No. 4
From John Graham, at the Hotel Cecil, London, to his son, Pierrepont, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago. The old man has just finished going through the young man's first report as manager of the lard department, and he finds it suspiciously good.
IV
LONDON, December 1, 189-.
Dear Pierrepont: Your first report; looks so good that I'm a little afraid of it. Figures don't lie, I know, but that's, only because they can't talk. As a matter of fact, they're just as truthful as the man who's behind them.
It's been my experience that there are two kinds of figures—educated and uneducated ones—and that the first are a good deal like the people who have had the advantage of a college education on the inside and the disadvantage of a society finish on the outside—they're apt to tell you only the smooth and the pleasant things. Of course, it's mighty nice to be told that the shine of your shirt-front is blinding the floor-manager's best girl; but if there's a hole in the seat of your pants you ought to know that, too, because sooner or later you've got to turn your back to the audience.
Now don't go off half-cocked and think I'm allowing that you ain't truthful; because I think you are—reasonably so—and I'm sure that everything you say in your report is true. But is there anything you don't say in it?
A good many men are truthful on the installment plan—that is, they tell their boss all the good things in sight about their end of the business and then dribble out the bad ones like a fellow who's giving you a list of his debts. They'll yell for a week that the business of their department has increased ten per cent., and then own up in a whisper that their selling cost has increased twenty. In the end, that always creates a worse impression than if both sides of the story had been told at once or the bad had been told first. It's like buying a barrel of apples that's been deaconed—after you've found that the deeper you go the meaner and wormier the fruit, you forget all about the layer of big, rosy, wax-finished pippins which was on top.
I never worry about the side of a proposition that I can see; what I want to get a look at is the side that's out of sight. The bugs always snuggle down on the under side of the stone.
The best year we ever had—in our minds—was one when the superintendent of the packing-house wanted an increase in his salary, and, to make a big showing, swelled up his inventory like a poisoned pup. It took us three months, to wake up to what had happened, and a year to get over feeling as if there was sand in our eyes when we compared the second showing with the first. An optimist is as bad as a drunkard when he comes to figure up results in business—he sees double. I employ optimists to get results and pessimists to figure them up.
After I've charged off in my inventory for wear and tear and depreciation, I deduct a little more just for luck—bad luck. That's the only sort of luck a merchant can afford to make a part of his calculations.
The fellow who said you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear wasn't on to the packing business. You can make the purse and you can fill it, too, from the same critter. What you can't do is to load up a report with moonshine or an inventory with wind, and get anything more substantial than a moonlight sail toward bankruptcy. The kittens of a wildcat are wildcats, and there's no use counting on their being angoras.
Speaking of educated pigs naturally calls to mind Jake Solzenheimer and the lard that he sold half a cent a pound cheaper than any one else in the business could make it. That was a long time ago, when the packing business was still on the bottle, and when the hogs that came to Chicago got only a common-school education and graduated as plain hams and sides and lard and sausage. Literature hadn't hit the hog business then. It was just Graham's hams or Smith's lard, and there were no poetical brands or high-art labels.
Well, sir, one day I heard that this Jake was offering lard to the trade at half a cent under the market, and that he'd had the nerve to label it "Driven Snow Leaf." Told me, when I ran up against him on the street, that he'd got the name from a song which began, "Once I was pure as the driven snow." Said it made him feel all choky and as if he wanted to be a better man, so he'd set out to make the song famous in the hope of its helping others. Allowed that this was a hard world, and that it was little enough we could do in our business life to scatter sunshine along the way; but he proposed that every can which left his packing-house after this should carry the call to a better life into some humble home.
I let him lug that sort of stuff to the trough till he got tired, and then I looked him square in the eye and went right at him with:
"Jake, what you been putting in that lard?" because I knew mighty well that there was something in it which had never walked on four feet and fattened up on fifty-cent corn and then paid railroad fare from the Missouri River to Chicago. There are a good many things I don't know, but hogs ain't one of them.
Jake just grinned at me and swore that there was nothing in his lard except the pure juice of the hog; so I quit fooling with him and took a can of "Driven Snow" around to our chemist. It looked like lard and smelt like lard—in fact, it looked better than real lard: too white and crinkly and tempting on top. And the next day the chemist came down to my office and told me that "Driven Snow" must have been driven through a candle factory, because it had picked up about twenty per cent. of paraffin wax somewhere.
Of course, I saw now why Jake was able to undersell us all, but it was mighty important to knock out "Driven Snow" with the trade in just the right way, because most of our best customers had loaded up with it. So I got the exact formula from the chemist and had about a hundred sample cans made up, labeling each one "Wandering Boy Leaf Lard," and printing on the labels: "This lard contains twenty per cent. of paraffin."
