She was mighty sorry about it, but she'd never heard of any way of getting money except asking papa for it, and she'd sort of supposed that every one asked papa when they wanted any, and, why didn't I ask papa? I finally made her see that I couldn't ask my papa, because I hadn't any, and that I couldn't ask hers, because it was against the rules of the game as I played it, and that was her first real lesson in high finance and low finances.

I gave her the second when she came to me about the twentieth of the month and kissed me on the ear and sent a tickly little whisper after it to the effect that the household appropriation for the month was exhausted and the pork-barrel and the meal-sack and the chicken-coop were in the same enfeebled condition.

I didn't say anything at first, only looked pretty solemn, and then I allowed that she'd have to go into the hands of a receiver. Well, sir, the way she snuggled up to me and cried made me come pretty close to weakening, but finally I told her that I reckoned I could manage to be appointed by the court and hush up the scandal so the neighbors wouldn't hear of it.

I took charge of her little books and paid over to myself her housekeeping money each month, buying everything myself, but explaining every move I made, until in the end I had paid her out of debt and caught up with my salary again. Then I came home on the first of the month, handed out her share of the money, and told her that the receiver had been discharged by the court.

My! but she was pleased. And then she paid me out for the scare I'd given her by making me live on side-meat and corn-bread for a month, so she'd be sure not to get the sheriff after her again. Of course, I had to tell her all about it in the end, and though she's never forgotten what she learned about money during the receivership, she's never quite forgiven the receiver.

Speaking of receiving, I notice the receipts of hogs are pretty light. Hold your lard prices up stiff to the market. It looks to me as if that Milwaukee crowd was getting under the February delivery.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

P.S.—You've got to square me with Helen.



No. 6

From John Graham, at the Waldorf-Astoria, New York, to his son, Pierrepont, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago. The young man has written describing the magnificent wedding presents that are being received, and hinting discreetly that it would not come amiss if he knew what shape the old man's was going to take, as he needs the money.

VI

NEW YORK, December 12, 189-.

Dear Pierrepont: These fellows at the branch house here have been getting altogether too blamed refined to suit me in their ideas of what's a fair day's work, so I'm staying over a little longer than I had intended, in order to ring the rising bell for them and to get them back into good Chicago habits. The manager started in to tell me that you couldn't do any business here before nine or ten in the morning—and I raised that boy myself!

We had a short season of something that wasn't exactly prayer, but was just as earnest, and I think he sees the error of his ways. He seemed to feel that just because he was getting a fair share of the business I ought to be satisfied, but I don't want any half-sports out gunning with me. It's the fellow that settles himself in his blind before the ducks begin to fly who gets everything that's coming to his decoys. I reckon we'll have to bring this man back to Chicago and give him a beef house where he has to report at five before he can appreciate what a soft thing it is to get down to work at eight.

I'm mighty glad to hear you're getting so many wedding presents that you think you'll have enough to furnish your house, only you don't want to fingermark them looking to see it a hundred-thousand-dollar check from me ain't slipped in among them, because it ain't.

I intend to give you a present, all right, but there's a pretty wide margin for guessing between a hundred thousand dollars and the real figures. And you don't want to feel too glad about what you've got, either, because you're going to find out that furnishing a house with wedding presents is equivalent to furnishing it on the installment plan. Along about the time you want to buy a go-cart for the twins, you'll discover that you'll have to make Tommy's busted old baby-carriage do, because you've got to use the money to buy a tutti-frutti ice-cream spoon for the young widow who sent you a doormat with "Welcome" on it. And when she gets it, the young widow will call you that idiotic Mr. Graham, because she's going to have sixteen other tutti-frutti ice-cream spoons, and her doctor's told her that if she eats sweet things she'll have to go in the front door like a piano—sideways.

Then when you get the junk sorted over and your house furnished with it, you're going to sit down to dinner on some empty soap-boxes, with the soup in cut-glass finger-bowls, and the fish on a hand-painted smoking-set, and the meat on dinky, little egg-shell salad plates, with ice-cream forks and fruit knives to eat with. You'll spend most of that meal wondering why somebody didn't send you one of those hundred and sixteen piece five-dollar-ninety-eight-marked-down-from-six sets of china. While I don't mean to say that the average wedding present carries a curse instead of a blessing, it could usually repeat a few cuss-words if it had a retentive memory.

Speaking of wedding presents and hundred-thousand-dollar checks naturally brings to mind my old friend Hamilton Huggins—Old Ham they called him at the Yards—and the time he gave his son, Percival, a million dollars.

Take him by and large, Ham was as slick as a greased pig. Before he came along, the heft of the beef hearts went into the fertilizer tanks, but he reasoned out that they weren't really tough, but that their firmness was due to the fact that the meat in them was naturally condensed, and so he started putting them out in his celebrated condensed mincemeat at ten cents a pound. Took his pigs' livers, too, and worked 'em up into a genuine Strasburg pate de foie gras that made the wild geese honk when they flew over his packing-house. Discovered that a little chopped cheek-meat at two cents a pound was a blamed sight healthier than chopped pork at six. Reckoned that by running twenty-five per cent. of it into his pork sausage he saved a hundred thousand people every year from becoming cantankerous old dyspeptics.

Ham was simply one of those fellows who not only have convolutions in their brains, but kinks and bow-knots as well, and who can believe that any sort of a lie is gospel truth just so it is manufactured and labeled on their own premises. I confess I ran out a line of those pigs' liver pates myself, but I didn't do it because I was such a patriot that I couldn't stand seeing the American flag insulted by a lot of Frenchmen getting a dollar for a ten-cent article, and that simply because geese have smaller livers than pigs.

For all Old Ham was so shrewd at the Yards, he was one of those fellows who begin losing their common-sense at the office door, and who reach home doddering and blithering. Had a fool wife with the society bug in her head, and as he had the one-of-our-leading-citizens bug in his, they managed between them to raise a lovely warning for a Sunday-school superintendent in their son, Percival.

Percy was mommer's angel boy with the sunny curls, who was to be raised a gentleman and to be "shielded from the vulgar surroundings and coarse associations of her husband's youth," and he was proud popper's pet, whose good times weren't going to be spoiled by a narrow-minded old brute of a father, or whose talents weren't going to be smothered in poverty, the way the old man's had been. No, sir-ee, Percy was going to have all the money he wanted, with the whisky bottle always in sight on the sideboard and no limit on any game he wanted to sit in, so that he'd grow up a perfect little gentleman and know how to use things instead of abusing them.

I want to say right here that I've heard a good deal of talk in my time about using whisky, and I've met a good many thousand men who bragged when they were half loaded that they could quit at any moment, but I've never met one of these fellows who would while the whisky held out. It's been my experience that when a fellow begins to brag that he can quit whenever he wants to, he's usually reached the point where he can't.

Naturally, Percy had hardly got the pap-rag out of his mouth before he learned to smoke cigarettes, and he could cuss like a little gentleman before he went into long pants. Took the four-years' sporting course at Harvard, with a postgraduate year of draw-poker and natural history—observing the habits and the speed of the ponies in their native haunts. Then, just to prove that he had paresis, Old Ham gave him a million dollars outright and a partnership in his business.

Percy started in to learn the business at the top—absorbing as much of it as he could find room for between ten and four, with two hours out for lunch—but he never got down below the frosting. The one thing that Old Ham wouldn't let him touch was the only thing about the business which really interested Percy—the speculating end of it. But everything else he did went with the old gentleman, and he was always bragging that Percy was growing up into a big, broad-gauged merchant. He got mighty mad with me when I told him that Percy was just a ready-made success who was so small that he rattled round in his seat, and that he'd better hold in his horses, as there were a good many humps in the road ahead of him.

Old Ham was a sure-thing packer, like myself, and let speculating alone, never going into the market unless he had the goods or knew where he could get them; but when he did plunge into the pit, he usually climbed out with both hands full of money and a few odd thousand-dollar bills sticking in his hair. So when he came to me one day and pointed out that Prime Steam Lard at eight cents for the November delivery, and the West alive with hogs, was a crime against the consumer, I felt inclined to agree with him, and we took the bear side of the market together.

Somehow, after we had gone short a big line, the law of supply and demand quit business. There were plenty of hogs out West, and all the packers were making plenty of lard, but people seemed to be frying everything they ate, and using lard in place of hair-oil, for the Prime Steam moved out as fast as it was made. The market simply sucked up our short sales and hollered for more, like a six-months shoat at the trough. Pound away as we would, the November option moved slowly up to 8-1/2, to 9, to 9-1/2. Then, with delivery day only six weeks off, it jumped overnight to 10, and closed firm at 12-1/4. We stood to lose a little over a million apiece right there, and no knowing what the crowd that was under the market would gouge us for in the end.

As soon as 'Change closed that day, Old Ham and I got together and gave ourselves one guess apiece to find out where we stood, and we both guessed right—in a corner.

