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."
[Illustration: "Tried to bust your poor old father"]
"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.
[Illustration: Crying into her third plate of ice cream]
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.