_My Dear Father_:
I am surprised that my broker should have given you the particulars of
my little flyer in short ribs--I mean ribs short--and in future I shall
patronize another broker. The few hundreds I made in that deal I had
relied upon to dispose of a little bill I owe in Chicago. When it
started it wasn't quite so much like the national debt as it is now; but
the fact is, I have been carting a deputy sheriff round the country for
three weeks, paying for his time and board. Now you want me to return
the check, endorsed to the treasurer of some orphanage. If you saw that
deputy sheriff you wouldn't have the heart. If I sent you back the check
it was lost in the mail and we'll forget it.
I've been so busy arranging to sell carloads of our stuff that I really
haven't been able to write before, but when I got rid of that deputy a
great load was removed from my mind. It's a tough thing to go in to try
and sell a hard proposition a bill of goods--this _is_ a euphemism in
our case--and know that the eye of the law is glued upon the
show-window, lest you escape by the back door. If I'm to keep up my
present spurt in the market you'll have to raise the limit. Thirty a
week might do for a drummer when you started business, but for a
commercial traveller of to-day it's only tip money. I'm making good now,
and if I'm not worth more than thirty I'm useless to you. I may mention
in passing that I've had an offer from Soper & Co. to jump over to them.
They don't know I'm your son. They know that I'm the same fellow who was
at your mailing desk a while back, and probably cannot imagine that you
would treat your only the way I was treated. You will agree with me that
business is business and I can learn it quite as well selling car lots
for Soper as for any one else. A word to the wise--and to the
cashier--is sufficient.
Don't worry about my becoming a victim to gambling on margin. Your tip
on the market--that you will fire me if I keep it up--is valuable. I
will see to it that you hear no more of my trading. I should not have
taken this particular flyer had it not been for the fact that you wrote
the last sheet of one of your recent letters on the back of a
typewritten note from Gamble & Chance, in which they advised you that
they had placed your order to sell ribs short. I just made up my mind
that what was good enough for pop must be real velvet for sonny. You
know you have always urged me to follow your example. I am quite certain
that, now you are in possession of the full facts, you will revise your
idea about that check. At all events, as I have hinted, that particular
check is so full of bank teller's stamps that its own father would
scarcely know it.
I never did take much stock in trading "on 'change." It's a form of
gambling where interest is sacrificed by the fact that you do not see
the ball rolled or the cards dealt. Even when you see the play you may
be up against a brace game, so what can you expect when two or three big
dealers, like my revered parent, get together and mark the cards for a
big game? Anyway, I'd rather bet any day on something straight. If a man
gambles on whether the sun will shine or not on certain days he may be
unlucky enough to lose every trip, but he will at least have the
satisfaction of knowing that no thimble rigging in somebody's back
office introduced the clouds.
Finance, as I understand it, is the art of making the other fellow's
dollar work for the financier; but this requires a sort of hypnotism
that I do not yet possess. I may grow to it; indeed, now that I find
myself able to sell the goods manufactured by our house, I am almost
afraid to look a mirror in the face lest I discover that I am possessed
of the evil eye. The "marts of trade," as the poet puts it, strike me as
queer places. The interior of a stock or produce exchange is certainly
an understudy for bedlam, if my imagination is correct.
"Give you 86 for C.P. & N.," shouts one.
"No," comes the reply, "want 86 and an eighth."
"All right."
"Sold."
"I'll take 500."
And nobody takes a thing, for the man who sells it hasn't got it and
the man who buys don't want it. No wonder the poor lambs lose their
fleece and their heads. Nevertheless, that short-rib check was a
life-saver.
I was actually so poor that I had to descend to living in lodgings for
three days. Think of it, the heir of Graham & Co. in lodgings! What
would "the street" say of that? But I have found that the Graham credit
is all covered with N.G.'s at the hotels and I scarcely cared to come
home with a deputy sheriff among my excess baggage. So I went into
lodgings in an "over Sunday" town. It gave me a lesson on the danger of
officiousness that I'm not likely to forget, but, although for a few
minutes I could see the danger lights of a sound thrashing dead ahead,
it ended pleasantly. Lodgings were hard to find, but the cigar store man
finally recommended me to a place. The woman who answered my ring was
willing to let me--and the sheriff--a room, but before we arranged terms
she took me one side and made an explanation.
Her husband, she said, was apt to stay out very late at night in
convivial company and I might be disturbed by his noise when he came
home. I assured her that, as a patron of hotels, I was quite used to
this sort of thing, and forthwith negotiated for the use of her front
parlor. About two o'clock in the morning we were awakened by the sound
of bacchanalian revelry outside the window. I looked out and saw a man
on the grassplot in front of the house. He was just able to move--and
howl--and his frantic struggles to get on his feet were funnier than
Milligan's attempts to put on superior airs.
