Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Chapter 2
Ethics and
Business Decision Making
TRUE/FALSE QUESTIONS
21
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22 TEST BANK TO ACCOMPANY BUSINESS LAW TODAY: THE ESSENTIALS
4. Adhering strictly to all business laws is all that is necessary to fulfill all
business ethics obligations.
6. Obeying the law does not necessarily fulfill all ethical obligations.
10. A business firm can sometimes predict whether a given action is legal.
11. Acting in good faith gives a business firm a better chance of defending its
actions in court.
12. Ethical codes of conduct can set the ethical tone of a firm.
14. Setting realistic workplace goals can increase the probability that employ-
ees will act unethically.
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Mr. Howells’ accurate attention to details gives to his stories
a most realistic flavor, making his books seem rather
photographic than artistic. He shuns imposing characters and
thrilling incidents, and makes much of interesting people and
ordinary events in our social life. A broad grasp of our national
characteristics and an intimate acquaintance with our institutions
gives him a facility in producing minute studies of certain
aspects of society and types of character, which no other writer
in America has approached. For instance, his “Undiscovered
Country” was an exhaustive study and presentation of
spiritualism, as it is witnessed and taught in New England. And
those who admire Mr. Howells’ writings will find in “The
Landlord at Lion’s Head” a clear-cut statement of the important
sociological problem yet to be solved, upon the other; which
problem is also characteristic of other of his books. Thoughtful
readers of Mr. Howells’ novels gain much information on vital
questions of society and government, which broaden the mind
and cannot fail to be of permanent benefit.
HE table was set for him alone, and it affected him as if the
family had been hurried away from it that he might
have it to himself. Everything was very simple; the iron
forks had two prongs; the knives bone handles; the dull
glass was pressed; the heavy plates and cups were
white, but so was the cloth, and all were clean. The woman brought in a
good boiled dinner of corned beef, potatoes, turnips and carrots, from the
kitchen, and a teapot, and said something about having kept them hot on
the stove for him; she brought him a plate of biscuit fresh from the oven;
then she said to the boy, “You come out and have your dinner with me,
Jeff,” and left the guest to make his meal unmolested.
The room was square, with two north windows that looked down the
lane he had climbed to the house. An open door led into the kitchen in an
ell, and a closed door opposite probably gave access to a parlor or a
ground-floor chamber. The windows were darkened down to the lower
sash by green paper shades; the walls were papered in a pattern of brown
roses; over the chimney hung a large picture, a life-size pencil-drawing
of two little girls, one slightly older and slightly larger than the other,
each with round eyes and precise ringlets, and with her hand clasped in
the other’s hand.
The guest seemed helpless to take his gaze from it, and he sat fallen
back in his chair gazing at it, when the woman came in with a pie.
“Thank you, I believe I don’t want any dessert,” he said. “The fact
is, the dinner was so good that I haven’t left any room for pie. Are those
your children?”
“Yes,” said the woman, looking up at the picture with the pie in her
hand. “They’re the last two I lost.”
“It’s the way they appear in the spirit life. It’s a spirit picture.”
She seemed to refer the point to him for his judgment; but he
answered wide of it:
“Oh, yes. Well I don’t know as we could stop you, if you wanted to
take it away.” A spare glimmer lighted up her face.
The stranger relaxed the frown he had put on at the greed of her
suggestion; it might have come from ignorance or mere innocence, “I’m
in the habit of paying five dollars for farm board, where I stayed several
weeks. What do you say to seven for a single week?”
“I guess that’ll do,” said the woman, and she went out with the pie,
which she had kept in her hand.
The plans of nearly all the houses in the city are alike: the entrance-
room next the door; the parlor or drawing-room next that; then the
impluvium, or unroofed space in the middle of the house, where the rains
were caught and drained into the cistern, and where the household used
to come to wash itself, primitively, as at a pump; the little garden, with
its painted columns, behind the impluvium, and, at last, the dining-room.
After referring to the frescos on the walls that have remained for
nearly two thousand years and the wonder of the art by which they were
produced, Mr. Howells thus continues:
Of course the houses of the rich were adorned by men of talent; but
it is surprising to see the community of thought and feeling in all this
work, whether it be from cunninger or clumsier hands. The subjects are
nearly always chosen from the fables of the gods, and they are in
illustration of the poets, Homer and the rest. To suit that soft, luxurious
life which people led in Pompeii, the themes are commonly amorous,
and sometimes not too chaste: there is much of Bacchus and Ariadne,
much of Venus and Adonis, and Diana bathes a good deal with her
nymphs,—not to mention frequent representations of the toilet of that
beautiful monster which the lascivious art of the time loved to depict.
