Chapter IV: Part 4

Of course Ike and his new wife appeared on the scene as soon as the rumpus began, and the young husband bitterly upbraided his dad, until I thought I should have to serve as referee in a good bout then and there. Ike said that the old man had ruined his credit in the town forever; that he never could hold his head up again. He appealed to me, and asked why fathers always wanted to make jackasses of themselves where their sons were concerned. I couldn't tell him, of course. Finally the household quieted down, but the upshot of it is that Ike is going to quit to-morrow and get out a handbill, saying that his father was drunk when the unfortunate affair occurred, and inviting the town to serenade him again in his new home. You see it's almost a religious point with young couples in this section of the world that their banns be blessed with the most outrageous racket man can devise. They actually feel sort of shame-faced otherwise.

Speaking of banns naturally leads me to remark, that however shy on personal beauty Mrs. Philpot may be, she has a daughter of the A1 pure leaf brand. Her name is Verbena, and she can certainly give points to her namesake in the matter of sweetness. Naturally, she was somewhat upset after the stirring experiences of this evening, and I felt it my duty to restore her equanimity, especially as I was a guest in the house. We sat for quite a while in the best parlor and Verbena grew somewhat confidential. She said she had a beau over at Bumstead Four Corners, but that as a sparker he was about as useful as a pig of lead. Asked me if I didn't think that city men had more real romance and made better husbands. At this point I slowly withdrew my hand from her pretty one, for there was something in the suggestion that looked ominous.

I think I might have kissed Verbena good-night had not old Philpot appeared on the scene. I am almost inclined to believe that he had some notion as to what I meditated and that he was simply a little ahead of time. For, before coming to my room to write, I strolled out for a smoke and met one of Philpot's neighbors, a garrulous old fellow.

"Verbena's a likely gal," was the way he opened on me. I admitted it. "Engaged yit?" was his astounding query. Quietly but firmly, I denied the soft impeachment. "So-ho" he said, "Vebe's a-gettin' slow."

Curiosity got the better of me and in a half hour's talk I wormed considerable information out of my companion. It seems that the three oldest girls married recently and that their husbands were travelling men who, for some occult reason, had penetrated into this country. In two cases there was an elopement, said my informant.

"What did the father do?" I asked, thinking of old Philpot's shotgun.

"Do?" echoed the old farmer, "waal, he helped the hired man to sot the ladder under Dahlia's window, and when Lobelia skipped with her feller, 'Vebe' routed the hired man out o' bed at two in the morning to hitch up the best hoss, so's he could foller the elopers with the girl's trunk. I tell yer, it's tough tripe to have so many darters in this country."

I've made up my mind that Verbena's flier than she looks and that she and her old man have an understanding.

To-morrow I leave this sylvan retreat and start once more on the pursuit of the man who wants pig. I believe this little outing has given me new nerve, and that you will soon get Orders, More Orders and Big Orders, the only trinity you seem to think has any holiness in it. I wonder how Verbena will take my departure.

Your dutiful son, PIERREPONT.

P.S. I've been thinking over old Philpot's rock salt shooting, and it suggests a great idea. "Why not kill hogs with volleys of the stuff, thus obviating the necessity of salting 'em?" Do I get a raise for this invention? P.

LETTER No. XIV.

_A companionable deputy sheriff, a hospitable townsman, and "the best-natured wife on earth" inspires Pierrepont's pen to the narration of lively incidents._

JASPER, IND., July 21, 189--

_My Dear Father_:

I am surprised that my broker should have given you the particulars of my little flyer in short ribs--I mean ribs short--and in future I shall patronize another broker. The few hundreds I made in that deal I had relied upon to dispose of a little bill I owe in Chicago. When it started it wasn't quite so much like the national debt as it is now; but the fact is, I have been carting a deputy sheriff round the country for three weeks, paying for his time and board. Now you want me to return the check, endorsed to the treasurer of some orphanage. If you saw that deputy sheriff you wouldn't have the heart. If I sent you back the check it was lost in the mail and we'll forget it.

I've been so busy arranging to sell carloads of our stuff that I really haven't been able to write before, but when I got rid of that deputy a great load was removed from my mind. It's a tough thing to go in to try and sell a hard proposition a bill of goods--this _is_ a euphemism in our case--and know that the eye of the law is glued upon the show-window, lest you escape by the back door. If I'm to keep up my present spurt in the market you'll have to raise the limit. Thirty a week might do for a drummer when you started business, but for a commercial traveller of to-day it's only tip money. I'm making good now, and if I'm not worth more than thirty I'm useless to you. I may mention in passing that I've had an offer from Soper & Co. to jump over to them. They don't know I'm your son. They know that I'm the same fellow who was at your mailing desk a while back, and probably cannot imagine that you would treat your only the way I was treated. You will agree with me that business is business and I can learn it quite as well selling car lots for Soper as for any one else. A word to the wise--and to the cashier--is sufficient.

