overcoat instead. I don't expect to get my
experience on free passes. And I had my money's worth, too, because it
taught me that it's a good rule to make sure the other fellow's wrong
before you go ahead. When you jump on the man who didn't do it, you
make sore spots all over him; and it takes the spring out of your leap
for the fellow who did it.

One of the first things a boss must lose is his temper--and it must
stay lost. There's about as much sense in getting yourself worked up
into a rage when a clerk makes a mistake as there is in going into the
barn and touching off a keg of gunpowder under the terrier because he
got mixed up in the dark and blundered into a chicken-coop instead of
a rat-hole. Fido may be an all-right ratter, in spite of the fact that
his foot slips occasionally, and a cut now and then with a switch
enough to keep him in order; but if his taste for chicken develops
faster than his nose for rats, it's easier to give him to one of the
neighbors than to blow him off the premises.

Where a few words, quick, sharp, and decisive, aren't enough for a
man, a cussing out is too much. It proves that he's unfit for his
work, and it unfits you for yours. The world is full of fellows who
could take the energy which they put into useless cussing of their
men, and double their business with it.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

No. 13

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.

XIII

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 bur