_Dear Pierrepont:_ Yours of the fourth has the right ring, and it
says more to the number of words used than any letter that I have ever
received from you. I remember reading once that some fellows use
language to conceal thought; but it's been my experience that a good
many more use it _instead_ of thought.
A business man's conversation should be regulated by fewer and simpler
rules than any other function of the human animal. They are:
Have something to say.
Say it.
Stop talking.
Beginning before you know what you want to say and keeping on after you
have said it lands a merchant in a lawsuit or the poorhouse, and the
first is a short cut to the second. I maintain a legal department here,
and it costs a lot of money, but it's to keep me from going to law.
It's all right when you are calling on a girl or talking with friends
after dinner to run a conversation like a Sunday-school excursion, with
stops to pick flowers; but in the office your sentences should be the
shortest distance possible between periods. Cut out the introduction and
the peroration, and stop before you get to secondly. You've got to
preach short sermons to catch sinners; and deacons won't believe they
need long ones themselves. Give fools the first and women the last word.
The meat's always in the middle of the sandwich. Of course, a little
butter on either side of it doesn't do any harm if it's intended for a
man who likes butter.
Remember, too, that it's easier to look wise than to talk wisdom. Say
less than the other fellow and listen more than you talk; for when a
man's listening he isn't telling on himself and he's flattering the
fellow who is. Give most men a good listener and most women enough
note-paper and they'll tell all they know. Money talks--but not unless
its owner has a loose tongue, and then its remarks are always offensive.
Poverty talks, too, but nobody wants to hear what it has to say.
I simply mention these things in passing because I'm afraid you're apt
to be the fellow who's doing the talking; just as I'm a little afraid
that you're sometimes like the hungry drummer at the dollar-a-day
house--inclined to kill your appetite by eating the cake in the centre
of the table before the soup comes on.
Of course, I'm glad to see you swing into line and show the proper
spirit about coming on here and going to work; but you mustn't get
yourself all "het up" before you take the plunge, because you're bound
to find the water pretty cold at first. I've seen a good many young
fellows pass through and out of this office. The first week a lot of
them go to work they're in a sweat for fear they'll be fired; and the
second week for fear they won't be. By the third, a boy that's no good
has learned just how little work he can do and keep his job; while the
fellow who's got the right stuff in him is holding down his own place
with one hand and beginning to reach for the job just ahead of him with
the other. I don't mean that he's neglecting his work; but he's
beginning to take notice, and that's a mighty hopeful sign in either a
young clerk or a young widow.
You've got to handle the first year of your business life about the way
you would a trotting horse. Warm up a little before going to the
post--not enough to be in a sweat, but just enough to be limber and
eager. Never start off at a gait that you can't improve on, but move
along strong and well in hand to the quarter. Let out a notch there, but
take it calm enough up to the half not to break, and hard enough not to
fall back into the ruck. At the three-quarters you ought to be going
fast enough to poke your nose out of the other fellow's dust, and
running like the Limited in the stretch. Keep your eyes to the front all
the time, and you won't be so apt to shy at the little things by the
side of the track. Head up, tail over the dashboard--that's the way the
winners look in the old pictures of Maud S. and Dexter and Jay-Eye-See.
And that's the way I want to see you swing by the old man at the end of
the year, when we hoist the numbers of the fellows who are good enough
to promote and pick out the salaries which need a little sweetening.
I've always taken a good deal of stock in what you call "Blood-will-tell"
if you're a Methodist, or "Heredity" if you're a Unitarian; and I don't
want you to come along at this late day and disturb my religious beliefs.
A man's love for his children and his pride are pretty badly snarled up
in this world, and he can't always pick them apart. I think a heap of you
and a heap of the house, and I want to see you get along well together.
To do that you must start right. It's just as necessary to make a good
first impression in business as in courting. You'll read a good deal about
"love at first sight" in novels, and there may be something in it for all
I know; but I'm dead certain there's no such thing as love at first sight
in business. A man's got to keep company a long time, and come early and
stay late and sit close, before he can get a girl or a job worth having.
