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Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis
8-1
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill
Education.
CHAPTER 08
LOCATION PLANNING AND ANALYSIS
Teaching Notes
Facility location refers to the location of a service or manufacturing facility with respect to customers,
suppliers, and other existing facilities such that it allows the company to gain a competitive and/or
strategic edge. In making a location decision, both tangible costs (e.g., cost of operating the facility; cost
of land (if it applies); cost of labor, taxes, and utilities; cost of inbound and outbound transportation) and
intangible costs (e.g., availability of qualified labor and labor climate) must be considered. Because the
location decision usually involves making a large capital investment, it not only affects the firm’s ability
to compete but also has long-term strategic implications. Therefore, in making the location decision, we
should consider issues related to marketing, production, transportation and other relevant costs as well as
the strategy of the organization. The importance of various factors in relation to the location decision will
vary between service and manufacturing organizations and from industry to industry as well.
Reading: Innovative MCI Unit Finds Culture Shock in Colorado Springs
1. The most severe fallouts from the move to Colorado were:
a. Numerous key executives and engineers, and hundreds of the division’s minority
population refused to relocate, or fled Colorado Springs soon after relocating.
b. The move isolated engineers from top management and from marketing colleagues at
headquarters, undermining collaboration.
c. The professionals whom Mr. Liebhaber hoped to recruit proved difficult and expensive to
woo to Colorado Springs.
d. Thousands of workers (more than expected) took advantage of the relocation package,
undercutting plans to recruit lower-cost employees in Colorado.
e. The move cost more than $200 million, far more than anticipated, and most of the
expected savings never materialized.
2. Mr. Liebhaber should have sought out more information by conducting surveys of workers,
managers, and engineers asking them for the following information: how likely they were to
move, ratings of factors that would affect their decision to move, ratings of factors that they
valued about their current work environment, and ratings about factors that they considered
important for quality of life issues. Mr. Liebhaber seems to have considered his own quality of
life and work issues only.
Reading: Site Selection Grows Up: Improved Tech Tools Make the Process
Faster, Better
1. Tech tools have improved the process of site selection by providing in-depth market research
analyzing traffic volumes, concentration of other retail businesses, and demographic data. In
addition, some of these tools provide aerial photographs of proposed sites and surrounding areas.
Some tools allow users to plug in the site characteristics criteria and a proposed location and then
push a button to receive output such as maps, reports, and models. Other tools provide market
optimization software that informs the user on how best to carve out territories, helping to
eliminate encroachment and cannibalization.
2. Franchisors also can use geoVue and other similar tools to analyze changes in performance,
demographics, or other factors that would warrant closing or relocating a facility.
Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis
8-2
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill
Education.
Answers to Discussion and Review Questions
1. Location decisions can have an impact on access to markets, costs (including materials, labor,
rent, construction, and transportation), quality of work life (e.g., community-related factors), and
growth potential.
2. The fact that similar businesses are located widely underscores the futility of searching for that
“one best” location. However, it does not necessarily follow that little attention is needed in
finding a suitable location. Many organizations that have not been successful are no longer in
business (e.g., service stations in poor locations, motels bypassed by an expressway, and so on).
Moreover, others currently in operation might be much more profitable in another location. For
some businesses (e.g., restaurants) regional factors are not particularly significant, and even
community-related factors are of little importance. However, site-related factors are extremely
important. Similarly, there are numerous examples of firms that are less affected by community
or site factors than they are by regional factors (i.e., nearness to market, labor, or raw materials).
3. Important community factors include size of the community, public transportation, schools,
recreational facilities, libraries, restaurants, shopping centers, cultural and entertainment
selections, and so on.
4. Manufacturing and non-manufacturing organizations tend to approach location decisions in a
similar way, but the factors that are important to each tend to differ. Although both tend to take
costs and profits into consideration, manufacturing firms are often concerned with location of raw
materials, transportation costs, availability of energy and water, and similar factors. Non-
manufacturing firms often are more concerned with convenience, access to markets, traffic flow,
and the like.
5. Foreign locations may offer lower taxes, access to markets, availability of raw materials, lower
transportation costs (due to nearness to market), and lower labor costs than a comparable
domestic location. Potential drawbacks often relate to the political and economic stability of the
host country and attitudes of the populace towards a particular nation, industry, or firm.
6. Location rating, or factor rating, is a qualitative technique used to develop an overall composite
index for an alternative, which can be used to compare location alternatives. It involves
identifying relevant factors, assigning relative weights to the factors, and rating each alternative
with respect to the factors.
7. The first step is to decide on the criteria to use to evaluate location alternatives (e.g., cost, profits,
community service, etc.). The second step is to identify any important factors that will dominate
the decision. The third step is to develop location alternatives (country, general region, small
number of community alternatives, and site alternatives among the community alternatives). The
fourth step is to evaluate the alternatives and make a selection.
8. Locational breakeven analysis generally assumes the following:
a. Fixed costs are constant for the range of probable output.
b. Variable costs are linear for the range of probable output.
c. The level of output that will be required can be estimated within a narrow range.
d. A single product is involved.
9. Recent trends include the location of foreign manufacturing plants in the United States, having
smaller factories located close to markets, choosing nearby suppliers, low-cost labor is becoming
less of a factor in many industries, and advances in information technology make it less important
to have design, engineering, etc. close to the factory.
Taking Stock
1. Due to economies of scale, the centrally located large facility will be more efficient. The
scheduling and coordination between the large facility and suppliers or customers will be
Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis
8-3
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill
Education.
simplified. However, due to distance, transportation/distribution costs to or from the large facility
will be much higher than those costs would be when using several smaller dispersed facilities
instead. Having several smaller dispersed facilities will not only reduce the transportation cost but
also increase the flexibility of the firm in terms of being able to reduce distribution lead time, thus
resulting in faster deliveries or receipts of goods or merchandise.
2. Unlike the process design decision, the facility location decision is a macro decision and thus
requires the involvement of top-level management. The larger the facility, the higher the level of
involvement of the company personnel will be. In terms of various functions or departments
within the company, manufacturing (or operations), logistics and distribution, marketing, and
strategic planning must be involved. Depending on the type of facility considered, other groups
may also need to be included in making this important decision.
3. Due to the advancement of data mining and data warehousing, and the related improvements in
computers’ ability to store and exchange data, we can generate much more useful information to
make the facility location decision.
Critical Thinking Exercises
1. The company does have some social responsibility. Because the company employs such a large
percentage of the city’s workforce, its leaving is certain to have a major impact on town
businesses. It is likely that unless new sources of employment emerge, some residents may be
forced to move away, and many businesses may fail, or barely get by.
Thus, the company must weigh the projected benefits of the move against the actual and social
costs of the move. It also must factor in the primary reasons for the move. These might include
high taxes, adverse weather conditions, a shift in its markets, poor public relations, labor strife, an
aging facility that has to be replaced, an insufficient supply of essential labor skills, and a need to
be closer to a major customer.
2. Trade-offs involved would include:
a. The nature of current, and more importantly, the forecasted future demand.
b. Current demographics and the future expected changes in demographics for this area.
c. The nature and type of competition for this area. We will need to predict what our
competitors will be doing in the short-term as well as in the long-term.
d. We need to divide the area into several sub-areas and consider the advantages and
disadvantages of opening a store in each of the sub-areas.
e. What is the projected impact of the new location(s) on the sales of the existing locations?
If the demand is too low and we decide to open more than one site, we will have to experience
the cost of closing at least one of the existing locations and perhaps absorb the loss of sales in
our existing store. On the other hand, if the demand is higher than we expected, and we opened
up a store only on one site, we will have to consider the opportunity cost of lost sales and profit.
Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis
8-4
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill
Education.
3.
Options Pros Cons
Avoid such locations. Avoid the problem completely. Miss out on potential business.
Locate there and deal with it. Potential business. Need to make sure workers
know and abide by the policy.
Risk cheating and possible
consequences.
When in Rome … (assuming
“bribes” are more like “tips”
to service people).
Potential business. Probably a fine line between
tipping and bribing, very risky.
4. Student answers will vary. Some possible answers follow:
a. If a company located a manufacturing facility that creates heavy pollution adjacent to an
elementary school or a retirement home, this action would violate the Common Good
Principle.
b. If the CEO of a corporation accepted a bribe to locate a new facility in a city, this action
would violate the Virtue Principle.
c. If an executive asked a subordinate to alter some numbers in a factor-scoring model so that
the executive’s location choice came out on top, this action would violate the Rights Principle
and the Virtue Principle.
Solutions
1. Given: We have the following information shown below for two plant location alternatives:
Omaha Kansas City
R $185 $185
v $36 $47
Annual FC $1,200,000 $1,400,000
Expected annual
demand (units) (Q)
8,000 12,000
Determine the expected profits per year for each alternative:
Profit = Q(R – v) – FC
Omaha: 8,000($185 – $36) – $1,200,000 = -$8,000
Kansas City: 12,000($185 – $47) – $1,400,000 = $256,000
Conclusion: Kansas City would produce the greater profit.
Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis
8-5
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill
Education.
2. Given: We have the following information shown below for three potential locations for a new
outlet:
A B C
R $2.65 $2.65 $2.65
v $1.76 $1.76 $1.76
Monthly FC $5,000 $5,500 $5,800
a. Determine the monthly volume necessary at each location to realize a monthly profit of
$10,000 (round to 1 decimal).
𝑄 =
𝑆𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑑 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑓𝑖𝑡+𝐹𝐶
𝑅−𝑣
Location A Volume:
𝑄 =
𝑆𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑑 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑓𝑖𝑡+𝐹𝐶
𝑅−𝑣
=
10,000 + 5,000
2.65−1.76
= 16,853.9 𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑠
Location B Volume:
𝑄 =
𝑆𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑑 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑓𝑖𝑡+𝐹𝐶
𝑅−𝑣
=
10,000 + 5,500
2.65−1.76
= 17,415.7 𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑠
Location C Volume:
𝑄 =
𝑆𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑑 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑓𝑖𝑡+𝐹𝐶
𝑅−𝑣
=
10,000 + 5,800
2.65−1.76
= 17,752.8 𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑠
b. Determine the expected profits at each facility given the expected monthly volumes:
A = 21,000 per month, B = 22,000 per month, & C = 23,000 per month.
Profit = Q(R – v) – FC
Location A: 21,000($2.65 – $1.76) – $5,000 = $13,690 per month
Location B: 22,000($2.65 – $1.76) – $5,500 = $14,080 per month
Location C: 23,000($2.65 – $1.76) – $5,800 = $14,670 per month
Conclusion: Location C would yield the greatest profits.
Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis
8-6
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill
Education.
3. Given: There are two alternatives for which costs and revenue are listed below:
A B
R $17,000 $17,000
v $14,000 $13,000
Annual FC $800,000 $920,000
a. Find the volume at which the two locations have the same total cost (TC).
TC = FC + VC
TC = FC + (Q x v)
TC (Location A) = $800,000 + $14,000Q
TC (Location B) = $920,000 + $13,000Q
Set the two cost equations equal and solve for Q:
$800,000 + $14,000Q = $920,000 + $13,000Q
$14,000Q – $13,000Q = $920,000 – $800,000
$1,000Q = $120,000
Q = $120,000 / $1,000
Q = 120 units
b. Range over which A and B would be superior:
Location A has the lowest fixed costs; therefore, it is preferred at lower volumes.
Conclusion:
Location A Preferred: 0 < 120 units
Location B Preferred: > 120 units
4. Given: There are three alternatives for which costs are given below:
A (new) B (sub) C (expand)
v $500 $2,500 $1,000
Annual FC $250,000 --- $50,000
a. Step 1: Determine the total cost equation for each alternative.
TC = FC + VC
TC = FC + (Q x v)
A: TC = $250,000 + $500Q
B: TC = $2,500Q
C: TC = $50,000 + $1,000Q
Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis
8-7
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill
Education.
Step 2: Graph the alternatives.
Step 3: Determine over what range each alternative is preferred.
Looking at the graph, we can tell that Alternative B is preferred over the lowest range,
Alternative C is preferred over the middle range, and Alternative A is preferred over the
highest range.
First, we find the indifference (break-even) point between Alternatives B & C by setting their
total cost equations equal to each other and solving for Q.
B: TC = $2,500Q
C: TC = $50,000 + $1,000Q
$2,500Q = $50,000 + $1,000Q
$2,500Q – $1,000Q = $50,000
$1,500Q = $50,000
Q = $50,000 / $1,500
Q = 33.33 units
Second, we find the indifference (break-even) point between Alternatives C & A by setting
their total cost equations equal to each other and solving for Q.
C: TC = $50,000 + $1,000Q
A: TC = $250,000 + $500Q
$50,000 + $1,000Q = $250,000 + $500Q
$1,000Q – $500Q = $250,000 – $50,000
$500Q = $200,000
Q = $200,000 / $500
Q = 400 units
A (new location)
C (expansion)
B (sub-
contract)
33.3 100 200 300 400
500
400
300
200
100
0
TC
($000)
B C A
[250]
[50]
No. of Boats/yr.
Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis
8-8
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill
Education.
Conclusion:
Alternative B preferred: < 33.33 units
Alternative C preferred: > 33.33 units to < 400 units
Alternative A preferred: > 400 units
b. Expected volume of 150 boats:
Based on the graph, Alternative C would yield the lowest total cost (TC) at a volume of 150
boats.
c. Other factors that might be considered when deciding between the expansion and
subcontracting alternatives include subcontracting costs will be known with greater certainty,
subcontracting provides a secondary (backup) source of supply, and expansion offers more
control over operations.
5. Rework Problem 4b using this additional information: Alternative A (New Location) will have an
additional $4,000 in fixed costs per year. Alternative B (Subcontracting) will have $25,000 in
fixed costs per year. Alternative C (Expansion) will have an additional $70,000 in fixed costs per
year.
Step 1: Change the costs in the table.
A (new) B (sub) C (expand)
v $500 $2,500 $1,000
Annual FC $254,000 $25,000 $120,000
Step 2: Determine the total cost equation for each alternative.
