_Dear Pierrepont:_ That order for a carload of Spotless Snow Leaf from
old Shorter is the kind of back talk I like. We can stand a little more
of the same sort of sassing. I have told the cashier that you will draw
thirty a week after this, and I want you to have a nice suit of clothes
made and send the bill to the old man. Get something that won't keep
people guessing whether you follow the horses or do buck and wing dancing
for a living. Your taste in clothes seems to be lasting longer than the
rest of your college education. You looked like a young widow who had
raised the second crop of daisies over the deceased when you were in here
last week.
Of course, clothes don't make the man, but they make all of him except
his hands and face during business hours, and that's a pretty
considerable area of the human animal. A dirty shirt may hide a pure
heart, but it seldom covers a clean skin. If you look as if you had
slept in your clothes, most men will jump to the conclusion that you
have, and you will never get to know them well enough to explain that
your head is so full of noble thoughts that you haven't time to bother
with the dandruff on your shoulders. And if you wear blue and white
striped pants and a red necktie, you will find it difficult to get close
enough to a deacon to be invited to say grace at his table, even if you
never play for anything except coffee or beans.
Appearances are deceitful, I know, but so long as they are, there's
nothing like having them deceive for us instead of against us. I've seen
a ten-cent shave and a five-cent shine get a thousand-dollar job, and a
cigarette and a pint of champagne knock the bottom out of a
million-dollar pork corner. Four or five years ago little Jim Jackson
had the bears in the provision pit hibernating and living on their own
fat till one morning, the day after he had run the price of mess pork up
to twenty dollars and nailed it there, some one saw him drinking a small
bottle just before he went on 'Change, and told it round among the
brokers on the floor. The bears thought Jim must have had bad news, to
be bracing up at that time in the morning, so they perked up and
everlastingly sold the mess pork market down through the bottom of the
pit to solid earth. There wasn't even a grease spot left of that corner
when they got through. As it happened, Jim hadn't had any bad news; he
just took the drink because he felt pretty good, and things were coming
his way.
But it isn't enough to be all right in this world; you've got to look
all right as well, because two-thirds of success is making people think
you are all right. So you have to be governed by general rules, even
though you may be an exception. People have seen four and four make
eight, and the young man and the small bottle make a damned fool so
often that they are hard to convince that the combination can work out
any other way. The Lord only allows so much fun for every man that He
makes. Some get it going fishing most of the time and making money the
rest; some get it making money most of the time and going fishing the
rest. You can take your choice, but the two lines of business don't gee.
The more money, the less fish. The farther you go, the straighter you've
got to walk.
I used to get a heap of solid comfort out of chewing tobacco. Picked up
the habit in Missouri, and took to it like a Yankee to pie. At that time
pretty much every one in those parts chewed, except the Elder and the
women, and most of them snuffed. Seemed a nice, sociable habit, and I
never thought anything special about it till I came North and your Ma
began to tell me it was a vile relic of barbarism, meaning Missouri, I
suppose. Then I confined operations to my office and took to fine cut
instead of plug, as being tonier.
Well, one day, about ten years ago, when I was walking through the
office, I noticed one of the boys on the mailing-desk, a mighty
likely-looking youngster, sort of working his jaws as he wrote. I didn't
stop to think, but somehow I was mad in a minute. Still, I didn't say a
word--just stood and looked at him while he speeded up the way the boys
will when they think the old man is nosing around to see whose salary he
can raise next.
I stood over him for a matter of five minutes, and all the time he was
pretending not to see me at all. I will say that he was a pretty game
boy, for he never weakened for a second. But at last, seeing he was
about to choke to death, I said, sharp and sudden--"Spit."
Well, sir, I thought it was a cloudburst. You can bet I was pretty hot,
and I started in to curl up that young fellow to a crisp. But before I
got out a word, something hit me all of a sudden, and I just went up to
the boy and put my hand on his shoulder and said, "Let's swear off, son."
Naturally, he swore off--he was so blamed scared that he would have quit
breathing if I had asked him to, I reckon. And I had to take my stock of
fine cut and send it to the heathen.
I simply mention this little incident in passing as an example of the
fact that a man can't do what he pleases in this world, because the
higher he climbs the plainer people can see him. Naturally, as the old
man's son, you have a lot of fellows watching you and betting that you
are no good. If you succeed they will say it was an accident; and if you
fail they will say it was a cinch.
There are two unpardonable sins in this world--success and failure.
Those who succeed can't forgive a fellow for being a failure, and those
who fail can't forgive him for being a success. If you do succeed, though,
you will be too busy to bother very much about what the failures think.
I dwell a little on this matter of appearances because so few men are
really thinking animals. Where one fellow reads a stranger's character
in his face, a hundred read it in his get-up. We have shown a dozen
breeds of dukes and droves of college presidents and doctors of divinity
through the packing-house, and the workmen never noticed them except to
throw livers at them when they got in their way. But when John L.
