Letters from a self-made merchant to his son

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

" Young fellows come to me
looking for jobs and telling me
•what a mean house they have
been working for.""

Letters from

A Self-Made Merchant

To His Son

Being the Letters written by John Graham,

Head of the House of Graham & Company,

Pork-Packers in Chicago, familiarly known

on 'Change as " Old Gorgon Graham," to

his Son, Pierrepont, facetiously known

to his intimates as " Piggy."

Boston: Small, Maynard & Company: 1905

Copyright, 1901-1902, by
THE CURTIS PUBLISHING CO.

Copyright, 1901-1902, by
GEORGE HORACE LO RIMER

Copyright, 1902, by

SMALL, MAYNARD 6- COMPANY
(Incorporated)

Entered at Stationers' Hall

Published October, 1902

Regular American Edition 150,000 Copies

Foreign Editions and Translations .... fOj,ooo "
Limited Popular Edition (February, 1905) . 30,000 "

Press of

Geo. H. Ellis Co.,
Boston, U.S. A

College
Library

33^3

I <rq • /

i o / - -

TO
CYRUS CURTIS

A SELF-MADE MAN

1

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. From John Graham, head of the house of Gra
ham & Co., at the Union Stock Yards in Chicago,
to his son, Pierrepont, at Harvard University, Cam
bridge, Mass. — Mr. Pierrepont has just become a
member, in good and regular standing, of the Fresh
man class. ....... 1

II. From John Graham, in Chicago, to his son,
Pierrepont, at Harvard University.— Mr. Pierre-
pont's expense account has just passed under hi8
father's eye, and has furnished him with a text for
some plain particularities. .... 15

in. From John Graham, in Chicago, to his son,
Pierrepont, at Harvard University. — Mr. Pierrepont
finds Cambridge to his liking, and has suggested that
he take a post-graduate course to Jill up some gaps
which he has found in his education. . . 29

IV. From John Graham, in Chicago, to his son,
Pierrepont Graham, at the Waldorf-Astoria, in
New York. — Mr. Pierrepont has suggested the grand
tour as a proper finish to his education. . . 45

V. From John Graham, in Chicago, to his son,
Pierrepont Graham, in the Maine woods. — Mr.
Pierrepont has written to his father withdrawing his
suggestion. . . , . . .57

VI. From John Graham, en route to Texas, to
Pierrepont Graham, care of Graham & Co., Chi
cago. — Mr. Pierrepont has, entirely without inten
tion, caused a little confusion in the mails, and it has
come to his father's notice in the course of business. 69

iv

CONTENTS

PAGB

VII. From John Graham, at the Omaha Branch of
Graham & Co., to Pierrepont Graham, at Chicago.
— Mr. Pierrepont hasn't found the methods of the
worthy Milligan altogether to his liking, and he has
commented rather freely on them. . . .81

VIII. From John Graham, at Hot Springs, Arkan
sas, to his son, Pierrepont, at Chicago. — Mr. Pierre
pont has just been promoted from the mailing to the
billing desk, and, in consequence, his father is feel
ing rather " mellow " toward him. . . .93

IX. From John Graham, at Hot Springs, Arkansas,
to his son, Pierrepont, at Chicago. — Mr. Pierrepont
has been investing more heavily in roses than his
father thinks his means warrant, and he tries to turn

his thoughts to staple groceries. . . . .113

X. From John Graham, in Chicago, to his son,
Pierrepont, at the Commercial House, Jefferson-
ville, Indiana. — Mr. Pierrepont has been promoted
to the position of travelling salesman for the house,

and has started out on the road. . . .127

XI. From John Graham, in Chicago, to his son,
Pierrepont, at the Planters' Palace Hotel, Big Gap,
Kentucky. — Mr. Pierreponi's orders are small and
his expenses are large, so his father feels pessimistic
over his prospects. ...... 141

XII. From John Graham, in Chicago, to his son,
Pierrepont, at Little Delmonico's, Prairie Centre,
Indiana. — Mr. Pierrepont has annoyed his father by
accepting his criticisms in a spirit of gentle, but
most reprehensible, resignation. . . . .157

XIII. From John Graham, in Chicago, to his son,
Pierrepont, care of The Hoosier Grocery Co., Ind
ianapolis, Indiana.— Mr. Pierrepont' s orders have
been looking up, so the old man gives him a pat on the
back — but not too hard a one. 177

CONTENTS

PAGE

XIV. From John Graham, in Chicago, to his son,
Pierrepont, at the Travelers' Rest, New Albany,
Indiana. — Mr. Pierrepont has taken a little flyer in
short ribs on 'Change, and has accidentally come

into the line of his father's vision. . . .191

XV. From John Graham, in Chicago, to his son,
Pierrepont, at the Scrub Oaks, Spring Lake, Michi
gan. — Mr. Pierrepont has been promoted again, and
the old man sends him a little advice with his appoint
ment. ........ 209

XVI. From John Graham, at the Schweitzerkasen-
hof , Karlsbad, Austria, to his son, Pierrepont, at
Chicago. — Mr. Pierrepont has shown mild symptoms
of an attack of society fever, and his father is ad
ministering some simple remedies. . . . 223

XVII. From John Graham, at the London house
of Graham & Co., to his son, Pierrepont, at Chicago.

— Mr. Pierrepont has written his father that he is
getting along famously in his new place. . . 243

XVIII. From John Graham, at the London house
of Graham & Co., to his son, Pierrepont, at Chicago.
— Mr. Pierrepont is worried over rumors that the old
man is a bear on lard and that the longs are about to
make him climb a tree. ... . . 259

XIX. From John Graham, at the New York house
of Graham & Co., to his son, Pierrepont, at Chicago.

— The old man, on the voyage home, has met a girl
who interests him and who in turn seems to be inter
ested in Mr. Pierrepont. . > . . . 275

XX. From John Graham, at the Boston house of
Graham & Co., to his son, Pierrepont, at Chicago. —
Mr. Pierrepont has told the old man "what's what "

and received a limited blessing. , . .301

VI

No.l

FROM John Graham,
at the Union Stock
Yards in Chicago,
to his son, Pierrepont, at
Harvard University, Cam
bridge, Mass. Mr. Pierre
pont has just been settled
by his mother as a mem
ber, in good and regular
standing, of the Freshman
claSs.

LETTERS/™^ a SELF-MADE
MERCHANT to his SON

i

CHICAGO, October 1, 189 —
Dear Pierrepont: Your Ma got back safe
this morning and she wants ine to be sure to
tell you not to over-study, and I want to
tell you to be sure not to under-study. What
we're really sending you to Harvard for is
to get a little of the education that's so good
and plenty there. When it's passed around
you don't want to be bashful, but reach right
out and take a big helping every time, for I
want you to get your share. You'll find
that education's about the only thing lying
around loose in this world, and that it's
about the only thing a fellow can have as
much of as he's willing to haul away.
Everything else is screwed down tight and
the screw-driver lost.

I didn't have your advantages when I was
a boy, and you can't have mine. Some men
I

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

learn the value of money by not having any
and starting out to pry a few dollars loose
from the odd millions that are lying
around; and some learn it by having fifty
thousand or so left to them and starting out
to spend it as if it were fifty thousand a
year. Some men learn the value of truth by
having to do business with liars; and some
by going to Sunday School. Some men
learn the cussedness of whiskey by having a
drunken father; and some by having a good
mother. Some men get an education from
other men and newspapers and public li
braries; and some get it from professors and
parchments — it doesn't make any special
difference how you get a half -nelson on the
right thing, just so you get it and freeze on
to it. The package doesn't count after the
eye's been attracted by it, and in the end it
finds its way to the ash heap. It's the qual
ity of the goods inside which tells, when
they once get into the kitchen and up ix?
the cook.

LETTERS TO HIS SON

You can cure a ham in dry salt and you
can cure it in swesjt pickle, and when you're
through you've got pretty good eating either
way, provided you started in with a sound
ham. If you didn't, it doesn't make any
special difference how you cured it — the
ham-tryer's going to strike the sour spot
around the bone. And it doesn't make any
difference how much sugar and fancy pickle
you soak into a fellow, he's no good unless
he's sound and sweet at the core.

The first thing that any education ought
to give a man is character, and the second
thing is education. That is where I'm a
little skittish about this college business.
I'm not starting in to preach to you, because
I know a young fellow with the right sort
of stuff in him preaches to himself harder
than any one else can, and that he's mighty
often switched off the right path by having
it pointed out to him in the wrong way.

I remember when I was a boy, and I
wasn't a very bad boy, as boys go, old Doc

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

Hoover got a notion in his head that I ought
to join the church, and he scared me out of it
for five years by asking me right out loud in
Sunday School if I didn't want to be saved,
and then laying for me after the service
and praying with ma Of course I wanted
to be saved, but I didn't want to be saved
quite so publicly.

When a boy's had a good mother he's got
a good conscience, and when he's got a good
conscience he don't need to have right and
wrong labeled for him. Now that your Ma's
left and the apron strings are cut, you're
naturally running up against a new sensa
tion every minute, but if you'll simply use
a little conscience as a tryer, and probe into
a thing which looks sweet and sound on
the skin, to see if you can't fetch up a sour
smell from around the bone, you'll be all
right.

I'm anxious that you should be a good
scholar, but I'm more anxious that you
should be a good clean man. And if you

LETTERS TO HIS SON

graduate with a sound conscience, I shan't
care so much if there are a few holes in
your Latin. There are two parts of a col
lege education — the part that you get in the
schoolroom from the professors, and the
part that you get outside of it from the
boys. That's the really important part.
For the first can only make you a scholar,
while the second can make you a man.

Education's a good deal like eating — a fel
low can't always tell which particular thing
did him good, but he can usually tell which
one did him harm. After a square meal of
roast beef and vegetables, and mince pie
and watermelon, you can't say just which
ingredient is going into muscle, but you
don't have to be very bright to figure out
which one started the demand for pain
killer in your insides, or to guess, next
morning, which one made you believe in a
personal devil the night before. And so,
while a fellow can't figure out to an ounce
whether it's Latin or algebra or history or

5

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

what among the solids that is building him
up in this place or that, he can go right
along feeding them in and betting that
they're not the things that turn his tongue
fuzzy. It's down among the sweets, among
his amusements and recreations, that he's
going to find his stomach-ache, and it's
there that he wants to go slow and to pick
and choose.

It's not the first half, but the second half
of a college education which merchants
mean when they ask if a college education
pays. It's the Willie and the Bertie boys;
the chocolate eclair and tutti-frutti boys;
the la-de-dah and the baa-baa-billy-goat
boys; the high cock-a-lo-rum and the cock-
a-doodle-do boys; the Bah Jove!, hair-
parted - in - the - middle, cigaroot - smoking,
Champagne-Charlie, up-all-night-and-in-all-
day boys that make 'em doubt the cash
value of the college output, and overlook the
roast-beef and blood-gravy boys, the shirt
sleeves and high-water-pants boys, who take
6

LETTERS TO HIS SON

their college education and make some fel
low's business hum with it.

Does a College education pay? Does it
pay to feed in pork trimmings at five cents
a pound at the hopper and draw out nice,
cunning, little " country " sausages at
twenty cents a pound at the other end?
Does it pay to take a steer that's been run
ning loose on the range and living on cactus
and petrified wood till he's just a bunch of
barb-wire and sole-leather, and feed him
corn till he's just a solid hunk of porter
house steak and oleo oil?

You bet it pays. Anything that trains a
boy to think and to think quick pays; any
thing that teaches a boy to get the answer
before the other fellow gets through biting
the pencil, pays.

College doesn't make fools; it develops
them. It doesn't make bright men; it de
velops them. A fool will turn out a fool,
whether he goes to college or not, though
he'll probably turn out a different sort of a

7

A SELF-MADE MERCHANTS

fool. And a good, strong boy will turn out
a bright, strong man whether he's worn
smooth in the grab-what-you-want-and-eat-
standing - with - one - eye - skinned - for-the-
dog school of the streets and stores, or
polished up and slicked down in the give-
your - order - to - the - waiter - and - get - a-
sixteen - course - dinner school of the pro
fessors. But while the lack of a college edu
cation can't keep No. 1 down, having it
boosts No. 2 up.

It's simply the difference between jump
in, rough-and-tumble, kick-with-the-heels-
and-butt-with-the-head nigger fighting, and
this grin-and-look-pleasant, dodge-and-save-
your - wind - till - you - see - a - chance - to-
land-on-the-solar-plexus style of the trained
athlete. Both styles win fights, but the fel
low with a little science is the better man,
providing he's kept his muscle hard. If he
hasn't, he's in a bad way, for his fancy spar
ring is just going to aggravate the other
fellow so thai he'll eat him up.
8

LETTERS TO HIS SON

Of course, some men are like pigs, the
more you educate them, the more amusing
little cusses they become, and the funnier
capers they cut when they show off their
tricks. Naturally, the place to send a boy
of that breed is to the circus, not to college.

Speaking of educated pigs, naturally
calls to mind the case of old man Whitaker
and his son, Stanley. I used to know the
old man mighty well ten years ago. He
was one of those men whom business nar
rows, instead of broadens. Didn't get any
special fun out of his work, but kept right
along at it because he didn't know anything
else. Told me he'd had to root for a living
all his life and that he proposed to have
Stan's brought to him in a pail. Sent him
to private schools and dancing schools and
colleges and universities, and then shipped
him to Oxford to soak in a little " atmos
phere," as hn put it. I never could quite lay
hold of that atmosphere dodge by the tail,
but so far as I could make out, the idea was

9

A SELF-MADE MERCHANTS

that there was something in the air of the
Oxford ham-house that gave a fellow an
extra fancy smoke.

Well, about the time Stan was through,
the undertaker called by for the old man,
and when his assets were boiled down and
the water drawn off, there wasn't enough
left to furnish Stan with a really nourish
ing meal. I had a talk with Stan about
what he was going to do, but some ways he
didn't strike me as having the making of a
good private of industry, let alone a cap
tain, so I started in to get him a job that
would suit his talents. Got him in a bank,
but while he knew more about the history
of banking than the president, and more
about political economy than the board of
directors, he couldn't learn the difference
between a fiver that the Government turned
out and one that was run off on a hand
press in a Halsted Street basement. Got
him a job on a paper, but while he knew six
different languages and all the facts about

10

LETTERS TO HIS SON

the Arctic regions, and the history of danc
ing from the days of Old Adam down to
those of Old Nick, he couldn't write up a
satisfactory account of the Ice-Men's Ball.
Could prove that two and two made four
by trigonometry and geometry, but couldn't
learn to keep books; was thick as thieves
with all the high-toned poets, but couldn't
write a good, snappy, merchantable street
car ad.; knew a thousand diseases that
would take a man off before he could blink,
but couldn't sell a thousand-dollar tontine
policy; knew the lives of our Presidents as
well as if he'd been raised with them, but
couldn't place a set of the Library of the
Fathers of the Republic, though they were
offered on little easy payments that made
them come as easy as borrowing them from
a friend. Finally I hit on what seemed to
be just the right thing. I figured out that
any fellow who had such a heavy stock of
information on hand, ought to be able to job
it out to good advantage, and so I got him
II

A MERCHANT'S LETTERS

a place teaching. But it seemed that he'd
learned so much about the best way of
teaching boys, that he told his principal
right on the jump that he was doing it all
wrong, and that made him sore; and he
knew so much about the dead languages,
which was what he was hired to teach, that
he forgot he was handling live boys, and as
he couldn't tell it all to them in the regular
time, he kept them after hours, and that
made them sore and put Stan out of a job
again. The last I heard of him he was writ
ing articles on Why Young Men Fail, and
making a success of it, because failing was
the one subject on which he was practical.
I simply mention Stan in passing as an
example of the fact that it isn't so much
knowing a whole lot, as knowing a little
and how to use it that counts.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GEAHAM.

12

No, 2

FROM John Graham,
at the Union Stock
Yards in Chicago,
to his son, Pierrepont, at
Harvard University.
Mr. Pierrepont's expense
account has just passed
under his father's eye,
and has furnished him
with a text for some plain
particularities.

II

CHICAGO, May 4, 189 —
Dear Pierrepont: The cashier has just
handed me your expense account for the
month, and it fairly makes a fellow hump-
shouldered to look it over. When I told
you that I wished you to get a liberal edu
cation, I didn't mean that I wanted to buy
Cambridge. Of course the bills won't break
me, but they will break you unless you are
very, very careful.

I have noticed for the last two years that
your accounts have been growing heavier
every month, but I haven't seen any signs
of your taking honors to justify the in
creased operating expenses ; and that is bad
business — a good deal like feeding his
weight in corn to a scalawag steer that
won't fat up.

I haven't said anything about this before,
as I trusted a good deal to your native com
mon-sense to keep you from making a fool

15

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

of yourself in the way that some of these
young fellows who haven't had to work for
it do. But because I have sat tight, I
don't want you to get it into your head that
the old man's rich, and that he can stand
it, because he won't stand it after you leave
college. The sooner you adjust your spend
ing to what your earning capacity will be,
the easier they will find it to live together.
The only sure way that a man can get
rich quick is to have it given to him or to
inherit it. You are not going to get rich
that way — at least, not until after you have
proved your ability to hold a pretty impor
tant position with the firm ; and, of course,
there is just one place from which a man
can start for that position with Graham &
<Co. It doesn't make any difference whether
!he is the son of the old man or of the cellar
%oss — that place is the bottom. And the
bottom in the office end of this business is a
seat at the mailing-desk, with eight dollars
every Saturdav nigrht.
ib

LETTERS TO HIS SON

I can't hand out any ready-made success
to you. It would do you no good, and it
would do the house harm. There is plenty
of room at the top here, but there is no
elevator in the building. Starting, as you
do, with a good education, you should
be able to climb quicker than the fellow
who hasn't got it; but there's going to be
a time when you begin at the factory when
you won't be able to lick stamps so fast as
the other boys at the desk. Yet the man
who hasn't licked stamps isn't fit to write
letters. Naturally, that is the time when
knowing whether the pie comes before the
ice-cream, and how to run an automobile
isn't going to be of any real use to you.

I simply mention these things because I
am afraid your ideas as to the basis on
which you are coming with the house have
swelled up a little in the East I can give
you a start, but after that you will have to
dynamite your way to the front by yourself.
It is all with the man. If you gave some

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

fellows a talent wrapped in a napkin to
start with in business, they would swap the
talent for a gold brick and lose the napkin ;
and there are others that you could start
out with just a napkin, who would set up
with it in the dry-goods business in a small
way, and then coax the other fellow's talent
into it

I have pride enough to believe that you
have the right sort of stuff in you, but I
want to see some of it come out. You will
never make a good merchant of yourself by
reversing the order in which the Lord de
creed that we should proceed — learning the
spending before the earning end of business.
Pay day is always a month off for the spend
thrift, and he is never able to realize more
than sixty cents on any dollar that comes
to him. But a dollar is worth one hundred
and six cents to a good business man, and
he never spends the dollar. It's the man
who keeps saving up and expenses down
that buys an interest in the concern. That
18

LETTERS TO HIS SON

is where you are going to find yourself weak
if your expense accounts don't lie ; and they
generally don't lie in that particular way,
though Baron Munchausen was the first
traveling man, and my drummers' bills still
show his influence.

I know that when a lot of young men
get off by themselves, some of them think
that recklessness with money brands them
as good fellows, and that carefulness is
meanness. That is the one end of a college
education which is pure cussedness; and
that is the one thing which makes nine
business men out of ten hesitate to send
their boys off to school. But on the other
Land, that is the spot where a young man
has the chance to show that he is not a
lightweight. I know that a good many
people say I am a pretty close proposi
tion; that I make every hog which goes
through my packing-house give up more
lard than the Lord gave him gross weight;
that I have improved on Nature to the ex-

19

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

tent of getting four hams out of an animal
which began life with two; but you have
lived with me long enough to know that
my hand is usually in my pocket at the right
time.

Now I want to say right here that the
meanest man alive is the one who is gener
ous with money that he has not had to
sweat for, and that the boy who is a good
fellow at some one else's expense would not
work up into first-class fertilizer. That
same ambition to be known as a good fellow
has crowded my office with second-rate
clerks, and they always will be second-rate
clerks. If you have it, hold it down until
you have worked for a year. Then, if your
ambition runs to hunching up all week over
a desk, to earn eight dollars to blow on a
few rounds of drinks for the boys on Satur
day night, there is no objection to your
gratifying it; for I will know that the Lord
didn't intend you to be your own boss.

You know how I began — I was started off
20

" / have seen hundreds of boys
go to Europe who didn't bring
back a great deal except a few
trunks of badly fitting clothes"

LETTERS TO HIS SON

with a kick, but that proved a kick up, and
in the end every one since has lifted me a
little bit higher. I got two dollars a week,
and slept under the counter, and you can
bet I knew just how many pennies there
were in each of those dollars, and how hard
the floor was. That is what you have got to
learn.

I remember when I was on the Lakes, our
schooner was passing out through the draw
at Buffalo when I saw little Bill Biggs, the
butcher, standing up above me on the end of
the bridge with a big roast of beef in his
basket. They were a little short in the gal
ley on that trip, so I called up to Bill and he
threw the roast down to me. I asked him
how much, and he yelled back, " about a
dollar." That was mighty good beef, and
when we struck Buffalo again on the return
trip, I thought I would like a little more of
it. So I went up to Bill's shop and asked
him for a piece of the same. But this time
he gave me a little roast, not near so big as

21

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

the other, and it was pretty tough and
stringy. But when I asked him how much,
he answered " about a dollar." He simply
didn't have any sense of values, and that's
the business man's sixth sense. Bill has al
ways been a big, healthy, hard-working
man, but to-day he is very, very poor.

The Bills ain't all in the butcher business.
I've got some of them right now in my office,
but they will never climb over the railing
that separates the clerks from the execu
tives. Yet if they would put in half the
time thinking for the house that they give
up to hatching out reasons why they ought
to be allowed to overdraw their salary ac
counts, I couldn't keep them out of our pri
vate offices with a pole-ax, and I wouldn't
want to ; for they could double their salaries
and my profits in a year. But I always lay
it down as a safe proposition that the fellow
who has to break open the baby's bank to
ward the last of the week for car-fare isn't
going to be any Russell Sage when it comes
22

LETTERS TO HIS SON

to trading with the old man's money. He'd
punch my bank account as full of holes as a
carload of wild Texans would a fool stock
man that they'd got in a corner.

Now I know you'll say that I don't un
derstand how it is; that you've got to do as
the other fellows do; and that things have
changed since I was a boy. There's nothing
in it. Adam invented all the different ways
in which a young man can make a fool of
himself, and the college yell at the end of
them is just a frill that doesn't change es
sentials. The boy who does anything just
because the other fellows do it is apt to
scratch a poor man's back all his life. He's
the chap that's buying wheat at ninety-
seven cents the day before the market
breaks. They call him " the country " in
the market reports, but the city's full of
him. It's the fellow who has the spunk to
think and act for himself, and sells short
when prices hit the high C and the house is
standing on its hind legs yelling for more,

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

that sits in the directors' meetings when he
gets on toward forty.

We've got an old steer out at the packing
house that stands around at the foot of the
runway leading up to the killing pens, look
ing for all the world like one of the village
fathers sitting on the cracker box before the
grocery — sort of sad-eyed, dreamy old cuss
— always has two or three straws from his
cud sticking out of the corner of his mouth.
You never saw a steer that looked as if he
took less interest in things. But by and by
the boys drive a bunch of steers toward him,
or cows maybe, if we're canning, and then
you'll see Old Abe move off up that runway,
sort of beckoning the bunch after him with
that wicked old stump of a tail of his, as if
there was something mighty interesting to
steers at the top, and something that every
Texan and Colorado, raw from the prairies,
ought to have a look at to put a metropoli
tan finish on him. Those steers just natur
ally follow along on up that runway and

24

LETTERS TO HIS SON

into the killing pens. But just as they get
to the top, Old Abe, someways, gets lost in
the crowd, and he isn't among those present
when the gates are closed and the real
trouble begins for his new friends.

I never saw a dozen boys together that
there wasn't an Old Abe among them. If
you find your crowd following him, keep
away from it. There are times when it's
safest to be lonesome. Use a little common-
sense, caution and conscience. You can
stock a store with those three commodities,
when you get enough of them. But you've
got to begin getting them young. They
ain't catching after you toughen up a
bit.

You needn't write me if you feel your
self getting them. The symptoms will show
in your expense account, Good-by; life's
too short to write letters and New York's
calling me on the wire.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

25

No, 3

FROM John Graham,
at the Union Stock
Yards in Chicago,
to his son, Pierrepont, at
Harvard University.
Mr. Pierrepont finds Cam
bridge to his liking, and
has suggested that he take
a post-graduate course to
fill up some gaps which he
has found in his education.

Ill

June 1, 189 —

Dear Pierrepont: No, I can't say that I
think anything of your post-graduate course
idea. You're not going to be a poet or a
professor, but a packer, and the place to
take a post-graduate course for that calling
is in the packing-house. Some men learn
all they know from books; others from life;
both kinds are narrow. The first are all
theory ; the second are all practice. It's the
fellow who knows enough about practice to
test his theories for blow-holes that gives
the world a shove ahead, and finds a fair
margin of profit in shoving it.

There's a chance for everything you have
learned, from Latin to poetry, in the pack
ing business, though we don't use much
poetry here except in our street-car ads.,
and about the only time our products are
given Latin names is when the State Board
of Health condemns them. So I think
29

A SELF-MADE MERCHANTS

you'll find it safe to go short a little on the
frills of education; if you want them bad
enough you'll find a way to pick them up
later, after business hours.

The main thing is to get a start along
right lines, and that is what I sent you to
college for. I didn't expect you to carry
off all the education in sight — I knew you'd
leave a little for the next fellow. But I
wanted you to form good mental habits,
just as I want you to have clean, straight
physical ones. Because I was run through
a threshing machine when I was a boy, and
didn't begin to get the straw out of my hair
till I was past thirty, I haven't any sym
pathy with a lot of these old fellows who go
around bragging of their ignorance and
saying that boys don't need to know any
thing except addition and the " best policy "
brand of honesty.

We started in a mighty different world,
and we were all ignorant together. The
Lord let us in on the ground floor, gave us

30

LETTERS TO HIS SON

corner lots, and then started in to improve
the adjacent property. We didn't have to
know fractions to figure out our profits.
Now a merchant needs astronomy to see
them, and when he locates them they are
out somewhere near the fifth decimal place.
There are sixteen ounces to the pound still,
but two of them are wrapping paper in a
good many stores. And there're just as
many chances for a fellow as ever, but
they're a little gun shy, and you can't catch
them by any such coarse method as putting
salt on their tails.

Thirty years ago, you could take an old
muzzle-loader and knock over plenty of
ducks in the city limits, and Chicago wasn't
Cook County then, either. You can get
them still, but you've got to go to Kanka-
kee and take a hammerless along. And
when I started in the packing business it
was all straight sailing — no frills — just
turning hogs into hog meat — dry salt for the
niggers down South and sugar-cured for

31

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

the white folks up North. Everything else
was sausage, or thrown away. But when
we get through with a hog nowadays, he's
scattered through a hundred different cans
and packages, and he's all accounted for.
What we used to throw away is our profit.
It takes doctors, lawyers, engineers, poets,
and I don't know what, to run the busi
ness, and I reckon that improvements which
call for parsons will be creeping in next.
Naturally, a young man who expects to hold
his own when he is thrown in with a lot
of men like these must be as clean and
sharp as a hound's tooth, or some other
fellow's simply going to eat him up.

