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

Replying to your last budget of aphorism and advice, I must say that it pains me somewhat to find my own father skeptical as to the history of the fish I caught at Spring Lake. The only lies I have ever told thus far have been on the road for Graham & Co., and I'm not going to begin any outside prevaricating on such trivial articles as fish. By the way, why do they use the term "fish stories" as a generic description for falsehoods? If the world only knew its business, "pork yarns" would be the synonym henceforth and forevermore.

But a truce to the finny tribe! I note with joy that the wisdom of the "House" has decreed that I am to be assistant manager of the lard department on my return. Now, to be honest, there's nothing very fascinating about tried-out pig fat, but the prospects of staying in good old Chicago right along atone for anything. We college men at first condemn our city because it seems the right and proper thing to do, after Boston; but let me tell you that a few months on the road will knock all that nonsense out of a fellow for good, and he's willing to swear that old "Chi" is the nearest copy of the New Jerusalem that's yet been invented.

Allow me to congratulate you on your good taste, my dear father, in gilding the lard pail with the fifty per you mention. I haven't sold so very many goods, but I like to see that you recognize good intentions. I have always believed that the Graham products could be made to sell better if certain imperfections could be eliminated, and these I have tried to point out to you, from time to time. It speaks well for your good sense that you haven't got offended at my blunt speech. Of course I can't help feeling elated, also, at my rapid rise in the business. It isn't every young man who can climb from eight dollars a week to fifty in about a year; it only goes to prove my pet theory that to the son of the "old man" all things are possible.

I'm coming back to town with the firm determination to make the manager of the lard department look like three battered dimes. As you say, it's my business to do my work so well that I can run the department without him, and I'm going to bring that about pretty deuced quick, because I need his job. I rely on your shrewd sense of economy to fire him the moment he becomes superfluous.

Your observation to the effect that a man who can't take orders can't give them, may be true enough in the pork-packing business, but did you ever watch a Pullman car conductor? The only person I can conceive of giving him orders is the porter, and I presume there's sufficient esprit de corps to lead the subordinate functionary to at least make a pretence of deference due, and take out all his bossing on the passengers. As you must be aware from the way I've been eating my way through mileage books, I've made some long jumps lately. It was necessary, for as soon as I gladdened your paternal heart by becoming the "car lot man" you once expressed some doubt of my ever being, I saw at once that I had no business in towns where a car load of anybody's lard—to say nothing of ours—would last so long as to become eventually a public nuisance. My long railroad trips have broadened my point of view of life materially, and have incidentally given me no little amusement.

I tell you, father, outside of your letters there's no place where human nature can be studied so well as on a railroad train; whether it is the nervous strain of travel, or the clickety-click of the wheels, or the rapid motion, a man on a train comes pretty near acting out his real nature. It's pretty hard to be a hero to a "Limited" conductor. Thanks to the methods of American railroading, democracy is at its zenith on the cars. True, we have gradations, but the people who ride second-class are seldom appealing, while the parlor car is really very little of a barrier against the touching elbows of the most diverse elements of society. For a collection of all sorts, commend me to the parlor coach of an express. You are quite as likely to be bled in a game of freeze-out in the smoker next to the buffet, as you are in a less expensive portion of the train.

There was a very merry crowd of travelling men on the "Gilt-Edge" Express the other afternoon when I came through. It was a hot day and very few of the boys took the parlor, preferring the greater freedom from constraint of the ordinary smoker. If this had not been the case, perhaps the incident which I am to relate—merely as a warning to you, for I know you take the "Gilt-Edged" occasionally—might not have occurred.

The train stops at the Junction, you know, about ten minutes, and the majority of the boys got down to stretch their legs on the platform and get a bit of air, for even Indiana air is better than no air at all. As I strolled along, smoking, my attention was attracted by a young woman who was pacing slowly up and down the extreme end of the platform. As I am not especially observant of the fair sex, the fact that I noticed her at all is proof that she was considerably out of the ordinary in the feminine line. In fact, she was ripe fruit from the very top layer.

She had a music roll under her arm, and a tailor-made gown that, fitting perfectly, showed that not quite all the modern Venuses have been corralled for the "showgirl" department of musical comedy. It was little wonder, then, that one of the band of travelling men should have disentangled himself from his fellows and extended his promenade up into the reservation affected by the Beauty, for closer inspection subsequently proved that she was entitled to the name and to the initial capital I've employed. The two paced up and down, as people will, and passed each other several times. It chanced that just as this passing was about to occur again, the music roll fell to the platform. A raised hat, a returned music roll, a smile, a murmured "thank you," were the preludes to a more extended conversation.