"Ah, the inebriate husband!" I said to the sheriff, who agreed with me
that it would be a good scheme to get him off the lawn and into the
house. So we slipped on enough clothing to cover the law and the major
part of our persons and went out. The serenader was light weight and we
carried him up the steps without difficulty. He stopped singing long
enough to roar:
"Whas-yer-doin'--lemme go--lemme go, I tell yer."
"Come to bed," I said, soothingly.
"Done wan ter go ter bed--never go t' bed Sat'day night," he
hiccoughed. "This not (hic) my bed."
We bore him into the front hall, and laid him down to get a fresh hold
for the journey upstairs. He was happy again and started a new song.
Just then a light appeared at the top of the stairs, and I saw the
landlady's face peering over the balustrade. In my most courteous manner
I asked:
"Shall we bring him upstairs, madam?"
"Who?" she asked.
"Your husband."
She did not reply, but another voice did. "I am her husband, sir," and
another head, with a jolly face and a big moustache, appeared beside the
landlady's.
We dumped our operatic load across the street and I hid my shamed head
in the pillows, making a sacred vow that for ever more I shall keep very
busy attending to my own affairs. This led to a very pleasant Sunday for
me--and the sheriff--however. The landlady's husband could take a
joke--especially when it was on me, and at breakfast we became very good
friends. He invited me to his club and we--and the legal limb--spent the
afternoon there. His face grew bigger and jollier each hour, and
finally he became very confidential. Referring to his own peccadilloes,
he made the statement that he had the best-natured wife in the world. I
had no reason to controvert this, but he seemed to think that I doubted
it, and went on to accumulate testimony.
"We've never had a quarrel yet, though we've been married sixteen
years," he declared. "I'll bet that no matter what I might do when I go
home, she'd smile through it all."
This didn't interest me, but my legal guardian seemed curious. He even
went so far as to doubt our friend. It wasn't long before they had
patched up some sort of a wager between them. The husband was to go home
to supper, appear intoxicated, raise a row, break dishes and otherwise
generally make an ass of himself. If his wife kept her temper it was on
the sheriff, and _vice versa_.
Bill--his name was William Jenks--started off ahead. We were to follow
at a distance and observe results from the yard. Bill began to totter
and sway as he neared the house, and presently Mrs. J. ran out of the
front gate to meet him. She picked up his hat from the ground, brushed
it and put it on, and then kissed him. Then she guided his uncertain
legs into the house. When we reached the window which looked into the
parlor we saw Bill sitting on the floor, howling incoherencies at his
wife, who was trying to help him pull off his shoes. When they were off
he commanded: "Put 'em on the mantelpiece," and she did it. Then he got
up and staggered across the room and fell, just before he reached a
sofa.
"What did yer pull sofa 'way for?" he howled.
"Oh, William, forgive me. I didn't know. I'm so awkward. Did you hurt
yourself?" And she tried to help him up. But he wouldn't get up, and
continued to abuse her like a pickpocket. Finally she induced him to go
into the dining-room and sit down at the supper table. As a prelude he
shied a teacup past her head and against the wall. Then he pulled away
the tablecloth and with it the dishes, and sat down on the floor amid
the ruins.
What did that wonder of a woman do but plump down on the floor in front
of him and say, with a smile as of gratified pleasure, "Why, William,
isn't this nice? We haven't eaten on the floor since we were married. So
like the old picnic days!" Then she tried to rearrange the broken
crockery and rescue the supper. It was too much for me, and I guess Bill
thought he had gone far enough, for he began to smile and abandoned his
assumed inebriety.
"Mary, my dear," he said, "I brought home a couple of friends to supper.
They're outside and--"
"Brought home friends to supper," cried his wife, jumping to her feet,
"brought them home to supper, did you, without notice to me, when you
knew it was Sally's afternoon out? I'll teach you," and she set both
hands in his hair and shook him. "I've stood your freaks for sixteen
years and been patient and loving, but this is more than human nature is
capable of. Friends? No warning? What would they think of me?"
Our entrance relieved the tragedy, but Jenks was terror-stricken. The
surprise was too much for him. For the first time he realized that even
the most docile of women have reservations and that every worm has some
turning point. He finally explained the joke and it was received with
his wife's smiles. He was desperately anxious to square himself and then
and there presented her with twenty dollars, to which the sheriff added
the ten-dollar bill which he insisted he had lost on the wager. I saw
Jenks the following evening. "You'll never guess," he said, "what that
woman did with the thirty?"