From John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago, to his son, Pierrepont, care of Graham & Company, Denver. The young man has been offered a large interest in a big thing at a small price, and he has written asking the old man to lend him the price.

CHICAGO, June 4, 1900.

Dear Pierrepont: Judging from what you say about the Highfaluting Lulu, it must be a wonder, and the owner’s reason for selling-that his lungs are getting too strong to stand the climate-sounds perfectly good. You can have the money at 5 per cent, as soon as you’ve finally made up your mind that you want it, but before you plant it in the mine for keeps, I think you should tie a wet towel around your head, while you consider for a few minutes the bare possibility of having to pay me back out of your salary, instead of the profits from the mine. You can’t throw a stone anywhere in this world without hitting a man, with a spade over his shoulder, who’s just said the last sad good-byes to his bank account and is starting out for the cemetery where defunct flyers are buried.

While you’ve only asked me for money, and not for advice, I may say that, should you put a question on some general topic like, “What are the wild waves saying, father?” I should answer, “Keep out of watered stocks, my son, and wade into your own business a little deeper.” Though, when you come to think of it, these continuous-performance companies, that let you in for ten, twenty, and thirty cents a share, ought to be a mighty good thing for investors after they’ve developed their oil and gold properties, because a lot of them can afford to pay 10 per cent. before they’ve developed anything but suckers.

So long as gold-mining with a pen and a little fancy paper continues to be such a profitable industry, a lot of fellows who write a pretty fair hand won’t see any good reason for swinging a pick. They’ll simply pass the pick over to the fellow who invests, and start a new prospectus. While the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, they’re something after all; but the walls along the short cuts to Fortune are papered with only the prospectuses of good intentions-intentions to do the other fellow good and plenty.

I don’t want to question your ability or the purity of your friends’ intentions, but are you sure you know their business as well as they do? Denver is a lovely city, with a surplus of climate and scenery, and a lot of people there go home from work every night pushing a wheelbarrow full of gold in front of them, but at the same time there is no surplus of that commodity, and most of the fellows who find it have cut their wisdom teeth on quartz. It isn’t reasonable to expect that you’re going to buy gold at fifty cents on the dollar, just because it hasn’t been run through the mint yet.

I simply mention these things in a general way. There are two branches in the study of riches-getting the money and keeping it from getting away. When a fellow has saved a thousand dollars, and every nickel represents a walk home, instead of a ride on a trolley; and every dollar stands for cigars he didn’t smoke and for shows he didn’t see-it naturally seems as if that money, when it’s invested, ought to declare dividends every thirty days. But almost any scheme which advertises that it will make small investors rich quick is like one of these Yellowstone geysers that spouts up straight from Hades with a boom and a roar-it’s bound to return to its native brimstone sooner or later, leaving nothing behind it but a little smoke, and a smell of burned money-your money.

If a fellow would stop to think, he would understand that when money comes in so hard, it isn’t reasonable to expect that it can go out and find more easy. But the great trouble is that a good many small investors don’t stop to think, or else let plausible strangers do their thinking for them. That’s why most young men have tucked away with their college diploma and the picture of their first girl, an impressive deed to a lot in Nowhere-on-the-Nothingness, or a beautiful certificate of stock in the Gushing Girlie Oil Well, that has never gushed anything but lies and promises, or a lovely receipt for money invested in one of these discretionary pools that are formed for the higher education of indiscreet fools. While I reckon that every fellow has one of these certificates of membership in The Great Society of Suckers, I had hoped that you would buy yours for a little less than the Highfaluting Lulu is going to cost you. Young men are told that the first thousand dollars comes hard and that after that it comes easier. So it does-just a thousand dollars plus interest easier; and easier through all the increased efficiency that self-denial and self-control have given you, and the larger salary they’ve made you worth.

It doesn’t seem like much when you take your savings’ bank book around at the end of the year and get a little thirty or forty dollars interest added, or when you cash in the coupon on the bond that you’ve bought; yet your bank book and your bond are still true to you. But if you’d had your thousand in one of these 50 per cent. bleached blonde schemes, it would have lit out long ago with a fellow whose ways were more coaxing, leaving you the laugh and a mighty small lock of peroxide gold hair. If you think that saving your first thousand dollars is hard, you’ll find that saving the second, after you’ve lost the first, is hell and repeat.

