Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to his Son (Illustrated)

by George Horace Lorimer

When it’s passed around you don’t want to be bashful, but reach right out and take a big helping every time, for I want you to get your share. You’ll find that education’s about the only thing lying around loose in this world, and that it’s about the only thing a fellow can have as much of as he’s willing to haul away. Everything else is screwed down tight and the screw-driver lost.

I’m anxious that you should be a good scholar, but I’m more anxious that you should be a good clean man.

You bet it pays. Anything that trains a boy to think and to think quick pays; anything that teaches a boy to get the answer before

the other fellow gets through biting the pencil, pays. College

The boy who does anything just because the other fellows do it is apt to scratch a poor man’s back all his life.

Those steers just naturally follow along on up that runway and into the killing pens. But just as they get to the top, Old Abe, someways, gets lost in the crowd, and he isn’t among those present when the gates are closed and the real trouble begins for his new friends.

There are times when it’s safest to be lonesome. Use a little common-sense, caution and conscience. You can stock a store with those three commodities, when you get enough of them.

It’s not what a man does during working-hours, but after them, that breaks down his health. A fellow and his business should be bosom friends in the office and sworn enemies out of it. A clear mind is one that is swept clean of business at six o’clock every night and isn’t opened up for it again until after the shutters are taken down next morning.