{"id":11803,"date":"2011-02-19T22:34:32","date_gmt":"2011-02-20T04:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artofmanliness.com\/?p=11803"},"modified":"2021-09-24T22:46:14","modified_gmt":"2021-09-25T03:46:14","slug":"manvotional-letters-from-a-self-made-merchant-to-his-son-no-17-pride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/character\/manhood\/manvotional-letters-from-a-self-made-merchant-to-his-son-no-17-pride\/","title":{"rendered":"Manvotional: False Pride"},"content":{"rendered":"

George Lorimer, an editor at the Saturday Evening Post, published a series of fictional letters in that magazine in which a father, John Graham, imparts advice to his son, Pierrepont, throughout the different stages of the young man\u2019s life. The letters were then compiled in the hugely successful 1901 book<\/em> Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

London, October 24, 189\u2014<\/p>\n

Dear Pierrepont:<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m glad to learn from your letter that you\u2019re getting along so well in your new place, and I hope that when I get home your boss will back up all the good things which you say about yourself. For the future, however, you needn\u2019t bother to keep me posted along this line. It\u2019s the one subject on which most men are perfectly frank, and it\u2019s about the only one on which it isn\u2019t necessary to be. There\u2019s never any use trying to hide the fact that you\u2019re a jim-dandy\u2014you\u2019re bound to be found out. A man who does big things is too busy to talk about them. When the jaws really need exercise, chew gum.<\/p>\n

Some men go through life on the Sarsaparilla Theory\u2014that they\u2019ve got to give a hundred doses of talk about themselves for every dollar which they take in; and that\u2019s a pretty good theory when you\u2019re getting a dollar for ten cents\u2019 worth of ingredients. But a man who\u2019s giving a dollar\u2019s worth of himself for ninety-nine cents doesn\u2019t need to throw in any explanations.<\/p>\n

Of course, you\u2019re going to meet fellows right along who pass as good men for a while, because they say they\u2019re good men; just as a lot of fives are in circulation which are accepted at their face value until they work up to the receiving teller. And you\u2019re going to see these men taking buzzards and coining eagles from them that will fool people so long as they can keep them in the air; but sooner or later they\u2019re bound to swoop back to their dead horse, and you\u2019ll get the buzzard smell.<\/p>\n

Hot air can take up a balloon a long ways, but it can\u2019t keep it there. And when a fellow\u2019s turning flip-flops up among the clouds, he\u2019s naturally going to have the farmers gaping at him. But in the end there always comes a time when the parachute fails to work. I don\u2019t know anything that\u2019s quite so dead as a man who\u2019s fallen three or four thousand feet off the edge of a cloud.<\/p>\n

The only way to gratify a taste for scenery is to climb a mountain. You don\u2019t get up so quick, but you don\u2019t come down so sudden. Even then, there\u2019s a chance that a fellow may slip and fall over a precipice, but not unless he\u2019s foolish enough to try short-cuts over slippery places; though some men can manage to fall down the hall stairs and break their necks. The path isn\u2019t  the shortest way to the top, but it\u2019s usually the safest way.<\/p>\n

Life isn\u2019t a spurt, but a long, steady climb. You can\u2019t run far up-hill without stopping to sit down. Some men do a day\u2019s work and then spend six lolling around admiring it. They rush at a thing with a whoop and use up all their wind in that. And when they\u2019re rested and have got it back, they whoop again and start off in a new direction. They mistake intention for determination, and after they have told you what they propose to do and get right up to doing it, they simply peter out.<\/p>\n

I speak of these things in a general way, because I want you to keep in mind all the time that steady, quiet, persistent, plain work can\u2019t be imitated or replaced by anything just as good, and because your request for a job for Courtland Warrington naturally brings them up. You write that Court says that a man who has occupied his position in the world naturally can\u2019t cheapen himself by stepping down into any little piddling job where he\u2019d have to do undignified things.<\/p>\n