Don't worry about my becoming a victim to gambling on margin. Your tip on the market--that you will fire me if I keep it up--is valuable. I will see to it that you hear no more of my trading. I should not have taken this particular flyer had it not been for the fact that you wrote the last sheet of one of your recent letters on the back of a typewritten note from Gamble & Chance, in which they advised you that they had placed your order to sell ribs short. I just made up my mind that what was good enough for pop must be real velvet for sonny. You know you have always urged me to follow your example. I am quite certain that, now you are in possession of the full facts, you will revise your idea about that check. At all events, as I have hinted, that particular check is so full of bank teller's stamps that its own father would scarcely know it.

I never did take much stock in trading "on 'change." It's a form of gambling where interest is sacrificed by the fact that you do not see the ball rolled or the cards dealt. Even when you see the play you may be up against a brace game, so what can you expect when two or three big dealers, like my revered parent, get together and mark the cards for a big game? Anyway, I'd rather bet any day on something straight. If a man gambles on whether the sun will shine or not on certain days he may be unlucky enough to lose every trip, but he will at least have the satisfaction of knowing that no thimble rigging in somebody's back office introduced the clouds.

Finance, as I understand it, is the art of making the other fellow's dollar work for the financier; but this requires a sort of hypnotism that I do not yet possess. I may grow to it; indeed, now that I find myself able to sell the goods manufactured by our house, I am almost afraid to look a mirror in the face lest I discover that I am possessed of the evil eye. The "marts of trade," as the poet puts it, strike me as queer places. The interior of a stock or produce exchange is certainly an understudy for bedlam, if my imagination is correct.

"Give you 86 for C.P. & N.," shouts one.

"No," comes the reply, "want 86 and an eighth."

"All right."

"Sold."

"I'll take 500."

And nobody takes a thing, for the man who sells it hasn't got it and the man who buys don't want it. No wonder the poor lambs lose their fleece and their heads. Nevertheless, that short-rib check was a life-saver.

I was actually so poor that I had to descend to living in lodgings for three days. Think of it, the heir of Graham & Co. in lodgings! What would "the street" say of that? But I have found that the Graham credit is all covered with N.G.'s at the hotels and I scarcely cared to come home with a deputy sheriff among my excess baggage. So I went into lodgings in an "over Sunday" town. It gave me a lesson on the danger of officiousness that I'm not likely to forget, but, although for a few minutes I could see the danger lights of a sound thrashing dead ahead, it ended pleasantly. Lodgings were hard to find, but the cigar store man finally recommended me to a place. The woman who answered my ring was willing to let me--and the sheriff--a room, but before we arranged terms she took me one side and made an explanation.

Her husband, she said, was apt to stay out very late at night in convivial company and I might be disturbed by his noise when he came home. I assured her that, as a patron of hotels, I was quite used to this sort of thing, and forthwith negotiated for the use of her front parlor. About two o'clock in the morning we were awakened by the sound of bacchanalian revelry outside the window. I looked out and saw a man on the grassplot in front of the house. He was just able to move--and howl--and his frantic struggles to get on his feet were funnier than Milligan's attempts to put on superior airs.

"Ah, the inebriate husband!" I said to the sheriff, who agreed with me that it would be a good scheme to get him off the lawn and into the house. So we slipped on enough clothing to cover the law and the major part of our persons and went out. The serenader was light weight and we carried him up the steps without difficulty. He stopped singing long enough to roar:

"Whas-yer-doin'--lemme go--lemme go, I tell yer."

"Come to bed," I said, soothingly.

"Done wan ter go ter bed--never go t' bed Sat'day night," he hiccoughed. "This not (hic) my bed."

We bore him into the front hall, and laid him down to get a fresh hold for the journey upstairs. He was happy again and started a new song. Just then a light appeared at the top of the stairs, and I saw the landlady's face peering over the balustrade. In my most courteous manner I asked:

"Shall we bring him upstairs, madam?"

"Who?" she asked.

"Your husband."

She did not reply, but another voice did. "I am her husband, sir," and another head, with a jolly face and a big moustache, appeared beside the landlady's.

