Old Gorgon Graham More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son

by George Horace Lorimer

Lies are great travellers, and welcome visitors in a good many homes, and no questions asked. Truth travels slowly, has to prove its identity, and then a lot of people hesitate to turn out an agreeable stranger to make room for it. About the only way I know to kill a lie is to live the truth. When your credit is doubted, don't bother to deny the rumors, but discount your bills. When you are attacked unjustly, avoid the appearance of evil, but avoid also the appearance of being too good—that is, better than usual. A man can't be too good, but he can appear too good. Surmise and suspicion feed on the unusual, and when a man goes about his business along the usual rut, they soon fade away for lack of nourishment. First and last every fellow gets a lot of unjust treatment in this world, but when he's as old as I am and comes to balance his books with life and to credit himself with the mean things which weren't true that have been said about him, and to debit himself with the mean things which were true that people didn't get on to or overlooked, he'll find that he's had a tolerably square deal. This world has some pretty rotten spots on its skin, but it's sound at the core.

There are two ways of treating gossip about other people, and they're both good ways. One is not to listen to it, and the other is not to repeat it.

a man's always sure of a woman when he's married to her, while a woman's never really afraid of losing a man till she's got him.

When your conscience doesn't tell you what to do in a matter of right and wrong, ask your wife.

It's a pretty safe rule, when you hear a heavy yarn about any one, to allow a fair amount for tare, and then to verify your weights.

Fighting the devil with fire is all foolishness, because that's the one weapon with which he's more expert than any one else. I usually find that it's pretty good policy to oppose suspicion with candor, foxiness with openness, indifference with earnestness. When you deal squarely with a crooked man you scare him to death, because he thinks you're springing some new and extra-deep game on him.

It's been my experience that most women try to prove their love by talking about it, and most men by spending money.

when Charlie, on twenty-five a week, marries a fool, she pouts and says that he doesn't love her just the same because he takes her to the theatre now in the street-cars, instead of in a carriage, as he used to in those happy days before they were married. As a matter of fact, this doesn't show that she's losing Charlie's love, but that he's getting his senses back.

It's only calf love that's always bellering about it. When love is full grown it has few words, and sometimes it growls them out.

It's been my experience that you've got to have leisure to be unhappy. Half the troubles in this world are imaginary, and it takes time to think them up. But it's these oftener than the real troubles that break a young husband's back or a young wife's heart.

Everybody's got to raise something in this world, and unless people raise a job, or crops, or children, they'll raise Cain.

There's always an idle woman or an idle man in every divorce case. When the man earns the bread in the sweat of his brow, it's right that the woman should perspire a little baking it.

There are two kinds of discontent in this world—the discontent that works and the discontent that wrings its hands. The first gets what it wants, and the second loses what it has. There's no cure for the first but success; and there's no cure at all for the second, especially if a woman has it; for she doesn't know what she wants, and so you can't give it to her.

Happiness is like salvation—a state of grace that makes you enjoy the good things you've got and keep reaching out, for better ones in the hereafter. And home is...

Like most people who fall into fortunes suddenly, he had bought a lot of things, not because he needed them or really wanted them, but because poorer people couldn't have them. Yet in the end he had sense enough to see that happiness can't be inherited, but that it must be earned.

Being a millionaire is a trade like a doctor's—you must work up through every grade of earning, saving, spending and giving, or you're no more fit to be trusted with a fortune than a quack with human life. For there's no trade in the world, except the doctor's, on which the lives and the happiness of so many people depend as the millionaire's; and I might add that there's no other in which there's so much malpractice.

You've only one pair of eyes with which to watch 10,000 men, so unless they're open all the time you'll be apt to overlook something here and there; but you'll have 10,000 pairs of eyes watching you all the time, and they won't overlook anything.

For this reason, one of the most important duties of your job is to keep track of everything that's out of the usual. If anything unusually good happens, there's an unusually good man behind it, and he ought to be earmarked for promotion; and if anything unusually bad happens, there's apt to be an unusually bad man behind that, and he's a candidate for a job with another house.

so the real reason why the name of the boss doesn't appear on the time-sheet is not because he's a bigger man than any one else in the place, but because there shouldn't be any one around to take his time when he gets down and when he leaves.

You mustn't depend too much on the judgment of department heads and foremen when picking men for promotion. Take their selection if he is the best man, but know for yourself that he is the best man.