TC = FC + VC
TC = FC + (Q x v)
A: TC = $254,000 + $500Q
B: TC = $25,000 + $2,500Q
C: TC = $120,000 + $1,000Q
Step 3: Find TC for 150 units.
A: TC = $254,000 + $500(150) = $329,000
B: TC = $25,000 + $2,500(150) = $400,000
C: TC = $120,000 + $1,000(150) = $270,000
Conclusion: Alternative C (Expand) would yield the lowest total cost for an expected volume of
150 boats.
Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis
8-9
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill
Education.
6. Given: Expected annual volume (Q) = 10,000 units. There are three lease alternatives for which
costs are given below:
Memphis Biloxi Birmingham
Lease building &
equipment $40,000 $60,000 $100,000
Transportation $50,000 $60,000 $25,000
v $8 $4 $5
Step 1: Determine fixed cost (FC) for each alternative & add FC to table.
FC = Lease cost + transportation cost.
Memphis Biloxi Birmingham
Lease building &
equipment $40,000 $60,000 $100,000
Transportation $50,000 $60,000 $25,000
Annual FC $90,000 $120,000 $125,000
v $8 $4 $5
Step 2: Determine the total cost equation for each alternative.
TC = FC + VC
TC = FC + (Q x v)
Memphis: $90,000 + $8Q
Biloxi: $120,000 + $4Q
Birmingham: $125,000 + $5Q
Step 3: Find TC for 10,000 units.
Memphis: $90,000 + $8(10,000) = $170,000
Biloxi: $120,000 + $4(10,000) = $160,000
Birmingham: $125,000 + $5(10,000) = $175,000
Conclusion: The Biloxi alternative yields the lowest total cost for an expected annual volume of
10,000 units.
Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis
8-10
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill
Education.
7. Given: There are two alternative shop locations for which costs are shown below:
City Outside
R $90 $90
v $30 $40
Monthly FC $7,000 $4,700
a. (1) Monthly profit for Q = 200 cars:
Step 1: Determine total profit equation for each alternative.
Total profit = Q(R – v) – FC
City: Q($90 – $30) – $7,000
Outside: Q($90 – $40) – $4,700
Step 2: Determine total profit for each alternative at the expected monthly volume.
City: 200($90 – $30) – $7,000 = $5,000
Outside: 200($90 – $40) – $4,700 = $5,300
Conclusion: Outside location yields the greatest profit if monthly demand is 200 cars.
(2) Monthly profit for Q = 300 cars:
City: 300($90 – $30) – $7,000 = $11,000
Outside: 300($90 – $40) – $4,700 = $10,300
Conclusion: City location yields the greatest profit if monthly demand is 300 cars.
b. Determine the indifference (break-even point) between the two locations.
Set their total profit equations equal to each other and solve for Q:
Q($90 – $30) – $7,000 = Q($90 – $40) – $4,700
$60Q – $7,000 = $50Q – $4,700
$60Q – $50Q = -$4,700 – (-$7,000)
$10Q = $2,300
Q = $2,300 / $10
Q = 230 cars
Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis
8-11
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill
Education.
8. Given: We are provided the location factors below for four different types of organizations.
Factor Local bank Steel mill Food warehouse Public school
Convenience for
customers
Attractiveness of
building
Nearness to raw
materials
Large amounts
of power
Pollution
controls
Labor cost and
availability
Transportation
costs
Construction
costs
Student answers will vary regarding how they rate the importance of each factor in terms of
making location decisions using L = low importance, M = moderate importance, and H = high
importance. One possible set of answers is given below.
Factor Local bank Steel mill Food warehouse Public school
Convenience for
customers H L M–H M–H
Attractiveness of
building H L M M–H
Nearness to raw
materials L H L M
Large amounts
of power L H L L
Pollution
controls L H L L
Labor cost and
availability L M L L
Transportation
costs L M–H M–H M
Construction
costs M H M M–H
Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis
8-12
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill
Education.
9. Given: We are given factors, weights, and factor rating scores for three locations. Scores range
from 1 – 100 (best).
Location Score
Factor Wt. A B C
Convenience .15 80 70 60
Parking .20 72 76 92
Display area .18 88 90 90
Shopper traffic .27 94 86 80
Operating costs .10 98 90 82
Neighborhood .10 96 85 75
1.00
Multiply the factor weight by the score for each factor and sum the results for each location
alternative.
Weight x Score
Factor Wt. A B C
Convenience .15 .15(80) = 12.00 .15(70) = 10.50 .15(60) = 9.00
Parking .20 .20(72) = 14.40 .20(76) = 15.20 .20(92) = 18.40
Display area .18 .18(88) = 15.84 .18(90) = 16.20 .18(90) = 16.20
Shopper traffic .27 .27(94) = 25.38 .27(86) = 23.22 .27(80) = 21.60
Operating costs .10 .10(98) = 9.80 .10(90) = 9.00 .10(82) = 8.20
Neighborhood .10 .10(96) = 9.60 .10(85) = 8.50 .10(75) = 7.50
1.00 87.02 82.62 80.90
Conclusion: Based on composite score, Location A seems to be the best.
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whisking out her teeth and laying them down wherever she chanced
to be; you might come upon them grinning amongst Mazie's music
on the piano, or under the sofa-cushions. She frankly enjoyed a
loose story, and made a point of telling them in mixed companies of
young people. She alternately bullied the servants and gossiped with
them in the kitchen; once I most inopportunely happened upon Mrs.
Botlisch engaged in a battle-royal with one of the chambermaids
over some trifle—a broken dish, perhaps—in the pantry. Fortunately,
I could not understand one word they uttered; and after a little, Mrs.
Pallinder came, looking quite grey over her handsome resolute face,
and took her mother away still shrieking hideous abuse. "Ma is so
eccentric," she said to me afterwards, with a ghastly smile; and
some feeling, of mingled horror and compassion, withheld me from
reporting the wretched scene. In most households, these
undesirable parents can be thrust, gently or not, into the
background; in fact, very many parents retire thither of their own
accord. But Mrs. Botlisch was not of that type.
"I like to set in the parlour an' see the young folks," she said.
"Mirandy she don't want me to, but I says to her, 'Mirandy,' says I,
'don't you worry. I'm goin' ter keep my uppers an' lowers in, 'less I
git a fish-bone er a hunk o' meat under the plate at dinner, an' I ain't
a-goin' to no bed till I git sleepy,' says I. She says, 'Ma, I'm afraid
you won't be comf'ble with your—you know—on all evenin'.'" (Here
she gave J. B. a poke in the side and dropped her left eyelid). "'Lord
love you, don't set there lookin' so innercent like you'd never saw a
woman undress in yer life—don't come that over me, young feller.
She says, 'Ma, I'm afraid you'll feel kinder tight an' uncomf'ble with
'em on all evenin' 'long as you ain't used to wearin' 'em much in the
daytime,' she says. 'Land!' says I. 'Mirandy,' I ain't squoze inter my
cloze by main stren'th the way Mazie is. 'F I feel uncomf'ble, I'll just
undo the bottom buttons of my basque an' I'll be all right, you see.'"
And there she sat, true to her word, creaking in her black silk and
bugles (with the bottom buttons undone!), perspiring greasily over
her fat red face; and shouting rough, humorous, and frequently
shrewd criticism at our amateurs during rehearsal until midnight,
when we went out to the dining-room for oysters, egg-nogg, and the
too lavish entertainment of Colonel Pallinder's sideboard. The first
time this occurred Teddy Johns retreated precipitately from the
table, and, being sought, was discovered at last, pallidly reclining on
the library lounge.
"I'm all right, old man," he said feebly. "Just a minute, please. I
couldn't stand seeing old Mrs. Botlisch wallop down those oysters,
that's all."
There lies before me now a square of rough paper (designedly
rough), with jagged edges (designedly jagged), tinted in water
colours an elegant cloudy blue, with a butterfly, or some such insect,
painted in one corner, and a slit diagonally opposite through which
we stuck a single rosebud, as I remember. Slanting across the sheet
in loose gilt lettering I read "Programme," and a date beneath. This
confection represented days of effort and ingenuity on the part of
those young ladies among my contemporaries who painted china, or
were otherwise "artistic." Some of them took the "Art Amateur," at a
ruinous expenditure; that publication has long since gone the way of
all flesh and most print, in company, it would appear, with the
amateurs for whom it was destined. Nobody is either "artistic" or
amateurish any more. We did the jagging with a meat-saw, I believe
—what a spectacle for our accomplished posterity!
If I reverse the sheet, I find upon the other side, in a correct angular
hand (it may well be my own, for angularity was much the fashion in
those days; and the inartistic ones let what aid they could to the
task of programme-making), I find, I say, the
CAST OF CHARACTERS
WILLIAM TELL,
An Opera in Two Acts.
William Tell Mr. Archer Baldwin Lewis
Arnold von Winkelreid Mr. James Hathaway
Walter Furst Mr. Julian Todd
Melcthal Mr. Appleton Wingate
Gessler Mr. James Smith
Rudolph Mr. John Porter
Ruodi Mr. Joseph Randall McHenry
Leuthold Mr. Henry Barnes Smith
Matilda Mr. Gwynne Peters
Mrs. Tell Mr. Oliver Hunt
Mrs. Gessler Mr. Theodore E. Johns
Jemmy, Tell's son
Mr. Junius Brutus
Breckinridge Taylor
Chorus of Peasants, Knights, Pages,
Ladies, Hunters,
Soldiers, etc.
Mr. Robert Carson
Scene: The Schactenthal Waterfall.
The uninformed might very well inquire, as did Doctor Vardaman,
what under Heaven Arnold von Winkelreid was doing in this galère?
He appeared among the other historical personages with a baseball-
catcher's padded guard tied about his chest, and stuck full of
enormous arrows; at one time or another every young man in the
cast, including Jimmie Hathaway himself, was overheard laboriously
explaining to Muriel that it was "all just nonsense, you know; of
course Winkelreid didn't have anything to do with Tell—but there
was an Arnold in the cast of the real opera—and then there was that
funny old piece about Arnold von Winkelreid in McGuffey's Reader,
you know: 'Make way for liberty, he cried, make way for liberty, and
died!' and he somehow seemed to fit in pretty well with the rest of
the foolishness. They had thought of having Casabianca, too, but
gave it up," and so on and so on.
"Don't pay any attention to their excuses, Miss Baxter," said the
doctor fiercely, yet shaking with laughter. "It's all miserable horse-
play—vandalism—desecration. 'Guillaume Tell' is a beautiful opera,
the creation of a great musical genius. I've seen Sonntag and
Lablache in it; it ought to be sacred from these barbarians—you hear
me, boys, barbarians!" He menaced them with a closed fist; and
they went on shamelessly:
Gessler (in a loud voice)—Who are these fellows?
Rudolph—My lord, these are Swiss.
Gessler (louder, pointing to Tell)—Who's that fellow with the
freckles?
Rudolph—My lord, that is a dotted Swiss.
Gessler (louder still)—Take away that dashed Swiss!
Rudolph—My lord, I said dotted.
Gessler (very loud)—Well, I said dashed——
It took little enough to make us laugh, for we thought all that very
funny indeed. And an interesting point might be made of the fact
that "William Tell," whether the men had greater abilities, or easier
parts, or from whatever reason, was, as a whole, far and away
superior to the play in which the girls appeared. Doctor Vardaman,
for all his old-time gallantry, betrayed his preference more than
once; but it sometimes seemed to me as if the old gentleman took a
malign satisfaction in viewing our performances, theatrical and
otherwise, as one who should stand by and observe the antics of so
many apes with an amused detachment.
"Of course, of course, I enjoy the comedy. Don't you want me to
enjoy the comedy?" he said when I taxed him, and eyed me
sidelong with his discomfiting grin. The doctor was a queer old man;
not the least evidence of his queerness was the interest he displayed
in our affairs. He watched us drill for "William Tell" and "Mrs.
Tankerville's Tiara," day by day, appearing to find therein unfailing
entertainment. To be sure he had little else to do; he had long
retired from practice, and, as he said of himself, was the weak-
minded victim of his own whims. With all his oddities, we were fond
of him; and his advice and suggestions were a real help to such of
us as took ourselves and our parts seriously. The stage was one of
his many hobbies; he had collected a huge library of books relating
to it; had seen all of the celebrated actors of his day and known not
a few of them; and could recall Laura Keane in the very rôle which
Muriel was now essaying.
"Do you remember what she wore, Doctor?" Mazie asked him,
characteristically enough, by the way.
"White gauze, I think," said the old gentleman, considering. "Yes, it
was white gauze, and a touch of green about it somewhere."
"Huh! Touch o' green was a fig-leaf, I s'pose—hope so, anyhow!"
said Mrs. Botlisch, and "wallopped" down another oyster. She was a
terrible old woman.
"I don't know what we'd do without you, doctor," said Mazie
precipitately. "You know so much about it—what we ought to do, I
mean, and how the whole thing ought to go. It's ever so kind of you
——"
"Not at all—the kindness is on your side," said the doctor. He
glanced about with a smile in which there lurked a whimsical
melancholy. "I don't aspire to the post of guide, philosopher, and fr
——"
"Talkin' o' guides," old Mrs. Botlisch interrupted him. "Ever hear that
story 'bout the English feller that went aroun' Niagry Falls with a
guide, out to Table Rock an' Goat Island, and down under th' Falls
an' everywheres, an' when they got through, he took an' wrote in th'
visitors' book, 'Why am I like Desdemona?' That's th' white girl that
married a nigger in one o' these here plays, you know. He took an'
wrote, 'Why am I like Desdemona? Becuz——'"
"Ahem!" interrupted Doctor Vardaman, with extraordinary
vehemence. "You were asking me for the address of the man that
sells make-up boxes, one of you the other day. I meant to bring it
with me to-night, but forgot. Any time you want, you can stop at my
house, and in case I'm out, ask Huddesley, I left it with him. It's
Kryzowski—bowski—wowski—some such unpronounceable Russian
name, and his shop is somewhere on Sixth Avenue, I think, but I
can't exactly remember."