We dumped our operatic load across the street and I hid my shamed head in the pillows, making a sacred vow that for ever more I shall keep very busy attending to my own affairs. This led to a very pleasant Sunday for me--and the sheriff--however. The landlady's husband could take a joke--especially when it was on me, and at breakfast we became very good friends. He invited me to his club and we--and the legal limb--spent the afternoon there. His face grew bigger and jollier each hour, and finally he became very confidential. Referring to his own peccadilloes, he made the statement that he had the best-natured wife in the world. I had no reason to controvert this, but he seemed to think that I doubted it, and went on to accumulate testimony.

"We've never had a quarrel yet, though we've been married sixteen years," he declared. "I'll bet that no matter what I might do when I go home, she'd smile through it all."

This didn't interest me, but my legal guardian seemed curious. He even went so far as to doubt our friend. It wasn't long before they had patched up some sort of a wager between them. The husband was to go home to supper, appear intoxicated, raise a row, break dishes and otherwise generally make an ass of himself. If his wife kept her temper it was on the sheriff, and _vice versa_.

Bill--his name was William Jenks--started off ahead. We were to follow at a distance and observe results from the yard. Bill began to totter and sway as he neared the house, and presently Mrs. J. ran out of the front gate to meet him. She picked up his hat from the ground, brushed it and put it on, and then kissed him. Then she guided his uncertain legs into the house. When we reached the window which looked into the parlor we saw Bill sitting on the floor, howling incoherencies at his wife, who was trying to help him pull off his shoes. When they were off he commanded: "Put 'em on the mantelpiece," and she did it. Then he got up and staggered across the room and fell, just before he reached a sofa.

"What did yer pull sofa 'way for?" he howled.

"Oh, William, forgive me. I didn't know. I'm so awkward. Did you hurt yourself?" And she tried to help him up. But he wouldn't get up, and continued to abuse her like a pickpocket. Finally she induced him to go into the dining-room and sit down at the supper table. As a prelude he shied a teacup past her head and against the wall. Then he pulled away the tablecloth and with it the dishes, and sat down on the floor amid the ruins.

What did that wonder of a woman do but plump down on the floor in front of him and say, with a smile as of gratified pleasure, "Why, William, isn't this nice? We haven't eaten on the floor since we were married. So like the old picnic days!" Then she tried to rearrange the broken crockery and rescue the supper. It was too much for me, and I guess Bill thought he had gone far enough, for he began to smile and abandoned his assumed inebriety.

"Mary, my dear," he said, "I brought home a couple of friends to supper. They're outside and--"

"Brought home friends to supper," cried his wife, jumping to her feet, "brought them home to supper, did you, without notice to me, when you knew it was Sally's afternoon out? I'll teach you," and she set both hands in his hair and shook him. "I've stood your freaks for sixteen years and been patient and loving, but this is more than human nature is capable of. Friends? No warning? What would they think of me?"

Our entrance relieved the tragedy, but Jenks was terror-stricken. The surprise was too much for him. For the first time he realized that even the most docile of women have reservations and that every worm has some turning point. He finally explained the joke and it was received with his wife's smiles. He was desperately anxious to square himself and then and there presented her with twenty dollars, to which the sheriff added the ten-dollar bill which he insisted he had lost on the wager. I saw Jenks the following evening. "You'll never guess," he said, "what that woman did with the thirty?"

I acknowledged my incapacity to cope with the subject.

"Bought me a smoking-jacket, a meerschaum pipe and three boxes of Havanas. And, my boy," he added, "I've quit drinking. She's so good that I'm going to see all I can of her in my lifetime, for we'll keep house separately in the next world."

I guess he's right, for they'll certainly feel called upon to build a special alcove in heaven when she reaches there.

Your snappy observation that the poorest men on earth are the relations of millionaires strikes me in a very sensitive spot. I realize its truth, and I can assure you that if something is not done speedily to decrease the discrepancy between my income and my outgo, there will be a sensational story for the newspapers, with cuts--cuts of you and me, with possibly a picture of the hog plant thrown in for decorative purposes. If you think this would be a good ad., I'll play the cards as they lay. If not, please see to it that my expense accounts are accepted more in the spirit in which they are made.

My ex-guardian, the sheriff, has given me many pointers on how to escape the debt trap--it was after I settled his particular claim--but I don't think you'd care to have me get a reputation as a shirker of obligations. Sometimes, though, the escapes from the clutches of the law are very amusing. The sheriff tells of a good one that happened recently in Indianapolis. It seems that a young spendthrift was arrested for debt on the very day he was to be married to a wealthy widow. Knowledge of his plight would put an end to his expectations in this direction, and he was at his wits' ends as the two officers escorted him along the street.

In front of the City Hall a carriage was standing and as they approached the mayor of the city entered it and conversed for a moment through the window with a friend.