One of the most pleasing of all the scenes is that in one of the houses, of
the Judgment of Paris, in which the shepherd sits upon a bank in an
attitude of ineffable and flattered importance, with one leg carelessly
crossing the other, and both hands resting lightly on his shepherd’s
crook, while the goddesses before him await his sentence. Naturally, the
painter has done his best for the victress in this rivalry, and you see
“Idalian Aphrodite beautiful,”
as she should be, but with a warm and piquant spice of girlish resentment
in her attitude, that Paris should pause for an instant, which is altogether
delicious.
“And I beheld great Here’s angry eyes.”
Awful eyes! How did the painter make them? The wonder of all these
pagan frescos is the mystery of the eyes,—still, beautiful, unhuman. You
cannot believe that it is wrong for those tranquil-eyed men and women to
do evil, they look so calm and so unconscious in it all; and in the
presence of the celestials, as they bend upon you those eternal orbs, in
whose regard you are but a part of space, you feel that here art has
achieved the unearthly. I know of no words in literature which give a
sense (nothing gives the idea) of the stare of these gods, except that
magnificent line of Kingsley’s, describing the advance over the sea
toward Andromeda of the oblivious and unsympathizing Nereids. They
floated slowly up and their eyes
“Stared on her, silent and still, like the eyes in the house of the idols.”
VENETIAN VAGABONDS. ¹
( “ .” 1867.)
DESCRIPTION OF CHRIST. ¹
( “ .” 1880.)
“The Spirit dwelt in the Holy of Holies set apart for it in the
Tabernacle; yet no man ever saw it here, a thing of sight. The soul is not
to be seen; still less is the Spirit of the Most High; or if one did see it, its
brightness would kill him. In great mercy, therefore, it has come and
done its good works in the world veiled; now in one form, now in
another; at one time, a voice in the air; at another, a vision in sleep; at
another, a burning bush; at another, an angel; at another, a descending
dove”—
“Thus always when its errand was of quick despatch,” the Prince
continued. “But if its coming were for residence on earth, then its habit
has been to adopt a man for its outward form, and enter into him, and
speak by him; such was Moses, such Elijah, such were all the Prophets,
and such”—he paused, then exclaimed shrilly—“such was Jesus Christ!”
DEATH OF MONTEZUMA. ¹
( “ .”)
HE king turned his pale face and fixed his gazing eyes
upon the conqueror; and such power was there in the
look that the latter added, with softening manner,
“What I can do for thee I will do. I have always been
thy true friend.”
“Let me intrust these women and their children to you and your lord.
Of all that which was mine but now is yours—lands, people, empire,—
enough to save them from want and shame were small indeed. Promise
me; in the hearing of all these, promise, Malinche.”
Taint of anger was there no longer on the soul of the great Spaniard.
“Rest thee, good king!” he said, with feeling. “Thy queens and their
children shall be my wards. In the hearing of all these, I so swear.”
The listener smiled again; his eyes closed, his hand fell down; and so
still was he that they began to think him dead. Suddenly he stirred, and
said faintly, but distinctly,—
“Nearer, uncles, nearer.” The old men bent over him, listening.
“And in sign that I love him, take my sceptre, and give it to him—”
His voice fell away, yet the lips moved; lower the accents stooped,—
“Tula and the empire go with the sceptre,” he murmured, and they
were his last words,—his will. A wail from the women pronounced him
dead.
HE was not more than fifteen. Her form, voice and manner
belonged to the period of transition from girlhood. Her
face was perfectly oval, her complexion more pale than
fair. The nose was faultless; the lips, slightly parted,
were full and ripe, giving to the lines of the mouth
warmth, tenderness and trust; the eyes were blue and large, and shaded
by drooping lids and long lashes, and, in harmony with all, a flood of
golden hair, in the style permitted to Jewish brides, fell unconfined down
her back to the pillion on which she sat. The throat and neck had the
downy softness sometimes seen which leaves the artist in doubt whether
it is an effect of contour or color. To these charms of feature and person
were added others more indefinable—an air of purity which only the
soul can impart, and of abstraction natural to such as think much of
things impalpable. Often, with trembling lips, she raised her eyes to
heaven, itself not more deeply blue; often she crossed her hands upon her
breast, as in adoration and prayer; often she raised her head like one
listening eagerly for a calling voice. Now and then, midst his slow
utterances, Joseph turned to look at her, and, catching the expression
kindling her face as with light, forgot his theme, and with bowed head,
wondering, plodded on.