We had a little over a month to get together the lard to deliver on our short sales or else pay up, but we hadn't had enough experience in the paying-up business to feel like engaging in it. So that afternoon we wired our agents through the West to start anything that looked like a hog toward Chicago, and our men in the East to ship us every tierce of Prime Steam they could lay their hands on. Then we made ready to try out every bit of hog fat, from a grease spot up, that we could find in the country. And all the time the price kept climbing on us like a nigger going up a persimmon tree, till it was rising seventeen cents.

So far the bull crowd had managed to keep their identity hidden, and we'd been pretty modest about telling the names of the big bears, because we weren't very proud of the way we'd been caught napping, and because Old Ham was mighty anxious that Percy shouldn't know that his safe old father had been using up the exception to his rule of no speculation.

It was a near thing for us, but the American hog responded nobly—and a good many other critters as well, I suspect—and when it came on toward delivery day we found that we had the actual lard to turn over on our short contracts, and some to spare. But Ham and I had lost a little fat ourselves, and we had learned a whole lot about the iniquity of selling goods that you haven't got, even when you do it with the benevolent intention of cheapening an article to the consumer.

We got together at his office in the Board of Trade building to play off the finals with the bull crowd. We'd had inspectors busy all night passing the lard which we'd gathered together and which was arriving by boat-loads and train-loads. Then, before 'Change opened, we passed the word around through our brokers that there wasn't any big short interest left, and to prove it they pointed to the increase in the stocks of Prime Steam in store and gave out the real figures on what was still in transit. By the time the bell rang for trading on the floor we had built the hottest sort of a fire under the market, and thirty minutes after the opening the price of the November option had melted down flat to twelve cents.

We gave the bulls a breathing space there, for we knew we had them all nicely rounded up in the killing-pens, and there was no hurry. But on toward noon, when things looked about right, we jumped twenty brokers into the pit, all selling at once and offering in any sized lots for which they could find takers. It was like setting off a pack of firecrackers—biff! bang! bang! our brokers gave it to them, and when the smoke cleared away the bits of that busted corner were scattered all over the pit, and there was nothing left for us to do but to pick up our profits; for we had swung a loss of millions over to the other side of the ledger.

Just as we were sending word to our brokers to steady the market so as to prevent a bad panic and failures, the door of the private office flew open, and in bounced Mr. Percy, looking like a hound dog that had lapped up a custard pie while the cook's back was turned and is hunting for a handy bed to hide under. Had let his cigarette go out—he wore one in his face as regularly as some fellows wear a pink in their buttonhole—and it was drooping from his lower lip, instead of sticking up under his nose in the old sporty, sassy way.

"Oh, gov'ner!" he cried as he slammed the door behind him; "the market's gone to hell."

"Quite so, my son, quite so," nodded Old Ham approvingly; "it's the bottomless pit to-day, all right, all right."

I saw it coming, but it came hard. Percy sputtered and stuttered and swallowed it once or twice, and then it broke loose in:

"And oh! gov'ner, I'm caught—in a horrid hole—you've got to help me out!"

"Eh! what's that!" exclaimed the old man, losing his just-after-a-hearty-meal expression. "What's that—caught—speculating, after what I've said to you! Don't tell me that you're one of that bull crowd—Don't you dare do it, sir."

"Ye-es," and Percy's voice was scared back to a whisper; "yes; and what's more, I'm the whole bull crowd—the Great Bull they've all been talking and guessing about."

Great Scott! but I felt sick. Here we'd been, like two pebbles in a rooster's gizzard, grinding up a lot of corn that we weren't going to get any good of. I itched to go for that young man myself, but I knew this was one of those holy moments between father and son when an outsider wants to pull his tongue back into its cyclone cellar. And when I looked at Ham, I saw that no help was needed, for the old man was coming out of his twenty-five-years' trance over Percy. He didn't say a word for a few minutes, just kept boring into the young man with his eyes, and though Percy had a cheek like brass, Ham's stare went through it as easy as a two-inch bit goes into boiler-plate. Then, "Take that cigaroot out of your mouth," he bellered. "What d'ye mean by coming into my office smoking cigareets?"

Percy had always smoked whatever he blamed pleased, wherever he blamed pleased before, though Old Ham wouldn't stand for it from any one else. But because things have been allowed to go all wrong for twenty-five years, it's no reason why they should be allowed to go wrong for twenty-five years and one day; and I was mighty glad to see Old Ham rubbing the sleep out of his eyes at last.

"But, gov'ner," Percy began, throwing the cigarette away, "I really—"

"Don't you but me; I won't stand it. And don't you call me gov'ner. I won't have your low-down street slang in my office. So you're the great bull, eh? you bull-pup! you bull in a china shop! The great bull-calf, you mean. Where'd you get the money for all this cussedness? Where'd you get the money? Tell me that. Spit it out—quick—I say."



"Well, I've got a million dollars," Percy dribbled out.

"Had a million dollars, and it was my good money," the old man moaned.

"And an interest in the business, you know."

"Yep; I oughter. I s'pose you hocked that."

"Not exactly; but it helped me to raise a little money."

"You bet it helped you; but where'd you get the rest? Where'd you raise the money to buy all this cash lard and ship it abroad? Where'd you get it? You tell me that."

"Well, ah—the banks—loaned—me—a—-good deal."

"On your face."

"Not exactly that—but they thought—inferred—that you were interested with me—and without—" Percy's tongue came to a full stop when he saw the old man's face.

"Oh! they did, eh! they did, eh!" Ham exploded. "Tried to bust your poor old father, did you! Would like to see him begging his bread, would you, or piking in the bucket-shops for five-dollar bills! Wasn't satisfied with soaking him with his own million! Couldn't rest when you'd swatted him with his own business! Wanted to bat him over the head with his own credit! And now you come whining around—"

"But, dad—"

"Don't you dad me, dad-fetch you—don't you try any Absalom business on me. You're caught by the hair, all right, and I'm not going to chip in for any funeral expenses."

Right here I took a hand myself, because I was afraid Ham was going to lose his temper, and that's one thing you can't always pick up in the same place that you left it. So I called Ham off, and told Percy to come back in an hour with his head broker and I'd protect his trades in the meanwhile. Then I pointed out to the old man that we'd make a pretty good thing on the deal, even after we'd let Percy out, as he'd had plenty of company on the bull side that could pay up; and anyway, that the boy was a blamed sight more important than the money, and here was the chance to make a man of him.

We were all ready for Mister Percy when he came back, and Ham got right down to business.

"Young man, I've decided to help you out of this hole," he began.

Percy chippered right up. "Thank you, sir," he said.

"Yes, I'm going to help you," the old man went on. "I'm going to take all your trades off your hands and assume all your obligations at the banks."

"Thank you, sir."

"Stop interrupting when I'm talking, I'm going to take up all your obligations, and you're going to pay me three million dollars for doing it. When the whole thing's cleaned up that will probably leave me a few hundred thousand in the hole, but I'm going to do the generous thing by you."

Percy wasn't so chipper now. "But, father," he protested, "I haven't got three million dollars; and you know very well I can't possibly raise any three million dollars."

"Yes, you can," said Ham. "There's the million I gave you: that makes one. There's your interest in the business; I'll buy it back for a million: that makes two. And I'll take your note at five per cent, for the third million. A fair offer, Mr. Graham?"

"Very liberal, indeed, Mr. Huggins," I answered.

"But I won't have anything to live on, let alone any chance to pay you back, if you take my interest in the business away," pleaded Percy.

"I've thought of that, too," said his father, "and I'm going to give you a job. The experience you've had in this campaign ought to make you worth twenty-five dollars a week to us in our option department. Then you can board at home for five dollars a week, and pay ten more on your note. That'll leave you ten per for clothes and extras."

Percy wriggled and twisted and tried tears. Talked a lot of flip-flap flub-doodle, but Ham was all through with the proud-popper business, and the young man found him as full of knots as a hickory root, and with a hide that would turn the blade of an ax.

Percy was simply in the fix of the skunk that stood on the track and humped up his back at the lightning express—there was nothing left of him except a deficit and the stink he'd kicked up. And a fellow can't dictate terms with those assets. In the end he left the room with a ring in his nose.

After all, there was more in Percy than cussedness, for when he finally decided that it was a case of root hog or die with him, he turned in and rooted. It took him ten years to get back into his father's confidence and a partnership, and he was still paying on the million-dollar note when the old man died and left him his whole fortune. It would have been cheaper for me in the end if I had let the old man disinherit him, because when Percy ran that Mess Pork corner three years ago, he caught me short a pretty good line and charged me two dollars a barrel more than any one else to settle. Explained that he needed the money to wipe out the unpaid balance of a million-dollar note that he'd inherited from his father.

I simply mention Percy to show why I'm a little slow to regard members of my family as charitable institutions that I should settle endowments on. If there's one thing I like less than another, it's being regarded as a human meal-ticket. What is given to you always belongs to some one else, and if the man who gave it doesn't take it back, some fellow who doesn't have to have things given to him is apt to come along and run away with it. But what you earn is your own, and apt to return your affection for it with interest—pretty good interest.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

P.S.—I forgot to say that I had bought a house on Michigan Avenue for Helen, but there's a provision in the deed that she can turn you out if you don't behave.



