trade. I
want to see you grow into a car-lot man--so strong and big that you will
force us to see that you are out of place among the little fellows. Buck
up!

Your affectionate father,
JOHN GRAHAM.

+---------------------------+
| No. 12 |
+---------------------------+
| From John Graham, at |
| the Union Stock Yards |
| in Chicago, to his son, |
| Pierrepont, at Little |
| Delmonico's, Prairie |
| Centre, Indiana. Mr. |
| Pierrepont has annoyed |
| his father by accepting |
| his criticisms in a |
| spirit of gentle, but |
| most reprehensible, |
| resignation. |
+---------------------------+

XII

CHICAGO, April 15, 189-

_Dear Pierrepont:_ Don't ever write me another of those sad, sweet,
gentle sufferer letters. It's only natural that a colt should kick a
trifle when he's first hitched up to the break wagon, and I'm always a
little suspicious of a critter that stands too quiet under the whip. I
know it's not meekness, but meanness, that I've got to fight, and it's
hard to tell which is the worst.

The only animal which the Bible calls patient is an ass, and that's both
good doctrine and good natural history. For I had to make considerable
of a study of the Missouri mule when I was a boy, and I discovered that
he's not really patient, but that he only pretends to be. You can cuss
him out till you've nothing but holy thoughts left in you to draw on,
and you can lay the rawhide on him till he's striped like a circus
zebra, and if you're cautious and reserved in his company he will just
look grieved and pained and resigned. But all the time that mule will be
getting meaner and meaner inside, adding compound cussedness every
thirty days, and practicing drop kicks in his stall after dark.

Of course, nothing in this world is wholly bad, not even a mule, for he
is half horse. But my observation has taught me that the horse half of
him is the front half, and that the only really