EDWARD EGGLESTON.
“ - .”
He was born in 1837 in Vevay, Indiana, and his early life was
spent amid the “noble scenery” on the banks of the Ohio River.
His father died while he was a young boy, and he himself was
too delicate to spend much time at school, so that he is a shining
example of those who move up the inclined plane of self-culture
and self-improvement.
His novels depict the rural life of Southern Indiana, and his
own judgment upon them is as follows: “I should say that what
distinguishes my novels from other works of fiction is the
prominence which they give to social conditions; that the
individual characters are here treated to a greater degree than
elsewhere as parts of a study of a society, as in some sense the
logical result of the environment. Whatever may be the rank
assigned to these stories as works of literary art, they will always
have a certain value as materials for the student of social
history.”
His chief novels and stories are the following: “Mr. Blake’s
Walking Stick” (Chicago, 1869); “The Hoosier School-master”
(New York, 1871); “End of the World” (1872); “The Mystery of
Metropolisville” (1873); “The Circuit Rider” (1874); “School-
master’s Stories for Boys and Girls” (1874); and “The Hoosier
School-boy” (1883). He has written in connection with his
daughter an interesting series of biographical tales of famous
American Indians, and during these later years of his life he has
largely devoted himself to historical work which has had an
attraction for him all his life.
There was a general giggle at this, and many of the young swains
took occasion to nudge the girls alongside them, ostensibly for the
purpose of making them see the joke, but really for the pure pleasure of
nudging.
“I appint Larkin Lanham and Jeems Buchanan fer captings,” said the
Squire. And the two young men thus named took a stick and tossed it
from hand to hand to decide who should have the “first chice.” One
tossed the stick to the other, who held it fast just where he happened to
catch it. Then the first placed his hand above the second, and so the
hands were alternately changed to the top. The one who held the stick
last without room for the other to take hold had gained the lot. This was
tried three times. As Larkin held the stick twice out of three times, he
had the choice. He hesitated a moment. Everybody looked toward tall
Jim Phillips. But Larkin was fond of a venture on unknown seas, and so
he said, “I take the master,” while a buzz of surprise ran round the room,
and the captain of the other side, as if afraid his opponent would
withdraw the choice, retorted quickly, and with a little smack of
exultation and defiance in his voice: “And I take Jeems Phillips.”
And soon all present, except a few of the old folks, found themselves
ranged in opposing hosts, the poor spellers lagging in, with what grace
they could at the foot of the two divisions. The Squire opened his
spelling-book and began to give out the words to the two captains, who
stood up and spelled against each other. It was not long before Larkin
spelled “really” with one l, and had to sit down in confusion, while a
murmur of satisfaction ran through the ranks of the opposing forces. His
own side bit their lips. The slender figure of the young teacher took the
place of the fallen leader, and the excitement made the house very quiet.
Ralph dreaded the loss of influence he would suffer if he should be
easily spelled down. And at the moment of rising he saw in the darkest
corner the figure of a well-dressed young man sitting in the shadow. It
made him tremble. Why should his evil genius haunt him? But by a
strong effort he turned his attention away from Dr. Small, and listened
carefully to the words which the Squire did not pronounce very
distinctly, spelling them with extreme deliberation. This gave him an air
of hesitation which disappointed those on his own side. They wanted him
to spell with a dashing assurance. But he did not begin a word until he
had mentally felt his way through it. After ten minutes of spelling hard
words, Jeems Buchanan, the captain of the other side, spelled “atrocious”
with an s instead of a c, and subsided, his first choice, Jeems Phillips,
coming up against the teacher. This brought the excitement to fever-heat.
For though Ralph was chosen first, it was entirely on trust, and most of
the company were disappointed. The champion who now stood up
against the school-master was a famous speller.
Jim Phillips was a tall, lank, stoop-shouldered fellow, who had never
distinguished himself in any other pursuit than spelling. Except in this
one art of spelling he was of no account. He could neither catch a ball
well nor bat well. He could not throw well enough to make his mark in
that famous Western game of Bull-pen. He did not succeed well in any
study but that of Webster’s Elementary. But in that—to use the usual Flat
Creek locution—he was “a hoss.” The genius for spelling is in some
people a sixth sense, a matter of intuition. Some spellers are born and not
made, and their facility reminds one of the mathematical prodigies that
crop out every now and then to bewilder the world. Bud Means,
foreseeing that Ralph would be pitted against Jim Phillips, had warned
his friend that Jim could spell “like thunder and lightning,” and that it
“took a powerful smart speller” to beat him, for he knew “a heap of
spelling-book.” To have “spelled down the master” is next thing to
having whipped the biggest bully in Hoophole County, and Jim had
“spelled down” the last three masters. He divided the hero-worship of the
district with Bud Means.
