No. 18FROM 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.
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 attention 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 myself. 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 in twenty years when there wasn’t anice “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 philanthropist, 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 stealing the pork out of the workingman’s pot. As long as you can’t please both sides inthis world, there’s nothing like pleasing your own side.
There are mighty few people who can 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-syrupy way asked if I would lend it to her, as she wanted to build acrècheon it. I hesitated a little, because I had never heard of acrèchebefore, and someways it sounded sort of foreign and frisky, though the woman looked like a good, safe, reliable old heifer. But she explained that acrèchewas 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 dissatisfied, to find out if I wouldn’t build thecrècheitself. It seemed like a worthy object, 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 anything 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 refreshments.
I thought that was pretty good measure, but the carpenters hadn’t more than finished with the pavilion before the woman telephoned 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 thepainters 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 morning 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. Allowed I ought to send my check for that amount to thecrèchefund. 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 thecrècheindustry.
I’ve put a good deal more than work into my business, and I’ve drawn a good dealmore 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 because 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’reafraid 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 playmate 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 hungrythey’d come home. And someways, the whole drove always showed up safe and dirty about meal time.
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 expectations of the neighbors who had brought the news, and who were standing around waiting 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 Christian resignation, the rest of the town wasmightily 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 results. 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 thatboys 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 taking 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. Reckoned that Bud was up to some cussedness off somewhere, and that he wouldn’t answer for any two-bits.
Elder Hoover was accounted a powerful exhorter in our parts.“Elder Hoover was accounted apowerful exhorter in our parts.”
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 fancyfits. But next day she came again and paid down four bits, 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 responded 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 Washington,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 neighbors 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 move. Allowed that if she could once get her hands in “that lost lamb’s” wool there might be an opening for a funeral when shegot through with him, but 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 itappeared 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.
No. 19FROM 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.
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.
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 somehow, 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 isjust 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 betheconsideration in marriage, but it always ought to beaconsideration. When a boy and a girl don’t think enough about money before the ceremony, they’re going to have to think altogether 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 fellow’s got the money to invest. I have met women who had cut their husband’s expenses 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 anydiscussion of our business, because they are hogs. There’s a point where economy becomes 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 cement till you’ve got something to build on. But a lot of women will go right ahead without 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, whosefather 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 particularly, because Jack was one of these charlotte-russe boys, all whipped cream and sponge cake and high-priced flavoring extracts, 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 mearound to a meet at the Ralstons one evening. 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 turning out a steady stream of fancy work with his mouth. And all the time he was looking 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 ahair-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 something 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 going to reign in your life and make it a heaven, or something of that sort. I forgetjust the words, but they were mighty beautiful 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 myself, 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 proposed—that is, I want to propose to her,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 million-dollar offer as a practical joke. What is it you’ve said to her? ‘I love you,darling,’ or something about as foxy and noncommittal.”
“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 delicate 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 onJack’s face now; “I told her that you, as trustee under father’s will, had certain unpleasant powers over my money—in fact, that most of it would revert to Sis if I married against your wishes, and that you disliked 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.”
“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 fromthat. 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 wreckage. Then I reckoned on copper-riveting their engagement by announcing it myself and standing over Jack with a shotgun to see that there wasn’t any more nonsense. 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 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 telephone.”
“A lady!” says Jack. “Tell her I’m not here.” Talk to one of those girls, even froma 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 already 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 same.
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.
“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, addressed 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
“‘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 straightthat 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 thestreet 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 hasinstincts 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 himself 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, entirely; but I’ve made a very satisfactory beginning.”
“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’thave 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 dignified, 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.
I surprised your Ma a good deal that evening by allowing that I’d go to the Blairs’ 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.
Miss Curzon, with one of his roses in her hair, watching him from a corner.“Miss Curzon, with one of his roses in her hair, watching him from a corner.”
Mrs. Dick beat me stalking Jack, but I was just behind, a close second. He didn’tsee 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 Templars 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 partner along to the other end of the room, whileI 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 something 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 something 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 mistake somewhere,” he mumbled. “Awfully hot here—get you a glass of water,” and herushed 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 delicately strung to stand a thing of this sort.”
“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-by.”
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 ofyourbeing 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 helpthat. 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.
No. 20FROM 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 received a limited blessing.
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 received a limited blessing.
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 engagements 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 engagement.
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. Naturally, a girl’s got her better nature and her best complexion along under thosecircumstances; but the really valuable thing to know is how she approaches ham and eggs at sevena.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 elevenp.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 expenses. Of course, when you’re patting and petting and feeding a woman she’s going to purr, but there’s nothing like stirring herup 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 thefuneral of the man who wasn’t “a professor”—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 housekeeping 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 climbingroses 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 another we managed to get a good deal of satisfaction 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 happiness, because you’ll find that when they’redue 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 livestock, even then; and while I couldn’t afford 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 opportunities. I never saw a pig that turnedcorn 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 something 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 moment, 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 madand 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 appetite 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 youharder 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 nothing like a woman at home to spur on a man at the office.
A married 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 different girl every night, and can’t stay at hometo 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
FROM THE LIST OF
ByFINLAY PETER DUNNE (“Mr. Dooley”)
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ALPHABET OF CELEBRITIES, AN
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