_Dear Father_:
What a clever, indulgent, far-seeing old boy you are, to be sure. Your
ultimatum that I must continue to be subject to Milligan sounds harsh at
first reading, but I see your motive. You think by keeping me under him
for a while I shall work like a fiend to get promotion, and thus escape
his Celtic cussedness. I shall. No greater incentive to rise was ever
offered a poor young man. In fact, you couldn't keep me down with Mike
if you gave me ten thousand a year. My lacerated feelings are worth much
more than that.
Ma is a pretty good Samaritan these days. I told her that Milligan was
my _bête noir_, and she said it was a mean shame for a grandson of her
father to have to affiliate with such an animal. Her sympathy cost her
ten, but I feel that it was worth that to have her wellsprings of
emotion tapped once more.
I see the logic of what you said in your last. True it is that if it
isn't a Milligan over us, it's some one else--I won't say worse, for
that would be lying. I have Mike, Mike has you, you have Ma, and Ma has
Mrs. Grundy. We are all travelling over the ocean of life in the same
boat, but I'm hanged if I wouldn't prefer to be in the first cabin
drinking champagne, than down in the stoke-hole sweating like a galley
slave.
I am sincerely glad you are coming home. The old adage about the mice
playing when the cat's away is away off. Since you've been gone, except
for the half day that your Brian Boru-descended super was sick, I've not
even had time enough in office hours to devote an occasional few
moments' thought to how I will improve methods here when you elect to
add "retired" to your recital of personal facts for the city directory.
The way Milligan keeps me jumping would have pinned all the Mott Haven
medals on me, had his system of training been adopted in Harvard
athletics. I've lost seven pounds in three weeks, and if this thing
keeps on I'll be so far under weight that I'll be sent out to pasture or
to the boneyard.
I used to think Milligan a well-balanced man, but I was wrong,--no man
whose lungs are so out of proportion to his brains can be. I'm getting
used to being bossed, but I shall never be broke to being roared at in
the fashion of the Bull of Bashan. I don't object to being told that it
is necessary to have a state as a component part of the superscription
on a letter,--but is it essential to the business code that the people
in East Saginaw should have full particulars of my dereliction shouted
at them?
Milligan takes especial delight in introducing me to all the visitors
who inspect the works, but never by any chance does he tell who I am.
Not a bit of it. "This is our new mailing clerk: he is just from
Harvard," is the neat way he puts it. And then they look me over and
say, "Harvard? Oh, indeed!" and the look passed out with it--you'd think
I was a new line of prize pig. I've come to believe that I'm under
suspicion here in Chicago; and I've locked up all my college pins and
insignia in a closet down cellar, and couldn't be roped into confession
of my _alma mater_ with a lariat. Education is evidently not a thing to
brag of in Chicago.
I can't quite get on to what it is, but Milligan is up to some game.
He's very chummy with the visitors and insists upon showing them about
himself. An English lord who was here the other day, chatted with him
for fully half an hour in your private office. Think of it--in your
private office. I shall have it deodorized before you return. As usual,
Milligan boasted and, as the door was open, we all heard. Something was
said of the Irish land bill, and this opened the throttle of the super's
conversation.
"It's no more than roight to do somethin' for Ireland. Who won the Boer
War for ye? Kitchener, Lord Roberts,--both Irish."
"Really, you don't tell me?" drawled his lordship. "And were all our
great fighters Irishmen? Was--was Wellington?"
"Certainly," said Milligan.
"And Nelson?"
"Shure. All great fightin' min were Irish."
"How about Alexander?" asked the Englishman.
"Celtic, for shure."
"So? And say now, how about--well, Balaam?" lisped the peer.
"Irish," cried Milligan, "Irish to the backbone. But--an' I asks ye to
note this, your lordship--but the ass was English."
I hate Milligan, but I love a joke, and I joined in the laugh that went
up. Then I heard his lordship pipe up, "How delightful, don't yer know,
that your clarks are so merry. I do wonder what they are laughing at."
Just then he toddled out and surveyed us through his monocle. As
Milligan joined him he turned to him and said: "So Balaam was Irish,
too, Mr. Milligan? But I really didn't know the ass was a native animal
in my country."
Milligan certainly possesses self-control. He was as grave as a
government inspector opening a Graham tin can as he replied, "Those
laugh best who laugh last, your lordship."
By the way, there was a little excitement in the packing house
yesterday which you may hear of in some other way. I'll tell you the
straight facts. I happened to be over in the refining house during the
noon hour, to get some butterine for a sandwich, when a fellow with some
sort of monkey togs blew in and acted in a very suspicious manner. He
nosed around into the vats, poked a queer glass machine plumb through a
keg of butterine, broke open some tins and raised particular Ned in the
olive oil department When he started to put some stuff in his pockets, I
remembered your oft-repeated injunctions to occasionally do some
independent work for the house--to get out of the ruts, as it were--and
I came an old-time Soldier's Field tackle on his jiglets which resulted
in his complete disappearance from the interior of the plant, and a
compound fracture of the left shoulder-blade where he landed on the
cobblestones of the yard. He cursed me as he was being carried away on a
stretcher, and said the concern would hear from him to its sorrow.
