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( Originally Published 1908 ) The Hundred Point Man THE other day I wrote to a banker-friend inquiring as to the responsibility of a certain person. The answer came back, thus : " He is a Hundred-Point man in everything and anything he undertakes. " I read the telegram and then pinned it up over my desk where I could see it. That night it sort of stuck in my memory. I dreamed of it. The next day I showed the message to a fellow I know pretty well, and said, "I 'd rather have that said of me than to be called a great this or that." Oliver Wendell Holmes has left on record the statement that you could not throw a stone on Boston Common without caroming on three poets, two essayists, and a playwright. Hundred-Point men are not so plentiful. A Hundred - Point man is one who is true to every trust; who keeps his word; who is loyal to the firm that employs him; who does not listen for insults nor look for slights; who carries a civil tongue in his head; who is polite to strangers, without being " fresh; " who is considerate towards servants; who is moderate in his eating and drinking; who is willing to learn; who is cautious and yet courageous. Hundred-Point men may vary much in ability, but this is always true—they are safe men to deal with, whether drivers of drays, motor men, clerks, cashiers, engineers or presidents of railroads. Paranoics are people who are suffering from fatty enlargement of the ego They want the best seats in the synagogue, they demand bouquets, compliments, obeisance, and in order to sec what the papers will say next morning, they sometimes obligingly commit suicide. The Paranoic is the antithesis of the Hundred-Point man The Paranoic imagines he is being wronged, that some one has it in for him and that the world is down on him. He is given to that which is strange, peculiar, uncertain, eccentric and erratic. The Hundred-Point man may not look just like all other men, or dress like them, or talk like them, but what he does is true to his own nature. He is himself. He is more interested in doing his work than in what people will say about it. He does not consider the gallery. He acts his thought and thinks little of the act. I never knew a Hundred-Point man who was not one brought up from early youth to make himself useful, and to economize in the matter of time and money. Necessity is ballast. The Paranoic, almost without exception, is one who has been made exempt from work. He has been petted, waited upon, coddled, cared for, laughed at and chuckled to.
The excellence of the old-fashioned big family was that no child got an undue amount of
The Hundred-Point man looks after just one individual, and that is the man under his own
hat; he is one who does not spend money until he earns it; who pays his way; who knows that
nothing is ever given for nothing; who keeps his digits off other people's property. When he
does not know what to say, why, he says nothing, and when he does not know what to do,
does not do it We should mark on moral qualities not merely mental attainment or proficiency, because in the race of life only moral qualities count. We should rate on judgment,
application and intent ,t Men by habit and nature who are untrue to a trust, are dangerous just in proportion as they are clever. I would like to see a university devoted to turning out safe men instead of merely clever ones.
How would it do for a college to give one degree, and one only, to those who are worthy,
the degree of H. P. ?
Would it not be worth striving for, to have a college president say of you, over his own sig-
nature : "He is a Hundred-Point man in everything and anything that he undertakes!"
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