Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son Being the Letters written by John Graham, Head of the House of Graham & Company, Pork-Packers in Chicago, ... known to his intimates as "Piggy."

by George Horace Lorimer

A business man’s conversation should be regulated by fewer and simpler rules than any other function of the human animal. They are: Have something to say. Say it. Stop talking. Beginning before you know what you want to say and keeping on after you have said it lands a merchant in a lawsuit or the poorhouse, and the first is a short cut to the second. I maintain a legal department here, and it costs a lot of money, but it’s to keep me from going to law. It’s all right when you are calling on a girl or talking with friends after dinner to run a conversation like a Sunday-school excursion, with stops to pick flowers; but in the office your sentences should be the shortest distance possible between periods. Cut out the introduction and the peroration, and stop before you get to secondly. You’ve got to preach short sermons to catch sinners; and deacons won’t believe they need long ones themselves. Give fools the first and women the last word. The meat’s always in the middle of the sandwich. Of course, a little butter on either side of it doesn’t do any harm if it’s intended for a man who likes butter.