The Psychology of the Business Man 289 



tionally, an instinctive pleasure in mere bodily activity (in 

 common with the lower animals) from this feeling's being an 

 advantageoiis incentive for us to be doing something, yet the 

 business man has developed this instinct into an executive 

 ability far more than the working or professional man. The 

 laboring man has the natural pleasure in activity too much 

 exercised and worn down by fatigue; the professional man has 

 stunted his natural activity or developed it into more indirect 

 and artificial forms ; but the business maa is a business man 

 primarily because of his vigorous pleasure in doing things. 

 The elastic step, cheery voice, and alert face of the hurrying, 

 business man on the street are contagious signs of his joyous 

 pleasure in work. Even now a veteran business man occasion- 

 ally still clings to the early farm hours of his youth, and is 

 down at his winter or summer office before any of his clerks 

 and takes a worthy pride in this early activity of the day. 



Such a business hustler is restless and unhappy when still. 

 A wealthy manufacturer was finally inveigled abroad with his 

 whole family as a precaution for his health ; but he no sooner 

 got ashore at Alexandria, Athens, and Constantinople than he 

 instantly got into cable communication with the price of wheat 

 and sales of his flour. The trip did him no appreciable good; 

 he was beamingly happy on getting back again to his haunted 

 Chamber of Commerce, and died in the prime of life at full 

 gallop in the business harness. Another wealthy man, wh.o 

 had built up a great firm, laughed at the idea of his lying still 

 in a hospital bed a couple of weeks after an appendicitis opera- 

 tion ; and, after reasoning and entreaties had been tried on him 

 in vain, his angry threats of getting up from bed himself and 

 going home in his own carriage were only met by the absolute 

 commands of the doctor to his attendants. 



On the other hand, even men with less than the average 

 instinctive pleasure in activity can become entirely devoted to 

 business thru the operation of custom or habit, which will 

 develop pleasure in any kind of long-continued activity that is 

 not positively killing in its operation. Thns many a restless 

 wealthy merchant's son, whose pleasurable activity seems for 

 some youthful years to be confined to sporting and society nov- 

 elties, grows finally to be a concentrated business machine ; for, 

 as business habits engross him more and more, his family and 

 friends are relieved at his settling down from a roaming life 



