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To Your Good Health
By Paul G. Donohue, M.D.
DEAR DR. DONOHUE: My daughter
is 6 years old and has acquired head lice many
times in day care and in public schools. We fear
that the treatment is toxic. Is there a lice
season? I wish the public were more educated on
head lice. We all need to work together to stop
outbreaks. -- C.L.
ANSWER: Few things fill mothers
with greater revulsion than the news that their
child has head lice. Lice aren’t an
indication of delinquent housecleaning.
They’ve been with us since the dawn of
civilization, and they’ll stay, unless
C.L.’s call to action is heeded.
The most-used anti-louse
medicine is permethrin (Nix and many other
brands). It is safe for child use. It has no
long-term health consequences. Another popular
louse medicine is pyrethrins (RID and others). It
too is safe to use. Malathion (Ovide)
shouldn’t be used in children younger than
6. Lindane (Kwell) is held in reserve and used
when other medicines fail. It’s only for
those who weigh more than 110 pounds.
Lice don’t have a special
season. They can appear at any time of the year.
The female louse lays seven to 10 eggs a day -- a
considerable number over her life span of 20 to
30 days. The eggs are firmly glued to a hair as
"nits." The eggs hatch in a week or so,
and the young louse matures in two to three
weeks, when it begins to lay eggs.
Lice live for only about two
days apart from a human host. They don’t
live forever on carpets and furniture. All that
need be done is to vacuum those furnishings. The
hot water of a washer and the high heat of a
dryer kill lice.
Some parents in your
daughter’s schools aren’t paying
attention to their child’s head and their
child’s scratching of it.
OLD GORGON
GRAHAM
More Letters from
a Self-Made
Merchant
to His Son
by George Horace
Lorimer
First Published
1903
From John Graham,
head of the house of Graham & Company, pork
packers, in Chicago, familiarly known on
‘Change as Old Gorgon Graham, to his son,
Pierrepont, at the Union Stock Yards.
No. 3
From John Graham, at the Schweitzerkasenhof,
Carlsbad, to his son, Pierrepont, at the Union
Stock Yards, Chicago. A friend of the young man
has just presented a letter of introduction to
the old man, and has exchanged a large bunch of
stories for a small roll of bills.
III
CARLSBAD, October
24, 189-.
Dear Pierrepont:
Yesterday your old college friend, Clarence, blew
in from Monte Carlo, where he had been spending a
few days in the interests of science, and
presented your letter of introduction. Said he
still couldn’t understand just how it
happened, because he had figured it out by
logarithms and trigonometry and differential
calculus and a lot of other high-priced studies
that he’d taken away from Harvard, and that
it was a cinch on paper. Was so sure that he
could have proved his theory right if he’d
only had a little more money that it hardly
seemed worth while to tell him that the only
thing he could really prove with his system was
old Professor Darwin’s theory that men and
monkeys began life in the same cage. It never
struck me before, but I’ll bet the Professor
got that idea while he was talking with some of
his students.
Personally, I
don’t know a great deal about gambling,
because all I ever spent for information on the
subject was $2.75--my fool horse broke in the
stretch--and that was forty years ago; but first
and last I’ve heard a lot of men explain how
it happened that they hadn’t made a
hog-killing. Of course, there must be a winning
end to gambling, but all that these men have been
able to tell about is the losing end. And I
gather from their experiences that when a fellow
does a little gambling on the side, it’s
usually on the wrong side.
The fact of the
matter is, that the race-horse, the faro tiger,
and the poker kitty have bigger appetites than
any healthy critter has a right to have; and
after you’ve fed a tapeworm, there’s
mighty little left for you. Following the horses
may be pleasant exercise at the start, but
they’re apt to lead you to the door of the
poorhouse or the jail at the finish.
To get back to
Clarence; he took about an hour to dock his cargo
of hard luck, and another to tell me how strange
it was that there was no draft from his London
bankers waiting to welcome him. Naturally, I
haven’t lived for sixty years among a lot of
fellows who’ve been trying to drive a
cold-chisel between me and my bank account,
without being able to smell a touch coming a long
time before it overtakes me, and Clarence’s
intentions permeated his cheery conversation
about as thoroughly as a fertilizer factory does
a warm summer night. Of course, he gave me every
opportunity to prove that I was a gentleman and
to suggest delicately that I should be glad if he
would let me act as his banker in this sudden
emergency, but as I didn’t show any signs of
being a gentleman and a banker, he was finally
forced to come out and ask me in coarse
commercial words to lend him a hundred. Said it
hurt him to have to do it on such short
acquaintance, but I couldn’t see that he was
suffering any real pain.
