What is it with synchronicity? This topic of method is like buying a new car and, next thing you know, there’s suddenly one just like it on every corner.

I’m winding down, leafing through a book of one of my favorite writers, and this leaps off the page:

Method is the soul of business.
–OLD SAYING.

I AM a business man. I am a methodical man. Method is the thing, after all. But there are no people I more heartily despise than your eccentric fools who prate about method without understanding it; attending strictly to its letter, and violating its spirit. These fellows are always doing the most out-of-the-way things in what they call an orderly manner. Now here, I conceive, is a positive paradox. True method appertains to the ordinary and the obvious alone, and cannot be applied to the outre. What definite idea can a body attach to such expressions as “methodical Jack o’ Dandy,” or “a systematical Will o’ the Wisp”?

That’s Edgar Allen Poe from “The Business Man“ — published in 1850. Not “The Gold-Bug“ or “The Cask of Amontillado“, but still a great story (and not nearly as long as the others.)

And who can argue with the line, “But there are no people I more heartily despise than your eccentric fools who prate about method without understanding it; attending strictly to its letter, and violating its spirit.”

Amen, and good night.