I sent most of these cans, with letters of instruction, to our men through the country. Then I waited until it was Jake's time to be at the Live Stock Exchange, and happened in with a can of "Wandering Boy" under my arm. It didn't take me long to get into conversation with Jake, and as we talked I swung that can around until it attracted his attention, and he up and asked:
"What you got there, Graham?"
"Oh, that," I answered, slipping the can behind my back—"that's a new lard we're putting out—something not quite so expensive as our regular brand."
Jake stopped grinning then and gave me a mighty sharp look.
"Lemme have a squint at it," says he, trying not to show too keen an interest in his face.
I held back a little; then I said: "Well, I don't just know as I ought to show you this. We haven't regularly put it on the market, and this can ain't a fair sample of what we can do; but so long as I sort of got the idea from you I might as well tell you. I'd been thinking over what you said about that lard of yours, and while they were taking a collection in church the other day the soprano up and sings a mighty touching song. It began, 'Where is my wandering boy to-night?' and by the time she was through I was feeling so mushy and sobby that I put a five instead of a one into the plate by mistake. I've been thinking ever since that the attention of the country ought to be called to that song, and so I've got up this missionary lard"; and I shoved the can of "Wandering Boy" under his eyes, giving him time to read the whole label.
"H—l!" he said.
"Yes," I answered; "that's it. Good lard gone wrong; but it's going to do a great work."
"That's it—good lard gone wrong"
"That's it—good lard gone wrong"
Jake's face looked like the Lost Tribes—the whole bunch of 'em—as the thing soaked in; and then he ran his arm through mine and drew me off into a corner.
"Graham," said he, "let's drop this cussed foolishness. You keep dark about this and we'll divide the lard trade of the country."
I pretended not to understand what he was driving at, but reached out and grasped his hand and wrung it. "Yes, yes, Jake," I said; "we'll stand shoulder to shoulder and make the lard business one grand sweet song," and then I choked him off by calling another fellow into the conversation. It hardly seemed worth while to waste time telling Jake what he was going to find out when he got back to his office—that there wasn't any lard business to divide, because I had hogged it all.
You see, my salesmen had taken their samples of "Wandering Boy" around to the buyers and explained that it was made from the same formula as "Driven Snow," and could be bought at the same price. They didn't sell any "Boy," of course—that wasn't the idea; but they loaded up the trade with our regular brand, to take the place of the "Driven Snow," which was shipped back to Jake by the car-lot.
Since then, when anything looks too snowy and smooth and good at the first glance, I generally analyze it for paraffin. I've found that this is a mighty big world for a square man and a mighty small world for a crooked one.
I simply mention these things in a general way. I've confidence that you're going to make good as head of the lard department, and if, when I get home, I find that your work analyzes seventy-five per cent, as pure as your report I shall be satisfied. In the meanwhile I shall instruct the cashier to let you draw a hundred dollars a week, just to show that I haven't got a case of faith without works. I reckon the extra twenty-five per will come in mighty handy now that you're within a month of marrying Helen.
I'm still learning how to treat an old wife, and so I can't give you many pointers about a young one. For while I've been married as long as I've been in business, and while I know all the curves of the great American hog, your ma's likely to spring a new one on me tomorrow. No man really knows anything about women except a widower, and he forgets it when he gets ready to marry again. And no woman really knows anything about men except a widow, and she's got to forget it before she's willing to marry again. The one thing you can know is that, as a general proposition, a woman is a little better than the man for whom she cares. For when a woman's bad, there's always a man at the bottom of it; and when a man's good, there's always a woman at the bottom of that, too.
The fact of the matter is, that while marriages may be made in heaven, a lot of them are lived in hell and end in South Dakota. But when a man has picked out a good woman he holds four hearts, and he needn't be afraid to draw cards if he's got good nerve. If he hasn't, he's got no business to be sitting in games of chance. The best woman in the world will begin trying out a man before she's been married to him twenty-four hours; and unless he can smile over the top of a four-flush and raise the ante, she's going to rake in the breeches and keep them.
The great thing is to begin right. Marriage is a close corporation, and unless a fellow gets the controlling interest at the start he can't pick it up later. The partner who owns fifty-one per cent. of the stock in any business is the boss, even if the other is allowed to call himself president. There's only two jobs for a man in his own house—one's boss and the other's office-boy, and a fellow naturally falls into the one for which he's fitted.