Mr. Spendthrift had an inspiration and said to the officers: "You know that gentleman who got into that carriage?"

"Yes," said one of them, "It's Mayor B----."

"Well, he's my uncle, and if I ask him he'll see me out of this thing. You'll take his guarantee, of course."

The deputies thought it would be satisfactory and when they reached the carriage the men hung back. The young man took off his hat and put his head into the carriage window just as it was about to start.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Mayor," he said, "but there are two men with me who have influence in the seventh ward. They say they'll be glad to work for you at the election next week if you'll give them any encouragement."

"Very well," said the mayor, "bring them here."

The spendthrift beckoned to the deputies and they approached. The mayor looked them over and said: "Come around to my office at 5 o'clock this afternoon and I'll fix up this matter." Then he drove off and the spendthrift borrowed half a dollar of one of the deputies, went and got shaved and then married.

I simply mention this to illustrate to what extremities an appetite for truffles and mushrooms may lead a young man whose pocket money prescribes cheese sandwiches and spinach. For the honor of the name I must not be permitted to be set down as deficient in credit. This really _must_ appeal to you. As you say, a man must not overwork a dollar, and the thirty of them I am now receiving per week get fatigued to a standstill within twenty-four hours after I make their acquaintance.

Yours in trust, P.

P.S. I would respectfully suggest that you do not show this letter to mother. The story of Bill Jenk's wife might not appeal to her.

LETTER No. XV.

_The oddities and humors of railroad travels appeal so strongly to Pierrepont that he writes his father of them, as well as of a breach-of-promise suit._

FALL LAKE, Mich., Sept. 7, 189--

_Dear Father_:

Replying to your last budget of aphorism and advice, I must say that it pains me somewhat to find my own father skeptical as to the history of the fish I caught at Spring Lake. The only lies I have ever told thus far have been on the road for Graham & Co., and I'm not going to begin any outside prevaricating on such trivial articles as fish. By the way, why do they use the term "fish stories" as a generic description for falsehoods? If the world only knew its business, "pork yarns" would be the synonym henceforth and forevermore.

But a truce to the finny tribe! I note with joy that the wisdom of the "House" has decreed that I am to be assistant manager of the lard department on my return. Now, to be honest, there's nothing very fascinating about tried-out pig fat, but the prospects of staying in good old Chicago right along atone for anything. We college men at first condemn our city because it seems the right and proper thing to do, after Boston; but let me tell you that a few months on the road will knock all that nonsense out of a fellow for good, and he's willing to swear that old "Chi" is the nearest copy of the New Jerusalem that's yet been invented.

Allow me to congratulate you on your good taste, my dear father, in gilding the lard pail with the fifty per you mention. I haven't sold so very many goods, but I like to see that you recognize good intentions. I have always believed that the Graham products could be made to sell better if certain imperfections could be eliminated, and these I have tried to point out to you, from time to time. It speaks well for your good sense that you haven't got offended at my blunt speech. Of course I can't help feeling elated, also, at my rapid rise in the business. It isn't every young man who can climb from eight dollars a week to fifty in about a year; it only goes to prove my pet theory that to the son of the "old man" all things are possible.

I'm coming back to town with the firm determination to make the manager of the lard department look like three battered dimes. As you say, it's my business to do my work so well that I can run the department without him, and I'm going to bring that about pretty deuced quick, because I need his job. I rely on your shrewd sense of economy to fire him the moment he becomes superfluous.

Your observation to the effect that a man who can't take orders can't give them, may be true enough in the pork-packing business, but did you ever watch a Pullman car conductor? The only person I can conceive of giving him orders is the porter, and I presume there's sufficient _esprit de corps_ to lead the subordinate functionary to at least make a pretence of deference due, and take out all his bossing on the passengers. As you must be aware from the way I've been eating my way through mileage books, I've made some long jumps lately. It was necessary, for as soon as I gladdened your paternal heart by becoming the "car lot man" you once expressed some doubt of my ever being, I saw at once that I had no business in towns where a car load of anybody's lard--to say nothing of ours--would last so long as to become eventually a public nuisance. My long railroad trips have broadened my point of view of life materially, and have incidentally given me no little amusement.

I tell you, father, outside of your letters there's no place where human nature can be studied so well as on a railroad train; whether it is the nervous strain of travel, or the clickety-click of the wheels, or the rapid motion, a man on a train comes pretty near acting out his real nature. It's pretty hard to be a hero to a "Limited" conductor. Thanks to the methods of American railroading, democracy is at its zenith on the cars. True, we have gradations, but the people who ride second-class are seldom appealing, while the parlor car is really very little of a barrier against the touching elbows of the most diverse elements of society. For a collection of all sorts, commend me to the parlor coach of an express. You are quite as likely to be bled in a game of freeze-out in the smoker next to the buffet, as you are in a less expensive portion of the train.

