sleep, so she rigged up a simple little device in the way of an alarm
and dropped off peacefully, while Doodums pretended to.
When she began to snore in her upper register and to hit the high C,
he judged the coast was clear, and leaped lightly out of bed. Even
before he'd struck the floor he knew there'd been a horrible mistake
somewhere, for he felt a tug as if he'd hooked a hundred-pound
catfish. There was an awful ripping and tearing sound, something
fetched loose, and his wife was sitting up in bed blinking at him in
the moonlight. It seemed that just before she went to sleep she'd
pinned her nightgown to his with a safety pin, which wasn't such a bad
idea for a simple, trusting, little village maiden.
"Was you wantin' anything, Duckie Doodums?" she asked in a voice like
the running of sap in maple-sugar time.
"N-n-nothin' but a drink of water, Honeybunch sweetness," he stammered
back.
[Illustration: "N-n-nothin' but a drink of water"]
"You're sure you ain't mistook in your thirst and that it ain't a
suddint cravin' for licker, and that you ain't sort of p'intin' down
the waterspout for the Dutchman's, Duckie Doodums?"
"Shorely not, Honeybunch darlin'," he finally fetched up, though he
was hardly breathing.
"Because your ma told me that you was given to somnambulasticatin' in
your sleep, and that I must keep you tied up nights or you'd wake up
some mornin' at the foot of a waterspout with your head bust open and
a lot of good licker spilt out on the grass."
"Don't you love your Doodums anymore?" was all Dickie could find to
say to this; but Honeybunch had too much on her mind to stop and swap
valentines just then.
"You wouldn't deceive your Honeybunch, would you, Duckie Doodums?"
"I shorely would not."
"Well, don't you do it, Duckie Doodums, because it would break my
heart; and if you should break my heart I'd just naturally bust your
head. Are you listenin', Doodums?"
Doodums was listening.
"Then you come back to bed and stay there."
Doodums never called his wife Honeybunch after that. Generally it was
Kate, and sometimes it was Kitty, and when she wasn't around it was
usually Kitty-cat. But he minded better than anything I ever met on
less than four legs.
Your affectionate father,
JOHN GRAHAM.
P.S.--You might tear up this letter.
No. 8
From John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago, to his son,
Pierrepont, at Yemassee-on-the-Tallahassee. In replying to his
father's hint that it is time to turn his thoughts from love to lard,
the young man has quoted a French sentence, and the old man has been
both pained and puzzled by it.
VIII
CHICAGO, January 24, 189-.
_Dear Pierrepont_: I had to send your last letter to the fertilizer
department to find out what it was all about. We've got a clerk there
who's an Oxford graduate, and who speaks seven languages for fifteen
dollars a week, or at the rate of something more than two dollars a
language. Of course, if you're such a big thinker that your ideas rise
to the surface too fast for one language to hold 'em all, it's a
mighty nice thing to know seven; but it's been my experience that
seven spread out most men so thin that they haven't anything special
to say in any of them. These fellows forget that while life's a
journey, it isn't a palace-car trip for most of us, and that if they
hit the trail packing a lot of weight for which they haven't any
special use, they're not going to get very far. You learn men and what
men should do, and how they should do it, and then if you happen to
have any foreigners working for you, you can hire a fellow at fifteen
per to translate hustle to 'em into their own fool language. It's
always been my opinion that everybody spoke American while the tower
of Babel was building, and that the Lord let the good people keep
right on speaking it. So when you've got anything to say to me, I want
you to say it in language that will grade regular on the Chicago Board
of Trade.
Some men fail from knowing too little, but more fail from knowing too
much, and still more from knowing it all. It's a mighty good thing to
understand French if you can use it to some real purpose, but when all
the good it does a fellow is to help him understand the foreign
cuss-words in a novel, or to read a story which is so tough that it
would make the Queen's English or any other ladylike language blush,
he'd better learn hog-Latin! He can be just the same breed of yellow
dog in it, and it don't take so much time to pick it up.
Never ask a man what he knows, but what he can do. A fellow may know
everything that's happened since the Lord started the ball to rolling,
and not be able to do anything to help keep it from stopping. But when
a man can do anything, he's bound to know something worth while. Books
are all right, but dead men's brains are no good unless you mix a live
one's with them.
