Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son / Being the Letters written by John Graham, Head of the House of Graham & Company, Pork-Packers in Chicago, familiarly known on 'Change as "Old Gorgon Graham," to his Son, Pierrepont, facetiously known to his intimates as "Piggy."

by George Horace Lorimer

FROM John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards in Chicago, to his son, Pierrepont, at the Commercial House, Jeffersonville, Indiana. Mr. Pierrepont has been promoted to the position of traveling salesman for the house, and has started out on the road.

X

Chicago, March 1, 189—

Dear Pierrepont: When I saw you start off yesterday I was just a little uneasy; for you looked so blamed important and chesty that I am inclined to think you will tell the first customer who says he doesn’t like our sausage that he knows what he can do about it. Repartee makes reading lively, but business dull. And what the house needs is more orders.

Sausage is the one subject of all others that a fellow in the packing business ought to treat solemnly. Half the people in the world take a joke seriously from the start, and the other half if you repeat it often enough. Only last week the head of our sausage department started to put out a tin-tag brand of frankfurts, but I made him take it off the market quicker than lightning, because I knew that the first fool who saw the tin-tag would ask if that was the license. And, though people would grin a little at first, they’d begin to look serious after a while; and whenever the butcher tried to sell them our brand they’d imagine they heard the bark, and ask for “that real country sausage” at twice as much a pound.

He laughs best who doesn’t laugh at all when he’s dealing with the public. It has been my experience that, even when a man has a sense of humor, it only really carries him to the point where he will join in a laugh at the expense of the other fellow. There’s nothing in the world sicker-looking than the grin of the man who’s trying to join in heartily when the laugh’s on him, and to pretend that he likes it.

Speaking of sausage with a registered pedigree calls to mind a little experience that I had last year. A fellow came into the office here with a shriveled-up toy spaniel, one of those curly, hairy little fellows that a woman will kiss, and then grumble because a fellow’s mustache tickles. Said he wanted to sell him. I wasn’t really disposed to add a dog to my troubles, but on general principles I asked him what he wanted for the little cuss.

“You looked so blamed important and chesty when you started off.”