There was a very merry crowd of travelling men on the "Gilt-Edge" Express the other afternoon when I came through. It was a hot day and very few of the boys took the parlor, preferring the greater freedom from constraint of the ordinary smoker. If this had not been the case, perhaps the incident which I am to relate--merely as a warning to you, for I know you take the "Gilt-Edged" occasionally--might not have occurred.

The train stops at the Junction, you know, about ten minutes, and the majority of the boys got down to stretch their legs on the platform and get a bit of air, for even Indiana air is better than no air at all. As I strolled along, smoking, my attention was attracted by a young woman who was pacing slowly up and down the extreme end of the platform. As I am not especially observant of the fair sex, the fact that I noticed her at all is proof that she was considerably out of the ordinary in the feminine line. In fact, she was ripe fruit from the very top layer.

She had a music roll under her arm, and a tailor-made gown that, fitting perfectly, showed that not quite all the modern Venuses have been corralled for the "showgirl" department of musical comedy. It was little wonder, then, that one of the band of travelling men should have disentangled himself from his fellows and extended his promenade up into the reservation affected by the Beauty, for closer inspection subsequently proved that she was entitled to the name and to the initial capital I've employed. The two paced up and down, as people will, and passed each other several times. It chanced that just as this passing was about to occur again, the music roll fell to the platform. A raised hat, a returned music roll, a smile, a murmured "thank you," were the preludes to a more extended conversation.

I noted that at the fall of the music roll a slight laugh arose from several of the older fellows, but I paid no attention to it at the time, being otherwise engaged. When the train started the young woman was helped into the parlor car by her new acquaintance, and provided with a seat which, as he put it, he had secured for his sister, who, at the last moment, had postponed her journey. He was rather young, this travelling man, so his trepidation is explained. It was scarcely necessary, as I have since learned, for him to sneak out and surreptitiously pay for both seats. It was surprising how this little incident affected the railroad business. Almost all the drummer clan moved up into the parlor coach. I imagined at the time that they envied their associate his prize and wished at least to share his very evident satisfaction by witnessing it.

The young man was most gallant, and everything that the train boy offered, from the latest novel to chocolates and smelling salts, was left in the young woman's custody. Never have I seen a train boy who made as many trips in a given time. The dining car had been put on at the Junction--the train, you know, gets in just between hay and grass on the meal question--and the porter's announcement had scarcely left his lips before the couple were at the table. Most of the boys went, too, and watched with evident delight the exquisite taste and lavish appetite with which the young woman selected from the _à la carte_ menu. I was one of the few who saw the check after it was all over, and its duplicate would practically annihilate half a week's salary for me.

It was over quite soon, for, just as the pair had begun to sip their cordial, the train whistled and slowed down. I thought there must have been an accident, for the train is an express with no stops indicated between the Junction and the terminus. But the young woman was better posted, for she interrupted the flow of conversation and _liqueur_, by gathering up the beneficences heaped upon her, for sundry considerations, by the train boy. The young man expostulated, but she nodded her head and said something in a low tone. Just then the conductor of the regular train came into the dining car.

"Oh, there you are, Bessie! I thought I'd find you here. Hurry now! Remember, you nearly got a fall yesterday by being slow."

The car was rosy with grinning faces by this time, but the red flush on the young man's cheeks was certainly the most conspicuous feature. But I am pleased to say that he kept a stiff upper lip and assisted the young woman off the train. When he returned it was on the run--in the gathering up of the books, boxes and magazines, the young woman had forgotten her music roll. He had to throw it at her as the train rolled ahead. There was no hope for him; he had to go back into the dining car, for the check had not been paid.

As he opened the door he met the porter and hurled one question at him. "Why in thunder did the train stop here?"

"Stops ebry day, sir," answered the grinning son of Ham. "Dere's a bridge ahead an' we has to slow down, an' as Miss Bessie's de engineer's daughter, he makes it a full stop so she kin ride home on the Express."

It was really pitiful what the young man was forced to endure as he walked back to his table. It is but simple justice to him to say that he stood his ground bravely, doubled the denomination of his check for the benefit of his guyers, and tried to drop vague hints as to future carriage rides.

It was of no avail, however, for every man jack of them, except himself, knew that Bessie was an established institution on the "Gilt Edge," and that it was accounted a pretty dull trip when she failed to add to the revenue of the dining car. Of course she is doing a certain sort of good in the world, on her daily trip from her music lesson, in taking some of the conceit out of fresh young men, but I really think it would be quite as well for her if she rode on the engine with her father.