Of course, when I speak of a fellow's being boss in his own home, I simply mean that, in a broad way, he's going to shape the policy of the concern. When a man goes sticking his nose into the running of the house, he's apt to get it tweaked, and while he's busy drawingitback out of danger he's going to get his leg pulled, too. You let your wife tend to the housekeeping and you focus on earning money with which she can keep house. Of course, in one way, it's mighty nice of a man to help around the place, but it's been my experience that the fellows who tend to all the small jobs at home never get anything else to tend to at the office. In the end, it's usually cheaper to give all your attention to your business and to hire a plumber.
You don't want to get it into your head, though, that because your wife hasn't any office-hours she has a soft thing. A lot of men go around sticking out their chests and wondering why their wives have so much trouble with the help, when they are able to handle their clerks so easy. If you really want to know, you lift two of your men out of their revolving-chairs, and hang one over a forty-horse-power cook-stove that's booming along under forced draft so that your dinner won't be late, with a turkey that's gobbling for basting in one oven, and a cake that's gone back on you in a low, underhand way in another, and sixteen different things boiling over on top and mixing up their smells. And you set the other at a twelve-hour stunt of making all the beds you've mussed, and washing all the dishes you've used, and cleaning all the dust you've kicked up, and you boss the whole while the baby yells with colic over your arm—you just try this with two of your men and see how long it is before there's rough-house on the Wabash. Yet a lot of fellows come home after their wives have had a day of this and blow around about how tired and overworked they are, and wonder why home isn't happier. Don't you ever forget that it's a blamed sight easier to keep cool in front of an electric fan than a cook-stove, and that you can't subject the best temper in the world to 500 degrees Fahrenheit without warming it up a bit. And don't you add to your wife's troubles by saying how much better you could do it, but stand pat and thank the Lord you've got a snap.
I remember when old Doc Hoover, just after his wife died, bought a mighty competent nigger, Aunt Tempy, to cook and look after the house for him. She was the boss cook, you bet, and she could fry a chicken into a bird of paradise just as easy as the Doc could sizzle a sinner into a pretty tolerable Christian.
The old man took his religion with the bristles on, and he wouldn't stand for any Sunday work in his house. Told Tempy to cook enough for two days on Saturday and to serve three cold meals on Sunday.
Tempy sniffed a little, but she'd been raised well and didn't talk back. That first Sunday Doc got his cold breakfast all right, but before he'd fairly laid into it Tempy trotted out a cup of hot coffee. That made the old man rage at first, but finally he allowed that, seeing it was made, there was no special harm in taking a sup or two, but not to let it occur again. A few minutes later he called back to Tempy in the kitchen and asked her if she'd been sinful enough to make two cups.
Doc's dinner was ready for him when he got back from church, and it was real food—that is to say, hot food, a-sizzling and a-smoking from the stove. Tempy told around afterward that the way the old man went for her about it made her feel mighty proud and set-up over her new master. But she just stood there dripping perspiration and good nature until the Doc had wound up by allowing that there was only one part of the hereafter where meals were cooked on Sunday, and that she'd surely get a mention on the bill of fare there as dark meat, well done, if she didn't repent, and then she blurted out:
"Law, chile, you go 'long and 'tend to yo' preaching and I'll 'tend to my cookin'; yo' can't fight the debbil with snow-balls." And what's more, the Doc didn't, not while Aunt Tempy was living.
There isn't any moral to this, but there's a hint in it to mind your own business at home as well as at the office. I sail to-morrow. I'm feeling in mighty good spirits, and I hope I'm not going to find anything at your end of the line to give me a relapse.
Your affectionate father,
JOHN GRAHAM.
No. 5
From John Graham, at the Waldorf-Astoria, New York, to his son, Pierrepont, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago. The young man has hinted vaguely of a quarrel between himself and Helen Heath, who is in New York with her mother, and has suggested that the old man act as peacemaker.
V
NEW YORK, December 8, 189-.
Dear Pierrepont: I've been afraid all along that you were going to spoil the only really sensible thing you've ever done by making some fool break, so as soon as I got your letter I started right out to trail down Helen and her ma. I found them hived up here in the hotel, and Miss Helen was so sweet to your poor old pa that I saw right off she had a stick cut for his son. Of course, I didn't let on that I knew anything about a quarrel, but I gradually steered the conversation around to you, and while I don't want to hurt your feelings, I am violating no confidence when I tell you that the mention of your name aroused about the same sort of enthusiasm that Bill Bryan's does in Wall Street—only Helen is a lady and so she couldn't cuss. But it wasn't the language of flowers that I saw in her eyes. So I told her that she must make allowances for you, as you were only a half-baked boy, and that, naturally, if she stuck a hat-pin into your crust she was going to strike a raw streak here and there.
