cast iron; I
believe that they should be made of rubber, so that they can be
stretched to fit any particular case and then spring back into shape
again. The really important part of a rule is the exception to it.

Your affectionate father,

JOHN GRAHAM.

P.S.--Leave for home to-morrow.

No. 4

From John Graham, at the Hotel Cecil, London, to his son, Pierrepont,
at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago. The old man has just finished going
through the young man's first report as manager of the lard
department, and he finds it suspiciously good.

IV

LONDON, December 1, 189-.

_Dear Pierrepont_: Your first report; looks so good that I'm a little
afraid of it. Figures don't lie, I know, but that's, only because they
can't talk. As a matter of fact, they're just as truthful as the man
who's behind them.

It's been my experience that there are two kinds of figures--educated
and uneducated ones--and that the first are a good deal like the
people who have had the advantage of a college education on the inside
and the disadvantage of a society finish on the outside--they're apt
to tell you only the smooth and the pleasant things. Of course, it's
mighty nice to be told that the shine of your shirt-front is blinding
the floor-manager's best girl; but if there's a hole in the seat of
your pants you ought to know that, too, because sooner or later you've
got to turn your back to the audience.

Now don't go off half-cocked and think I'm allowing that you ain't
truthful; because I think you are--reasonably so--and I'm sure that
everything you say in your report is true. But is there anything you
don't say in it?

A good many men are truthful on the installment plan--that is, they
tell their boss all the good things in sight about their end of the
business and then dribble out the bad ones like a fellow who's giving
you a list of his debts. They'll yell for a week that the business of
their department has increased ten per cent., and then own up in a
whisper that their selling cost has increased twenty. In the end, that
always creates a worse impression than if both sides of the story had
been told at once or the bad had been told first. It's like buying a
barrel of apples that's been deaconed--after you've found that the
deeper you go the meaner and wormier the fruit, you forget all about
the layer of big, rosy, wax-finished pippins which was on top.

I never worry about the side of a proposition that I can see; wh