The balance of that run was devoted to stories of somewhat similar experiences. Job Withers--he is sure to be around when anything happens--told one on himself which sounded a bit apochryphal, but is nevertheless worth repeating, as illustrating how easy it is to simplify a situation by speaking the right word at the right time. As Job tells it, he draws a verbal picture of a very pretty girl in a crowded car and confesses to having honored her with glances more admiring than strictly decorous.

"She was a beauty, boys, and no mistake, and I envied the old lady who sat with her. When the old lady left the train I sauntered out upon the platform and stayed there till the train slowed down for the next stop. Then I wandered in again and, stopping beside the young Hebe, I inquired in my most dulcet tones, 'Is this seat engaged, miss?'

"She looked up straight into my face, and her baby-blue eyes seemed to be making a bill of lading of me. Then she spoke up in a sweet, clear, distinct voice, that must have been heard in every part of the car. 'No,' she said, 'this seat isn't engaged, but I am, and _he_ is just getting aboard the train.'

"And he was, six feet seven of him, with hands like friend Piggy's hams. I tell you, boys," concluded Job, "I felt about as cheap as the man who raised a warranted watch-dog from a pup, taught him to fetch and carry things, and, when burglars broke into the house, discovered their presence without his dog's assistance, and found that the faithful brute was doing credit to his training by trotting about after the burglars with their lantern in his mouth."

I got quite a shock to-day by the receipt of a letter, forwarded from Chicago, from one Silas Pettingill, attorney at Doolittle's Mills, Ind., informing me that Miss Verbena Philpot had decided to sue for breach of promise in the sum of $10,000. The only way in which this calamity could be staved off, according to Mr. Pettingill, was by my going to Doolittle's Mills and making "other arrangements," which I firmly decline to do. Verbena is all right on her native heath, but I fear that transplanting her to Chicago wouldn't be healthful for her or me. Talk about your simple, confiding farmers and all that sort of rubbish! I believe that if old "Vebe" Philpot should come to Chicago and walk up and down State street a couple of times, he would have the biggest bunco artist in town skinned to his last nickel before sundown. As it is, however, the thing looks rather ugly, and I don't know but I had better be absent from home for a year or so. Why couldn't I be made manager of your London branch instead of monkeying with the lard department?

Your threatened son, P.

P.S. In some roundabout way you may hear of the train escapade with the engineer's daughter. The boys on the road are no respecters of persons and are likely to make most any one the hero of a story. Should some hint connecting me with the affair reach you, it will be only necessary to recall that you heard the story first from me.

LETTER No. XVI.

_The Game of Golf, a most peculiar banquet, a social lion's fall and his escape from threatening legal meshes, inspire Pierrepont's pen._

CHICAGO, Sept. 20, 189--

_Dear Father_:

Your little joke about being almost well and about broke at Carlsbad strikes me as about the limit in sarcastic humor. It's always so easy for millionaires to talk about being broke, that they're about the only ones who do it. It's the same with clothes, you know. If I dressed like Russell Sage, you wouldn't have me in the lard department ten minutes. On the whole, I guess you'll get back somehow, even if you have to draw on London for a thousand or two.

I don't mind telling you that I'm doing great work in my new position. I don't know whether the manager of the lard section could do without me or not, but I'm dead sure I could do without him, for a more pompous ass never yet brayed in an office. He told me to-day that I ought to be very thankful for the accident of birth, and I countered on him by telling him he ought to be devilish glad my father was a good-natured man. I think that when you get home, we'll revolutionize this department. I can already see that there is great waste going on here; the amount of hog fat they are putting into the lard is simply scandalous.

While I think about it, I want to ask you if you can't find a good place for my old college friend, Courtland Warrington. Court is a perfect gentleman, and would be an ornament to the packing house, if you could only manage to keep him out of Milligan's way. I think that wild Irishman would kill him if he ever caught sight of his stockings. Of course Courtland ought to have something that wouldn't grate on his refined tastes and dignified style. Pasting labels on cans might do, but I don't think sorting livers would appeal to him. Anyway, I rely on you to fix up something nice and genteel for Court; he is very unfortunate in having an unsuccessful father.

I'll tell the Beef House people to look up the export cattle business, as you request, and tell it to 'em good and hard. If there's anything I like to do it's to give orders to fellows that are not under me; I believe this shows that I have the making of a successful business man concealed within me. I'd like to know, however, what this General Principle is you speak of as being in my department; up to now I never thought there was any principle in it.

