"Lally, this is the only thing I have ever owned in the way of jewelry, and it's not much, but will you take it and wear it for my sake?"
"It will always be a perfect pearl to me," said the blushing girl.
[GEORGE HORACE LORIMER]
George Horace Lorimer, editor and novelist, was born at Louisville, Kentucky, October 6, 1868, the son of Dr. George C. Lorimer (1838-1904), the distinguished Baptist clergyman and author, who held pastorates at Harrodsburg (where he married a wife), Paducah, and Louisville, but who won his widest reputation in Tremont Temple, Boston. His son was educated at Colby College and at Yale. Since Saint Patrick's Day of 1899, Mr. Lorimer has been editor-in-chief of The Saturday Evening Post. He resides with his family at Wyncote, Pennsylvania, but he may be more often found near the top of the magnificent new building of the Curtis Publishing Company in Independence Square. As an author Mr. Lorimer is known for his popular Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son (Boston, 1902), which was one of the "six best sellers" for a long time. It was actually translated into Japanese. Its sequel, Old Gorgon Graham (New York, 1904), was more letters from the same to the same. The original of Old Gorgon Graham was none other than Philip Danforth Armour, the Chicago packer, under whom Mr. Lorimer worked for several years. Both of the books made a powerful appeal to men, but it is doubtful if many women cared for either of them. The False Gods (New York, 1906), is a newspaper story in which "the false gods" are the faithless flares which lead a "cub" reporter into many mixups, only to have everything turn out happily in the end. Mr. Lorimer's latest story, Jack Spurlock—Prodigal (New York, 1908), an adventurous young fellow who is expelled from Harvard, defies his father, and finds himself in the maw of a cold and uncongenial world, is deliciously funny—for the reader! All of Mr. Lorimer's books are full of the Poor Richard brand of worldly-wise philosophy, which he is in the habit of "serving up" weekly for the readers of The Post. That he is certainly an editor of very great ability, and that he has exerted wide influence in his field, no one will gainsay. The men who help him make his paper call him "the greatest editor in America;" and he is undoubtedly the highest salaried one in this country to-day. The Post, which was nothing before he assumed control of it, is one of the foremost weeklies in the English-reading world at the present time; and its success is due to the longheadedness and hard common sense of its editor, George Horace Lorimer.
Bibliography. The Critic (June, 1903); The Bookman (October, November, 1904); Little Pilgrimages Among the Men Who Have Written Famous Books, by E. F. Harkins (Boston, 1903, Second Series).
HIS SON'S SWEETHEART[57]
[From Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son (Boston, 1902)]
New York, November 4, 189-.