Men During Business Hours.
THE social nature of the man of business may be said to be under a cloud during business hours. Under the pressure of numerous and varied responsibilities, his genial qualities, whatever they may be, are necessarily held in abeyance. Expect nothing of him when he is in harness, save the gait and style of action that belong to the business course. He is running against time, and has no leisure for curveting and caracoling. Your idler who drops in upon the business man during the burden and heat of the commercial day is apt to find him “grumpy.” Grumpy is an epithet which the do-nothings of the world are rather fond of applying to pre-occupied men whose working moments are too precious to be wasted in ceremony. Ask the untimely counting-house visitor if he was treated with incivility, and he will probably answer—“Why, no, not exactly with incivility; but Mr. So-and-So was short and abrupt in his manner, and he did not even invite me to sit down.” Most worshipful trifler whose object it is to kill time, while that of the gentleman you were so uncivil as to annoy, is to make the most of it, how do you suppose Mr. So-and-so would get through his herculean daily labors if he were not short and abrupt in his questions and replies? Should he ask every bore who calls upon him to sit down, how many chairs do you think he would need in his office? Do you imagine he would transact his private business in the midst of a crowd, or that if he sought golden opinions from you, or such as you, by doing the agreeable when he might be doing the profitable, he would achieve fortune or the respect of the business world?