A LETTER FROM A SELF-MADE MERCHANT TO HIS SON
By George Horace Lorimer
[From John Graham, at the London House of Graham & Co., to his son, Pierrepont, at the Union Stock Yards in Chicago. Mr. Pierrepont is worried over rumors that the old man is a bear on lard, and that the longs are about to make him climb a tree.]
London, October 27, 189-
Dear Pierrepont: Yours of the twenty-first inst. to hand and I note the inclosed clippings. You needn't pay any special attention to this newspaper talk about the Comstock crowd having caught me short a big line of November lard. I never sell goods without knowing where I can find them when I want them, and if these fellows try to put their forefeet in the trough, or start any shoving and crowding, they're going to find me forgetting my table manners, too. For when it comes to funny business I'm something of a humorist myself. And while I'm too old to run, I'm young enough to stand and fight.
First and last, a good many men have gone gunning for me, but they've always planned the obsequies before they caught the deceased. I reckon there hasn't been a time in twenty years when there wasn't a nice "Gates Ajar" piece all made up and ready for me in some office near the Board of Trade. But the first essential of a quiet funeral is a willing corpse. And I'm still sitting up and taking nourishment.
There are two things you never want to pay any attention to—abuse and flattery. The first can't harm you and the second can't help you. Some men are like yellow dogs—when you're coming toward them they'll jump up and try to lick your hands; and when you're walking away from them they'll sneak up behind and snap at your heels. Last year, when I was bulling the market, the longs all said that I was a kindhearted old philanthropist, who was laying awake nights scheming to get the farmers a top price for their hogs; and the shorts allowed that I was an infamous old robber, who was stealing the pork out of the workingman's pot. As long as you can't please both sides in this world, there's nothing like pleasing your own side.
There are mighty few people who can see any side to a thing except their own side. I remember once I had a vacant lot out on the Avenue, and a lady came in to my office and in a soothing-sirupy way asked if I would lend it to her, as she wanted to build a crèche on it. I hesitated a little, because I had never heard of a crèche before, and someways it sounded sort of foreign and frisky, though the woman looked like a good, safe, reliable old heifer. But she explained that a crèche was a baby farm, where old maids went to wash and feed and stick pins in other people's children while their mothers were off at work. Of course, there was nothing in that to get our pastor or the police after me, so I told her to go ahead.
She went off happy, but about a week later she dropped in again, looking sort of dissatisfied, to find out if I wouldn't build the crèche itself. It seemed like a worthy object, so I sent some carpenters over to knock together a long frame pavilion. She was mighty grateful, you bet, and I didn't see her again for a fortnight. Then she called by to say that so long as I was in the business and they didn't cost me anything special, would I mind giving her a few cows. She had a surprised and grieved expression on her face as she talked, and the way she put it made me feel that I ought to be ashamed of myself for not having thought of the live stock myself. So I threw in a half dozen cows to provide the refreshments.
I thought that was pretty good measure, but the carpenters hadn't more than finished with the pavilion before the woman telephoned a sharp message to ask why I hadn't had it painted.
I was too busy that morning to quarrel, so I sent word that I would fix it up; and when I was driving by there next day the painters were hard at work on it. There was a sixty-foot frontage of that shed on the Avenue, and I saw right off that it was just a natural signboard. So I called over the boss painter and between us we cooked up a nice little ad that ran something like this:
Graham's Extract:
It Makes the Weak Strong
Well, sir, when she saw the ad next morning that old hen just scratched gravel. Went all around town saying that I had given a five-hundred-dollar shed to charity and painted a thousand-dollar ad on it. Allowed I ought to send my check for that amount to the crèche fund. Kept at it till I began to think there might be something in it, after all, and sent her the money. Then I found a fellow who wanted to build in that neighborhood, sold him the lot cheap, and got out of the crèche industry.
I've put a good deal more than work into my business, and I've drawn a good deal more than money out of it; but the only thing I've ever put into it which didn't draw dividends in fun or dollars was worry. That is a branch of the trade which you want to leave to our competitors.