No. 7

From John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago, to his son, Pierrepont, at Yemassee-on-the-Tallahassee. The young man is now in the third quarter of the honeymoon, and the old man has decided that it is time to bring him fluttering down to earth.

VII

CHICAGO, January 17, 189-.

Dear Pierrepont: After you and Helen had gone off looking as if you'd just bought seats on 'Change and been baptized into full membership with all the sample bags of grain that were handy, I found your new mother-in-law out in the dining-room, and, judging by the plates around her, she was carrying in stock a full line of staple and fancy groceries and delicatessen. When I struck her she was crying into her third plate of ice cream, and complaining bitterly to the butler because the mould had been opened so carelessly that some salt had leaked into it.

Of course, I started right in to be sociable and to cheer her up, but I reckon I got my society talk a little mixed—I'd been one of the pall-bearers at Josh Burton's funeral the day before—and I told her that she must bear up and eat a little something to keep up her strength, and to remember that our loss was Helen's gain.

Now, I don't take much stock in all this mother-in-law talk, though I've usually found that where there's so much smoke there's a little fire; but I'm bound to say that Helen's ma came back at me with a sniff and a snort, and made me feel sorry that I'd intruded on her sacred grief. Told me that a girl of Helen's beauty and advantages had naturally been very, very popular, and greatly sought after. Said that she had been received in the very best society in Europe, and might have worn strawberry leaves if she'd chosen, meaning, I've since found out, that she might have married a duke.



I tried to soothe the old lady, and to restore good feeling by allowing that wearing leaves had sort of gone out of fashion with the Garden of Eden, and that I liked Helen better in white satin, but everything I said just seemed to enrage her the more. Told me plainly that she'd thought, and hinted that she'd hoped, right up to last month, that Helen was going to marry a French nobleman, the Count de Somethingerino or other, who was crazy about her. So I answered that we'd both had a narrow escape, because I'd been afraid for a year that I might wake up any morning and find myself the father-in-law of a Crystal Slipper chorus-girl. Then, as it looked as if the old lady was going to bust a corset-string in getting out her answer, I modestly slipped away, leaving her leaking brine and acid like a dill pickle that's had a bite taken out of it.

Good mothers often make bad mothers-in-law, because they usually believe that, no matter whom their daughters marry, they could have gone farther and fared better. But it struck me that Helen's ma has one of those retentive memories and weak mouths—the kind of memory that never loses anything it should forget, and the kind of mouth that can't retain a lot of language which it shouldn't lose.

Of course, you want to honor your mother-in-law, that your days may be long in the land; but you want to honor this one from a distance, for the same reason. Otherwise, I'm afraid you'll hear a good deal about that French count, and how hard it is for Helen to have to associate with a lot of mavericks from the Stock Yards, when she might be running with blooded stock on the other side. And if you glance up from your morning paper and sort of wonder out loud whether Corbett or Fitzsimmons is the better man, mother-in-law will glare at you over the top of her specs and ask if you don't think it's invidious to make any comparisons if they're both striving, to lead earnest, Christian lives. Then, when you come home at night, you'll be apt to find your wife sniffing your breath when you kiss her, to see if she can catch that queer, heavy smell which mother has noticed on it; or looking at you slant-eyed when she feels some letters in your coat, and wondering if what mother says is true, and if men who've once taken chorus-girls to supper never really recover from the habit.

On general principles, it's pretty good doctrine that two's a company and three's a crowd, except when the third is a cook. But I should say that when the third is Helen's ma it's a mob, out looking for a chance to make rough-house. A good cook, a good wife and a good job will make a good home anywhere; but you add your mother-in-law, and the first thing you know you've got two homes, and one of them is being run on alimony.

You want to remember that, beside your mother-in-law, you're a comparative stranger to your wife. After you and Helen have lived together for a year, you ought to be so well acquainted that she'll begin to believe that you know almost as much as mamma; but during the first few months of married life there are apt to be a good many tie votes on important matters, and if mother-in-law is on the premises she is generally going to break the tie by casting the deciding vote with daughter. A man can often get the best of one woman, or ten men, but not of two women, when one of the two is mother-in-law.

When a young wife starts housekeeping with her mother too handy, it's like running a business with a new manager and keeping the old one along to see how things go. It's not in human nature that the old manager, even with the best disposition in the world, shouldn't knock the new one a little, and you're Helen's new manager. When I want to make a change, I go about it like a crab—get rid of the old shell first, and then plunge right in and begin to do business with the new skin. It may be a little tender and open to attack at first, but it doesn't take long to toughen up when it finds out that the responsibility of protecting my white meat is on it.

You start a woman with sense to making mistakes and you've started her to learning common-sense; but you let some one else shoulder her natural responsibilities and keep her from exercising her brain, and it'll be fat-witted before she's forty. A lot of girls find it mighty handy to start with mother to look after the housekeeping and later to raise the baby; but by and by, when mamma has to quit, they don't understand that the butcher has to be called down regularly for leaving those heavy ends on the steak or running in the shoulder chops on you, and that when Willie has the croup she mustn't give the little darling a stiff hot Scotch, or try to remove the phlegm from his throat with a button-hook.

There are a lot of women in this world who think that there's only one side to the married relation, and that's their side. When one of them marries, she starts right out to train her husband into kind old Carlo, who'll go downtown for her every morning and come home every night, fetching a snug little basketful of money in his mouth and wagging his tail as he lays it at her feet. Then it's a pat on the head and "Nice doggie." And he's taught to stand around evenings, retrieving her gloves and handkerchief, and snapping up with a pleased licking of his chops any little word that she may throw to him. But you let him start in to have a little fun scratching and stretching himself, or pawing her, and it's "Charge, Carlo!" and "Bad doggie!"

Of course, no man ever believes when he marries that he's going to wind up as kind Carlo, who droops his head so that the children can pull his ears, and who sticks up his paw so as to make it easier for his wife to pull his leg. But it's simpler than you think.

As long as fond fathers slave and ambitious mothers sacrifice so that foolish daughters can hide the petticoats of poverty under a silk dress and crowd the doings of cheap society into the space in their heads which ought to be filled with plain, useful knowledge, a lot of girls are going to grow up with the idea that getting married means getting rid of care and responsibility instead of assuming it.

A fellow can't play the game with a girl of this sort, because she can't play fair. He wants her love and a wife; she wants a provider, not a lover, and she takes him as a husband because she can't draw his salary any other way. But she can't return his affection, because her love is already given to another; and when husband and wife both love the same person, and that person is the wife, it's usually a life sentence at hard labor for the husband. If he wakes up a little and tries to assert himself after he's been married a year or so, she shudders and sobs until he sees what a brute he is; or if that doesn't work, and he still pretends to have a little spirit, she goes off into a rage and hysterics, and that usually brings him to heel again. It's a mighty curious thing how a woman who has the appetite and instincts of a turkey—buzzard will often make her husband believe that she's as high-strung and delicate as a canary-bird!

It's been my experience that both men and women can fool each other before marriage, and that women can keep right along fooling men after marriage, but that as soon as the average man gets married he gets found out. After a woman has lived in the same house with a man for a year, she knows him like a good merchant knows his stock, down to any shelf-worn and slightly damaged morals which he may be hiding behind fresher goods in the darkest corner of his immortal soul. But even if she's married to a fellow who's so mean that he'd take the pennies off a dead man's eyes (not because he needed the money, but because he hadn't the change handy for a two-cent stamp), she'll never own up to the worst about him, even to herself, till she gets him into a divorce court.

I simply mention these things in a general way. Helen has shown signs of loving you, and you've never shown any symptoms of hating yourself, so I'm not really afraid that you're going to get the worst of it now. So far as I can see, your mother-in-law is the only real trouble that you have married. But don't you make the mistake of criticizing her to Helen or of quarrelling with her. I'll attend to both for the family. You simply want to dodge when she leads with the right, take your full ten seconds on the floor, and come back with your left cheek turned toward her, though, of course, you'll yank it back out of reach just before she lands on it. There's nothing like using a little diplomacy in this world, and, so far as women are concerned, diplomacy is knowing when to stay away. And a diplomatist is one who lets the other fellow think he's getting his way, while all the time he's having his own. It never does any special harm to let people have their way with their mouths.

What you want to do is to keep mother-in-law from mixing up in your family affairs until after she gets used to the disgrace of having a pork-packer for a son-in-law, and Helen gets used to pulling in harness with you. Then mother'll mellow up into a nice old lady who'll brag about you to the neighbors. But until she gets to this point, you've got to let her hurt your feelings without hurting hers. Don't you ever forget that Helen's got a mother-in-law, too, and that it's some one you think a heap of.

Whenever I hear of a fellow's being found out by his wife, it always brings to mind the case of Dick Hodgkins, whom I knew when I was a young fellow, back in Missouri. Dickie was one of a family of twelve, who all ran a little small any way you sized them up, and he was the runt. Like most of these little fellows, when he came to match up for double harness, he picked out a six-footer, Kate Miggs. Used to call her Honeybunch, I remember, and she called him Doodums.

