Graham, how old are you?" "I was established in 187—" I said, with one of my fervid I'll-meet-you-in-the-conservatory-after-the-next-dance glances. But I never added the odd figure. Everybody laughed. Fortunately they thought I intended a joke. I'll bet you a new hat—if you are still sporting your old friend you need one—that you couldn't say "born." I caught the "established" from you. I trust my education will do all that you hope for my advancement in business. I've read somewhere—perhaps in one of your meaty letters—that "good schooling is good capital." It may be, but the chances for investment are pretty poor hereabouts. Money is certainly more generally current. It may be the root of all evil, but I've noticed that it is a root that some very good people plant in the sunniest corner of their intellectual garden and keep well[Pg 35] watered. While it may not be true that every man has his price, I note that many of those who do are ready to cut rates and give long time with discounts. [Pg 35] With your customary capacity for banging the spike on its topknot, you diagnose my future correctly. I admit that I'm "not going to be a poet or a professor." Even the Lampoon rejects my verses—though I am bound to say that if I wrote such hogwash as your street-car ad-smith grinds out, I would never dare criticise Alfred Austin again—while as for the professorial calling, there is nothing I could possibly teach except anatomy. We have had a splendid course in that at the various Boston amphitheatres, and the fellows say I'm way up on the subject. But I hardly think it serious enough for a life calling, so, as you so pleasantly intimate, I believe I will accept your offer to join fortunes with the packing-house. I think I know enough of Latin to decline pig—and I always do when it's our label—but circumstances of a strictly pecuniary nature make it advisable for me to close with you at once. Better an eight-dollar job and six o'clock dinner than a post-graduate course and free[Pg 36] lunch. While I'm not prepared to admit that my soul soars to the azure at the thought of being a pork packer, perhaps it is just as well. When I was a boy my ambition oscillated between keeping a candy store and being a hero. Now candy makes my teeth ache and I've seen two or three heroes. [Pg 36] I spent some time thinking what I had better do about meeting your desire that I desert literature for liver, but your last letter soldered my aspirations into a pretty small can. My chum
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