Sullivan went through the stock yards it just simply shut down the
plant. The men quit the benches with a yell and lined up to cheer him.
You see, John looked his job, and you didn't have to explain to the men
that he was the real thing in prize-fighters. Of course, when a fellow
gets to the point where he is something in particular, he doesn't have
to care because he doesn't look like anything special; but while a young
fellow isn't anything in particular, it is a mighty valuable asset if he
looks like something special.
Just here I want to say that while it's all right for the other fellow
to be influenced by appearances, it's all wrong for you to go on them.
Back up good looks by good character yourself, and make sure that the
other fellow does the same. A suspicious man makes trouble for himself,
but a cautious one saves it. Because there ain't any rotten apples in
the top layer, it ain't always safe to bet that the whole barrel is
sound.
[Illustration: "_When John L. Sullivan went through the stock yards, it
just simply shut down the plant._"]
A man doesn't snap up a horse just because he looks all right. As a
usual thing that only makes him wonder what really is the matter that
the other fellow wants to sell. So he leads the nag out into the middle
of a ten-acre lot, where the light will strike him good and strong, and
examines every hair of his hide, as if he expected to find it near-seal,
or some other base imitation; and he squints under each hoof for the
grand hailing sign of distress; and he peeks down his throat for dark
secrets. If the horse passes this degree the buyer drives him twenty or
thirty miles, expecting him to turn out a roarer, or to find that he
balks, or shies, or goes lame, or develops some other horse nonsense.
If after all that there are no bad symptoms, he offers fifty less than
the price asked, on general principles, and for fear he has missed
something.
Take men and horses, by and large, and they run pretty much the same.
There's nothing like trying a man in harness a while before you bind
yourself to travel very far with him.
I remember giving a nice-looking, clean-shaven fellow a job on the
billing-desk, just on his looks, but he turned out such a poor hand at
figures that I had to fire him at the end of a week. It seemed that the
morning he struck me for the place he had pawned his razor for fifteen
cents in order to get a shave. Naturally, if I had known that in the
first place I wouldn't have hired him as a human arithmetic.
Another time I had a collector that I set a heap of store by. Always
handled himself just right when he talked to you and kept himself
looking right up to the mark. His salary wasn't very big, but he had
such a persuasive way that he seemed to get a dollar and a half's worth
of value out of every dollar that he earned. Never crowded the fashions
and never gave 'em any slack. If sashes were the thing with summer
shirts, why Charlie had a sash, you bet, and when tight trousers were
the nobby trick in pants, Charlie wore his double reefed. Take him fore
and aft, Charlie looked all right and talked all right--always careful,
always considerate, always polite.
One noon, after he had been with me for a year or two, I met him coming
in from his route looking glum; so I handed him fifty dollars as a
little sweetener. I never saw a fifty cheer a man up like that one did
Charlie, and he thanked me just right--didn't stutter and didn't slop
over. I earmarked Charlie for a raise and a better job right there.
Just after that I got mixed up with some work in my private office and I
didn't look around again till on toward closing time. Then, right
outside my door I met the office manager, and he looked mighty glum,
too.
"I was just going to knock on your door," said he.
"Well?" I asked.
"Charlie Chasenberry is eight hundred dollars short in his collections."
"Um--m," I said, without blinking, but I had a gone feeling just the
same.
"I had a plain-clothes man here to arrest him this evening, but he
didn't come in."
"Looks as if he'd skipped, eh?" I asked.
"I'm afraid so, but I don't know how. He didn't have a dollar this
morning, because he tried to overdraw his salary account and I wouldn't
let him, and he didn't collect any bills to-day because he had already
collected everything that was due this week and lost it bucking the
tiger."
I didn't say anything, but I suspected that there was a sucker somewhere
in the office. The next day I was sure of it, for I got a telegram from
the always polite and thoughtful Charlie, dated at Montreal:
"Many, many thanks, dear Mr. Graham, for your timely assistance."
Careful as usual, you see, about the little things, for there were just
ten words in the message. But that "Many, many thanks, dear Mr. Graham,"
was the closest to slopping over I had ever known him to come.
I consider the little lesson that Charlie gave me as cheap at eight
hundred and fifty dollars, and I pass it along to you because it may
save you a thousand or two on your experience account.
Your affectionate father,
JOHN GRAHAM.
+----------------------------+
| No. 14 |
+----------------------------+
| From John Graham, at the |
| Union Stock Yards in |
| Chicago, to his son, |
| Pierrepont, at The |
| Travelers' Rest, New |
| Albany, Indiana. Mr. |
| Pierrepont has taken a |
| little flyer in short |
| ribs on 'Change, and has |
| accidentally come into |
| the line of his father's |
| vision. |
+----------------------------+