Chapter V: NEW YORK, December 8, 189

_Dear Pierrepont_: I've been afraid all along that you were going to spoil the only really sensible thing you've ever done by making some fool break, so as soon as I got your letter I started right out to trail down Helen and her ma. I found them hived up here in the hotel, and Miss Helen was so sweet to your poor old pa that I saw right off she had a stick cut for his son. Of course, I didn't let on that I knew anything about a quarrel, but I gradually steered the conversation around to you, and while I don't want to hurt your feelings, I am violating no confidence when I tell you that the mention of your name aroused about the same sort of enthusiasm that Bill Bryan's does in Wall Street--only Helen is a lady and so she couldn't cuss. But it wasn't the language of flowers that I saw in her eyes. So I told her that she must make allowances for you, as you were only a half-baked boy, and that, naturally, if she stuck a hat-pin into your crust she was going to strike a raw streak here and there.

She sat up a little at that, and started in to tell me that while you had said "some very, very cruel, cruel things to her, still--" But I cut her short by allowing that, sorry as I was to own it, I was afraid you had a streak of the brute in you, and I only hoped that you wouldn't take it out on her after you were married.

Well, sir, the way she flared up, I thought that all the Fourth of July fireworks had gone off at once. The air was full of trouble--trouble in set pieces and bombs and sizzy rockets and sixteen-ball Roman candles, and all pointed right at me. Then it came on to rain in the usual way, and she began to assure me between showers that you were so kind and gentle that it hurt you to work, or to work at my horrid pig-sticking business, I forget which, and I begged her pardon for having misjudged you so cruelly, and then the whole thing sort of simmered off into a discussion of whether I thought you'd rather she wore pink or blue at breakfast. So I guess you're all right. Only you'd better write quick and apologize.

I didn't get at the facts of the quarrel, but you're in the wrong. A fellow's always in the wrong when he quarrels with a woman, and even if he wasn't at the start he's sure to be before he gets through. And a man who's decided to marry can't be too quick learning to apologize for things he didn't say and to be forgiven for things he didn't do. When you differ with your wife, never try to reason out who's in the wrong, because you'll find that after you've proved it to her shell still have a lot of talk left that she hasn't used.

Of course, it isn't natural and it isn't safe for married people, and especially young married people, not to quarrel a little, but you'll save a heap of trouble if you make it a rule never to refuse a request before breakfast and never to grant one after dinner. I don't know why it is, but most women get up in the morning as cheerful as a breakfast-food ad., while a man will snort and paw for trouble the minute his hoofs touch the floor. Then, if you'll remember that the longer the last word is kept the bitterer it gets, and that your wife is bound to have it anyway, you'll cut the rest of your quarrels so short that she'll never find out just how much meanness there is in you. Be the silent partner at home and the thinking one at the office. Do your loose talking in your sleep.

Of course, if you get a woman who's really fond of quarreling there isn't any special use in keeping still, because she'll holler if you talk back and yell if you don't. The best that you can do is to pretend that you've got a chronic case of ear-ache, and keep your ears stuffed with cotton. Then, like as not, she'll buy you one of these things that you hold in your mouth so that you can hear through your teeth.

I don't believe you're going to draw anything of that sort with Helen, but this is a mighty uncertain world, especially when you get to betting on which way the kitten is going to jump--you can usually guess right about the cat--and things don't always work out as planned.

While there's no sure rule for keeping out of trouble in this world, there's a whole set of them for getting into it.

I remember a mighty nice, careful mother who used to shudder when slang was used in her presence. So she vowed she'd give _her_ son a name that the boys couldn't twist into any low, vulgar nick-name. She called him Algernon, but the kid had a pretty big nose, and the first day he was sent to school with his long lace collar and his short velvet pants the boys christened him Snooty, and now his parents are the only people who know what his real name is.