I understand he's a government inspector, but I rely on your little way
of settling such things. However, I think it would be just as well that
you cut your expedition in two and get around here by the time the plot
thickens. If you don't care to go home so much sooner than you intended,
you can live in the private car right here in the railroad yard, and I
won't let Ma know. You would enjoy the surroundings immensely. Think of
being lulled to sleep by the squealing of your own hogs and awakened in
the morning by the music of Texas steers that are going into Graham
cans.
Billy Poindexter is here for a day or two on a little trip from New
York. He cut up horribly when I told him I couldn't get out to air
myself all day long. But I pointed out to him that I was in training to
carry Graham & Co. around on my shoulders one of these days, and he
admitted that it looked like a good game to follow. I showed him one or
two of your letters, and he said they were too clever for a pork-packer
and too greasy for a philosopher. Asked if you weren't over-doing the
"Beyond-the-Alps-lies-Italy" business a trifle, and allowed that too
much watering has killed many a promising plant. However, I don't
believe water will be the death of me. Billy says my occupation would
drive him to drink, but I guess he isn't on to my salary or else doesn't
know the price of cabs out here. Besides, he doesn't need driving.
Billy has developed quite a philosophical streak lately. I guess the
girl he really wanted for better or worse decided it a long shot for
worse and scratched Billy in the running. I taxed him with it.
"Young man," said he--he's only fourteen months older than I, but how he
does swell up over it--"Young man, the pursuit of a girl is like running
after a street car and missing it. You're never quite sure that it was
the right car, after all."
That's all I could coax out of him, but I guess he got the stuffed glove
all right. The other night, after we had spent several hours in the
Palmer House examining some very curiously shaped glasses and some
quaintly embossed steins, Billy became pathetically confidential and
imparted a secret to me.
"Piggy, my boy," he said, "I once cherished rainbow visions of being a
great man some day, but I've given it up. After all, the only sure
guarantee that you _are_ a great man is to have a five-cent cigar named
after you and see them sold at the drug stores at seven for a quarter."
The thought affected him so that he tried to conceal his emotion by
hiding his face behind one of a couple of glasses that were just then
submitted to our inspection.
If Billy only could set his mind on any thing he'd be sure to make a
success at it; but the only thing he has ever tried to do is to help
spend his governor's money, and he is certainly the entire ping-pong at
that. He is of a companionable nature, however, and is not averse to
assistance in his pecuniary labors. I help him all I can, and, to square
things up a bit, I invited him to be my guest at the house during his
stay here. He doesn't eat much, so the family exchequer will not be
lowered materially. He never has any appetite for breakfast. Mother has
cottoned to him as if he were an orphan. She likes me to be with him for
his good example, for she knows that he doesn't drink, he's always so
thirsty in the morning.
The other night at dinner Billy was very loquacious. He had been playing
billiards all the afternoon, and there is something connected with the
game that always loosens his tongue. Somebody mentioned success, and
that started William, for he always spells it with a big "S."
"Success is much easier to talk about than to discover," he said. "The
man of affairs who undertakes to point out the path to it to a young man
anxious to tread it, is like the average man of whom you ask directions
in a large city, and who says, 'Well, but it's hard to tell a stranger.
You'd better go up this street till you come to the City Hall, then take
the first street to the right and the second to the left and--and then
ask some one else.'"
"I've noticed," said Billy, without a pause in his eloquence, "that the
prominent men who write magazine and newspaper articles on 'How to
Succeed,' always tell their yearning readers to save part of each dollar
they receive, but never tell them how to get the dollar. Fact is, if
they knew where the dollar was they'd go get it themselves. And they
never tell how they themselves succeeded. That would be betraying a
business secret. 'Work, work hard,' they say, 'do more than you're paid
for doing, and you will soon be appreciated by your employer. Do two
dollars' worth of work for one dollar and you'll soon be getting three
dollars.'"
Here Billy leaned over the table and spoke more impressively than I
thought he was able to. "Search the career of one of these self-advisory
boards for the community," he said, "and you'll find that these men
succeeded by hiring men to do two dollars' worth of work for one dollar
and then getting themselves incorporated and selling the work for $5."
When Billy got through, Ma smiled across to me and said, "How much Mr.
Poindexter talks like your father!"
Your hopeful son,
P.
P.S.--We are going to a masquerade ball to-night at the De Porques. Old
De P. offers a prize of $100 for the most hideous make-up. I'm going as
Milligan.
LETTER No. VIII.
_His governor's visit to Hot Springs, a contretemps with a British Lord,
together with experiences with a few physicians, inspire Pierrepont's
pen._