She sat up a little at that, and started in to tell me that while you had said "some very, very cruel, cruel things to her, still—" But I cut her short by allowing that, sorry as I was to own it, I was afraid you had a streak of the brute in you, and I only hoped that you wouldn't take it out on her after you were married.
Well, sir, the way she flared up, I thought that all the Fourth of July fireworks had gone off at once. The air was full of trouble—trouble in set pieces and bombs and sizzy rockets and sixteen-ball Roman candles, and all pointed right at me. Then it came on to rain in the usual way, and she began to assure me between showers that you were so kind and gentle that it hurt you to work, or to work at my horrid pig-sticking business, I forget which, and I begged her pardon for having misjudged you so cruelly, and then the whole thing sort of simmered off into a discussion of whether I thought you'd rather she wore pink or blue at breakfast. So I guess you're all right. Only you'd better write quick and apologize.
I didn't get at the facts of the quarrel, but you're in the wrong. A fellow's always in the wrong when he quarrels with a woman, and even if he wasn't at the start he's sure to be before he gets through. And a man who's decided to marry can't be too quick learning to apologize for things he didn't say and to be forgiven for things he didn't do. When you differ with your wife, never try to reason out who's in the wrong, because you'll find that after you've proved it to her shell still have a lot of talk left that she hasn't used.
Of course, it isn't natural and it isn't safe for married people, and especially young married people, not to quarrel a little, but you'll save a heap of trouble if you make it a rule never to refuse a request before breakfast and never to grant one after dinner. I don't know why it is, but most women get up in the morning as cheerful as a breakfast-food ad., while a man will snort and paw for trouble the minute his hoofs touch the floor. Then, if you'll remember that the longer the last word is kept the bitterer it gets, and that your wife is bound to have it anyway, you'll cut the rest of your quarrels so short that she'll never find out just how much meanness there is in you. Be the silent partner at home and the thinking one at the office. Do your loose talking in your sleep.
Of course, if you get a woman who's really fond of quarreling there isn't any special use in keeping still, because she'll holler if you talk back and yell if you don't. The best that you can do is to pretend that you've got a chronic case of ear-ache, and keep your ears stuffed with cotton. Then, like as not, she'll buy you one of these things that you hold in your mouth so that you can hear through your teeth.
I don't believe you're going to draw anything of that sort with Helen, but this is a mighty uncertain world, especially when you get to betting on which way the kitten is going to jump—you can usually guess right about the cat—and things don't always work out as planned.
While there's no sure rule for keeping out of trouble in this world, there's a whole set of them for getting into it.
I remember a mighty nice, careful mother who used to shudder when slang was used in her presence. So she vowed she'd giveherson a name that the boys couldn't twist into any low, vulgar nick-name. She called him Algernon, but the kid had a pretty big nose, and the first day he was sent to school with his long lace collar and his short velvet pants the boys christened him Snooty, and now his parents are the only people who know what his real name is.
After you've been married a little while you're going to find that there are two kinds of happiness you can have—home happiness and fashionable happiness. With the first kind you get a lot of children and with the second a lot of dogs. While the dogs mind better and seem more affectionate, because they kiss you with their whole face, I've always preferred to associate with children. Then, for the first kind of happiness you keep house for yourself, and for the second you keep house for the neighbors.
You can buy a lot of home happiness with a mighty small salary, but fashionable happiness always costs just a little more than you're making. You can't keep down expenses when you've got to keep up appearances—that is, the appearance of being something that you ain't. You're in the fix of a dog chasing his tail—you can't make ends meet, and if you do it'll give you such a crick in your neck that you won't get any real satisfaction out of your gymnastics. You've got to live on a rump-steak basis when you're alone, so that you can appear to be on a quail-on-toast basis when you have company. And while they're eating your quail and betting that they're cold-storage birds, they'll be whispering to each other that the butcher told their cook that you lived all last week on a soup-bone and two pounds of Hamburger steak. Your wife must hog it around the house in an old wrapper, because she's got to have two or three of those dresses that come high on the bills and low on the shoulders, and when she wears 'em the neighbors are going to wonder how much you're short in your accounts. And if you've been raised a shouting Methodist and been used to hollering your satisfaction in a good hearty Glory! or a Hallelujah! you've got to quit it and go to one of those churches where the right answer to the question, "What is the chief end of man?" is "Dividend," and where they think you're throwing a fit and sick the sexton on to you if you forget yourself and whoop it up a little when your religion gets to working.
