George Horace Lorimer
Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664129550
Table of Contents
LETTERS from a SELF-MADE MERCHANT to his SON
ILLUSTRATIONS
By F. R. GRUGER and B. MARTIN JUSTICE
1. “Young fellows come to me looking for jobs and telling me what a mean house they have been working for.”Frontispiece
2. “Old Doc Hoover asked me right out in Sunday School if I didn’t want to be saved.”4
3. “I have seen hundreds of boys go to Europe who didn’t bring back a great deal except a few trunks of badly fitting clothes.”20
4. “I put Jim Durham on the road to introduce a new product.”38
5. “Old Dick Stover was the worst hand at procrastinating that I ever saw.”50
6. “Charlie Chase told me he was President of the Klondike Exploring, Gold Prospecting, and Immigration Company.”62
7. “Jim Donnelly, of the Donnelly Provision Company, came into my office with a fool grin on his fat face.”72
8. “Bill Budlong was always the last man to come up to the mourners’ bench.”84
9. “Clarence looked to me like another of his father’s bad breaks.”98
10. “You looked so blamed important and chesty when you started off.”128
11. “Josh Jenkinson would eat a little food now and then just to be sociable, but what he really lived on was tobacco.”146
12. “Herr Doctor Paracelsus Von Munsterberg was a pretty high-toned article.”166
13. “When John L. Sullivan went through the stock yards it just simply shut down the plant.”184
14. “I started in to curl up that young fellow to a crisp.”200
15. “A good many salesmen have an idea that buyers are only interested in funny stories.”216
16. “Jim Hicks dared Fatty Wilkins to eat a piece of dirt.”248
17. “Elder Hoover was accounted a powerful exhorter in our parts.”268
18. “Miss Curzon, with one of his roses in her hair, watching him from a corner.”294
No. 1
FROM John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards in Chicago, to his son, Pierrepont, at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Mr. Pierrepont has just been settled by his mother as a member, in good and regular standing, of the Freshman class.
LETTERS from a SELF-MADE MERCHANT to his SON
I
Chicago, October 1, 189—
Dear Pierrepont: Your Ma got back safe this morning and she wants me to be sure to tell you not to over-study, and I want to tell you to be sure not to under-study. What we’re really sending you to Harvard for is to get a little of the education that’s so good and plenty there. When it’s passed around you don’t want to be bashful, but reach right out and take a big helping every time, for I want you to get your share. You’ll find that education’s about the only thing lying around loose in this world, and that it’s about the only thing a fellow can have as much of as he’s willing to haul away. Everything else is screwed down tight and the screw-driver lost.
I didn’t have your advantages when I was a boy, and you can’t have mine. Some men learn the value of money by not having any and starting out to pry a few dollars loose from the odd millions that are lying around; and some learn it by having fifty thousand or so left