The first college man I ever hired was old
John Durham's son, Jim. That was a good
many years ago when the house was a much
smaller affair. Jim's father had a lot of
money till he started out to buck the uni
verse and corner wheat. And the boy took
all the fancy courses and trimmings at col
lege. The old man was mighty proud of

32

LETTERS TO HIS SON

Jim. Wanted him to be a literary fellow.
But old Durham found out what every one
learns who gets his ambitions mixed up
with number two red — that there's a heap
of it lying around loose in the country. The
bears did quick work and kept the cash
wheat coming in so lively that one settling
day half a dozen of us had to get under
the market to keep it from going to ever
lasting smash.

That day made young Jim a candidate
for a job. It didn't take him long to de
cide that the Lord would attend to keep
ing up the visible supply of poetry, and that
he had better turn his attention to the
stocks of mess pork. Next morning he was
laying for me with a letter of introduction
when I got to the office, and when he found
that I wouldn't have a private secretary at
any price, he applied for every other posi
tion on the premises right down to office
boy. I told him I was sorry, but I couldn't
do anything for him then; that we were

33

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

letting men go, but I'd keep him in mind,
and so on. The fact was that I didn't think
a fellow with Jim's training would be much
good, anyhow. But Jim hung on — said he'd
taken a fancy to the house, and wanted to
work for it Used to call by about twice
a week to find out if anything had turned
up.

Finally, after about a month of this, he
wore me down so that I stopped him one
day as he was passing me on the street. I
thought I'd find out if he really was so
red-hot to work as he pretended to be; be
sides, I felt that perhaps I hadn't treated
the boy just right, as I had delivered quite
a jag of that wheat to his father myself.

"Hello, Jim," I called; "do you still
want that job?"

" Yes, sir," he answered, quick as light
ning.

" Well, I tell you how it is, Jim," I said,
looking up at him — he was one of those
husky, lazy-moving six-footers — " I don't

34

BETTERS TO HIS SON

see any chance in the office, but I under
stand they can use another good, strong
man in one of the loading gangs."

I thought that would settle Jim and let
me out, for it's no joke lugging beef, or
rolling barrels and tierces a hundred yards
or so to the cars. But Jim came right back
at me with, " Done. Who'll I report to? "

That sporty way of answering, as if he
was closing a bet, made me surer than ever
that he was not cut out for a butcher. But
I told him, and off he started hot-foot to
find the foreman. I sent word by another
route to see that he got plenty to do.

I forgot all about Jim until about three
months later, when his name was handed
up to me for a new place and a raise in
pay. It seemed that he had sort of abolished
his job. After he had been rolling barrels
a while, and the sport had ground down one
of his shoulders a couple of inches lower
than the other, he got to scheming around
for a way to make the work easier, and he

35

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

hit on an idea for a sort of overhead rail
road system, by which the barrels conld be
swung out of the storerooms and run right
along into the cars, and two or three men
do the work of a gang. It was just as I
thought. Jim was lazy, but he had put the
house in the way of saving so much money
that I couldn't fire him. So I raised his
salary, and made him an assistant time
keeper and checker. Jim kept at this for
three or four months, until his feet began
to hurt him, I guess, and then he was out
of a job again. It seems he had heard
something of a new machine for registering
the men, that did away with most of the
timekeepers except the fellows who watched
the machines, and he kept after the Superin
tendent until he got him to put them in.
Of course he claimed a raise again for ef
fecting such a saving, and we just had to
allow it.

I was beginning to take an interest in
Jim, so I brought him up into th* office and

36

LETTERS TO HIS SON

set him to copying circular letters. We
used to send out a raft of them to the trade.
That was just before the general adoption
of typewriters, when they were still in the
experimental stage. But Jim hadn't been
in the office plugging away at the letters
for a month before he had the writer's
cramp, and began nosing around again.
The first thing I knew he was sicking the
agents for the new typewriting machine on
to me, and he kept them pounding away
until they had made me give them a trial.
Then it was all up with Mister Jim's job
again. I raised his salary without his ask
ing for it this time, and put him out on the
road to introduce a new product that we
were making — beef extract.

Jim made two trips without selling
enough to keep them working overtime at
the factory, and then he came into my
office with a long story about how we were
doing it all wrong. Said we ought to go
for the consumer by advertising, and make

37

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

the trade came to us, instead of chasing it
up.

That was so like Jim that I just laughed
at first; besides, that sort of advertising was
a pretty new thing then, and I was one of
the old-timers who didn't take any stock
in it. But Jim just kept plugging away at
me between trips, until finally I took him
off the road and told him to go ahead and
try it in a small way.

Jim pretty nearly scared me to death that
first year. At last he had got into some
thing that he took an interest in — spending
money — and he just fairly wallowed in it.
Used to lay awake nights, thinking up new
ways of getting rid of the old man's profits.
And he found them. Seemed as if I couldn't
get away from Graham's Extract, and
whenever I saw it I gagged, for I knew it
was costing me money that wasn't coming
back; but every time I started to draw in
my horns Jim talked to me, and showed me

38

" I put Jim Durham out on the
road to introduce a new product, ' '

LETTERS TO HIS SON

where there was a fortune waiting for me
just around the corner.

Graham's Extract started out by being
something that you could make beef-tea
out of — that was all. But before Jim had
been fooling with it a month he had got his
girl to think up a hundred different ways
in which it could be used, and had adver
tised them all. It seemed there was nothing
you could cook that didn't need a dash of
it. He kept me between a chill and a sweat
all the time. Sometimes, but not often, I
just had to grin at his foolishness. I re
member one picture he got out showing six
teen cows standing between something that
looked like a letter-press, and telling how
every pound or so of Graham's Extract
contained the juice squeezed from a herd of
steers. If an explorer started for the North
Pole, Jim would send him a case of Extract,
and then advertise that it was the great heat^
maker for cold climates; and if some other

39

A SELF-MADE MERCHANTS

fellow started across Africa he sent him a
case, too, and advertised what a bully drink
it was served up with a little ice.

He broke out in a new place every day,
and every time he broke out it cost the
house money. Finally, I made up my mind
to swallow the loss, and Mister Jim was
just about to lose his job sure enough, when
the orders for Extract began to look up, and
he got a reprieve; then he began to make
expenses, and he got a pardon; and finally
a rush came that left him high and dry in
a permanent place. Jim was all right in
his way, but it was a new way, and I hadn't
been broad-gauged enough to see that it was
a better way.

That was where I caught the connection
between a college education and business.
I've always made it a rule to buy brains,
and I've learned now that the better trained
they are the faster they find reasons for
getting their salaries raised. The fellow
who hasn't had the training may be just as
40

LETTERS TO HIS SON

smart, but he's apt to paw the air when
he's reaching for ideas.

I suppose you're asking why, if I'm so
hot for education, I'm against this post
graduate course. But habits of thought
ain't the only thing a fellow picks up at
college.

I see you've been elected President of
your class. I'm glad the boys aren't down
on you, but while the most popular man
in his class isn't always a failure in busi
ness, being as popular as that takes up a
heap of time. I noticed, too, when you were
home Easter, that you were running to
sporty clothes and cigarettes. There's noth
ing criminal about either, but I don't
hire sporty clerks at all, and the only part
of the premises on which cigarette smoking
is allowed is the fertilizer factory.

I simply mention this in passing. I have
every confidence in your ultimate good
sense, and I guess you'll see the point with
out my elaborating with a meat ax my

41

A MERCHANT'S LETTERS

reasons for thinking that you've had enougk
college for the present.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

No, 4

FROM John Graham,
head of the house
of Graham & Co.,
at the Union Stock Yards
in Chicago, to his son,
Pierrepont Graham, at
the Waldorf-Astoria, in
New York. Mr. Pierre
pont has suggested the
grand tour as a proper
finish to his education.

IV

June 25, 189—

Dear Pierrepont: Your letter of the sev
enth twists around the point a good deal
like a setter pup chasing his tail. But I
gather from it that you want to spend a
couple of months in Europe before coming
on here and getting your nose in the bull
ring. Of course, you are your own boss
now and you ought to be able to judge
better than any one else how much time
you have to waste, but it seems to me, on
general principles, that a young man of
twenty-two, who is physically and mentally
sound, and who hasn't got a dollar and has
never earned one, can't be getting on some
body's pay-roll too quick. And in this
connection it is only fair to tell you that I
have instructed the cashier to discontinue
your allowance after July 15. That gives
you two weeks for a vacation — enough to
make a sick boy well, or a lazy one lazier.

45

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

I hear a good deal about men who won't
take vacations, and who kill themselves by
overwork, but it's usually worry or whiskey.
It's not what a man does during working-
hours, but after them, that breaks down
his health. A fellow and his business should
be bosom friends in the office and sworn
enemies out of it. A clear mind is one that
is swept clean of business at six o'clock
every night and isn't opened up for it again
until after the shutters are taken down
next morning.

Some fellows leave the office at night and
start out to whoop it up with the boys, and
some go home to sit up with their troubles
— they're both in bad company. They're the
men who are always needing vacations, and
never getting any good out of them. What
every man does need once a year is a change
of work — that is, if he has been curved up
over a desk for fifty weeks and subsisting
on birds and burgundy, he ought to take
to fishing for a living and try bacon and

LETTERS TO HIS SON

eggs, with a little spring water, for dinner.
But coming from Harvard to the packing
house will give you change enough this year
to keep you in good trim, even if you didn't
have a fortnight's leeway to run loose.

You will always find it a safe rule to take
a thing just as quick as it is offered —
especially a job. It is never easy to get
one except when you don't want it; but
when you have to get work, and go after
it with a gun, you'll find it as shy as an old
crow that every farmer in the county has
had a shot at.

When I was a young fellow and out of
a place, I always made it a rule to take the
first job that offered, and to use it for bait.
You can catch a minnow with a worm, and
a bass will take your minnow. A good fat
bass will tempt an otter, and then you've
got something worth skinning. Of course,
there's no danger of your not being able to
get a job with the house — in fact, there is
no real way in which you can escape getting

47

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

one ; but I don't like to see you shy off every
time the old man gets close to you with the
halter.

I want you to learn right at the outset
not to play with the spoon before you take
the medicine. Putting off an easy thing
makes it hard, and putting off a hard one
makes it impossible. Procrastination is
the longest word in the language, but there's
only one letter between its ends when they
'occupy their proper places in the alphabet.

Old Dick Stover, for whom I once clerked
in Indiana, was the worst hand at pro
crastinating that I ever saw. Dick was
a powerful hearty eater, and no one ever
loved meal- time better, but he used to keep
turning over in bed mornings for just an
other wink and staving off getting up, until
finally his wife combined breakfast and
dinner on him, and he only got two meals a
day. He was a mighty religious man, too,
but he got to putting off saying his prayers
until after he was in bed, and then he would

48

" Old Dick Stover was the worst band
at procrastinating that I ever saw.'' '

LETTERS TO HIS SON

keep passing them along until his mind was
clear of worldly things, and in the end he
would drop off to sleep without saying them
at all. What between missing the Sunday
morning service and never being seen on
his knees, the first thing Dick knew he was
turned out of the church. He had a pretty
good business when I first went with him,
but he would keep putting off firing his
bad clerks until they had lit out with the
petty cash; and he would keep putting off
raising the salaries of his good ones until
his competitor had hired them away. Fin
ally, he got so that he wouldn't discount his
bills, even when he had the money; and
when they came due he would give notes so
as to keep from paying out his cash a little
longer. Running a business on those lines
is, of course, equivalent to making a will
in favor of the sheriff and committing sui
cide so that he can inherit The last I
heard of Dick he was ninety-three years old
and just about to die. That was ten years

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

ago, and I'll bet he's living yet. I simply
mention Dick in passing as an instance of
how habits rule a man's life.

There is one excuse for every mistake a
man can make, but only one. When a fel
low makes the same mistake twice he's got
to throw up both hands and own up to care
lessness or cussedness. Of course, I knew
that you would make a fool of yourself
pretty often when I sent you to college, and
I haven't been disappointed. But I ex
pected you to narrow down the number of
combinations possible by making a different
sort of a fool of yourself every time. That
is the important thing, unless a fellow has
too lively an imagination, or has none at
all. You are bound to try this European
foolishness sooner or later, but if you will
wait a few years, you will approach it in an
entirely different spirit — and you will come
back with a good deal of respect for the
people who have sense enough to stay at
home.

5°

LETTERS TO HIS SON

I piece out from your letter that you ex
pect a few months on the other side will
sort of put a polish on you. I don't want
to seem pessimistic, but I have seen hun
dreds of boys graduate from college and
go over with the same idea, and they didn't
bring back a great deal except a few trunks
of badly fitting clothes. Seeing the world
is like charity — it covers a multitude of
sins, and, like charity, it ought to begin
at home.

Culture is not a matter of a change of
climate. You'll hear more about Browning
to the square foot in the Mississippi Valley
than you will in England. And there's as
much Art talk on the Lake front as in the
Latin Quarter. It may be a little different,
but it's there.

I went to Europe once myself. I was
pretty raw when I left Chicago, and I was
pretty sore when I got back. Coming and
going I was simply sick. In London, for
the first time in my life, I was taken for an

51

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

easy thing. Every time I went into a store
there was a bull movement. The clerks all
knocked off their regular work and started
in to mark up prices.

They used to tell me that they didn't
have any gold-brick men over there. So
they don't. They deal in pictures — old
masters, they call them. I bought two —
you know the ones — those hanging in the
waiting-room at the stock yards; and when
I got back I found out that they had been
painted by a measly little fellow who went
to Paris to study art, after Bill Harris had
found out that he was no good as a settling
clerk. I keep 'em to remind myself that
there's no fool like an old American fool
when he gets this picture paresis.

The fellow who tried to fit me out with
a coat-of-arms didn't find me so easy. I
picked mine when I first went into business
for myself — a charging steer — and it's reg
istered at Washington. It's my trade-

52

LETTERS TO HIS SON

mark, of course, and that's the only coat-of-
arms an American merchant has any busi
ness with. It's penetrated to every quarter
of the globe in the last twenty years, and
every soldier in the world has carried it —
in his knapsack.

I take just as much pride in it as the fel
low who inherits his and can't find any
place to put it, except on his carriage door
and his letter-head — and it's a heap more
profitable. It's got so now that every job
ber in the trade knows that it stands for
good quality, and that's all any English
man's coat-of-arms can stand for. Of
course, an American's can't stand for any
thing much — generally it's the burned-in-the
skin brand of a snob.

After the way some of the descendants of
the old New York Dutchmen with the hoe
and the English general storekeepers have
turned out, I sometimes feel a little uneasy
about what my great-grandchildren may

53

A MERCHANT'S LETTERS

do, but we'll just stick to the trade-mark
and try to live up to it while the old man's
in the saddle.

I simply mention these things in a general
way. I have no fears for you after you've
been at work for a few years, and have
struck an average between the packing
house and Harvard; then if you want to
graze over a wider range it can't hurt you.
But for the present you will find yourself
pretty busy trying to get into the winning
class.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

No, 5

FROM John Graham,
head of the house
of Graham & Co.,
at the Union Stock Yards
in Chicago, to his son,
Pierrepont Graham, at
Lake Moosgatchemawa-
muc, in the Maine woods.
Mr. Pierrepont has writ
ten to his father withdraw
ing his suggestion.

July 7, 189—

Dear Pierrepont: Yours of the fourth
has the right ring, and it says more to the
number of words used than any letter that
I have ever received from you. I remember
reading once that some fellows use lan
guage to conceal thought; but it's been my
experience that a good many more use it
instead of thought.

A business man's conversation should be
regulated by fewer and simpler rules than
any other function of the human animal.
They are:

Have something to say.

Say it.

Stop talking.

Beginning before you know what you
want to say and keeping on after you have
said it lands a merchant in a lawsuit or the
poorhouse, and the first is a short cut to the
second. I maintain a legal department here,

57

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

and it costs a lot of money, but it's to keep
me from going to law.

It's all right when you are calling on a
girl or talking with friends after dinner
to run a conversation like a Sunday-school
excursion, with stops to pick flowers; but
in the office your sentences should be the
shortest distance possible between periods.
Cut out the introduction and the perora
tion, and stop before you get to secondly.
You've got to preach short sermons to catch
sinners ; and deacons won't believe they need
long ones themselves. Give fools the first
and women the last word. The meat's
always in the middle of the sandwich. Of
course, a little butter on either side of it
doesn't do any harm if it's intended for a
man who likes butter.

Remember, too, that it's easier to look
wise than to talk wisdom. Say less than
the other fellow and listen more than you
talk; for when a man's listening he isn't
telling on himself and he's flattering the fel-

58

LETTERS TO HIS SON

low who is. Give most men a good listener
and most women enough note-paper and
they'll tell all they know. Money talks — but
not unless its owner has a loose tongue, and
then its remarks are always offensive. Pov
erty talks, too, but nobody wants to hear
what it has to say.

I simply mention these things in passing
because I'm afraid you're apt to be the
fellow who's doing the talking; just as I'm
a little afraid that you're sometimes like
the hungry drummer at the dollar-a-day
house — inclined to kill your appetite by eat
ing the cake in the centre of the table be
fore the soup comes on.

Of course, I'm glad to see you swing into
line and show the proper spirit about com
ing on here and going to work; but you
mustn't get yourself all " het up " before
you take the plunge, because you're bound
to find the water pretty cold at first. I've
seen a good many young fellows pass
through and out of this office. The first

59

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

week a lot of them go to work they're in a
sweat for fear they'll be fired; and the sec
ond week for fear they won't be. By the
third, a boy that's no good has learned just
how little work he can do and keep his job ;
while the fellow who's got the right stuff
in him is holding down his own place with
one hand and beginning to reach for the
job just ahead of him with the other. I
don't mean that he's neglecting his work;
but he's beginning to take notice, and that's
a mighty hopeful sign in either a young
clerk or a young widow.

You've got to handle the first year of
your business life about the way you would
a trotting horse. Warm up a little before
going to the post — not enough to be in a
sweat, but just enough to be limber and
eager. Never start off at a gait that you
can't improve on, but move along strong
and well in hand to the quarter. Let out a
notch there, but take it calm enough up to
the half not to break, and hard enough not
60

LETTERS TO HIS SON

to fall back into the ruck. At the three-
quarters you ought to be going fast enough
to poke your nose out of the other fellow's
dust, and running like the Limited in the
stretch. Keep your eyes to the front all the
time, and you won't be so apt to shy at the
little things by the side of the track. Head
up, tail over the dashboard — that's the way
the winners look in the old pictures of Maud
S. and Dexter and Jay-Eye-See. And
that's the way I want to see you swing by
the old man at the end of the year, when we
hoist the numbers of the fellows who are
good enough to promote and pick out the
salaries which need a little sweetening.

I've always taken a good deal of stock in
what you call " Blood-will-tell " if you're
a Methodist, or " Heredity " if you're a Uni
tarian ; and I don't want you to come along
at this late day and disturb my religious
beliefs. A man's love for his children and
his pride are pretty badly snarled up in
this world, and he can't always pick them
61

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

apart. I think a heap of you and a heap of
the house, and I want to see you get along
well together. To do that you must start
right. It's just as necessary to make a
good first impression in business as in
courting. You'll read a good deal about
" love at first sight " in novels, and there
may be something in it for all I know; but
I'm dead certain there's no such thing as
love at first sight in business. A man's got
to keep company a long time, and come
early and stay late and sit close, before he
can get a girl or a job worth having. There's
nothing comes without calling in this world,
and after you've called you've generally got
to go and fetch it yourself.

Our bright young men have discovered
how to make a pretty good article of potted
chicken, and they don't need any help from
hens, either; and you can smell the clover
in our butterine if you've developed the
poetic side of your nose; but none of the
boys have been able to discover anything
62

LETTERS TO HIS SON

that will pass as a substitute for work, even
in a boarding-house, though I'll give some of
them credit for having tried pretty hard.

I remember when I was selling goods for
old Josh Jennings, back in the sixties, and
had rounded up about a thousand in a sav
ings-bank — a mighty hard thousand, that
came a dollar or so at a time, and every dol
lar with a little bright mark where I had bit
it — I roomed with a dry-goods clerk named
Charlie Chase. Charlie had a hankering to
be a rich man ; but somehow he could never
see any connection between that hankering
and his counter, except that he'd hint to me
sometimes about an heiress who used to
squander her father's money shamefully for
the sake of having Charlie wait on her. But
when it came to getting rich outside the dry-
goods business and getting rich in a hurry,
Charlie was the man.

Along about Tuesday night — he was paid
on Saturday — he'd stay at home and begin
to scheme. He'd commence at eight o'clock

63

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

and start a magazine, maybe, and before
midnight he'd be turning away subscribers
because his preses couldn't print a big
enough edition. Or perhaps he wouldn't
feel literary that night, and so he'd invent a
system for speculating in wheat and go on
pyramiding his purchases till he'd made the
best that Cheops did look like a five-cent
plate of ice cream. All he ever needed was
a few hundred for a starter, and to get that
he'd decide to let me in on the ground floor.
I want to say right here that whenever any
one offers to let you in on the ground floor
it's a pretty safe rule to take the elevator to
the roof garden. I never exactly refused to
lend Charlie the capital he needed, but we
generally compromised on half a dollar next
morning, when he was in a hurry to make
the store to keep from getting docked.

He dropped by the office last week, a little
bent and seedy, but all in a glow and trem
bling with excitement in the old way. Told
me he was President of the Klondike

64

LETTERS TO HIS SON

Exploring, Gold Prospecting and Immigra
tion Company, with a capital of ten millions.
I guessed that he was the board of directors
and the capital stock and the exploring and
the prospecting and the immigrating, too —
everything, in fact, except the business card
he'd sent in; for Charlie always had a gift
for nosing out printers who'd trust him.
Said that for the sake of old times he'd let
me have a few thousand shares at fifty cents,
though they would go to par in a year. In
the end we compromised on a loan of ten
dollars, and Charlie went away happy.

The swamps are full of razor-backs like
Charlie, fellows who'd rather make a million
a night in their heads than five dollars a
day in cash. I have always found it cheaper
to lend a man of that build a little money
than to hire him. As a matter of fact, I
have never known a fellow who was smart
enough to think for the house days and for
himself nights. A man who tries that is
usually a pretty poor thinker, and he isn't

65

A MERCHANT'S LETTERS

much good to either; but if there's any
choice the house gets the worst of it.

I simply mention these little things in a
general way. If you can take my word for
some of them you are going to save yourself
a whole lot of trouble. There are others
which I don't speak of because life is too
short and because it seems to afford a fellow
a heap of satisfaction to pull the trigger for
himself to see if it is loaded; and a lesson
learned at the muzzle has the virtue of never
being forgotten.

You report to Milligan at the yards at
eight sharp on the fifteenth. You'd better
figure on being here on the fourteenth, be
cause Milligan's a pretty touchy Irishman,
and I may be able to give you a point or two
that will help you to keep on his mellow
side. He's apt to feel a little sore at taking
on in his department a man whom he hasn't
passed on.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.
66

No, 6

FROM John Graham,
en route to Texas, to
Pierrepont Graham,
care of Graham & Co.,
Union Stock Yards, Chi
cago. Mr. Pierrepont has,
entirely without intention,
caused a little confusion in
the mails, and it has come
to his father's notice in
the course of business.

VI

PRIVATE CAR PARNASSUS, Aug. 15,189 —

Dear Pierrepont: Perhaps it's just as
well that I had to hurry last night to make
my train, and so had no time to tell you some
things that are laying mighty heavy on my
mind this morning.

Jim Donnelly, of the Donnelly Provision
Company, came into the office in the after
noon, with a fool grin on his fat face, to tell
me that while he appreciated a note which
he had just received in one of the firm's
envelopes, beginning " Dearest," and con
taining an invitation to the theatre to-mor
row night, it didn't seem to have any real
bearing on his claim for shortage on the
last carload of sweet pickled hams he had
bought from us.

Of course, I sent for Milligan and went
for him pretty rough for having a mailing
clerk so no-account as to be writing personal
letters in office hours, and such a blunderer

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

as to mix them up with the firm's corres
pondence. Milligan just stood there like a
dumb Irishman and let me get through
and go back and cuss him out all over again,
with some trimmings that I had forgotten
the first time, before he told me that you
were the fellow who had made the bull. Nat
urally, I felt pretty foolish, and, while I
tried to pass it off with something about
your still being green and raw, the ice was
mighty thin, and you had the old man run
ning tiddledies.

It didn't make me feel any sweeter about
the matter to hear that when Milligan went
for you, and asked what you supposed Don
nelly would think of that sort of business,
you told him to " consider the feelings of the
girl who got our brutal refusal to allow a
claim for a few hundredweight of hams."

I haven't any special objection to your
writing to girls and telling them that they
are the real sugar-cured article, for, after
70

LETTERS TO HIS SON

all, if you overdo it, it's your breach-of-
promise suit, but you must write before
eight or after six. I have bought the stretch
between those hours. Your time is money —
my money — and when you take half an hour
of it for your own purposes, that is just a
petty form of petty larceny.

Milligan tells me that you are quick to
learn, and that you can do a powerful lot of
work when you've a mind to; but he adds
that it's mighty seldom your mind takes that
particular turn. Your attention may be on
the letters you are addressing, or you may
be in a comatose condition mentally; he
never quite knows until the returns come
from the dead-letter office.

A man can't have his head pumped out
like a vacuum pan, or stuffed full of odds
and ends like a bologna sausage, and do his
work right. It doesn't make any difference
how mean and trifling the thing he's doing
may seem, that's the big thing and the only,

71

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

thing for him just then. Business is like
oil — it won't mix with anything but
business.

You can resolve everything in the world,
even a great fortune, into atoms. And the
fundamental principles which govern the
handling of postage stamps and of millions
are exactly the same. They are the common
law of business, and the whole practice of
commerce is founded on them. They are so
simple that a fool can't learn them ; so hard
that a lazy man won't.

Boys are constantly writing me for advice
about how to succeed, and when I send them
my receipt they say that I am dealing out
commonplace generalities. Of course I am,
but that's what the receipt calls for, and if a
boy will take these commonplace general
ities and knead them into his job, the mix-
ture'll be cake.

Once a fellow's got the primary business
virtues cemented into his character, he's
safe to build on. But when a clerk crawls
72

LETTERS TO HIS SON

into the office in the morning like a sick set
ter pup, and leaps from his stool at night
with the spring of a tiger, I'm a little afraid
that if I sent him off to take charge of a
branch house he wouldn't always be around
when customers were. He's the sort of a
chap who would hold back the sun an hour
every morning and have it gain two every
afternoon if the Lord would give him the
same discretionary powers that He gave
Joshua. And I have noticed that he's the
fellow who invariably takes a timekeeper
as an insult. He's pretty numerous in busi
ness offices; in fact, if the glance of the
human eye could affect a clockface in the
same way that a man's country cousins af
fect their city welcome, I should haye to buy
a new timepiece for the office every morning.
I remember when I was a boy, we used to
have a pretty lively camp-meeting every
summer, and Elder Hoover, who was ac
counted a powerful exhorter in our parts,
would wrastle with the sinners and the

73

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

backsliders. There was one old chap in the
town — Bill Budlong — who took a heap of
pride in being the simon pure cuss. Bill
was always the last man to come up to the
mourners' bench at the camp-meeting and
the first one to backslide when it was over.
Used to brag around about what a hold
Satan had on him and how his sin was the
original brand, direct from Adam, put up
in cans to keep, and the can-opener lost.
Doc Hoover would get the whole town safe
in the fold and then have to hold extra meet
ings for a couple of days to snake in that
miserable Bill; but, in the end, he always
got religion and got it hard. For a month or
two afterward, he'd make the chills run
down the backs of us children in prayer-
meeting, telling how he had probably been
the triflingest and orneriest man alive before
he was converted. Then, along toward hog-
killing time, he'd backslide, and go around
bragging that he was standing so close to

74

LETTERS TO HIS SON

the mouth of the pit that his whiskers smelt
of brimstone.