All of which speech the doctor delivered in a rapid and vigorous
outburst of words, not pausing until he was quite out of breath; and
even then he had the air of one skirting by a hair's-breadth some
desperate verge.
"I'll stop in to-morrow," said J. B. "Huddesley isn't likely to get mixed
up about it, is he?"
"Huddesley? Oh, no, trust him. Besides I'll leave it written down. But
Huddesley is perfectly reliable—a remarkable man, that—never had
a such a servant is my house—he's really unusual."
"Snake in th' grass—don't tell me!" Mrs. Botlisch grunted. She had
taken a bitter prejudice against the doctor's man-servant; partly, no
doubt, because although he was a good deal about the house,
coming and going on the doctor's errands, he had managed to avoid
both her bullying and her patronage. There is nothing more
offensive than the servant whose manners are better than our own.
And Huddesley's manners were perfect in his degree; he was
English, we supposed from the short fragment of his history we had
heard, and had not been long enough abroad to lose the insular
standard of domestic service, and the insular traditions of class.
"Huddesley'll get spoiled if you don't look out, Doctor," Colonel
Pallinder warned him. "None of my affair, of course, but, pardon me,
too much notice and perhaps too much pay——"
"I know some of 'em that ain't sufferin' from that anyhow!" growled
the old woman pointedly.
"I believe ma thinks we ought to give all these lazy darkies as much
as we spend on ourselves," said Mrs. Pallinder with an indulgent
laugh. "As if they weren't eating us out of house and home already!
But William's right, doctor, Huddesley will be spoiled if we're not all
more careful. A white servant can't stand petting and familiarity the
way black ones do; sooner or later he'll presume on it. Did you know
that all these boys have been going down to your house to get
Huddesley to hear them their parts?"
"It's my fault, I began it," J. B. explained, reddening. "I said to Ted
that if he wanted to know how an English butler behaved he'd better
get a few pointers from Huddesley. Huddesley'd make an ideal
'Jenks,' you know, as far as looks go, I mean. He's the real thing in
butlers. And it's funny, he's got ever so many good ideas about
business, you know, and all that. But we won't do it any more if
you'd rather not, Doctor."
"Pooh, you can't spoil a man like that," the doctor said. "Reverence
for class is born in 'em; it runs in the blood. That's what I admire
about these English servants—their perfect self-respect, and idea of
the dignity of their own position, without presuming on yours."
"It's awfully convenient having him to prompt anyhow," said Mazie,
who needed a great deal of prompting. "Nobody wants to sit and
hold an old prompt-book and watch for mistakes. What bothers me
is all those funny little pairs of letters 'r.u.' and 'cross over' and 'sits
right' scattered all through your speech like hiccups. I don't know
what r.u. means, anyhow."
"Huddesley says it means retire up—walk toward the back of the
stage, you know."
"Well, but I thought you oughtn't ever to turn your back on the
audience."
"Depends on yer figger, I guess," said Mrs. Botlisch. "Some girl's
backs and fronts ain't no different—they're flat both sides like a
paper doll!"
"Huddesley has aspirations," said Doctor Vardaman briskly. "I
discovered that some time ago. At first I thought he wanted to study
medicine; he used to be forever poking about my little room,
pretending to dust and arrange the bottles, and asking all manner of
questions. But since this business of your plays has come up, he's
been tremendously interested in them. The fellow has some
education, you know. I've found him two or three times reading in
my library, with the feather duster under his arm—perfectly
absorbed. He was very mortified the first time I caught him at it, and
humbly begged my pardon. 'Hi can't resist a book, sir, sometimes,'
he said. 'Hi wouldn't wish to be thought to presoom, but Hi've tastes
hother than my lot can gratify; and Hi've 'ad 'opes—but,' says he,
with a sigh, 'that's hall hover and gone, now.'"
"Kind of stagey, wasn't he?"
"Yes, of course, he must have got that out of some book. Once in a
while, he uses very fine language, indeed, and then I know he's
been reading. I said, 'Well, Huddesley, it's a pity, if feeling that way,
you can't raise yourself as high as you choose here in America.' I
only said it to draw him out, you know. He shook his head
mournfully. 'No, sir,' says he, 'Hi won't never be anything but a butler
—a servant pourin' out wine an' blackin' boots for the rich and light-
'earted like yourself, sir.' I asked him what he would like to be if he
could begin over again. 'A hactor, sir,' said he respectfully. 'Hi feel the
stirrin' of Hart within my buzzom.' 'That's where we commonly feel
'em, Huddesley,' says I. 'Hi don't mean 'eart, sir, beggin' your
parding, Hi mean Hart—with a Hay, sir—that's what Hi feel, but
they'll never 'ave no houtlet, sir, Hi'm a butler—the die is cast——'
and then I escaped into the garden to laugh."
"That isn't all funny—it's pathetic too," said J. B. thoughtfully. "Poor
devil!"
At least two people in the room looked at the young man with a
quicker interest—Doctor Vardaman and Muriel, the doctor with an
odd and pleased surprise in his keen quizzical face. As for Muriel,
she and J. B. looked at one another pretty often, as I remember.
Mrs. Botlisch raised her hard old features from a close inspection of
her empty, swept and scraped platter, and fixed the doctor with a
little twinkling porcine eye.
"How long you had him anyway, Doc.?"
"Three months, or so, I believe."
"Oh, no, it's not that long, Doctor," exclaimed Mazie. "I remember
Huddesley came after the holidays, just as I was starting to
Washington. That was a little after the Charity Ball. I put off going so
as not to miss it. I remember about Huddesley because you had just
got rid of that awful man that had d.t's and came up here with an
axe wanting to kill somebody."
"Huddesley's arrival raised the tone of our neighbourhood
appreciably," said the doctor, with a laugh. Doctor Vardaman's men
were a byword in the community. Men of every colour and
nationality had drifted through his hands; it was a long procession of
lazy, drunken, thieving rascality, or honesty so abysmally stupid and
incompetent as to be equally worthless. "I'll never let him go, now
I've got him," said the old gentleman. "I have a fellow-feeling for all
you ladies that keep house. Rather than lose him, I'd give him
everything I own even unto the half of my substance."
"He'll git more'n that 'fore he's through with ye," said Mrs. Botlisch.
"You young Taylor feller,"—she always called J. B. and in fact all the
young men that frequented the house, by the last name—"you'd
better git that bottle o' rye away from Johns. He's had about
enough, 'f I'm any jedge—an' I reckon I'd oughter be, all th' drunks
I've handled——"
"Pioneer times, pioneer times," said the colonel, hastily. "Er—um—
the ice to Mr. Johns, Sam."
"When Mirandy's pa useter came home loaded," pursued the old
woman, unmoved, "many's the time I've shet him in th' woodshed,
him hollerin' bloody murder—'Let him holler!' says I. Time mornin'
come I'd git him under th' pump—oh my, yes, I've had lots of
experience."
"Pioneer times," said Colonel Pallinder again desperately. (But J. B.
did take the bottle away from Teddy's neighbourhood.) "Pioneer
days! Good God, gentlemen, when I think of what men and women
had to contend with then, I'm ashamed, yes, ashamed of the
luxuries we live in. You were saying, Doctor——"
"About—ahem—oh—ah—yes, about Huddesley," said the doctor, who
had not been saying anything. "I can't always make the fellow out—
I'm rather puzzled——"
"Speakin' o' puzzles," said old Mrs. Botlisch, "I was goin' to tell ye
that one 'bout th' English feller that the guide was takin' 'roun'
Niagry Falls. After they had gone down under th' Falls, an' out to
Goat Island, and everywheres else, ye know, he took an' wrote in th'
visitors' book, 'Why am I like Desdemona?' (That's the white girl that
goes off with a nigger in th' play, ye know). He wrote just that: 'Why
am I like Desdemona?' Th' answer is: 'Becuz——'"
This time, in spite of an outburst of coughing that threatened serious
results to Doctor Vardaman, in spite of a fusillade of loud irrelevant
talk from the colonel, in spite even of Teddy Johns' quite
unintentionally falling over a chair, this time, I say, we all heard the
answer!
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Not long since I had a visit from Gwynne Peters' oldest boy. The little
fellow is twelve, and, as I abstained from any embarrassing and
inconvenient demonstrations of affection or even friendship, we
became quite intimate, and I believe he enjoyed himself after a
fashion. He is not like his father, neither so delicate in body, nor so
gentle and winning as I remember the elder Gwynne—but, in truth, I
do not know if I ever found the way to his heart, with all my
diplomacy; the unconquerable barrier of age divided us; childhood
looks with so solidly-rooted a suspicion on our efforts to approach it;
it guards its quaint jungles, its enchanted gardens with so jealous a
care that we may well despair of ever touching hands. And for that
matter I sometimes think we are all strangers more or less to the
end, and our nearest intimacy only a painful interchange of signals
in a fog. Little Gwynne tolerated me, and I soon ceased to ask
anything else. He approved of cookies and the works of Mr. Alger; as
these latter immortal productions do not form a part of my library,
we were obliged to call upon the Carnegie one a few squares
distant, whence he requisitioned them at the rate of a new Alger
volume about every twenty-four hours until the supply was
exhausted, when we began on Mr. Henty. This fell out very luckily, as
I had discovered him asleep in a corner over "Ivanhoe," and I should
not have wished him to carry away so unfavourable an impression of
my resources in the way of entertainment. But what I most observed
in him was an indifference to, or ignorance of, his family history and
traditions that seemed abnormal in a Gwynne, however remotely
descended. I asked him if he had ever been to see his great-
grandfather's portrait in the State-House? The moment was ill-
chosen, as he was profoundly occupied with a new variety of top,
but he absently answered: "Yep."
"What did you think of it?"
"Nothin'," said this renegade, with astounding callousness, bending
himself to the top; it was warranted to spin five minutes at a stretch,
and when he had got it started, and was timing it by my watch, he
felt his mind released from cares enough to volunteer indulgently:
"Father's got a big photograph of it in his office. It's all yellow and
fly-specky, because it's so old, you know. I guess it's 'most as old as
father—or maybe you."
"Doesn't your father ever tell you about him—what a great man he
was, and all?"
"Nope."
"What!" said I, then, unable to believe my ears. "Doesn't he ever
talk to you about Governor Gwynne? Doesn't anybody ever tell you
to remember that you're a Gwynne?" The top was reeling to its fall,
and he was very busy, and, as I could see, justifiably annoyed at my
persistence, but this question caused him to look up sharply with the
quick suspicion of his twelve years.
"Aw, you're in fun!" he said, eying me shrewdly. "Father wouldn't
talk guff like that! And anyway my name's Peters—Gwynne's just my
given name—so it wouldn't be true, see?" Guff like that! These were
his sacrilegious words. Nothing could have more stingingly brought
home to me the lapse of years, or better illustrated the changes in
men's minds. And I might here insert some valuable reflections on
the vanity of human achievement, and the hollow and transitory
character of fame, if I were not uneasily conscious that Governor
Gwynne's renown, even in his heyday, was not of a kind to fill the
four corners of the universe; it was only in the opinion of his family
that it reached those magnificent proportions. Now he and his deeds
are forgotten, even by them; the fires are all dead on that fantastic
altar which the Gwynnes tended for so many years with so much
misplaced zeal. It is not likely, I think, that little Gwynne will ever be
troubled by the problems confronting his father in March of the year
of Grace, 1883.
In fact, during this time, Gwynne might have been seen any day
pondering gloomily before his empty desk, under his grandfather's
grimly searching scrutiny, by the hour. The Pallinder business had
reached a stage when he could no longer ignore it; yet he could not
bring himself to any active measures. Gwynne knew as much as
anybody about the colonel's affairs; he had heard certain subdued
but very disagreeable rumours. Templeton himself had brought them
to him months earlier with a countenance of fright and perplexity. It
had not cleared much when he left the office; the little agent could
not understand what ailed his patron. He had never known Gwynne
to be so indifferent, so careless of the rights and feelings of the
other heirs; it was clean out of his character, and Templeton felt with
dismay that his surest prop had been removed. If Mr. Peters was
becoming as queer as the rest of them, Templeton was almost ready
to resign from the management of the Gwynne estate; single-
handed, he could not "hold up his end," as he phrased it. In the
years of their association he had conceived something like a real
affection for the young man, and this change obscurely alarmed and
distressed him. Gwynne, about everything else so open, so
resourceful, so patient in the control of his difficult kindred, so
genially shrewd, would not allow any discussion of the Pallinder
delinquency; he shifted the subject, or turned upon Templeton with
a manner of such forbidding reticence that the agent shrank
discomfited. "Oh, well, Mr. Peters, I—I guess I'd better leave you
alone to run your tenants and the family," he would say humbly,
reaching for his hat in an apologetic confusion. "I—I ain't ever made
such a success of it that I've any call to argue, or advise you how to
do," and so would shuffle meekly from the room, leaving the young
man, had he known it, in a miserable humiliation. Time and again,
Gwynne had made the resolve to have it out with the colonel; and
time and again had turned aside from the act, like a hunter refusing
the leap. He bargained with himself, loathing his own weakness; he
would go and see Colonel Pallinder on such a day at such an hour;
he would say to him thus and so. The day came and the hour—why
was it that something invariably prevented him? Once he even got
so far as the door of Colonel Pallinder's office—and it was locked.
The office was closed for the day: it was late Saturday afternoon,
and in his heart Gwynne knew the office would be closed—knew it
before he left his own. He turned away in a flash of angry contempt
of himself—of Pallinder—of the whole shabby business. Yet the
colonel was safe for that day; you cannot scour the town for a man,
like a bailiff; and Gwynne certainly was not going to follow him to
the house, and dun him under the very roof where he himself had
received so many hospitalities, such unfailing courtesy and kindness,
within hearing of the fellow's innocent wife and daughter! What had
Mrs.—ahem!—what had those two poor women done? Very likely
they knew nothing whatever about Pallinder's indebtedness; they
were both of them touchingly ignorant of money matters. This was
strictly an affair for men—he would see Pallinder Monday. And so
Gwynne strode away home, to dinner and a change of dress, and
thence, by the most natural sequence in the world, to the Lexington
and Amherst cars, and out to the Pallinders'! In one of his spasms of
conscience he had refused their urgent invitation to the house party
—the irony of his position was apparent, even to him; but he
balanced the scales by going out night after night to the rehearsals
of "William Tell," wherein he bore his part with a feverish enthusiasm
that surprised his friends.