You can’t too soon make it a rule to invest only on your own know and never on somebody else’s say so. You may lose some profits by this policy, but you’re bound to miss a lot of losses. Often the best reason for keeping out of a thing is that everybody else is going into it. A crowd’s always dangerous; it first pushes prices up beyond reason and then down below common sense. The time to buy is before the crowd comes in or after it gets out. It’ll always come back to a good thing when it’s been pushed up again to the point where it’s a bad thing.

It’s better to go slow and lose a good bargain occasionally than to go fast and never get a bargain. It’s all right to take a long chance now and then, when you’ve got a long bank account, but it’s been my experience that most of the long chances are taken by the fellows with short bank accounts.

You’ll meet a lot of men in Chicago who’ll point out the corner of State and Madison and tell you that when they first came to the city they were offered that lot for a hundred dollars, and that it’s been the crowning regret of their lives that they didn’t buy it. But for every genuine case of crowning regret because a fellow didn’t buy, there are a thousand because he did. Don’t let it make you feverish the next time you see one of those Won’t-you-come-in-quick-and-get-rich-sudden ads. Freeze up and on to your thousand, and by and by you’ll get a chance to buy a little stock in the concern for which you’re working and which you know something about; or to take that thousand and one or two more like it, and buy an interest in a nice little business of the breed that you’ve been grooming and currying for some other fellow. But if your money’s tied up in the sudden-millionaire business, you’ll have to keep right on clerking.

A man’s fortune should grow like a tree, in rings around the parent trunk. It’ll be slow work at first, but every ring will be a little wider and a little thicker than the last one, and by and by you’ll be big enough and strong enough to shed a few acorns within easy reaching distance, and so start a nice little nursery of your own from which you can saw wood some day. Whenever you hear of a man’s jumping suddenly into prominence and fortune, look behind the popular explanation of a lucky chance. You’ll usually find that these men manufactured their own luck right on the premises by years of slow preparation, and are simply realizing on hard work.

Speaking of manufacturing luck on the premises, naturally calls to mind the story of old Jim Jackson, “dealer in mining properties,” and of young Thornley Harding, graduate of Princeton and citizen of New York.

Thorn wasn’t a bad young fellow, but he’d been brought up by a nice, hard-working, fond and foolish old papa, in the fond belief that his job in life was to spend the income of a million. But one week papa failed, and the next week he died, and the next Thorn found he had to go to work. He lasted out the next week on a high stool, and then he decided that the top, where there was plenty of room for a bright young man, was somewhere out West.

Thorn’s life for the next few years was the whole series of hard-luck parables, with a few chapters from Job thrown in, and then one day he met old Jim. He seemed to cotton to Thorn from the jump. Explained to him that there was nothing in this digging gopher holes in the solid rock and eating Chinaman’s grub for the sake of making niggers’ wages. Allowed that he was letting other fellows dig the holes, and that he was selling them at a fair margin of profit to young Eastern capitalists who hadn’t been in the country long enough to lose their roll and that trust in Mankind and Nature which was Youth’s most glorious possession. Needed a bright young fellow to help him-someone who could wear good clothes and not look as if he were in a disguise, and could spit out his words without chewing them up. Would Thorn join him on a grub, duds, and commission basis? Would Thorn surprise his skin with a boiled shirt and his stomach with a broiled steak? You bet he would, and they hitched up then and there.

They ran along together for a year or more, selling a played-out mine now and then or a “promising claim,” for a small sum. Thorn knew that the mines which they handled were no Golcondas, but, as he told himself, you could never absolutely swear that a fellow wouldn’t strike it rich in one of them.

There came a time, though, when they were way down on their luck. The run of young Englishmen was light, and visiting Easterners were a little gun-shy. Almost looked to Thorn as if he might have to go to work for a living, but he was a tenacious cuss, and stuck it out till one day when Jim came back to Leadville from a near-by camp, where he’d been looking at some played-out claims.

Jim was just boiling over with excitement. Wouldn’t let on what it was about, but insisted on Thorn’s going back with him then and there. Said it was too big to tell; must be taken in by all Thorn’s senses, aided by his powers of exaggeration.