Don't worry that I am to become a golf maniac, dear dad. My first day on the links was my last, and the article you saw in that Chicago paper about my appearance as a putter was very misleading. The fact is that I had gotten half around the promenade when I unfortunately allowed my brassy-niblick, or something of that sort, to come into contact with my caddy's head, and the game ended at the moment he was carried away on a stretcher. The caddy's father, a bullet-headed Dutchman, who was utterly unamenable to reason, had me arrested for assault and battery, and it made terrible inroads into my surplus to get him to withdraw the charge and to square the police reporters. No golf for Pierrepont, so you may calm your perturbed spirit. If I want highballs, I know where I can connect with 'em, and the place isn't a thousand miles from the packing house, either. Curiously, they have a concoction there known as a "Graham Fertilizer." I tried one, and I must say that the man who could drink two must have a stomach of brass.

Speaking of the stomach reminds me of a banquet. I can't imagine how it happened, but when the news leaked out that you had gone to Europe, so soon after calling me in from the road, the impression gained currency in some quarters that I had been placed in charge at the "House." You will appreciate that it's a pretty leathery sort of a proposition to have to go around denying a report that your own father has done the square thing by you, and explaining that you are in reality only first assistant manager of the lard department, and that a salt-pickled Celt named Milligan is still so far above me that I get a crick in the neck looking up at his exaltedness.

So I decided that the best thing I could do was not to deny the rumor and to accept all the honors likely to be thrust upon me. This may be obtaining distinction under false pretences, but it's less embarrassing than confessing that one's father is so thoroughly under the domination of a man who eats, drinks, sleeps and thinks pig, as to ignore the claims of blood and heredity. What could I do, for instance, when a number of friends proposed to give a banquet in my honor? If I had refused they would have said that I was a hog myself, besides being in the business; for people who get up banquets for other people are really only seeking an excuse to give themselves a good time. How could I disappoint them?

Anyway, the banquet came off on the appointed date. It was really an elaborate affair, the sixty guests sitting at tables fairly buried in flowers. It was doubtless thought to be a delicate compliment to the guest of the evening--meaning your only--that a few feet down the table at whose head I sat, and facing towards me, stood the life-sized figure of a hog, done in white roses and with a pail of our lard in its mouth; but I submit that there _are_ better appetizers than a reminder of the source of our prosperity. I accepted the situation and swallowed the pig--metaphorically, of course--with all the grace I could assume.

The menu card at my plate was an elegant affair, evidently handwork, and was different in design from those of the others, although I was kept too busy in conversation with my neighbors to read it. The service of the dinner was perfect, the well-trained waiters moving noiselessly to and fro and depositing the various courses without a word. A special attendant had evidently been assigned to me and I appreciated the distinction. The food that he served me, however, was, to say the least, peculiar. The soup tasted queer--like medicine; the oysters were replaced by curious tasting lumps served on shells, while the fish course was fishy enough in smell, but tasteless.

I had eaten practically nothing, and when the _entrees_ brought me only a spoonful of something that looked surprisingly like hash, I looked around at the other fellows. I saw twinkling eyes, some of which fell upon the plates in front of their owners. A glance at the plates of my nearest neighbors showed that they were being served with quite different food from that which reached me. I began to smell something familiar, and surreptitiously glanced at my menu. The first thing that struck my eye was this line in gilt letters at the bottom:

"This dinner prepared from recipes in Graham's celebrated booklet, '100 Dainty Dishes from a Can.'"

You should hear the roar that went up, as the crowd saw that I was no longer shut out of their executive session. I could do no less than order up a case of wine (which you, of course, will pay for and charge to advertising account), and after that they let me have something to eat. It's a terrible thing to have one's father's business chickens come home to roost so frequently. I did not recover from this affair for two days, which will explain the absence from the office, of which I have no doubt Milligan has duly informed you.

I have had a hearty laugh over your story of Hank Smith and his attempt to butt into Boston society with money, a brass band and fireworks. Hank made the great mistake of thinking that noise would go very far on Beacon street. And this just naturally reminds me of Baron Bonski, a self-made social lion, who had Boston's upper-tendom on tiptoe about the time I was a freshman in college. Bonski's method was the very antithesis of Hank's, and it worked as long as he chose to have it.

The Baron floated gently into Boston one spring day, armed with letters of introduction to a few of the _literati_ from men of prominence in Europe. He straightway attended various "afternoons" of poets, artists and Bohemian philosophers. He was a little chap with a sad, pale face, dark and soulful eyes, a voice as mellow as new cider, and a gift of gab unceasing as the flow of the tides. He hinted at tragic love affairs and allowed it to get around that he had been expelled from Russia for revolutionary work. He was modest and retiring, and the more he retired at the literary functions the more people tumbled over themselves to dig him out. He made a distinct hit without doing anything in particular, except to look pensive and sow a crop of romantic rumors.