He kept this up for about ten years, get
ting vainer and vainer of his staying qual
ities, until one summer, when the Elder had
rounded up all the likeliest sinners in the
bunch, he announced that the meetings were
over for that year.

You never saw a sicker-looking man than
Bill when he heard that there wasn't going
to be any extra session for him. He got up
and said he reckoned another meeting would
fetch him; that he sort of felt the clutch of
old Satan loosening; but Doc Hoover was
firm. Then Bill begged to have a special
deacon told off to wrastle with him, but
Doc wouldn't listen to that. Said he'd been
wasting time enough on him for ten years
to save a county, and he had just about
made up his mind to let him try his luck by
himself; that what he really needed more
than religion was common-sense and a con«

75

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

viction that time in this world was too valu
able to be frittered away. If he'd get that
in his head he didn't think he'd be so apt to
trifle with eternity; and if he didn't get it,
religion wouldn't be of any special use to
him.

A big merchant finds himself in Doc
Hoover's fix pretty often. There are too
many likely young sinners in his office to
make it worth while to bother long with the
Bills. Very few men are worth wasting
time on beyond a certain point, and that
point is soon reached with a fellow who
Doesn't show any signs of wanting to help.
Naturally, a green man always comes to a
house in a pretty subordinate position, and
it isn't possible to make so much noise with
a firecracker as with a cannon. But you
can tell a good deal by what there is left of
the boy, when you come to inventory him on
the fifth of July, whether he'll be safe to
trust with a cannon next year.

76

LETTERS TO HIS SON

It isn't the little extra money that you
may make for the house by learning the
fundamental business virtues which counts
so much as it is the effect that it has on your
character and that of those about you, and
especially on the judgment of the old man
when he's casting around for the fellow to
fill the vacancy just ahead of you. He's
pretty apt to pick some one who keeps sepa
rate ledger accounts for work and for fun,
who gives the house sixteen ounces to the
pound, and, on general principles, to pass
by the one who is late at the end where he
ought to be early, and early at the end where
he ought to be late.

I simply mention these things in passing,
but, frankly, I am afraid that you have a
streak of the Bill in you ; and you can't be a
good clerk, let alone a partner, until you get
it out. I try not to be narrow when I'm
weighing up a young fellow, and to allow
for soakage and leakage, and then to thrrw
77

A MERCHANT'S LETTERS

in a little for good feeling ; but I don't trade
with a man whom I find deliberately mark
ing up the weights on me.

This is a fine country we're running
through, but it's a pity that it doesn't raise
more hogs. It seems to take a farmer a
long time to learn that the best way to sell
his corn is on the hoof.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

P. 8. I just had to allow Donnelly his
claim on those hams, though I was dead sure
our weights were right, and it cost the house
sixty dollars. But your fool letter took all
the snap out of our argument. I get hot
every time I think of it.

No, 7

FROM John Graham,
at the Omaha Branch
of Graham & Co.,
to Pierrepont Graham, at
the Union Stock Yards,
Chicago. Mr. Pierrepont
hasn't found the methods
of the worthy Milligan al
together to his liking, and
he has commented rather
freely on them.

VII

OMAHA, September 1, 189—
Dear Pierrepont: Yours of the 30th
ultimo strikes me all wrong. I don't like to
hear you say that you can't work under
Milligan or any other man, for it shows
a fundamental weakness. And then, too,
the house isn't interested in knowing how
you like your boss, but in how he likes you.
I understand all about Milligan. He's a
cross, cranky old Irishman with a temper
tied up in bow-knots, who prods his men
with the bull-stick six days a week and
schemes to get them salary raises on the
seventh, when he ought to be listening to the
sermon; who puts the black-snake on a
clerk's hide when he sends a letter to Osh-
kosh that ought to go to Kalamazoo, and
begs him off when the old man wants to have
him fired for it. Altogether he's a hard,
crabbed, generous, soft-hearted, loyal, bully
old boy, who's been with the house since we
81

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

took down the shutters for the first time,
and who's going to stay with it till we put
them up for the last time.

But all that apart, you want to get it
firmly fixed in your mind that you're going
to have a Milligan over you all your life,
and if it isn't a Milligan it will be a Jones
or a Smith, and the chances are that you'll
find them both harder to get along with thaD
this old fellow. And if it isn't Milligan or
Jones or Smith, and you ain't a butcher, but
a parson or a doctor, or even the Presi
dent of the United States, it'll be a way-
back deacon, or the undertaker, or the
machine. There isn't any such thing as
being your own boss in this world unless
you're a tramp, and then there's the con
stable.

Like the old man if yon can, but give him
no cause to dislike you. Keep your self-re
spect at any cost, and your upper lip stiff
at the same figure. Criticism can properly
come only from above, and whenever you
82

LETTERS TO HIS SON

discover that your boss is no good you may
rest easy that the man who pays his salary
shares your secret Learn to give back a
bit from the base-burner, to let the village
fathers get their feet on the fender and the
sawdust box in range, and you'll find them
making a little room for you in turn. Old
men have tender feet, and apologies are poor
salve for aching corns. Remember that
when you're in the right you can afford to
keep your temper, and that when you're in
the wrong you can't afford to lose it.

When you've got an uncertain cow it's all
O. K. to tie a figure eight in her tail, if you
ain't thirsty, and it's excitement you're
after; but if you want peace and her nine
quarts, you will naturally approach her
from the side, and say, So-boss, in about
the same tone that you would use if you
were asking your best girl to let you hold
her hand.

Of course, you want to be sure of your
natural history facts and learn to distin-

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

guish between a cow that's a kicker, but
whose intentions are good if she's ap
proached with proper respect, and a hooker,
who is vicious on general principles, and
any way you come at her. There's never
any use fooling with an animal of that sort,
brute or human. The only safe place is the
other side of the fence or the top of the
nearest tree.

When I was clerking in Missouri, a fellow
named Jeff Hankins moved down from Wis
consin and bought a little clearing just out
side the town. Jeff was a good talker, but a
bad listener, and so we learned a heap about
how things were done in Wisconsin, but he
didn't pick up much information about the
habits of our Missouri fauna, When it came
to cows, he had had a liberal education and
he made out all right, but by and by it got
on to ploughing time and Jeff naturally
bought a mule — a little moth-eaten cuss,
with sad, dreamy eyes and droopy, wiggly-
woggly ears that swung in a circle as easy

' ' Bill Budlong was always the last
man to come up to the mourners' bench.*'

LETTERS TO HIS SON

as if they ran on ball-bearings. Her owner
didn't give her a very good character, but
Jeff was too busy telling how much he knew
about horses to pay much attention to what
anybody was saying about mules. So finally
the seller turned her loose in Jeff's lot, told
him he wouldn't have any trouble catching
her if he approached her right, and hurried
off out of range.

Next morning at sunup Jeff picked out a
bridle and started off whistling Buffalo
Gals — he was a powerful pretty whistler
and could do the Mocking Bird with varia
tions — to catch the mule and begin his
plowing. The animal was feeding as peace
ful as a water-color picture, and she didn't
budge; but ivhen Jeff began to get nearer,
her ears dropped back along her neck as if
they had lead in them. He knew that symp
tom and so he closed up kind of cautious,
aiming for her at right angles and gurgling,
" Muley, muley, here muley; that's a good
muley," sort of soothing and caressing-like.

85

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

Still she didn't stir and Jeff got right up
to her and put one arm over her back and
began to reach forward with the bridle,
when something happened. He never could
explain just what it was, but we judged
from the marks on his person that the mule
had reached forward and kicked the seat of
his trousers with one of her prehensile hind
feet; and had reached back and caught him
on the last button of his waistcoat with one
of her limber fore feet; and had twisted
around her elastic neck and bit off a mouth
ful of his hair. When Jeff regained con
sciousness, he reckoned that the only really
safe way to approach a mule was to drop on
it from a balloon.

I simply mention this little incident as an
example of the fact that there are certain
animals with which the Lord didn't intend
white men to fool. And you will find that,
as a rule, the human varieties of them are
not the fellows who go for you rough-shod,
like Milligan, when you're wrong. It's when
86

LETTERS TO HIS SON

you come across one of those gentlemen who
have more oil in their composition than any
two-legged animal has a right to have, that
you should be on the lookout for concealed
deadly weapons.

I don't mean that you should distrust a
man who is affable and approachable, but
you want to learn to distinguish between
him and one who is too affable and too ap
proachable. The adverb makes the differ
ence between a good and a bad fellow. The
bunco men aren't all at the county fair, and
they don't all operate with the little shells
and the elusive pea. When a packer has
learned all that there is to learn about quad
rupeds, he knows only one-eighth of his
business; the other seven-eighths, and the
important seven-eighths, has to do with the
study of bipeds.

I dwell on this because I am a little dis
appointed that you should have made such
a mistake in sizing up Milligan. He isn't
the brightest man in the office, but he is

87

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

loyal to me and to the house, and when you
have been in business as long as I have you
will be inclined to put a pretty high value
on loyalty. It is the one commodity that
hasn't any market value, and it's the one
that you can't pay too much for. You can
trust any number of men with your money,
but mighty few with your reputation. Half
the men who are with the house on pay day
are against it the other six.

A good many young fellows come to me
looking for jobs, and start in by telling me
what a mean house they have been working
for; what a cuss to get along with the senior
partner was; and how little show a bright,
progressive clerk had with him. I never
get very far with a critter of that class, be
cause I know that he wouldn't like me or
the house if he came to work for us.

I don't know anything that a young busi
ness man ought to keep more entirely to
himself than his dislikes, unless it is his
likes. It's generally expensive to have either,
88

LETTERS TO HIS SON

but it's bankruptcy to tell about them. It's
all right to say nothing about the dead but
good, but it's better to apply the rule to the
living, and especially to the house which is
paying your salary.

Just one word before I close, as old Doc
Hoover used to say, when he was coming
into the stretch, but still a good ways off
from the benediction. I have noticed that
you are inclined to be a little chesty and
starchy around the office. Of course, it's
good business, when a fellow hasn't much
behind his forehead, to throw out his chest
and attract attention to his shirt-front. But
as you begin to meet the men who have done
something that makes them worth meeting
you will find that there are no " keep off the
grass " or " beware of the dog " signs around
their premises, and that they don't motion
to the orchestra to play slow music while
they talk.

Superiority makes every man feel ite
equal. It is courtesy without condescen-

A MERCHANT'S LETTERS

sion; affability without familiarity; self-
sufficiency without selfishness; simplicity
without snide. It weighs sixteen ounces
to the pound without the package, and it
doesn't need a four-colored label to make it

go.

We are coming home from here. I am a
little disappointed in the showing that this
house has been making. Pound for pound
it is not getting nearly so much out of its
hogs as we are in Chicago. I don't know
just where the leak is, but if they don't do
better next month I am coming back here
with a shotgun, and there's going to be a
pretty heavy mortality among our head men.
Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

No, 8

FROM John Graham,
at Hot Springs, Ar
kansas, to his son,
Pierrepont, at the Union
Stock Yards in Chicago.
Mr. Pierrepont has just
been promoted from the
mailing to the billing desk
and, in consequence, his
father is feeling rather
"mellow" toward him.

VIII

HOT SPRINGS, January 15, 189 —
Dear Pierrepont: They've run me
through the scalding vats here till they've
pretty nearly taken all the hair off my hide,
but that or something else has loosened up
my joints so that they don't squeak any more
when I walk. The doctor says he'll have
my rheumatism cured in thirty days, so I
guess you can expect me home in about a
fortnight. For he's the breed of doctor that
is always two weeks ahead of his patients'
condition when they're poor, and two weeks
behind it when they're rich. He calls him
self a specialist, which means that it costs
me ten dollars every time he has a look in
at my tongue, against two that I would pay
the family doctor for gratifying his curi
osity. But I guess this specialist business
is about the only outlet for marketing the
surplus of young doctors.

Reminds me of the time when we were

Q3

A SELF-MADE MERCHANTS

piling up canned corned beef in stock faster
than people would eat it, and a big drought
happened along in Texas and began driving
the canners in to the packing-house quicker
than we could tuck them away in tin. Jim
Durham tried to " stimulate the consump
tion," as he put it, by getting out a nice little
booklet called, " A Hundred Dainty Dishes
from a Can," and telling how to work off
corned beef on the family in various dis
guises; but, after he had schemed out ten
different combinations, the other ninety
turned out to be corned-beef hash. So that
was no use.

But one day we got together and had a
nice, fancy, appetizing label printed, and
we didn't economize on the gilt — a picture
of a steer so fat that he looked as if he'd
break his legs if they weren't shored up
pretty quick with props, and with blue rib
bons tied to his horns. We labeled it " Blue
Ribbon Beef — For Fancy Family Trade,"
and charged an extra ten cents a dozen for

94

LETTERS TO HIS SON

the cans on which that special label was
pasted. Of course, people just naturally
wanted it.

There's nothing helps convince some men
that a thing has merit like a little gold on
the label. And it's pretty safe to bet that if
a fellow needs a six or seven-syllabled word
to describe his profession, he's a corn doctor
when you come to look him up in the dic
tionary. And then you'll generally find him
in the back part of the book where they tuck
away the doubtful words.

But that isn't what I started out to say.
I want to tell you that I was very, very glad
to learn from your letter that you had been
promoted to the billing desk. I have felt
all along that when you got a little of the
nonsense tried out of you there would be a
residue of common-sense, and I am glad to
have your boss back up my judgment.
There's two things you just naturally don't
expect from human nature — that the
widow's tombstone estimate of the departed,

95

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

on which she is trying to convince the neigh
bors against their better judgment that he
went to Heaven, and the father's estimate
of the son, on which he is trying to pass him
along into a good salary, will be conserva
tive.

I had that driven into my mind and
spiked down when I hired the widow's son a
few years ago. His name was Clarence —
Clarence St. Clair Hicks — and his father
used to keep books for me when he wasn't
picking the winners at Washington Park or
figuring out the batting averages of the Chi-
cagos. He was one of those quick men who
always have their books posted up half an
hour before closing time for three weeks of
the month, and spend the evenings of the
fourth hunting up the eight cents that they
are out on the trial balance. When he died
his wife found that his life insurance had
lapsed the month before, and so she brought
Clarence down to the office and asked me to
give him a job.

gb

LETTERS TO HIS SON

Clarence wasn't exactly a pretty boy; in
fact, he looked to me like another of his
father's bad breaks; but his mother seemed
to think a heap of him. I learned that he
would have held the belt in his Sunday-
school for long-distance verse-reciting if the
mother of one of the other boys hadn't fixed
the superintendent, and that it had taken a
general conspiracy of the teachers in his
day-school to keep him from walking off
with the good-conduct medal.

I couldn't just reconcile those statements
with Clarence's face, but I accepted him at
par and had him passed along to the head
errand boy. His mother cried a little when
she saw him marched off, and asked me to
see that he was treated kindly and wasn't
bullied by the bigger boys, because he had
been " raised a pet."

A number of unusual things happened in
the offices that morning, and the head office
boy thought Clarence might be able to ex
plain some of them, but he had an alibi

97

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

ready every time — even when a bookkeeper
found the vault filled with cigarette smoke
and Clarence in it hunting for something he
couldn't describe. But as he was a new boy,
no one was disposed to bear down on him
very hard, so his cigarettes were taken
away from him and he was sent back to his
bench with a warning that he had used up
all his explanations.

Along toward noon, a big Boston customer
came in with his little boy — a nice, plump,
stall-fed youngster, with black velvet pants
and hair that was just a little longer than
was safe in the stock-yards district. And
while we were talking business, the kid wan
dered off to the coat-room, where the errand
boys were eating lunch, which was a pretty
desperate place for a boy with velvet pants
on to go.

As far as we could learn from Willie
when he came out of his convulsions, the
boys had been very polite to him and had in
sisted on his joining in a new game which

98

LETTERS TO HIS SON

Clarence had just invented, called playing
pig-sticker. And, because he was company,
Clarence told him that he could be the pig.
Willie didn't know just what being the pig
meant, but, as he told his father, it didn't
sound very nice and he was afraid he
wouldn't like it. So he tried to pass along
the honor to some one else, but Clarence
insisted that it was " hot stuff to be the pig,"
and before Willie could rightly judge what
was happening to him, one end of a rope had
been tied around his left ankle and the
other end had been passed over a transom
bar, and he was dangling headforemost in
the air, while Clarence threatened his jugu
lar with a lath sword. That was when he
let out the yell which brought his father and
me on the jump and scattered the boys all
over the stock yards.

Willie's father canceled his bologna con
tract and marched off muttering something
about " degrading surroundings brutalizing
the young;" and Clarence's mother wrote

99

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S*

me that I was a bad old man who had held
her husband down all his life and now
wouldn't give her son a show. For, nat
urally, after that little incident, I had told
the boy who had been raised a pet that he
had better go back to the menagerie.

I simply mention Clarence in passing as
an instance of why I am a little slow to trust
my judgment on my own. I have always
found that, whenever I thought a heap of
anything I owned, there was nothing like
getting the other fellow's views expressed
in figures; and the other fellow is usually a
pessimist when he's buying. The lady on
the dollar is the only woman who hasn't any
sentiment in her make-up. And if you really
want a look at the solid facts of a thing you
must strain off the sentiment first.

I put you under Milligan to get a view of
you through his eyes. If he says that you
are good enough to be a billing clerk, and to
draw twelve dollars a week, I guess there's
no doubt about it. For he's one of those
100

LETTERS TO HIS SON

men that never show any real enthusiasm
except when they're cussing.

Naturally, it's a great satisfaction to see
a streak or two of business ability beginning
to show under the knife, because when it
comes closing time for me it will make it a
heap easier to know that some one who bears
the name will take down the shutters in the
morning.

Boys are a good deal like the pups that
fellows sell on street corners — they don't
always turn out as represented. You buy
a likely setter pup and raise a spotted coach
dog from it, and the promising son of an
honest butcher is just as like as not to turn
out a poet or a professor. I want to say
in passing that I have no real prejudice
against poets, but I believe that, if you're
going to be a Milton, there's nothing like
being a mute, inglorious one, as some fellow
who was a little sore on the poetry business
once put it. Of course, a packer who un
derstands something about the versatility of
101

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

cottonseed oil need never turn down orders
for lard because the run of hogs is light, and
a father who understands human nature can
turn out an imitation parson from a boy
whom the Lord intended to go on the Board
of Trade. But on general principles it's
best to give your cottonseed oil a Latin name
and to market it on its merits, and to let
your boy follow his bent, even if it leads him
into the wheat pit. If a fellow has got
poetry in him it's bound to come out sooner
or later in the papers or the street cars ; and
the longer you keep it bottled up the harder
it comes, and the longer it takes the patient
to recover. There's no easier way to cure
foolishness than to give a man leave to be
foolish. And the only way to show a fel
low that he's chosen the wrong business is
to let him try it. If it really is the wrong
thing you won't have to argue with him to
quit, and if it isn't you haven't any right to.
Speaking of bull-pups that turned out to
be tenders naturally calls to mind the case
102

LETTERS TO HIS SON

of my old friend Jeremiah Simpkins' son.
There isn't a solider man in the Boston
leather trade than Jeremiah, nor a bigger
scamp that the law can't touch than his son
Ezra. There isn't an ounce of real mean
ness in Ezra's whole body, but he's just
naturally and unintentionally a maverick.
When he came out of college his father
thought that a few years' experience in the
hide department of Graham & Co. would be
a good thing for him before he tackled the
leather business. So I wrote to send him on
and I would give him a job, supposing, of
course, that I was getting a yearling of the
steady, old, reliable Simpkins strain.

I was a little uneasy when Ezra reported,
because he didn't just look as if he had had
a call to leather. He was a tall, spare New
Englander, with one of those knobby fore
heads which has been pushed out by the
overcrowding of the brain, or bulged by the
thickening of the skull, according as yon
like or dislike the man. His manners were
103

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

easy or familiar by the same standard. He
told me right at the start that, while he
didn't know just what he wanted to do, he
was dead sure that it wasn't the leather
business. It seemed that he had said the
same thing, to his father and that the old
man had answered, " Tut, tut," and told
him to forget it and to learn hides.

Simpkins learned all that he wanted to
know about the packing industry in thirty
days, and I learned all that I wanted to
know about Ezra in the same time. Pork-
packing seemed to be the only thing that he
wasn't interested in. I got his resignation
one day just five minutes before the one
which I was having written out for him was
ready ; for I will do Simpkins the justice to
say that there was nothing slow about him.
He and his father split up, temporarily, over
it, and, of course, it cost me the old man's
trade and friendship. I want to say right
here that the easiest way in the world to
make enemies is to hire friends.
104

LETTERS TO HIS SON

I lost sight of Simpkins for a while, and
then he turned up at the office one morning
as friendly and familiar as ever. Said he
was a reporter and wanted to interview me
on the December wheat deal. Of course, I
wouldn't talk on that, but I gave him a little
fatherly advice — told him he would sleep in
a hall bedroom all his life if he didn't quit
his foolishness and go back to his father,
though I didn't really believe it. He thanked
me and went off and wrote a column about
what I might have said about December
wheat, and somehow gave the impression
that I had said it.

The next I heard of Simpkins he was
dead. The Associated Press dispatches an
nounced it, the Cuban Junta confirmed it,
and last of all, a long dispatch from Simp-
kins himself detailed the circumstances lead
ing up to the " atrocity," as the headlines in
his paper called it

I got a long wire from Ezra's father ask
ing me to see the managing editor and get
105

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

at the facts for him. It seemed that the
paper had thought a heap of Simpkins, and
that he had been sent out to Cuba as a cor
respondent, and stationed with the Insur
gent army. Simpkins in Cuba had evidently
lived up to the reputation of Simpkins in
Chicago. When there was any news he
sent it, and when there wasn't he just made
news and sent that along.

The first word of his death had come in
his own letter, brought across on a filibuster
ing steamer and wired on from Jacksonville.
It told, with close attention to detail —
something he had learned since he left me
— how he had strayed away from the little
band of insurgents with which he had been
out scouting and had blundered into the
Spanish lines. He had been promptly made
a prisoner, and, despite his papers proving
his American citizenship, and the nature of
his job, and the red cross on his sleeve, he
had been tried by drumhead court martial
a^d sentenced to be shot at dawn. All this
106

LETTERS TO HIS SON

he had written out, and then, that his ac
count might be complete, he had gone on
and imagined his own execution. This was
written in a sort of pigeon, or perhaps you
would call it black Spanish, English, and
let on to be the work of the eyewitness to
whom Simpkins had confided his letter. He
had been the sentry over the prisoner, and
for a small bribe in hand and the promise of
a larger one from the paper, he had turned
his back on Simpkins while he wrote out
the story, and afterward had deserted and
carried it to the Cuban lines.

The account ended : " Then, as the order
to fire was given by the lieutenant, Senor
Simpkins raised his eyes toward Heaven and
cried : ' I protest in the name of my Amer
ican citizenship ! ' " At the end of the letter,
and not intended for publication, was
scrawled : " This is a bully scoop for you,
boys, but it's pretty tough on me. Good-by.
Simpkins."

The managing editor dashed a tear from
107

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

his eye when he read this to me, and gulped
a little as he said: " I can't help it; he was

such a d d thoughtful boy. Why, he

even remembered to inclose descriptions for
the pictures ! "

Simpkins' last story covered the whole of
the front page and three columns of the sec
ond, and it just naturally sold cords of
papers. His editor demanded that the State
Department take it up, though the Span
iards denied the execution or any previous
knowledge of any such person as this Senor
Simpkins. That made another page in the
paper, of course, and then they got up a
memorial service, which was good for three
columns. One of those fellows that you can
find in every office, who goes around and
makes the boys give up their lunch money
to buy flowers for the deceased aunt of the
cellar boss' wife, managed to collect twenty
dollars among our clerks, and they sent a
floral notebook, with " Gone to Press," done
1 08

LETTERS TO HIS SON

in blue immortelles on the cover, as their
" tribute."

I put on a plug hat and attended the
service out of respect for his father. But I
had hardly got back to the office before 1
received a wire from Jamaica, reading:
" Cable your correspondent here let me have
hundred. Notify father all hunk. Keep it
dark from others. Simpkins."

I kept it dark and Ezra came back to life
by easy stages and in such a way as not to
attract any special attention to himself. He
managed to get the impression around that
he'd been snatched from the jaws of death
by a rescue party at the last moment. The
last I heard of him he was in New York and
drawing ten thousand a year, which was
more than he could have worked up to in
the leather business in a century.

Fifty or a hundred years ago, when there
was good money in poetry, a man with
Simpkins' imagination would naturally
109

A MERCHANT'S LETTERS

have been a bard, as I believe they used to
call the top-notchers ; and, once he was
turned loose to root for himself, he instinc
tively smelled out the business where he
could use a little poetic license and made a
hit in it.

When a pup has been born to point par
tridges there's no use trying to run a fox
with him. I was a little uncertain about
you at first, but I guess the Lord intended
you to hunt with the pack. Get the scent
in your nostrils and keep your nose to the
ground, and don't worry too much about
the end of the chase. The fun of the thing's
in the run and not in the finish.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

no

No, 9

FROM John Graham,
at Hot Springs, Ar
kansas, to his son,
Pierrepont, at the Union
Stock Yards in Chicago.
Mr. Pierrepont has been
investing more heavily in
roses than his father thinks
his means warrant, and he
tries to turn his thoughts
to staple groceries.

IX

HOT SPRINGS, January 30, 189 —
Dear Pierrepont: I knew right off that I
had made a mistake when I opened the in
closed and saw that it was a bill for fifty-
two dollars, " for roses sent, as per orders,
to Miss Mabel Dashkam." I don't just place
Miss Dashkam, but if she's the daughter of
old Job Dashkam, on the open Board, I
should say, on general principles, that she
was a fine girl to let some other fellow
marry. The last time I sawT her, she in
ventoried about $10,000 as she stood — al
lowing that her diamonds would scratch
glass — and that's more capital than any
woman has a right to tie up on her back, I
don't care how rich her father is. And
Job's fortune is one of that brand which
foots up to a million in the newspapers and
leaves the heirs in debt to the lawyers who
settle the estate.
Of course I've never had any real expert-

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

ence in this sparking business, except with
your Ma; but I've watched from the other
side of the fence while a heap of fellows
were getting it, and I should say that marry
ing a woman like Mabel Dashkam would be
the first step toward becoming a grass wid
ower. I'll bet if you'll tell her you're mak
ing twelve a week and ain't going to get any
more till you earn it, you'll find that you
can't push within a mile of her even on a
Soo ice-breaker. She's one of those women
with a heart like a stock-ticker — it doesn't
beat over anything except money.

Of course you're in no position yet to
think of being engaged even, and that's why
I'm a little afraid that you may be planning
to get married. But a twelve-dollar clerk,
who owes fifty-two dollars for roses, needs
a keeper more than a wife. I want to say
right here that there always comes a time
to the fellow who blows fifty-two dollars at
a lick on roses when he thinks how many
staple groceries he could have bought with
114

LETTERS TO HIS SON

the money. After all, there's no fool like
a young fool, because in the nature of things
he's got a long time to live.

