OMAHA,
September 1, 189-
Dear Pierrepont: Yours of the
30th ultimo strikes me all wrong. I don’t
like to hear you say that you can’t work under
Milligan or any other man, for it shows a fundamental
weakness. And then, too, the house isn’t
interested in knowing how you like your boss, but in
how he likes you.
I understand all about Milligan.
He’s a cross, cranky old Irishman with a temper
tied up in bow-knots, who prods his men with the bull-stick
six days a week and schemes to get them salary raises
on the seventh, when he ought to be listening to the
sermon; who puts the black-snake on a clerk’s
hide when he sends a letter to Oshkosh that ought to
go to Kalamazoo, and begs him off when the old man
wants to have him fired for it. Altogether he’s
a hard, crabbed, generous, soft-hearted, loyal, bully
old boy, who’s been with the house since we took
down the shutters for the first time, and who’s
going to stay with it till we put them up for the
last time.
But all that apart, you want to get
it firmly fixed in your mind that you’re going
to have a Milligan over you all your life, and if it
isn’t a Milligan it will be a Jones or a Smith,
and the chances are that you’ll find them both
harder to get along with than this old fellow.
And if it isn’t Milligan or Jones or Smith,
and you ain’t a butcher, but a parson or a doctor,
or even the President of the United States, it’ll
be a way-back deacon, or the undertaker, or the machine.
There isn’t any such thing as being your own
boss in this world unless you’re a tramp, and
then there’s the constable.
Like the old man if you can, but give
him no cause to dislike you. Keep your self-respect
at any cost, and your upper lip stiff at the same
figure. Criticism can properly come only from
above, and whenever you discover that your boss is
no good you may rest easy that the man who pays his
salary shares your secret. Learn to give back
a bit from the base-burner, to let the village fathers
get their feet on the fender and the sawdust box in
range, and you’ll find them making a little room
for you in turn. Old men have tender feet, and
apologies are poor salve for aching corns. Remember
that when you’re in the right you can afford
to keep your temper, and that when you’re in
the wrong you can’t afford to lose it.
When you’ve got an uncertain
cow it’s all O.K. to tie a figure eight in her
tail, if you ain’t thirsty, and it’s excitement
you’re after; but if you want peace and her
nine quarts, you will naturally approach her from
the side, and say, So-boss, in about the same tone
that you would use if you were asking your best girl
to let you hold her hand.
Of course, you want to be sure of
your natural history facts and learn to distinguish
between a cow that’s a kicker, but whose intentions
are good if she’s approached with proper respect,
and a hooker, who is vicious on general principles,
and any way you come at her. There’s never
any use fooling with an animal of that sort, brute
or human. The only safe place is the other side
of the fence or the top of the nearest tree.
When I was clerking in Missouri, a
fellow named Jeff Hankins moved down from Wisconsin
and bought a little clearing just outside the town.
Jeff was a good talker, but a bad listener, and so
we learned a heap about how things were done in Wisconsin,
but he didn’t pick up much information about
the habits of our Missouri fauna. When it came
to cows, he had had a liberal education and he made
out all right, but by and by it got on to ploughing
time and Jeff naturally bought a mule a
little moth-eaten cuss, with sad, dreamy eyes and droopy,
wiggly-woggly ears that swung in a circle as easy
as if they ran on ball-bearings. Her owner didn’t
give her a very good character, but Jeff was too busy
telling how much he knew about horses to pay much
attention to what anybody was saying about mules.
So finally the seller turned her loose in Jeff’s
lot, told him he wouldn’t have any trouble catching
her if he approached her right, and hurried off out
of range.
Next morning at sunup Jeff picked
out a bridle and started off whistling Buffalo Gals he
was a powerful pretty whistler and could do the Mocking
Bird with variations to catch the mule and
begin his plowing. The animal was feeding as
peaceful as a water-color picture, and she didn’t
budge; but when Jeff began to get nearer, her ears
dropped back along her neck as if they had lead in
them. He knew that symptom and so he closed up
kind of cautious, aiming for her at right angles and
gurgling, “Muley, muley, here muley; that’s
a good muley,” sort of soothing and caressing-like.
Still she didn’t stir and Jeff got right up to
her and put one arm over her back and began to reach
forward with the bridle, when something happened.
He never could explain just what it was, but we judged
from the marks on his person that the mule had reached
forward and kicked the seat of his trousers with one
of her prehensile hind feet; and had reached back
and caught him on the last button of his waistcoat
with one of her limber fore feet; and had twisted around
her elastic neck and bit off a mouthful of his hair.
When Jeff regained consciousness, he reckoned that
the only really safe way to approach a mule was to
drop on it from a balloon.
I simply mention this little incident
as an example of the fact that there are certain animals
with which the Lord didn’t intend white men to
fool. And you will find that, as a rule, the human
varieties of them are not the fellows who go for you
rough-shod, like Milligan, when you’re wrong.
It’s when you come across one of those gentlemen
who have more oil in their composition than any two-legged
animal has a right to have, that you should be on
the lookout for concealed deadly weapons.
I don’t mean that you should
distrust a man who is affable and approachable, but
you want to learn to distinguish between him and one
who is too affable and too approachable. The adverb
makes the difference between a good and a bad fellow.
The bunco men aren’t all at the county fair,
and they don’t all operate with the little shells
and the elusive pea. When a packer has learned
all that there is to learn about quadrupeds, he knows
only one-eighth of his business; the other seven-eighths,
and the important seven-eighths, has to do with the
study of bipeds.
I dwell on this because I am a little
disappointed that you should have made such a mistake
in sizing up Milligan. He isn’t the brightest
man in the office, but he is loyal to me and to the
house, and when you have been in business as long
as I have you will be inclined to put a pretty high
value on loyalty. It is the one commodity that
hasn’t any market value, and it’s the
one that you can’t pay too much for. You
can trust any number of men with your money, but mighty
few with your reputation. Half the men who are
with the house on pay day are against it the other
six.
A good many young fellows come to
me looking for jobs, and start in by telling me what
a mean house they have been working for; what a cuss
to get along with the senior partner was; and how
little show a bright, progressive clerk had with him.
I never get very far with a critter of that class,
because I know that he wouldn’t like me or the
house if he came to work for us.
I don’t know anything that a
young business man ought to keep more entirely to
himself than his dislikes, unless it is his likes.
It’s generally expensive to have either, but
it’s bankruptcy to tell about them. It’s
all right to say nothing about the dead but good, but
it’s better to apply the rule to the living,
and especially to the house which is paying your salary.
Just one word before I close, as old
Doc Hoover used to say, when he was coming into the
stretch, but still a good ways off from the benediction.
I have noticed that you are inclined to be a little
chesty and starchy around the office. Of course,
it’s good business, when a fellow hasn’t
much behind his forehead, to throw out his chest and
attract attention to his shirt-front. But as
you begin to meet the men who have done something
that makes them worth meeting you will find that there
are no “keep off the grass” or “beware
of the dog” signs around their premises, and
that they don’t motion to the orchestra to play
slow music while they talk.
Superiority makes every man feel its
equal. It is courtesy without condescension;
affability without familiarity; self-sufficiency without
selfishness; simplicity without snide. It weighs
sixteen ounces to the pound without the package, and
it doesn’t need a four-colored label to make
it go.
We are coming home from here.
I am a little disappointed in the showing that this
house has been making. Pound for pound it is not
getting nearly so much out of its hogs as we are in
Chicago. I don’t know just where the leak
is, but if they don’t do better next month I
am coming back here with a shotgun, and there’s
going to be a pretty heavy mortality among our head
men.
Your
affectionate father,
JOHN
GRAHAM.