Frankly, I
shouldn’t have lent Clarence a dollar on his
looks or his story, for they both struck me as
doubtful collateral, but so long as he had a
letter from you, asking me to "do anything
in my power to oblige him, or to make his stay in
Carlsbad pleasant," I let him have the money
on your account, to which I have written the
cashier to charge it. Of course, I hope Clarence
will pay you back, but I think you will save
bookkeeping by charging it off to experience.
I’ve usually found that these quick, glad
borrowers are slow, sad payers. And when a fellow
tells you that it hurts him to have to borrow,
you can bet that the thought of having to pay is
going to tie him up into a bow-knot of pain.
Right here I want
to caution you against giving away your signature
to every Clarence and Willie that happens along.
When your name is on a note it stands only for
money, but when it’s on a letter of
introduction or recommendation it stands for your
judgment of ability and character, and you
can’t call it in at the end of thirty days,
either. Giving a letter of introduction is simply
lending your name with a man as collateral, and
if he’s no good you can’t have the
satisfaction of redeeming your indorsement, even;
and you’re discredited. The first thing that
a young merchant must learn is that his brand
must never appear on a note, or a ham, or a man
that isn’t good. I reckon that the devil
invented the habit of indorsing notes and giving
letters to catch the fellows he couldn’t
reach with whisky and gambling.
Of course, letters
of introduction have their proper use, but about
nine out of ten of them are simply a license to
some Clarence to waste an hour of your time and
to graft on you for the luncheon and cigars.
It’s getting so that a fellow who’s
almost a stranger to me doesn’t think
anything of asking for a letter of introduction
to one who’s a total stranger. You
can’t explain to these men, because when you
try to let them down easy by telling them that
you haven’t had any real opportunity to know
what their special abilities are, they always
come back with an, "Oh! that’s all
right--just say a word and refer to anything you
like about me."
I give them the
letter then, unsealed, and though, of course,
they’re not supposed to read it, I have
reason to think that they do, because I’ve
never heard of one of those letters being
presented. I use the same form on all of them,
and after they’ve pumped their thanks into
me and rushed around the corner, they find in the
envelope: "This will introduce Mr.
Gallister. While I haven’t had the pleasure
of any extended acquaintance with Mr. Gallister,
I like his nerve."
It’s a mighty
curious thing, but a lot of men who have no claim
on you, and who wouldn’t think of asking for
money, will panhandle both sides of a street for
favors that mean more than money. Of course,
it’s the easy thing and the pleasant thing
not to refuse, and after all, most men think, it
doesn’t cost anything but a few strokes of
the pen, and so they will give a fellow that they
wouldn’t ordinarily play on their friends as
a practical joke, a nice sloppy letter of
introduction to them; or hand out to a man that
they wouldn’t give away as a booby prize, a
letter of recommendation in which they crack him
up as having all the qualities necessary for an
A1 Sunday-school superintendent and bank
president.
Now that you are a
boss you will find that every other man who comes
to your desk is going to ask you for something;
in fact, the difference between being a sub and a
boss is largely a matter of asking for things and
of being asked for things. But it’s just as
one of those poets said--you can’t afford to
burn down the glue factory to stimulate the
demand for glue stock, or words to that effect.
Of course, I
don’t mean by this that I want you to be one
of those fellows who swell out like a ready-made
shirt and brag that they "never borrow and
never lend." They always think that this
shows that they are sound, conservative business
men, but, as a matter of fact, it simply stamps
them as mighty mean little cusses. It’s very
superior, I know, to say that you never borrow,
but most men have to at one time or another, and
then they find that the never-borrow-never-lend
platform is a mighty inconvenient one to be
standing on. Be just in business and generous out
of it. A fellow’s generosity needs a heap of
exercise to keep it in good condition, and the
hand that writes out checks gets cramped easier
than the hand that takes them in. You want to
keep them both limber.
While I don’t
believe in giving with a string tied to every
dollar, or doing up a gift in so many conditions
that the present is lost in the wrappings,
it’s a good idea not to let most people feel
that money can be had for the asking. If you do,
they’re apt to go into the asking business
for a living. But these millionaires who give
away a hundred thousand or so, with the
understanding that the other fellow will raise
another hundred thousand or so, always remind me
of a lot of boys coaxing a dog into their yard
with a hunk of meat, so that they can tie a tin
can to his tail--the pup edges up licking his
chops at the thought of the provisions and
hanging his tail at the thought of the hardware.