After you've been married a little while you're going to find that there are two kinds of happiness you can have--home happiness and fashionable happiness. With the first kind you get a lot of children and with the second a lot of dogs. While the dogs mind better and seem more affectionate, because they kiss you with their whole face, I've always preferred to associate with children. Then, for the first kind of happiness you keep house for yourself, and for the second you keep house for the neighbors.

You can buy a lot of home happiness with a mighty small salary, but fashionable happiness always costs just a little more than you're making. You can't keep down expenses when you've got to keep up appearances--that is, the appearance of being something that you ain't. You're in the fix of a dog chasing his tail--you can't make ends meet, and if you do it'll give you such a crick in your neck that you won't get any real satisfaction out of your gymnastics. You've got to live on a rump-steak basis when you're alone, so that you can appear to be on a quail-on-toast basis when you have company. And while they're eating your quail and betting that they're cold-storage birds, they'll be whispering to each other that the butcher told their cook that you lived all last week on a soup-bone and two pounds of Hamburger steak. Your wife must hog it around the house in an old wrapper, because she's got to have two or three of those dresses that come high on the bills and low on the shoulders, and when she wears 'em the neighbors are going to wonder how much you're short in your accounts. And if you've been raised a shouting Methodist and been used to hollering your satisfaction in a good hearty Glory! or a Hallelujah! you've got to quit it and go to one of those churches where the right answer to the question, "What is the chief end of man?" is "Dividend," and where they think you're throwing a fit and sick the sexton on to you if you forget yourself and whoop it up a little when your religion gets to working.

Then, if you do have any children, you can't send them to a plain public school to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, because they've got to go to a fashionable private one to learn hog-Latin, hog-wash, and how much the neighbors are worth. Of course, the rich children are going to say that they're pushing little kids, but they've got to learn to push and to shove and to butt right in where they're not wanted if they intend to herd with the real angora billy-goats. They've got to learn how to bow low to every one in front of them and to kick out at every one behind them. It's been my experience that it takes a good four-year course in snubbing before you can graduate a first-class snob.

Then, when you've sweat along at it for a dozen years or so, you'll wake up some morning and discover that your appearances haven't deceived any one but yourself. A man who tries that game is a good deal like the fellow who puts on a fancy vest over a dirty shirt--he's the only person in the world who can't see the egg-spots under his chin. Of course, there isn't any real danger of your family's wearing a false front while I'm alive, because I believe Helen's got too much sense to stand for anything of the sort; but if she should, you can expect the old man around with his megaphone to whisper the real figures to your neighbors.

I don't care how much or how little money you make--I want you to understand that there's only one place in the world where you can live a happy life, and that's inside your income. A family that's living beyond its means is simply a business that's losing money, and it's bound to go to smash. And to keep a safe distance ahead of the sheriff you've got to make your wife help. More men go broke through bad management at home than at the office. And I might add that a lot of men who are used to getting only one dollar's worth of food for a five-dollar bill down-town, expect their wives to get five dollars' worth of food for a one-dollar bill at the corner grocery, and to save the change toward a pair of diamond earrings. These fellows would plant a tin can and kick because they didn't get a case of tomatoes.

Of course, some women put their husband's salaries on their backs instead of his ribs; but there are a heap more men who burn up their wives' new sealskin sacques in two-bit cigars. Because a man's a good provider it doesn't always mean that he's a good husband--it may mean that he's a hog. And when there's a cuss in the family and it comes down to betting which, on general principles the man always carries my money. I make mistakes at it, but it's the only winning system I've ever been able to discover in games of chance.

You want to end the wedding trip with a business meeting and talk to your wife quite as frankly as you would to a man whom you'd taken into partnership. Tell her just what your salary is and then lay it out between you--so much for joint expenses, the house and the housekeeping, so much for her expenses, so much for yours, and so much to be saved. That last is the one item on which you can't afford to economize. It's the surplus and undivided profits account of your business, and until the concern accumulates a big one it isn't safe to move into offices on Easy Street.

