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

"Hence," said the colonel, "it's never too late for some men to reform—to desert or to take to the bar."

I'm sure I have no desire to be a humming bird in life, to flit from flower to flower; but I shall not be sorry if some day a stentorian call comes to me to forsake the pork industry. I am not much of a farmer, but I'm cock sure you can't make cider out of dried apples, and as far as taste for the business of selling pig is concerned, I'm threaded on a string from the rafters. I really think it's time that the family name was taken out of trade. Where would the "four hundred" be if the Astors and Vanderbilts and the rest of the aristocracy had stuck to the business that made them rich? It's actually indecent for the wealthy to parade the source of their prosperity to the populace.

May I venture a suggestion? Why not capitalize the Graham plant? You can do this at a figure about four times its worth, sell almost half of the stock, keep the rest and own the plant after all is done. If this isn't kicking the gizzard out of the old proverb that you can't eat your cake and have it too, I'm a Dutchman. Besides, when you are an incorporated company, or in a merger, you're respectable. The grease don't come off dividend checks. Then if, as a clincher, you give away some of your surplus to educational institutions, you've headed your family along the highway which leads to seeing your name in another part of the newspapers than the court calendar.

You certainly owe something to your descendants, for upon them depends the future of your own reputation. The original money grabber of a great family may have dug clams and robbed widows and orphans, but his memory swells into gigantic proportions when his multi-millionaire great-grandchildren know that he is so generally forgotten as to be talked about with impunity. You may not take kindly to this, but mother has social aspirations. She will probably never get any farther, personally, than an extremely pink tea, but she would be encouraged if she had some hope of being pointed to in her portrait as the grandmother of people to whom trade will be only a despised heirloom, to be stored in the garret with the haircloth sofa.

I presume that you are to stay at the Waldorf-Astoria while you linger in New York. Let me, as a dutiful son, give you a tip as to your bearing in that hostelry. Don't let on that you are a pork packer from Chicago, if you value the contents of your pocketbook. They'll skin you, dress you and salt you while you wait, if they find out your profession. And don't tell the clerk that you're the father of Pierrepont Graham who stopped at his hotel for awhile, a little over a year ago. I believe there's still a little something due for extras from that visit of mine, and I am considerate enough not to want to get you into any muss about that robber baron bill.

You are somewhat of a stranger in New York, and I want to caution you against travelling around town exposing your massive gold chain with the hog watch-charm you affect. Somehow a sucker is viewed by the amount of yellow metal he displays on his vest, and I don't want to hear that you have been treated to knock-out drops or tapped on the cranium with a sandbag, just because you look like a guy with an inflated wallet. All I ask of you is, that you get back safe to Chicago to straighten out the business. Since I have assumed control of the lard department there have been two strikes and one lock-out in our branch of the business, and I don't know whether to close down the department altogether or to raise everybody's wages and make it up on the quality of the lard. Even Ma is beginning to kick, for she says she has a life interest in the business and she can't see why your rheumatism should be allowed to cut her dividends in two. I read her your excellent advice as to the sin of worrying, but it had no effect on her. She says that any woman who has a gallivanting husband and a fool son has the right to worry, and that she will keep right at it until you drive up to the door, when she will give you a welcome home that you will remember. Perhaps you had better come in by the back entrance and let her discover you in bed suffering the tortures of the damned, as they say in novels. Nothing disarms a woman like a man keeled over by disease.

In any event, don't tell her the truth about your European trip and its little enjoyments. If you do, you may have something like the experience of Henry Bagshot. As you, I have reason to believe, know, Bagshot is an habitual poker player—one of the kind who'd rather sit up all night saying, "that's good," than make fifty thousand by a coup on the Exchange. In twenty-seven years of married life, it seems he has concealed from Mrs. B. his feverish anxiety to draw one card for the middle, and has always had some good excuse for his late sessions. But about a month ago he had a bad attack with his heart and the doctor who pulled him through warned him that life was not eternal in his case any more than with the rest of us.

It gave Bagshot a creepy feeling to see the "Gates Ajar," and for a couple of weeks, when his fingers itched for the chips, he let it go at scratching. When he fell there was a terrible thud and it was 4 A.M. when he crawled into the family mansion. Mrs. B. was sitting up. She had feared the worst. A compunction of conscience, due to the graveyard suggestion of his medical advisor, struck Bagshot when the lady of his choice propounded the usual conundrum and he weakened. His carefully prepared explanation stuck in his throat and he blurted out: "Very sorry, my dear, but the fact is I got into a game of poker at the club and—and I won eighty-five. Here they are, buy yourself something." And he dropped the greenbacks into Mrs. B's lap.

Then there was a scene. She didn't believe him and could not be induced to do so. "Henry Bagshot," she cried, "in twenty-seven years you've never stayed away from home to play poker. It was not cards, but some awful hussy!" and she had hysterics till daylight and it cost Bagshot $2,500 for a new brougham and a span of horses before he could get away to breakfast. Whatever happens, no husband should tell the truth to his wife. Either she'd not believe him or the shock would kill her.