Honeybunch was a good girl, but she was as strong as a six-mule team, and a cautious man just naturally shied away from her. Was a pretty free stepper in the mazes of the dance, and once, when she was balancing partners with Doodums, she kicked out sort of playful to give him a love pat and fetched him a clip with her tootsey that gave him water on the kneepan. It ought to have been a warning to Doodums, but he was plumb infatuated, and went around pretending that he'd been kicked by a horse. After that the boys used to make Honeybunch mighty mad when she came out of dark corners with Doodums, by feeling him to see if any of his ribs were broken. Still he didn't take the hint, and in the end she led him to the altar.

We started in to give them a lovely shivaree after the wedding, beginning with a sort of yell which had been invented by the only fellow in town who had been to college.

As I remember, it ran something like this:

Hun, hun, hunch! Bun, bun, bunch! Funny, funny! Honey, honey! Funny Honeybunch!

But as soon as we got this off, and before we could begin on the dishpan chorus, Honeybunch came at us with a couple of bed-slats and cleaned us all out.

Before he had married, Doodums had been one of half a dozen half-baked sports who drank cheap whisky and played expensive poker at the Dutchman's; and after he'd held Honeybunch in his lap evenings for a month, he reckoned one night that he'd drop down street and look in on the boys. Honeybunch reckoned not, and he didn't press the matter, but after they'd gone to bed and she'd dropped off to sleep, he slipped into his clothes and down the waterspout to the ground. He sat up till two o'clock at the Dutchman's, and naturally, the next morning he had a breath like a gasoline runabout, and looked as if he'd been attending a successful coon-hunt in the capacity of the coon.

Honeybunch smelt his breath and then she smelt a mouse, but she wasn't much of a talker and she didn't ask any questions—of him. But she had brother Jim make some inquiries, and a few days later, when Doodums complained of feeling all petered out and wanted to go to bed early, she was ready for him.

Honeybunch wasn't any invalid, and when she went to bed it was to sleep, so she rigged up a simple little device in the way of an alarm and dropped off peacefully, while Doodums pretended to.

When she began to snore in her upper register and to hit the high C, he judged the coast was clear, and leaped lightly out of bed. Even before he'd struck the floor he knew there'd been a horrible mistake somewhere, for he felt a tug as if he'd hooked a hundred-pound catfish. There was an awful ripping and tearing sound, something fetched loose, and his wife was sitting up in bed blinking at him in the moonlight. It seemed that just before she went to sleep she'd pinned her nightgown to his with a safety pin, which wasn't such a bad idea for a simple, trusting, little village maiden.

"Was you wantin' anything, Duckie Doodums?" she asked in a voice like the running of sap in maple-sugar time.

"N-n-nothin' but a drink of water, Honeybunch sweetness," he stammered back.



"You're sure you ain't mistook in your thirst and that it ain't a suddint cravin' for licker, and that you ain't sort of p'intin' down the waterspout for the Dutchman's, Duckie Doodums?"

"Shorely not, Honeybunch darlin'," he finally fetched up, though he was hardly breathing.

"Because your ma told me that you was given to somnambulasticatin' in your sleep, and that I must keep you tied up nights or you'd wake up some mornin' at the foot of a waterspout with your head bust open and a lot of good licker spilt out on the grass."

"Don't you love your Doodums anymore?" was all Dickie could find to say to this; but Honeybunch had too much on her mind to stop and swap valentines just then.

"You wouldn't deceive your Honeybunch, would you, Duckie Doodums?"

"I shorely would not."

"Well, don't you do it, Duckie Doodums, because it would break my heart; and if you should break my heart I'd just naturally bust your head. Are you listenin', Doodums?"

Doodums was listening.

"Then you come back to bed and stay there."

Doodums never called his wife Honeybunch after that. Generally it was Kate, and sometimes it was Kitty, and when she wasn't around it was usually Kitty-cat. But he minded better than anything I ever met on less than four legs.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

P.S.—You might tear up this letter.



No. 8

From John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago, to his son, Pierrepont, at Yemassee-on-the-Tallahassee. In replying to his father's hint that it is time to turn his thoughts from love to lard, the young man has quoted a French sentence, and the old man has been both pained and puzzled by it.

VIII

CHICAGO, January 24, 189-.

Dear Pierrepont: I had to send your last letter to the fertilizer department to find out what it was all about. We've got a clerk there who's an Oxford graduate, and who speaks seven languages for fifteen dollars a week, or at the rate of something more than two dollars a language. Of course, if you're such a big thinker that your ideas rise to the surface too fast for one language to hold 'em all, it's a mighty nice thing to know seven; but it's been my experience that seven spread out most men so thin that they haven't anything special to say in any of them. These fellows forget that while life's a journey, it isn't a palace-car trip for most of us, and that if they hit the trail packing a lot of weight for which they haven't any special use, they're not going to get very far. You learn men and what men should do, and how they should do it, and then if you happen to have any foreigners working for you, you can hire a fellow at fifteen per to translate hustle to 'em into their own fool language. It's always been my opinion that everybody spoke American while the tower of Babel was building, and that the Lord let the good people keep right on speaking it. So when you've got anything to say to me, I want you to say it in language that will grade regular on the Chicago Board of Trade.

Some men fail from knowing too little, but more fail from knowing too much, and still more from knowing it all. It's a mighty good thing to understand French if you can use it to some real purpose, but when all the good it does a fellow is to help him understand the foreign cuss-words in a novel, or to read a story which is so tough that it would make the Queen's English or any other ladylike language blush, he'd better learn hog-Latin! He can be just the same breed of yellow dog in it, and it don't take so much time to pick it up.

Never ask a man what he knows, but what he can do. A fellow may know everything that's happened since the Lord started the ball to rolling, and not be able to do anything to help keep it from stopping. But when a man can do anything, he's bound to know something worth while. Books are all right, but dead men's brains are no good unless you mix a live one's with them.

It isn't what a man's got in the bank, but what he's got in his head, that makes him a great merchant. Rob a miser's safe and he's broke; but you can't break a big merchant with a jimmy and a stick of dynamite. The first would have to start again just where he began—hoarding up pennies; the second would have his principal assets intact. But accumulating knowledge or piling up money, just to have a little more of either than the next fellow, is a fool game that no broad-gauged man has time enough to sit in. Too much learning, like too much money, makes most men narrow.

I simply mention these things in a general way. You know blame well that I don't understand any French, and so when you spring it on me you are simply showing a customer the wrong line of goods. It's like trying to sell our Pickled Luncheon Tidbits to a fellow in the black belt who doesn't buy anything but plain dry-salt hog in hunks and slabs. It makes me a little nervous for fear you'll be sending out a lot of letters to the trade some day, asking them if their stock of Porkuss Americanuss isn't running low.

The world is full of bright men who know all the right things to say and who say them in the wrong place. A young fellow always thinks that if he doesn't talk he seems stupid, but it's better to shut up and seem dull than to open up and prove yourself a fool. It's a pretty good rule to show your best goods last.

Whenever I meet one of those fellows who tells you all he knows, and a good deal that he doesn't know, as soon as he's introduced to you, I always think of Bill Harkness, who kept a temporary home for broken-down horses—though he didn't call it that—back in Missouri. Bill would pick up an old critter whose par value was the price of one horse-hide, and after it had been pulled and shoved into his stable, the boys would stand around waiting for crape to be hung on the door. But inside a week Bill would be driving down Main Street behind that horse, yelling Whoa! at the top of his voice while it tried to kick holes in the dashboard.

Bill had a theory that the Ten Commandments were suspended while a horse-trade was going on, so he did most of his business with strangers. Caught a Northerner nosing round his barn one day, and inside of ten minutes the fellow was driving off behind what Bill described as "the peartest piece of ginger and cayenne in Pike County." Bill just made a free gift of it to the Yankee, he said, but to keep the transaction from being a piece of pure charity he accepted fifty dollars from him.

The stranger drove all over town bragging of his bargain, until some one casually called his attention to the fact that the mare was stone-blind. Then he hiked back to Bill's and went for him in broken Bostonese, winding up with:

"What the skip-two-and-carry-one do you mean, you old hold-your-breath-and-take-ten-swallows, by stealing my good money. Didn't you know the horse was blind? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Yep," Bill bit off from his piece of store plug; "I reckon I knew the hoss was blind, but you see the feller I bought her of"—and he paused to settle his chaw—"asked me not to mention it. You wouldn't have me violate a confidence as affected the repertashun of a pore dumb critter, and her of the opposite sect, would you?" And the gallant Bill turned scornfully away from the stranger.

There were a good many holes in Bill's methods, but he never leaked information through them; and when I come across a fellow who doesn't mention it when he's asked not to, I come pretty near letting him fix his own salary. It's only a mighty big man that doesn't care whether the people whom he meets believe that he's big; but the smaller a fellow is, the bigger he wants to appear. He hasn't anything of his own in his head that's of any special importance, so just to prove that he's a trusted employee, and in the confidence of the boss, he gives away everything he knows about the business, and, as that isn't much, he lies a little to swell it up. It's a mighty curious thing how some men will lie a little to impress people who are laughing at them; will drink a little in order to sit around with people who want to get away from them; and will even steal a little to "go into society" with people who sneer at them.