I've always found worrying a blamed sight more uncertain than horse-racing—it's harder to pick a winner at it. You go home worrying because you're afraid that your fool new clerk forgot to lock the safe after you, and during the night the lard refinery burns down; you spend a year fretting because you think Bill Jones is going to cut you out with your best girl, and then you spend ten worrying because he didn't; you worry over Charlie at college because he's a little wild, and he writes you that he's been elected president of the Y.M.C.A.; and you worry over William because he's so pious that you're afraid he's going to throw up everything and go to China as a missionary, and he draws on you for a hundred; you worry because you're afraid your business is going to smash, and your health busts up instead. Worrying is the one game in which, if you guess right, you don't get any satisfaction out of your smartness. A busy man has no time to bother with it. He can always find plenty of old women in skirts or trousers to spend their days worrying over their own troubles and to sit up nights waking his.
Speaking of handing over your worries to others naturally calls to mind the Widow Williams and her son Bud, who was a playmate of mine when I was a boy. Bud was the youngest of the Widow's troubles, and she was a woman whose troubles seldom came singly. Had fourteen altogether, and four pair of 'em were twins. Used to turn 'em loose in the morning, when she let out her cows and pigs to browse along the street, and then she'd shed all worry over them for the rest of the day. Allowed that if they got hurt the neighbors would bring them home; and that if they got hungry they'd come home. And someways, the whole drove always showed up safe and dirty about meal time.
I've no doubt she thought a lot of Bud, but when a woman has fourteen it sort of unsettles her mind so that she can't focus her affections or play any favorites. And so when Bud's clothes were found at the swimming hole one day, and no Bud inside them, she didn't take on up to the expectations of the neighbors who had brought the news, and who were standing around waiting for her to go off into something special in the way of high-strikes.
She allowed that they were Bud's clothes, all right, but she wanted to know where the remains were. Hinted that there'd be no funeral, or such like expensive goings-on, until some one produced the deceased. Take her by and large, she was a pretty cool, calm cucumber.
But if she showed a little too much Christian resignation, the rest of the town was mightily stirred up over Bud's death, and every one just quit work to tell each other what a noble little fellow he was; and how his mother hadn't deserved to have such a bright little sunbeam in her home; and to drag the river between talks. But they couldn't get a rise.
Through all the worry and excitement the Widow was the only one who didn't show any special interest, except to ask for results. But finally, at the end of a week, when they'd strained the whole river through their drags and hadn't anything to show for it but a collection of tin cans and dead catfish, she threw a shawl over her head and went down the street to the cabin of Louisiana Clytemnestra, an old yellow woman, who would go into a trance for four bits and find a fortune for you for a dollar. I reckon she'd have called herself a clairvoyant nowadays, but then she was just a voodoo woman.
Well, the Widow said she reckoned that boys ought to be let out as well as in for half price, and so she laid down two bits, allowing that she wanted a few minutes' private conversation with her Bud. Clytie said she'd do her best, but that spirits were mighty snifty and high-toned, even when they'd only been poor white trash on earth, and it might make them mad to be called away from their high jinks if they were taking a little recreation, or from their high-priced New York customers if they were working, to tend to cut-rate business. Still, she'd have a try, and she did. But after having convulsions for half an hour, she gave it up. Reckoned that Bud was up to some cussedness off somewhere, and that he wouldn't answer for any two-bits.
The Widow was badly disappointed, but she allowed that that was just like Bud. He'd always been a boy that never could be found when any one wanted him. So she went off, saying that she'd had her money's worth in seeing Clytie throw those fancy fits. But next day she came again and paid down four bits, and Clytie reckoned that that ought to fetch Bud sure. Someways though, she didn't have any luck, and finally the Widow suggested that she call up Bud's father—Buck Williams had been dead a matter of ten years—and the old man responded promptly.
"Where's Bud?" asked the Widow.
Hadn't laid eyes on him. Didn't know he'd come across. Had he joined the church before he started?
"No."
Then he'd have to look downstairs for him.
Clytie told the Widow to call again and they'd get him sure. So she came back next day and laid down a dollar. That fetched old Buck Williams' ghost On the jump, you bet, but he said he hadn't laid eyes on Bud yet. They hauled the Sweet By and By with a drag net, but they couldn't get a rap from him. Clytie trotted out George Washington, and Napoleon, and Billy Patterson, and Ben Franklin, and Captain Kidd, just to show that there was no deception, but they couldn't get a whisper even from Bud.
