Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son Part 12

Reckoned that Bud was up to some cussedness off somewhere, and that he wouldn't answer for any two-bits.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_Elder Hoover was accounted a powerful exhorter in our parts._"]

The Widow was badly disappointed, but she allowed that that was just like Bud. He'd always been a boy that never could be found when any one wanted him. So she went off, saying that she'd had her money's worth in seeing Clytie throw those fancy fits. But next day she came again and paid down four bits, and Clytie reckoned that that ought to fetch Bud sure. Someways though, she didn't have any luck, and finally the Widow suggested that she call up Bud's father--Buck Williams had been dead a matter of ten years--and the old man responded promptly.

"Where's Bud?" asked the Widow.

Hadn't laid eyes on him. Didn't know he'd come across. Had he joined the church before he started?

"No."

Then he'd have to look downstairs for him.

Clytie told the Widow to call again and they'd get him sure. So she came back next day and laid down a dollar. That fetched old Buck Williams'

ghost on the jump, you bet, but he said he hadn't laid eyes on Bud yet.

They hauled the Sweet By and By with a drag net, but they couldn't get a rap from him. Clytie trotted out George Was.h.i.+ngton, and Napoleon, and Billy Patterson, and Ben Franklin, and Captain Kidd, just to show that there was no deception, but they couldn't get a whisper even from Bud.

I reckon Clytie had been stringing the old lady along, intending to produce Bud's spook as a sort of red-fire, calcium-light, grand-march-of-the-Amazons climax, but she didn't get a chance. For right there the old lady got up with a mighty set expression around her lips and marched out, muttering that it was just as she had thought all along--Bud wasn't there. And when the neighbors dropped in that afternoon to plan out a memorial service for her "lost lamb," she chased them off the lot with a broom. Said that they had looked in the river for him and that she had looked beyond the river for him, and that they would just stand pat now and wait for him to make the next move. Allowed that if she could once get her hands in "that lost lamb's" wool there might be an opening for a funeral when she got through with him, but there wouldn't be till then. Altogether, it looked as if there was a heap of trouble coming to Bud if he had made any mistake and was still alive.

The Widow found her "lost lamb" hiding behind a rain-barrel when she opened up the house next morning, and there was a mighty touching and affecting scene. In fact, the Widow must have touched him at least a hundred times and every time he was affected to tears, for she was using a bed slat, which is a powerfully strong moral agent for making a boy see the error of his ways. And it was a month after that before Bud could go down Main Street without some man who had called him a n.o.ble little fellow, or a bright, manly little chap, while he was drowned, reaching out and fetching him a clip on the ear for having come back and put the laugh on him.

No one except the Widow ever really got at the straight of Bud's conduct, but it appeared that he left home to get a few Indian scalps, and that he came back for a little bacon and corn pone.

I simply mention the Widow in pa.s.sing as an example of the fact that the time to do your worrying is when a thing is all over, and that the way to do it is to leave it to the neighbors. I sail for home to-morrow.

Your affectionate father, JOHN GRAHAM.

+----------------------------+ No. 19 +----------------------------+ From John Graham, at the New York house of Graham & Co., to his son, Pierrepont, at the Union Stock Yards in Chicago. The old man, on the voyage home, has met a girl who interests him and who in turn seems to be interested in Mr. Pierrepont. +----------------------------+

XIX

NEW YORK, November 4, 189-

_Dear Pierrepont:_ Who is this Helen Heath, and what are your intentions there? She knows a heap more about you than she ought to know if they're not serious, and I know a heap less about her than I ought to know if they are. Hadn't got out of sight of land before we'd become acquainted somehow, and she's been treating me like a father clear across the Atlantic. She's a mighty pretty girl, and a mighty nice girl, and a mighty sensible girl--in fact she's so exactly the sort of girl I'd like to see you marry that I'm afraid there's nothing in it.

Of course, your salary isn't a large one yet, but you can buy a whole lot of happiness with fifty dollars a week when you have the right sort of a woman for your purchasing agent. And while I don't go much on love in a cottage, love in a flat, with fifty a week as a starter, is just about right, if the girl is just about right. If she isn't, it doesn't make any special difference how you start out, you're going to end up all wrong.

Money ought never to be _the_ consideration in marriage, but it always ought to be _a_ consideration. When a boy and a girl don't think enough about money before the ceremony, they're going to have to think altogether too much about it after; and when a man's doing sums at home evenings, it comes kind of awkward for him to try to hold his wife on his lap.

There's nothing in this talk that two can live cheaper than one. A good wife doubles a man's expenses and doubles his happiness, and that's a pretty good investment if a fellow's got the money to invest. I have met women who had cut their husband's expenses in half, but they needed the money because they had doubled their own. I might add, too, that I've met a good many husbands who had cut their wives' expenses in half, and they fit naturally into any discussion of our business, because they are hogs. There's a point where economy becomes a vice, and that's when a man leaves its practice to his wife.