It might have been noticed, but, as a matter of fact, I am sure
hardly anybody did notice, that Gwynne was the only one of the
family who figured in the theatricals, or, in the pungent everyday
phrase, had anything to do with the Pallinders. Marian Lawrence had
been asked to the house party, and had eagerly promised to come,
but in a day or so Mrs. Pallinder received a charming, apologetic,
and graceful little note from Mrs. Lawrence, declining on Marian's
behalf, for some vague reason. The truth is, Mrs. Horace Gwynne,
on hearing of the plan, had once again ordered out her barouche
and driven over to the Lawrences', upright and stern, with the stark
face of Doom. And after a heated conference with the mother, the
note had been despatched; Mrs. Lawrence sat down and cried
heartily with the disappointed girl when that dire act had been
performed—but neither of them thought of disobeying Cousin
Jennie. When they met Mrs. Pallinder face to face coming out of
church next Sunday morning they were both a good deal flustered;
they flinched before Mrs. Pallinder's steadily radiant smile, and were
devoutly glad, I think, to escape from her neighbourhood into the
crowd. Archie Lewis walked home with Marian, and raised his hat as
a carriage spun by—"That was the Pallinders with Miss Baxter," said
Archie, observing with a passing surprise that his companion made
no sign of recognition. "Was it? I didn't see them," said Marian
stoutly, looking straight in front of her with very red cheeks. Not so
long before, Mazie had been one of her most intimate friends. Look
on that picture, and now on this! What was the matter with all the
Gwynnes? Little old Eleanor and little old Mollie, on seeing the
colonel less than half a square off, advancing upon them, already
uncovered, courtly, bland, with outstretched hand—the two old
sisters, I say, fairly took to their heels up a side street, with scared
and shrinking faces. They gathered up their virgin skirts and fled
shudderingly as from contamination. Mrs. Horace Gwynne, alone of
them all, possessed the courage of her convictions. Erect in her
barouche, she encountered and returned Mrs. Pallinder's smile with
a salute so casual, so perfunctory that it suggested the recognition
she would have bestowed upon her cook in event of a public
meeting with that functionary. Mrs. Pallinder bit her lips; she
reddened through her rouge—and the next moment was gaily
bowing to another acquaintance as if life meant nothing to her but
this pleasant exchange of civilities. "Of course I never would
deliberately cut anybody," Mrs. Horace explained later; "that sort of
behaviour is childish and ill-tempered. But I flatter myself I know as
well as anyone how to put people in their proper place, and intimate
my opinion of them, without talking or acting like a washerwoman. I
wanted Mrs. Pallinder to understand that while I was absolutely
indifferent to such a matter as the back-rent she owed me and every
one of us, I did not approve of the principle of the thing. She knew
perfectly well what I meant. And at receptions or wherever she
happened to be in the same company with me afterwards, I simply
didn't see her at all! I was always talking to someone else, or had
my back turned. She understood—a person like that!" I dare say
Mrs. Pallinder did understand; she was not without some previous
experience, and it is likely deserved every snub and stab which Mrs.
Horace, with the just severity of a good and upright woman, inflicted
on her. So must we all lie upon the beds we make.
This was the secret of the Gwynnes' altered demeanour; it was, of
course, not the failure to pay them their rent to which they objected,
but the appalling principle, or lack of principle, it indicated. At least,
that is what they all and severally declared afterwards. At the time,
with characteristic Gwynne reticence, they kept their troubles to
themselves; no set of conspiring revolutionists could have been more
close-mouthed. Their behaviour in this instance was of a piece with
the futile pride that prompted their efforts to distract the public mind
from Caroline—from Steven—from Sam Peters. What! Drag their
noble name through the mud and riot of a Common Pleas suit?
Associate their house and the memory of Governor Gwynne with a
debasing scandal about Money! I should not care to reveal the arts
by which Gwynne put off the hour of retribution for the Pallinders,
playing upon these familiar strings with a skill he himself despised.
Even he, in the end, sounded the note once too often, as we have
seen in the case of old Steven, to whom the sum, small as it was,
meant more than to the other members of the family. For Steven,
once away from the blandishments of Mrs. Pallinder, naturally
reverted in the shortest possible space of time to his previous mood
of brooding indignation. He had parted from Doctor Vardaman with a
confused notion that everything was going smoothly—that Gwynne
would settle with the Pallinders in a few days—a week, perhaps, at
furthest. It had not been stated in so many words; none the less
Steven carried away these ideas planted within him either by Mrs.
Pallinder's soothing flatteries, or by the doctor's well-meant efforts at
comforting and diverting him. He waited a day or two, eagerly
inspecting every mail; he spoke grandly of his expected remittances
to his tolerant country neighbours, and alluded to Gwynne with a
large air as his man of business. But as the days passed and his man
of business made no sign, Steven's slender allowance of patience
gave out once more. He wrote to Gwynne, and waited a fevered
while for an answer. Wrote again, and with the letter, addressed and
stamped, in his pocket, abandoned his design, and took the first
train for town. It was with a fierce and resolute face that he stalked
into the office that afternoon—and Gwynne had gone out! This
delay, to speak in high metaphorical terms which would have
delighted Steven's own taste, did not arrest the falling of the levin-
brand; it only increased its momentum. In proportion as the
moments lapsed, his wrath gathered head. As it happened, he found
himself in appropriate company, with his grievance; when he entered
the room there sat his cousins, the two Misses Gwynne, with their
pale, furtive, startled faces framed in curls and satin rosettes, in their
rigid bombazine skirts, Miss Gwynne tremblingly clasping an
umbrella, Miss Mollie fingering a foolscap document whereon, if
Steven had cared to look, he might have seen some arithmetical
calculations similar to his own. They started up, fluttering and
ejaculating at his appearance; then sank down disappointed, yet,
probably, a little relieved. The two not only dressed, but thought and
acted in couples; either one was helpless without the other; and
both now wore an air of terrified resolution such as a pair of mice, a
pair of pullets might have presented in some desperate crisis of the
trap or butcher's knife. Even in their day, a day which recognised but
one career for respectable women, which knew not women's
colleges or bachelor-maids, or what we call the professional equality
of the sexes, Eleanor and Mollie were caricatures of spinsterhood;
we looked upon them with as much pity as amusement, I believe.
This was a tremendous step for them to take; and horror laid a
throttling hold on both at the idea (occurring to them
simultaneously) that Cousin Steven might think them indiscreet or
unladylike. But Steven was much too preoccupied to spare a thought
to their confusion. "Huh, girls!" said he, sat down in Gwynne's
revolving-chair, and glowered absently out of the window, beating a
tattoo on the desk, and framing the sentences in which he would
open his arraignment. "Waiting to see Gwynne?" he inquired,
rousing himself with a momentary curiosity after a while.
The twins murmured inarticulately, looking at each other.
"So'm I," said Steven, scowling, and they might all three have
proceeded to some explanations, but at that moment, upon this
amiable family-group, strolled in Archie Lewis, on some errand from
his father's office, debonair, whistling his song from "William Tell,"
and very much taken aback at sight of the company into which he
had stumbled. "It was a perfect nest of Gwynnes," he said,
graphically describing the episode. "I felt like Daniel in the lions'
den."
"Oh—ah—Mr. Gwynne—er—Miss Gwynne——" said he, stopping
short in embarrassment. "Ah—um—Gwynne's gone out, I see."
"He'll be back in a few minutes," stammered Miss Eleanor, after a
moment of fearful indecision.
"The office-boy said so," added Miss Mollie faintly. "It's almost half-
an-hour now."
"Well, I guess I won't wait—if you'll be so kind as to tell him I was
here? And I'll just put this on his desk under the paperweight—he'll
understand when he sees it," said Archie, depositing his bundle of
papers on the desk as he spoke, and very ready to beat a retreat.
But Steven, eying him, suddenly growled out, "You're Judge Lewis'
son, ain't you?"
"Why, yes—you know my father, of course—I've often heard him
speak of you," said Archie, conventionally, edging off.
"Sit down," said Steven, imperiously motioning. "Gwynne'll be along
in a little. You ought to be a lawyer, young man—your father's a
lawyer. I haven't seen him for years—I guess he's a good deal
changed. Law kind of changes people; it's seldom a man takes it up
and stays honest. Sit down; Gwynne'll be here presently."
("And so," said Archie, "I sat down. The fact is, the old fellow looked
sort of queer, and though I never heard of his doing anything, I
didn't much like to leave him alone with those two old ladies—you
never can tell, you know.")
"I'd like to see the judge," said Steven.
"Why, I'm sure father'd be very pleased——"
Steven waved an impatient gesture. "I'm not particular about seeing
him," said he—and Archie used to repeat this part of the story in his
father's presence with infinite relish—"But I'd like to have his
opinion, in a matter of—a matter of debt!"
The two sisters exchanged a horrified glance; they knew what
Steven's errand was, now, and thought he was about to reveal the
awful secret, and tarnish the name of Gwynne forever. But that was
by no means Steven's intention; he was as tender of the family
honour as they, but much more confident of his own knowledge of
the world and diplomatic abilities. Archie, upon whose youthfully
sharp wits none of this by-play was lost, sat wondering what was to
come next.
"This debt—or—er—this indebtedness," said Steven elaborately, "is—
er—it should be, in short, collected—that is—er—measures should
be taken by which it—could be, in short, collected." He fixed a
profound look on the young man, pausing while he considered in
what other roundabout terms he could present the situation.
"Is the fellow that owes you responsible—solid, I mean, you know?"
asked Archie, beginning to be interested. "If he's on a salary, or got
a good business you might attach——"
"I—I—I'm not prepared to state," said Steven, appalled at the
briskness of Archie's deductions. "I'm just supposing a case, you
understand."
"Oh!" said Archie, suppressing a grin. "Well—ah—are you supposing
it to be a large sum, Mr. Gwynne?"
"A debt's a debt," said Steven, with magnificent brevity; he could not
resist a sidelong glance at Eleanor and Mollie, commanding their
admiration.
"Yes, of course, Mr. Gwynne, but there's a difference between a debt
of five dollars and one of five hundred," said Archie peaceably. "If
you can come to some kind of compromise, it's generally a great
deal better than going to law; you may get a little less than you're
entitled to, but you save time and trouble and worry. I suppose I've
heard my father say that to a hundred clients."
This view appeared to strike Eleanor and Mollie favourably;
something in the half-a-loaf policy appeals with a subtle power to
the feminine mind. But Steven's old face reddened; he darted a
vengeful glance at this Laodicean councillor.
"Compromise—nothing!" he snarled. "I'll see him da—I'll see him
farther before I'll compromise!"
"All right—all right, I was just saying that's one way of settling these
things," said Archie hastily. "Of course you know what you want, Mr.
Gwynne. Trouble is, you go into court with a case, and you never
know how long it will take to wind it up—maybe two or three years
—that's perfectly irrespective of the rights of the case. Whereas, if
you accept some kind of settlement, you—well, in general, you come
out ahead of the game," said Archie, falling back on the vernacular.
Oh, wise young judge! The two Misses Gwynne listened to Archie's
exposition with respectful awe. I have heard him say with a laugh
that at no time in his subsequent career—which has been one of
considerable distinction—has he ever felt himself to be exerting so
much influence, no, not in his most sustained and vigorous flights of
oratory. "I might have been the Almighty, instead of a smart-Alecky
boy, by the way those two poor old women were impressed—it was
funny—funny and pitiful," he says, and shakes his grizzling head.
"It's—it's very awful to have someone in debt to you, Mr. Lewis,"
Miss Mollie took courage to say falteringly.
"Not so bad as being in debt to somebody yourself, though," said
Archie genially. This well-intended levity was a serious mistake; they
shrank—they withered before the dreadful suggestion.
"We—we aren't that, Mr. Lewis," cried both old maids in scared
chorus. "It's not we that are in debt—it's somebody that owes us
——"
"That owes the GWYNNE ESTATE," said Steven ponderously. He had
forgot all about his supposititious case, and Archie, who, as he
himself might have said, was not born yesterday, had already made
a shrewd guess as to the identity of the debtor.
"A debt's a bad business, anyway you fix it," he said easily. "Reminds
me of that story father tells of himself when he was a boy borrowing
money of their old coloured man to go to the circus with. 'Chile,'
says old Mose, 'you's got to 'member this; er debt that ain't paid
stahts er roorback! You owe me, an' I owe Pete, an' Pete he owes
that wall-eyed niggah oveh at the liv'ry-stable, an' lakly Mistah
Walleye, he owes somebody else, an' 'twell one of us stahts the
payin', nobuddy cyahn't pay—an' thar's your roorback!'" Archie
laughed. He laughed alone, for this sprightly tale, although he had
recited it in a careful imitation of Judge Lewis' best manner,
apparently failed to amuse anybody but himself. Perhaps it went too
near the truth to be wholly agreeable. "I never realised until that
moment," he used to say with a certain naïveté, "what an awful job
poor Gwynne Peters had for years with those people. I'll bet nobody
knows or ever will know what he put up with!"
His new sympathy put a greater warmth into his greeting when
Gwynne at last came in, a few minutes later. Archie, as he explained
his errand, noted inwardly that his friend's face was drawn and tired;
nor did he wonder much at the grim look Gwynne cast around the
waiting family-circle.
"You're late, Gwynne," said old Steven, fierce-eyed under his shaggy
brows.
"I know it," said Gwynne, in a harsh voice. "I had to go out to the
country this morning, and that put me back with everything."
