A worm won't turn if you step on it right.
Efficiency is an admirable quality, but it can be overdone, according to Representative M. Clyde Kelly, of Pennsylvania.
"Last election day," Mr. Kelly explains, "the city editor of my newspaper in Braddock sent his best reporter out to learn if the saloons were open in defiance of the law. Four days later he returned and reported, 'They were.'"
"Sambo, I don't understand how you can do all your work so quickly, and so well."
"I'll tell yuh how 'tis, boss. I sticks de match ob enthusiasm to de fuse ob yenergy--and jes natchurally explodes, I does."
"Don't be so long-winded in your reports as you have been in the past," said the manager of the "Wild West" railway to his overseer. "Just report the condition of the track as ye find it, and don't put in a lot of needless words that ain't to the point. Write a business letter, not a love-letter."
A few days later the railway line was badly flooded, and the overseer wrote his report to the manager in one line: "Sir--Where the railway was the river is.--Yours faithfully,----."
In Montana a railway-bridge had been destroyed by fire, and it was necessary to replace it. The bridge-engineer and his staff were ordered in haste to the place. Two days later came the superintendent of the division. Alighting from his private car, he encountered the old master bridge-builder.
"Bill," said the superintendent--and the words quivered with energy--"I want this job rushed. Every hour's delay costs the company money. Have you got the engineer's plans for the new bridge?"
"I don't know," said the bridge-builder, "whether the engineer has the picture drawed yet or not, but the bridge is up and the trains is passin' over it."--_Harper's_.
"Better consider my course in efficiency training. I can show you how to earn more money than you are getting."
The boy was very small and the load he was pushing in the wheelbarrow was very, very big.
A benevolent old gentleman, putting down his bundles, lent him a helping hand.
"Really, my boy," he puffed, "I don't see how you manage to get that barrow up the gutters alone."
"I don't," replied the appreciative kid. "Dere's always some jay a-standin' round as takes it up for me."--_Puck_.