An unmarried man is a good deal like a piece of unimproved real estate--he may be worth a whole lot of money, but he isn't of any particular use except to build on. The great trouble with a lot of these fellows is that they're "made land," and if you dig down a few feet you strike ooze and booze under the layer of dollars that their daddies dumped in on top. Of course, the only way to deal with a proposition of that sort is to drive forty-foot piles clear down to solid rock and then to lay railroad iron and cement till you've got something to build on.

But a lot of women will go right ahead without any preliminaries and wonder what's the matter when the walls begin to crack and tumble about their ears.

I never come across a case of this sort without thinking of Jack Carter, whose father died about ten years ago and left Jack a million dollars, and left me as trustee of both until Jack reached his twenty-fifth birthday. I didn't relish the job particularly, because Jack was one of these charlotte-russe boys, all whipped cream and sponge cake and high-priced flavoring extracts, without any filling qualities. There wasn't any special harm in him, but there wasn't any special good, either, and I always feel that there's more hope for a fellow who's an out and out cuss than for one who's simply made up of a lot of little trifling meannesses. Jack wore mighty warm clothes and mighty hot vests, and the girls all said that he was a perfect dream, but I've never been one who could get a great deal of satisfaction out of dreams.

It's mighty seldom that I do an exhibition mile, but the winter after I inherited Jack--he was twenty-three years old then--your Ma kept after me so strong that I finally put on my fancy harness and let her trot me around to a meet at the Ralstons one evening. Of course, I was in the Percheron cla.s.s, and so I just stood around with a lot of heavy old draft horses, who ought to have been resting up in their stalls, and watched the three-year-olds prance and cavort round the ring. Jack was among them, of course, dancing with the youngest Churchill girl, and holding her a little tighter, I thought, than was necessary to keep her from falling. Had both ends working at once--never missed a st.i.tch with his heels and was turning out a steady stream of fancy work with his mouth. And all the time he was looking at that girl as intent and eager as a Scotch terrier at a rat hole.

I happened just then to be pinned into a corner with two or three women who couldn't escape--Edith Curzon, a great big brunette whom I knew Jack had been pretty soft on, and little Mabel Moore, a nice roly-poly blonde, and it didn't take me long to see that they were watching Jack with a hair-pulling itch in their finger-tips. In fact, it looked to me as if the young scamp was a good deal more popular than the facts about him, as I knew them, warranted him in being.

I slipped out early, but next evening, when I was sitting in my little smoking-room, Jack came charging in, and, without any sparring for an opening, burst out with:

"Isn't she a stunner, Mr. Graham!"

I allowed that Miss Curzon was something on the stun.

"Miss Curzon, indeed," he sniffed. "She's well enough in a big, black way, but Miss Churchill----" and he began to paw the air for adjectives.

"But how was I to know that you meant Miss Churchill?" I answered. "It's just a fortnight now since you told me that Miss Curzon was a G.o.ddess, and that she was going to reign in your life and make it a heaven, or something of that sort. I forget just the words, but they were mighty beautiful thoughts and did you credit."

"Don't remind me of it," Jack groaned. "It makes me sick every time I think what an a.s.s I've been."

I allowed that I felt a little nausea myself, but I told him that this time, at least, he'd shown some sense; that Miss Churchill was a mighty pretty girl and rich enough so that her liking him didn't prove anything worse against her than bad judgment; and that the thing for him to do was to quit his foolishness, propose to her, and dance the heel, toe, and a one, two, three with her for the rest of his natural days.

Jack hemmed and hawked a little over this, but finally he came out with it:

"That's the deuce of it," says he. "I'm in a beastly mess--I want to marry her--she's the only girl in the world for me--the only one I've ever really loved, and I've proposed--that is, I want to propose to her, but I'm engaged to Edith Curzon on the quiet."

"I reckon you'll marry her, then," I said; "because she strikes me as a young woman who's not going to lose a million dollars without putting a tracer after it."

"And that's not the worst of it," Jack went on.

"Not the worst of it! What do you mean! You haven't married her on the quiet, too, have you?"

"No, but there's Mabel Moore, you know."

I didn't know, but I guessed. "You haven't been such a double-barreled donkey as to give her an option on yourself, too?"

"No, no; but I've said things to her which she may have misconstrued, if she's inclined to be literal."

"You bet she is," I answered. "I never saw a nice, fat, blonde girl who took a million-dollar offer as a practical joke. What is it you've said to her? 'I love you, darling,' or something about as foxy and noncommittal."

"Not that--not that at all; but she may have stretched what I said to mean that."

Well, sir, I just laid into that fellow when I heard that, though I could see that he didn't think it was refined of me. He'd never made it any secret that he thought me a pretty coa.r.s.e old man, and his face showed me now that I was jarring his delicate works.

"I suppose I have been indiscreet," he said, "but I must say I expected something different from you, after coming out this way and owning up.

Of course, if you don't care to help me----"

I cut him short there. "I've got to help you. But I want you to tell me the truth. How have you managed to keep this Curzon girl from announcing her engagement to you?"

"Well," and there was a scared grin on Jack's face now; "I told her that you, as trustee under father's will, had certain unpleasant powers over my money--in fact, that most of it would revert to Sis if I married against your wishes, and that you disliked her, and that she must work herself into your good graces before we could think of announcing our engagement."