Hank dropped by my office for a minute on his way to ’Frisco. Said he liked things lively, but there was altogether too much rough-house on Beacon Hill for him. Judged that as the crowd which wasn’t invited was so blamed sociable, the one which was invited would have stayed a week if it hadn’t slipped up on the date. That might be the Boston idea, but he wanted a little more refinement in his. Said he was a pretty free spender, and would hold his end up, but he hated a hog. Of course I told Hank that Boston wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be in the school histories, and that Circle City wasn’t so tough as it read in the newspapers, for there was no way of making him understand that he might have lived in Boston for a hundred years without being invited to a strawberry sociable. Because a fellow cuts ice on the Arctic Circle, it doesn’t follow that he’s going to be worth beans on the Back Bay.
I simply mention Hank in a general way. His case may be a little different, but it isn’t any more extreme than lots of others all around you over there and me over here. Of course, I want you to enjoy good society, but any society is good society where congenial men and women meet together for wholesome amusement. But I want you to keep away from people who choose play for a profession. A man’s as good as he makes himself, but no man’s any good because his grandfather was.
Your affectionate father,
John Graham.
No. 17
FROM John Graham, at the London House of Graham & Co., to his son, Pierrepont, at the Union Stock Yards in Chicago. Mr. Pierrepont has written his father that he is getting along famously in his new place.
XVII
London, October 24, 189—
Dear Pierrepont: Well, I’m headed for home at last, checked high and as full of prance as a spotted circus horse. Those Dutchmen ain’t so bad as their language, after all, for they’ve fixed up my rheumatism so that I can bear down on my right leg without thinking that it’s going to break off.