> I've never pursued this, but one of the more
> fascinating things about the Horatio Alger stories is
> not, I've been told, that he works hard and makes it,
> but that he learns how to follow the normative rules
> of being a gentleman and, thereby, impresses the
> boss. the example I'd read about was that, in one
> story, Horatio "makes it" after being noticed by the
> boss because he spread his jacket over puddle so the
> boss's daughter could traverse it unsullied by the
> muck of the factory floor.
In Tom Stoppard's _Shakespeare_in_Love_, (a makeover of _Romeo_and_Juliet_), queen Elizabeth, leaving the theatre with her entourage, arrives at puddle and stops there, for an awkward moment, until finally Sir Raleigh digs and puts his coat in the puddle. Elizabeth, angry: "Too late!", jumps over the puddle and mounts her coach.
cheers AN