Read Ebook: Letters from a Son to His Self-Made Father Being the Replies to Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son by Merriman Charles Eustace Kulz Fred Illustrator

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Ebook has 1102 lines and 125899 words, and 23 pages

Illustrator: Fred Kulz

Entered at STATIONERS HALL.

Mark Twain

CAMBRIDGE, Oct. 10, 189--

I know you will accuse me of lack of the business promptness which is the red label on your brand of success, but I really couldn't answer your letter before. I have been trying to reconcile your maxims of life with the real thing, and I had to get busy and keep so. Reconciliation has not yet come, leastwise not so as you would notice it.

I'm glad Ma got back safe to the stock-yards, for when she left Cambridge that morning she didn't quite feel as if she would. I thought she had too large a roll to be travelling around the country with, and convinced her that she ought to leave all but and her return ticket with me. Its a great thing to have a good mother.

I have already taken quite a course in art, fitting up my new flat; the fellows go in quite strong for art here, and it really is one of the most expensive courses in the curriculum, for although the photographers make special rates to the students, models come high.

You will be glad to hear that I shook the room in College Hall that Ma picked out for me, and by extraordinary luck secured a small apartment of five rooms and bath in one of the big dormitories. The dingy hole in "College" was so horribly noisy that I found it impossible to do my best work. The building was fairly infested with "pluggers," whose grinding made day and night hideous. Here I can work in peace and get a raft of culture from my art studies and other beautiful surroundings. I have had the bill for fitting up forwarded to you. Please settle within thirty days, or I shall be terribly disturbed in my course.

Tell Ma not to worry about my over-studying. I have too much inherited common sense for that. It's a wise pig that knows when he is being crammed for John Graham's lightning sausage developer; I've heard the squeal. As for under-study--well, as Kip says, that's another floor to the building.

I fail to find education as "good and plenty" at Harvard as you seem to think it. Some of it may be good, but it certainly isn't plenty, and it isn't passed around with the term bills. There's a fellow in our dormitory--one of the "pluggers" who escaped from College Hall--who is hot after education, and they say he has to dig for it. I haven't dug yet, although I had a spade given me last night. Unfortunately, what I needed just then was a club.

You will be pleased to hear that I have already added several extra elective courses to my studies. I am especially interested in the topography course, in which we are making a careful study of Boston streets. I am glad to say that I am making rapid strides in the same. For this no text-books are required, but the experimental apparatus is quite expensive. On our last tour of inspection we all required lanterns. I paid and costs for mine, and it stood me more to square things with the driver of the herdic for a window broken while making a particularly interesting experiment.

I feel that I am learning rapidly. I know the value of money as never before. Money talks here quite as much as in Chicago; not so loudly, perhaps, but faster. As you have always advised me to be sociable, I find it pretty lively work keeping up my share in the pecuniary conversation, especially as in all our little gatherings there are always several fellows whose money doesn't talk even in signs.

Taking it by and large, as you say so often, Harvard seems all right, although the fellows say the term hasn't really opened, as there's nothing doing yet in the legitimate drama in the Boston theatres. They have a queer custom of colloquial abbreviation here--they call it "leg. drama," or "leg. show." Curious, isn't it?

If you value my peace of mind, dear father, don't write any more educated pig stories to me. Such anecdotes strike me as verging close on personalities. In fact, the whole pig question just now hits me in a tender spot. Even the pen I am using makes me shudder. I hate to look a gift hog in the mouth, but I wish you had made your money in coal or patent medicine, or anything that wasn't porcine. Fact is, I've got a nickname out of your business, and it'll stick so that even your boss hogman, Milligan, couldn't scald it off.

You see, I board at Memorial Hall with about 1199 other hungry wretches, and let me tell you that your yarns about old Lem Hostitter and his skin-bruised hams wouldn't go for a cent here. Memorial is the limit for bad grub, and thereby hangs a curly tail. The other day at dinner, things were so rotten that an indignation meeting was held on the spot, and a committee of investigation was appointed to go to the kitchen and see what kind of vile stuff was being shovelled at us.

There must have been a rough-house in the culinary cellar, for we heard a tremendous racket in which the crash of crockery and the banging of tin predominated. Pretty soon the committee came back bringing a dozen or so of cans, waving them about and yelling like Indians. When they got near enough for me to see, I shuddered, for on every blessed can of them was your label, father--that old red steer pawing the ground as if he smelt something bad.

Just one table away from me the gang stopped, and a fat senior they call "Hippo" Smith rapped for order. Even the girls in the gallery quit gabbling.

"Gentlemen," yelled the senior, "your committee begs leave to report that it has discovered the abominable truck that has been ruining our palates and torturing our vitals. It's these cans of trichinated pork, unclassable sausages and mildewed beef that have made life a saturnalia of dyspepsia for us, and every one of 'em bears the label 'Graham & Company, Chicago.'"