It isn't what a man's got in the bank, but what he's got in his head,
that makes him a great merchant. Rob a miser's safe and he's broke;
but you can't break a big merchant with a jimmy and a stick of
dynamite. The first would have to start again just where he
began--hoarding up pennies; the second would have his principal assets
intact. But accumulating knowledge or piling up money, just to have a
little more of either than the next fellow, is a fool game that no
broad-gauged man has time enough to sit in. Too much learning, like
too much money, makes most men narrow.
I simply mention these things in a general way. You know blame well
that I don't understand any French, and so when you spring it on me
you are simply showing a customer the wrong line of goods. It's like
trying to sell our Pickled Luncheon Tidbits to a fellow in the black
belt who doesn't buy anything but plain dry-salt hog in hunks and
slabs. It makes me a little nervous for fear you'll be sending out a
lot of letters to the trade some day, asking them if their stock of
Porkuss Americanuss isn't running low.
The world is full of bright men who know all the right things to say
and who say them in the wrong place. A young fellow always thinks that
if he doesn't talk he seems stupid, but it's better to shut up and
seem dull than to open up and prove yourself a fool. It's a pretty
good rule to show your best goods last.
Whenever I meet one of those fellows who tells you all he knows, and a
good deal that he doesn't know, as soon as he's introduced to you, I
always think of Bill Harkness, who kept a temporary home for
broken-down horses--though he didn't call it that--back in Missouri.
Bill would pick up an old critter whose par value was the price of one
horse-hide, and after it had been pulled and shoved into his stable,
the boys would stand around waiting for crape to be hung on the door.
But inside a week Bill would be driving down Main Street behind that
horse, yelling Whoa! at the top of his voice while it tried to kick
holes in the dashboard.
Bill had a theory that the Ten Commandments were suspended while a
horse-trade was going on, so he did most of his business with
strangers. Caught a Northerner nosing round his barn one day, and
inside of ten minutes the fellow was driving off behind what Bill
described as "the peartest piece of ginger and cayenne in Pike
County." Bill just made a free gift of it to the Yankee, he said, but
to keep the transaction from being a piece of pure charity he accepted
fifty dollars from him.
The stranger drove all over town bragging of his bargain, until some
one casually called his attention to the fact that the mare was
stone-blind. Then he hiked back to Bill's and went for him in broken
Bostonese, winding up with:
"What the skip-two-and-carry-one do you mean, you old
hold-your-breath-and-take-ten-swallows, by stealing my good money.
Didn't you know the horse was blind? Why didn't you tell me?"
"Yep," Bill bit off from his piece of store plug; "I reckon I knew the
hoss was blind, but you see the feller I bought her of"--and he paused
to settle his chaw--"asked me not to mention it. You wouldn't have me
violate a confidence as affected the repertashun of a pore dumb
critter, and her of the opposite sect, would you?" And the gallant
Bill turned scornfully away from the stranger.
There were a good many holes in Bill's methods, but he never leaked
information through them; and when I come across a fellow who doesn't
mention it when he's asked not to, I come pretty near letting him fix
his own salary. It's only a mighty big man that doesn't care whether
the people whom he meets believe that he's big; but the smaller a
fellow is, the bigger he wants to appear. He hasn't anything of his
own in his head that's of any special importance, so just to prove
that he's a trusted employee, and in the confidence of the boss, he
gives away everything he knows about the business, and, as that isn't
much, he lies a little to swell it up. It's a mighty curious thing how
some men will lie a little to impress people who are laughing at them;
will drink a little in order to sit around with people who want to get
away from them; and will even steal a little to "go into society" with
people who sneer at them.
The most important animal in the world is a turkey-cock. You let him
get among the chickens on the manure pile behind the barn, with his
wings held down stiff, his tail feathers stuck up starchy, his
wish-bone poked out perky, and gobbling for room to show his fancy
steps, and he's a mighty impressive fowl. But a small boy with a rock
and a good aim can make him run a mile. When you see a fellow swelling
up and telling his firm's secrets, holler Cash! and you'll stampede
him back to his hall bedroom.