A lot of fool fathers only give their fool daughters a liberal education in spending, and it's pretty hard to teach those women the real facts about earning and saving, but it's got to be done unless you want to be the fool husband of a fool wife. These girls have an idea that men get money by going to a benevolent old party behind some brass bars and shoving a check at him and telling him that they want it in fifties and hundreds.

You should take home your salary in actual money for a while, and explain that it's all you got for sweating like a dog for ten hours a day, through six long days, and that the cashier handed it out with an expression as if you were robbing the cash-drawer of an orphan asylum. Make her understand that while those that have gets, when they present a check, those that haven't gets it in the neck. Explain that the benevolent old party is only on duty when papa's daughter has a papa that Bradstreet rates AA, and that when papa's daughter's husband presents a five-dollar check with a ten-cent overdraft, he's received by a low-browed old brute who calls for the bouncer to put him out. Tell her right at the start the worst about the butcher, and the grocer, and the iceman, and the milkman, and the plumber, and the gas-meter--that they want their money and that it has to come out of that little roll of bills. Then give her enough to pay them, even if you have to grab for your lunch from a high stool. I used to know an old Jew who said that the man who carved was always a fool or a hog, but you've got to learn not to divide your salary on either basis.

Make your wife pay cash. A woman never really understands money till she's done that for a while. I've noticed that people rarely pay down the money for foolish purchases--they charge them. And it's mighty seldom that a woman's extravagant unless she or her husband pays the bills by check. There's something about counting out the actual legal tender on the spot that keeps a woman from really wanting a lot of things which she thinks she wants.

When I married your ma, your grandpa was keeping eighteen niggers busy seeing that the family did nothing. She'd had a liberal education, which, so far as I've been able to find out, means teaching a woman everything except the real business that she's going into--that is, if she marries. But when your ma swapped the big house and the eighteen niggers for me and an old mammy to do the rough work, she left the breakfast-in-bed, fine-lady business behind her and started right in to get the rest of the education that belonged to her. She did a mighty good job, too, all except making ends meet, and they were too elastic for her at first--sort of snapped back and left a deficit just when she thought she had them together.

She was mighty sorry about it, but she'd never heard of any way of getting money except asking papa for it, and she'd sort of supposed that every one asked papa when they wanted any, and, why didn't I ask papa? I finally made her see that I couldn't ask my papa, because I hadn't any, and that I couldn't ask hers, because it was against the rules of the game as I played it, and that was her first real lesson in high finance and low finances.

I gave her the second when she came to me about the twentieth of the month and kissed me on the ear and sent a tickly little whisper after it to the effect that the household appropriation for the month was exhausted and the pork-barrel and the meal-sack and the chicken-coop were in the same enfeebled condition.

I didn't say anything at first, only looked pretty solemn, and then I allowed that she'd have to go into the hands of a receiver. Well, sir, the way she snuggled up to me and cried made me come pretty close to weakening, but finally I told her that I reckoned I could manage to be appointed by the court and hush up the scandal so the neighbors wouldn't hear of it.

I took charge of her little books and paid over to myself her housekeeping money each month, buying everything myself, but explaining every move I made, until in the end I had paid her out of debt and caught up with my salary again. Then I came home on the first of the month, handed out her share of the money, and told her that the receiver had been discharged by the court.

My! but she was pleased. And then she paid me out for the scare I'd given her by making me live on side-meat and corn-bread for a month, so she'd be sure not to get the sheriff after her again. Of course, I had to tell her all about it in the end, and though she's never forgotten what she learned about money during the receivership, she's never quite forgiven the receiver.

Speaking of receiving, I notice the receipts of hogs are pretty light. Hold your lard prices up stiff to the market. It looks to me as if that Milwaukee crowd was getting under the February delivery.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

P.S.--You've got to square me with Helen.

No. 6

From John Graham, at the Waldorf-Astoria, New York, to his son, Pierrepont, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago. The young man has written describing the magnificent wedding presents that are being received, and hinting discreetly that it would not come amiss if he knew what shape the old man's was going to take, as he needs the money.