I want to start right out by saying that I know Court and his whole breed like a glue factory, and that we can\u2019t use him in our business. He\u2019s one of those fellows who start in at the top and naturally work down to the bottom, because that is where they belong. His father gave him an interest in the concern when he left college, and since the old man failed three years ago and took a salary himself, Court\u2019s been sponging on him and waiting for a nice, dignified job to come along and steal him. But we are not in the kidnapping business.<\/p>\n

The only undignified job I know of is loafing, and nothing can cheapen a man who sponges instead of hunting any sort of work, because he\u2019s as cheap already as they can be made. I never could quite understand these fellows who keep down every decent instinct in order to keep up appearance, and who will stoop to any sort of real meanness to boost up their false pride.<\/p>\n

 <\/div>\n
\u201cJim Hicks dared Fatty Wilkins to eat a piece of dirt.<\/em>\u201d<\/div>\n

They always remind me of little Fatty Wilkins, who came to live in our town back in Missouri when I was a boy. His mother thought a heap of Fatty, and Fatty thought a heap of himself, or his stomach, which was the same thing. Looked like he\u2019d been taken from a joke book. Used to be a great eater. Stuffed himself till his hide was stretched as tight as a sausage skin, and then howled for painkiller. Spent all his pennies for cakes, because candy wasn\u2019t filling enough. Hogged \u2019em in the shop, for fear he would have to give some one a bite if he ate them on the street.<\/p>\n

The other boys didn\u2019t take to Fatty, and they didn\u2019t make any special secret of it when he was around. He was a mighty brave boy and a mighty strong boy and a mighty proud boy\u2014with his mouth; but he always managed to slip out of anything that looked like a fight by having a sore hand or a case of the mumps. The truth of the matter was that he was afraid of everything except food, and that was the thing which was hurting him most. It\u2019s mighty seldom that a fellow\u2019s afraid of what he ought to be afraid of in this world.<\/p>\n

Of course, like most cowards, while Fatty always had an excuse for not doing something that might hurt his skin, he would take a dare to do anything that would hurt his self-respect, for fear the boys would laugh at him, or say that he was afraid, if he refused. So one day during recess Jim Hicks dared him to eat a piece of dirt. Fatty hesitated a little, because, while he was pretty promiscuous about what he put into his stomach, he had never included dirt in his bill-of-fare. But when the boys began to say that he was afraid, Fatty up and swallowed it.<\/p>\n

And when he dared the other boys to do the same thing and none of them would take the dare, it made him mighty proud and puffed up. Got to charging the bigger boys and the lounger around the post-office a cent to see him eat a piece of dirt the size of a hickory-nut. Found there was good money in that, and added grasshoppers, at two cents apiece, as a side line. Found them so popular that he took on chinch bugs at a nickel, and fairly coined money. The last I heard of Fatty he was in a Dime Museum, drawing two salaries\u2014one as \u201cThe Fat Man,\u201d and the other as \u201cLauncelot, The Locust Eater, the Only Man Alive with a Gizzard.\u201d<\/p>\n

You are going to meet a heap of Fatties, first and last, fellows who\u2019ll eat a little dirt \u201cfor fun\u201d or to show off, and who\u2019ll eat a little more because they find that there\u2019s some easy money or times in it. It\u2019s hard to get at these men, because when they\u2019ve lost everything they had to be proud of, they still keep their pride. You can always bet that when a fellow\u2019s pride makes him touchy, it\u2019s because there are some mighty raw spots on it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been my experience that pride is usually a spur to the strong and a drag on the weak. It drives the strong man along and holds the weak one back. It makes the fellow with the stiff upper lip and the square jaw smile at a laugh and laugh at a sneer; it keeps his conscience straight and his back humped over his work; it makes him appreciate the little things and fight for the big ones. But it makes the fellow with the retreating forehead do the thing that looks right, instead of the thing that is right; it makes him fear a laugh and shrivel up at a sneer; it makes him live to-day on to-morrow\u2019s salary; it makes him a cheap imitation of some Willie who has a little more money than he has, without giving him zip enough to go out and force luck for himself.<\/p>\n