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  • 5. Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis 8-1 Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education. CHAPTER 08 LOCATION PLANNING AND ANALYSIS Teaching Notes Facility location refers to the location of a service or manufacturing facility with respect to customers, suppliers, and other existing facilities such that it allows the company to gain a competitive and/or strategic edge. In making a location decision, both tangible costs (e.g., cost of operating the facility; cost of land (if it applies); cost of labor, taxes, and utilities; cost of inbound and outbound transportation) and intangible costs (e.g., availability of qualified labor and labor climate) must be considered. Because the location decision usually involves making a large capital investment, it not only affects the firm’s ability to compete but also has long-term strategic implications. Therefore, in making the location decision, we should consider issues related to marketing, production, transportation and other relevant costs as well as the strategy of the organization. The importance of various factors in relation to the location decision will vary between service and manufacturing organizations and from industry to industry as well. Reading: Innovative MCI Unit Finds Culture Shock in Colorado Springs 1. The most severe fallouts from the move to Colorado were: a. Numerous key executives and engineers, and hundreds of the division’s minority population refused to relocate, or fled Colorado Springs soon after relocating. b. The move isolated engineers from top management and from marketing colleagues at headquarters, undermining collaboration. c. The professionals whom Mr. Liebhaber hoped to recruit proved difficult and expensive to woo to Colorado Springs. d. Thousands of workers (more than expected) took advantage of the relocation package, undercutting plans to recruit lower-cost employees in Colorado. e. The move cost more than $200 million, far more than anticipated, and most of the expected savings never materialized. 2. Mr. Liebhaber should have sought out more information by conducting surveys of workers, managers, and engineers asking them for the following information: how likely they were to move, ratings of factors that would affect their decision to move, ratings of factors that they valued about their current work environment, and ratings about factors that they considered important for quality of life issues. Mr. Liebhaber seems to have considered his own quality of life and work issues only. Reading: Site Selection Grows Up: Improved Tech Tools Make the Process Faster, Better 1. Tech tools have improved the process of site selection by providing in-depth market research analyzing traffic volumes, concentration of other retail businesses, and demographic data. In addition, some of these tools provide aerial photographs of proposed sites and surrounding areas. Some tools allow users to plug in the site characteristics criteria and a proposed location and then push a button to receive output such as maps, reports, and models. Other tools provide market optimization software that informs the user on how best to carve out territories, helping to eliminate encroachment and cannibalization. 2. Franchisors also can use geoVue and other similar tools to analyze changes in performance, demographics, or other factors that would warrant closing or relocating a facility.
  • 6. Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis 8-2 Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education. Answers to Discussion and Review Questions 1. Location decisions can have an impact on access to markets, costs (including materials, labor, rent, construction, and transportation), quality of work life (e.g., community-related factors), and growth potential. 2. The fact that similar businesses are located widely underscores the futility of searching for that “one best” location. However, it does not necessarily follow that little attention is needed in finding a suitable location. Many organizations that have not been successful are no longer in business (e.g., service stations in poor locations, motels bypassed by an expressway, and so on). Moreover, others currently in operation might be much more profitable in another location. For some businesses (e.g., restaurants) regional factors are not particularly significant, and even community-related factors are of little importance. However, site-related factors are extremely important. Similarly, there are numerous examples of firms that are less affected by community or site factors than they are by regional factors (i.e., nearness to market, labor, or raw materials). 3. Important community factors include size of the community, public transportation, schools, recreational facilities, libraries, restaurants, shopping centers, cultural and entertainment selections, and so on. 4. Manufacturing and non-manufacturing organizations tend to approach location decisions in a similar way, but the factors that are important to each tend to differ. Although both tend to take costs and profits into consideration, manufacturing firms are often concerned with location of raw materials, transportation costs, availability of energy and water, and similar factors. Non- manufacturing firms often are more concerned with convenience, access to markets, traffic flow, and the like. 5. Foreign locations may offer lower taxes, access to markets, availability of raw materials, lower transportation costs (due to nearness to market), and lower labor costs than a comparable domestic location. Potential drawbacks often relate to the political and economic stability of the host country and attitudes of the populace towards a particular nation, industry, or firm. 6. Location rating, or factor rating, is a qualitative technique used to develop an overall composite index for an alternative, which can be used to compare location alternatives. It involves identifying relevant factors, assigning relative weights to the factors, and rating each alternative with respect to the factors. 7. The first step is to decide on the criteria to use to evaluate location alternatives (e.g., cost, profits, community service, etc.). The second step is to identify any important factors that will dominate the decision. The third step is to develop location alternatives (country, general region, small number of community alternatives, and site alternatives among the community alternatives). The fourth step is to evaluate the alternatives and make a selection. 8. Locational breakeven analysis generally assumes the following: a. Fixed costs are constant for the range of probable output. b. Variable costs are linear for the range of probable output. c. The level of output that will be required can be estimated within a narrow range. d. A single product is involved. 9. Recent trends include the location of foreign manufacturing plants in the United States, having smaller factories located close to markets, choosing nearby suppliers, low-cost labor is becoming less of a factor in many industries, and advances in information technology make it less important to have design, engineering, etc. close to the factory. Taking Stock 1. Due to economies of scale, the centrally located large facility will be more efficient. The scheduling and coordination between the large facility and suppliers or customers will be
  • 7. Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis 8-3 Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education. simplified. However, due to distance, transportation/distribution costs to or from the large facility will be much higher than those costs would be when using several smaller dispersed facilities instead. Having several smaller dispersed facilities will not only reduce the transportation cost but also increase the flexibility of the firm in terms of being able to reduce distribution lead time, thus resulting in faster deliveries or receipts of goods or merchandise. 2. Unlike the process design decision, the facility location decision is a macro decision and thus requires the involvement of top-level management. The larger the facility, the higher the level of involvement of the company personnel will be. In terms of various functions or departments within the company, manufacturing (or operations), logistics and distribution, marketing, and strategic planning must be involved. Depending on the type of facility considered, other groups may also need to be included in making this important decision. 3. Due to the advancement of data mining and data warehousing, and the related improvements in computers’ ability to store and exchange data, we can generate much more useful information to make the facility location decision. Critical Thinking Exercises 1. The company does have some social responsibility. Because the company employs such a large percentage of the city’s workforce, its leaving is certain to have a major impact on town businesses. It is likely that unless new sources of employment emerge, some residents may be forced to move away, and many businesses may fail, or barely get by. Thus, the company must weigh the projected benefits of the move against the actual and social costs of the move. It also must factor in the primary reasons for the move. These might include high taxes, adverse weather conditions, a shift in its markets, poor public relations, labor strife, an aging facility that has to be replaced, an insufficient supply of essential labor skills, and a need to be closer to a major customer. 2. Trade-offs involved would include: a. The nature of current, and more importantly, the forecasted future demand. b. Current demographics and the future expected changes in demographics for this area. c. The nature and type of competition for this area. We will need to predict what our competitors will be doing in the short-term as well as in the long-term. d. We need to divide the area into several sub-areas and consider the advantages and disadvantages of opening a store in each of the sub-areas. e. What is the projected impact of the new location(s) on the sales of the existing locations? If the demand is too low and we decide to open more than one site, we will have to experience the cost of closing at least one of the existing locations and perhaps absorb the loss of sales in our existing store. On the other hand, if the demand is higher than we expected, and we opened up a store only on one site, we will have to consider the opportunity cost of lost sales and profit.
  • 8. Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis 8-4 Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education. 3. Options Pros Cons Avoid such locations. Avoid the problem completely. Miss out on potential business. Locate there and deal with it. Potential business. Need to make sure workers know and abide by the policy. Risk cheating and possible consequences. When in Rome … (assuming “bribes” are more like “tips” to service people). Potential business. Probably a fine line between tipping and bribing, very risky. 4. Student answers will vary. Some possible answers follow: a. If a company located a manufacturing facility that creates heavy pollution adjacent to an elementary school or a retirement home, this action would violate the Common Good Principle. b. If the CEO of a corporation accepted a bribe to locate a new facility in a city, this action would violate the Virtue Principle. c. If an executive asked a subordinate to alter some numbers in a factor-scoring model so that the executive’s location choice came out on top, this action would violate the Rights Principle and the Virtue Principle. Solutions 1. Given: We have the following information shown below for two plant location alternatives: Omaha Kansas City R $185 $185 v $36 $47 Annual FC $1,200,000 $1,400,000 Expected annual demand (units) (Q) 8,000 12,000 Determine the expected profits per year for each alternative: Profit = Q(R – v) – FC Omaha: 8,000($185 – $36) – $1,200,000 = -$8,000 Kansas City: 12,000($185 – $47) – $1,400,000 = $256,000 Conclusion: Kansas City would produce the greater profit.
  • 9. Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis 8-5 Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education. 2. Given: We have the following information shown below for three potential locations for a new outlet: A B C R $2.65 $2.65 $2.65 v $1.76 $1.76 $1.76 Monthly FC $5,000 $5,500 $5,800 a. Determine the monthly volume necessary at each location to realize a monthly profit of $10,000 (round to 1 decimal). 𝑄 = 𝑆𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑑 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑓𝑖𝑡+𝐹𝐶 𝑅−𝑣 Location A Volume: 𝑄 = 𝑆𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑑 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑓𝑖𝑡+𝐹𝐶 𝑅−𝑣 = 10,000 + 5,000 2.65−1.76 = 16,853.9 𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑠 Location B Volume: 𝑄 = 𝑆𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑑 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑓𝑖𝑡+𝐹𝐶 𝑅−𝑣 = 10,000 + 5,500 2.65−1.76 = 17,415.7 𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑠 Location C Volume: 𝑄 = 𝑆𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑑 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑓𝑖𝑡+𝐹𝐶 𝑅−𝑣 = 10,000 + 5,800 2.65−1.76 = 17,752.8 𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑠 b. Determine the expected profits at each facility given the expected monthly volumes: A = 21,000 per month, B = 22,000 per month, & C = 23,000 per month. Profit = Q(R – v) – FC Location A: 21,000($2.65 – $1.76) – $5,000 = $13,690 per month Location B: 22,000($2.65 – $1.76) – $5,500 = $14,080 per month Location C: 23,000($2.65 – $1.76) – $5,800 = $14,670 per month Conclusion: Location C would yield the greatest profits.
  • 10. Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis 8-6 Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education. 3. Given: There are two alternatives for which costs and revenue are listed below: A B R $17,000 $17,000 v $14,000 $13,000 Annual FC $800,000 $920,000 a. Find the volume at which the two locations have the same total cost (TC). TC = FC + VC TC = FC + (Q x v) TC (Location A) = $800,000 + $14,000Q TC (Location B) = $920,000 + $13,000Q Set the two cost equations equal and solve for Q: $800,000 + $14,000Q = $920,000 + $13,000Q $14,000Q – $13,000Q = $920,000 – $800,000 $1,000Q = $120,000 Q = $120,000 / $1,000 Q = 120 units b. Range over which A and B would be superior: Location A has the lowest fixed costs; therefore, it is preferred at lower volumes. Conclusion: Location A Preferred: 0 < 120 units Location B Preferred: > 120 units 4. Given: There are three alternatives for which costs are given below: A (new) B (sub) C (expand) v $500 $2,500 $1,000 Annual FC $250,000 --- $50,000 a. Step 1: Determine the total cost equation for each alternative. TC = FC + VC TC = FC + (Q x v) A: TC = $250,000 + $500Q B: TC = $2,500Q C: TC = $50,000 + $1,000Q
  • 11. Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis 8-7 Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education. Step 2: Graph the alternatives. Step 3: Determine over what range each alternative is preferred. Looking at the graph, we can tell that Alternative B is preferred over the lowest range, Alternative C is preferred over the middle range, and Alternative A is preferred over the highest range. First, we find the indifference (break-even) point between Alternatives B & C by setting their total cost equations equal to each other and solving for Q. B: TC = $2,500Q C: TC = $50,000 + $1,000Q $2,500Q = $50,000 + $1,000Q $2,500Q – $1,000Q = $50,000 $1,500Q = $50,000 Q = $50,000 / $1,500 Q = 33.33 units Second, we find the indifference (break-even) point between Alternatives C & A by setting their total cost equations equal to each other and solving for Q. C: TC = $50,000 + $1,000Q A: TC = $250,000 + $500Q $50,000 + $1,000Q = $250,000 + $500Q $1,000Q – $500Q = $250,000 – $50,000 $500Q = $200,000 Q = $200,000 / $500 Q = 400 units A (new location) C (expansion) B (sub- contract) 33.3 100 200 300 400 500 400 300 200 100 0 TC ($000) B C A [250] [50] No. of Boats/yr.
  • 12. Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis 8-8 Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education. Conclusion: Alternative B preferred: < 33.33 units Alternative C preferred: > 33.33 units to < 400 units Alternative A preferred: > 400 units b. Expected volume of 150 boats: Based on the graph, Alternative C would yield the lowest total cost (TC) at a volume of 150 boats. c. Other factors that might be considered when deciding between the expansion and subcontracting alternatives include subcontracting costs will be known with greater certainty, subcontracting provides a secondary (backup) source of supply, and expansion offers more control over operations. 5. Rework Problem 4b using this additional information: Alternative A (New Location) will have an additional $4,000 in fixed costs per year. Alternative B (Subcontracting) will have $25,000 in fixed costs per year. Alternative C (Expansion) will have an additional $70,000 in fixed costs per year. Step 1: Change the costs in the table. A (new) B (sub) C (expand) v $500 $2,500 $1,000 Annual FC $254,000 $25,000 $120,000 Step 2: Determine the total cost equation for each alternative. TC = FC + VC TC = FC + (Q x v) A: TC = $254,000 + $500Q B: TC = $25,000 + $2,500Q C: TC = $120,000 + $1,000Q Step 3: Find TC for 150 units. A: TC = $254,000 + $500(150) = $329,000 B: TC = $25,000 + $2,500(150) = $400,000 C: TC = $120,000 + $1,000(150) = $270,000 Conclusion: Alternative C (Expand) would yield the lowest total cost for an expected volume of 150 boats.