I reckon Clytie had been stringing the old lady along, intending to produce Bud's spook as a sort of red-fire, calcium-light, grand-march-of-the-Amazons climax, but she didn't get a chance. For right there the old lady got up with a mighty set expression around her lips and marched out, muttering that it was just as she had thought all along—Bud wasn't there. And when the neighbors dropped in that afternoon to plan out a memorial service for her "lost lamb," she chased them off the lot with a broom. Said that they had looked in the river for him and that she had looked beyond the river for him, and that they would just stand pat now and wait for him to make the next move. Allowed that if she could once get her hands in "that lost lamb's" wool there might be an opening for a funeral when she got through with him, but there wouldn't be till then. Altogether, it looked as if there was a heap of trouble coming to Bud if he had made any mistake and was still alive.
The Widow found her "lost lamb" hiding behind a rain-barrel when she opened up the house next morning, and there was a mighty touching and affecting scene. In fact, the Widow must have touched him at least a hundred times and every time he was affected to tears, for she was using a bed slat, which is a powerfully strong moral agent for making a boy see the error of his ways. And it was a month after that before Bud could go down Main Street without some man who had called him a noble little fellow, or a bright, manly little chap, while he was drowned, reaching out and fetching him a clip on the ear for having come back and put the laugh on him.
No one except the Widow ever really got at the straight of Bud's conduct, but it appeared that he left home to get a few Indians scalps, and that he came back for a little bacon and corn pone.
I simply mention the Widow in passing as an example of the fact that the time to do your worrying is when a thing is all over, and that the way to do it is to leave it to the neighbors. I sail for home to-morrow.
Your affectionate father,John Graham.
FAREWELL
Provoked by Calverley's "Forever"
By Bert Leston Taylor
"Farewell!" Another gloomy word
As ever into language crept.
'Tis often written, never heard,
Except
In playhouse. Ere the hero flits—
In handcuffs—from our pitying view.
"Farewell!" he murmurs, then exits
R.U.
"Farewell" is much too sighful for
An age that has not time to sigh.
We say, "I'll see you later," or
"Good-by!"
When, warned by chanticleer, you go
From her to whom you owe devoir,
"Say not 'good-by,'" she laughs, "but
'Au Revoir!'"
Thus from the garden are you sped;
And Juliet were the first to tell
You, you were silly if you said
"Farewell!"
"Farewell," meant long ago, before
It crept, tear-spattered, into song,
"Safe voyage!" "Pleasant journey!" or
"So long!"
But gone its cheery, old-time ring;
The poets made it rhyme with knell—
Joined it became a dismal thing—
"Farewell!"
"Farewell!" into the lover's soul
You see Fate plunge the fatal iron.
All poets use it. It's the whole
Of Byron.
"I only feel—farewell!" said he;
And always fearful was the telling—
Lord Byron was eternally
Farewelling.
"Farewell!" A dismal word, 'tis true
(And why not tell the truth about it!);
But what on earth would poets do
Without it?
MY RUTHERS
By James Whitcomb Riley
[Writ durin' State Fair at Indanoplis, whilse visitin' a Soninlaw then residin' thare, who has sence got back to the country whare he says a man that's raised thare ot to a-stayed in the first place.]
I tell you what I'd ruther do—
Ef I only had my ruthers,—
I'd ruther work when I wanted to
Than be bossed round by others;—
I'd ruther kindo' git the swing
O' what was needed, first, I jing!
Afore I swet at anything!—
Ef I only had my ruthers;—
In fact I'd aim to be the same
With all men as my brothers;
And they'd all be the same with me—
Ef I only had my ruthers.
I wouldn't likely know it all—
Ef I only had my ruthers;—
I'd know some sense, and some base-ball—
Some old jokes, and—some others:
I'd know some politics, and 'low
Some tarif-speeches same as now,
Then go hear Nye on "Branes and How
To Detect Theyr Presence." T'others,
That stayed away, I'd let 'em stay—
All my dissentin' brothers
Could chuse as shore a kill er cuore,
Ef I only had my ruthers.
The pore 'ud git theyr dues sometimes—
Ef I only had my ruthers,—
And be paid dollars 'stid o' dimes,
Fer children, wives and mothers:
Theyr boy that slaves; theyr girl that sews—
Fer others—not herself, God knows!—
The grave's her only change of clothes!
