om Graham's Extract, and whenever I saw it I gagged,
for I knew it was costing me money that wasn't coming back; but every
time I started to draw in my horns Jim talked to me, and showed me where
there was a fortune waiting for me just around the corner.

[Illustration: "_I put Jim Durham out on the road to introduce a new
product._"]

Graham's Extract started out by being something that you could make
beef-tea out of--that was all. But before Jim had been fooling with it a
month he had got his girl to think up a hundred different ways in which
it could be used, and had advertised them all. It seemed there was
nothing you could cook that didn't need a dash of it. He kept me between
a chill and a sweat all the time. Sometimes, but not often, I just _had_
to grin at his foolishness. I remember one picture he got out showing
sixteen cows standing between something that looked like a letter-press,
and telling how every pound or so of Graham's Extract contained the
juice squeezed from a herd of steers. If an explorer started for the
North Pole, Jim would send him a case of Extract, and then advertise
that it was the great heat-maker for cold climates; and if some other
fellow started across Africa he sent _him_ a case, too, and advertised
what a bully drink it was served up with a little ice.

He broke out in a new place every day, and every time he broke out it
cost the house money. Finally, I made up my mind to swallow the loss,
and Mister Jim was just about to lose his job sure enough, when the
orders for Extract began to look up, and he got a reprieve; then he
began to make expenses, and he got a pardon; and finally a rush came
that left him high and dry in a permanent place. Jim was all right in
his way, but it was a new way, and I hadn't been broad-gauged enough to
see that it was a better way.

That was where I caught the connection between a college education and
business. I've always made it a rule to buy brains, and I've learned now
that the better trained they are the faster they find reasons for
getting their salaries raised. The fellow who hasn't had the training
may be just as smart, but he's apt to paw the air when he's reaching
for ideas.

I suppose you're asking why, if I'm so hot for education, I'm against
this post-graduate course. But habits of thought ain't the only thing a
fellow picks up at college.

I see you've been elected President of your class. I'm glad the boys
aren't down on you, but whi