I dwell a little on this matter of loose talking, because it breaks up
more firms and more homes than any other one thing I know. The father
of lies lives in Hell, but he spends a good deal of his time in
Chicago. You'll find him on the Board of Trade when the market's
wobbling, saying that the Russians are just about to eat up Turkey,
and that it'll take twenty million bushels of our wheat to make the
bread for the sandwich; and down in the street, asking if you knew
that the cashier of the Teenth National was leading a double life as a
single man in the suburbs and a singular life for a married man in the
city; and out on Prairie Avenue, whispering that it's too bad Mabel
smokes Turkish cigarettes, for she's got such pretty curly hair; and
how sad it is that Daisy and Dan are going to separate, "but they do
say that he--sh! sh! hush; here she comes." Yet, when you come to wash
your pan of dirt, and the lies have all been carried off down the
flume, and you've got the color of the few particles of solid,
eighteen-carat truth left, you'll find it's the Sultan who's smoking
Turkish cigarettes; and that Mabel is trying cubebs for her catarrh;
and that the cashier of the Teenth National belongs to a whist club in
the suburbs and is the superintendent of a Sunday-school in the city;
and that Dan has put Daisy up to visiting her mother to ward off a
threatened swoop down from the old lady; and that the Czar hasn't done
a blame thing except to become the father of another girl baby.
It's pretty hard to know how to treat a lie when it's about yourself.
You can't go out of your way to deny it, because that puts you on the
defensive; and sending the truth after a lie that's got a running
start is like trying to round up a stampeded herd of steers while the
scare is on them. Lies are great travellers, and welcome visitors in a
good many homes, and no questions asked. Truth travels slowly, has to
prove its identity, and then a lot of people hesitate to turn out an
agreeable stranger to make room for it.
About the only way I know to kill a lie is to live the truth. When
your credit is doubted, don't bother to deny the rumors, but discount
your bills. When you are attacked unjustly, avoid the appearance of
evil, but avoid also the appearance of being too good--that is, better
than usual. A man can't be too good, but he can appear too good.
Surmise and suspicion feed on the unusual, and when a man goes about
his business along the usual rut, they soon fade away for lack of
nourishment. First and last every fellow gets a lot of unjust
treatment in this world, but when he's as old as I am and comes to
balance his books with life and to credit himself with the mean things
which weren't true that have been said about him, and to debit himself
with the mean things which were true that people didn't get on to or
overlooked, he'll find that he's had a tolerably square deal. This
world has some pretty rotten spots on its skin, but it's sound at the
core.
There are two ways of treating gossip about other people, and they're
both good ways. One is not to listen to it, and the other is not to
repeat it. Then there's young Buck Pudden's wife's way, and that's
better than either, when you're dealing with some of these old heifers
who browse over the range all day, stuffing themselves with gossip
about your friends, and then round up at your house to chew the cud
and slobber fake sympathy over you.
Buck wasn't a bad fellow at heart, for he had the virtue of trying to
be good, but occasionally he would walk in slippery places. Wasn't
very sure-footed, so he fell down pretty often, and when he fell from
grace it usually cracked the ice. Still, as he used to say, when he
shot at the bar mirrors during one of his periods of temporary
elevation, he paid for what he broke--cash for the mirrors and sweat
and blood for his cussedness.
Then one day Buck met the only woman in the world--a mighty nice girl
from St. Jo--and she was hesitating over falling in love with him,
till the gossips called to tell her that he was a dear, lovely fellow,
and wasn't it too bad that he had such horrid habits? That settled it,
of course, and she married him inside of thirty days, so that she
could get right down to the business of reforming him.
I don't, as a usual thing, take much stock in this marrying men to
reform them, because a man's always sure of a woman when he's married
to her, while a woman's never really afraid of losing a man till she's
got him. When you want to teach a dog new tricks, it's all right to
show him the biscuit first, but you'll usually get better results by
giving it to him after the performance. But Buck's wife fooled the
whole town and almost put the gossips out of business by keeping Buck
straight for a year. She allowed that what he'd been craving all the
time was a home and family, and that his rare-ups came from not having
'em. Then, like most reformers, she overdid it--went and had twins.
