Turning down opportunities (sometimes even good ones) helps me stick to my word. I guess I, too, have a “great antipathy to half and half men.” This is true in the business world as well as in personal matters. Today, I was reading a letter, Mr. Frankish wrote to Mr. Stamm with regard to a banker. The following is an excerpt of the letter.
“I do not know how you felt about Dr. Olmsted but I was much disappointed in him. A man who will blow hot and cold as he did within 48 hours is not, in my opinion, the man of stability that we require in a banker. I felt that you must think me a fool speaking to you as I did about him being all ready to go into the business and then to find him so cool and indifferent about it. But I only repeated his own words as given me here on Friday and he then told me that he could put in at once $25,000 or $30,000. While today he was intimated that he had very little of course you may know more of him through his friends and he may be all right, but I must say that my present impressions are that we shall be better without him. I have a great antipathy to half and half men.”