I suppose I'm fanning the air when I ask
you to be guided by my judgment in this
matter, because, while a young fellow will
consult his father about buying a horse, he's
cock-sure of himself when it comes to pick
ing a wife. Marriages may be made in
Heaven, but most engagements are made in
the back parlor with the gas so low that a
fellow doesn't really get a square look at
what he's taking. While a man doesn't see
much of a girl's family when he's courting,
he's apt to see a good deal of it when he's
housekeeping; and while he doesn't marry
his wife's father, there's nothing in the mar
riage vow to prevent the old man from bor
rowing money of him, and you can bet if
he's old Job Dashkam he'll do it. A man
can't pick his own mother, but he can pick
his son's mother, and when he chooses a
father-in-law who plays the bucket shops,

"5

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

he needn't be surprised if his own son plays
the races.

Never marry a poor girl who's been raised
like a rich one. She's simply traded the
virtues of the poor for the vices of the rich
without going long on their good points.
To marry for money or to marry without
money is a crime. There's no real objection
to marrying a woman with a fortune, but
there is to marrying a fortune with a
woman. Money makes the mare go, and it
makes her cut up, too, unless she's used to it
and you drive her with a snaffle-bit.

While you are at it, there's nothing like
picking out a good-looking wife, because
even the handsomest woman looks homely
sometimes, and so you get a little variety;
but a homely one can only look worse than
usual. Beauty is only skin deep, but that's
deep enough to satisfy any reasonable man.
(I want to say right here that to get any
sense out of a proverb I usually find that I
have to turn it wrong side out. ) Then, too,
116

if a fellow's bound to marry a fool, and a
lot of men have to if they're going to hitch
up into a well-matched team, there's nothing
like picking a good-looking one.

I simply mention these things in a gen
eral way, because it seems to me, from the
gait ,t which you're starting off, that you'll
likely find yourself roped and branded any
day, without quite knowing how it hap
pened, and I want you to understand that
the girl who marries you for my money is
getting a package of green goods in more
ways than one. I think, though, if you
really understood what marrying on twelve
a week meant, you would have bought a bed
room set instead of roses with that fifty-two
you owe.

Speaking of marrying the old man's
money by proxy naturally takes me back to
my old town in Missouri and the case of
Chauncey Witherspoon Hoskins. Chaun-
cey's father was the whole village, barring
the railroad station and the saloon, and, of
117

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

course, Chauncey thought that he was some
thing of a pup himself. So he was, but not
just the kind that Chauncey thought he was.
He stood about five foot three in his pumps,
had a nice pinky complexion, pretty wavy
hair, and a curly mustache. All he needed
was a blue ribbon around his neck to make
you call, " Here, Fido," when he came into
the room.

Still I believe he must have been pretty
popular with the ladies, because I can't
think of him to this day without wanting
to punch his head. At the church sociables
he used to hop around among them, chipping
and chirping like a dicky-bird picking up
seed; and he was a great hand to play the
piano, and sing saddish, sweetish songs to
them. Always said the smooth thing and
said it easy. Never had to choke and swal
low to fetch it up. Never stepped through
his partner's dress when he began to dance,
or got flustered when he brought her refresh
ments and poured the coffee in her lap to
118

LETTERS TO HIS SON

cool instead of in the saucer. We boys who
couldn't walk across the floor without feel
ing that our pants had hiked up till they
showed our feet to the knees, and that we
were carrying a couple of canvased hams
where our hands ought to be, didn't like
him; but the girls did. You can trust a
woman's taste on everything except men;
and it's mighty lucky that she slips up there
or we'd pretty nigh all be bachelors. I
might add that you can't trust a man's taste
on women, either, and that's pretty lucky,
too, because there are a good many old maids
in the world as it is.

One time or another Chauncey lolled in
the best room of every house in our town,
and we used to wonder how he managed to
browse up and down the streets that way
without getting into the pound. I never
found out till after I married your Ma, and
she told me Chauncey's heart secrets. It
really wasn't violating any confidence, be
cause he'd told them to evcT*y girl in town.
119

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

Seems he used to get terribly sad as soon
as he was left alone with a girl and began
to hint about a tragedy in his past — some
thing that had blighted his whole life and
left him without the power to love again —
and lots more slop from the same pail.

Of course, every girl in that town had
known Chauncey since he wore short pants,
and ought to have known that the nearest to
a tragedy he had ever been was when he sat
in the top gallery of a Chicago theatre and
saw a lot of barnstormers play Othello. But
some people, and especially very young peo
ple, don't think anything's worth believing
unless it's hard to believe.

Chauncey worked along these lines until
he was twenty-four, and then he made a mis
take. Most of the girls that he had growm
up with had married off, and while he was
waiting for a new lot to come along, he
began to shine up to the widow Sharpless,
a powerful, well-preserved woman of forty
or thereabouts, who had been born with her
1 20

LETTERS TO HIS SON

eye-teeth cut. He found her uncommon
sympathetic. And when Chauncey finally
came out of his trance he was the stepfather
of the widow's four children.

She was very kind to Chauncey, and
treated him like one of her own sons; but
she was very, very firm. There was no gal
livanting off alone, and when they went out
in double harness strangers used to annoy
him considerable by patting him on the
head and saying to his wife : " What a
bright-looking chap your son is, Mrs. Hos-
kins!"

She was almost seventy when Chauncey
buried her a while back, and they say that
he began to take notice again on the way
home from the funeral. Anyway, he
crowded his mourning into sixty days — and
I reckon there was plenty of room in them
to hold all his grief without stretching —
and his courting into another sixty. And
four months after date he presented his
matrimonial papers for acceptance. Said
121

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

he was tired of this mother-and-son foolish
ness, and wasn't going to leave any room for
doubt this time. Didn't propose to have
people sizing his wife up for one of his an
cestors any more. So he married Lulu
Littlebrown, who was just turned eighteen.
Chauncey was over fifty then, and wizened
up like a late pippin that has been out over
night in an early frost,

He took Lu to Chicago for the honey
moon, and Mose Greenebaum, who happened
to be going up to town for his fall goods, got
into the parlor car with them. By and by
the porter came around and stopped beside
Chauncey.

" Wouldn't your daughter like a pillow
under her head? " says he.

Chauncey just groaned. Then — " Git ;
you Senegambian son of darkness ! " And
the porter just naturally got.

Mose had been taking it all in, and now
he went back to the smoking-room and
passed the word along to the drummers

122

LETTERS TO HIS SON

there. Every little while one of them would
lounge up the aisle to Chauncey and ask if
he couldn't lend his daughter a magazine,
or give her an orange, or bring her a drink
And the language that he gave back in re
turn for these courtesies wasn't at all fitting
in a bridegroom. Then Mose had another
happy thought, and dropped off at a way
station and wired the clerk at the Palmer
House.

When they got to the hotel the clerk was
on the lookout for them, and Chauncey
hadn't more than signed his name before he
reached out over his diamond and said:
"Ah, Mr. Hoskins; would you like to have
your daughter near you? "

I simply mention Chauncey in passing
as an example of the foolishness of thinking
you can take any chances with a woman
who has really decided that she wants to
marry, or that you can average up matri
monial mistakes. And I want you to re^
member that marrying the wrong girl is
123

A MERCHANT'S LETTERS

the one mistake that you've got to live with
all your life. I think, though, that if you
tell Mabel what your assets are, she'll de
cide she won't be your particular mistake.
Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

124

No. 10

FROM John Graham,
at the Union Stock
Yards in Chicago,
to his son, Pierrepont, at
the Commercial House,
Jeffersonville, Indiana.
Mr. Pierrepont has been
promoted to the position
of traveling salesman for
the house, and has started
out on the road.

CHICAGO, March 1, 189 —
Dear Pierrepont: When I saw you start
off yesterday I was just a little uneasy;
for you looked so blamed important and
chesty that I am inclined to think you will
tell the first customer who says he doesn't
like our sausage that he knows what he can
do about it. Repartee makes reading lively,
but business dull. And what the house
needs is more orders.

Sausage is the one subject of all others
that a fellow in the packing business ought
to treat solemnly. Half the people in the
world take a joke seriously from the start,
and the other half if you repeat it often
enough. Only last week the head of our
sausage department started to put out a
tin-tag brand of frankfurts, but I made him
take it off the market quicker than light
ning, because I knew that the first fool who
saw the tin-tag would ask if that was the
127

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

license. And, though people would grin a
little at first, they'd begin to look serious
after a while; and whenever the butcher
tried to sell them our brand they'd imagine
they heard the bark, and ask for " that real
country sausage " at twice as much a pound.

He laughs best who doesn't laugh at all
when he's dealing with the public. It has
been my experience that, even when a man
has a sense of humor, it only really carries
him to the point where he will join in a
laugh at the expense of the other fellow.
There's * thing in the world sicker-looking
than the grin cf the man who's trying to
join in heartily when the laugh's on him,
and to preteni that he likes it

Speaking of sausage with a registered
pedigree calls to mind a little experience
that I had last year. A fellow came into
the office here with a shriveled-up toy
spaniel, one of those curly, hairy little fel
lows that a woman will kiss, and then
grumble because a fellow's mustache tickles.
128

" You looked so blamed important and
chesty when you started off. ' '

LETTERS TO HIS SON

Said he wanted to sell him. I wasn't really
disposed to add a dog to my troubles, but on
general principles I asked him what he
wanted for the little cuss.

The fellow hawed and choked and wiped
away a tear. Finally, he fetched out that
he loved the dog like a son, and that it broke
his heart to think of parting with him ; that
he wouldn't dare look Dandy in the face
after he had named the price he was asking
for him, and that it was the record-breaking,
marked-down sacrifice sale of the year on
dogs; that it wasn't really money he was
after, but a good home for the little chap.
Said that I had a rather pleasant face and
he knew that he could trust me to treat
Dandy kindly; so — as a gift — he would let
me have him for five hundred.

" Cents? " says I.

" Dollars," says he, without blinking.

" It ought to be a mastiff at that price,"
says I.

" If you thought more of quality," says
129

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

he, in a tone of sort of dignified reproof,
" and less of quantity, your brand would
enjoy a better reputation."

I was pretty hot, I can tell you, but I
had laid myself open, so I just said : " The
sausage business is too poor to warrant our
paying any such price for light-weights.
Bring around a bigger dog and then we'll
talk ; " but the fellow only shook his head
sadly, whistled to Dandy, and walked off.

I simply mention this 1'ttle incident as
an example of the fact that when a man
cracks a joke in the Middle Ages he's apt to
affect the sausage market in the Nineteenth
Century, and to lay open an honest butcher
to the jeers of every dog-stealer in the street.
There's such a thing as carrying a joke too
far, and the fellow who keeps on pretending
to believe that he's paying for pork and
getting dog is pretty apt to get dog in the
end.

But all that aside, I want you to get it
firmly fixed in your mind right at the start

LETTERS TO HIS SON

that this trip is only an experiment, and
that I am not at all sure you were cut out
by the Lord to be a drummer. But you can
figure on one thing — that you will never
become the pride of the pond by starting out
to cut figure eights before you are firm on
your skates.

A real salesman is one-part talk and nine-
parts judgment; and he uses the nine-parts
of judgment to tell when to use the one-part
of talk. Goods ain't sold under Marquess
of Queensberry rules any more, and you'll
find that knowing how many rounds the Old
'Un can last against the Boiler-Maker won't
really help you to load up the junior partner
with our Corn-fed brand hams.

A good many salesmen have an idea that
buyers are only interested in baseball, and
funny stories, and Tom Lipton, and that
business is a side line with them; but as a
matter of fact mighty few men work up to
the position of buyer through giving up their
office hours to listening to anecdotes. I

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

never saw one that liked a drummer's jokes
more than an eighth of a cent a pound on
a tierce of lard. What the house really
sends you out for is orders.

Of course, you want to be nice and mel
low with the trade, but always remember
that mellowness carried too far becomes
rottenness. You can buy some fellows with
a cheap cigar and some with a cheap com
pliment, and there's no objection to giving
a man what he likes, though I never knew
smoking to do anything good except a ham,
or flattery to help any one except to make a
fool of himself.

Real buyers ain't interested in much be
sides your goods and your prices. Never
run down your competitor's brand to them,
and never let them run down yours. Don't
get on your knees for business, but don't
hold your nose so high in the air that an
order can travel under it without your see
ing it. You'll meet a good many people on
132

LETTERS TO HIS SON

the road that you won't like, but the house
needs their business.

Some fellows will tell you that we play
the hose on our dry salt meat before we ship
it, and that it shrinks in transit like a Bax
ter Street Jew's all-wool suits in a rain
storm ; that they wonder how we manage to
pack solid gristle in two-pound cans with
out leaving a little meat hanging to it; and
that the last car of lard was so strong
that it came back of its own accord from
every retailer they shipped it to. The first
fellow will be lying, and the second will be
exaggerating, and the third may be telling
the truth. With him you must settle on the
spot; but always remember that a man
who's making a claim never underestimates
his case, and that you can generally compro
mise for something less than the first figure.
With the second you must sympathize, and
say that the matter will be reported to head
quarters and the boss of the canning-room

'33

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

called up on the carpet and made to promise
that it will never happen again. With the
first you needn't bother. There's no use
feeding expensive " hen-food " to an old
Dominick that sucks eggs. The chances are
that the car weighed out more than it was
billed, and that the fellow played the hose
on it himself and added a thousand pounds
of cheap salt before he jobbed it out to his
trada

Where you're going to slip up at first is
in knowing which is which, but if you don't
learn pretty quick you'll not travel very far
for the house. For your own satisfaction I
will say right here that you may know you
are in a fair way of becoming a good drum
mer by three things :

First — When you send us Orders.

Second — More Orders.

Third— Big Orders.

If you do this you won't have a great deal
of time to write long letters, and we wori^t
have a great deal of time to read them, for

'34

LETTERS TO HIS SON

we will be very, very busy here making and
shipping the goods. We aren't specially in
terested in orders that the other fellow gets,
or in knowing how it happened after it has
happened. If you like life on the road you
simply won't let it happen. So just send us
your address every day and your orders.
They will tell us all that we want to know
about " the situation."

I was cured of sending information to the
house when I was very, very young — in fact,
on the first trip which I made on the road.
I was traveling out of Chicago for Hammer
& Hawkins, wholesale dry-goods, gents' fur
nishings and notions. They started me out
to round up trade in the river towns down
Egypt ways, near Cairo.

I hadn't more than made my first town
and sized up the population before I began
to feel happy, because I saw that business
ought to be very good there. It appeared as
if everybody in that town needed something
in my line. The clerk of the hotel where I

'35

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

registered wore a dicky and his cuffs were
tied to his neck by pieces of string run up
his sleeves, and most of the merchants on
Main Street were in their shirt-sleeves — at
least those that had shirts were — and so far
as I could judge there wasn't a whole pair
of galluses among them. Some were using
wire, some a little rope, and others just faith
— buckled extra tight. Pride of the Prairie
XXX flour sacks seemed to be the nobby
thing in boys' suitings there. Take it by and
large, if ever there was a town which looked
as if it had a big, short line of dry-goods,
gents' furnishings and notions to cover, it
was that one.

But when I caught the proprietor of the
general store during a lull in the demand
for navy plug, he wouldn't even look at my
samples, and when I began to hint that the
people were pretty ornery dressers he reck
oned that he " would paste me one if I
warn't so young." Wanted to know what I
meant by coming swelling around in song-
136

LETTERS TO HIS SON

and-dance clothes and getting funny at the
expense of people who made their living
honestly. Allowed that when it came to a
humorous get-up my clothes were the orig
inal end-man's gag.

I noticed on the way back to the hotel
that every fellow holding up a hitching-post
was laughing, and I began to look up and
down the street for the joke, not understand
ing at first that the reason why I couldn't
see it was because I was it. Right there I
began to learn that, while the Prince of
Wales may wear the correct thing in hats,
it's safer when you're out of his sphere of
influence to follow the styles that the hotel
clerk sets; that the place to sell clothes is
in the city, where every one seems to have
plenty of them; and that the place to sell
mess pork is in the country, where every
one keeps hogs. That is why when a fellow
comes to me for advice about moving to a
new country, where there are more oppor
tunities, I advise him — if he is built right
137

A MERCHANT'S LETTERS

— to go to an old city where there is more
money.

I wrote in to the house pretty often on
that trip, explaining how it was, going over
the whole situation very carefully, and tell
ing what our competitors were doing, wher
ever I could find that they were doing any
thing.

I gave old Hammer credit for more curi
osity than he possessed, because when I
reached Cairo I found a telegram from him
reading : " Know what our competitors are
doing: they are getting all the trade. But
ivhat are you doing?" I saw then that the
time for explaining was gone and that the
moment for resigning had arrived ; so I just
naturally sent in my resignation. That is
what we will expect from you — or orders.
Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

138

No, 11

FROM John Graham,
at the Union Stock
Yards in Chicago,
to his son, Pierrepont, at
The Planters' Palace
Hotel, at Big Gap, Ken
tucky. Mr. Pierrepont's
orders are small and his
expenses are large, so his
father feels pessimistic
over his prospects.

CHICAGO, April 10, 189 —
Dear Picrrepont: You ought to be feeling
mighty thankful to-day to the fellow who
invented fractions, because while your sell
ing cost for last month was within the limit,
it took a good deal of help from the decimal
system to get it there. You are in the posi
tion of the boy who was chased by the bull —
open to congratulations because he reached
the tree first, and to condolence because a
fellow up a tree, in the middle of a forty-
acre lot, with a disappointed bull for com
pany, is in a mighty bad fix.

I don't want to bear down hard on you
right at the beginning of your life on the
road, but I would feel a good deal happier
over your showing if you would make a
downright failure or a clean-cut success
once in a while, instead of always just
skinning through this way. It looks to me
as if you were trying only half as hard as
141

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

you could, and in trying it's the second half
that brings results. If there's one piece of
knowledge that is of less use to a fellow
than knowing when he's beat, it's knowing
when he's done just enough work to keep
from being fired. Of course, you are bright
enough to be a half-way man, and to hold a
half-way place on a half-way salary by
doing half the work you are capable of, but
you've got to add dynamite and ginger and
jounce to your equipment if you want to get
the other half that's coming to you. You've
got to believe that the Lord made the first
hog with the Graham brand burned in the
skin, and that the drove which rushed down
a steep place was packed by a competitor.
You've got to know your goods from A to
Izzard, from snout to tail, on the hoof and
in the can. You've got to know 'em like a
young mother knows baby talk, and to be
as proud of 'em as the young father of a
twelve-pound boy. without really thinking
that you're stretching it four pounds.
142

LETTERS TO HIS SON

You've got to believe in yourself and make
jour buyers take stock in you at par and
accrued interest. You've got to have the
scent of a bloodhound for an order, and the
grip of a bulldog on a customer. You've got
to feel the same personal solicitude over a
bill of goods that strays off to a competitor
as a parson over a backslider, and hold
special services to bring it back into the
fold. You've got to get up every morning
with determination if you're going to go to
bed with satisfaction. You've got to eat
hog, think hog, dream hog — in short, go the
whole hog if you're going to win out in the
pork-packing business.

That's a pretty liberal receipt, I know,
but it's intended for a fellow who wants to
make a good-sized pie. And the only thing
you ever find in pastry that you don't put
in yourself is flies.

You have had a wide-open chance during
the last few months to pick up a good deal
about the practical end of the business, and

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

between tripe now you ought to spend every
spare minute in the packing-house getting
posted. Nothing earns better interest than
judicious questions, and the man who in
vests in more knowledge of the business
than he has to have in order to hold his
job has capital with which to buy a mort
gage on a better one.

I may be mistaken, but I am just a little
afraid that you really did not get beyond a
bowing acquaintance with Mr. Porker when
you were here at the packing-house. Of
course, there isn't anything particularly
pretty about a hog, but any animal which
has its kindly disposition and benevolent
inclination to yield up a handsome margin
of profit to those who get close to it, is
worthy of a good deal of respect and atten
tion.

I ain't one of those who believe that a half

knowledge of a subject is useless, but it

has been my experience that when a fellow

has that half knowledge he finds it's the

144

LETTERS TO HIS SON

other half which would really come in
handy. So, when a man's in the selling
end of the business what he really needs to
know is the manufacturing end; and when
he's in the factory he can't know too much
about the trade.

You're just about due now to run into a
smart Aleck buyer who'll show you a sample
of lard which he'll say was made by a com
petitor, and ask what you think the grand
jury ought to do to a house which had the
nerve to label it " leaf." Of course, you will
nose around it and look wise and say that,
while you hesitate to criticize, you are afraid
it would smell like a hot-box on a freight
if any one tried to fry doughnuts in it.
That is the place where the buyer will call
for Jack and Charlie to get in on the laugh,
and when he has wiped away the tears he
will tell you that it is your own lard, and
prove it to you. Of course, there won't be
anything really the matter with it, and if
you had been properly posted yon would

HS

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

have looked surprised when he showed it to
you and have said :

" I don't quite diagnose the case your
way, Mr. Smith ; that's a blamed sight better
lard than I thought Muggins & Co. were
making." And you'd have driven a spike
right through that fellow's little joke and
have nailed down his order hard and tight
with the same blow.

What you know is a club for yourself,
and what you don't know is a meat-ax for
the other fellow. That is why you want to
be on the lookout all the time for informa
tion about the business, and to nail a fact
just as a sensible man nails a mosquito —
the first time it settles near him. Of course,
a fellow may get another chance, but the
odds are that if he misses the first opening
he will lose a good deal of blood before he
gets the second.

Speaking of finishing up a subject as you
go along naturally calls to mind the case of
Josh Jenkinson, back in my home town.
146

LETTERS TO HIS SON

As I first remember Josh, he was just bone
and by-products. Wasn't an ounce of real
meat on him. In fact, he was so blamed
thin that when he bought an outfit of clothes
his wife used to make them over into two
vsuits for him. Josh would eat a little food
now and then, just to be sociable, but what
he really lived on was tobacco. Usually
kept a chew in one cheek and a cob pipe in
the other. He was a powerful hand for a
joke and had one of those porous heads and
movable scalps which go with a sense of
humor in a small village. Used to scare us
boys by drawing in on his pipe and letting
the smoke sort of leak out through his eyes
and ears and nose. Pretended that he was
the devil and that he was on fire inside. Old
Doc Hoover caught him at it once and told
us that he wasn't, but allowed that he was
a blood relation.

Elder Hoover was a Methodist off the tip
of the sirloin. There weren't any evasions
or generalities or metaphors in his religion.

H7

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

The lower layers of the hereafter weren't
Hades or Gehenna with him, but just plain
Hell, and mighty hot, too, you bet His
creed was built of sheet iron and bolted to
gether with inch rivets. He kept the fire
going under the boiler night and day, and
he was so blamed busy stoking it that he
didn't have much time to map out the golden
streets. When he blew off it was super
heated steam and you could see the sinners
who were in range fairly sizzle and parboil
and shrivel up. There wasi no give in Doc;
no compromises with creditors ; no fire sales.
He wasn't one of those elders who would let
a fellow dance the lancers if he'd swear off
on waltzing; or tell him it was all right to
play whist in the parlor if he'd give up
penny-ante at the Dutchman's; or wink at
his smoking if he'd quit whisky.

Josh knew this, so he kept away from

the camp-meeting, though the Elder gunned

for him pretty steady for a matter of five

years. But one summer when the meetings

148

LETTERS TO HIS SON

were extra interesting, it got so lonesome
sitting around with the whole town off in
the woods that Josh sneaked out to the edge
of the camp and hid behind some bushes
where he could hear what was going on.
The elder was carrying about two hundred
and fifty pounds, by the gauge, that day,
and with that pressure he naturally traveled
into the sinners pretty fast. The first thing
Josh knew he was out from under cover and
a-hallelujahing down between the seats to
the mourners' bench. When the elder saw
what was coming he turned on the forced
draft. Inside of ten minutes he had Josh
under conviction and had taken his pipe
and plug away from him.

I am just a little inclined to think that
Josh would have backslid if he hadn't been
a practical joker, and a critter of that breed
is about as afraid of a laugh on himself as
a raw colt of a steam roller. So he stuck it
out, and began to take an interest in meal
time. Kicked because it didn't come eight
149

A SELF-MADE MERCHANTS

or ten times a day. The first thing he knew
he had fatted up till he filled out his half
suit and had to put it away in camphor.
Then he bought a whole suit, living-skeleton
size. In two weeks he had strained a shoul
der seam and looked as if he was wearing
tights. So he retired it from circulation
and moved up a size. That one was a little
loose, and it took him a good month to
crowd it.

Josh was a pretty hefty man now, but he
kept right on bulging out, building on an
addition here and putting out a bay window
there, all the time retiring new suits, until
his wife had fourteen of them laid away in
the chest

Said it didn't worry him; that he was
bound to lose flesh sooner or later. That
he would catch them on the way down, and
wear them out one at a time. But when he
got up to three hundred and fifty pounds
he just stuck. Tried exercise and dieting
and foreign waters, but he couldn't budge
150

LETTERS TO HIS SON

an ounce. In the end he had to give the
clothes to the Widow Doolan, who had four
teen sons in assorted sizes.

I simply mention Josh in passing as an
example of the fact that a fellow can't bank
on getting a chance to go back and take up
a thing that he has passed over once, and
to call your attention to the fact that a man
who knows his own business thoroughly will
find an opportunity sooner or later of reach
ing the most hardened cuss of a buyer on his
route and of getting a share of his.

I want to caution you right here against
learning all there is to know about pork-
packing too quick. Business is a good deal
like a nigger's wool — it doesn't look very
deep, but there are a heap of kinks and
curves in it.

When I was a boy and the fellow in pink
tights came into the ring, I used to think
he was doing all that could be reasonably
expected when he kept eight or ten glass
balls going in the air at once. But the

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

beautiful lady in the blue tights would keep
right on handing him things — kerosene
lamps and carving knives and miscellaneous
cutlery and crockery, and he would get them
going, too, without losing his happy smile.
The great trouble with most young fellows
is that they think they have learned all they
need to know and have given the audience
its money's worth when they can keep the
glass balls going, and so they balk at the
kerosene lamps and the rest of the imple
ments of light housekeeping. But there's
no real limit to the amount of extras a fel
low with the right stuff in him will take on
without losing his grin.

I want to see you come up smiling; I
want to feel you in the business, not only
on pay day but every other day. I want to
know that you are running yourself full
time and overtime, stocking up your brain
so that when the demand comes you will
have the goods to offer. So far, you promise
to make a fair to ordinary salesman among
152

LETTERS TO HIS SON

our retail trade. I want to see you grow
into a car-lot man — so strong and big that
you will force us to see that you are out
of place among the little fellows. Buck up !
Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

153

No, 12

FROM John Graham,
at the Union Stock
Yards in Chicago,
to his son, Pierrepont, at
Little Delmonico's, Prairie
Centre, Indiana. Mr.
Pierrepont has annoyed
his father by accepting his
criticisms in a spirit of
gentle, but most repre
hensible, resignation.

XII

CHICAGO, April 15, 189 —
Dear Pierrepont: Don't ever write me an
other of those sad, sweet, gentle sufferer
letters. It's only natural that a colt should
kick a trifle when he's first hitched up to
the break wagon, and I'm always a little sus
picious of a critter that stands too quiet
under the whip. I know it's not meekness,
but meanness, that I've got to fight, and it's
hard to tell which is the worst.

The only animal wThich the Bible calls
patient is an ass, and that's both good doc
trine and good natural history. For I had
to make considerable of a study of the Mis
souri mule when I was a boy, and I discov
ered that he's not really patient, but that
he only pretends to be. You can cuss
him out till you've nothing but holy
thoughts left in you to draw on, and you
can lay the rawhide on him till he's striped
like a circus zebra, and if you're cautious

157

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

and reserved in his company he will just
look grieved and pained and resigned. But
all the time that mule will be getting meaner
and meaner inside, adding compound cuss-
edness every thirty days, and practicing
drop kicks in his stall after dark.