I never see one of these fellows swelling around with their petty larceny pride that I don\u2019t think of a little experience of mine when I was a boy. An old fellow caught me lifting a watermelon in his patch, one afternoon, and instead of cuffing me and letting me go, as I had expected if I got caught, he led me home by the ear to my ma, and told her what I had been up to.<\/p>\n

Your grandma had been raised on the old-fashioned plan, and she had never heard of these new-fangled theories of reasoning gently with a child till its under lip begins to stick out and its eyes to fill with tears as it sees the error of its ways. She fetched the tears all right, but she did it with a trunk strap or a slipper. And your grandma was a pretty substantial woman. Nothing of the tootsey-wootsey about her foot, and nothing of the airy-fairy trifle about her slipper. When she was through I knew that I\u2019d been licked\u2014polished right off to a point\u2014and then she sent me to my room and told me not to poke my nose out of it till I could recite the Ten Commandments and the Sunday-school lesson by heart.<\/p>\n

There was a whole chapter of it, and an Old Testament chapter at that, but I laid right into it because I knew ma, and supper was only two hours off. I can repeat that chapter still, forward and backward, without missing a word or stopping to catch my breath.<\/p>\n

Every now and then old Doc Hoover used to come into the Sunday-school room and scare the scholars into fits by going around from class to class and asking questions. That next Sunday, for the first time, I was glad to see him happen in, and I didn\u2019t try to escape attention when he worked around to our class. For ten minutes I\u2019d been busting for him to ask me to recite a verse of the lesson, and, when he did, I simply cut loose and recited the whole chapter and threw in the Ten Commandments for good measure. It sort of dazed the Doc, because he had come to me for information about the Old Testament before, and we\u2019d never got much beyond, And Ahab begat Jahab, or words to that effect. But when he got over the shock he made me stand right up before the whole school and do it again. Patted me on the head and said I was \u201can honor to my parents and an example to my playmates.\u201d<\/p>\n

I had been looking down all the time, feeling mighty proud and scared, but at that I couldn\u2019t help glancing up to see the other boys admire me. But the first person my eye lit on was your grandma, standing in the back of the room, where she had stopped for a moment on her way up to church, and glaring at me in a mighty unpleasant way.<\/p>\n

\u201cTell \u2019em, John,\u201d she said right out loud, before everybody.<\/p>\n

There was no way to run, for the Elder had hold of my hand, and there was no place to hide, though I reckon I could have crawled into a rat hole. So, to gain time, I blurted out:<\/p>\n

\u201cTell \u2019em what, mam?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTell \u2019em how you come to have your lesson so nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

I learned to hate notoriety right then and there, but I knew there was no switching her off on to the weather when she wanted to talk religion. So I shut my eyes and let it come, though it caught on my palate once or twice on the way out.<\/p>\n

\u201cHooked a watermelon, mam.\u201d<\/p>\n

There wasn\u2019t any need for further particulars with that crowd, and they simply howled. Ma led me up to our pew, allowing that she\u2019d tend to me Monday for disgracing her in public that way\u2014and she did.<\/p>\n

That was a twelve-grain dose, without any sugar coat, but it sweat more cant and false pride out of my system than I could get back into it for the next twenty years. I learned right there how to be humble, which is a heap more important than knowing how to be proud. There are mighty few men that need any lessons in that.<\/p>\n

Your affectionate father,
\nJohn Graham.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

George Lorimer, an editor at the Saturday Evening Post, published a series of fictional letters in that magazine in which a father, John Graham, imparts advice to his son, Pierrepont, throughout the different stages of the young man\u2019s life. The letters were then compiled in the hugely successful 1901 book Letters from a Self-Made Merchant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11804,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[502,42272],"tags":[42295],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-11803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-character","category-manhood","tag-manvotionals"],"featured_image_urls":{"large":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2010\/08\/17-267x280.jpg","aom":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2010\/08\/17-267x230.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11803"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138614,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11803\/revisions\/138614"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11803"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=11803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}