  • 13. Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis 8-9 Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education. 6. Given: Expected annual volume (Q) = 10,000 units. There are three lease alternatives for which costs are given below: Memphis Biloxi Birmingham Lease building & equipment $40,000 $60,000 $100,000 Transportation $50,000 $60,000 $25,000 v $8 $4 $5 Step 1: Determine fixed cost (FC) for each alternative & add FC to table. FC = Lease cost + transportation cost. Memphis Biloxi Birmingham Lease building & equipment $40,000 $60,000 $100,000 Transportation $50,000 $60,000 $25,000 Annual FC $90,000 $120,000 $125,000 v $8 $4 $5 Step 2: Determine the total cost equation for each alternative. TC = FC + VC TC = FC + (Q x v) Memphis: $90,000 + $8Q Biloxi: $120,000 + $4Q Birmingham: $125,000 + $5Q Step 3: Find TC for 10,000 units. Memphis: $90,000 + $8(10,000) = $170,000 Biloxi: $120,000 + $4(10,000) = $160,000 Birmingham: $125,000 + $5(10,000) = $175,000 Conclusion: The Biloxi alternative yields the lowest total cost for an expected annual volume of 10,000 units.
  • 14. Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis 8-10 Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education. 7. Given: There are two alternative shop locations for which costs are shown below: City Outside R $90 $90 v $30 $40 Monthly FC $7,000 $4,700 a. (1) Monthly profit for Q = 200 cars: Step 1: Determine total profit equation for each alternative. Total profit = Q(R – v) – FC City: Q($90 – $30) – $7,000 Outside: Q($90 – $40) – $4,700 Step 2: Determine total profit for each alternative at the expected monthly volume. City: 200($90 – $30) – $7,000 = $5,000 Outside: 200($90 – $40) – $4,700 = $5,300 Conclusion: Outside location yields the greatest profit if monthly demand is 200 cars. (2) Monthly profit for Q = 300 cars: City: 300($90 – $30) – $7,000 = $11,000 Outside: 300($90 – $40) – $4,700 = $10,300 Conclusion: City location yields the greatest profit if monthly demand is 300 cars. b. Determine the indifference (break-even point) between the two locations. Set their total profit equations equal to each other and solve for Q: Q($90 – $30) – $7,000 = Q($90 – $40) – $4,700 $60Q – $7,000 = $50Q – $4,700 $60Q – $50Q = -$4,700 – (-$7,000) $10Q = $2,300 Q = $2,300 / $10 Q = 230 cars
  • 15. Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis 8-11 Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education. 8. Given: We are provided the location factors below for four different types of organizations. Factor Local bank Steel mill Food warehouse Public school Convenience for customers Attractiveness of building Nearness to raw materials Large amounts of power Pollution controls Labor cost and availability Transportation costs Construction costs Student answers will vary regarding how they rate the importance of each factor in terms of making location decisions using L = low importance, M = moderate importance, and H = high importance. One possible set of answers is given below. Factor Local bank Steel mill Food warehouse Public school Convenience for customers H L M–H M–H Attractiveness of building H L M M–H Nearness to raw materials L H L M Large amounts of power L H L L Pollution controls L H L L Labor cost and availability L M L L Transportation costs L M–H M–H M Construction costs M H M M–H
  • 16. Chapter 08 - Location Planning and Analysis 8-12 Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education. 9. Given: We are given factors, weights, and factor rating scores for three locations. Scores range from 1 – 100 (best). Location Score Factor Wt. A B C Convenience .15 80 70 60 Parking .20 72 76 92 Display area .18 88 90 90 Shopper traffic .27 94 86 80 Operating costs .10 98 90 82 Neighborhood .10 96 85 75 1.00 Multiply the factor weight by the score for each factor and sum the results for each location alternative. Weight x Score Factor Wt. A B C Convenience .15 .15(80) = 12.00 .15(70) = 10.50 .15(60) = 9.00 Parking .20 .20(72) = 14.40 .20(76) = 15.20 .20(92) = 18.40 Display area .18 .18(88) = 15.84 .18(90) = 16.20 .18(90) = 16.20 Shopper traffic .27 .27(94) = 25.38 .27(86) = 23.22 .27(80) = 21.60 Operating costs .10 .10(98) = 9.80 .10(90) = 9.00 .10(82) = 8.20 Neighborhood .10 .10(96) = 9.60 .10(85) = 8.50 .10(75) = 7.50 1.00 87.02 82.62 80.90 Conclusion: Based on composite score, Location A seems to be the best.
  • 17. Discovering Diverse Content Through Random Scribd Documents
  • 18. profit. I used to feel that someone ought in conscience to explain Mrs. Botlisch to Muriel, to apologise for that really terrible old woman; the irritating thing was that Muriel accepted her without comment, exactly as she accepted the rest of us—as if, I thought with annoyance, we were all freaks together! "Mazie's grandmother is not—well—er—she's not at all—you know?" I said, feeling, notwithstanding this public-spirited effort, a little embarrassed under Muriel's direct, serious gaze. "Mrs. Botlisch is—well, she's really not— er—very good style, nobody else here is like her—you must have noticed it. She's awfully common—of course, we didn't know much about the Pallinders before they came here—nobody knows how they—they got in, you see——" "I shouldn't think you'd come to the house so much if you feel that way," said Muriel. "I wouldn't." She did not mean it as a rebuke; she was only saying, as usual, precisely what she thought. But all at once, with the uncompromising harshness of youth, I saw and denounced myself inwardly for a petty groundling, eating people's bread with a covert sneer, and parading their shortcomings before a stranger. No, Muriel would not have done it. Noblesse oblige! The Pallinders, to their honour be it said, never seemed to be ashamed of Mrs. Botlisch. They had their notions of noblesse oblige, too, strange as that may sound. Reflecting upon it now, I see certain a heroism in the respect they paid that dreadful, screeching, vile- tongued old termagant. I have known prosperous, reputable families, who paid the butcher and thought it a sin to play cards, wherein the unornamental older members were not treated with one-half the consideration these kind-hearted, conscienceless outlaws bestowed on Mrs. Botlisch. She was a fat harridan of seventy with a blotched red face, a great, coarse, husky voice like a man's and thick hands, the nails bitten down to the quick. She liked to go about without corsets or shoes in a shapeless gaberdine she called a double-gown—not too clean at that. She kept a bottle of whisky on her mantelpiece; she had a disconcerting habit of
  • 19. whisking out her teeth and laying them down wherever she chanced to be; you might come upon them grinning amongst Mazie's music on the piano, or under the sofa-cushions. She frankly enjoyed a loose story, and made a point of telling them in mixed companies of young people. She alternately bullied the servants and gossiped with them in the kitchen; once I most inopportunely happened upon Mrs. Botlisch engaged in a battle-royal with one of the chambermaids over some trifle—a broken dish, perhaps—in the pantry. Fortunately, I could not understand one word they uttered; and after a little, Mrs. Pallinder came, looking quite grey over her handsome resolute face, and took her mother away still shrieking hideous abuse. "Ma is so eccentric," she said to me afterwards, with a ghastly smile; and some feeling, of mingled horror and compassion, withheld me from reporting the wretched scene. In most households, these undesirable parents can be thrust, gently or not, into the background; in fact, very many parents retire thither of their own accord. But Mrs. Botlisch was not of that type. "I like to set in the parlour an' see the young folks," she said. "Mirandy she don't want me to, but I says to her, 'Mirandy,' says I, 'don't you worry. I'm goin' ter keep my uppers an' lowers in, 'less I git a fish-bone er a hunk o' meat under the plate at dinner, an' I ain't a-goin' to no bed till I git sleepy,' says I. She says, 'Ma, I'm afraid you won't be comf'ble with your—you know—on all evenin'.'" (Here she gave J. B. a poke in the side and dropped her left eyelid). "'Lord love you, don't set there lookin' so innercent like you'd never saw a woman undress in yer life—don't come that over me, young feller. She says, 'Ma, I'm afraid you'll feel kinder tight an' uncomf'ble with 'em on all evenin' 'long as you ain't used to wearin' 'em much in the daytime,' she says. 'Land!' says I. 'Mirandy,' I ain't squoze inter my cloze by main stren'th the way Mazie is. 'F I feel uncomf'ble, I'll just undo the bottom buttons of my basque an' I'll be all right, you see.'" And there she sat, true to her word, creaking in her black silk and bugles (with the bottom buttons undone!), perspiring greasily over her fat red face; and shouting rough, humorous, and frequently
  • 20. shrewd criticism at our amateurs during rehearsal until midnight, when we went out to the dining-room for oysters, egg-nogg, and the too lavish entertainment of Colonel Pallinder's sideboard. The first time this occurred Teddy Johns retreated precipitately from the table, and, being sought, was discovered at last, pallidly reclining on the library lounge. "I'm all right, old man," he said feebly. "Just a minute, please. I couldn't stand seeing old Mrs. Botlisch wallop down those oysters, that's all." There lies before me now a square of rough paper (designedly rough), with jagged edges (designedly jagged), tinted in water colours an elegant cloudy blue, with a butterfly, or some such insect, painted in one corner, and a slit diagonally opposite through which we stuck a single rosebud, as I remember. Slanting across the sheet in loose gilt lettering I read "Programme," and a date beneath. This confection represented days of effort and ingenuity on the part of those young ladies among my contemporaries who painted china, or were otherwise "artistic." Some of them took the "Art Amateur," at a ruinous expenditure; that publication has long since gone the way of all flesh and most print, in company, it would appear, with the amateurs for whom it was destined. Nobody is either "artistic" or amateurish any more. We did the jagging with a meat-saw, I believe —what a spectacle for our accomplished posterity! If I reverse the sheet, I find upon the other side, in a correct angular hand (it may well be my own, for angularity was much the fashion in those days; and the inartistic ones let what aid they could to the task of programme-making), I find, I say, the CAST OF CHARACTERS WILLIAM TELL, An Opera in Two Acts. William Tell Mr. Archer Baldwin Lewis Arnold von Winkelreid Mr. James Hathaway Walter Furst Mr. Julian Todd
  • 21. Melcthal Mr. Appleton Wingate Gessler Mr. James Smith Rudolph Mr. John Porter Ruodi Mr. Joseph Randall McHenry Leuthold Mr. Henry Barnes Smith Matilda Mr. Gwynne Peters Mrs. Tell Mr. Oliver Hunt Mrs. Gessler Mr. Theodore E. Johns Jemmy, Tell's son Mr. Junius Brutus Breckinridge Taylor Chorus of Peasants, Knights, Pages, Ladies, Hunters, Soldiers, etc. Mr. Robert Carson Scene: The Schactenthal Waterfall. The uninformed might very well inquire, as did Doctor Vardaman, what under Heaven Arnold von Winkelreid was doing in this galère? He appeared among the other historical personages with a baseball- catcher's padded guard tied about his chest, and stuck full of enormous arrows; at one time or another every young man in the cast, including Jimmie Hathaway himself, was overheard laboriously explaining to Muriel that it was "all just nonsense, you know; of course Winkelreid didn't have anything to do with Tell—but there was an Arnold in the cast of the real opera—and then there was that funny old piece about Arnold von Winkelreid in McGuffey's Reader, you know: 'Make way for liberty, he cried, make way for liberty, and died!' and he somehow seemed to fit in pretty well with the rest of the foolishness. They had thought of having Casabianca, too, but gave it up," and so on and so on. "Don't pay any attention to their excuses, Miss Baxter," said the doctor fiercely, yet shaking with laughter. "It's all miserable horse- play—vandalism—desecration. 'Guillaume Tell' is a beautiful opera, the creation of a great musical genius. I've seen Sonntag and Lablache in it; it ought to be sacred from these barbarians—you hear
  • 22. me, boys, barbarians!" He menaced them with a closed fist; and they went on shamelessly: Gessler (in a loud voice)—Who are these fellows? Rudolph—My lord, these are Swiss. Gessler (louder, pointing to Tell)—Who's that fellow with the freckles? Rudolph—My lord, that is a dotted Swiss. Gessler (louder still)—Take away that dashed Swiss! Rudolph—My lord, I said dotted. Gessler (very loud)—Well, I said dashed—— It took little enough to make us laugh, for we thought all that very funny indeed. And an interesting point might be made of the fact that "William Tell," whether the men had greater abilities, or easier parts, or from whatever reason, was, as a whole, far and away superior to the play in which the girls appeared. Doctor Vardaman, for all his old-time gallantry, betrayed his preference more than once; but it sometimes seemed to me as if the old gentleman took a malign satisfaction in viewing our performances, theatrical and otherwise, as one who should stand by and observe the antics of so many apes with an amused detachment. "Of course, of course, I enjoy the comedy. Don't you want me to enjoy the comedy?" he said when I taxed him, and eyed me sidelong with his discomfiting grin. The doctor was a queer old man; not the least evidence of his queerness was the interest he displayed in our affairs. He watched us drill for "William Tell" and "Mrs. Tankerville's Tiara," day by day, appearing to find therein unfailing entertainment. To be sure he had little else to do; he had long retired from practice, and, as he said of himself, was the weak- minded victim of his own whims. With all his oddities, we were fond
  • 23. of him; and his advice and suggestions were a real help to such of us as took ourselves and our parts seriously. The stage was one of his many hobbies; he had collected a huge library of books relating to it; had seen all of the celebrated actors of his day and known not a few of them; and could recall Laura Keane in the very rôle which Muriel was now essaying. "Do you remember what she wore, Doctor?" Mazie asked him, characteristically enough, by the way. "White gauze, I think," said the old gentleman, considering. "Yes, it was white gauze, and a touch of green about it somewhere." "Huh! Touch o' green was a fig-leaf, I s'pose—hope so, anyhow!" said Mrs. Botlisch, and "wallopped" down another oyster. She was a terrible old woman. "I don't know what we'd do without you, doctor," said Mazie precipitately. "You know so much about it—what we ought to do, I mean, and how the whole thing ought to go. It's ever so kind of you ——" "Not at all—the kindness is on your side," said the doctor. He glanced about with a smile in which there lurked a whimsical melancholy. "I don't aspire to the post of guide, philosopher, and fr ——" "Talkin' o' guides," old Mrs. Botlisch interrupted him. "Ever hear that story 'bout the English feller that went aroun' Niagry Falls with a guide, out to Table Rock an' Goat Island, and down under th' Falls an' everywheres, an' when they got through, he took an' wrote in th' visitors' book, 'Why am I like Desdemona?' That's th' white girl that married a nigger in one o' these here plays, you know. He took an' wrote, 'Why am I like Desdemona? Becuz——'" "Ahem!" interrupted Doctor Vardaman, with extraordinary vehemence. "You were asking me for the address of the man that sells make-up boxes, one of you the other day. I meant to bring it
  • 24. with me to-night, but forgot. Any time you want, you can stop at my house, and in case I'm out, ask Huddesley, I left it with him. It's Kryzowski—bowski—wowski—some such unpronounceable Russian name, and his shop is somewhere on Sixth Avenue, I think, but I can't exactly remember." All of which speech the doctor delivered in a rapid and vigorous outburst of words, not pausing until he was quite out of breath; and even then he had the air of one skirting by a hair's-breadth some desperate verge. "I'll stop in to-morrow," said J. B. "Huddesley isn't likely to get mixed up about it, is he?" "Huddesley? Oh, no, trust him. Besides I'll leave it written down. But Huddesley is perfectly reliable—a remarkable man, that—never had a such a servant is my house—he's really unusual." "Snake in th' grass—don't tell me!" Mrs. Botlisch grunted. She had taken a bitter prejudice against the doctor's man-servant; partly, no doubt, because although he was a good deal about the house, coming and going on the doctor's errands, he had managed to avoid both her bullying and her patronage. There is nothing more offensive than the servant whose manners are better than our own. And Huddesley's manners were perfect in his degree; he was English, we supposed from the short fragment of his history we had heard, and had not been long enough abroad to lose the insular standard of domestic service, and the insular traditions of class. "Huddesley'll get spoiled if you don't look out, Doctor," Colonel Pallinder warned him. "None of my affair, of course, but, pardon me, too much notice and perhaps too much pay——" "I know some of 'em that ain't sufferin' from that anyhow!" growled the old woman pointedly. "I believe ma thinks we ought to give all these lazy darkies as much as we spend on ourselves," said Mrs. Pallinder with an indulgent
  • 25. laugh. "As if they weren't eating us out of house and home already! But William's right, doctor, Huddesley will be spoiled if we're not all more careful. A white servant can't stand petting and familiarity the way black ones do; sooner or later he'll presume on it. Did you know that all these boys have been going down to your house to get Huddesley to hear them their parts?" "It's my fault, I began it," J. B. explained, reddening. "I said to Ted that if he wanted to know how an English butler behaved he'd better get a few pointers from Huddesley. Huddesley'd make an ideal 'Jenks,' you know, as far as looks go, I mean. He's the real thing in butlers. And it's funny, he's got ever so many good ideas about business, you know, and all that. But we won't do it any more if you'd rather not, Doctor." "Pooh, you can't spoil a man like that," the doctor said. "Reverence for class is born in 'em; it runs in the blood. That's what I admire about these English servants—their perfect self-respect, and idea of the dignity of their own position, without presuming on yours." "It's awfully convenient having him to prompt anyhow," said Mazie, who needed a great deal of prompting. "Nobody wants to sit and hold an old prompt-book and watch for mistakes. What bothers me is all those funny little pairs of letters 'r.u.' and 'cross over' and 'sits right' scattered all through your speech like hiccups. I don't know what r.u. means, anyhow." "Huddesley says it means retire up—walk toward the back of the stage, you know." "Well, but I thought you oughtn't ever to turn your back on the audience." "Depends on yer figger, I guess," said Mrs. Botlisch. "Some girl's backs and fronts ain't no different—they're flat both sides like a paper doll!"