Then, if you do have any children, you can't send them to a plain public school to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, because they've got to go to a fashionable private one to learn hog-Latin, hog-wash, and how much the neighbors are worth. Of course, the rich children are going to say that they're pushing little kids, but they've got to learn to push and to shove and to butt right in where they're not wanted if they intend to herd with the real angora billy-goats. They've got to learn how to bow low to every one in front of them and to kick out at every one behind them. It's been my experience that it takes a good four-year course in snubbing before you can graduate a first-class snob.
Then, when you've sweat along at it for a dozen years or so, you'll wake up some morning and discover that your appearances haven't deceived any one but yourself. A man who tries that game is a good deal like the fellow who puts on a fancy vest over a dirty shirt—he's the only person in the world who can't see the egg-spots under his chin. Of course, there isn't any real danger of your family's wearing a false front while I'm alive, because I believe Helen's got too much sense to stand for anything of the sort; but if she should, you can expect the old man around with his megaphone to whisper the real figures to your neighbors.
I don't care how much or how little money you make—I want you to understand that there's only one place in the world where you can live a happy life, and that's inside your income. A family that's living beyond its means is simply a business that's losing money, and it's bound to go to smash. And to keep a safe distance ahead of the sheriff you've got to make your wife help. More men go broke through bad management at home than at the office. And I might add that a lot of men who are used to getting only one dollar's worth of food for a five-dollar bill down-town, expect their wives to get five dollars' worth of food for a one-dollar bill at the corner grocery, and to save the change toward a pair of diamond earrings. These fellows would plant a tin can and kick because they didn't get a case of tomatoes.
Of course, some women put their husband's salaries on their backs instead of his ribs; but there are a heap more men who burn up their wives' new sealskin sacques in two-bit cigars. Because a man's a good provider it doesn't always mean that he's a good husband—it may mean that he's a hog. And when there's a cuss in the family and it comes down to betting which, on general principles the man always carries my money. I make mistakes at it, but it's the only winning system I've ever been able to discover in games of chance.
You want to end the wedding trip with a business meeting and talk to your wife quite as frankly as you would to a man whom you'd taken into partnership. Tell her just what your salary is and then lay it out between you—so much for joint expenses, the house and the housekeeping, so much for her expenses, so much for yours, and so much to be saved. That last is the one item on which you can't afford to economize. It's the surplus and undivided profits account of your business, and until the concern accumulates a big one it isn't safe to move into offices on Easy Street.
A lot of fool fathers only give their fool daughters a liberal education in spending, and it's pretty hard to teach those women the real facts about earning and saving, but it's got to be done unless you want to be the fool husband of a fool wife. These girls have an idea that men get money by going to a benevolent old party behind some brass bars and shoving a check at him and telling him that they want it in fifties and hundreds.
You should take home your salary in actual money for a while, and explain that it's all you got for sweating like a dog for ten hours a day, through six long days, and that the cashier handed it out with an expression as if you were robbing the cash-drawer of an orphan asylum. Make her understand that while those that have gets, when they present a check, those that haven't gets it in the neck. Explain that the benevolent old party is only on duty when papa's daughter has a papa that Bradstreet rates AA, and that when papa's daughter's husband presents a five-dollar check with a ten-cent overdraft, he's received by a low-browed old brute who calls for the bouncer to put him out. Tell her right at the start the worst about the butcher, and the grocer, and the iceman, and the milkman, and the plumber, and the gas-meter—that they want their money and that it has to come out of that little roll of bills. Then give her enough to pay them, even if you have to grab for your lunch from a high stool. I used to know an old Jew who said that the man who carved was always a fool or a hog, but you've got to learn not to divide your salary on either basis.
Make your wife pay cash. A woman never really understands money till she's done that for a while. I've noticed that people rarely pay down the money for foolish purchases—they charge them. And it's mighty seldom that a woman's extravagant unless she or her husband pays the bills by check. There's something about counting out the actual legal tender on the spot that keeps a woman from really wanting a lot of things which she thinks she wants.
When I married your ma, your grandpa was keeping eighteen niggers busy seeing that the family did nothing. She'd had a liberal education, which, so far as I've been able to find out, means teaching a woman everything except the real business that she's going into—that is, if she marries. But when your ma swapped the big house and the eighteen niggers for me and an old mammy to do the rough work, she left the breakfast-in-bed, fine-lady business behind her and started right in to get the rest of the education that belonged to her. She did a mighty good job, too, all except making ends meet, and they were too elastic for her at first—sort of snapped back and left a deficit just when she thought she had them together.
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 pâté 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 pâtés 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 8½, to 9, to 9½. Then, with delivery day only six weeks off, it jumped overnight to 10, and closed firm at 12¼. 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—"