Your affectionate father,
JOHN GRAHAM.

+-----------------------------+
| No. 11 |
+-----------------------------+
| From John Graham, at the |
| Union Stock Yards in |
| Chicago, to his son, |
| Pierrepont, at The |
| Planters' Palace Hotel, |
| at Big Gap, Kentucky. Mr. |
| Pierrepont's orders are |
| small and his expenses |
| are large, so his father |
| feels pessimistic over |
| his prospects. |
+-----------------------------+

XI

CHICAGO, April 10, 189-

_Dear Pierrepont:_ You ought to be feeling mighty thankful to-day to the
fellow who invented fractions, because while your selling cost for last
month was within the limit, it took a good deal of help from the decimal
system to get it there. You are in the position of the boy who was
chased by the bull--open to congratulations because he reached the tree
first, and to condolence because a fellow up a tree, in the middle of a
forty-acre lot, with a disappointed bull for company, is in a mighty bad
fix.

I don't want to bear down hard on you right at the beginning of your
life on the road, but I would feel a good deal happier over your showing
if you would make a downright failure or a clean-cut success once in a
while, instead of always just skinning through this way. It looks to me
as if you were trying only half as hard as you could, and in trying
it's the second half that brings results. If there's one piece of
knowledge that is of less use to a fellow than knowing when he's beat,
it's knowing when he's done just enough work to keep from being fired.
Of course, you are bright enough to be a half-way man, and to hold a
half-way place on a half-way salary by doing half the work you are
capable of, but you've got to add dynamite and ginger and jounce to your
equipment if you want to get the other half that's coming to you. You've
got to believe that the Lord made the first hog with the Graham brand
burned in the skin, and that the drove which rushed