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."

I admitted it sadly and he said he would do what he could. He began by writing letters, but Papa Philpot was evidently too old a bird to be caught by legal chaff. It was settle up, or marry and settle down, and that settled it. Finally, Damon told me that there was only one chance for me. He would go down to Doolittle's Mills and see the old man in person and try and argue him out of it. I was deeply grateful that he should make it such a personal matter, but he said it wasn't much, he needed a vacation anyway.

Well, he went about three weeks ago and I accompanied him to the railroad station in a great state of nervousness. Three days later I received a letter from him stating that, although he had not sounded the old man yet, he had some hopes. Two other letters reached me within the next week, but no definite result had been attained.

Then I heard no more and for the last fortnight I have dreamt of bridal wreaths that changed into halters and wedding-cake with iron bars embedded in the frosting. Yesterday I received this telegram:

"NIAGARA FALLS, Sept 19.

I am on my wedding tour. Verbena sends kind regards.

George Damon."

I am much relieved, but my mind will not be at complete rest till I find out whether Damon is a modern martyr or just plain damn fool.

Your freed son, Pierrepont.

P.S. I wonder if Damon--but there are some things in life before which even the most riotous imagination falters.

LETTER No. XVII.

_A boomerang wager, a story of Illinois justice, and a futile attempt at small economy, furnish the inspiration for Pierrepont's correspondence._

CHICAGO, Oct. 21, 189--

_Dear Father_:

The enclosed clippings will doubtless prove even more explanatory to you than to me. I regret to learn from them and others--for all the newspapers had it--that you are being squeezed by being short on November lard. Couldn't you substitute some of the September variety that we have been unable to sell? It is naturally surprising to learn that you have become so involved, when I recall the wealth of good advice you have given me to avoid this sort of thing. I realize that you have the justification of a long line of precedent in not practicing what you preach, but do you think it wise to jeopardize the future of the "House" by being mixed up in deals of this sort, especially when you are not at home to look after them? Of course, had you placed the matter in my charge, the conditions to-day would be quite different.

The gambling mania--and what is dealing in futures of grain or pork but gambling?--is certainly a terrible disease to encourage. No one who begins knows where he will leave off. Of course I do not presume to comment on your conduct; these remarks are purely impersonal; but I must admit that I am glad you did not include Monte Carlo in your European itinerary. The late John T. Raymond, the actor, used to say that he'd gambled away several acres of business blocks. Not that he ever owned any, but he might have done so had he not gambled. For he lost, as every man who gambles does in the long run, I am told. He would bet on anything, from the time of day to the complexion of the next person to turn a corner.

His infirmity was well known in the theatrical profession and sometimes advantage was taken of it to lay pre-arranged wagers in which Raymond must get the worst of it. A veteran actor whom I met the other evening tells of an incident of this sort. It occurred here in Chicago years ago, when Raymond was playing "Mulberry Sellers" at McVickers. One afternoon he came into the hotel office and sat down to chat with some friends. As he crossed one leg over the other, a particularly striking pattern of fancy sock was exposed to view. Some one commented on the brilliant colors and Raymond held up his foot and looked at it admiringly.

"Isn't it great?" he said. "I found that in Wanamaker's in Philadelphia. I guess they had the only line, for I've never seen a duplicate of the pattern."

"Come now, Mr. Raymond," spoke up a young actor. "They don't have all the good things in Philadelphia. Chicago has anything that any city has."

"Most things, young man," laughed Raymond, "but not a stocking like this," and he surveyed it again critically. "No sir-ee, there's not another stocking like it in Chicago, I'll bet."

"What will you bet?" asked the young man quickly, with a laugh.

"Oh, anything," answered Raymond.

"Cigars for the crowd?"

"Certainly, and the best in the house," agreed the actor.

"You bet, Mr. Raymond, that there's not another stocking in Chicago like that one?"

"Yes."

"Well, what's the matter with the one on your other foot?" cried the young man, triumphantly, while a roar of laughter went up from the bystanders.

"Well," drawled Raymond, "strangely enough, young man, you have propounded a conundrum for which I've been unable to find an answer. What _is_ the matter with the stocking on my other foot? This is the way it came back from the laundry." He pulled up his trouser leg and exhibited a faded stocking that looked as if it had been exposed to some powerful bleach. "This certainly isn't like the other one. Now if there _is_ one in Chicago I'd like to have it, for I never did care for a fancy-matched span."