Of course, nothing in this world is wholly
bad, not even a mule, for he is half horse.
But my observation has taught me that the
horse half of him is the front half, and
that the only really safe way to drive him
is hind-side first I suppose that you could
train one to travel that way, but it really
doesn't seem worth while when good road
sters are so cheap.

That's the way I feel about these young
fellows who lazy along trying to turn in at
every gate where there seems to be a little
shade, and sulking and balking whenever
you say " git-ap " to them. They are the
men who are always howling that Bill
Smith was promoted because he had a pull,
and that they are being held down because

LETTERS TO HIS SON

the manager is jealous of them. I've seen a
good many pulls in my time, but I never
saw one strong enough to lift a man any
higher than he could raise himself by his
boot straps, or long enough to reach through
the cashier's window for more money than
its owner earned.

When a fellow brags that he has a pull,
he's a liar or his employer's a fool. And
when a fellow whines that he's being held
down, the truth is, as a general thing, that
his boss can't hold him up. He just picks
a nice, soft spot, stretches out flat on his
back, and yells that some heartless brute
has knocked him down and is sitting on his
chest.

A good man is as full of bounce as a cat
with a small boy and a bull terrier after
him. When he's thrown to the dog from
the second-story window, he fixes while he's
sailing through the air to land right, and
when the dog jumps for the spot where he
hits, he isn't there, but in the top of the

'59

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

tree across the street. He's a good deal like
the little red-headed cuss that we saw in
the football game you took me to. Every
time the herd stampeded it would start in
to trample and paw and gore him. One
minute the whole bunch would be on top
of him and the next he would be loping off
down the range, spitting out hair and pieces
of canvas jacket, or standing on one side as
cool as a hog on ice, watching the mess un
snarl and the removal of the cripples.

I didn't understand football, but I under
stood that little sawed-off. He knew his
business. And when a fellow knows his
business, he doesn't have to explain to peo
ple that he does. It isn't what a man knows,
but what he thinks he knows that he brags
about Big talk means little knowledge.

There's a vast difference between having
a carload of miscellaneous facts sloshing
around loose in your head and getting all
mixed up in transit, and carrying the same
assortment properly boxed and crated for
1 60

LETTERS TO HIS SON

convenient handling and immediate de
livery. A ham never weighs so much as
when it's half cured. When it has soaked
in all the pickle that it can, it has to sweat
out most of it in the smoke-house before it
is any real good; and when you've soaked
up all the information you can hold, you
will have to forget half of it before you will
be of any real use to the house. If there's
anything worse than knowing too little, it's
knowing too much. Education will broaden
a narrow mind, but there's no known cure
for a big head. The best you can hope is
that it will swell up and bust; and then, of
course, there's nothing left. Poverty never
spoils a good man, but prosperity often does.
It's easy to stand hard times, because that's
the only thing you can do, but in good times
the fool-killer has to do night work.

I simply mention these things in a general

way. A good many of them don't apply to

you, no doubt, but it won't do any harm

to make sure. Most men get cross-eyed

161

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

when they come to size themselves up, and
see an angel instead of what they're trying
to look at. There's nothing that tells the
truth to a woman like a mirror, or that lies
harder to a man.

What I am sure of is that you have got
the sulks too quick. If you knew all that
you'll have to learn before you'll be a big,
broad-gauged merchant, you might have
something to be sulky about

When you've posted yourself properly
about the business you'll have taken a step
in the right direction — you will be able to
get your buyer's attention. All the other
steps are those which lead you into his con
fidence.

Right here you will discover that you are
in the fix of the young fellow who married
his best girl and took her home to live with
his mother. He found that the only way in
which he could make one happy was by
making the other mad, and that when he
tried to make them both happy he only sue-
162

LETTERS TO HIS SON

ceeded in making them both mad. Naturally,
in the end, his wife divorced him and his
mother disinherited him, and left her money
to an orphan asylum, because, as she sen
sibly observed in the codicil, " orphans can
not be ungrateful to their parents." But if
the man had had a little tact he would have
kept them in separate houses, and have let
each one think that she was getting a trifle
the best of it, without really giving it to
either.

Tact is the knack of keeping quiet at the
right time; of being so agreeable yourself
that no one can be disagreeable to you; of
making inferiority feel like equality. A
tactful man can pull the stinger from a bee
without getting stung.

Some men deal in facts, and call Bill
Jones a liar. They get knocked down.
Some men deal in subterfuges, and say that
Bill Jones' father was a kettle-rendered liar,
and that his mother's maiden name was
Sapphira, and that any one who believes in
163

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

the Darwinian theory should pity rather
than blame their son. They get disliked.
But your tactful man says that since Baron
Munchausen no one has been so chuck full
of bully reminiscences as Bill Jones; and
when that comes back to Bill he is half
tickled to death, because he doesn't know
that the higher criticism has hurt the
Baron's reputation. That man gets the
trade.

There are two kinds of information: one
to which everybody's entitled, and that ia
taught at school; and one which nobody
ought to know except yourself, and that is
what you think of Bill Jones. Of course,
where you feel a man is not square you will
be armed to meet him, but never on his own
ground. Make him be honest with you if
you can, but don't let him make you dis
honest with him.

When you make a mistake, don't make
the second one — keeping it to yourself.
Own up. The time to sort out rotten eggs
164

LETTERS TO HIS SON

is at the nest The deeper you hide them in
the case the longer they stay in circulation,
and the worse impression they make when
they finally come to the breakfast-table. A
mistake sprouts a lie when you cover it up.
And one lie breeds enough distrust to choke
out the prettiest crop of confidence that a
fellow ever cultivated.

Of course, it's easy to have the confidence
of the house, or the confidence of the buyer,
but you've got to have both. The house pays
you your salary, and the buyer helps you
earn it. If you skin the buyer you will
lose your trade; and if you play tag with
the house you will lose your job. You've
simply got to walk the fence straight, for
if you step to either side you'll find a good
deal of air under you.

Even after you are able to command the
attention and the confidence of your buyers,
you've got to be up and dressed all day to
hold what trade is yours, and twisting and
turning all night to wriggle into some of

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

the other fellow's. When business is good,
that is the time to force it, because it will
come easy; and when it is bad, that is the
time to force it, too, because we will need
the orders.

Speaking of making trade naturally calls
to my mind my old acquaintance, Herr
Doctor Paracelsus Von Munsterberg, who,
when I was a boy, came to our town " fresh
from his healing triumphs at the Courts of
Europe," as his handbills ran, " not to make
money, but to confer on suffering mankind
the priceless boon of health; to make the
sick well, and the well better."

Munsterberg wasn't one of your common,
coarse, county-fair barkers. He was a pretty
high-toned article. Had nice, curly black
hair and didn't spare the bear's grease.
Wore a silk hat and a Prince Albert coat all
the time, except when he was orating, and
then he shed the coat to get freer action
with his arms. And when he talked he used
the whole language, you bet.
166

LETTERS TO HIS SON

Of course, the Priceless Boon was put up
in bottles, labeled Munsterberg's Miraculous
Medical Discovery, and, simply to introduce
it, he was willing to sell the small size at
fifty cents and the large one at a dollar. In
addition to being a philanthropist the Doc
tor was quite a hand at card tricks, played
the banjo, sung coon songs and imitated a
saw going through a board very creditably.
All these accomplishments, and the story
of how he cured the Emperor of Austria's
sister with a single bottle, drew a crowd,
but they didn't sell a drop of the Discovery.
Nobody in town was really sick, and those
who thought they were had stocked up the
week before with Quackenboss' Quick Qui
nine Kure from a fellow that made just as
liberal promises as Munsterberg and sold
the large size at fifty cents, including a
handsome reproduction of an old master for
the parlor.

Some fellows would just have cussed a
little and have moved on to the next town,
167

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

but Munsterberg made a beautiful speech,
praising the climate, and saying that in his
humble capacity he had been privileged to
meet the strength and beauty of many
Courts, but never had he been in any place
where strength was stronger or beauty beau-
tifuller than right here in Hoskins' Corners.
He prayed with all his heart, though it
was almost too much to hope, that the chol
era, which was raging in Kentucky, would
pass this Eden by; that the yellow fever,
which was devastating Tennessee, would
halt abashed before this stronghold of
health, though he felt bound to add that it
was a peculiarly malignant and persistent
disease ; that the smallpox, which was creep
ing southward from Canada, would smite
the next town instead of ours, though he
must own that it was no respecter of per
sons; that the diphtheria and scarlet- fever,
which were sweeping over New England
and crowding the graveyards, could be kept
from crossing the Hudson, though they were
168

LETTERS TO HIS SON

great travelers and it was well to be pre
pared for the worst; that we one and all
might providentially escape chills, head
aches, coated tongue, pains in the back, loss
of sleep and that tired feeling, but it was
almost too much to ask, even of such a gen
erous climate. In any event, he begged us
to beware of worthless nostrums and base
imitations. It made him sad to think that
to-day we were here and that to-morrow
we were running up an undertaker's bill, all
for the lack of a small bottle of Medicine's
greatest gift to Man.

I could see that this speech made a lot of
women in the crowd powerful uneasy, and I
heard the Widow Judkins say that she was
afraid it was going to be " a mighty sickly
winter," and she didn't know as it would do
any harm to have some of that stuff in the
house. But the Doctor didn't offer the
Priceless Boon for sale again. He went
right from his speech into an imitation of a
dog, with a tin can tied to his tail, running
169

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

down Main Street and crawling under Si
Hooper's store at the far end of it — an imi
tation, he told ns, to which the Sultan was
powerful partial, " him being a cruel man
and delighting in torturing the poor dumb
beasts which the Lord has given us to love,
honor and cherish."

He kept this sort of thing up till he judged
it was our bedtime, and then he thanked us
" one and all for our kind attention," and
said that as his mission in life was to amuse
as well as to heal, he would stay over till
the next afternoon and give a special
matine'e for the little ones, whom he loved
for the sake of his own golden-haired Willie,
back there over the Rhine.

Naturally, all the women and children
turned out the next afternoon, though the
men had to be at work in the fields and the
stores, and the Doctor just made us roar for
half an hour. Then, while he was singing
an uncommon funny song, Mrs. Brown's
Johnny let out a howl.
170

LETTERS TO HIS SON

The Doctor stopped short " Bring the
poor little sufferer here, Madam, and let me
see if I can soothe his agony," says he.

Mrs. Brown was a good deal embarrassed
and more scared, but she pushed Johnny,
yelling all the time, up to the Doctor, who
began tapping him on the back and looking
down his throat. Naturally, this made
Johnny cry all the harder, and his mother
was beginning to explain that she " reckoned
she must have stepped on his sore toe,"
when the Doctor struck his forehead, cried
•'Eureka!", whipped out a bottle of the
Priceless Boon, and forced a spoonful of it
into Johnny's mouth. Then he gave the boy
three slaps on the back and three taps on
the stomach, ran one hand along his wind
pipe, and took a small button-hook out of
his mouth with the other.

Johnny made all his previous attempts at

yelling sound like an imitation when ne saw

this, and he broke away and ran toward

home. Then the Doctor stuck one hand in

171

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

over the top of his vest, waved the button
hook in the other, and cried : " Woman, your
child is cured ! Your button-hook is found ! "

Then he went on to explain that when
baby swallowed safety-pins, or pennies, or
fish-bones, or button-hooks, or any little
household articles, that all you had to do
was to give it a spoonful of the Priceless
Boon, tap it gently fore and aft, hold your
hand under its mouth, and the little article
would drop out like chocolate from a slot
machine.

Every one was talking at once, now, and
nobody had any time for Mrs. Brown, who
was trying to say something. Finally she
got mad and followed Johnny home. Half
an hour later the Doctor drove out of the
Corners, leaving his stock of the Priceless
Boon distributed — for the usual considera
tion — among all the mothers in town.

It was not until the next day that Mrs.
Brown got a chance to explain that while
the Boon might be all that the Doctor
172

LETTERS TO HIS SON

claimed for it, no one in her house had ever
owned a button-hook, because her old man
wore jack-boots and she wore congress shoes,
and little Johnny wore just plain feet.

I simply mention the Doctor in passing,
not as an example in morals, but in methods.
Some salesmen think that selling is like
eating — to satisfy an existing appetite; but
a good salesman is like a good cook — he
can create an appetite when the buyer isn't
hungry.

I don't care how good old methods are,
new ones are better, even if they're only
just as good. That's not so Irish as it
sounds. Doing the same thing in the same
way year after year is like eating a quail
a day for thirty days. Along toward the
middle of the month a fellow begins to long
for a broiled crow or a slice of cold dog.
Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

'73

No, 13

FROM John Graham,
at the Union Stock
Yards in Chicago,
to his son, Pierrepont,
care of The Hoosier Gro
cery Co., Indianapolis, In
diana. Mr. Pierrepont's
orders have been looking
up, so the old man gives
him a pat on the back —
but not too hard a one.

XIII

CHICAGO, May 10, 189 —
Dear Pierrepont: That order for a car
load of Spotless Snow Leaf from old Shorter
is the kind of back talk I like. We can
stand a little more of the same sort of sass-
ing. I have told the cashier that you will
draw thirty a week after this, and I want
you to have a nice suit of clothes made and
send the bill to the old man. Get something
that won't keep people guessing whether
you follow the horses or do buck and wing
dancing for a living. Your taste in clothes
seems to be lasting longer than the rest of
your college education. You looked like a
young widow who had raised the second
crop of daisies over the deceased when you
were in here last week.

Of course, clothes don't make the man,
but they make all of him except his hands
and face during business hours, and that's
a pretty considerable area of the human ani-

177

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

mal. A dirty shirt may hide a pure heart,
but it seldom covers a clean skin. If you
look as if you had slept in your clothes, most
men will jump to the conclusion that you
have, and you will never get to know them
well enough to explain that your head is so
full of noble thoughts that you haven't time
to bother with the dandruff on your shoul
ders. And if you wear blue and white
striped pants and a red necktie, you will
find it difficult to get close enough to a dea
con to be invited to say grace at his table,
even' if you never play for anything except
coffee or beans.

Appearances are deceitful, I know, but so
long as they are, there's nothing like having
them deceive for us instead of against us.
I've seen a ten-cent shave and a five-cent
shine get a thousand-dollar job, and a cigar
ette and a pint of champagne knock the bot
tom out of a million-dollar pork corner.
Four or five years ago little Jim Jackson
had the bears in the provision pit hibernat-

178

LETTERS TO HIS SON

ing and living on their own fat till one
morning, the day after he had run the price
of mess pork up to twenty dollars and nailed
it there, some one saw him drinking a small
bottle just before he went on 'Change, and
told it round among the brokers on the
floor. The bears thought Jim must have
had bad news, to be bracing up at that time
in the morning, so they perked up and ever
lastingly sold the mess pork market down
through the bottom of the pit to solid earth.
There wasn't even a grease spot left of that
corner when they got through. As it hap
pened, Jim hadn't had any bad news; he
just took the drink because he felt pretty
good, and things were coming his way.

But it isn't enough to be all right in this
world; you've got to look all right as well,
because two-thirds of success is making peo
ple think you are all right. So you have
to be governed by general rules, even though
you may be an exception. People have seen
four and four make eight, and the yonng
179

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

man and the small bottle make a damned
fool so often that they are hard to convince
that the combination can work out any other
way. The Lord only allows so much fun
for every man that He makes. Some get it
going fishing most of the time and making
money the rest; some get it making money
most of the time and going fishing the rest.
You can take your choice, but the two lines
of business don't gee. The more money, the
less fish. The farther you go, the straighter
you've got to walk.

I used to get a heap of solid comfort out
of chewing tobacco. Picked up the habit in
Missouri, and took to it like a Yankee to
pie. At that time pretty much every one in
those parts chewed, except the Elder and
the women, and most of them snuffed.
Seemed a nice, sociable habit, and I never
thought anything special about it till I
came North and your Ma began to tell me
it was a vile relic of barbarism, meaning
Missouri, I suppose. Then I confined opera-
180

LETTERS TO HIS SON

tions to my office and took to fine cut in
stead of plug, as being tonier.

Well, one day, about ten years ago, when
I was walking through the office, I noticed
one of the boys on the mailing-desk, a
mighty likely-looking youngster, sort of
working his jaws as he wrote. I didn't stop
to think, but somehow I was mad in a min
ute. Still, I didn't say a word — just stood
and looked at him while he speeded up the
way the boys will when they think the old
man is nosing around to see whose salary he
can raise next.

I stood over him for a matter of five min
utes, and all the time he was pretending
not to see me at all. I will say that he
was a pretty game boy, for he never weak
ened for a second. But at last, seeing he
was about to choke to death, I said, sharp
and sudden — " Spit."

Well, sir, I thought it was a cloudburst.
You can bet I was pretty hot, and I started
in to curl up that young fellow to a crisp.
181

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

But before I got out a word, something hit
me all of a sudden, and I just went up to
the boy and put my hand on his shoulder
and said, " Let's swear off, son."

Naturally, he swore off — he was so blamed
scared that he would have quit breathing if
I had asked him to, I reckon. And I had
to take my stock of fine cut and send it to
the heathen.

I simply mention this little incident in
passing as an example of the fact that a
man can't do what he pleases in this world,
because the higher he climbs the plainer
people can see him. Naturally, as the old
man's son, you have a lot of fellows watch
ing you and betting that you are no good.
If you succeed they will say it was an acci
dent; and if you fail they will say it was a
cinch.

There are two unpardonable sins in this

world — success and failure. Those who

succeed can't forgive a fellow for being a

failure, and those who fail can't forgive him

182

LETTERS TO HIS SON

for being a success. If you do succeed,
though, you will be too busy to bother yery
much about what the failures think.

I dwell a little on this matter of appear
ances because so few men are really think
ing animals. Where one fellow reads a
stranger's character in his face, a hundred
read it in his get-up. We have shown a
dozen breeds of dukes and droves of college
presidents and doctors of divinity through
the packing-house, and the workmen never
noticed them except to throw livers at them
when they got in their way. But when John
L. Sullivan went through the stock yards
it just simply shut down the plant. The
men quit the benches with a yell and lined
up to cheer him. You see, John looked his
job, and you didn't have to explain to the
men that he was the real thing in prize
fighters. Of course, when a fellow gets to
the point where he is something in particu
lar, he doesn't have to care because he
doesn't look like anything special; but while

183

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

a young fellow isn't anything in particular,
it is a mighty valuable asset if he looks like
something special.

Just here I want to say that while it's all
right for the other fellow to be influenced
by appearances, it's all wrong for you to
go on them. Back up good looks by good
character yourself, and make sure that the
other fellow does the same. A suspicious
man makes trouble for himself, but a
cautious one saves it. Because there ain't
any rotten apples in the top layer, it ain't
always safe to bet that the whole barrel is
sound.

A man doesn't snap up a horse just be
cause he looks all right. As a usual thing
that only makes him wonder what really is
the matter that the other fellow wants to
sell. So he leads the nag out into the
middle of a ten-acre lot, where the light will
strike him good and strong, and examines
every hair of his hide, as if he expected to
find it near-seal, or some other base imita-
184

LETTERS TO HIS SON

tion; and he squints under each hoof for
the grand hailing sign of distress; and he
peeks down his throat for dark secrets. If
the horse passes this degree the buyer drives
him twenty or thirty miles, expecting him to
turn out a roarer, or to find that he balks,
or shies, or goes lame, or develops some
other horse nonsense. If after all that there
are no bad symptoms, he offers fifty less
than the price asked, on general principles,
and for fear he has missed something.

Take men and horses, by and large, and
they run pretty much the same. There's
nothing like trying a man in harness a while
before you bind yourself to travel very far
with him.

I remember giving a nice-looking, clean
shaven fellow a job on the billing-desk, just
on his looks, but he turned out such a poor
hand at figures that I had to fire him at the
end of a week. It seemed that the morning
he struck me for the place he had pawned
his razor for fifteen cents in order to get a

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

shave. Naturally, if I had known that in
the first place I wouldn't have hired him as
a human arithmetic.

Another time I had a collector that I set
a heap of store by. Always handled himself
just right when he talked to you and kept
himself looking right up to the mark. His
salary wasn't very big, but he had such a
persuasive way that he seemed to get a
dollar and a half's worth of value out of
every dollar that he earned. Never crowded
the fashions and never gave 'em any slack.
If sashes were the thing with summer
shirts, why Charlie had a sash, you bet, and
when tight trousers were the nobby trick in
pants, Charlie wore his double reefed. Take
him fore and aft, Charlie looked all right
and talked all right — always careful, always
considerate, always polite.

One noon, after he had been with me for

a year or two, I met him coming in from

his route looking glum; so I handed him

fifty dollars as a little sweetener. I never

1 86

LETTERS TO HIS SON

saw a fifty cheer a man up like that one did
Charlie, and he thanked me just right —
didn't stutter and didn't slop over. I ear
marked Charlie for a raise and a better job
right there.

Just after that I got mixed up with some
work in my private office and I didn't look
around again till on toward closing time.
Then, right outside my door I met the office
manager, and he looked mighty glum, too.

" I was just going to knock on your door,"
said he.

"Well?" I asked.

" Charlie Chasenberry is eight hundred
dollars short in his collections."

" Um — m," I said, without blinking, but
I had a gone feeling just the same.

" I had a plain-clothes man here to arrest
him this evening, but he didn't come in."

" Looks as if he'd skipped, eh? " I asked.

" I'm afraid so, but I don't know how.
He didn't have a dollar this morning, be
cause he tried to overdraw his salary ac-

A MERCHANT'S LETTERS

count and I wouldn't let him, and lie didn't
collect any bills to-day because he had al
ready collected everything that was due
this week and lost it bucking the tiger."

I didn't say anything, but I suspected
that there was a sucker somewhere in the
office. The next day I was sure of it, for I
got a telegram from the always polite and
thoughtful Charlie, dated at Montreal :

" Many, many thanks, dear Mr. Gra
ham, for your timely assistance."

Careful as usual, you see, about the little
things, for there were just ten words in the
message. But that " Many, many thanks,
dear Mr. Graham," was the closest to
slopping over I had ever known him to come.
I consider the little lesson that Charlie
gave me as cheap at eight hundred and fifty
dollars, and I pass it along to you because
it may save you a thousand or two on your
experience account.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.
1 88

No, 14

FROM John Graham,
at the Union Stock
Yards in Chicago,
to his son, Pierrepont, at
The Travelers' Rest, New
Albany, Indiana. Mr.
Pierrepont has taken a lit
tle flyer in short ribs on
'Change, and has acci
dentally come into the
line of his father's vision.

XIV

CHICAGO, July 15, 189—
Dear Pierrepont: I met young Horshey,
of Horshey & Horter, the grain and pro
vision brokers, at luncheon yesterday, and
while we were talking over the light run of
hogs your name came up somehow, and he
congratulated me on having such a smart
son. Like an old fool, I allowed that you
were bright enough to come in out of the
rain if somebody called you, though I ought
to have known better, for it seems as if I
never start in to brag about your being
sound and sweet that I don't have to wind
up by allowing a rebate for skippers.

Horshey was so blamed anxious to show
that you were over-weight — he wants to
handle some of my business on 'Change —
that he managed to prove you a light-weight
Told me you had ordered him to sell a hun
dred thousand ribs short last week, and that
he had just bought them in on a wire from
191

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

you at a profit of four hundred and sixty-
odd dollars. I was mighty hot, you bet, to
know that you had been speculating, but
I had to swallow and allow that you were
a pretty sharp boy. I told Horshey to close
out the account and send me a check for
your profits and I would forward it, as I
wanted to give you a tip on the market be
fore you did any more trading.

I inclose the check herewith. Please in
dorse it over to the treasurer of The Home
for Half Orphans and return at once, I will
see that he gets it with your compliments.

Now, I want to give you that tip on the
market There are several reasons why it
isn't safe for you to trade on 'Change just
now, but the particular one is that Graham
& Co. will fire you if you do. Trading on
margin is a good deal like paddling around
the edge of the old swimming hole — it seems
safe and easy at first, but before a fellow
knows it he has stepped off the edge into
deep water. The wheat pit is only thirty
192

LETTERS TO HIS SON

feet across, but it reaches clear down to
Hell. And trading on margin means trad
ing on the ragged edge of nothing. When
a man buys, he's buying something that the
other fellow hasn't got. When a man sells,
he's selling something that he hasn't got.
And it's been my experience that the net
profit on nothing is nit. When a speculator
wins he don't stop till he loses, and when
he loses he can't stop till he wins.

You have been in the packing business
long enough now to know that it takes a bull
only thirty seconds to lose his hide; and if
you'll believe me when I tell you that they
can skin a bear just as quick on 'Change,
you won't have a Board of Trade Indian
using your pelt for a rug during the long
winter months.

Because you are the son of a pork packer
you may think that you know a little more
than the next fellow about paper pork.
There's nothing in it. The poorest men on
earth are the relations of millionaires.

193

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

When I sell futures on 'Change, they're
against hogs that are traveling into dry salt
at the rate of one a second, and if the market
goes up on me I've got the solid meat to
deliver. But, if you lose, the only part of
the hog which you can deliver is the squeal.

I wouldn't bear down so hard on this
matter if money was the only thing that a
fellow could lose on 'Change. But if a clerk
sells pork, and the market goes down, he's
mighty apt to get a lot of ideas with holes
in them and bad habits as the small change
of his profits. And if the market goes up,
he's likely to go short his self-respect to
win back his money.

Most men think that they can figure up
all their assets in dollars and cents, but a
merchant may owe a hundred thousand dol
lars and be solvent. A man's got to lose
more than money to be broke. When a
fellow's got a straight backbone and a clear
eye his creditors don't have to lie awake
nights worrying over his liabilities. You

194

LETTERS TO HIS SON

can hide your meanness from your brain and
your tongue, but the eye and the backbone
won't keep secrets. When the tongue lies,
the eyes tell the truth.

I know you'll think that the old man is
bucking and kicking up a lot of dust over
a harmless little flyer. But I've kept a heap
smarter boys than you out of Joliet when
they found it easy to feed the Board of
Trade hog out of my cash drawer, after it
had sucked up their savings in a couple of
laps.

You must learn not to overwork a dollar
any more than you would a horse. Three
per cent, is a small load for it to draw ; six,
a safe one ; when it pulls in ten for you it's
likely working out West and you've got to
watch to see that it doesn't buck; when it
makes twenty you own a blame good critter
or a mighty foolish one, and you want to
make dead sure which ; but if it draws a hun
dred it's playing the races or something
just as hard on horses and dollars, and the

195

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

first thing you know you won't have even a
carcass to haul to the glue factory.

I dwell a little on this matter of specula
tion because you've got to live next door to
the Board of Trade all your life, and it's a
safe thing to know something about a neigh
bor's dogs before you try to pat them. Sure
Things, Straight Tips and Dead Cinches
will come running out to meet you, wagging
their tails and looking as innocent as if they
hadn't just killed a lamb, but they'll bite.
The only safe road to follow in speculation
leads straight away from the Board of
Trade on the dead run.

Speaking of sure things naturally calls
to mind the case of my old friend Deacon
Wiggleford, whom I used to know back
in Missouri years ago. The Deacon was a
powerful pious man, and he was good ac
cording to his lights, but he didn't use a
very superior article of kerosene to keep
them burning.