For half an hour the Squire gave out hard words. What a blessed
thing our crooked orthography is. Without it there could be no spelling-
schools. As Ralph discovered his opponent’s mettle he became more and
more cautious. He was now satisfied that Jim would eventually beat him.
The fellow evidently knew more about the spelling-book than old Noah
Webster himself. As he stood there, with his dull face and long sharp
nose, his hands behind his back, and his voice spelling infallibly, it
seemed to Hartsook that his superiority must lie in his nose. Ralph’s
cautiousness answered a double purpose; it enabled him to tread surely,
and it was mistaken by Jim for weakness. Phillips was now confident
that he should carry off the scalp of the fourth school-master before the
evening was over. He spelled eagerly, confidently, brilliantly. Stoop-
shouldered as he was, he began to straighten up. In the minds of all the
company the odds were in his favor. He saw this, and became ambitious
to distinguish himself by spelling without giving the matter any thought.
“T-h-e, the, o-d, od, theod, o, theodo, l-y-t-e, theodolite,” spelled the
champion.
“Next,” said the Squire, nearly losing his teeth in his excitement.
Ralph spelled the word slowly and correctly, and the conquered
champion sat down in confusion. The excitement was so great for some
minutes that the spelling was suspended. Everybody in the house had
shown sympathy with one or other of the combatants, except the silent
shadow in the corner. It had not moved during the contest, and did not
show any interest now in the result.
“He’s powerful smart is the master,” said old Jack to Mr. Pete Jones.
“He’ll beat the whole kit and tuck of ’em afore he’s through. I know’d he
was smart. That’s the reason I tuck him,” proceeded Mr. Means.
“Yaas, but he don’t lick enough. Not nigh,” answered Pete Jones.
“No lickin’, no larnin’, says I.”
It was now not so hard. The other spellers on the opposite side went
down quickly under the hard words which the Squire gave out. The
master had mowed down all but a few, his opponents had given up the
battle, and all had lost their keen interest in a contest to which there
could be but one conclusion, for there were only the poor spellers left.
But Ralph Hartsook ran against a stump where he was least expecting it.
It was the Squire’s custom, when one of the smaller scholars or poorer
spellers rose to spell against the master, to give out eight or ten easy
words that they might have some breathing spell before being
slaughtered, and then to give a poser or two which soon settled them. He
let them run a little, as a cat does a doomed mouse. There was now but
one person left on the opposite side, and as she rose in her blue calico
dress, Ralph recognized Hannah, the bound girl at old Jack Means’s. She
had not attended school in the district, and had never spelled in spelling-
school before, and was chosen last as an uncertain quantity. The Squire
began with easy words of two syllables, from that page of Webster, so
well-known to all who ever thumbed it, as “Baker,” from the word that
stands at the top of the page. She spelled these words in an absent and
uninterested manner. As everybody knew that she would have to go
down as soon as this preliminary skirmishing was over, everybody began
to get ready to go home, and already there was a buzz of preparation.
Young men were timidly asking girls if they could “see them safe home,”
which is the approved formula, and were trembling in mortal fear of “the
mitten.” Presently the Squire, thinking it time to close the contest, pulled
his scalp forward, adjusted his glass eye, which had been examining his
nose long enough, and turned over the leaves of the book to the great
words at the place known to spellers as “Incomprehensibility,” and began
to give out those “words of eight syllables with the accent on the sixth.”
Listless scholars now turned round, and ceased to whisper, in order to be
in the master’s final triumph. But to their surprise, “ole Miss Meanses’
white nigger,” as some of them called her, in allusion to her slavish life,
spelled these great words with as perfect ease as the master. Still, not
doubting the result, the Squire turned from place to place and selected all
the hard words he could find. The school became utterly quiet, the
excitement was too great for the ordinary buzz. Would “Meanses’
Hanner” beat the master? Beat the master that had laid out Jim Phillips?
Everybody’s sympathy was now turned to Hannah. Ralph noticed that
even Shocky had deserted him, and that his face grew brilliant every
time Hannah spelled a word. In fact, Ralph deserted himself. If he had
not felt that a victory given would insult her, he would have missed
intentionally.