If he gets the meat, he’s got to run himself
to death to get rid of the can.
While we’re
on this subject of favors I want to impress on
you the importance of deciding promptly. The man
who can make up his mind quick, makes up other
people’s minds for them. Decision is a sharp
knife that cuts clear and straight and lays bare
the fat and the lean; indecision, a dull one that
hacks and tears and leaves ragged edges behind
it. Say yes or no--seldom perhaps. Some people
have such fertile imaginations that they will
take a grain of hope and grow a large definite
promise with bark on it overnight, and later,
when you come to pull that out of their brains by
the roots, it hurts, and they holler.
When a fellow asks
for a job in your department there may be reasons
why you hate to give him a clear-cut refusal, but
tell him frankly that you see no possibility of
placing him, and while he may not like the taste
of the medicine, he swallows it and it’s
down and forgotten. But you say to him that
you’re very sorry your department is full
just now, but that you think a place will come
along later and that he shall have the first call
on it, and he goes away with his teeth in a job.
You’ve simply postponed your trouble for a
few weeks or months. And trouble postponed always
has to be met with accrued interest.
Never string a man
along in business. It isn’t honest and it
isn’t good policy. Either’s a good
reason, but taken together they head the list of
good reasons.
Of course, I
don’t mean that you want to go rampaging
along, trampling on people’s feelings and
goring every one who sticks up a head in your
path. But there’s no use shilly-shallying
and doddering with people who ask questions and
favors they have no right to ask. Don’t hurt
any one if you can help it, but if you must, a
clean, quick wound heals soonest.
When you can,
it’s better to refuse a request by letter.
In a letter you need say only what you choose; in
a talk you may have to say more than you want to
say.
With the best
system in the world you’ll find it
impossible, however, to keep a good many people
who have no real business with you from seeing
you and wasting your time, because a broad-gauged
merchant must be accessible. When a man’s
office is policed and every one who sees him has
to prove that he’s taken the third degree
and is able to give the grand hailing sign,
he’s going to miss a whole lot of things
that it would be mighty valuable for him to know.
Of course, the man whose errand could be attended
to by the office-boy is always the one who calls
loudest for the boss, but with a little tact you
can weed out most of these fellows, and it’s
better to see ten bores than to miss one buyer. A
house never gets so big that it can afford to
sniff at a hundred-pound sausage order, or to
feel that any customer is so small that it can
afford not to bother with him. You’ve got to
open a good many oysters to find a pearl.
You should answer
letters just as you answer men--promptly,
courteously, and decisively. Of course, you
don’t ever want to go off half-cocked and
bring down a cow instead of the buck you’re
aiming at, but always remember that game is shy
and that you can’t shoot too quick after
you’ve once got it covered. When I go into a
fellow’s office and see his desk buried in
letters with the dust on them, I know that there
are cobwebs in his head. Foresight is the quality
that makes a great merchant, but a man who has
his desk littered with yesterday’s business
has no time to plan for to-morrow’s.
The only letters
that can wait are those which provoke a hot
answer. A good hot letter is always foolish, and
you should never write a foolish thing if you can
say it to the man instead, and never say it if
you can forget it. The wisest man may make an ass
of himself to-day, over to-day’s
provocation, but he won’t tomorrow. Before
being used, warm words should be run into the
cooling-room until the animal heat is out of
them. Of course, there’s no use in a
fool’s waiting, because there’s no room
in a small head in which to lose a grievance.
Speaking of small
heads naturally calls to mind a gold brick named
Solomon Saunders that I bought when I was a good
deal younger and hadn’t been buncoed so
often. I got him with a letter recommending him
as a sort of happy combination of the three wise
men of the East and the nine muses, and I got rid
of him with one in which I allowed that he was
the whole dozen.
I really hired Sol
because he reminded me of some one I’d known
and liked, though I couldn’t just remember
at the time who it was; but one day, after
he’d been with me about a week, it came to
me in a flash that he was the living image of old
Bucker, a billy-goat I’d set aheap of store
by when I was a boy. That was a lesson to me on
the foolishness of getting sentimental in
business. I never think of the old homestead that
echo doesn’t answer, "Give up!";
or hear from it without getting a bill for having
been born there.