Used to take up half the time in prayer-
196

LETTERS TO HIS SON

meeting talking about how we were all weak
vessels and stewards. But he was so blamed
busy exhorting others to give out of the full
ness with which the Lord had blessed them
that he sort of forgot that the Lord had
blessed him about fifty thousand dollars'
worth, and put it all in mighty safe prop
erty, too, you bet.

The Deacon had a brother in Chicago
whom he used to call a sore trial. Brother
Bill was a broker on the Board of Trade,
and, according to the Deacon, he was not
only engaged in a mighty sinful occupation,
but he was a mighty poor steward of his sin
ful gains. Smoked two-bit cigars and wore
a plug hat. Drank a little and cussed a
little and went to the Episcopal Church,
though he had been raised a Methodist. Al
together it looked as if Bill was a pretty
hard nut.

Well, one fall the Deacon decided to go to
Chicago himself to buy his winter goods, and
naturally he hiked out to Brother Bill's to
197

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

stay, which was considerable cheaper for
him than the Palmer House, though, as he
told us when he got back, it made him sick
to see the waste.

The Deacon had his mouth all fixed to tell
Brother Bill that, in his opinion, he wasn't
much better than a faro dealer, for he used
to brag that he never let anything turn
him from his duty, which meant his
meddling in other people's business. I want
to say right here that with most men duty
means something unpleasant which the
other fellow ought to do. As a matter of
fact, a man's first duty is to mind his own
business. It's been my experience that it
takes about all the thought and work which
one man can give to run one man right, and
if a fellow's putting in five or six hours a
day on his neighbor's character, he's mighty
apt to scamp the building of his own.

Well, when Brother Bill got home from
business that first night, the Deacon ex
plained that every time he lit a two-bit cigar
198

" / started in to curl up
that young fellow to a crisp."

LETTERS TO HIS SON

he was depriving a Zulu of twenty-five help
ful little tracts which might have made a
better man of him; that fast horses were a
snare and plug hats a wile of the Enemy;
that the Board of Trade was the Temple
of Belial and the brokers on it his sons and
servants.

Brother Bill listened mighty patiently to
him, and when the Deacon had pumped out
all the Scripture that was in him, and was
beginning to suck air, he sort of slunk into
the conversation like a setter pup that's
been caught with the feathers on its chops.

" Brother Zeke," says he, " I shall cer
tainly let your words soak in. I want to be
a number two red, hard, sound and clean
sort of a man, and grade contract on de
livery day. Perhaps, as you say, the rust
has got into me and the Inspector won't
pass me, and if I can see it that way I'll
settle my trades and get out of the market
for good."

The Deacon knew that Brother Bill had
199

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

scraped together considerable property, and,
as he was a bachelor, it would come to him
in case the broker was removed by any
sudden dispensation. What he really feared
was that this money might be fooled away in
high living and speculation. And so he had
banged away into the middle of the flock,
hoping to bring down those two birds. Now
that it began to look as if he might kill
off the whole bunch he started in to hedge.

"Is it safe, William?" says he.

" As Sunday-school," says Bill, " if yon
do a strictly brokerage business and don't
speculate."

" I trust, William, that you recognize the
responsibilities of your stewardship? "

Bill fetched a groan. " Zeke," says he,
"you cornered me there, and I 'spose I
might as well walk up to the Captain's office
and settle. I hadn't bought or sold a bushel
on my own account in a year till last week,
when I got your letter saying that you were
coming. Then I saw what looked like a
200

LETTERS TO HIS SON

safe chance to scalp the market for a couple
of cents a bushel, and I bought 10,000 Sep
tember, intending to turn over the profits
to you as a little present, so that you could
see the town and have a good time without
it's costing you anything."

The Deacon judged from Bill's expression
that he had got nipped and was going to
try to unload the loss on him, so he changed
his face to the one which he used when at
tending the funeral of any one who hadn't
been a professor, and came back quick and
hard:

" I'm surprised, William, that you should
think I would accept money made in gam
bling. Let this be a lesson to you. How
much did you lose? "

" That's the worst of it — I didn't lose; I
made two hundred dollars," and Bill hove
another sigh.

" Made two hundred dollars ! " echoed the
Deacon, and he changed his face again for
the one which he used when he found a lead
201

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

quarter in his till and couldn't remember
who had passed it on him.

" Yes," Bill went on, " and I'm ashamed
of it, for you've made me see things in a
new light. Of course, after what you've
said, I know it would be an insult to offer
you the money. And I feel now that' it
wouldn't be right to keep it myself. I must
sleep on it and try to find the straight thing
to do."

I guess it really didn't interfere with
Bill's sleep, but the Deacon sat up with
the corpse of that two hundred dollars, you
bet. In the morning at breakfast he asked
Brother Bill to explain all about this specu
lating business, what made the market go
up and down, and whether real corn or
wheat or pork figured in any stage of a deal.
Bill looked sort of sad and dreamy-eyed, as
if his conscience hadn't digested that two
hundred yet, but he was mighty obliging
about explaining everything to Zeke. He

202

LETTERS TO HIS SON

had changed his face for the one which he
wore when he sold an easy customer ground
peas and chicory for O. G. Java, and every
now and then he gulped as if he was going
to start a hymn. When Bill told him how
good and bad weather sent the market up
and down, he nodded and said that that part
of it was all right, because the weather was
of the Lord.

" Not on the Board of Trade it isn't," Bill
answered back ; " at least, not to any marked
extent; it's from the weather man or some
liar in the corn belt, and, as the weather
man usually guesses wrong, I reckon there
isn't any special inspiration about it. The
game is to guess what's going to happen, not
what has happened, and by the time the real
weather comes along everybody has guessed
wrong and knocked the market off a cent
or two."

That made the Deacon's chin whiskers
droop a little, but he began to ask questions
203

A SELF-MADE MERCHANTS

again, and by and by he discovered that
away behind — about a hundred miles be
hind, but that was close enough for the
Deacon — a deal in futures there were real
wheat and pork. Said then that he'd been
misinformed and misled; that speculation
was a legitimate business, involving skill
and sagacity; that his last scruple was re
moved, and that he would accept the two
hundred.

Bill brightened right up at that and
thanked him for putting it so clear and re
moving the doubts that had been worrying
him. Said that he could speculate with a
clear conscience after listening to the Dea
con's able exposition of the subject. Was
only sorry he hadn't seen him to talk it over
before breakfast, as the two hundred had
been lying so heavy on his mind all night
that he'd got up early and mailed a check
for it to the Deacon's pastor and told him
to spend it on his poor.
204

LETTERS TO HIS SON

Zeke took the evening train home in order
to pry that check out of the elder, but old
Doc. Hoover was a pretty quick stepper
himself and he'd blown the whole two hun
dred as soon as he got it, buying winter coal
for poor people.

I simply mention the Deacon in passing
as an example of the fact that it's easy for a
man who thinks he's all right to go all
wrong when he sees a couple of hundred
dollars lying around loose a little to one
side of the straight and narrowr path; and
that when he reaches down to pick up the
money there's usually a string tied to it and
a small boy in the bushes to give it a yank.
Easy-come money never draws interest;
easy-borrowed dollars pay usury.

Of course, the Board of Trade and every
other commercial exchange have their legiti
mate uses, but all you need to know just
now is that speculation by a fellow who
never owns more pork at a time than he sees
205

A MERCHANT'S LETTERS

on his breakfast plate isn't one of them.
When you become a packer you may go on
'Change as a trader; until then you «an g*
there only as a sucker.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

206

No, 15

FROM John Graham,
at the Union Stock
Yards in Chicago,
to his son, Pierrepont, at
The Scrub Oaks, Spring
Lake, Michigan. Mr.
Pierrepont has been pro
moted again, and the old
man sends him a little
advice with his appoint
ment.

XV

CHICAGO, September 1, 189 —
Dear Pierrepont: I judge from yours of
the twenty-ninth that you must have the
black bass in those parts pretty well ter
rorized. I never could quite figure it out,
but there seems to be something about a fish
that makes even a cold-water deacon see
double. I reckon it must be that while Eve
was learning the first principles of dress
making from the snake, Adam was off bass
fishing and keeping his end up by learning
how to lie.

Don't overstock yourself with those four-
pound fish yarns, though, because the boys
have been bringing them back from their
vacations till we've got enough to last us for
a year of Fridays. And if you're sending
them to keep in practice, you might as well
quit, because we've decided to take you off
the road when you come back, and make
you assistant manager of the lard depart-
209

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

merit. The salary will be fifty dollars a
week, and the duties of the position to do
your work so well that the manager can't
run the department without you, and that
you can run the department without the
manager.

To do this you will have to know lard ; to
know yourself; and to know those under
you. To some fellows lard is just hog fat,
and not always that, if they would rather
make a dollar to-day than five to-morrow.
But it was a good deal more to Jack Sum
mers, who held your new job until we had to
promote him to canned goods.

Jack knew lard from the hog to the frying
pan ; was up on lard in history and religion ;
originated what he called the " Ham and "
theory, proving that Moses' injunction
against pork must have been dissolved by
the Circuit Court, because Noah included
a couple of shoats in his cargo, and called
one of his sons Ham, out of gratitude, prob
ably, after tasting a slice broiled for the first
210

LETTERS TO HIS SON

time; argued that all the great nations lived
on fried food, and that America was the
greatest of them all, owing to the energy-
producing qualities of pie, liberally short
ened with lard.

It almost broke Jack's heart when we
decided to manufacture our new cottonseed
oil product, Seedoiline. But on reflection
he saw that it just gave him an extra hold
on the heathen that he couldn't convert to
lard, and he started right out for the Hebrew
and vegetarian vote. Jack had enthusiasm,
and enthusiasm is the best shortening for
any job; it makes heavy work light.

A good many young fellows envy their
boss because they think he makes the rules
and can do as he pleases. As a matter of
fact, he's the only man in the shop who can't.
He's like the fellow on the tight-rope —
there's plenty of scenery under him and lota
of room around him, but he's got to keep his
feet on the wire all the time and travel
straight ahead.

211

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

A clerk has just one boss to answer to —
the manager. But the manager has just
as many bosses as he has clerks under him.
He can make rules, but he's the only man
who can't afford to break them now and
then. A fellow is a boss simply because he's
a better man than those under him, and
there's a heap of responsibility in being
better than the next fellow.

No man can ask more than he gives. A
fellow who can't take orders can't give them.
If his rules are too hard for him to mind,
you can bet they are too hard for the clerks
who don't get half so much for minding
them as he does. There's no alarm clock
for the sleepy man like an early rising man
ager; and there's nothing breeds work in an
office like a busy boss.

Of course, setting a good example is just
a small part of a manager's duties. It's not
enough to settle yourself firm on the box
seat — you must have every man under you
hitched up right and well in hand. Yon
212

LETTERS TO HIS SON

can't work individuals by general rules.
Every man is a special case and needs a
special pill.

When you fix up a snug little nest for a
Plymouth Rock hen and encourage her with
a nice porcelain egg, it doesn't always follow
that she has reached the fricassee age be
cause she doesn't lay right off. Sometimes
she will respond to a little red pepper in
her food.

I don't mean by this that you ever want
to drive your men, because the lash always
leaves its worst soreness under the skin.
A hundred men will forgive a blow in the
face where one will a blow to his self-esteem.
Tell a man the truth about himself and
shame the devil if you want to, but you won't
shame the man you're trying to reach, be
cause he won't believe you. But if you can
start him on the road that will lead him to
the truth he's mighty apt to try to reform
himself before any one else finds him out.

Consider carefully before you say a hard
213

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

word to a man, but never let a chance to say
a good one go by. Praise judiciously be
stowed is money invested.

Never learn anything about your men
except from themselves. A good manager
needs no detectives, and the fellow who can't
read human nature can't manage it. The
phonograph records of a fellow's character
are lined in his face, and a man's days tell
the secrets of his nights.

Be slow to hire and quick to fire. The
time to discover incompatibility of temper
and curl-papers is before the marriage cere
mony. But when you find that you've hired
the wrong man, you can't get rid of him too
quick. Pay him an extra month, but don't
let him stay another day. A discharged
clerk in the office is like a splinter in the
thumb — a centre of soreness. There are no
exceptions to this rule, because there are no
exceptions to human nature.

Never threaten, because a threat is a
promise to pay that it isn't always con-
214

LETTERS TO HIS SON

venient to meet, but if you don't make it
good it hurts your credit. Save a threat
till you're ready to act, and then you won't
need it. In all your dealings, remember that
to-day is your opportunity ; to-morrow some
other fellow's.

Keep close to your men. When a fellow's
sitting on top of a mountain he's in a mighty
dignified and exalted position, but if he's
gazing at the clouds, he's missing a heap
of interesting and important doings down in
the valley. Never lose your dignity, of
course, but tie it up in all the red tape you
can find around the office, and tuck it away
in the safe. It's easy for a boss to awe his
clerks, but a man who is feared to his face
is hated behind his back. A competent
boss can move among his men without hav
ing to draw an imaginary line between
them, because they will see the real one if it
exists.

Besides keeping in touch with" your office
men, you want to feel your salesmen all the
215

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

time. Send each of them a letter every day
so that they won't forget that we are making
goods for which we need orders; and insist
on their sending you a line every day,
whether they have anything to say or not.
When a fellow has to write in six times a
week to the house, he uses up his explana
tions mighty fast, and he's pretty apt to
hustle for business to make his seventh
letter interesting.

Right here I want to repeat that in keep
ing track of others and their faults it's very,
very important that you shouldn't lose sight
of your own. Authority swells up some fel
lows so that they can't see their corns ; but
a wise man tries to cure his own while re
membering not to tread on his neighbors'.

In this connection, the story of Lemuel
Hostitter, who kept the corner grocery in
my old town, naturally comes to mind.
Lem was probably the meanest white man
in the State of Missouri, and it wasn't any
walk-over to hold the belt in those days.
216

LETTERS TO HIS SON

Most grocers were satisfied to adulterate
their coffee with ground peas, but Lem was
so blamed mean that he adulterated the
peas first. Bought skin-bruised hams and
claimed that the bruise was his private and
particular brand, stamped in the skin, show
ing that they were a fancy article, packed
expressly for his fancy family trade. Ran
a soda-water fountain in the front of his
store with home-made syrups that ate the
lining out of the children's stomachs, and a
blind tiger in the back room with moonshine
whiskey that pickled their daddies' insides.
Take it by and large, Lem's character
smelled about as various as his store, and
that wasn't perfumed with lily-of-the-valley,
you bet.

One time and another most men dropped
into Lem's store of an evening, because there
wasn't any other place to go and swap lies
about the crops and any of the neighbors
who didn't happen to be there. As Lem was
always around, in the end he was the only
217

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

man in town whose meanness hadn't been
talked over in that grocery. Naturally, he
began to think that he was the only decent
white man in the county. Got to shaking
his head and reckoning that the town was
plum rotten. Said that such goings on
would make a pessimist of a goat. Wanted
to know if public opinion couldn't be
aroused so that decency would have a show
in the village.

Most men get information when they ask
for it, and in the end Lem fetched public
opinion all right. One night the local chap
ter of the W. C. T. U. borrowed all the loose
hatchets in town and made a good, clean,
workmanlike job of the back part of his
store, though his whiskey was so mean that
even the ground couldn't soak it up. The
noise brought out the men, and they sort of
caught the spirit of the happy occasion.
When they were through, Lem's stock and
fixtures looked mighty sick, and they had
Lem on a rail headed for the county line.
218

LETTERS TO HIS SON

I don't know when I've seen a more sur
prised man than Lem. He couldn't cuss
even. But as he never came back, to ask for
any explanation, I reckon he figured it out
that they wanted to get rid of him because
he was too good for the town.

I simply mention Lem in passing as an
example of the fact that when you're through
sizing up the other fellow, it's a good thing
to step back from yourself and see how you
look. Then add fifty per cent, to your esti
mate of your neighbor for virtues that you
can't see, and deduct fifty per cent, from
yourself for faults that you've missed in
your inventory, and you'll have a pretty ac
curate result.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

219

No, 16

FROM John Graham,
at the Schweitzer-
kasenhof, Karlsbad,
Austria, to his son, Pierre-
pont, at the. Union Stock
Yards, Chicago. Mr. Pier-
repont has shown mild
symptoms of an attack of
society fever, and his
father is administering
some simple remedies.

XVI

KARLSBAD, October 6, 189 —
Dear Pierrepont: If you happen to run
across Doc Titherington you'd better tell
him to go into training, because I expect to
be strong enough to lick him by the time I
get back. Between that ten-day boat which
he recommended and these Dutch doctors,
I'm almost well and about broke. You
don't really have to take the baths here to
get rid of your rheumatism — their bills
scare it out of a fellow.

They tell me we had a pretty quiet trip
across, and I'm not saying that we didn't,
because for the first three days I was so
busy holding myself in my berth that I
couldn't get a chance to look out the port
hole to see for myself. I reckon there isn't
anything alive that can beat me at being
seasick, unless it's a camel, and he's got
three stomachs.

When I did get around I was a good deal
223

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

of a maverick — for all the old fellows were
playing poker in the smoking-room and all
the young ones were lallygagging under the
boats — until I found that we were carrying
a couple of hundred steers between decks.
They looked mighty homesick, you bet, and
I reckon they sort of sized me up as being a
long ways from Chicago, for we cottoned to
each other right from the start. Take 'em
as they ran, they were a mighty likely bunch
of steers, and I got a heap of solid comfort
out of them. There must have been good
money in them, too, for they reached Eng
land in prime condition.

I wish you would tell our people at the
Beef House to look into this export cattle
business, and have all the facts and figures
ready for me when I get back. There seems
to be a good margin in it, and with our Eng
lish house we are fixed up to handle it all
right at this end. It makes me mighty sick
to think that we've been sitting back on our
hindlegs and letting the other fellow run
224

LETTERS TO HIS SON

away with this trade. We are packers, I
know, but that's no reason why we can't be
shippers, too. I want to milk the critter
coming and going, twice a day, and milk her
dry. Unless you do the whole thing you
can't do anything in business as it runs to
day. There's still plenty of room at the top,
but there isn't much anywheres else.

There may be reasons why we haven't
been able to tackle this exporting of live
cattle, but you can tell our people there that
they have got to be mighty good reasons to
wipe out the profit I see in it. Of course, I
may have missed them, for I've only looked
into the business a little by way of recrea
tion, but it won't do to say that it's not in
our line, because anything which carries a
profit on four legs is in our line.

I dwell a little on the matter because,
while this special case is out of your depart
ment, the general principle is in it. The
way to think of a thing in business is to
think of it first, and the way to get a
225

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

share of the trade is to go for all of it. Half
the battle's in being on the hilltop first ; and
the other half's in staying there. In speak
ing of these matters, and in writing you
about your new job, I've run a little ahead
of your present position, because I'm count
ing on you to catch up with me. But you
want to get it clearly in mind that I'm writ
ing to you not as the head of the house, but
as the head of the family, and that I don't
propose to mix the two things.

Even as assistant manager of the lard
department, you don't occupy a very im
portant position with us yet. But the great
trouble with some fellows is that a little
success goes to their heads. Instead of hid
ing their authority behind their backs and
trying to get close to their men, they use it
as a club to keep them off. And a boss with
a case of big-head will fill an office full of
sore heads.

I don't know any one who has better op
portunities for making himself unpopular
226

LETTERS TO HIS SON

than an assistant, for the clerks are apt to
cuss him for all -the manager's meanness,
and the manager is likely to find fault with
him for all the clerks' cussedness. But if he
explains his orders to the clerks he loses his
authority, and if he excuses himself to the
manager he loses his usefulness. A man
ager needs an assistant to take trouble from
him, not to bring it to him.

The one important thing for you to re
member all the time is not to forget. It's
easier for a boss to do a thing himself than
to tell some one twice to do it. Petty details
take up just as much room in a manager's
head as big ideas ; and the more of the first
you store for him, the more warehouse room
you leave him for the second. When a boss
has to spend his days swearing at his assist
ant and the clerks have to sit up nights
hating him, they haven't much time left to
swear by the house. Satisfaction is the oil
of the business machine.

Some fellows can only see those above
227

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

them, and others can only see those under
them, but a good man is cross-eyed and can
see both ends at once. An assistant who be
comes his manager's right hand is going to
find the left hand helping him ; and it's not
hard for a clerk to find good points in a
boss who finds good ones in him. Pulling
from above and boosting from below make
climbing easy.

In handling men, your own feelings are
the only ones that are of no importance. I
don't mean by this that you want to sacri
fice your self-respect, but you must keep in
mind that the bigger the position the
broader the man must be to fill it. And a
diet of courtesy and consideration gives
girth to a boss.

Of course, all this is going to take so
much time and thought that you won't have
a very wide margin left for golf — especially
in the afternoons. I simply mention this
in passing, because I see in the Chicago
papers which have been sent me that you
228

LETTERS TO HIS SON

were among the players on the links one
afternoon a fortnight ago. Golf's a nice,
foolish game, and there ain't any harm in it
so far as I know except for the balls — the
stiff balls at the beginning, the lost balls in
the middle, and the highballs at the end of
the game. But a young fellow who wants to
be a boss butcher hasn't much daylight to
waste on any kind of links except sausage
links.

Of course, a man should have a certain
amount of play, just as a boy is entitled to a
piece of pie at the end of his dinner, but he
don't want to make a meal of it. Any one
who lets sinkers take the place of bread and
meat gets bilious pretty young; and these
fellows who haven't any job, except to blow
the old man's dollars, are a good deal like
the little niggers in the pie-eating contest
at the County Fair — they've a-plenty of
pastry and they're attracting a heap of at
tention, but they've got a stomach-ache com
ing to them by and by.
229

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

I want to caution you right here against
getting the society bug in your head. I'd
sooner you'd smoke these Turkish cigarettes
which smell like a fire in the fertilizer fac
tory. You're going to meet a good many
stray fools in the course of business every
day without going out to hunt up the main
herd after dark.

Everybody over here in Europe thinks
that we haven't any society in America, and
a power of people in New York think that
we haven't any society in Chicago. But so
far as I can see there are just as many
ninety-nine-cent men spending million-dol
lar incomes in one place as another ; and the
rules that govern the game seem to be the
same in all three places — you've got to be a
descendant to belong, and the farther you
descend the harder you belong. The only
difference is that, in Europe, the ancestor
who made money enough so that his family
could descend, has been dead so long that
they have forgotten his shop; in New York
230

LETTERS TO HIS SON

he's so recent that they can only pretend to
have forgotten it; but in Chicago they can't
lose it because the ancestor is hustling on
the Board of Trade or out at the Stock
Yards. I want to say right here that I don't
propose to be an ancestor until after I'm
dead. Then, if you want to have some fellow
whose grandfather sold bad whiskey to the
Indians sniff and smell pork when you come
into the room, you can suit yourself.

Of course, I may be off in sizing this thing
up, because it's a little out of my line. But
it's been my experience that these people
who think that they are all the choice cuts
off the critter, and that the rest of us are
only fit for sausage, are usually chuck steak
when you get them under the knife. I've
tried two or three of them, who had gone
broke, in the office, but when you separate
them from their money there's nothing left,
not even their friends.

I never see a fellow trying to crawl or to
buy his way into society that I don't think
231

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

of my old friend Hank Smith and his wife
Kate — Kate Botts she was before he mar
ried her — and how they tried to butt their
way through the upper crust

Hank and I were boys together in Mis
souri, and he stayed along in the old town
after I left. I heard of him on and off as
tending store a little, and farming a little,
and loafing a good deal. Then I forgot all
about him, until one day a few years ago
when he turned up in the papers as Captain
Henry Smith, the Klondike Gold King, just
back from Circle City, with a million in
dust and anything you please in claims.
There's never any limit to what a miner may
be worth in those, except his imagination.

I was a little puzzled when, a week later,
my office boy brought me a card reading
Colonel Henry Augustus Bottes-Smythe,
but I supposed it was some distinguished
foreigner who had come to size me up so
that he could round out his roast on Chi-
232

LETTERS TO HIS SON

cago in his new book, and I told the boy to
show the General in.

I've got a pretty good memory for faces,
and I'd bought too much store plug of Hank
in my time not to know him, even with a
clean shave and a plug hat. Some men dry
up with success, but it was just spouting out
of Hank. Told me he'd made his pile and
that he was tired of living on the slag heap ;
that he'd spent his whole life where money
hardly whispered, let alone talked, and he
was going now where it would shout
Wanted to know what was the use of being
a nob if a fellow wasn't the nobbiest sort of
a nob. Said he'd bought a house on Beacon
Hill, in Boston, and that if I'd prick up my
ears occasionally I'd hear something drop
into the Back Bay. Handed me his new
card four times and explained that it was
the rawest sort of dog to carry a brace of
names in your card holster ; that it gave you
the drop on the swells every time, and that

233

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

they just had to throw up both hands and
pass you the pot when you showed down.
Said that Bottes was old English for Botts,
and that Smythe was new American for
Smith ; the Augustus was just a fancy touch,
a sort of high-card kicker.

I didn't explain to Hank, because it was
congratulations and not explanations that
he wanted, and I make it a point to show a
customer the line of goods that he's looking
for. And I never heard the full particulars
of his experiences in the East, though, from
what I learned afterward, Hank struck Bos
ton with a bang, all right.

He located his claim on Beacon Hill, be
tween a Mayflower descendant and a Dec
laration Signer's great-grandson, breeds
which believe that when the Lord made them
He was through, and that the rest of us just
happened. And he hadn't been in town two
hours before he started in to make improve
ments. There was a high wrought-iron rail
ing in front of his house, and he had that

234

LETTERS TO HIS SON

gilded first thing, because, as he said, he
wasn't running a receiving vault and he
didn't want any mistakes. Then he bought
a nice, open barouche, had the wheels
painted red, hired a nigger coachman and
started out in style to be sociable and get
acquainted. Left his card all the way down
one side of Beacon Street, and then drove
back leaving it on the other. Everywhere
he stopped he found that the whole family
was out. Kept it up a week, on and off, but
didn't seem to have any luck. Thought that
the men must be hot sports and the women
great gadders to keep on the jump so much.
Allowed that they were the liveliest little
lot of fleas that he had ever chased. De
cided to quit trying to nail 'em one at a
time, and planned out something that he
reckoned would round up the whole bunch.
Hank sent out a thousand invitations t»
his grand opening, as he called it; left on«
at every house within a mile. Had a brass
band on the front steps and fireworks on the

235

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

roof. Ordered forty kegs from the brewery
and hired a fancy mixer to sling together
mild snorts, as he called them, for the ladies.
They tell me that, when the band got to
going good on the steps and the fireworks
on the roof, even Beacon Street looked out
the windows to see what was doing. There
must have been ten thousand people in the
street and not a soul but Hank and his wife
and the mixer in the house. Some one
yelled speech, and then the whole crowd
took it up, till Hank came out on the steps.
He shut off the band with one hand and
stopped the fireworks with the other. Said
that speechmaking wasn't his strangle-hold ;
that he'd been living on snowballs in the
Klondike for so long that his gas-pipe was
frozen; but that this welcome started the
ice and he thought about three fingers of
the plumber's favorite prescription would
cut out the frost. Would the crowd join
him? He had invited a few friends in for
236

LETTERS TO HIS SON

the evening, but there seemed to be some
misunderstanding about the date, and he
hated to have good stuff curdle on his hands.

While this was going on, the Mayflower
descendant was telephoning for the police
from one side and the Signer's great-grand
son from the other, and just as the crowd
yelled and broke for the house two patrol
wagons full of policemen got there. But
they had to turn in a riot call and bring out
the reserves before they could break up
Hank's little Boston tea-party.

