There were six hundres students in State Teachers' Colleage,and Dala Carnegie was one of the isolated half-dozen who couldn't afford to board in town.He was ashamed of the poverty that made it necessary for him to ride back to the farm and milk the cows every night.He was ashamed of his coat,which was too tight,and his trousers,which were too short,Rapidly developing an inferiority complex,he looked about for some shortcut to distinction.He soon saw that there were certain groups in colleage that enjoyed influence and prestige-the footbal and baseball players and the chaps who won the debating and public-speaking contests.
Realizing that he had no flair for athletics,hw decided to win one of the speaking contests.He spent months preparing his talks.He practiced as he sat in the saddle galloping to college and back;he practiced his speeches as he milked the cows;and then he mounted a bale of hay in the barn and with great gusto and gestures harangues the frightened pigeons about the issues of the day.
But in spite of all his earnestness and preparation,he met with defeat after defeat.He was eighteen at the time-sensitive and proud.He became so discouraged,so depressed,that he even thought of suicide.And then suddenly he began to win,not one contest,but every speaking contest in college.
Other students pleaded with him to train them;and they won also.
After graduating from college,he started selling correspondence coursed to the ranchers among the sand hills of western Nebraska and eastern Whoming.In spite of all his boundless energy and enthusiasm,he couldn't make the grade.He boundless energy and enthusiasm,he couldn't make the grade.he became so discoruaged that he went to his hotel room in Alliance,Nebraska,in the middle of the day,threw himself across the bed,and weptin despair.He longed to go back to college,he longed to retreat from the harsh battle of life;but he couldn't .So he resolved to go to Omaha and get another job.He didnn't have the money for a railroad ticket,so he traveled on a freight train,feeding and watering two carloads of wild horses in return for his passage,After landing in south Omaha,he got a job selling bacon and soap and lard for Armour and company.His territory was up amony the Badlands and the cow and Indian country of western South Dakota.He covered his territory by freright train and stage coach and horseback and slept in pioneer hotels where the only partition between the rooms was a sheet of muslin.He studied book on salemanship,rode bucking bronchos,played poker with the Indians,and inland storekeeper couldn't pay cash for the bacon and hams he had ordered,Dale Carnegie would take a dozen pairs of shoes off his shelf,sell the shoes to the railroad men,and forward the receipts to Armour and Company. |