Buck thought he owned the town, of course, and that would have been
all right if he hadn't included the saloons among his real estate. Had
to take his drinks in pairs, too, and naturally, when he went home
that night and had another look at the new arrivals, he thought they
were quadruplets.
Buck straightened right out the next day, went to his wife and told
her all about it, and that was the last time he ever had to hang his
head when he talked to her, for he never took another drink. You see,
she didn't reproach him, or nag him--simply said that she was mighty
proud of the way he'd held on for a year, and that she knew she could
trust him now for another ten. Man was made a little lower than the
angels, the Good Book says, and I reckon that's right; but he was made
a good while ago, and he hasn't kept very well. Yet there are a heap
of women in this world who are still right in the seraphim class. When
your conscience doesn't tell you what to do in a matter of right and
wrong, ask your wife.
Naturally, the story of Buck's final celebration came to the gossips
like a thousand-barrel gusher to a drilling outfit that's been finding
dusters, and they went one at a time to tell Mrs. Buck all the
dreadful details and how sorry they were for her. She would just sit
and listen till they'd run off the story, and hemstitched it, and
embroidered it, and stuck fancy rosettes all over it. Then she'd smile
one of those sweet baby smiles that women give just before the
hair-pulling begins, and say:
"Law, Mrs. Wiggleford"--the deacon's wife was the one who was
condoling with her at the moment--"people will talk about the best of
us. Seems as if no one is safe nowadays. Why, they lie about the
deacon, even. I know it ain't true, and you know it ain't true, but
only yesterday somebody was trying to tell me that it was right
strange how a professor and a deacon got that color in his beak, and
while it might be inflammatory veins or whatever he claimed it was,
she reckoned that, if he'd let some one else tend the alcohol barrel,
he wouldn't have to charge up so much of his stock to leakage and
evaporation."
Of course, Mrs. Buck had made up the story about the deacon, because
every one knew that he was too mean to drink anything that he could
sell, but by the time Buck's wife had finished, Mrs. Wiggleford was so
busy explaining and defending him that she hadn't any further interest
in Buck's case. And each one that called was sent away with a special
piece of home scandal which Mrs. Buck had invented to keep her mind
from dwelling on her neighbor's troubles.
She followed up her system, too, and in the end it got so that women
would waste good gossip before they'd go to her with it. For if the
pastor's wife would tell her "as a true friend" that the report that
she had gone to the theatre in St. Louis was causing a scandal, she'd
thank her for being so sweetly thoughtful, and ask if nothing was
sacred enough to be spared by the tongue of slander, though she, for
one, didn't believe that there was anything in the malicious talk that
the Doc was cribbing those powerful Sunday evening discourses from a
volume of Beecher's sermons. And when they'd press her for the name of
her informant, she'd say: "No, it was a lie; she knew it was a lie,
and no one who sat under the dear pastor would believe it; and they
mustn't dignify it by noticing it." As a matter of fact, no one who
sat under Doc Pottle would have believed it, for his sermons weren't
good enough to have been cribbed; and if Beecher could have heard one
of them he would have excommunicated him.
Buck's wife knew how to show goods. When Buck himself had used up all
the cuss-words in Missouri on his conduct, she had sense enough to
know that his stock of trouble was full, and that if she wanted to get
a hold on him she mustn't show him stripes, but something in cheerful
checks. Yet when the trouble-hunters looked her up, she had a full
line of samples of their favorite commodity to show them.
I simply mention these things in a general way. Seeing would naturally
be believing, if cross-eyed people were the only ones who saw crooked,
and hearing will be believing when deaf people are the only ones who
don't hear straight. It's a pretty safe rule, when you hear a heavy
yarn about any one, to allow a fair amount for tare, and then to
verify your weights.
Your affectionate father,
JOHN GRAHAM.
P.S.--I think you'd better look in at a few of the branch houses on
your way home and see if you can't make expenses.
No. 9
From John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago, to his son,
Pierrepont, care of Graham & Company's brokers, Atlanta. Following the
old man's suggestion, the young man has rounded out the honeymoon into
a harvest moon, and is sending in some very satisfactory orders to the
house.
IX
CHICAGO, February 1, 189-.
