Letters from a Son to His Self-Made Father / Being the Replies to Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son

by Charles Eustace Merriman

LETTER No. XI.

Pierrepont meets with some curious experience
"on the road;" attends a "badger fight,"
and relates some of his adventures
in country hotels.

Harrod's Creek, Ind., April 16, 189—

Dear Dad:

There's no use in telling me that I've got to dream hog if I want to get a raise—for that's what all this rumpus on the road amounts to, after all. There's no need, I say, to enforce the lesson, for I have porcine nightmares every time I go to bed out in this uncivilized country. And I do wake up with determination—the determination to do something to get back to dear old Chicago, if I have to do the Weary Waggles act over the pike. When I think that I used to disparage our city in comparison with Boston, I feel very humble indeed. In comparison with the villages I've struck since I've been the avant courier of Graham & Co., Chicago is a paradise which no sensible man ought to depreciate. Milligan used to tell about a purgatory to which wandering souls have to go for a bit of scrubbing up to fit them for the good things of heaven. Of course he referred to experience on the road.

You complain because my selling cost in this sort of life just balances the profit I turn in to the house, but I think it should be a source of great satisfaction that you've got a son who can so rise superior to circumstances as to pay his way with the Graham incubus hitched to his shoulders. It's worth something to make an Ananias of yourself a dozen times a day, with bad dreams thrown in at the end of it. A liar is popular only when his cause hits the popular taste, and I've yet to find a town where our bluff is worth more than twenty-five cents in the pot.

Of course life isn't all a vale of tears, even during the quest for orders. There was a rift of sunlight yesterday at Simkinsville Four Corners, where I assisted at the annual Spring dog-and-badger fight. This function is gotten up with such a regard for the proprieties that even a college man has to give it his approval. I happened to arrive in town on the day of the festivity, and just naturally wanted to see it. A big crowd gathered in an open space back of the town hall, and all other interests were neglected for the time being. Even the Presbyterian minister was on hand to see that the thing was carried out in a fair and square manner, and I felt that with such spiritual backing the fight ought to be a good go.

There was a good-sized box in the centre of the ring, under which some one told me was a badger of exceptional fierceness. About ten feet away was a bull terrier who looked like the veteran of a hundred fields. He was kept in leash by a muscular negro, and the way he strained at his chain convinced me that badger was his particular meat and that he ate a good many pounds a day.

At the time I arrived on the scene there seemed to be a difference of opinion as to who should pull the string of the box and liberate the badger. Finally the row grew so intense that an election was proposed, and nominations for the exalted office were made. But every one who was mentioned seemed to have some out about him. He had bet heavily on either the dog or the badger, and such a thing as pulling the string with impartiality was thought to be out of the question. Meantime the odds were being chalked up on a big blackboard amid the excited roars of the crowd, and it began to look as if there wouldn't be any dog-and-badger fight at all.