_Dear Pierrepont:_ I knew right off that I had made a mistake when I
opened the inclosed and saw that it was a bill for fifty-two dollars,
"for roses sent, as per orders, to Miss Mabel Dashkam." I don't just
place Miss Dashkam, but if she's the daughter of old Job Dashkam, on the
open Board, I should say, on general principles, that she was a fine
girl to let some other fellow marry. The last time I saw her, she
inventoried about $10,000 as she stood--allowing that her diamonds would
scratch glass--and that's more capital than any woman has a right to tie
up on her back, I don't care how rich her father is. And Job's fortune
is one of that brand which foots up to a million in the newspapers and
leaves the heirs in debt to the lawyers who settle the estate.
Of course I've never had any real experience in this sparking business,
except with your Ma; but I've watched from the other side of the fence
while a heap of fellows were getting it, and I should say that marrying
a woman like Mabel Dashkam would be the first step toward becoming a
grass widower. I'll bet if you'll tell her you're making twelve a week
and ain't going to get any more till you earn it, you'll find that you
can't push within a mile of her even on a Soo ice-breaker. She's one of
those women with a heart like a stock-ticker--it doesn't beat over
anything except money.
Of course you're in no position yet to think of being engaged even, and
that's why I'm a little afraid that you may be planning to get married.
But a twelve-dollar clerk, who owes fifty-two dollars for roses, needs a
keeper more than a wife. I want to say right here that there always
comes a time to the fellow who blows fifty-two dollars at a lick on
roses when he thinks how many staple groceries he could have bought
with the money. After all, there's no fool like a young fool, because
in the nature of things he's got a long time to live.
I suppose I'm fanning the air when I ask you to be guided by my judgment
in this matter, because, while a young fellow will consult his father
about buying a horse, he's cock-sure of himself when it comes to picking
a wife. Marriages may be made in Heaven, but most engagements are made
in the back parlor with the gas so low that a fellow doesn't really get
a square look at what he's taking. While a man doesn't see much of a
girl's family when he's courting, he's apt to see a good deal of it when
he's housekeeping; and while he doesn't marry his wife's father, there's
nothing in the marriage vow to prevent the old man from borrowing money
of him, and you can bet if he's old Job Dashkam he'll do it. A man can't
pick his own mother, but he can pick his son's mother, and when he
chooses a father-in-law who plays the bucket shops, he needn't be
surprised if his own son plays the races.
Never marry a poor girl who's been raised like a rich one. She's simply
traded the virtues of the poor for the vices of the rich without going
long on their good points. To marry for money or to marry without money
is a crime. There's no real objection to marrying a woman with a
fortune, but there is to marrying a fortune with a woman. Money makes
the mare go, and it makes her cut up, too, unless she's used to it and
you drive her with a snaffle-bit.
While you are at it, there's nothing like picking out a good-looking
wife, because even the handsomest woman looks homely sometimes, and so
you get a little variety; but a homely one can only look worse than
usual. Beauty is only skin deep, but that's deep enough to satisfy any
reasonable man. (I want to say right here that to get any sense out of a
proverb I usually find that I have to turn it wrong side out.) Then,
too, if a fellow's bound to marry a fool, and a lot of men have to if
they're going to hitch up into a well-matched team, there's nothing like
picking a good-looking one.
I simply mention these things in a general way, because it seems to me,
from the gait at which you're starting off, that you'll likely find
yourself roped and branded any day, without quite knowing how it
happened, and I want you to understand that the girl who marries you for
my money is getting a package of green goods in more ways than one. I
think, though, if you really understood what marrying on twelve a week
meant, you would have bought a bedroom set instead of roses with that
fifty-two you owe.
Speaking of marrying the old man's money by proxy naturally takes me
back to my old town in Missouri and the case of Chauncey Witherspoon
Hoskins. Chauncey's father was the whole village, barring the railroad
station and the saloon, and, of course, Chauncey thought that he was
something of a pup himself. So he was, but not just the kind that
Chauncey thought he was. He stood about five foot three in his pumps,
had a nice pinky complexion, pretty wavy hair, and a curly mustache. All
he needed was a blue ribbon around his neck to make you call, "Here,
Fido," when he came into the room.