The most important animal in the world is a turkey-cock. You let him get among the chickens on the manure pile behind the barn, with his wings held down stiff, his tail feathers stuck up starchy, his wish-bone poked out perky, and gobbling for room to show his fancy steps, and he's a mighty impressive fowl. But a small boy with a rock and a good aim can make him run a mile. When you see a fellow swelling up and telling his firm's secrets, holler Cash! and you'll stampede him back to his hall bedroom.

I dwell a little on this matter of loose talking, because it breaks up more firms and more homes than any other one thing I know. The father of lies lives in Hell, but he spends a good deal of his time in Chicago. You'll find him on the Board of Trade when the market's wobbling, saying that the Russians are just about to eat up Turkey, and that it'll take twenty million bushels of our wheat to make the bread for the sandwich; and down in the street, asking if you knew that the cashier of the Teenth National was leading a double life as a single man in the suburbs and a singular life for a married man in the city; and out on Prairie Avenue, whispering that it's too bad Mabel smokes Turkish cigarettes, for she's got such pretty curly hair; and how sad it is that Daisy and Dan are going to separate, "but they do say that he—sh! sh! hush; here she comes." Yet, when you come to wash your pan of dirt, and the lies have all been carried off down the flume, and you've got the color of the few particles of solid, eighteen-carat truth left, you'll find it's the Sultan who's smoking Turkish cigarettes; and that Mabel is trying cubebs for her catarrh; and that the cashier of the Teenth National belongs to a whist club in the suburbs and is the superintendent of a Sunday-school in the city; and that Dan has put Daisy up to visiting her mother to ward off a threatened swoop down from the old lady; and that the Czar hasn't done a blame thing except to become the father of another girl baby.

It's pretty hard to know how to treat a lie when it's about yourself. You can't go out of your way to deny it, because that puts you on the defensive; and sending the truth after a lie that's got a running start is like trying to round up a stampeded herd of steers while the scare is on them. Lies are great travellers, and welcome visitors in a good many homes, and no questions asked. Truth travels slowly, has to prove its identity, and then a lot of people hesitate to turn out an agreeable stranger to make room for it.

About the only way I know to kill a lie is to live the truth. When your credit is doubted, don't bother to deny the rumors, but discount your bills. When you are attacked unjustly, avoid the appearance of evil, but avoid also the appearance of being too good—that is, better than usual. A man can't be too good, but he can appear too good. Surmise and suspicion feed on the unusual, and when a man goes about his business along the usual rut, they soon fade away for lack of nourishment. First and last every fellow gets a lot of unjust treatment in this world, but when he's as old as I am and comes to balance his books with life and to credit himself with the mean things which weren't true that have been said about him, and to debit himself with the mean things which were true that people didn't get on to or overlooked, he'll find that he's had a tolerably square deal. This world has some pretty rotten spots on its skin, but it's sound at the core.

There are two ways of treating gossip about other people, and they're both good ways. One is not to listen to it, and the other is not to repeat it. Then there's young Buck Pudden's wife's way, and that's better than either, when you're dealing with some of these old heifers who browse over the range all day, stuffing themselves with gossip about your friends, and then round up at your house to chew the cud and slobber fake sympathy over you.

Buck wasn't a bad fellow at heart, for he had the virtue of trying to be good, but occasionally he would walk in slippery places. Wasn't very sure-footed, so he fell down pretty often, and when he fell from grace it usually cracked the ice. Still, as he used to say, when he shot at the bar mirrors during one of his periods of temporary elevation, he paid for what he broke—cash for the mirrors and sweat and blood for his cussedness.

Then one day Buck met the only woman in the world—a mighty nice girl from St. Jo—and she was hesitating over falling in love with him, till the gossips called to tell her that he was a dear, lovely fellow, and wasn't it too bad that he had such horrid habits? That settled it, of course, and she married him inside of thirty days, so that she could get right down to the business of reforming him.

I don't, as a usual thing, take much stock in this marrying men to reform them, because a man's always sure of a woman when he's married to her, while a woman's never really afraid of losing a man till she's got him. When you want to teach a dog new tricks, it's all right to show him the biscuit first, but you'll usually get better results by giving it to him after the performance. But Buck's wife fooled the whole town and almost put the gossips out of business by keeping Buck straight for a year. She allowed that what he'd been craving all the time was a home and family, and that his rare-ups came from not having 'em. Then, like most reformers, she overdid it—went and had twins. Buck thought he owned the town, of course, and that would have been all right if he hadn't included the saloons among his real estate. Had to take his drinks in pairs, too, and naturally, when he went home that night and had another look at the new arrivals, he thought they were quadruplets.

Buck straightened right out the next day, went to his wife and told her all about it, and that was the last time he ever had to hang his head when he talked to her, for he never took another drink. You see, she didn't reproach him, or nag him—simply said that she was mighty proud of the way he'd held on for a year, and that she knew she could trust him now for another ten. Man was made a little lower than the angels, the Good Book says, and I reckon that's right; but he was made a good while ago, and he hasn't kept very well. Yet there are a heap of women in this world who are still right in the seraphim class. When your conscience doesn't tell you what to do in a matter of right and wrong, ask your wife.

Naturally, the story of Buck's final celebration came to the gossips like a thousand-barrel gusher to a drilling outfit that's been finding dusters, and they went one at a time to tell Mrs. Buck all the dreadful details and how sorry they were for her. She would just sit and listen till they'd run off the story, and hemstitched it, and embroidered it, and stuck fancy rosettes all over it. Then she'd smile one of those sweet baby smiles that women give just before the hair-pulling begins, and say:

"Law, Mrs. Wiggleford"—the deacon's wife was the one who was condoling with her at the moment—"people will talk about the best of us. Seems as if no one is safe nowadays. Why, they lie about the deacon, even. I know it ain't true, and you know it ain't true, but only yesterday somebody was trying to tell me that it was right strange how a professor and a deacon got that color in his beak, and while it might be inflammatory veins or whatever he claimed it was, she reckoned that, if he'd let some one else tend the alcohol barrel, he wouldn't have to charge up so much of his stock to leakage and evaporation."

Of course, Mrs. Buck had made up the story about the deacon, because every one knew that he was too mean to drink anything that he could sell, but by the time Buck's wife had finished, Mrs. Wiggleford was so busy explaining and defending him that she hadn't any further interest in Buck's case. And each one that called was sent away with a special piece of home scandal which Mrs. Buck had invented to keep her mind from dwelling on her neighbor's troubles.

She followed up her system, too, and in the end it got so that women would waste good gossip before they'd go to her with it. For if the pastor's wife would tell her "as a true friend" that the report that she had gone to the theatre in St. Louis was causing a scandal, she'd thank her for being so sweetly thoughtful, and ask if nothing was sacred enough to be spared by the tongue of slander, though she, for one, didn't believe that there was anything in the malicious talk that the Doc was cribbing those powerful Sunday evening discourses from a volume of Beecher's sermons. And when they'd press her for the name of her informant, she'd say: "No, it was a lie; she knew it was a lie, and no one who sat under the dear pastor would believe it; and they mustn't dignify it by noticing it." As a matter of fact, no one who sat under Doc Pottle would have believed it, for his sermons weren't good enough to have been cribbed; and if Beecher could have heard one of them he would have excommunicated him.

Buck's wife knew how to show goods. When Buck himself had used up all the cuss-words in Missouri on his conduct, she had sense enough to know that his stock of trouble was full, and that if she wanted to get a hold on him she mustn't show him stripes, but something in cheerful checks. Yet when the trouble-hunters looked her up, she had a full line of samples of their favorite commodity to show them.

I simply mention these things in a general way. Seeing would naturally be believing, if cross-eyed people were the only ones who saw crooked, and hearing will be believing when deaf people are the only ones who don't hear straight. It's a pretty safe rule, when you hear a heavy yarn about any one, to allow a fair amount for tare, and then to verify your weights.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

P.S.—I think you'd better look in at a few of the branch houses on your way home and see if you can't make expenses.



No. 9

From John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago, to his son, Pierrepont, care of Graham & Company's brokers, Atlanta. Following the old man's suggestion, the young man has rounded out the honeymoon into a harvest moon, and is sending in some very satisfactory orders to the house.

IX

CHICAGO, February 1, 189-.

Dear Pierrepont: Judging from the way the orders are coming in, I reckon that you must be lavishing a little of your surplus ardor on the trade. So long as you are in such good practise, and can look a customer in the eye and make him believe that he's the only buyer you ever really loved, you'd better not hurry home too fast. I reckon Helen won't miss you for a few hours every day, but even if she should it's a mighty nice thing to be missed, and she's right there where you can tell her every night that you love her just the same; while the only way in which you can express your unchanged affection for the house is by sending us lots of orders. If you do that you needn't bother to write and send us lots of love.