After all, Hank did what he started out
to do with his party — rounded up all his
neighbors in a bunch, though not exactly
according to schedule. For next morning
there were so many descendants and great-
grandsons in the police court to prefer
charges that it looked like a reunion of the
Pilgrim Fathers. The Judge fined Hank
on sixteen counts and bound him over to
keep the peace for a hundred years. That

237

A SELF-MADE MERCHANTS

afternoon he left for the West on a special,
because the Limited didn't get there quick
enough. But before going he tacked on the
front door of his house a sign which read :

" Neighbors paying their party calls
will please not heave rocks through
windows to attract attention. Not in
and not going to be. Gone back to
Circle City for a little quiet.

" Yours truly,
" HANK SMITH.

" N. B. — Too swift for your uncle."

Hank dropped by my office for a minute
on his way to 'Frisco. Said he liked things
lively, but there was altogether too much
rough-house on Beacon Hill for him.
Judged that as the crowd which wasn't in
vited was so blamed sociable, the one which
was invited would have stayed a week if it
hadn't slipped up on the date. That might

238

LETTERS TO HIS SON

be the Boston idea, but he wanted a little
more refinement in his. Said he was a
pretty free spender, and would hold his end
up, but he hated a hog. Of course I told
Hank that Boston wasn't all that it was
cracked up to be in the school histories, and
that Circle City wasn't so tough as it read
in the newspapers, for there was no way of
making him understand that he might have
lived in Boston for a hundred years without
being invited to a strawberry sociable. Be
cause a fellow cuts ice on the Arctic Circle,
it doesn't follow that he's going to be worth
beans on the Back Bay.

I simply mention Hank in a general way.
His case may be a little different, but it isn't
any more extreme than lots of others all
around you over there and me over here.
Of course, I want you to enjoy good society,
but any society is good society where con
genial men and women meet together for
wholesome amusement. But I want you to

239

A MERCHANT'S LETTERS

keep away from people who choose play for
a profession. A man's as good as he makes
himself, but no man's any good because his
grandfather was.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

240

No, 17

FROM John Graham,
at the London House
of Graham & Co., to
his son, Pierrepont, at the
Union Stock Yards in
Chicago. Mr. Pierrepont
has written his father that
he is getting along fa
mously in his new place.

XVII

LONDON, October 24, 189 —
Dear Pierrepont: Well, I'm headed for
home at last, checked high and as full of
prance as a spotted circus horse. Those
Dutchmen ain't so bad as their language,
after all, for they've fixed up my rheuma
tism so that I can bear down on my right leg
without thinking that it's going to break off.
I'm glad to learn from your letter that
you're getting along so well in your new
place, and I hope that when I get home your
boss will back up all the good things which
you say about yourself. For the future,
however, you needn't bother to keep me
posted along this line. It's the one subject
on which most men are perfectly frank, and
it's about the only one on which it isn't
necessary to be. There's never any use try
ing to hide the fact that you're a jim-dandy
— you're bound to be found out, Of course,
you want to have your eyes open all the

243

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

time for a good man, but follow the old
maid's example — look under the bed and in
the closet, not in the mirror, for him. A
man who does big things is too busy to talk
about them. When the jaws really need ex
ercise, chew gum.

Some men go through life on the Sarsapa-
rilla Theory — that they've got to give a hun
dred doses of talk about themselves for
every dollar which they take in ; and that's
a pretty good theory when you're getting
a dollar for ten cents' worth of ingredients.
But a man who's giving a dollar's worth of
himself for ninety-nine cents doesn't need
to throw in any explanations.

Of course, you're going to meet fellows
right along who pass as good men for a
while, because they say they're good men;
just as a lot of fives are in circulation which
are accepted at their face value until they
work up to the receiving teller. And you're
going to see these men taking buzzards and
coining eagles from them that will fool
244

LETTERS TO HIS SON

people so long as they can keep them in the
air; but sooner or later they're bound to
swoop back to their dead horse, and you'll
get the buzzard smell.

Hot air can take up a balloon a long
ways, but it can't keep it there. And when
a fellow's turning flip-flops up among the
clouds, he's naturally going to have the
farmers gaping at him. But in the end
there always comes a time when the para
chute fails to work. I don't know anything
that's quite so dead as a man who's fallen
three or four thousand feet off the edge of a
sloud.

The only way to gratify a taste for
scenery is to climb a mountain. You don't
get up so quick, but you don't come down
so sudden. Even then, there's a chance that
a fellow may slip and fall over a precipice,
but not unless he's foolish enough to try
short-cuts over slippery places; though
some men can manage to fall down the hall
stairs and break their necks. The path isn't

245

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

the shortest way to the top, but it's usually
the safest way.

Life isn't a spurt, but a long, steady
climb. You can't run far up-hill without
stopping to sit down. Some men do a day's
work and then spend six lolling around ad
miring it. They rush at a thing with a
whoop and use up all their wind in that
And when they're rested and have got it
back, they whoop again and start off in a
new direction. They mistake intention for
determination, and after they have told you
what they propose to do and get right up to
doing it, they simply peter out.

I've heard a good deal in my time about
the foolishness of hens, but when it comes
to right-down, plum foolishness, give me a
rooster, every time. He's always strutting
and stretching and crowing and bragging
about things with which he had nothing to
do. When the sun rises, you'd think that he
was making all the light, instead of all the
noise; when the farmer's wife throws the
246

LETTERS TO HIS SON

scraps in the henyard, he crows as if he was
the provider for the whole farmyard and
was asking a blessing on the food ; when he
meets another rooster, he crows; and when
the other rooster licks him, he crows; and
so he keeps it up straight through the day.
He even wakes up during the night and
crows a little on general principles. But
when you hear from a hen, she's laid an egg.
and she don't make a great deal of noise
about it, either.

I speak of these things in a general way,
because I want you to keep in mind all the
time that steady, quiet, persistent, plain
work can't be imitated or replaced by any
thing just as good, and because your re
quest for a job for Courtland Warrington
naturally brings them up. You write that
Court says that a man who has occupied his
position in the world naturally can't
cheapen himself by stepping down into any
little piddling job where he'd have to do
undignified things.

247

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

I want to start right out by saying that I
know Court and his whole breed like a glue
factory, and that we can't use him in our
business. He's one of those fellows who
start in at the top and naturally work down
to the bottom, because that is where they
belong. His father gave him an interest in
the concern when he left college, and since
the old man failed three years ago and took
a salary himself, Court's been sponging on
him and waiting for a nice, dignified job to
come along and steal him. But we are not
in the kidnapping business.

The only undignified job 1 know of is
loafing, and nothing can cheapen a man
who sponges instead of hunting any sort of
work, because he's as cheap already as they
can be made. I never could quite under
stand these fellows who keep down every
decent instinct in order to keep up appear
ance, and who will stoop to any sort of real
meanness to boost up their false pride.

They always remind me of little Fatty
248

LETTERS TO HIS SON

Wilkins, who came to live in our town back
in Missouri when I was a boy. His mother
thought a heap of Fatty, and Fatty thought
a heap of himself, or his stomach, which
was the same thing. Looked like he'd been
taken from a joke book. Used to be a great
eater. Stuffed himself till his hide was
stretched as tight as a sausage skin, and
then howled for painkiller. Spent all his
pennies for cakes, because candy wasn't
filling enough. Hogged 'em in the shop,
for fear he would have to give some one a
bite if he ate them on the street.

The other boys didn't take to Fatty, and
they didn't make any special secret of it
when he was around. He was a mighty
brave boy and a mighty strong boy and a
mighty proud boy — with his mouth; but he
always managed to slip out of anything that
looked like a fight by having a sore hand
or a case of the mumps. The truth of the
matter was that he was afraid of every
thing except food, and that was the thin?
249

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

which was hurting him most. It's mighty
seldom that a fellow's afraid of what he
ought to be afraid of in this world.

Of course, like most cowards, while Fatty
always had an excuse for not doing some
thing that might hurt his skin, he would
take a dare to do anything that would hurt
his self-respect, for fear the boys would
laugh at him, or say that he was afraid, if
he refused. So one day during recess Jim
Hicks dared him to eat a piece of dirt.
Fatty hesitated a little, because, while he
was pretty promiscuous about what he put
into his stomach, he had never included dirt
in his bill-of-fare. But when the boys be
gan to say that he was afraid, Fatty up and
swallowed it.

And when he dared the other boys to do
the same thing and none of them would take
the dare, it made him mighty proud and
puffed up. Got to charging the bigger boys
and the loungers around the post-office a
cent to see him eat a piece of dirt the size of
250

LETTERS TO HIS SON

a hickory-nut. Found there was good
money in that, and added grasshoppers, at
two cents apiece, as a side line. Found
them so popular that he took on chinch
bugs at a nickel, and fairly coined money.
The last I heard of Fatty he was in a Dime
Museum, drawing two salaries — one as
" The Fat Man," and the other as " Launce-
lot, The Locust Eater, the Only Man Alive
with a Gizzard."

You are going to meet a heap of Fatties,
first and last, fellows who'll eat a little
dirt " for fun " or to show off, and who'll
eat a little more because they find that
there's some easy money or times in it. It's
hard to get at these men, because when
they've lost everything they had to be proud
of, they still keep their pride. You can
always bet that when a fellow's pride makes
him touchy, it's because there are some
mighty raw spots on it,

It's been my experience that pride is usu
ally a spur to the strong and a drag on the
251

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

weak. It drives the strong man along and
holds the weak one back. It makes the
fellow with the stiff upper lip and the
square jaw smile at a laugh and laugh at a
sneer; it keeps his conscience straight and
his back humped over his work; it makes
him appreciate the little things and fight
for the big ones. But it makes the fellow
with the retreating forehead do the thing
that looks right, instead of the thing that is
right ; it makes him fear a laugh and shrivel
up at a sneer; it makes him live to-day on
to-morrow's salary; it makes him a cheap
imitation of some Willie who has a little
more money than he has, without giving
him zip enough to go out and force luck
for himself.

I never see one of these fellows swelling
around with their petty larceny pride that
I don't think of a little experience of mine
when I was a boy. An old fellow caught me
lifting a watermelon in his patch, one after
noon, and instead of cuffing me and letting
252

LETTERS TO HIS SON

me go, as I had expected if I got caught, he
led me home by the ear to my ma, and told
her what I had been up to.

Your grandma had been raised on the
old-fashioned plan, and she had never heard
of these new-fangled theories of reasoning
gently with a child till its under lip begins
to stick out and its eyes to fill with tears as
it sees the error of its ways. She fetched
the tears all right, but she did it with a
trunk strap or a slipper, And your grand
ma was a pretty substantial woman. Noth
ing of the tootsey-wootsey about her foot,
and nothing of the airy-fairy trifle about
her slipper. When she was through I knew
that I'd been licked — polished right off to a
point — and then she sent me to my room
and told me not to poke my nose out of it
till I could recite the Ten Commandments
and the Sunday-school lesson by heart.

There was a whole chapter of it, and an
Old Testament chapter at that, but I laid
right into it because I knew ma, and supper

253

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

was only two hours off. I can repeat that
chapter still, forward and backward, with
out missing a word or stopping to catch my
breath.

Every now and then old Doc Hoover used
to come into the Sunday-school room and
scare the scholars into fits by going around
from class to class and asking questions.
That next Sunday, for the first time, I was
glad to see him happen in, and I didn't try
to escape attention when he worked around
to our class. For ten minutes I'd been
busting for him to ask me to recite a
verse of the lesson, and, when he did,
I simply cut loose and recited the
whole chapter and threw in the Ten
Commandments for good measure. It sort
of dazed the Doc, because he had come
to me for information about the Old Testa
ment before, and we'd never got much be
yond, And Ahab begat Jahab, or words to
that effect. But when he got over the shock
he made me stand right up before the whole
254

LETTERS TO HIS SON

school and do it again. Patted me on the
head and said I was " an honor to my par
ents and an example to my playmates."

I had been looking down all the time,
feeling mighty proud and scared, but at that
I couldn't help glancing up to see the other
boys admire me. But the first person my
eye lit on was your grandma, standing in
the back of the room, where she had stopped
for a moment on her way up to church, and
glaring at me in a mighty unpleasant way.

" Tell 'em, John," she said right out loud,
before everybody.

There was no way to run, for the Elder
had hold of my hand, and there was no
place to hide, though I reckon I could have
crawled into a rat hole. So, to gain time, I
blurted out:

" Tell 'em what, mam? "

" Tell' em how you come to have your les
son so nice."

I learned to hate notoriety right then and
there, but I knew there was no switching

255

A MERCHANT'S LETTERS

her off on to the weather when she wanted to
talk religion. So I shut my eyes and let it
come, though it caught on my palate once or
twice on the way out.

" Hooked a watermelon, mam."
There wasn't any need for further par
ticulars with that crowd, and they simply
howled. Ma led me up to our pew, allow
ing that she'd tend to me Monday for dis
gracing her in public that way — and she
did.

That was a twelve-grain dose, without
any sugar coat, but it sweat more cant and
false pride out of my system than I could
get back into it for the next twenty years.
I learned right there how to be humble,
which is a heap more important than know
ing how to be proud. There are mighty few
men that need any lessons in that.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

256

No, 18

FROM John Graham,
at the London House
of Graham & Co., to
his son, Pierrepont, at the
Union Stock Yards in
Chicago. Mr. Pierrepont
is worried over rumors
that the old man is a bear
on lard, and that the longs
are about to make him
climb a tree.

LONDON, October 27, 189 —
Dear Pierrepont: Yours of the twenty-
first inst. to hand and I note the inclosed
clippings. You needn't pay any special at
tention to this newspaper talk about the
Comstock crowd having caught me short a
big line of November lard. I never sell
goods without knowing where I can find
them when I want them, and if these fellows
try to put their forefeet in the trough, or
start any shoving and crowding, they're
going to find me forgetting my table
manners, too. For when it comes to funny
business I'm something of a humorist my
self. And while I'm too old to run, I'm
young enough to stand and fight.

First and last, a good many men have
gone gunning for me, but they've always
planned the obsequies before they caught
the deceased. I reckon there hasn't been a
time m twenty years when there wasn't a
259

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

nice " Gates Ajar " piece all made up and
ready for me in some office near the Board
of Trade. But the first essential of a quiet
funeral is a willing corpse. And I'm still
sitting up and taking nourishment.

There are two things you never want to
pay any attention to — abuse and flattery.
The first can't harm you and the second
can't help you. Some men are like yellow
dogs — when you're coming toward them
they'll jump up and try to lick your
hands; and when you're walking away
from them they'll sneak up behind and
snap at your heels. Last year, when
I was bulling the market, the longs all
said that I was a kind-hearted old philan
thropist, who was laying awake nights
scheming to get the farmers a top price for
their hogs; and the shorts allowed that I
was an infamous old robber, who was steal
ing the pork out of the workingman's pot.
As long as you can't please both sides in
260

LETTERS TO HIS SON

this world, there's nothing like pleasing
jour own side.

There are mighty few people who tan see
any side to a thing except their own side. I
remember once I had a vacant lot out on the
Avenue, and a lady came in to my office and
in a soothing-sirupy way asked if I would
lend it to her, as she wanted to build a creche
on it. I hesitated a little, because I had
never heard of a creche before, and some-
ways it sounded sort of foreign and frisky,
though the woman looked like a good, safe,
reliable old heifer. But she explained that
a creche was a baby farm, where old maids
went to wash and feed and stick pins in
other people's children while their mothers
were off at work. Of course, there was
nothing in that to get our pastor or the
police after me, so I told her to go ahead.

She went off happy, but about a week later
she dropped in again, looking sort of dis
satisfied, to find out if I wouldn't build the
261

A SELF-MADE MERCHANTS

crdche itself. It seemed like a worthy ob
ject, so I sent some carpenters over to
knock together a long frame pavilion. She
was mighty grateful, you bet, and I didn't
see her again for a fortnight Then she
called by to say that so long as I was in
the business and they didn't cost me any
thing special, would I mind giving her a
few cows. She had a surprised and grieved
expression on her face as she talked, and the
way she put it made me feel that I ought
to be ashamed of myself for not having
thought of the live stock myself. So I threw
in half a dozen cows to provide the refresh
ments.

I thought that was pretty good measure,
but the carpenters hadn't more than finished
with the pavilion before the woman tele
phoned a sharp message to ask why I hadn't
had it painted.

I was too busy that morning to quarrel,
so I sent word that I would fix it up; and
when I was driving by there next day the
262

LETTERS TO HIS SON

painters were hard at work on it There
was a sixty-foot frontage of that shed on the
Avenue, and I saw right off that it was just
a natural signboard. So I called over the
boss painter and between us we cooked up
a nice little ad that ran something like this :

Graham's Extract:
It Makes the Weak Strong.

Well, sir, when she saw the ad next morn
ing that old hen just scratched gravel.
Went all around town saying that I had
given a five-hundred-dollar shed to charity
and painted a thousand-dollar ad on it. Al
lowed I ought to send my check for that
amount to the creche fund. Kept at it till
I began to think there might be something
in it, after all, and sent her the money.
Then I found a fellow who wanted to build
in that neighborhood, sold him the lot cheap,
and got out of the crdchc industry.

I've put a good deal more than work Into
my business, and I've drawn a good deal
263

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

more than money out of it; but the only
thing I've ever put into it which didn't draw
dividends in fun or dollars was worry.
That is a branch of the trade which you
want to leave to our competitors.

I've always found worrying a blamed
sight more uncertain than horse-racing —
it's harder to pick a winner at it You go
home worrying because you're afraid that
your fool new clerk forgot to lock the safe
after you, and during the night the lard
refinery burns down; you spend a year
fretting because you think Bill Jones is
going to cut you out with your best girl, and
then you spend ten worrying because he
didn't; you worry over Charlie at college
because he's a little wild, and he writes you
that he's been elected president of the Y.
M. C. A.; and you worry over William be
cause he's so pious that you're afraid he's
going to throw up everything and go to
China as a missionary, and he draws on you
for a hundred; you worry because you're
264

LETTERS TO HIS SON

afraid your business is going to smash, and
your health busts up instead. Worrying is
the one game in which, if you guess right,
you don't get any satisfaction out of your
smartness, A busy man has no time to
bother with it. He can always find plenty
of old women in skirts or trousers to spend
their days worrying over their own troubles
and to sit up nights waking his.

Speaking of handing over your worries
to others naturally calls to mind the Widow
Williams and her son Bud, who was a play
mate of mine when I was a boy. Bud was
the youngest of the Widow's troubles, and
she was a woman whose troubles seldom
came singly. Had fourteen altogether, and
four pair of 'em were twins. Used to turn
'em loose in the morning, when she let out
her cows and pigs to browse along the
street, and then she'd shed all worry over
them for the rest of the day. Allowed that
if they got hurt the neighbors would bring
them home; and that if they got hungry
265

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

they'd come home. And someways, the
whole drove always showed up safe and
dirty about meal tima

I've no doubt she thought a lot of Bud,
but when a woman has fourteen it sort of
unsettles her mind so that she can't focus
her affections or play any favorites. And
so when Bud's clothes were found at the
swimming hole one day, and no Bud inside
them, she didn't take on up to the expecta
tions of the neighbors who had brought the
news, and who were standing around wait
ing for her to go off into something special
in the way of high-strikes.

She allowed that they were Bud's clothes,
all right, but she wanted to know where the
remains were. Hinted that there'd be no
funeral, or such like expensive goings-on,
until some one produced the deceased. Take
her by and large, she was a pretty cool,
calm cucumber.

But if she showed a little too much Chris
tian resignation, the rest of the town was
266

LETTERS TO HIS SON

mightily stirred up over Bud's death, and
every one just quit work to tell each other
what a noble little fellow he was; and how
his mother hadn't deserved to have such a
bright little sunbeam in her home; and to
drag the river between talks. But they
couldn't get a rise.

Through all the worry and excitement the
Widow was the only one who didn't show
any special interest, except to ask for re
sults. But finally, at the end of a week,
when they'd strained the whole river
through their drags and hadn't anything to
show for it but a collection of tin cans
and dead catfish, she threw a shawl over
her head and went down the street to the
cabin of Louisiana Clytemnestra, an old
yellow woman, who would go into a trance
for four bits and find a fortune for you for
a dollar. I reckon she'd have called herself
a clairvoyant nowadays, but then she was
just a voodoo woman.

Well, the Widow said she reckoned that
267

A SELF-MADE MERCHANTS

boys ought to be let out as well as in for
half price, and so she laid down two bits,
allowing that she wanted a few minutes'
private conversation with her Bud. Clytie
said she'd do her best, but that spirits were
mighty snifty and high-toned, even when
they'd only been poor white trash on earth,
and it might make them mad to be called
away from their high jinks if they were tak
ing a little recreation, or from their high-
priced New York customers if they were
working, to tend to cut-rate business. Still,
she'd have a try, and she did. But after
having convulsions for half an hour, she
gave it up. Beckoned that Bud was up to
some cussedness off somewhere, and that he
wouldn't answer for any two-bits.

The Widow was badly disappointed, but
she allowed that that was just like Bud.
He'd always been a boy that never could be
found when any one wanted him. So she
went off, saying that she'd had her money's
worth in seeing Clytie throw those fancy
268

" Elder Hoover was accounted a
powerful exhorter in our parts."

LETTERS TO HIS SON

fits. But next day she came again and paid
down four bite, and Clytie reckoned that
that ought to fetch Bud sure. Someways
though, she didn't have any luck, and finally
the Widow suggested that she call up Bud's
father — Buck Williams had been dead a
matter of ten years — and the old man re
sponded promptly.

"Where's Bud?" asked the Widow.

Hadn't laid eyes on him. Didn't know
he'd come across. Had he joined the church
before he started?

" No."

Then he'd have to look downstairs for
him.

Clytie told the Widow to call again and
they'd get him sure. So she came back next
day and laid down a dollar. That fetched
old Buck Williams' ghost on the jump, you
bet, but he said he hadn't laid eyes on Bud
yet. They hauled the Sweet By and By with
a drag net, but they couldn't get a rap from
him. Clytie trotted out George Washing-
269

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

ton, and Napoleon, and Billy Patterson, and
Ben Franklin, and Captain Kidd, just to
show that there was no deception, but they
couldn't get a whisper even from Bud.

I reckon Clytie had been stringing the
old lady along, intending to produce Bud's
spook as a sort of red-fire, calcium-light,
grand-march-of -the- Amazons climax, but she
didn't get a chance. For right there the old
lady got up with a mighty set expression
around her lips and marched out, muttering
that it was just as she had thought all along
— Bud wasn't there. And when the neigh
bors dropped in that afternoon to plan out
a memorial service for her " lost lamb," she
chased them off the lot with a broom. Said
that they had looked in the river for him
and that she had looked beyond the river
for him, and that they would just stand pat
now and wait for him to make the next
mova Allowed that if she could once get
her hands in " that lost lamb's " wool there
might be an opening for a funeral when she
270

LETTERS TO HIS SON

got through with him, hut there wouldn't
be till then. Altogether, it looked as if
there was a heap of trouble coming to Bud
if he had made any mistake and was still
alive.

The Widow found her " lost lamb " hiding
behind a rain-barrel when she opened up
the house next morning, and there was a
mighty touching and affecting scene. In
fact, the Widow must have touched him at
least a hundred times and every time he
was affected to tears, for she was using a
bed slat, which is a powerfully strong moral
agent for making a boy see the error of his
ways. And it was a month after that before
Bud could go down Main Street without
some man who had called him a noble little
fellow, or a bright, manly little chap, while
he was drowned, reaching out and fetching
him a clip on the ear for having come back
and put the laugh on him.

No one except the Widow ever really got
at the straight of Bud's conduct, but it ap-
271

A MERCHANT'S LETTERS

peared that he left home to get a few Indian
scalps, and that he came back for a little
bacon and corn pone.

I simply mention the Widow in passing
as an example of the fact that the time to
do your worrying is when a thing is all
over, and that the way to do it is to leave
it to the neighbors. I sail for home to
morrow.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

272

No, 19

FROM John Graham,
at the New York
house of Graham &

Co. , to his son , Pierrepont,

at the Union Stock Yards

in Chicago. The old man,

on the voyage home, has

met a girl who interests

him and who in turn

seems to be interested in

Mr. Pierrepont.

XIX

NEW YORK, November 4, 189 —
Dear Pierrepont: Who is this Helen
Heath, and what are your intentions there?
She knows a heap more about you than she
ought to know if they're not serious, and I
know a heap less about her than I ought to
know if they are. Hadn't got out of sight of
land before we'd become acquainted some
how, and she's been treating me like a father
clear across the Atlantic. She's a mighty
pretty girl, and a mighty nice girl, and a
mighty sensible girl — in fact she's so exactly
the sort of girl I'd like to see you marry that
I'm afraid there's nothing in it.

Of course, your salary isn't a large one
yet, but you can buy a whole lot of happiness
with fifty dollars a week when you have the
right sort of a woman for your purchasing
agent. And while I don't go much on love
in a cottage, love in a flat, with fifty a week
as a starter, is just about right, if the girl is
275

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

just about right. If she isn't, it doesn't
make any special difference how you start
out, you're going to end up all wrong.

Money ought never to be the consideration
in marriage, but it always ought to be a con
sideration. When a boy and a girl don't
think enough about money before the cere
mony, they're going to have to think alto
gether too much about it after; and when a
man's doing sums at home evenings, it
comes kind of awkward for him to try to
hold his wife on his lap.

There's nothing in this talk that two can
live cheaper than one. A good wife doubles
a man's expenses and doubles his happiness,
and that's a pretty good investment if a fel
low's got the money to invest. I have met
women who had cut their husband's ex
penses in half, but they needed the money
because they had doubled their own. I
might add, too, that I've met a good many
husbands who had cut their wives' expenses
in half, and they fit naturally into any dis-
276

LETTERS TO HIS SON

cussion of our business, because they are
hogs. There's a point where economy be
comes a vice, and that's when a man leaves
its practice to his wife.

An unmarried man is a good deal like a
piece of unimproved real estate — he may be
worth a whole lot of money, but he isn't of
any particular use except to build on. The
great trouble with a lot of these fellows is
that they're " made land," and if you dig
down a few feet you strike ooze and booze
under the layer of dollars that their daddies
dumped in on top. Of course, the only way
to deal with a proposition of that sort is to
drive forty-foot piles clear down to solid
rock and then to lay railroad iron and ce
ment till you've got something to build on.
But a lot of women will go right ahead with
out any preliminaries and wonder what's the
matter when the walls begin to crack and
tumble about their ears.

I never come across a case of this sort
without thinking of Jack Carter, whose fa-
277

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

ther died about ten years ago and left Jack
a million dollars, and left me as trustee of
both until Jack reached his twenty-fifth
birthday. I didn't relish the job particu
larly, because Jack was one of these char-
lotte-russe boys, all whipped cream and
sponge cake and high-priced flavoring ex
tracts, without any filling qualities. There
wasn't any special harm in him, but there
wasn't any special good, either, and I always
feel that there's more hope for a fellow who's
an out and out cuss than for one who's
simply made up of a lot of little trifling
meannesses. Jack wore mighty warm
clothes and mighty hot vests, and the girls
all said that he was a perfect dream, but I've
never been one who could get a great deal
of satisfaction out of dreams.