  • 26. "Huddesley has aspirations," said Doctor Vardaman briskly. "I discovered that some time ago. At first I thought he wanted to study medicine; he used to be forever poking about my little room, pretending to dust and arrange the bottles, and asking all manner of questions. But since this business of your plays has come up, he's been tremendously interested in them. The fellow has some education, you know. I've found him two or three times reading in my library, with the feather duster under his arm—perfectly absorbed. He was very mortified the first time I caught him at it, and humbly begged my pardon. 'Hi can't resist a book, sir, sometimes,' he said. 'Hi wouldn't wish to be thought to presoom, but Hi've tastes hother than my lot can gratify; and Hi've 'ad 'opes—but,' says he, with a sigh, 'that's hall hover and gone, now.'" "Kind of stagey, wasn't he?" "Yes, of course, he must have got that out of some book. Once in a while, he uses very fine language, indeed, and then I know he's been reading. I said, 'Well, Huddesley, it's a pity, if feeling that way, you can't raise yourself as high as you choose here in America.' I only said it to draw him out, you know. He shook his head mournfully. 'No, sir,' says he, 'Hi won't never be anything but a butler —a servant pourin' out wine an' blackin' boots for the rich and light- 'earted like yourself, sir.' I asked him what he would like to be if he could begin over again. 'A hactor, sir,' said he respectfully. 'Hi feel the stirrin' of Hart within my buzzom.' 'That's where we commonly feel 'em, Huddesley,' says I. 'Hi don't mean 'eart, sir, beggin' your parding, Hi mean Hart—with a Hay, sir—that's what Hi feel, but they'll never 'ave no houtlet, sir, Hi'm a butler—the die is cast——' and then I escaped into the garden to laugh." "That isn't all funny—it's pathetic too," said J. B. thoughtfully. "Poor devil!" At least two people in the room looked at the young man with a quicker interest—Doctor Vardaman and Muriel, the doctor with an odd and pleased surprise in his keen quizzical face. As for Muriel,
  • 27. she and J. B. looked at one another pretty often, as I remember. Mrs. Botlisch raised her hard old features from a close inspection of her empty, swept and scraped platter, and fixed the doctor with a little twinkling porcine eye. "How long you had him anyway, Doc.?" "Three months, or so, I believe." "Oh, no, it's not that long, Doctor," exclaimed Mazie. "I remember Huddesley came after the holidays, just as I was starting to Washington. That was a little after the Charity Ball. I put off going so as not to miss it. I remember about Huddesley because you had just got rid of that awful man that had d.t's and came up here with an axe wanting to kill somebody." "Huddesley's arrival raised the tone of our neighbourhood appreciably," said the doctor, with a laugh. Doctor Vardaman's men were a byword in the community. Men of every colour and nationality had drifted through his hands; it was a long procession of lazy, drunken, thieving rascality, or honesty so abysmally stupid and incompetent as to be equally worthless. "I'll never let him go, now I've got him," said the old gentleman. "I have a fellow-feeling for all you ladies that keep house. Rather than lose him, I'd give him everything I own even unto the half of my substance." "He'll git more'n that 'fore he's through with ye," said Mrs. Botlisch. "You young Taylor feller,"—she always called J. B. and in fact all the young men that frequented the house, by the last name—"you'd better git that bottle o' rye away from Johns. He's had about enough, 'f I'm any jedge—an' I reckon I'd oughter be, all th' drunks I've handled——" "Pioneer times, pioneer times," said the colonel, hastily. "Er—um— the ice to Mr. Johns, Sam." "When Mirandy's pa useter came home loaded," pursued the old woman, unmoved, "many's the time I've shet him in th' woodshed,
  • 28. him hollerin' bloody murder—'Let him holler!' says I. Time mornin' come I'd git him under th' pump—oh my, yes, I've had lots of experience." "Pioneer times," said Colonel Pallinder again desperately. (But J. B. did take the bottle away from Teddy's neighbourhood.) "Pioneer days! Good God, gentlemen, when I think of what men and women had to contend with then, I'm ashamed, yes, ashamed of the luxuries we live in. You were saying, Doctor——" "About—ahem—oh—ah—yes, about Huddesley," said the doctor, who had not been saying anything. "I can't always make the fellow out— I'm rather puzzled——" "Speakin' o' puzzles," said old Mrs. Botlisch, "I was goin' to tell ye that one 'bout th' English feller that the guide was takin' 'roun' Niagry Falls. After they had gone down under th' Falls, an' out to Goat Island, and everywheres else, ye know, he took an' wrote in th' visitors' book, 'Why am I like Desdemona?' (That's the white girl that goes off with a nigger in th' play, ye know). He wrote just that: 'Why am I like Desdemona?' Th' answer is: 'Becuz——'" This time, in spite of an outburst of coughing that threatened serious results to Doctor Vardaman, in spite of a fusillade of loud irrelevant talk from the colonel, in spite even of Teddy Johns' quite unintentionally falling over a chair, this time, I say, we all heard the answer!
  • 29. CHAPTER THIRTEEN Not long since I had a visit from Gwynne Peters' oldest boy. The little fellow is twelve, and, as I abstained from any embarrassing and inconvenient demonstrations of affection or even friendship, we became quite intimate, and I believe he enjoyed himself after a fashion. He is not like his father, neither so delicate in body, nor so gentle and winning as I remember the elder Gwynne—but, in truth, I do not know if I ever found the way to his heart, with all my diplomacy; the unconquerable barrier of age divided us; childhood looks with so solidly-rooted a suspicion on our efforts to approach it; it guards its quaint jungles, its enchanted gardens with so jealous a care that we may well despair of ever touching hands. And for that matter I sometimes think we are all strangers more or less to the end, and our nearest intimacy only a painful interchange of signals in a fog. Little Gwynne tolerated me, and I soon ceased to ask anything else. He approved of cookies and the works of Mr. Alger; as these latter immortal productions do not form a part of my library, we were obliged to call upon the Carnegie one a few squares distant, whence he requisitioned them at the rate of a new Alger volume about every twenty-four hours until the supply was exhausted, when we began on Mr. Henty. This fell out very luckily, as I had discovered him asleep in a corner over "Ivanhoe," and I should not have wished him to carry away so unfavourable an impression of my resources in the way of entertainment. But what I most observed in him was an indifference to, or ignorance of, his family history and traditions that seemed abnormal in a Gwynne, however remotely descended. I asked him if he had ever been to see his great- grandfather's portrait in the State-House? The moment was ill- chosen, as he was profoundly occupied with a new variety of top, but he absently answered: "Yep." "What did you think of it?"
  • 30. "Nothin'," said this renegade, with astounding callousness, bending himself to the top; it was warranted to spin five minutes at a stretch, and when he had got it started, and was timing it by my watch, he felt his mind released from cares enough to volunteer indulgently: "Father's got a big photograph of it in his office. It's all yellow and fly-specky, because it's so old, you know. I guess it's 'most as old as father—or maybe you." "Doesn't your father ever tell you about him—what a great man he was, and all?" "Nope." "What!" said I, then, unable to believe my ears. "Doesn't he ever talk to you about Governor Gwynne? Doesn't anybody ever tell you to remember that you're a Gwynne?" The top was reeling to its fall, and he was very busy, and, as I could see, justifiably annoyed at my persistence, but this question caused him to look up sharply with the quick suspicion of his twelve years. "Aw, you're in fun!" he said, eying me shrewdly. "Father wouldn't talk guff like that! And anyway my name's Peters—Gwynne's just my given name—so it wouldn't be true, see?" Guff like that! These were his sacrilegious words. Nothing could have more stingingly brought home to me the lapse of years, or better illustrated the changes in men's minds. And I might here insert some valuable reflections on the vanity of human achievement, and the hollow and transitory character of fame, if I were not uneasily conscious that Governor Gwynne's renown, even in his heyday, was not of a kind to fill the four corners of the universe; it was only in the opinion of his family that it reached those magnificent proportions. Now he and his deeds are forgotten, even by them; the fires are all dead on that fantastic altar which the Gwynnes tended for so many years with so much misplaced zeal. It is not likely, I think, that little Gwynne will ever be troubled by the problems confronting his father in March of the year of Grace, 1883.
  • 31. In fact, during this time, Gwynne might have been seen any day pondering gloomily before his empty desk, under his grandfather's grimly searching scrutiny, by the hour. The Pallinder business had reached a stage when he could no longer ignore it; yet he could not bring himself to any active measures. Gwynne knew as much as anybody about the colonel's affairs; he had heard certain subdued but very disagreeable rumours. Templeton himself had brought them to him months earlier with a countenance of fright and perplexity. It had not cleared much when he left the office; the little agent could not understand what ailed his patron. He had never known Gwynne to be so indifferent, so careless of the rights and feelings of the other heirs; it was clean out of his character, and Templeton felt with dismay that his surest prop had been removed. If Mr. Peters was becoming as queer as the rest of them, Templeton was almost ready to resign from the management of the Gwynne estate; single- handed, he could not "hold up his end," as he phrased it. In the years of their association he had conceived something like a real affection for the young man, and this change obscurely alarmed and distressed him. Gwynne, about everything else so open, so resourceful, so patient in the control of his difficult kindred, so genially shrewd, would not allow any discussion of the Pallinder delinquency; he shifted the subject, or turned upon Templeton with a manner of such forbidding reticence that the agent shrank discomfited. "Oh, well, Mr. Peters, I—I guess I'd better leave you alone to run your tenants and the family," he would say humbly, reaching for his hat in an apologetic confusion. "I—I ain't ever made such a success of it that I've any call to argue, or advise you how to do," and so would shuffle meekly from the room, leaving the young man, had he known it, in a miserable humiliation. Time and again, Gwynne had made the resolve to have it out with the colonel; and time and again had turned aside from the act, like a hunter refusing the leap. He bargained with himself, loathing his own weakness; he would go and see Colonel Pallinder on such a day at such an hour; he would say to him thus and so. The day came and the hour—why was it that something invariably prevented him? Once he even got so far as the door of Colonel Pallinder's office—and it was locked.