Then you ought to have heard the roaring.

"Down with Graham & Co.!" "Let's go to Chicago and lynch Graham." "Confounded old skinflint!" the fellows shouted. I turned pale and thought what a narrow escape I was having.

Just then up got little "Bud" Hoover, old Doc's grandson, whom you have always held up to me as a model of truth-telling you know. Bud's a sophomore, and thinks he's a bigger man than old Eliot.

"Here's Graham's son," he piped in his rat-tail-file voice that you could hear over all the rumpus, and pointing right at me, "Ask him about it."

There was nothing for it for me but to get up and defend the family honor. As I was about to speak I saw another fellow running in from the kitchen with a big ham, yellow covered and bearing a big red label,--your label. I had a great inspiration. I felt that ham would prove our salvation.

"'If you'll probe into a thing which looks sweet and sound on the skin to see if you can't fetch up a sour smell from around the bone, you'll be all right.'"

That hit 'em in great shape, and "Hippo" Smith took a big carver and slashed the ham into shoe-strings in about thirty seconds. Then he lifted the bone to his nose and let out a yell that sent all the girls upstairs flying. The other fellows sniffed and bellowed with him.

The next thing I knew the bone landed violently on my neck and the air was full of tin cans, four of which met splendid interference from my head. When I came to I could hear four hundred voices shouting "Piggy, piggy, oowee, oowee oowee," at me, and I knew I had passed through a baptism of rapid fire. They were the "roast beef and blood-gravy boys" you mentioned in your letter, for sure.

I am appreciating more and more the golden truths of your cold storage precepts. As you say "Right and wrong don't need to be labelled for a boy with a good conscience." Good consciences must be scarce around here, for on the other side of Harvard Bridge they label wrong with red lights, and I've failed to find a fellow yet who is color blind.

In my pursuit of knowledge I have made the acquaintance of quite a number of the police force. They seem to me to be an undiscerning lot. For instance, I heard one of them say the other day that Harvard turned out fools. This isn't true, for, to my certain knowledge, there are quite a number of fools who have been in the University several years.

Your affectionate son, PIERREPONT GRAHAM.

P.S. I am trying hard to be a good scholar, and am really learning a thing or two. But I respect your anxiety that I should also be "a good, clean man," and almost every Sunday morning I wake up in a Turkish bath.

CAMBRIDGE, May 7, 189--

I am sincerely sorry my last expense account has made you round-shouldered. I should think you pay your cashier well enough to let him take the burden of this sort of thing. Better try it when next month's bills come in, for I should hate to have a hump-backed father.

You haven't the worst end of this expense account business, by any means. If it makes you round-shouldered to look it over, as you say, you can just gamble a future in the short ribs of your dutiful son that it made me cross-eyed to put it together. You see there are so many items that a Philistine--that's what Professor Wendell calls men who haven't been to Harvard--couldn't be expected to understand. I was afraid that 0 for incidental expenses in the Ethnological course wouldn't be quite clear to you. It may be necessary to tell you that Ethnology is the study of races, and the text-books are very costly and hard to procure. But the fellows are very fond of the course; it is so full of human interest that it is a real pastime for them. In fact, they sportively call it "playing the races," to the great delight of dear old Professor Bookmaker, our instructor.

I realize that my expenses grow heavier each month, but money not only has wings, but swims like a duck, and the fashionable fluid to float it is costly. I'm really beginning to believe that a man who can read, write and speak seven or eight languages may be an utter failure unless he's able to say "No" in at least one of them.

The problem of how to get rich has not yet been reached in the Higher Mathematics course and so it's not worrying me, as you seem to think. But of course I don't want to cast reflections on the solvency of the house of Graham & Co., so I try to keep my end up. It's expensive, for there are fellows here who've got bigger fools than I have for--but this wasn't what I started to say. All men may be born equal, but they get over it a good sight easier than they do the measles; and while some of the fellows have to study in cold rooms, others have money to burn. Poverty may not be a crime, but it's a grave misdemeanor in Cambridge.

I am grieved, my dear father, to have you say that you haven't noticed any signs of my taking honors here at Cambridge. You cannot have read the society columns of the Boston papers, or you would have seen that I have already a degree from the Cotillion Society, as being a proficient student of the German; am entitled to the letters B.A.A. after my name--a privilege granted by a learned Boston organization after very severe tests, and have been extended the freedom of Boston Common by the aldermen of the city. If these things don't justify the inking up of a few pink slips, you can souse my knuckles. It grieves me to have you fail to appreciate what I've accomplished. I am trying to do your credit,--what a foolish little slip; rub the "r" from "your" and you'll see my meaning.