It's mighty seldom that I do an exhibition
mile, but the winter after I inherited Jack
— he was twenty-three years old then — your
Ma kept after me so strong that I finally put
on my fancy harness and let her trot me
278

LETTERS TO HIS SON

around to a meet at the Ralstons one eve
ning. Of course, I was in the Percheron
class, and so I just stood around with a lot
of heavy old draft horses, who ought to have
been resting up in their stalls, and watched
the three-year-olds prance and cavort round
the ring. Jack was among them, of course,
dancing with the youngest Churchill girl,
and holding her a little tighter, I thought,
than was necessary to keep her from falling.
Had both ends working at once — never
missed a stitch with his heels and was turn
ing out a steady stream of fancy work with
his mouth. And all the time he was look
ing at that girl as intent and eager as a
Scotch terrier at a rat hole.

I happened just then to be pinned into a
corner with two or three women who
couldn't escape— Edith Curzon, a great big
brunette whom I knew Jack had been pretty
soft on, and little Mabel Moore, a nice roly-
poly blonde, and it didn't take me long to
see that they were watching Jack with a
279

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

hair-pulling itch in their finger-tips. In
fact, it looked to me as if the young scamp
was a good deal more popular than the facts
about him, as I knew them, warranted him
in being.

I slipped out early, but next evening,
when I was sitting in my little smoking-
room, Jack came charging in, and, without
any sparring for an opening, burst out with :

" Isn't she a stunner, Mr. Graham ! "

I allowed that Miss Curzon was some
thing on the stun.

" Miss Curzon, indeed," he sniffed.
" She's well enough in a big, black way, but

Miss Churchill " and he began to paw

the air for adjectives.

" But how was I to know that you meant
Miss Churchill?" I answered. "It's just
a fortnight now since you told me that Miss
Curzon was a goddess, and that she was go
ing to reign in your life and make it a
heaven, or something of that sort. I forget
280

LETTERS TO HIS SON

just the words, but they were mighty beauti
ful thoughts and did you credit."

" Don't remind me of it," Jack groaned.
" It makes me sick every time I think what
an ass I've been."

I allowed that I felt a little nausea my
self, but I told him that this time, at least,
he'd shown some sense; that Miss Churchill
was a mighty pretty girl and rich enough so
that her liking him didn't prove anything
worse against her than bad judgment; and
that the thing for him to do was to quit his
foolishness, propose to her, and dance the
heel, toe, and a one, two, three with her for
the rest of his natural days.

Jack hemmed and hawked a little over
this, but finally he came out with it :

" That's the deuce of it," says he. " I'm
in a beastly mess — I want to marry her—
she's the only girl in the world for me — the
only one I've ever really loved, and I've pro
posed—that is, I want to propose to her,
281

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

but I'm engaged to Edith Curzon on the
quiet."

" I reckon you'll marry her, then," I said ;
" because she strikes me as a young woman
who's not going to lose a million dollars
without putting a tracer after it."

"And that's not the worst of it," Jack
went on.

" Not the worst of it ! What do you
mean! You haven't married her on the
quiet, too, have you?"

" No, but there's Mabel Moore, you know."

I didn't know, but I guessed. " You
haven't been such a double-barreled donkey
as to give her an option on yourself, too? "

" No, no ; but I've said things to her which
she may have misconstrued, if she's inclined
to be literal."

" You bet she is," I answered. " I never
saw a nice, fat, blonde girl who took a mil
lion-dollar offer as a practical joka What
is it you've said to her? ' I love you, dar-
282

LETTERS TO HIS SON

ling/ or something about as foxy and non
committal."

" Not that — not that at all ; but she may
have stretched what I said to mean that."

Well, sir, I just laid into that fellow when
I heard that, though I could see that he
didn't think it was refined of me. He'd
never made it any secret that he thought
me a pretty coarse old man, and his face
showed me now that I was jarring his deli
cate works.

" I suppose I have been indiscreet," he
said, " but I must say I expected something
different from you, after coming out this
way and owning up. Of course, if you don't
care to help me

I cut him short there. " I've got to help
you. But I want you to tell me the truth.
How have you managed to keep this Curzon
girl from announcing her engagement to
you?"

" Well," and there was a scared grin on
283

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

Jack's face now ; " I told her that you, as
trustee under father's will, had certain un
pleasant powers over my money — in fact,
that most of it would revert to Sis if I mar
ried against your wishes, and that you dis
liked her, and that she must work herself
into your good graces before we could think
of announcing our engagement."

I saw right off that he had told Mabel
Moore the same thing, and that was why
those two girls had been so blamed polite to
me the night before. So I rounded on him
sudden.

" You're engaged to that Miss Moore, too,
aren't you?"

" I'm afraid so."

" Why didn't you come out like a man and
say so at first? "

" I couldn't, Mr. Graham. Someways it
seemed like piling it up so, and you take
such a cold-blooded, unsympathetic view of
these things."

284

LETTERS TO HIS SON

" Perhaps I do ; yes, I'm afraid I do. How
far are you committed to Miss Churchill? "

Jack cheered right up. " I'm all right
there, at least She hasn't answered."

" Then you've asked? "

" Why, so I have ; at least she may take it
for something like asking. But I don't care;
I want to be committed there; I can't live
without her ; she's the only "

I saw that he was beginning to foam up
again, so I shut him off straight at the
spigot Told him to save it till after the
ceremony. Set him down to my desk, and
dictated two letters, one to Edith Curzon
and the other to Mabel Moore, and made
him sign and seal them, then and there.
He twisted and squirmed and tried to wiggle
off the hook, but I wouldn't give him any
slack. Made him come right out and say
that he was a yellow pup ; that he had made
a mistake; and that the stuff was all off,
though I worded it a little different from
285

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

that. Slung in some fancy words and high-
toned phrases.

You see, I had made up my mind that the
best of a bad matter was the Churchill girl,
and I didn't propose to have her commit
herself, too, until I'd sort of cleared away
the wreckaga Then I reckoned on copper-
riveting their engagement by announcing it
myself and standing over Jack with a shot
gun to see that there wasn't any more non
sense. They were both so light-headed and
light- waisted and light-footed that it seemed
to me that they were just naturally mates.

Jack reached for those letters when they
were addressed and started to put them in
his pocket, but I had reached first. I reckon
he'd decided that something might happen
to them on their way to the post-office; but
nothing did, for I called in the butler and
made him go right out and mail them then
and there.

I'd had the letters dated from my house,
and I made Jack spend the night there. I
286

LETTERS TO HIS SON

reckoned it might be as well to keep him
within reaching distance for the next day or
two. He showed up at breakfast in the
morning looking like a calf on the way to
the killing pens, and I could see that his
thoughts were mighty busy following the
postman who was delivering those letters.
I tried to cheer him up by reading some
little odds and ends from the morning paper
about other people's troubles, but they
didn't seem to interest him.

" They must just about have received
them," he finally groaned into his coffee cup.
" Why did I send them ! What will those
girls think of me! They'll cut me dead —
never speak to me again."

The butler came in before I could tell him
that this was about what we'd calculated on
their doing, and said : " Beg pardon, sir,
but there's a lady asking for you at the tele
phone."

" A lady! " says Jack. " Tell her I'm not
here." Talk to one of those girls, even from
287

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

a safe distance ! He guessed not. He turned
as pale as a hog on ice at the thought of it.

" I'm sorry, sir," said the man, " but I've
already said that you were breakfasting
here. She said it was very important."

I could see that Jack's curiosity was al
ready getting the best of his scare. After
all, he threw out, feeling me, it might be
best to hear what she had to say. I thought
so, too, and he went to the instrument and
shouted " Hello ! " in what he tried to make
a big, brave voice, but it wobbled a little all
the sama

I got the other end of the conversation
from him when he was through.

"Hello! Is that you, Jack?" chirped
the Curzon girl.

" Yes. Who is that? "

" Edith," came back. " I have your letter,
but I can't make out what it's all about.
Come this afternoon and tell me, for we're
still good friends, aren't we, Jack?"

" Yes — certainly," stammered Jack.
288

LETTERS TO HIS SON

" And you'll come? "

" Yes," he answered, and cut her off.

He had hardly recovered from this shock
when a messenger boy came with a note, ad
dressed in a woman's writing.

" Now for it," he said, and breaking the
seal read :

"'Jack dear: Your horrid note doesn't
say anything, nor explain anything. Come
this afternoon and tell what it means to

MABEL.' "

" Here's a go," exclaimed Jack, but he
looked pleased in a sort of sneaking way.
"What do you think of it, Mr. Graham?"

" I don't like it."

" Think they intend to cut up? " he asked.

" Like a sausage machine; and yet I don't
see how they can stand for you after that
letter."

"Well, shall I go?"

" Yes, in fact I suppose you must go ; but
Jack, be a man. Tell 'em plain and straight
289

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

that you don't love 'em as you should to
marry 'em ; say you saw your old girl a few
days ago and found you loved her still, or
something from the same trough, and stick
to it. Take what you deserve. If they hold
you up to the bull-ring, the only thing you
can do is to propose to take the whole bunch
to Utah, and let 'em share and share alike.
That'll settle it Be firm."

" As a rock, sir."

I made Jack come downtown and lunch
with me, but when I started him off, about
two o'clock, he looked so like a cat padding
up the back-stairs to where she knows
there's a little canary meat — scared, but
happy — that I said once more : " Now be
firm, Jack."

" Firm's the word, sir," was the resolute
answer.

" And unyielding."

"As the old guard." And Jack puffed
himself out till he was as chesty as a pigeon
on a barn roof, and swung off down the
290

LETTERS TO HIS SON

street looking mighty fine and manly from
the rear.

I never really got the straight of it, but I
pieced together these particulars later. At
the corner there was a flower store. Jack
stepped inside and sent a box of roses by
special messenger to Miss Curzon, so there
might be something to start conversation
when he got there. Two blocks farther on
he passed a second florist's, turned back and
sent some lilies to Miss Moore, for fear she
might think he'd forgotten her during the
hour or more before he could work around
to her house. Then he chased about and
found a third florist, from whom he ordered
some violets for Miss Churchill, to remind
her that she had promised him the first
dance at the Blairs' that night. Your Ma
told me that Jack had nice instincts about
these little things which women like, and
always put a good deal of heavy thought
into selecting his flowers for them. It's been
my experience that a critter who has in-
291

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

stincts instead of sense belongs in the
bushes with the dicky-birds.

No one ever knew just what happened to
Jack during the next three hours. He
showed up at his club about five o'clock with
a mighty conceited set to his jaw, but it
dropped as if the spring had broken when
he caught sight of me waiting for him in the
reading-room.

" You here? " he asked as he threw him
self into a chair.

" You bet," I said. " I wanted to hear
how you made out. You settled the whole
business, I take it? " but I knew mighty
well from his looks that he hadn't settled
anything.

" Not — not exactly — that is to say, en
tirely ; but I've made a very satisfactory be
ginning."

" Began it all over again, I suppose."

This hit so near the truth that Jack
jumped, in spite of himself, and then he
burst out with a really swear. I couldn't
292

LETTERS TO HIS SON

have been more surprised if your Ma had
cussed.

" Damn it, sir, I won't stand any more of
your confounded meddling. Those letters
were a piece of outrageous brutality. I'm
breaking off with the girls, but I've gone
about it in a gentler and, I hope, more dig
nified, way."

" Jack, I don't believe any such stuff and
guff. You're tied up to them harder and
tighter than ever."

I could see I'd made a bull's eye, for Jack
began to bluster, but I cut him short with :

" Go to the devil your own way," and
walked out of the club. I reckon that Jack
felt mighty disturbed for as much as an
hour, but a good dinner took the creases
out of his system. He'd found that Miss
Moore didn't intend to go to the Blairs', and
that Miss Curzon had planned to go to a
dance with her sister somewheres else, so
he calculated on having a clear track for a
trial spin with Miss Churchill.

293

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

I surprised your Ma a good deal that eve
ning by allowing that I'd go to the Blairs7
myself, for it looked to me as if the finals
might be trotted there, and I thought I'd
better be around, because, while I didn't see
much chance of getting any sense into Jack's
head, I felt I ought to do what I could on
my friendship account with his father.

Jack was talking to Miss Churchill when
I came into the room, and he was tending
to business so strictly that he didn't see me
bearing down on him from one side of the
room, nor Edith Curzon's sister, Mrs. Dick,
a mighty capable young married woman,
bearing down on him from the other, nor
Miss Curzon, with one of his roses in her
hair, watching him from a corner. There
must have been a council of war between the
sisters that afternoon, and a change of their
plans for the evening.

Mrs. Dick beat me stalking Jack, but I
was just behind, a close second. He didn't
294

LETTERS TO HIS SON

see her until she got right up to him and
rapped him on the arm with her fan.

" Dear Jack," she says, all smiles and
sugar; "dear Jack, I've just heard. Edith
has told me, though I'd suspected something
for a long, long time, you rogue," and she
fetched him another kittenish clip with the
fan.

Jack looked about the way I once saw old
Miss Curley, the president of the Good Tem
plars back in our town in Missouri, look at
a party when she half-swallowed a spoonful
of her ice cream before she discovered that
it was flavored with liquor.

But he stammered something and hurried
Miss Churchill away, though not before a
fellow who was going by had wrung his
hand and said, " Congratulations, old chap.
Just heard the news."

Jack's only idea seemed to travel, and to
travel far and fast, and he dragged his part
ner along to the other end of the room, while
295

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

I followed the band. We had almost gone
the length of the course, when Jack, who
had been staring ahead mighty hard, shied
and balked, for there, not ten feet away,
stood Miss Moore, carrying his lilies, and
blushing and smiling at something young
Blakely was saying to her.

I reckon Jack guessed what that some
thing was, but just then Blakely caught
sight of him and rushed up to where he was
standing.

" I congratulate you, Jack," he said.
" Miss Moore's a charming girl."

And now Miss Churchill slipped her hand
from his arm and turned and looked at Jack.
Her lips were laughing, but there was some
thing in her eye which made Jack turn his
own away.

" Oh, you lucky Jack," she laughed.
" You twice lucky Jack."

Jack simply curled up : " Wretched mis
take somewhere," he mumbled. " Awfully
hot here — get you a glass of water," and he
296

LETTERS TO HIS SON

rushed off. He dodged around Miss Moore,
and made a flank movement which got him
by Miss Curzon and safely to the door. He
kept on; I followed.

I had to go to New York on business next
day. Jack had already gone there, bought a
ticket for Europe, and was just loafing
around the pier trying to hurry the steamer
off. I went down to see him start, and he
looked so miserable that I'd have felt sorry
for him if I hadn't seen him look miserable
before.

" Is it generally known, sir, do- you
think? " he asked me humbly. " Can't you
hush it up somehow?"

" Hush it up ! You might as well say
' Shoo ! ' to the Limited and expect it to stop
for you."

" Mr. Graham, I'm simply heartbroken
over it all. I know I shall never reach
Liverpool. I'll go mad on the voyage across,
and throw myself overboard. I'm too deli
cately strung to stand a thing of this sort"
297

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

" Delicate rats ! You haven't nerve
enough not to stand it," I said. " Brace up
and be a man, and let this be a lesson to you.
Good-bye."

Jack took my hand sort of mechanically
and looked at me without seeing me, for his
grief-dimmed eyes, in straying along the
deck, had lit on that pretty little Southern
baggage, Fanny Fairfax. And as I started
off he was leaning over her in the same old
way, looking into her brown eyes as if he
saw a full-course dinner there.

" Think of your being on board ! " I heard
him say. " I'm the luckiest fellow alive ; by
Jove, I am ! "

I gave Jack up, and an ex-grass widow is
keeping him in order now. I don't go much
on grass widows, but I give her credit for
doing a pretty good job. She's got Jack so
tame that he eats out of her hand, and so
well trained that he don't allow strangers to
pet him.

I inherited one Jack — I couldn't help
298

LETTERS TO HIS SON

that But I don't propose to wake up and
find another one in the family. So you
write me what's what by return.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

299

No, 20

FROM John Graham,
at the Boston House
of Graham & Co., to
his son, Pierrepont, at the
Union Stock Yards in
Chicago. Mr. Pierrepont
has told the old man
"what's what" and re
ceived a limited blessing.

XX

BOSTON, November 11, 189 —
Dear Pierrepont: If that's what, it's all
right. And you can't get married too quick
to suit the old man. I believe in short en
gagements and long marriages. I don't see
any sense in a fellow's sitting around on the
mourner's bench with the sinners, after he's
really got religion. The time to size up the
other side's strength is before the engage
ment.

Some fellows propose to a girl before they
know whether her front and her back hair
match, and then holler that they're stuck
when they find that she's got a cork leg and
a glass eye as well. I haven't any sympathy
with them. They start out on the principle
that married people have only one meal a
day, and that of fried oysters and tutti-
frutti ice-cream after the theatre. Natur
ally, a girl's got her better nature and her
best complexion along under those circum-

3°3

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

stances; but the really valuable thing to
know is how she approaches ham and eggs
at seven A. M., and whether she brings her
complexion with her to the breakfast table.
And these fellows make a girl believe that
they're going to spend all the time between
eight and eleven P. M., for the rest of their
lives, holding a hundred and forty pounds,
live weight, in their lap, and saying that it
feels like a feather. The thing to find out
is whether, when one of them gets up to
holding a ten pound baby in his arms, for
five minutes, he's going to carry on as if it
weighed a ton.

A girl can usually catch a whisper to the
effect that she's the showiest goods on the
shelf, but the vital thing for a fellow to know
is whether her ears are sharp enough to hear
him when he shouts that she's spending too
much money and that she must reduce ex
penses. Of course, when you're patting and
petting and feeding a woman she's going to
purr, but there's nothing like stirring her

3°4

LETTERS TO HIS SON

up a little now and then to see if she spits
fire and heaves things when she's mad.

I want to say right here that there's only
one thing more aggravating in this world
than a woman who gets noisy when she's
mad, and that's one who gets quiet. The
first breaks her spell of temper with the
crockery, but the second simmers along
like a freight engine on the track beside
your berth — keeps you scared and ready to
jump for fear she's going to blow off any
minute ; but she never does and gets it over
with — just drizzles it out.

You can punch your brother when he
plays the martyr, but you've got to love your
wife. A violent woman drives a fellow to
drink, but a nagging one drives him crazy.
She takes his faults and ties them to him
like a tin can to a yellow dog's tail, and the
harder he runs to get away from them the
more he hears of them.

I simply mention these things in a general
way, and in the spirit of the preacher at the

3°5

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

funeral of the man who wasn't " a profes
sor " — because it's customary to make a few
appropriate remarks on these occasions.
From what I saw of Helen Heath, I reckon
she's not getting any the best of it. She's
what I call a mighty eligible young woman —
pretty, bright, sensible, and without any
fortune to make her foolish and you a fool.
In fact, you'd have to sit up nights to make
yourself good enough for her, even if you
brought her a million, instead of fifty a
week.

I'm a great believer in women in the home,
but I don't take much stock in them in the
office, though I reckon I'm prejudiced and
they've come to stay. I never do business
with a woman that I don't think of a little
incident which happened when I was first
married to your Ma. We set up housekeep
ing in one of those cottages that you read
about in the story books, but that you want
to shy away from, when it's put up to you to
live in one of them. There were nice climb-
306

LETTERS TO HIS SON

ing roses on the front porch, but no running
water in the kitchen ; there were a-plenty of
old fashioned posies in the front yard, and
a-plenty of rats in the cellar ; there was half
an acre of ground out back, but so little room
inside that I had to sit with my feet out a
window. It was just the place to go for a
picnic, but it's been my experience that a
fellow does most of his picnicking before
he's married.

Your Ma did the cooking, and I hustled
for things to cook, though I would take a
shy at it myself once in a while and get up
my muscle tossing flapjacks. It was pretty
rough sailing, you bet, but one way and an
other we managed to get a good deal of sat
isfaction out of it, because we had made up
our minds to take our fun as we went along.
With most people happiness is something
that is always just a day off. But I have
made it a rule never to put off being happy
till to-morrow. Don't accept notes for hap
piness, because you'll find that when they're

3°7

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

due they're never paid, but just renewed for
another thirty days.

I was clerking in a general store at that
time, but I had a little weakness for live
stock, even then; and while I couldn't af
ford to plunge in it exactly, I managed to
buy a likely little shoat that I reckoned on
carrying through the Summer on credit and
presenting with a bill for board in the Fall.
He was just a plain pig when he came to us,
and we kept him in a little sty, but we
weren't long in finding out that he wasn't
any ordinary root-and-grunt pig. The first I
knew your Ma was calling him Toby, and
had turned him loose. Answered to his name
like a dog. Never saw such a sociable pig.
Wanted to sit on the porch with us. Tried
to come into the house evenings. Used to
run down the road squealing for joy when
he saw me coming home from work.

Well, it got on towards November and
Toby had been making the most of his op
portunities. I never saw a pig that turned
308

LETTERS TO HIS SON

corn into fat so fast, and the stouter he got
the better his disposition grew. I reckon I
was attached to him myself, in a sort of a
sneaking way, but I was mighty fond of hog
meat, too, and we needed Toby in the
kitchen. So I sent around and had him
butchered.

When I got home to dinner next day, I
noticed that your Ma looked mighty solemn
as she set the roast of pork down in front
of me, but I strayed off, thinking of some
thing else, as I carved, and my wits were
off wool gathering sure enough when I said :

" Will you have a piece of Toby, my
dear? "

Well sir, she just looked at me for a mo
ment, and then she burst out crying and ran
away from the table. But when I went
after her and asked her what was the
matter, she stopped crying and was mad in
a minute all the way through. Called me
a heartless, cruel cannibal. That seemed
to relieve her so that she got over her mad

3°9

A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

and began to cry again. Begged me to take
Toby out of pickle and to bury him in the
garden. I reasoned with her, and in the end
I made her see that any obsequies for Toby,
with pork at eight cents a pound, would be a
pretty expensive funeral for us. But first
and last she had managed to take my appe
tite away so that I didn't want any roast
pork for dinner or cold pork for supper.
That night I took what was left of Toby
to a store keeper at the Crossing, who I
knew would be able to gaze on his hams
without bursting into tears, and got a pretty
fair price for him.

I simply mention Toby in passing, as an
example of why I believe women weren't
cut out for business — at least for the pork-
packing business. I've had dealings with a
good many of them, first and last, and it's
been my experience that when they've got a
weak case they add their sex to it and win,
and that when they've got a strong case they
subtract their sex from it and deal with you
310

LETTERS TO HIS SON

harder than a man. They're simply bound
to win either way, and I don't like to play
a game where I haven't any show. When
a clerk makes a fool break, I don't want to
beg his pardon for calling his attention to
it, and I don't want him to blush and
tremble and leak a little brine into a fancy
pocket handkerchief.

A little change is a mighty soothing
thing, and I like a woman's ways too much
at home to care very much for them at the
office. Instead of hiring women, I try to
hire their husbands, and then I usually have
them both working for me. There's noth
ing like a woman at home to spur on a man
at the office.

A .narried man is worth more salary than
a single one, because his wife makes him
worth more. He's apt to go to bed a little
sooner and to get up a little earlier; to go
a little steadier and to work a little harder
than the fellow who's got to amuse a differ
ent girl every night, and can't stay at home

311

A MERCHANTS LETTERS

to do it. That's why I'm going to raise your
salary to seventy-five dollars a week the day
you marry Helen, and that's why I'm going
to quit writing these letters — I'm simply
going to turn you over to her and let her
keep you in order. I bet she'll do a better
job than I have.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

THE END

312

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By GERTRUDE SMITH

With an Introduction in Terse by Mary E. Wilkins
and illustrations by Ethel Reed

"A book which I should think might be more surpassingly loved
by the little ones than any book that -was ever written for them."

— W. D. HOWKLLS.
Square 8vo, cloth, decorative, $2.00. Paper boards, without

illustrations, $1.00

WANDERFOLK IN WONDERLAND
By EDITH GUERRIER

A charming collection of original Animal Fable Stories for
children. Uniform in size and type with the ARABELLA AND
ARAMINTA Stories, and promising to become as popular as
that children's classic. Illustrated with many drawings by
Edith Brown.

Square 8vo, cloth, decorative, net $1.20, by post $1.30

THE ROUND RABBIT and Other Child Verse
By AGNES LEE

A new Holiday Edition of Mrs. Lee's delightful verses,
greatly enlarged both in format and by the addition of many
new poems.

Square i2mo, cloth, decorative, illustrated, $1.00

IN CHILDHOOD'S COUNTRY

By LOUISK CHANDLER MOULTON

With nine full-page illustrations by Ethel Reed. Uniform in

size and style with ARABELLA AND ARAMINTA. Square 8vo,

cloth, decorative, $2.00

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
Publishers, Boston

THREE NOTABLE, NEW BOOKS

WIT AND HUMOR OF WELL-KNOWN QUOTA
TIONS.

Edited by MARSHALL BROWN.

A unique collection arranged in the nature of " Themes
with Variations." Grouped with each well-known quo
tation are many of the wise or witty comments which
serve to illustrate its significance. Beyond its interest
to the general reader, it should have an especial value to
after-dinner speakers, furnishing a wealth of bright gems
of wit, arranged under familiar maxims, which furnish a
ready topical reference.

1 2 mo, cloth, decorative . Net, $1.20; by post, $1.30

TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS OF THE UNITED
STATES (1787-1904). An Historical Review.

By EDWARD BICKNELL.
Third edition, revised and enlarged.

" A little volume crammed with exactly the information

many interested in the political development of the country

are searching through libraries for." — Western Christian

Advocate.

24mo, cloth . . . Net, 5oc. ; by post, S5C.

CHANTS COMMUNAL.

By HORACE TRAUBEL.

A representative collection of prose pieces, radical but
constructive, treating of the economic situation of the
time and imbued with the spirit and the letter of the
communistic ideal.

I2mo, paper boards, cloth back.

Net, $i .00 ; by post, $i .10

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
Publishers, Boston

NEW BOOKS FOR THE HOLIDAYS

THE ROSARY IN RHYME. By JOHN B. TABB.

A cycle of poems with the perfection of delicate flowers
and full of a poetic ecstasy and deep religious fervor
which will carry them to all Christian hearts, irrespective
of creed. With fifteen decorative drawings and initials by
T. B. Meteyard.

Edition limited to three hundred copies on hand-made
paper. Square i6mo, parchment boards. Net, $2.50;
by post, ^2.60.

ABOUT MY BOOKS. A Reader's Record.
Arranged by GRACE E. ENSEY.

A dainty volume, affording a convenient record for (I.)
Books to be read, (II.) Books read, (III.) Books borrowed,
(IV.) Books lent, (V.) Magazine articles, (VI.) Quota
tions.

With decorative borders by Marion L. Peabody and with
apt quotations for each page. Cloth, net, $1.50 ; by post,
$1.60. Full flexible leather, net, $2.50 ; by post, $2.60.

THE LOVER'S RUBAIYAT. "A book for sweet
hearts and unforgetting folk who would gather joy's
windstrewn petals to fashion again the rose."

Edited by JESSIE B. RITTENHOUSE.
An entirely novel setting of certain of the lesser known
quatrains of Omar in the form of a splendid Persian
love poem, having all the coherence of the work of a
single translator, although the blended work of ten differ
ent hands.

With decorations and ornamental cover, printed in two
colors, paper boards . . Net, 75C. ; by post, 8oc.

THE HOUSE OF A HUNDRED LIGHTS. A Psalm
of Experience after reading a couplet of Bidpai.

By FREDERIC RIDGELEY TORRENCE.
Uniform in style and format with The Lover's Rubaiyat,
with decorations by Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue. $1.00

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
Publishers, Boston

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES

COLLEGE LIBRARY

This book is due on the last date stamped below.

Book Slip-25m-7,'61(Cl437s4)4280

UCLA-College Library

PS 3523 L891 1902

L 005 721 084 1

UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY

College
Library

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