There's nothing comes without calling in this world, and after you've
called you've generally got to go and fetch it yourself.
Our bright young men have discovered how to make a pretty good article
of potted chicken, and they don't need any help from hens, either; and
you can smell the clover in our butterine if you've developed the poetic
side of your nose; but none of the boys have been able to discover
anything that will pass as a substitute for work, even in a
boarding-house, though I'll give some of them credit for having tried
pretty hard.
[Illustration: "_Charlie Chase told me he was President of the Klondike
Exploring, Gold Prospecting and Immigration Company._"]
I remember when I was selling goods for old Josh Jennings, back in the
sixties, and had rounded up about a thousand in a savings-bank--a mighty
hard thousand, that came a dollar or so at a time, and every dollar with
a little bright mark where I had bit it--I roomed with a dry-goods clerk
named Charlie Chase. Charlie had a hankering to be a rich man; but
somehow he could never see any connection between that hankering and his
counter, except that he'd hint to me sometimes about an heiress who used
to squander her father's money shamefully for the sake of having Charlie
wait on her. But when it came to getting rich outside the dry-goods
business and getting rich in a hurry, Charlie was the man.
Along about Tuesday night--he was paid on Saturday--he'd stay at home
and begin to scheme. He'd commence at eight o'clock and start a
magazine, maybe, and before midnight he'd be turning away subscribers
because his presses couldn't print a big enough edition. Or perhaps he
wouldn't feel literary that night, and so he'd invent a system for
speculating in wheat and go on pyramiding his purchases till he'd made
the best that Cheops did look like a five-cent plate of ice cream. All
he ever needed was a few hundred for a starter, and to get that he'd
decide to let me in on the ground floor. I want to say right here that
whenever any one offers to let you in on the ground floor it's a pretty
safe rule to take the elevator to the roof garden. I never exactly
refused to lend Charlie the capital he needed, but we generally
compromised on half a dollar next morning, when he was in a hurry to
make the store to keep from getting docked.
He dropped by the office last week, a little bent and seedy, but all in
a glow and trembling with excitement in the old way. Told me he was
President of the Klondike Exploring, Gold Prospecting and Immigration
Company, with a capital of ten millions. I guessed that he was the board
of directors and the capital stock and the exploring and the prospecting
and the immigrating, too--everything, in fact, except the business card
he'd sent in; for Charlie always had a gift for nosing out printers
who'd trust him. Said that for the sake of old times he'd let me have a
few thousand shares at fifty cents, though they would go to par in a
year. In the end we compromised on a loan of ten dollars, and Charlie
went away happy.
The swamps are full of razor-backs like Charlie, fellows who'd rather
make a million a night in their heads than five dollars a day in cash.
I have always found it cheaper to lend a man of that build a little money
than to hire him. As a matter of fact, I have never known a fellow who
was smart enough to think for the house days and for himself nights. A
man who tries that is usually a pretty poor thinker, and he isn't much
good to either; but if there's any choice the house gets the worst of
it.
I simply mention these little things in a general way. If you can take
my word for some of them you are going to save yourself a whole lot of
trouble. There are others which I don't speak of because life is too
short and because it seems to afford a fellow a heap of satisfaction
to pull the trigger for himself to see if it is loaded; and a lesson
learned at the muzzle has the virtue of never being forgotten.
You report to Milligan at the yards at eight sharp on the fifteenth.
You'd better figure on being here on the fourteenth, because Milligan's
a pretty touchy Irishman, and I may be able to give you a point or two
that will help you to keep on his mellow side. He's apt to feel a little
sore at taking on in his department a man whom he hasn't passed on.
Your affectionate father,
JOHN GRAHAM.
+-----------------------------+
| No. 6 |
+-----------------------------+
| From John Graham, en route |
| to Texas, to Pierrepont |
| Graham, care of Graham & |
| Co., Union Stock Yards, |
| Chicago. Mr. Pierrepont |
| has, entirely without |
| intention, caused a little |
| confusion in the mails, |
| and it has come to his |
| father's notice in the |
| course of business. |
+-----------------------------+