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

The Baron quickly got next the residence problem in Boston. He hired a room in a side street, just far enough off Beacon street to be cheap, and just near enough to catch the sacred aroma of that classic thoroughfare. He filled up his place with Oriental toggery, and kept it lighted dimly and religiously with queer Eastern lanterns. A mysterious odor always hung over the apartment. Here the Baron began to receive the swells at five o'clock teas, over which he presided with a huge samovar. The thing was so new, so captivating, so full of charm, that half the society women in town, including Mrs. "Bob" Tiller, the leading lady of the whole bunch, used to drop in quite informally.

They do say that the Baron became pretty well acquainted with the interiors, not to speak of boudoirs, of a good many of the great houses in town, and that his living expenses were pretty small during his first year in Boston.

But in an evil hour Baron Bonski fell. He decided that he wanted more money, and he could conceive no better way of getting it than by writing novels. He found a publisher easily enough, and then he used his knowledge of society people for his books. He paraded the foibles of his friends under thin disguises, and even trotted out Mrs. "Bob" as one of his leading characters.

The novels were pretty poor stuff, on the whole, but they got everybody hot, and the Baron's social star went down behind the horizon with a thud. Then his creditors began to worry him, his later books failed, ugly stories about his fraudulent title got around, and finally a brother novelist lampooned him. At last the town, which had warmed toward him at first, got too hot to hold him, and he resigned in favor of the next impostor.

I simply mention the Baron's case to show you that you can get into Boston society all right by knowing just how to do it, but that you've got to stick to your original rôle if you want to stay there.

You will be gratified to learn that the little difficulty with Verbena Philpot and her pa is at an end. Although, when I asked your advice on how to meet the absurd charge, you politely informed me that it was my breach-of-promise suit, I know you will be glad not to find this particular Verbena blooming beneath your roof-tree. When you refused to aid me with your vast experience, I went to see George Damon, who graduated from Harvard Law in my sophomore year. I told him the facts and he looked so solemn that I made up my mind that all was over, and I tried to decide between Canada and South America as a place of residence. He never even laughed when I told him that old man Philpot had the reputation of bribing the drivers of rural conveyances to lose a tire off a wheel when they were driving by his place with an eligible stranger as passenger.

"You won't marry the girl?" he asked. With as much courtesy to Verbena as I could at the time command, I replied in the negative.

"How much can you give to settle the thing?" came next. I said almost any sum, but it would have to be in expectancy, for you had definitely declared yourself against any appropriation to take up mortgages for indigent farmers with beguiling daughters.

"But you must get out of this without publicity," he said. "You'd be the laughing stock of the town."