_Dear Pierrepont_: Judging from the way the orders are coming in, I
reckon that you must be lavishing a little of your surplus ardor on
the trade. So long as you are in such good practise, and can look a
customer in the eye and make him believe that he's the only buyer you
ever really loved, you'd better not hurry home too fast. I reckon
Helen won't miss you for a few hours every day, but even if she should
it's a mighty nice thing to be missed, and she's right there where you
can tell her every night that you love her just the same; while the
only way in which you can express your unchanged affection for the
house is by sending us lots of orders. If you do that you needn't
bother to write and send us lots of love.
The average buyer is a good deal like the heiress to a million dollars
who's been on the market for eight or ten years, not because there's
no demand for her, but because there's too much. Most girls whose
capital of good looks is only moderate, marry, and marry young,
because they're like a fellow on 'Change who's scalping the
market--not inclined to take chances, and always ready to make a quick
turn. Old maids are usually the girls who were so homely that they
never had an offer, or so good-looking that they carried their
matrimonial corner from one option to another till the new crop came
along and bust them. But a girl with a million dollars isn't a
speculative venture. She can advertise for sealed proposals on her
fiftieth birthday and be oversubscribed like an issue of 10 per cent.
Government bonds. There's no closed season on heiresses, and,
naturally, a bird that can't stick its head up without getting shot at
becomes a pretty wary old fowl.
A buyer is like your heiress--he always has a lot of nice young
drummers flirting and fooling around him, but mighty few of them are
so much in earnest that they can convince him that their only chance
for happiness lies in securing his particular order. But you let one
of these dead-in-earnest boys happen along, and the first thing you
know he's persuaded the heiress that he loves her for herself alone or
has eloped from town with an order for a car-load of lard.
A lot of young men start off in business with an idea that they must
arm themselves with the same sort of weapons that their competitors
carry. There's nothing in it. Fighting the devil with fire is all
foolishness, because that's the one weapon with which he's more expert
than any one else. I usually find that it's pretty good policy to
oppose suspicion with candor, foxiness with openness, indifference
with earnestness. When you deal squarely with a crooked man you scare
him to death, because he thinks you're springing some new and
extra-deep game on him.
A fellow who's subject to cramps and chills has no business in the
water, but if you start to go in swimming, go in all over. Don't be
one of those chappies who prance along the beach, shivering and
showing their skinny shapes, and then dabble their feet in the surf,
pour a little sand in their hair, and think they've had a bath.
You mustn't forget, though, that it's just as important to know when
to come out as when to dive in. I mention this because yesterday some
one who'd run across you at Yemassee told me that you and Helen were
exchanging the grip of the third degree under the breakfast-table, and
trying to eat your eggs with your left hands. Of course, this is all
very right and proper if you can keep it up, but I've known a good
many men who would kiss their wives on the honeymoon between swallows
of coffee and look like an ass a year later when she chirruped out at
the breakfast-table, "Do you love me, darling?" I'm just a little
afraid that you're one of those fellows who wants to hold his wife in
his lap during the first six months of his married life, and who, when
she asks him at the end of a year if he loves her, answers "Sure." I
may be wrong about this, but I've noticed a tendency on your part to
slop over a little, and a pail that slops over soon empties itself.
It's been my experience that most women try to prove their love by
talking about it, and most men by spending money. But when a
pocketbook or a mouth is opened too often nothing but trouble is left
in it.
Don't forget the little attentions due your wife, but don't hurt the
grocer's feelings or treat the milkman with silent contempt in order
to give them to her. You can hock your overcoat before marriage to buy
violets for a girl, but when she has the run of your wardrobe you
can't slap your chest and explain that you stopped wearing it because
you're so warm-blooded. A sensible woman soon begins to understand
that affection can be expressed in porterhouse steaks as well as in
American beauties. But when Charlie, on twenty-five a week, marries a
fool, she pouts and says that he doesn't love her just the same
because he takes her to the theatre now in the street-cars, instead of
in a carriage, as he used to in those happy days before they were
married. As a matter of fact, this doesn't show that she's losing
Charlie's love, but that he's getting his senses back. It's been my
experience that no man can really attend to business properly when
he's chased to the office every morning by a crowd of infuriated
florists and livery-men.