The average buyer is a good deal like the heiress to a million dollars who's been on the market for eight or ten years, not because there's no demand for her, but because there's too much. Most girls whose capital of good looks is only moderate, marry, and marry young, because they're like a fellow on 'Change who's scalping the market—not inclined to take chances, and always ready to make a quick turn. Old maids are usually the girls who were so homely that they never had an offer, or so good-looking that they carried their matrimonial corner from one option to another till the new crop came along and bust them. But a girl with a million dollars isn't a speculative venture. She can advertise for sealed proposals on her fiftieth birthday and be oversubscribed like an issue of 10 per cent. Government bonds. There's no closed season on heiresses, and, naturally, a bird that can't stick its head up without getting shot at becomes a pretty wary old fowl.

A buyer is like your heiress—he always has a lot of nice young drummers flirting and fooling around him, but mighty few of them are so much in earnest that they can convince him that their only chance for happiness lies in securing his particular order. But you let one of these dead-in-earnest boys happen along, and the first thing you know he's persuaded the heiress that he loves her for herself alone or has eloped from town with an order for a car-load of lard.

A lot of young men start off in business with an idea that they must arm themselves with the same sort of weapons that their competitors carry. There's nothing in it. Fighting the devil with fire is all foolishness, because that's the one weapon with which he's more expert than any one else. I usually find that it's pretty good policy to oppose suspicion with candor, foxiness with openness, indifference with earnestness. When you deal squarely with a crooked man you scare him to death, because he thinks you're springing some new and extra-deep game on him.

A fellow who's subject to cramps and chills has no business in the water, but if you start to go in swimming, go in all over. Don't be one of those chappies who prance along the beach, shivering and showing their skinny shapes, and then dabble their feet in the surf, pour a little sand in their hair, and think they've had a bath.

You mustn't forget, though, that it's just as important to know when to come out as when to dive in. I mention this because yesterday some one who'd run across you at Yemassee told me that you and Helen were exchanging the grip of the third degree under the breakfast-table, and trying to eat your eggs with your left hands. Of course, this is all very right and proper if you can keep it up, but I've known a good many men who would kiss their wives on the honeymoon between swallows of coffee and look like an ass a year later when she chirruped out at the breakfast-table, "Do you love me, darling?" I'm just a little afraid that you're one of those fellows who wants to hold his wife in his lap during the first six months of his married life, and who, when she asks him at the end of a year if he loves her, answers "Sure." I may be wrong about this, but I've noticed a tendency on your part to slop over a little, and a pail that slops over soon empties itself.

It's been my experience that most women try to prove their love by talking about it, and most men by spending money. But when a pocketbook or a mouth is opened too often nothing but trouble is left in it.

Don't forget the little attentions due your wife, but don't hurt the grocer's feelings or treat the milkman with silent contempt in order to give them to her. You can hock your overcoat before marriage to buy violets for a girl, but when she has the run of your wardrobe you can't slap your chest and explain that you stopped wearing it because you're so warm-blooded. A sensible woman soon begins to understand that affection can be expressed in porterhouse steaks as well as in American beauties. But when Charlie, on twenty-five a week, marries a fool, she pouts and says that he doesn't love her just the same because he takes her to the theatre now in the street-cars, instead of in a carriage, as he used to in those happy days before they were married. As a matter of fact, this doesn't show that she's losing Charlie's love, but that he's getting his senses back. It's been my experience that no man can really attend to business properly when he's chased to the office every morning by a crowd of infuriated florists and livery-men.

Of course, after a girl has spent a year of evenings listening to a fellow tell her that his great ambition is to make her life one grand, sweet song, it jars her to find the orchestra grunting and snoring over the sporting extra some night along six months after the ceremony. She stays awake and cries a little over this, so when he sees her across the liver and bacon at breakfast, he forgets that he's never told her before that she could look like anything but an angel, and asks, "Gee, Mame, what makes your nose so red?" And that's the place where a young couple begins to adjust itself to life as it's lived on Michigan Avenue instead of in the story-books.

There's no rule for getting through the next six months without going back to mamma, except for the Brute to be as kind as he knows how to be and the Angel as forgiving as she can be. But at the end of that time a boy and girl with the right kind of stuff in them have been graduated into a man and a woman. It's only calf love that's always bellering about it. When love is full grown it has few words, and sometimes it growls them out.

I remember, when I was a youngster, hearing old Mrs. Hoover tell of the trip she took with the Doc just after they were married. Even as a young fellow the Doc was a great exhorter. Knew more Scripture when he was sixteen than the presiding elder. Couldn't open his mouth without losing a verse. Would lose a chapter when he yawned.

Well, when Doc was about twenty-five, he fell in love with a mighty sweet young girl, Leila Hardin, who every one said was too frivolous for him. But the Doc only answered that it was his duty to marry her to bring her under Christian influences, and they set off down the river to New Orleans on their honeymoon.

Mrs. Hoover used to say that he hardly spoke to her on the trip. Sat around in a daze, scowling and rolling his eyes, or charged up and down the deck, swinging his arms and muttering to himself. Scared her half to death, and she spent all her time crying when he wasn't around. Thought he didn't love her any more, and it wasn't till the first Sunday after she got home that she discovered what had ailed him. Seemed that in the exaltation produced by his happiness at having got her, he'd been composing a masterpiece, his famous sermon on the Horrors of Hell, that scared half of Pike County into the fold, and popularized dominoes with penny points as a substitute for dollar-limit draw-poker among those whom it didn't quite fetch.

Curious old cuss, the Doc. Found his wife played the piano pretty medium rotten, so when he wanted to work himself into a rage about something he'd sit down in the parlor and make her pound out "The Maiden's Prayer."

It's a mighty lucky thing that the Lord, and not the neighbors, makes the matches, because Doc's friends would have married him to Deacon Dody's daughter, who was so chuck full of good works that there was no room inside her for a heart. She afterward eloped with a St. Louis drummer, and before he divorced her she'd become the best lady poker player in the State of Missouri. But with Leila and the Doc it was a case of give-and-take from the start—that is, as is usual with a good many married folks, she'd give and he'd take. There never was a better minister's wife, and when you've said that you've said the last word about good wives and begun talking about martyrs, because after a minister's wife has pleased her husband she's got to please the rest of the church.

I simply mention Doc's honeymoon in passing as an example of the fact that two people can start out in life without anything in common apparently, except a desire to make each other happy, and, with that as a platform to meet on, keep coming closer and closer together until they find that they have everything in common. It isn't always the case, of course, but then it's happened pretty often that before I entered the room where an engaged couple were sitting I've had to cough or whistle to give them a chance to break away; and that after they were married I've had to keep right on coughing or whistling for the same couple to give them time to stop quarreling.

There are mighty few young people who go into marriage with any real idea of what it means. They get their notion of it from among the clouds where they live while they are engaged, and, naturally, about all they find up there is wind and moonshine; or from novels, which always end just before the real trouble begins, or if they keep on, leave out the chapters that tell how the husband finds the rent and the wife the hired girls. But if there's one thing in the world about which it's possible to get all the facts, it's matrimony. Part of them are right in the house where you were born, and the neighbors have the rest.

It's been my experience that you've got to have leisure to be unhappy. Half the troubles in this world are imaginary, and it takes time to think them up. But it's these oftener than the real troubles that break a young husband's back or a young wife's heart.

A few men and more women can be happy idle when they're single, but once you marry them to each other they've got to find work or they'll find trouble. Everybody's got to raise something in this world, and unless people raise a job, or crops, or children, they'll raise Cain. You can ride three miles on the trolley car to the Stock Yards every morning and find happiness at the end of the trip, but you may chase it all over the world in a steam yacht without catching up with it. A woman can find fun from the basement to the nursery of her own house, but give her a license to gad the streets and a bunch of matinee tickets and shell find discontent. There's always an idle woman or an idle man in every divorce case. When the man earns the bread in the sweat of his brow, it's right that the woman should perspire a little baking it.

There are two kinds of discontent in this world—the discontent that works and the discontent that wrings its hands. The first gets what it wants, and the second loses what it has. There's no cure for the first but success; and there's no cure at all for the second, especially if a woman has it; for she doesn't know what she wants, and so you can't give it to her.

Happiness is like salvation—a state of grace that makes you enjoy the good things you've got and keep reaching out, for better ones in the hereafter. And home isn't what's around you, but what's inside you.

I had a pretty good illustration of this whole thing some years ago when a foolish old uncle died and left my cellar boss, Mike Shaughnessy, a million dollars. I didn't bother about it particularly, for he'd always been a pretty level-headed old Mick, and I supposed that he'd put the money in pickle and keep right along at his job. But one morning, when he came rooting and grunting into my office in a sort of casual way, trying to keep a plug hat from falling off the back of his head, I knew that he was going to fly the track. Started in to tell me that his extensive property interests demanded all his attention now, but I cut it short with:

"Mike, you've been a blamed good cellar boss, but you're going to make a blamed bad millionaire. Think it over."

Well, sir, I'm hanged if that fellow, whom I'd raised from the time he was old enough to poke a barrel along the runways with a pointed stick, didn't blow a cloud of cigar smoke in my face to show that he was just as big as I was, and start tight in to regularly cuss me out. But he didn't get very far. I simply looked at Mm, and said sudden, "Git, you Mick," and he wilted back out of the office just as easy as if he hadn't had ten cents.