… Ef I only had my ruthers,
They'd all have "stuff" and time enugh
To answer one-another's
Appealin' prayer fer "lovin' care"—
Ef I only had my ruthers.
They'd be few folks 'ud ast fer trust,
Ef I only had my ruthers,
And blame few business-men to bu'st
Theyrselves, er harts of others:
Big Guns that come here durin' Fair-
Week could put up jest anywhare,
And find a full-and-plenty thare,
Ef I only had my ruthers:
The rich and great 'ud 'sociate
With all theyr lowly brothers,
Feelin' we done the honorun—
Ef I only had my ruthers.
THE DUTIFUL MARINER 4
By Wallace Irwin
'Twas off the Eastern Filigrees—
Wizzle the pipes o'ertop!—
When the gallant Captain of the Cheese
Began to skip and hop.
"Oh stately man and old beside,
Why dost gymnastics do?
Is such example dignified
To set before your crew?"
"Oh hang me crew," the Captain cried,
"And scuttle of me ship.
If I'm the skipper, blarst me hide!
Ain't I supposed to skip?
"I'm growing old," the Captain said;
"Me dancing days are done;
But while I'm skipper of this ship
I'll skip with any one.
"I'm growing grey," I heard him say,
"And I can not rest or sleep
While under me the troubled sea
Lies forty spasms deep.
"Lies forty spasms deep," he said;
"But still me trusty sloop
Each hour, I wot, goes many a knot
And many a bow and loop.
"The hours are full of knots," he said,
"Untie them if ye can.
In vain I've tried, for Time and Tied
Wait not for any man.
"Me fate is hard," the old man sobbed,
"And I am sick and sore.
Me aged limbs of rest are robbed
And skipping is a bore.
"But Duty is the seaman's boast,
And on this gallant ship
You'll find the skipper at his post
As long as he can skip."
And so the Captain of the Cheese
Skipped on again as one
Who lofty satisfaction sees
In duty bravely done.
MELINDA'S HUMOROUS STORY
By May McHenry
Melinda was dejected. She told herself that she was groping in the vale of despair, that life was a vast, gray, echoing void. She decided that ambition was dead—a case of starvation; that friendship had slipped through too eagerly grasping fingers; that love—ah, love!—
"You'd better take a dose of blue-mass," her aunt suggested when she had sighed seven times dolefully at the tea table.
"Not blue-mass. Any other kind of mass you please, but not blue," Melinda shuddered absently.
No; she was not physically ill; the trouble was deeper—soul sickness, acute, threatening to become chronic, that defied allopathic doses of favorite and other philosophers, that would not yield even to hourly repetition of the formula handed down from her grandmother—"If you can not have what you want, try to want what you have." Yet she could lay her finger on no bleeding heart-wound, on no definite cause. It was true that the deeply analytical, painstakingly interesting historical novel on which she had worked all winter had been sent back from the publishers with a briefly polite note of thanks and regrets; but as she had never expected anything else, that could not depress her. Also, the slump in G.C. Copper stock had forced her to give up her long-planned southern trip and even to forego the consolatory purchase of a spring gown; but she had a mind that could soar above flesh-pot disappointments. Then, the Reverend John Graham;—but what John Graham did or said was nothing—absolutely nothing, to her.
So Melinda clenched her hands and moaned in the same key with the east wind and told the four walls of her room that she could not endure it; she must do something. Then it was, that in a flash of inspiration, it came to her—she would write a humorous story.
The artistic fitness of the idea pleased her. She had always understood that humorists were marked by a deep-dyed melancholy, that the height of unhappiness was a vantage-ground from which to view the joke of existence. She would test the dictum; now, if ever, she would write humorously. The material was at hand, seething and crowding in her mind, in fact—the monumental dullness and complacent narrowness of the villagers, the egoism, the conceit, the bland shepherd-of-his-flock pomposity of John Graham. What more could a humorist desire? Yes; she would write.
Thoughts came quick and fast; words flowed in a fiery stream like lava that glows and rushes and curls and leaps down the mountain, sweeping all obstacles aside. (The figure did not wholly please Melinda, for everybody knows how dull and gray and uninteresting lava is when it cools, but she had no time to bother with another.) She felt the exultation, the joy and uplifting of spirit that is the reward—usually, alas, the sole reward—of the writer in the work of creation.
