her husband's youth," and he was proud
popper's pet, whose good times weren't going to be spoiled by a
narrow-minded old brute of a father, or whose talents weren't going to
be smothered in poverty, the way the old man's had been. No, sir-ee,
Percy was going to have all the money he wanted, with the whisky
bottle always in sight on the sideboard and no limit on any game he
wanted to sit in, so that he'd grow up a perfect little gentleman and
know how to use things instead of abusing them.

I want to say right here that I've heard a good deal of talk in my
time about using whisky, and I've met a good many thousand men who
bragged when they were half loaded that they could quit at any moment,
but I've never met one of these fellows who would while the whisky
held out. It's been my experience that when a fellow begins to brag
that he can quit whenever he wants to, he's usually reached the point
where he can't.

Naturally, Percy had hardly got the pap-rag out of his mouth before he
learned to smoke cigarettes, and he could cuss like a little gentleman
before he went into long pants. Took the four-years' sporting course
at Harvard, with a postgraduate year of draw-poker and natural
history--observing the habits and the speed of the ponies in their
native haunts. Then, just to prove that he had paresis, Old Ham gave
him a million dollars outright and a partnership in his business.

Percy started in to learn the business at the top--absorbing as much
of it as he could find room for between ten and four, with two hours
out for lunch--but he never got down below the frosting. The one thing
that Old Ham wouldn't let him touch was the only thing about the
business which really interested Percy--the speculating end of it. But
everything else he did went with the old gentleman, and he was always
bragging that Percy was growing up into a big, broad-gauged merchant.
He got mighty mad with me when I told him that Percy was just a
ready-made success who was so small that he rattled round in his seat,
and that he'd better hold in his horses, as there were a good many
humps in the road ahead of him.

Old Ham was a sure-thing packer, like myself, and let speculating
alone, never going into the market unless he had the goods or knew
where he could get them; but when he did plunge into the pit, he
usually climbed out with both hands full of money and a few odd
thousand-dollar bills sticking in his hair. So when he came to me one
day an