How to Win Friends and Influence People (3 page)

the duel.

That was the most lurid personal incident in Lincoln’s

life. It taught him an invaluable lesson in the art of dealing

with people. Never again did he write an insulting

letter. Never again did he ridicule anyone. And from that

time on, he almost never criticized anybody for anything.

Time after time, during the Civil War, Lincoln put a

new general at the head of the Army of the Potomac, and

each one in turn - McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker,

Meade - blundered tragically and drove Lincoln to pacing

the floor in despair. Half the nation savagely condemned

these incompetent generals, but Lincoln, “with

malice toward none, with charity for all,” held his peace.

One of his favorite quotations was “Judge not, that ye be

not judged.”

And when Mrs. Lincoln and others spoke harshly of

the southern people, Lincoln replied: “Don’t criticize

them; they are just what we would be under similar

circumstances.”

Yet if any man ever had occasion to criticize, surely it

was Lincoln. Let’s take just one illustration:

The Battle of Gettysburg was fought during the first

three days of July 1863. During the night of July 4, Lee

began to retreat southward while storm clouds deluged

the country with rain. When Lee reached the Potomac

with his defeated army, he found a swollen, impassable

river in front of him, and a victorious Union Army behind

him. Lee was in a trap. He couldn’t escape. Lincoln

saw that. Here was a golden, heaven-sent opportunity-

the opportunity to capture Lee’s army and end the war

immediately. So, with a surge of high hope, Lincoln ordered

Meade not to call a council of war but to attack

Lee immediately. Lincoln telegraphed his orders and

then sent a special messenger to Meade demanding immediate

action.

And what did General Meade do? He did the very

opposite of what he was told to do. He called a council

of war in direct violation of Lincoln’s orders. He hesitated.

He procrastinated. He telegraphed all manner of

excuses. He refused point-blank to attack Lee. Finally

the waters receded and Lee escaped over the Potomac

with his forces.

Lincoln was furious, “ What does this mean?” Lincoln

cried to his son Robert. “Great God! What does this

mean? We had them within our grasp, and had only to

stretch forth our hands and they were ours; yet nothing

that I could say or do could make the army move. Under

the circumstances, almost any general could have defeated

Lee. If I had gone up there, I could have whipped

him myself.”

In bitter disappointment, Lincoln sat down and wrote

Meade this letter. And remember, at this period of his

life Lincoln was extremely conservative and restrained

in his phraseology. So this letter coming from Lincoln in

1863 was tantamount to the severest rebuke.

My dear General,

I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune

involved in Lee’s escape. He was within our easy

grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection

With our other late successes, have ended the war. As it is,

the war will be prolonged indefinitely. If you could not

safely attack Lee last Monday, how can you possibly do so

south of the river, when you can take with you very few-

no more than two-thirds of the force you then had in hand?

It would be unreasonable to expect and I do not expect that

you can now effect much. Your golden opportunity is gone,

and I am distressed immeasurably because of it.

What do you suppose Meade did when he read the

letter?

Meade never saw that letter. Lincoln never mailed it.

It was found among his papers after his death.

My guess is - and this is only a guess - that after writing

that letter, Lincoln looked out of the window and

said to himself, “Just a minute. Maybe I ought not to be

so hasty. It is easy enough for me to sit here in the quiet

of the White House and order Meade to attack; but if I

had been up at Gettysburg, and if I had seen as much

blood as Meade has seen during the last week, and if my

ears had been pierced with the screams and shrieks of

the wounded and dying, maybe I wouldn’t be so anxious

to attack either. If I had Meade’s timid temperament,

perhaps I would have done just what he had done. Anyhow,

it is water under the bridge now. If I send this

letter, it will relieve my feelings, but it will make Meade

try to justify himself. It will make him condemn me. It

will arouse hard feelings, impair all his further usefulness

as a commander, and perhaps force him to resign

from the army.”

So, as I have already said, Lincoln put the letter aside,

for he had learned by bitter experience that sharp criticisms

and rebukes almost invariably end in futility.

Theodore Roosevelt said that when he, as President,

was confronted with a perplexing problem, he used to

lean back and look up at a large painting of Lincoln

which hung above his desk in the White House and ask

himself, “What would Lincoln do if he were in my

shoes? How would he solve this problem?”

The next time we are tempted to admonish somebody,

/
let’s pull a five-dollar bill out of our pocket, look at Lincoln’s

picture on the bill, and ask. “How would Lincoln

handle this problem if he had it?”

Mark Twain lost his temper occasionally and wrote

letters that turned the Paper brown. For example, he

once wrote to a man who had aroused his ire: “The thing

for you is a burial permit. You have only to speak and I

will see that you get it.” On another occasion he wrote

to an editor about a proofreader’s attempts to “improve

my spelling and punctuation.” He ordered: “Set the

matter according to my copy hereafter and see that the

proofreader retains his suggestions in the mush of his

decayed brain.”

