l like feeding his weight in corn to a scalawag
steer that won't fat up.

I haven't said anything about this before, as I trusted a good deal to
your native common-sense to keep you from making a fool of yourself in
the way that some of these young fellows who haven't had to work for it
do. But because I have sat tight, I don't want you to get it into your
head that the old man's rich, and that he can stand it, because he won't
stand it after you leave college. The sooner you adjust your spending to
what your earning capacity will be, the easier they will find it to live
together.

The only sure way that a man can get rich quick is to have it given to
him or to inherit it. You are not going to get rich that way--at least,
not until after you have proved your ability to hold a pretty important
position with the firm; and, of course, there is just one place from
which a man can start for that position with Graham & Co. It doesn't
make any difference whether he is the son of the old man or of the
cellar boss--that place is the bottom. And the bottom in the office end
of this business is a seat at the mailing-desk, with eight dollars every
Saturday night.

I can't hand out any ready-made success to you. It would do you no good,
and it would do the house harm. There is plenty of room at the top here,
but there is no elevator in the building. Starting, as you do, with a
good education, you should be able to climb quicker than the fellow who
hasn't got it; but there's going to be a time when you begin at the
factory when you won't be able to lick stamps so fast as the other boys
at the desk. Yet the man who hasn't licked stamps isn't fit to write
letters. Naturally, that is the time when knowing whether the pie comes
before the ice-cream, and how to run an automobile isn't going to be of
any real use to you.

I simply mention these things because I am afraid your ideas as to the
basis on which you are coming with the house have swelled up a little in
the East. I can give you a start, but after that you will have to
dynamite your way to the front by yourself. It is all with the man. If
you gave some fellows a talent wrapped in a napkin to start with in
business, they would swap the talent for a gold brick and lose the
napkin; and there are others that you could start out with just a
napkin, who would set up with it in the dry-goods business in a small
way, and then coax the other fellow's talent into it.

I have pride eno