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. XVI.

The Game of Golf, a most peculiar banquet, a
social lion's fall and his escape from threatening
legal meshes, inspire Pierrepont's
pen.

Chicago, Sept. 20, 189—

Dear Father:

Your little joke about being almost well and about broke at Carlsbad strikes me as about the limit in sarcastic humor. It's always so easy for millionaires to talk about being broke, that they're about the only ones who do it. It's the same with clothes, you know. If I dressed like Russell Sage, you wouldn't have me in the lard department ten minutes. On the whole, I guess you'll get back somehow, even if you have to draw on London for a thousand or two.

I don't mind telling you that I'm doing great work in my new position. I don't know whether the manager of the lard section could do without me or not, but I'm dead sure I could do without him, for a more pompous ass never yet brayed in an office. He told me to-day that I ought to be very thankful for the accident of birth, and I countered on him by telling him he ought to be devilish glad my father was a good-natured man. I think that when you get home, we'll revolutionize this department. I can already see that there is great waste going on here; the amount of hog fat they are putting into the lard is simply scandalous.

While I think about it, I want to ask you if you can't find a good place for my old college friend, Courtland Warrington. Court is a perfect gentleman, and would be an ornament to the packing house, if you could only manage to keep him out of Milligan's way. I think that wild Irishman would kill him if he ever caught sight of his stockings. Of course Courtland ought to have something that wouldn't grate on his refined tastes and dignified style. Pasting labels on cans might do, but I don't think sorting livers would appeal to him. Anyway, I rely on you to fix up something nice and genteel for Court; he is very unfortunate in having an unsuccessful father.

I'll tell the Beef House people to look up the export cattle business, as you request, and tell it to 'em good and hard. If there's anything I like to do it's to give orders to fellows that are not under me; I believe this shows that I have the making of a successful business man concealed within me. I'd like to know, however, what this General Principle is you speak of as being in my department; up to now I never thought there was any principle in it.