I heard of him off and on for the next year, putting up a house on Michigan Avenue, buying hand-painted pictures by the square foot and paying for them by the square inch—for his wife had decided that they must occupy their proper station in society—and generally building up a mighty high rating as a good thing.

As you know, I keep a pretty close eye on the packing house, but on account of my rheumatism I don't often go through the cellars. But along about this time we began to get so many complaints about our dry salt meats that I decided to have a little peek at our stock for myself, and check up the new cellar boss. I made for him and his gang first, and I was mightily pleased, as I came upon him without his seeing me, to notice how he was handling his men. No hollering, or yelling, or cussing, but every word counting and making somebody hop. I was right upon him before I discovered that it wasn't the new foreman, but Mike, who was bossing the gang. He half ducked behind a pile of Extra Short Clears when he saw me, but turned, when he found that it was too late, and faced me bold as brass.

"A nice state you've let things get in while I was away, sorr," he began.

It was Mike, the cellar boss, who knew his job, and no longer Mr. Shaughnessy, the millionaire, who didn't know his, that was talking, so I wasn't too inquisitive, and only nodded.

"Small wonder," he went on, "that crime's incr'asing an' th' cotton crop's decreasing in the black belt, when you're sendin' such mate to the poor naygurs. Why don't you git a cellar man that's been raised with the hogs, an' 'll treat 'em right when they're dead?"

"I'm looking for one," says I.

"I know a likely lad for you," says he.

"Report to the superintendent," says I; and Mike's been with me ever since. I found out when I looked into it that for a week back he'd been paying the new cellar boss ten dollars a day to lay around outside while he bossed his job.

Mike sold his old masters to a saloon-keeper and moved back to Packingtown, where he invested all his money in houses, from which he got a heap of satisfaction, because, as his tenants were compatriots, he had plenty of excitement collecting his rents. Like most people who fall into fortunes suddenly, he had bought a lot of things, not because he needed them or really wanted them, but because poorer people couldn't have them. Yet in the end he had sense enough to see that happiness can't be inherited, but that it must be earned.

Being a millionaire is a trade like a doctor's—you must work up through every grade of earning, saving, spending and giving, or you're no more fit to be trusted with a fortune than a quack with human life. For there's no trade in the world, except the doctor's, on which the lives and the happiness of so many people depend as the millionaire's; and I might add that there's no other in which there's so much malpractice.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.



No. 10

From John Graham, at Mount Clematis, Michigan, to his son, Pierrepont, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago. The young man has done famously during the first year of his married life, and the old man has decided to give him a more important position.

X

MOUNT CLEMATIS, January 1, 1900.

Dear Pierrepont: Since I got here, my rheumatism has been so bad mornings that the attendant who helps me dress has had to pull me over to the edge of the bed by the seat of my pajamas. If they ever give way, I reckon I'll have to stay in bed all day. As near as I can figure out from what the doctor says, the worse you feel during the first few days you're taking the baths, the better you really are. I suppose that when a fellow dies on their hands they call it a cure.

I'm by the worst of it for to-day, though, because I'm downstairs. Just now the laugh is on an old boy with benevolent side-whiskers, who's sliding down the balusters, and a fat old party, who looks like a bishop, that's bumping his way down with his feet sticking out straight in front of him. Shy away from these things that end in an ism, my boy. From skepticism to rheumatism they've an ache or a pain in every blamed joint.

Still, I don't want to talk about my troubles, but about your own. Barton leaves us on the first, and so we shall need a new assistant general manager for the business. It's a ten-thousand-dollar job, and a nine-thousand-nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine-dollar man can't fill it. From the way in which you've handled your department during the past year, I'm inclined to think that you can deliver that last dollar's worth of value. Anyway, I'm going to try you, and you've got to make good, because if you should fail it would be a reflection on my judgment as a merchant and a blow to my pride as a father. I could bear up under either, but the combination would make me feel like firing you.

As a matter of fact, I can't make you general manager; all I can do is to give you the title of general manager. And a title is like a suit of clothes—it must fit the man who tries to wear it. I can clothe you in a little brief authority, as your old college friend, Shakespeare, puts it, but I can't keep people from laughing at you when they see you swelling around in your high-water pants.

It's no use demanding respect in this world; you've got to command it. There's old Jim Wharton, who, for acting as a fourth-class consul of a fifth-class king, was decorated with the order of the garter or the suspender or the eagle of the sixth class—the kind these kings give to the cook when he gets just the right flavor of garlic in a fancy sauce. Jim never did a blame thing in his life except to inherit a million dollars from a better man, who happened to come over on the Cunard Line instead of the Mayflower, but he'd swell around in our best society, with that ribbon on his shirt-front, thinking that he looked like Prince Rupert by Louis the Fourteenth and Lady Clara Vere de Vere, instead of the fourth assistant to the floor manager at the Plumbers' ball. But you take Tom Lipton, who was swelled up into Sir Thomas because he discovered how to pack a genuine Yorkshire ham in Chicago, and a handle looks as natural on him as on a lard pail.

A man is a good deal like a horse—he knows the touch of a master, and no matter how lightly the reins are held over him, he understands that he must behave. But let a fellow who isn't quite sure of himself begin sawing on a horse's mouth, and the first thing you know the critter bucks and throws him.

You've only one pair of eyes with which to watch 10,000 men, so unless they're open all the time you'll be apt to overlook something here and there; but you'll have 10,000 pairs of eyes watching you all the time, and they won't overlook anything. You mustn't be known as an easy boss, or as a hard boss, but as a just boss. Of course, some just men lean backward toward severity, and some stoop down toward mercy. Both kinds may make good bosses, but I've usually found that when you hold the whip hand it's a great thing not to use the whip.

It looks like a pretty large contract to know what 10,000 men are doing, but, as a matter of fact, there's nothing impossible about it. In the first place, you don't need to bother very much about the things that are going all right, except to try to make them go a little better; but you want to spend your time smelling out the things that are going all wrong and laboring with them till you've persuaded them to lead a better life. For this reason, one of the most important duties of your job is to keep track of everything that's out of the usual. If anything unusually good happens, there's an unusually good man behind it, and he ought to be earmarked for promotion; and if anything unusually bad happens, there's apt to be an unusually bad man behind that, and he's a candidate for a job with another house.

A good many of these things which it's important for you to know happen a little before beginning and a little after quitting time; and so the real reason why the name of the boss doesn't appear on the time-sheet is not because he's a bigger man than any one else in the place, but because there shouldn't be any one around to take his time when he gets down and when he leaves.

You can tell a whole lot about your men from the way in which they come in and the way in which they go home; but because a fellow is in the office early, it doesn't always mean that he's panting to begin work; it may mean that he's been out all night. And when you see a fellow poring over his books after the others have quit, it doesn't always follow that he's so wrapped up in his work that he can't tear himself away from it. It may mean that during business hours he had his head full of horse-racing instead of figures, and that he's staying to chase up the thirty cents which he's out in his balance. You want to find out which.

The extra-poor men and the extra-good men always stick their heads up above the dead-level of good-enough men; the first to holler for help, and the second to get an extra reach. And when your attention is attracted to one of these men, follow him up and find out just what sort of soil and fertilizer he needs to grow fastest. It isn't enough to pick likely stock; you've got to plant it where the conditions are right to develop its particular possibilities. A fellow who's got the making of a five-thousand-dollar office man in him may not sell enough lard to fry a half-portion of small potatoes if you put him on the road. Praise judiciously given may act on one man like an application of our bone-meal to a fruit tree, and bring out all the pippins that are in the wood; while in the other it may simply result in his going all to top.

You mustn't depend too much on the judgment of department heads and foremen when picking men for promotion. Take their selection if he is the best man, but know for yourself that he is the best man.

Sometimes a foreman will play a favorite, and, as any fellow who's been to the races knows, favorites ain't always winners. And sometimes, though not often, he'll try to hold back a good man through jealousy. When I see symptoms of a foreman's being jealous of a man under him, that fellow doesn't need any further recommendation to me. A man's never jealous of inferiority.

It's a mighty valuable asset for a boss, when a vacancy occurs in a department, to be able to go to its head when he recommends Bill Smith for the position, and show that he knows all about Bill Smith from his number-twelve socks up to his six-and-a-quarter hat, and to ask: "What's the matter with Tom Jones for the job?" When you refuse to take something just as good in this world, you'll usually find that the next time you call the druggist has the original Snicker's Sassafras Sneezer in stock.

It's mighty seldom, though, that a really good man will complain to you that he's being held down, or that his superior is jealous of him. It's been my experience that it's only a mighty small head that so small an idea as this can fill. When a fellow has it, he's a good deal like one of those girls with the fatal gift of beauty in her imagination, instead of her face—always believing that the boys don't dance with her because the other girls tell them spiteful things about her.