The writing of these stinging letters made Mark Twain

feel better. They allowed him to blow off steam, and the

letters didn’t do any real harm, because Mark’s wife

secretly lifted them out of the mail. They were never

sent.

Do you know someone you would like to change and

regulate and improve? Good! That is fine. I am all in

favor of it, But why not begin on yourself? From a purely

selfish standpoint, that is a lot more profitable than

trying to improve others - yes, and a lot less dangerous.

 “Don’t complain about the snow on your neighbor’s

roof,” said Confucius, “when your own doorstep is unclean.”

When I was still young and trying hard to impress

people, I wrote a foolish letter to Richard Harding

Davis, an author who once loomed large on the literary

horizon of America. I was preparing a magazine article

about authors, and I asked Davis to tell me about his

method of work. A few weeks earlier, I had received a

letter from someone with this notation at the bottom:

“Dictated but not read.” I was quite impressed. I felt

that the writer must be very big and busy and important.

I wasn’t the slightest bit busy, but I was eager to make

an impression on Richard Harding Davis, so I ended my

short note with the words: “Dictated but not read.”

He never troubled to answer the letter. He simply

returned it to me with this scribbled across the bottom:

“Your bad manners are exceeded only by your bad manners.”

True, I had blundered, and perhaps I deserved

this rebuke. But, being human, I resented it. I resented

it so sharply that when I read of the death of Richard

Harding Davis ten years later, the one thought that still

persisted in my mind - I am ashamed to admit - was the

hurt he had given me.

If you and I want to stir up a resentment tomorrow

that may rankle across the decades and endure until

death, just let us indulge in a little stinging criticism-

no matter how certain we are that it is justified.

When dealing with people, let us remember we are

not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with

creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices

and motivated by pride and vanity.

Bitter criticism caused the sensitive Thomas Hardy,

one of the finest novelists ever to enrich English literature,

to give up forever the writing of fiction. Criticism

drove Thomas Chatterton, the English poet, to suicide.

Benjamin Franklin, tactless in his youth, became so

diplomatic, so adroit at handling people, that he was

made American Ambassador to France. The secret of his

success? “I will speak ill of no man,” he said, " . . and

speak all the good I know of everybody.”

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and

most fools do.

But it takes character and self-control to be under-standing

and forgiving.

“A great man shows his greatness,” said Carlyle, “by

the way he treats little men.”

Bob Hoover, a famous test pilot and frequent per-former

at air shows, was returning to his home in Los

Angeles from an air show in San Diego. As described in

the magazine
Flight Operations,
at three hundred feet

in the air, both engines suddenly stopped. By deft maneuvering

he managed to land the plane, but it was

badly damaged although nobody was hurt.

Hoover’s first act after the emergency landing was to

inspect the airplane’s fuel. Just as he suspected, the

World War II propeller plane he had been flying had

been fueled with jet fuel rather than gasoline.

Upon returning to the airport, he asked to see the mechanic

who had serviced his airplane. The young man

was sick with the agony of his mistake. Tears streamed

down his face as Hoover approached. He had just caused

the loss of a very expensive plane and could have caused

the loss of three lives as well.

You can imagine Hoover’s anger. One could anticipate

the tongue-lashing that this proud and precise pilot

would unleash for that carelessness. But Hoover didn’t

scold the mechanic; he didn’t even criticize him. Instead,

he put his big arm around the man’s shoulder and

said, “To show you I’m sure that you’ll never do this

again, I want you to service my F-51 tomorrow.”

Often parents are tempted to criticize their children.

You would expect me to say “don’t.” But I will not, I am

merely going to say,
“Before
you criticize them, read

one of the classics of American journalism, ‘Father Forgets.’ ”

It originally appeared as an editorial in the
People's

Home Journnl.
We are reprinting it here with the

author’s permission, as condensed in the
Reader’s Digest
:

“Father Forgets” is one of those little pieces which-

dashed of in a moment of sincere feeling - strikes an

echoing chord in so many readers as to become a perenial

reprint favorite. Since its first appearance, “Father

Forgets" has been reproduced, writes the author,

W, Livingston Larned, “in hundreds of magazines and

house organs, and in newspapers the country over. It has

been reprinted almost as extensively in many foreign

languages. I have given personal permission to thousands

who wished to read it from school, church, and

lecture platforms. It has been ‘on the air’ on countless

occasions and programs. Oddly enough, college periodicals

have used it, and high-school magazines. Sometimes

a little piece seems mysteriously to ‘click.’ This

one certainly did.”

FATHER FORGETS

W. Livingston Larned

Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little

paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily

wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room

alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper

in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me.

Guiltily I came to your bedside.

There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross

to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because

you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took

you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily

when you threw some of your things on the floor.

At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You

gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table.

You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you

started off to play and I made for my train, you turned

and waved a hand and called, “Goodbye, Daddy!” and

I frowned, and said in reply, “Hold your shoulders

back!”

Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I

came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing

marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated

you before your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to

the house. Stockings were expensive - and if you had to

buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son,

from a father!

Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library,