Then before the lava had time to cool she sent the story to the first magazine on her list with a name beginning with "A." It was her custom to send them that way, though sometimes with a desire to be impartial she commenced at "Z" and went up the list.
At the end of two weeks the wind had ceased blowing from the east. Melinda decided that though life for her must be gray, echoing, void, yet would she make an effort for the joy of others. She would lift herself above the depression that enfolded her even as the buoyant hyacinths were cleaving their dark husks and lifting up the beauty and fragrance of their hearts to solace passers-by. Therefore she ceased parting her hair in the middle and ordered a simple little frock from D–'s—hyacinth blue voile with a lining that should whisper and rustle like the glad winds whisking away last year's leaves.
Then the day came when she strolled carelessly and unexpectantly down the village street to the post-office and there received a letter that bore on the upper left-hand corner of the envelope the name of the magazine first on her list beginning with "A." A chill passed along Melinda's spine. That humorous story—Could this mean?—It was too horrible to contemplate.
She took a short cut through the orchard and as she walked she tore off a corner and peeped into the envelope. Yes, there was a pale-blue slip of paper with serrated edges. She leaned against a Baldwin apple-tree to think.
How true it is that one should be prepared for the unexpected. Melinda had sent out many manuscripts freighted with tingling hopes and eager aspirations and with the postage stamps that insured their prompt return; how was she to know, by what process of reasoning could she infer that this, that had been offered simply from force of habit, would be retained in exchange for an æsthetically tinted check? She anathematized the magazine editor. (That seems the proper thing to do with editors.) She wanted to know what business he had to keep that story after having led her to believe that it was his unbreakable custom to send them back. It was deception, she told the swelling Baldwin buds, base, deep-dyed, subtle deception. After baiting her on with his little, pink, printed rejection slips, he suddenly sprung a wicked trap.
It was some time before Melinda grew calm enough to read the editorial letter. It ran:
"Dear Madam—We are glad to have your tender and delicately sympathetic picture of village life. There is a note of true sentiment and a generous appreciation of homely virtue marking this story for which we desire to add an especial word of praise. Check enclosed.
"Very truly yours,"The Editor of A–."
Melinda sank limply on the bleached, last year's grass at the foot of the tree. "Tender and delicately sympathetic picture"—"Generous appreciation!" She laughed feebly. The editor was pleased to be facetious. Having a fine sense of humor himself he showed his realization of the story by acknowledging it in the same vein of subtle satire.
She reread the letter and unfolded the slip of paper with serrated edges with changing emotions. After all it was not such a very bad story. She permitted herself to recall how humorous it was, how cleverly and keenly it laid bare the ridiculous, the unexpected, how it scintillated with wit and abounded in droll and subtle distinctions and descriptions—all—all at the expense of her nearest relatives and her dearest friends.
Melinda thought she would return the check and demand that her story be sent back to her or destroyed; but, reflecting that Punch's advice is applicable to other things than matrimony and suicide, she didn't. She resolutely put her literary Frankenstein behind her. She reasoned that in all probability the story would not be published during the lifetime of any of the originals of the characters; that even if the worst came to the worst, Mossdale was likely to remain in ignorance that would be blissful. The villagers were not wont to waste time on the printed word; in fact, such was the profundity of their unenlightenment, few of them had heard of the magazine with a name beginning with "A." Even John Graham paid little attention to the secular periodicals; besides, if absolutely necessary, John's attention might be diverted.
So Melinda went away on a visit. Her health demanded it. The doctor was unable to name her malady, but she herself diagnosed it as magazinitis.
Toward fall Melinda, entirely recovered, returned to Mossdale. Entirely recovered, yet she turned cold, unseeing eyes on the newsboy when he passed through the car with his towering load of varicolored periodicals, and rather than be forced to the final resort of the unaccompanied traveler, she welcomed the advent of an acquaintance possessed of volubility of an ejaculatory, eruptive variety. After many gentle jets and spurts of gossip much remained to be told, as the lady hastily gathered up her impedimenta preparatory to alighting at her home station.