“D-a-u, dau――”
“Next.”
EDWD. BELLAMY.
F. MARION CRAWFORD. • GEO. W. CABLE. • E. P. ROE.
THOS. NELSON PAGE. • FRANK STOCKTON.
old adage declares it “an ill wind that blows nobody good;” and
certainly the world may take whatever consolation it can find out
of the fact that the long and bloody war between the North and
South has at least afforded the opportunity for
certain literary men and women to rise upon
the ruins which it wrought, and win fame to
themselves as well as put money in their purses
by embalming in literature the story of times
and social conditions that now exist only in the history of the
past.
OLD SUE. ¹
( “ .”)
“Kick me—heah, kick me; I jis dyah you to lay you’ foot ’g’inst
me,” he would say, standing defiantly against her as she appeared about
to let fly at him. Then he would seize her with a guffaw. Or at times,
coming down the hill, he would “hall off” and hit her, and “take out”
with her at his heels her long furry ears backed, and her mouth wide
open as if she would tear him to pieces; and just as she nearly caught him
he would come to a stand and wheel around, and she would stop dead,
and then walk on by him as sedately as if she were in a harrow. In all the
years of their association she never failed him; and she never failed to
fling herself on the collar, rounding the sharp curve at Ninth, and to get
the car up the difficult turn.
Last fall, however, the road passed into new hands, and the
management changed the old mules on the line, and put on a lot of new
and green horses. It happened to be a dreary, rainy day in November
when the first new team was put in. They came along about three
o’clock. Old Sue had been standing out in the pouring rain all day with
her head bowed, and her stubby tail tucked in, and her black back
dripping. She had never failed nor faltered. The tug-boy in an old rubber
suit and battered tarpauling hat, had been out also, his coat shining with
the wet. He and old Sue appeared to mind it astonishingly little. The
gutters were running brimming full, and the cobble-stones were wet and
slippery. The street cars were crowded inside and out, the wretched
people on the platforms vainly trying to shield themselves with
umbrellas held sideways. It was late in the afternoon when I first
observed that there was trouble at the corner. I thought at first that there
was an accident, but soon found that it was due to a pair of new, balking
horses in a car. Old Sue was hitched to the tug, and was doing her part
faithfully; finally she threw her weight on the collar, and by sheer
strength bodily dragged the car, horses and all, around the curve and on
up the straight track, until the horses, finding themselves moving, went
off with a rush, I saw the tug-boy shake his head with pride, and heard
him give a whoop of triumph. The next car went up all right; but the next
had a new team, and the same thing occurred. The streets were like glass;
the new horses got to slipping and balking, and old Sue had to drag them
up as she did before. From this time it went from bad to worse: the rain
changed to sleet, and the curve at Ninth became a stalling-place for every
car. Finally, just at dark, there was a block there, and the cars piled up. I
intended to have taken a car on my way home, but finding it stalled, I
stepped into my friend Polk Miller’s drug-store, just on the corner, to get
a cigar and to keep warm. I could see through the blurred glass of the
door the commotion going on just outside, and could hear the shouts of
the driver and of the tug-boy mingled with the clatter of horses’ feet as
they reared and jumped, and the cracks of the tug-boy’s whip as he called
to Sue, “Git up, Sue, git up, Sue.” Presently, I heard a shout, and then the
tones changed, and things got quiet.
A minute afterwards the door slowly opened, and the tug-boy came
in limping, his old hat pushed back on his head, and one leg of his wet
trousers rolled up to his knee, showing about four inches of black, ashy
skin, which he leaned over and rubbed as he walked. His wet face wore a
scowl, half pain, half anger. “Mist’ Miller, kin I use you’ telephone?” he
asked, surlily. (The company had the privilege of using it by courtesy.)
He limped up, and still rubbing his leg with one hand, took the
’phone off the hook with the other and put it to his ear.
“Hello! Suh? Yas, suh; fo’ hund’ an’ sebent’-three on three sixt’-fo’.
Street-car stables on three sixt’-fo’. Hello! Hello! Hello! Dat you,
streetcar stables? Hello! Yas. Who dat? Oh! Dat you, Mist’ Mellerdin?
Yas, suh; yes, suh; Jim; Jim; dis Jim. G-i-m, Jim. Yas, suh; whar drive
Ole Sue, in Mist’ Polk Miller’ drug-sto’—. Yas, suh. ‘Matter’?—Ole Sue
—she done tu’n fool; done gone ’stracted. I can’t do nuttin’ ’tall wid her.