Besides always having a man in mind for any vacancy that may occur, you want to make sure that there are two men in the office who understand the work of each position in it. Every business should be bigger than any one man. If it isn't, there's a weak spot in it that will kill it in the end. And every job needs an understudy. Sooner or later the star is bound to fall sick, or get the sulks or the swelled head, and then, if there's no one in the wings who knows her lines, the gallery will rotten-egg the show and howl for its money back. Besides, it has a mighty chastening and stimulating effect on the star to know that if she balks there's a sweet young thing in reserve who's able and eager to go the distance.

Of course, I don't mean by this that you want to play one man against another or try to minimize to a good man his importance to the house. On the contrary, you want to dwell on the importance of all positions, from that of office-boy up, and make every man feel that he is a vital part of the machinery of the business, without letting him forget that there's a spare part lying around handy, and that if he breaks or goes wrong it can be fitted right in and the machine kept running. It's good human nature to want to feel that something's going to bust when you quit, but it's bad management if things are fixed so that anything can.

In hiring new men, you want to depend almost altogether on your own eyes and your own judgment. Remember that when a man's asking for a job he's not showing you himself, but the man whom he wants you to hire. For that reason, I never take on an applicant after a first interview. I ask him to call again. The second time he may not be made up so well, and he may have forgotten some of his lines. In any event, hell feel that he knows you a little better, and so act a little easier and talk a little freer.

Very often a man whom you didn't like on his first appearance will please you better on his second, because a lot of people always appear at their worst when they're trying to appear at their best. And again, when you catch a fellow off guard who seemed all right the first time, you may find that he deaconed himself for your benefit, and that all the big strawberries were on top. Don't attach too much importance to the things which an applicant has a chance to do with deliberation, or pay too much attention to his nicely prepared and memorized speech about himself. Watch the little things which he does unconsciously, and put unexpected questions which demand quick answers.

If he's been working for Dick Saunders, it's of small importance what Dick says of him in his letter of recommendation. If you want Dick's real opinion, get it in some other way than in an open note, of which the subject's the bearer. As a matter of fact, Dick's opinion shouldn't carry too much weight, except on a question of honesty, because if Dick let him go, he naturally doesn't think a great deal of him; and if the man resigned voluntarily, Dick is apt to feel a little sore about it. But your applicant's opinion of Dick Saunders is of very great importance to you. A good man never talks about a real grievance against an old employer to a new one; a poor man always pours out an imaginary grievance to any one who will listen. You needn't cheer in this world when you don't like the show, but silence is louder than a hiss.

Hire city men and country men; men who wear grandpa's Sunday suit; thread-bare men and men dressed in those special four-ninety-eight bargains; but don't hire dirty men. Time and soap will cure dirty boys, but a full-grown man who shrinks from the use of water externally is as hard to cure as one who avoids its use internally. It's a mighty curious thing that you can tell a man his morals are bad and he needs to get religion, and hell still remain your friend; but that if you tell him his linen's dirty and he needs to take a bath, you've made a mortal enemy.

Give the preference to the lean men and the middleweights. The world is full of smart and rich fat men, but most of them got their smartness and their riches before they got their fat.

Always appoint an hour at which you'll see a man, and if he's late a minute don't bother with him. A fellow who can be late when his own interests are at stake is pretty sure to be when yours are. Have a scribbling pad and some good letter paper on a desk, and ask the applicant to write his name and address. A careful and economical man will use the pad, but a careless and wasteful fellow will reach for the best thing in sight, regardless of the use to which it's to be put.

Look in a man's eyes for honesty; around his mouth for weakness; at his chin for strength; at his hands for temperament; at his nails for cleanliness. His tongue will tell you his experience, and under the questioning of a shrewd employer prove or disprove its statements as it runs along. Always remember, in the case of an applicant from another city, that when a man says he doesn't like the town in which he's been working it's usually because he didn't do very well there.

You want to be just as careful about hiring boys as men. A lot of employers go on the theory that the only important thing about a boy is his legs, and if they're both fitted on and limber they hire him. As a matter of fact, a boy is like a stick of dynamite, small and compact, but as full of possibilities of trouble as a car-load of gunpowder. One bad boy in a Sunday-school picnic can turn it into a rough-house outfit for looting orchards, and one little cuss in your office can demoralize your kids faster than you can fire them.

I remember one boy who organized a secret society, called the Mysterious League. It held meetings in our big vault, which they called the donjon keep, and, naturally, when one of them was going on, boys were scarcer around the office than hen's teeth. The object of the league, as I shook it out of the head leaguer by the ear, was to catch the head bookkeeper, whom the boys didn't like, and whom they called the black caitiff, alone in the vault some night while he was putting away his books, slam the door, and turn the combination on him. Tucked away in a corner of the vault, they had a message for him, written in red ink, on a sheep's skull, telling him to tremble, that he was in the hands of the Mysterious League, and that he would be led at midnight to the torture chamber. I learned afterward that when the bookkeeper had reached in his desk to get a pen, a few days before, he had pulled out a cold, clammy, pickled pig's foot, on which was printed: "Beware! first you will lose a leg!"

I simply mention the Mysterious League in passing. Of course, boys will be boys, but you mustn't let them be too cussed boyish during business hours. A slow boy can waste a lot of the time of a five-thousand-dollar man whose bell he's answering; and a careless boy can mislay a letter or drop a paper that will ball up the work of the most careful man in the office.

It's really harder to tell what you're getting when you hire a boy than when you hire a man. I found that out for keeps a few years ago, when I took on the Angel Child. He was the son of rich parents, who weren't quite rich enough to buy chips and sit in the game of the no-limit millionaires. So they went in for what they called the simple life. I want to say right here that I'm a great believer in the simple life, but some people are so blamed simple about it that they're idiotic. The world is full of rich people who talk about leading the simple life when they mean the stingy life. They are the kind that are always giving poorer people a chance to chip in an even share with them toward defraying the expenses of the charities and the entertainments which they get up. They call it "affording those in humbler walks an opportunity to keep up their self-respect," but what they really mean is that it helps them to keep down their own expenses.

The Angel Child's mother was one of these women who talk to people that aren't quite so rich as she in the tone of one who's commending a worthy charity; but who hangs on the words of a richer woman like a dog that hopes a piece of meat is going to be thrown at it, and yet isn't quite sure that it won't get a kick instead. As a side-line, she made a specialty of trying to uplift the masses, and her husband furnished the raw material for the uplifting, as he paid his men less and worked 'em harder than any one else in Chicago.

Well, one day this woman came into my office, bringing her only son with her. He was a solemn little cuss, but I didn't get much chance to size him up, because his ma started right in to explain how he'd been raised—no whipping, no—but I cut it short there, and asked her to get down to brass tacks, as I was very busy trying to see that 70,000,000 people were supplied with their daily pork. So she explained that she wanted me to give the Angel Child a job in my office during his summer vacation, so that he could see how the other half lived, and at the same time begin to learn self-reliance.

I was just about to refuse, when it occurred to me that if he had never really had a first-class whipping it was a pity not to put him in the way of getting one. So I took him by the hand and led him to headquarters for whippings, the bench in the shipping department, where a pretty scrappy lot of boys were employed to run errands, and told the boss to take him on.

I wasn't out of hearing before one kid said, "I choose him," and another, whom they called the Breakfast-Food Baby, because he was so strong, answered, "Naw; I seen him first."

I dismissed the matter from my mind then, but a few days later, when I was walking through the shipping department, it occurred to me that I might as well view the remains of the Angel Child, if they hadn't been removed to his late residence. I found him sitting in the middle of the bench, looking a little sad and lonesome, but all there. The other boys seemed to be giving him plenty of room, and the Breakfast-Food Baby, with both eyes blacked, had edged along to the end of the bench. I beckoned to the Angel Child to follow me to my private office.

"What does this mean, young man?" I asked, when he got there. "Have you been fighting?"

"Yes, sir," he answered, sort of brightening up.

"Which one?"

"Michael and Patrick the first day, sir."

"Did you lick 'em?"

"I had rather the better of it," he answered, as precise as a slice of cold-boiled Boston.

"And the second?"

"Why, the rest of 'em, sir."

"Including the Breakfast-Food—er, James?"

He nodded. "James is very strong, sir, but he lacks science. He drew back as if he had a year to hit me, and just as he got good and ready to strike, I pasted him one in the snoot, and followed that up with a left jab in the eye."

I hadn't counted on boxing lessons being on the bill of fare of the simple life, and it raised my hopes still further to see from that last sentence how we had grafted a little Union Stock Yards on his Back Bay Boston. In fact, my heart quite warmed to the lad; but I looked at him pretty severely, and only said:

"Mark you, young man, we don't allow any fighting around here; and if you can't get along without quarrelling with the boys in the shipping department, I'll have to bring you into these offices, where I can have an eye on your conduct."

There were two or three boys in the main office who were spoiling for a thrashing, and I reckoned that the Angel Child would attend to their cases; and he did. He was cock of the walk in a week, and at the same time one of the bulliest, daisiest, most efficient, most respectful boys that ever worked for me. He put a little polish on the other kids, and they took a little of the extra shine off him. He's in Harvard now, but when he gets out there's a job waiting for him, if he'll take it.