It took them only a few hours to make the return trip. When Jim came within a couple of miles of the camp, he struck in among some trees and on to the center of a little clearing. There he called Thorn’s attention to a small, deep spring of muddy water.

“Thorn,” Jim began, as impressive as if he were introducing him to an easy millionaire, “look at thet spring. Feast yer eyes on it and tell me what you see.”

“A spring, you blooming idiot,” Thorn replied, feeling a little disappointed.

“You wouldn’t allow, Thorn, to look at it, thet thar was special pints about thet spring, would you?” he went on, slow and solemn. “You wouldn’t be willin’ to swar thet the wealth of the Hindoos warn’t in thet precious flooid which you scorn? Son,” he wound up suddenly, “this here is the derndest, orneriest spring you ever see. Thet water is rich enough to be drunk straight.”

Thorn began to get excited in earnest now. “What is it? Spit it out quick?”

“Watch me, sonny,” and Jim hung his tin cup in the spring and sat down on a near-by rock. Then after fifteen silent minutes had passed, he lifted the cup from the water and passed it over. Thorn almost jumped out of his jack-boots with surprise.

“Silver?” he gasped.

“Generwine,” Jim replied. “Down my way, in Illinois, thar used to be a spring thet turned things to stone. This gal gives ’em a jacket of silver.”

After Thorn had kicked and rolled and yelled a little of the joy out of his system, he started to take a drink of the water, but Jim stopped him with:

“Taste her if you wanter, but she’s one of them min’rul springs which leaves a nasty smack behind.” And then he added: “I reckon she’s a winner. We’ll christen her the Infunt Fernomerner, an’ gin a lib’rul investor a crack at her.”

The next morning Thorn started back, doing fancy steps up the trail.

He hadn’t been in Leadville two days before he bumped into an old friend of his uncle’s, Tom Castle, who was out there on some business, and had his daughter, a mighty pretty girl, along. Thorn sort of let the spring slide for a few days, while he took them in hand and showed them the town. And by the time he was through, Castle had a pretty bad case of mining fever, and Thorn and the girl were in the first stages of something else.

Castle showed a good deal of curiosity about Thorn’s business and how he was doing, so he told ’em all about how he’d struck it rich, and in his pride showed a letter which he had received from Jim the day before. It ran:

“Dere Thorn: The Infunt Fernomerner is a wunder and the pile groes every day. I hav 2 kittles, a skilit and a duzzen cans in the spring every nite wich is awl it wil hold and days i trys out the silver frum them wich have caked on nites. This is to dern slo. we nede munny so we kin dril and get a bigger flo and tanks and bilers and sech. hump yoursel and sell that third intrest. i hav to ten the kittles now so no mor frum jim.”

“You see,” Thorn explained, “we camped beside the spring one night, and a tin cup, which Jim let fall when he first tasted the water, discovered its secret. It’s just the same principle as those lime springs that incrust things with lime. This one must percolate through a bed of ore. There’s some quality in the water which acts as a solvent of the silver, you know, so that the water becomes charged with it.”

Now, Thorn hadn’t really thought of interesting Castle as an investor in that spring, because he regarded his Western business and his Eastern friends as things not to be mixed, and he wasn’t very hot to have Castle meet Jim and get any details of his life for the past few years. But nothing would do Castle but that they should have a look at The Infant, and have it at once.

Well, sir, when they got about a mile from camp they saw Jim standing in the trail, and smiling all over his honest, homely face. He took Castle for a customer, of course, and after saying “Howdy” to Thorn, opened right up: “I reckon Thorn hev toted you up to see thet blessid infunt as I’m mother, father and wet-nuss to. Thar never was sich a kid. She’s jest the cutest little cuss ever you see. Eh, Thorn?”

“Do you prefer to the er-er-Infant Phenomenon?” asked Castle, all eagerness.