"How like me in the joy of seeing you, to forget! What a sweet, clever story! And to think of you having something published in 'A–'! I never was more surprised than when Mr. Ferguson brought home the magazine. Those delicious Mossdale people! I could not endure that the dear things should not see and know at once. The lovely hamlet is so—so remote, and I knew you were traveling. What a pleasure to send them half a dozen copies that very evening!—Yes, porter, that, too—Do run down to see me soon, dear—Now do. Good-by!"
Melinda summoned the newsboy and bought the latest number of the magazine with a name beginning with "A." She turned to the list of "Contents" with feverish anxiety, then the book slid from her nerveless fingers. Her humorous story had been given to an eager public. She leaned back and gazed out at the flying telegraph poles and fields. Even the worthiest, the gravest, the finest, she reflected, has a face, that if seen in a certain light, will flash out the ignus fatuus of the ridiculous; but it is not usually considered the office of friendship to turn on the betraying light. Oh, well, her relatives would forgive in time. Relatives have to forgive. It was unfortunate that John Graham was not a relative. "One thing, I know now how much Mrs. Ferguson cares because I got those six votes ahead of her for the Thursday Club presidency—Half a dozen copies!" Melinda said aloud as she caught sight of the spire of the Mossdale Church.
Her Uncle Joe met her at the station and kissed her for the first time since she had put on long dresses. Notwithstanding a foolish prejudice against tobacco juice Melinda received the salute in a meek and contrite spirit.
"Notice how many citizens were hanging around underfoot on the depot platform—so as you kinder had to stop and shake hands to get 'em out o' the way?" Uncle Joe queried as he turned the colts' heads toward home.
Melinda had noticed. "I suppose they came out to see the train come in," she suggested.
"Nope; not exactly." Uncle Joe explained, "Looking out for automobiles and flying airships have made trains of cars seem mighty common up this way. Nope; the folks was out on account of you a-comin'."
"Me?" Having a guilty conscience Melinda glanced backward apprehensively and made a motion as though to dodge a missile.
"Yep; and you'll find a lot of the relations at the house a-waitin' for you."
"Why—what—? Now look here, Uncle Joe, there is no occasion to be foolish about a little—"
"Foolish? Now, mebby some would call it foolish, but us folks up the creek here we can't help feelin' set up some over findin' out we have a second Milton or a Mrs. Stowe in the fambly."
Melinda looked at her relative's concave profile in sick suspicion. Was the trail of the serpent over them all? But no, Uncle Joe was beaming mildly with the satisfaction of having shown that although the literary hemisphere was the unknown land, he had heard of a mountain and a minor elevation or two; he was, as she had always believed, incapable of satire.
For once Melinda was speechless. But Uncle Joe was likely to be fluent when he got started. He cleared his throat and turned mild, suffused, half-shamed blue eyes on his shrinking niece. "Yes, your piece has come out in the paper, Melinda, and your folks are all-fired pleased with you. I told Lucy this morning I wisht your poor Pap could come back to earth for just this one day."
"Ah-h!" Melinda took a firm grip on the side of the buggy. "But I guess you'll have to write another right off. There is some jealousy amongst them that aren't in it," Uncle Joe went on. "I told 'em you couldn't put the whole connection in or it would read like a list of 'them present' at a surprise party. Your Aunt Lucy, she's just as tickled as a hen with three chickens." The old man chuckled. "There it is all down in black and white just like it happened, only different, about her spasm of economy when she was cleanin' away Mary Emmeline's medicine bottles and couldn't bear to throw away what was left over, but up and took it all herself in one powerful mixed dose to save it, and had to have the doctor with a stomach-pump to cure her of spasms, what wasn't so economical after all. It's her picture tickles her most."
"Oh!" said Melinda.
"Yes, you know the picture is as slim as a girl in her first pair o' cossets a-standin' on a chair a-reachin' bottles off a top shelf, and your Aunt Lucy's that hefty she hain't stood on a chair for ten years for fear 'twould break down, and she's had to trust the top shelf to the hired girl. I guess when she goes to Heaven she'll want to stop on the way up and fix that top shelf to suit her. So she just sits and looks at that picture and smiles and smiles. She likes my whiskers, too. Yes, she's always wanted me to wear whiskers ever since we was married, but we never was a whiskery fambly and they wouldn't seem to grow thicker than your Uncle Josh's corn when he planted it one grain to the hill. But there I am in the picture in the paper with real biblical whiskers reachin' to the bottom o' my vest."