Another thing that proves my high standing in college is the fact that I've been admitted to the D.K.E., playfully known here as the "Dicky," a very exclusive and high-toned literary and debating society, specially patronized by the Faculty. The initiation ceremonies are very curious, and I really believe you would laugh to see some of the innocent little pranks the new men cut up. They are sent around town and over into Boston dressed in quaint garb and instructed to ask roguish questions of any they meet. This is to give them self-possession in debate and calmness in facing the battles of life. It would meet with your hearty approval, I am sure.

For my little trial I was compelled to wear a yellow Mother Hubbard, with a belt of empty Graham & Co. tin cans fastened around my waist and a double rope of your sausages hanging from my neck. A silk hat completed the rig. Thus accoutred I was told to promenade up and down Tremont street over in Boston, a swell walk opposite the Common, and bark like a dog. Every five minutes I had to buttonhole some one and shout "Buy Graham & Co.'s pork products and you'll never use any others."

Well, the long and short of it is that I became a marked man on the gay boulevard. Small boys tendered me a free escort and made insulting remarks, which I endured cheerfully for the cause. It vexed me a bit, though, to find that one of the persons I advised as to our meats was Miss Vane of Chicago. She looked unutterable things and murmured something to her escort at which he smiled pityingly. If you hear that I drink, you will know exactly how the rumor started, and discredit it accordingly.

Finally the crowd around me became so dense that street traffic was blocked, and I was taken in charge by a policeman for disorderly conduct. In another minute I was arrested by a meat inspector for exposing adulterated foods for sale. Between the two of them it was a simple little cot that night and a frugal breakfast next morning for Pierrepont. I was discharged on the disorderly conduct count, but fined 0 and costs on the bad meat item. The judge ordered all the windows opened when it came into court. Father, it's up to Graham & Co. to make good the deficit in my month's allowance. As a philosopher, you will see the point, I am sure. Perhaps a little bonus for mental suffering will suggest itself to you.

I simply mention this in a general way to let you know how your pork products are regarded in the east, where the health laws are stricter than in Chicago. I would advise you to play harder for the Klondike trade and cut Boston off your drummers' maps. This is a bit of "thinking for the house" that I'm not charging anything for. It's sense, though, and you can coin it into dollars if you see fit.

Dear old father, always planning for my comfort and pecuniary welfare! You wrote that when I have had my last handshake with John the Orangeman, I am to enter the Graham packing plant to lick postage stamps as a mailing clerk at a week. Honestly, dad, I don't feel worthy of so much. Make me an office boy at three per and let me grow up with the business. And I can't lick a postage stamp--really, I can't. Professor Plexus, our instructor in calisthenics, told me so the other day. He is a coarse and brutal man and I think I shall cut his elective out next semester.

But of course I shall accept your offer, although I should prefer a partnership, no matter how silent; for I shall be glad to be on hand in case anything should happen to you. Despite the law of averages you never can tell, you know.

As you say, there's plenty of room at the top. But that's where I'd like to start. I'd take all the chances of falling down the elevator well. Even if one starts at the bottom, he's not safe. The elevator may fall on him.

You say that Adam invented all the different ways in which a young man can make a fool of himself. If he did--which, with all due respect to you, pater, I doubt--it's a wonder to me that Beelzebub didn't quit his job in Adam's favor. I have no doubt it pays to be good, but you know better than I do that it often takes a long time to get a business well established. Misdeeds may be sure to find you out, but if they do they'll call again.

I've devoted a good deal of thought to your maxims, which I realize to be sensible if homely, but, after all, if people practiced what other people preached, the preachers would have to take on a new line of goods. At all events I won't allow myself to worry. The man who's long on pessimism is usually short on liver pills. Misanthropy is only an aristocratic trade-mark for biliousness.

I don't do things just because the other fellows do, as you suggest, but for the sake of the family name I must observe the proprieties. Even in this I do not go to such extremes as the Afro-American gentleman who sells hot corn and "hot dogs" in Harvard Square in their respective seasons. His wife died a few weeks ago and he found it pretty hard to get a living and crap stakes without a laundress in the family. So he married a stout wench about ten days ago. Last Sunday, says our janitor, who tells the story, his new wife asked him to go to church with her. "Go to church wid you, chile," he cried; "Bress de Lord, be'ent you got no moh sense ob de propri'ties dan to think dat I'd go to church wid annuder woman so soon after de death ob my wife?"

It is nearly midnight and I must close, for at twelve the art class meets at Soldiers Field to go and paint the John Harvard statue.

Your affectionate son, PIERREPONT GRAHAM.

P.S. I wired you to-day for . I couldn't explain by telegraph, but the fact is it cost me that sum to keep your name out of the police court records.

CAMBRIDGE, June 4, 189--

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