Still I believe he must have been pretty popular with the ladies,
because I can't think of him to this day without wanting to punch his
head. At the church sociables he used to hop around among them, chipping
and chirping like a dicky-bird picking up seed; and he was a great hand
to play the piano, and sing saddish, sweetish songs to them. Always said
the smooth thing and said it easy. Never had to choke and swallow to
fetch it up. Never stepped through his partner's dress when he began to
dance, or got flustered when he brought her refreshments and poured the
coffee in her lap to cool instead of in the saucer. We boys who
couldn't walk across the floor without feeling that our pants had hiked
up till they showed our feet to the knees, and that we were carrying a
couple of canvased hams where our hands ought to be, didn't like him;
but the girls did. You can trust a woman's taste on everything except
men; and it's mighty lucky that she slips up there or we'd pretty nigh
all be bachelors. I might add that you can't trust a man's taste on
women, either, and that's pretty lucky, too, because there are a good
many old maids in the world as it is.
One time or another Chauncey lolled in the best room of every house in
our town, and we used to wonder how he managed to browse up and down the
streets that way without getting into the pound. I never found out till
after I married your Ma, and she told me Chauncey's heart secrets. It
really wasn't violating any confidence, because he'd told them to every
girl in town.
Seems he used to get terribly sad as soon as he was left alone with a
girl and began to hint about a tragedy in his past--something that had
blighted his whole life and left him without the power to love
again--and lots more slop from the same pail.
Of course, every girl in that town had known Chauncey since he wore
short pants, and ought to have known that the nearest to a tragedy he
had ever been was when he sat in the top gallery of a Chicago theatre
and saw a lot of barnstormers play Othello. But some people, and
especially very young people, don't think anything's worth believing
unless it's hard to believe.
Chauncey worked along these lines until he was twenty-four, and then he
made a mistake. Most of the girls that he had grown up with had married
off, and while he was waiting for a new lot to come along, he began to
shine up to the widow Sharpless, a powerful, well-preserved woman of
forty or thereabouts, who had been born with her eye-teeth cut. He
found her uncommon sympathetic. And when Chauncey finally came out of
his trance he was the stepfather of the widow's four children.
She was very kind to Chauncey, and treated him like one of her own sons;
but she was very, very firm. There was no gallivanting off alone, and
when they went out in double harness strangers used to annoy him
considerable by patting him on the head and saying to his wife: "What a
bright-looking chap your son is, Mrs. Hoskins!"
She was almost seventy when Chauncey buried her a while back, and they
say that he began to take notice again on the way home from the funeral.
Anyway, he crowded his mourning into sixty days--and I reckon there was
plenty of room in them to hold all his grief without stretching--and his
courting into another sixty. And four months after date he presented his
matrimonial papers for acceptance. Said he was tired of this
mother-and-son foolishness, and wasn't going to leave any room for doubt
this time. Didn't propose to have people sizing his wife up for one of
his ancestors any more. So he married Lulu Littlebrown, who was just
turned eighteen. Chauncey was over fifty then, and wizened up like a
late pippin that has been out overnight in an early frost.
He took Lu to Chicago for the honeymoon, and Mose Greenebaum, who happened
to be going up to town for his fall goods, got into the parlor car with
them. By and by the porter came around and stopped beside Chauncey.
"Wouldn't your daughter like a pillow under her head?" says he.
Chauncey just groaned. Then--"Git; you Senegambian son of darkness!" And
the porter just naturally got.
Mose had been taking it all in, and now he went back to the smoking-room
and passed the word along to the drummers there. Every little while one
of them would lounge up the aisle to Chauncey and ask if he couldn't
lend his daughter a magazine, or give her an orange, or bring her a
drink. And the language that he gave back in return for these courtesies
wasn't at all fitting in a bridegroom. Then Mose had another happy
thought, and dropped off at a way station and wired the clerk at the
Palmer House.
When they got to the hotel the clerk was on the lookout for them, and
Chauncey hadn't more than signed his name before he reached out over his
diamond and said: "Ah, Mr. Hoskins; would you like to have your daughter
near you?"
I simply mention Chauncey in passing as an example of the foolishness of
thinking you can take any chances with a woman who has really decided
that she wants to marry, or that you can average up matrimonial
mistakes. And I want you to remember that marrying the wrong girl is
the one mistake that you've got to live with all your life. I think,
though, that if you tell Mabel what your assets are, she'll decide she
won't be your particular mistake.
Your affectionate father,
JOHN GRAHAM.
+----------------------------+
| No. 10 |
+----------------------------+
| From John Graham, at the |
| Union Stock Yards in |
| Chicago, to his son, |
| Pierrepont, at the |
| Commercial House, |
| Jeffersonville, Indiana. |
| Mr. Pierrepont has been |
| promoted to the position |
| of traveling salesman |
| for the house, and has |
| started out on the road. |
+----------------------------+
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