  • 32. The office was closed for the day: it was late Saturday afternoon, and in his heart Gwynne knew the office would be closed—knew it before he left his own. He turned away in a flash of angry contempt of himself—of Pallinder—of the whole shabby business. Yet the colonel was safe for that day; you cannot scour the town for a man, like a bailiff; and Gwynne certainly was not going to follow him to the house, and dun him under the very roof where he himself had received so many hospitalities, such unfailing courtesy and kindness, within hearing of the fellow's innocent wife and daughter! What had Mrs.—ahem!—what had those two poor women done? Very likely they knew nothing whatever about Pallinder's indebtedness; they were both of them touchingly ignorant of money matters. This was strictly an affair for men—he would see Pallinder Monday. And so Gwynne strode away home, to dinner and a change of dress, and thence, by the most natural sequence in the world, to the Lexington and Amherst cars, and out to the Pallinders'! In one of his spasms of conscience he had refused their urgent invitation to the house party —the irony of his position was apparent, even to him; but he balanced the scales by going out night after night to the rehearsals of "William Tell," wherein he bore his part with a feverish enthusiasm that surprised his friends. It might have been noticed, but, as a matter of fact, I am sure hardly anybody did notice, that Gwynne was the only one of the family who figured in the theatricals, or, in the pungent everyday phrase, had anything to do with the Pallinders. Marian Lawrence had been asked to the house party, and had eagerly promised to come, but in a day or so Mrs. Pallinder received a charming, apologetic, and graceful little note from Mrs. Lawrence, declining on Marian's behalf, for some vague reason. The truth is, Mrs. Horace Gwynne, on hearing of the plan, had once again ordered out her barouche and driven over to the Lawrences', upright and stern, with the stark face of Doom. And after a heated conference with the mother, the note had been despatched; Mrs. Lawrence sat down and cried heartily with the disappointed girl when that dire act had been performed—but neither of them thought of disobeying Cousin
  • 33. Jennie. When they met Mrs. Pallinder face to face coming out of church next Sunday morning they were both a good deal flustered; they flinched before Mrs. Pallinder's steadily radiant smile, and were devoutly glad, I think, to escape from her neighbourhood into the crowd. Archie Lewis walked home with Marian, and raised his hat as a carriage spun by—"That was the Pallinders with Miss Baxter," said Archie, observing with a passing surprise that his companion made no sign of recognition. "Was it? I didn't see them," said Marian stoutly, looking straight in front of her with very red cheeks. Not so long before, Mazie had been one of her most intimate friends. Look on that picture, and now on this! What was the matter with all the Gwynnes? Little old Eleanor and little old Mollie, on seeing the colonel less than half a square off, advancing upon them, already uncovered, courtly, bland, with outstretched hand—the two old sisters, I say, fairly took to their heels up a side street, with scared and shrinking faces. They gathered up their virgin skirts and fled shudderingly as from contamination. Mrs. Horace Gwynne, alone of them all, possessed the courage of her convictions. Erect in her barouche, she encountered and returned Mrs. Pallinder's smile with a salute so casual, so perfunctory that it suggested the recognition she would have bestowed upon her cook in event of a public meeting with that functionary. Mrs. Pallinder bit her lips; she reddened through her rouge—and the next moment was gaily bowing to another acquaintance as if life meant nothing to her but this pleasant exchange of civilities. "Of course I never would deliberately cut anybody," Mrs. Horace explained later; "that sort of behaviour is childish and ill-tempered. But I flatter myself I know as well as anyone how to put people in their proper place, and intimate my opinion of them, without talking or acting like a washerwoman. I wanted Mrs. Pallinder to understand that while I was absolutely indifferent to such a matter as the back-rent she owed me and every one of us, I did not approve of the principle of the thing. She knew perfectly well what I meant. And at receptions or wherever she happened to be in the same company with me afterwards, I simply didn't see her at all! I was always talking to someone else, or had my back turned. She understood—a person like that!" I dare say
  • 34. Mrs. Pallinder did understand; she was not without some previous experience, and it is likely deserved every snub and stab which Mrs. Horace, with the just severity of a good and upright woman, inflicted on her. So must we all lie upon the beds we make. This was the secret of the Gwynnes' altered demeanour; it was, of course, not the failure to pay them their rent to which they objected, but the appalling principle, or lack of principle, it indicated. At least, that is what they all and severally declared afterwards. At the time, with characteristic Gwynne reticence, they kept their troubles to themselves; no set of conspiring revolutionists could have been more close-mouthed. Their behaviour in this instance was of a piece with the futile pride that prompted their efforts to distract the public mind from Caroline—from Steven—from Sam Peters. What! Drag their noble name through the mud and riot of a Common Pleas suit? Associate their house and the memory of Governor Gwynne with a debasing scandal about Money! I should not care to reveal the arts by which Gwynne put off the hour of retribution for the Pallinders, playing upon these familiar strings with a skill he himself despised. Even he, in the end, sounded the note once too often, as we have seen in the case of old Steven, to whom the sum, small as it was, meant more than to the other members of the family. For Steven, once away from the blandishments of Mrs. Pallinder, naturally reverted in the shortest possible space of time to his previous mood of brooding indignation. He had parted from Doctor Vardaman with a confused notion that everything was going smoothly—that Gwynne would settle with the Pallinders in a few days—a week, perhaps, at furthest. It had not been stated in so many words; none the less Steven carried away these ideas planted within him either by Mrs. Pallinder's soothing flatteries, or by the doctor's well-meant efforts at comforting and diverting him. He waited a day or two, eagerly inspecting every mail; he spoke grandly of his expected remittances to his tolerant country neighbours, and alluded to Gwynne with a large air as his man of business. But as the days passed and his man of business made no sign, Steven's slender allowance of patience gave out once more. He wrote to Gwynne, and waited a fevered
  • 35. while for an answer. Wrote again, and with the letter, addressed and stamped, in his pocket, abandoned his design, and took the first train for town. It was with a fierce and resolute face that he stalked into the office that afternoon—and Gwynne had gone out! This delay, to speak in high metaphorical terms which would have delighted Steven's own taste, did not arrest the falling of the levin- brand; it only increased its momentum. In proportion as the moments lapsed, his wrath gathered head. As it happened, he found himself in appropriate company, with his grievance; when he entered the room there sat his cousins, the two Misses Gwynne, with their pale, furtive, startled faces framed in curls and satin rosettes, in their rigid bombazine skirts, Miss Gwynne tremblingly clasping an umbrella, Miss Mollie fingering a foolscap document whereon, if Steven had cared to look, he might have seen some arithmetical calculations similar to his own. They started up, fluttering and ejaculating at his appearance; then sank down disappointed, yet, probably, a little relieved. The two not only dressed, but thought and acted in couples; either one was helpless without the other; and both now wore an air of terrified resolution such as a pair of mice, a pair of pullets might have presented in some desperate crisis of the trap or butcher's knife. Even in their day, a day which recognised but one career for respectable women, which knew not women's colleges or bachelor-maids, or what we call the professional equality of the sexes, Eleanor and Mollie were caricatures of spinsterhood; we looked upon them with as much pity as amusement, I believe. This was a tremendous step for them to take; and horror laid a throttling hold on both at the idea (occurring to them simultaneously) that Cousin Steven might think them indiscreet or unladylike. But Steven was much too preoccupied to spare a thought to their confusion. "Huh, girls!" said he, sat down in Gwynne's revolving-chair, and glowered absently out of the window, beating a tattoo on the desk, and framing the sentences in which he would open his arraignment. "Waiting to see Gwynne?" he inquired, rousing himself with a momentary curiosity after a while. The twins murmured inarticulately, looking at each other.
  • 36. "So'm I," said Steven, scowling, and they might all three have proceeded to some explanations, but at that moment, upon this amiable family-group, strolled in Archie Lewis, on some errand from his father's office, debonair, whistling his song from "William Tell," and very much taken aback at sight of the company into which he had stumbled. "It was a perfect nest of Gwynnes," he said, graphically describing the episode. "I felt like Daniel in the lions' den." "Oh—ah—Mr. Gwynne—er—Miss Gwynne——" said he, stopping short in embarrassment. "Ah—um—Gwynne's gone out, I see." "He'll be back in a few minutes," stammered Miss Eleanor, after a moment of fearful indecision. "The office-boy said so," added Miss Mollie faintly. "It's almost half- an-hour now." "Well, I guess I won't wait—if you'll be so kind as to tell him I was here? And I'll just put this on his desk under the paperweight—he'll understand when he sees it," said Archie, depositing his bundle of papers on the desk as he spoke, and very ready to beat a retreat. But Steven, eying him, suddenly growled out, "You're Judge Lewis' son, ain't you?" "Why, yes—you know my father, of course—I've often heard him speak of you," said Archie, conventionally, edging off. "Sit down," said Steven, imperiously motioning. "Gwynne'll be along in a little. You ought to be a lawyer, young man—your father's a lawyer. I haven't seen him for years—I guess he's a good deal changed. Law kind of changes people; it's seldom a man takes it up and stays honest. Sit down; Gwynne'll be here presently." ("And so," said Archie, "I sat down. The fact is, the old fellow looked sort of queer, and though I never heard of his doing anything, I didn't much like to leave him alone with those two old ladies—you never can tell, you know.")
  • 37. "I'd like to see the judge," said Steven. "Why, I'm sure father'd be very pleased——" Steven waved an impatient gesture. "I'm not particular about seeing him," said he—and Archie used to repeat this part of the story in his father's presence with infinite relish—"But I'd like to have his opinion, in a matter of—a matter of debt!" The two sisters exchanged a horrified glance; they knew what Steven's errand was, now, and thought he was about to reveal the awful secret, and tarnish the name of Gwynne forever. But that was by no means Steven's intention; he was as tender of the family honour as they, but much more confident of his own knowledge of the world and diplomatic abilities. Archie, upon whose youthfully sharp wits none of this by-play was lost, sat wondering what was to come next. "This debt—or—er—this indebtedness," said Steven elaborately, "is— er—it should be, in short, collected—that is—er—measures should be taken by which it—could be, in short, collected." He fixed a profound look on the young man, pausing while he considered in what other roundabout terms he could present the situation. "Is the fellow that owes you responsible—solid, I mean, you know?" asked Archie, beginning to be interested. "If he's on a salary, or got a good business you might attach——" "I—I—I'm not prepared to state," said Steven, appalled at the briskness of Archie's deductions. "I'm just supposing a case, you understand." "Oh!" said Archie, suppressing a grin. "Well—ah—are you supposing it to be a large sum, Mr. Gwynne?" "A debt's a debt," said Steven, with magnificent brevity; he could not resist a sidelong glance at Eleanor and Mollie, commanding their admiration.
  • 38. "Yes, of course, Mr. Gwynne, but there's a difference between a debt of five dollars and one of five hundred," said Archie peaceably. "If you can come to some kind of compromise, it's generally a great deal better than going to law; you may get a little less than you're entitled to, but you save time and trouble and worry. I suppose I've heard my father say that to a hundred clients." This view appeared to strike Eleanor and Mollie favourably; something in the half-a-loaf policy appeals with a subtle power to the feminine mind. But Steven's old face reddened; he darted a vengeful glance at this Laodicean councillor. "Compromise—nothing!" he snarled. "I'll see him da—I'll see him farther before I'll compromise!" "All right—all right, I was just saying that's one way of settling these things," said Archie hastily. "Of course you know what you want, Mr. Gwynne. Trouble is, you go into court with a case, and you never know how long it will take to wind it up—maybe two or three years —that's perfectly irrespective of the rights of the case. Whereas, if you accept some kind of settlement, you—well, in general, you come out ahead of the game," said Archie, falling back on the vernacular. Oh, wise young judge! The two Misses Gwynne listened to Archie's exposition with respectful awe. I have heard him say with a laugh that at no time in his subsequent career—which has been one of considerable distinction—has he ever felt himself to be exerting so much influence, no, not in his most sustained and vigorous flights of oratory. "I might have been the Almighty, instead of a smart-Alecky boy, by the way those two poor old women were impressed—it was funny—funny and pitiful," he says, and shakes his grizzling head. "It's—it's very awful to have someone in debt to you, Mr. Lewis," Miss Mollie took courage to say falteringly. "Not so bad as being in debt to somebody yourself, though," said Archie genially. This well-intended levity was a serious mistake; they shrank—they withered before the dreadful suggestion.
  • 39. "We—we aren't that, Mr. Lewis," cried both old maids in scared chorus. "It's not we that are in debt—it's somebody that owes us ——" "That owes the GWYNNE ESTATE," said Steven ponderously. He had forgot all about his supposititious case, and Archie, who, as he himself might have said, was not born yesterday, had already made a shrewd guess as to the identity of the debtor. "A debt's a bad business, anyway you fix it," he said easily. "Reminds me of that story father tells of himself when he was a boy borrowing money of their old coloured man to go to the circus with. 'Chile,' says old Mose, 'you's got to 'member this; er debt that ain't paid stahts er roorback! You owe me, an' I owe Pete, an' Pete he owes that wall-eyed niggah oveh at the liv'ry-stable, an' lakly Mistah Walleye, he owes somebody else, an' 'twell one of us stahts the payin', nobuddy cyahn't pay—an' thar's your roorback!'" Archie laughed. He laughed alone, for this sprightly tale, although he had recited it in a careful imitation of Judge Lewis' best manner, apparently failed to amuse anybody but himself. Perhaps it went too near the truth to be wholly agreeable. "I never realised until that moment," he used to say with a certain naïveté, "what an awful job poor Gwynne Peters had for years with those people. I'll bet nobody knows or ever will know what he put up with!" His new sympathy put a greater warmth into his greeting when Gwynne at last came in, a few minutes later. Archie, as he explained his errand, noted inwardly that his friend's face was drawn and tired; nor did he wonder much at the grim look Gwynne cast around the waiting family-circle. "You're late, Gwynne," said old Steven, fierce-eyed under his shaggy brows. "I know it," said Gwynne, in a harsh voice. "I had to go out to the country this morning, and that put me back with everything."
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