“The same precious infunt. She’s a cooin’ to herself over thar in them pines,” Jim replied, and he started right in to explain: “As you see, Jedge, the precious flooid comes from the bowels of the earth, as full of silver as sody water of gas; and to think thet water is the mejum. Nacher’s our silent partner, and the blessid infunt delivers the goods. No ore, no stamps, no sweatin’, no grindin’, and crushin’, and millin’, and smeltin’. Thar you hev the pure juice, and you bile it till it jells. Looky here,” and Jim reached down and pulled out a skillet. “Taste it! Smell it! Bite it! Lick it! An’ then tell me if Sollermun in all his glory was dressed up like this here!”

Castle handled that skillet like a baby, and stroked it as if he just naturally loved children. Stayed right beside the spring during the rest of the day, and after supper he began talking about it with Jim, while Thorn and Kate went for a stroll along the trail. During the time they were away Jim must have talked to pretty good purpose, for no sooner were the partners alone for the night than Jim said to Thorn: “I hev jest sold the Jedge a third intrest in the Fernomerner fur twenty thousand dollars.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” answered Thorn, for he still didn’t quite like the idea of doing business with one of his uncle’s friends. “The Infant looks good and I believe she’s a wonder, but it’s a new thing, and twenty thousand’s a heap of money to Castle. If it shouldn’t pan out up to the first show-down, I’d feel deucedly cut up about having let him in. I’d a good deal rather refuse to sell Castle and hunt up a stranger.”

“Don’t be a dern fool, son,” Jim replied. “He knew we was arter money to develop, and when he made thet offer I warn’t goin’ to be sich a permiscuss Charley-hoss as to refuse. It’d be a burnin’ crime not to freeze to this customer. It takes time to find customers, even for a good thing like this here, and it’s bein’ a leetle out of the usual run will make it slower still.”

“But my people East. If Castle should get stuck he’ll raise an awful howl.”

Jim grinned: “He’d holler, would he? In course; it might help his business. Yer the orneriest ostrich fur a man of yer keerful eddication! Did you hear thet Boston banker what bought the Cracker-jack from us a-hollerin’? He kept so shet about it, I’ll bet, thet you couldn’t a-blasted it outer him.”

They argued along until after midnight, but Jim carried his point; and two weeks later Thorn was in Denver, saying good-by to Kate, and listening to her whisper, “But it won’t be for long, as you’ll soon be able to leave business and come back East,” and to Castle yelling from the rear platform to “Push the Infant and get her sizzling.”

Later, as Jim and Thorn walked back to the hotel, the old scoundrel turned to his partner with a grin and said: “I hev removed the insides from the Infunt and stored ’em fur future ref’rence. Meanin’, in course,” he added, as Thorn gaped up at him like a chicken with the pip, “the ‘lectro-platin’ outfit. P’r’aps it would be better to take a leetle pasear now, but later we can come back and find another orphant infunt and christen her the Phoenix, which is Greek fur sold agin.”

It took Thorn a full minute to comprehend the rascality in which he’d been an unconscious partner, but when he finally got it through his head that Jim had substituted the child of a base-born churl for the Earl’s daughter, he fairly raged. Threatened him with exposure and arrest if he didn’t make restitution to Castle, but Jim simply grinned and asked him whether he allowed to sing his complaint to the police. Wound up by saying that, even though Thorn had rounded on him, old Jim was a square man, and he proposed to divide even.

Thorn was simply in the fix of the fellow between the bull and the bulldog-he had a choice, but it was only whether he would rather be gored or bitten, so he took the ten thousand, and that night Jim faded away on a west-bound Pullman, smoking two-bit cigars and keeping the porter busy standing by with a cork-screw. Thorn took his story and the ten thousand back to his uncle in the East, and after a pretty solemn interview with the old man, he went around and paid Castle in full and resumed his perch on top of the high stool he’d left a few years before. He never got as far as explaining to the girl in person, because Castle told him that while he didn’t doubt his honesty, he was afraid he was too easy a mark to succeed in Wall Street. Yet Thorn did work up slowly in his uncle’s office, and he’s now in charge of the department that looks after the investments of widows and orphans, for he is so blamed conservative that they can’t use him in any part of the business where it’s necessary to take chances.

I simply speak of Thorn as an example of why I think you should have a cool head before you finally buy the Lulu with my money. After all, it seems rather foolish to pay railroad fares to the West and back for the sake of getting stuck when there are such superior facilities for that right here in the East.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.