Sol had started
out in life to be a great musician. Had raised
the hair for the job and had kept his
finger-nails cut just right for it, but somehow,
when he played "My Old Kentucky Home,"
nobody sobbed softly in the fourth row. You see,
he could play a piece absolutely right and meet
every note just when it came due, but when he got
through it was all wrong. That was Sol in
business, too. He knew just the right rule for
doing everything and did it just that way, and
yet everything he did turned out to be a mistake.
Made it twice as aggravating because you
couldn’t consistently find fault with him.
If you’d given Sol the job of making over
the earth he’d have built it out of the
latest text-book on "How to Make the World
Better," and have turned out something as
correct as a spike-tail coat--and every one would
have wanted to die to get out of it.
Then, too, I never
saw such a cuss for system. Other men would
forget costs and prices, but Sol never did.
Seemed he ran his memory by system. Had a way
when there was a change in the price-list of
taking it home and setting it to poetry. Used
"Ring Out, Wild Bells," by A. Tennyson,
for a bull market--remember he began it
"Ring Off, Wild Bulls"--and
"Break, Break, Break," for a bear one.
It used to annoy
me considerable when I asked him the price of
pork tenderloins to have him mumble through two
or three verses till he fetched it up, but I
didn’t have any real kick coming till he got
ambitious and I had to wait till he’d hummed
half through a grand opera to get a quotation on
pickled pigs’ feet in kits. I felt that we
had reached the parting of the ways then, but I
didn’t like to point out his way too
abruptly, because the friend who had unloaded him
on us was pretty important to me in my business
just then, and he seemed to be all wrapped up in
Sol’s making a hit with us.
It’s been my
experience, though, that sometimes when you
can’t kick a man out of the back door
without a row, you can get him to walk out the
front way voluntarily. So when I get stuck with a
fellow that, for some reason, it isn’t
desirable to fire, I generally promote him and
raise his pay. Some of these weak sisters I make
the assistant boss of the machine-shop and some
of the bone-meal mill. I didn’t dare send
Sol to the machine-shop, because I knew he
wouldn’t have been there a week before
he’d have had the shop running on
Goetterdaemmerung or one of those other cuss-word
operas of Wagner’s. But the strong point of
a bone-meal mill is bone-dust, and the strong
point of bone-dust is smell, and the strong point
of its smell is its staying qualities. Naturally
it’s the sort of job for which you want a
bald-headed man, because a fellow who’s got
nice thick curls will cheat the house by taking a
good deal of the product home with him. To tell
the truth, Sol’s hair had been worrying me
almost as much as his system. When I hired him
I’d supposed he’d finally molt it along
with his musical tail-feathers. I had a little
talk with him then, in which I hinted at the
value of looking clear-cut and trim and of giving
sixteen ounces to the pound, but the only result
of it was that he went off and bought a pot of
scented vaseline and grew another inch of hair
for good measure. It seemed a pity now, so long
as I was after his scalp, not to get it with the
hair on.
Sol had never seen
a bone-meal mill, but it flattered him mightily
to be promoted into the manufacturing end,
"where a fellow could get ahead
faster," and he said good-by to the boys in
the office with his nose in the air, where he
kept it, I reckon, during the rest of his
connection with the house.
If Sol had stuck
it out for a month at the mill I’d have
known that he had the right stuff in him
somewhere and have taken him back into the office
after a good rub-down with pumice-stone. But he
turned up the second day, smelling of violet soap
and bone-meal, and he didn’t sing his list
of grievances, either. Started right in by
telling me how, when he got into a street-car,
all the other passengers sort of faded out; and
how his landlady insisted on serving his meals in
his room. Almost foamed at the mouth when I said
the office seemed a little close and opened the
window, and he quoted some poetry about that
being "the most unkindest cut of all."
Wound up by wanting to know how he was going to
get it out of his hair.
I broke it to him
as gently as I could that it would have to wear
out or be cut out, and tried to make him see that
it was better to be a bald-headed boss on a large
salary than a curly-headed clerk on a small one;
but, in the end, he resigned, taking along a
letter from me to the friend who had recommended
him and some of my good bone-meal.
I didn’t
grudge him the fertilizer, but I did feel sore
that he hadn’t left me a lock of his hair,
till some one saw him a few days later, dodging
along with his collar turned up and his hat
pulled down, looking like a new-clipped lamb. I
heard, too, that the fellow who had given him the
wise-men-muses letter to me was so impressed with
the almost exact duplicate of it which I gave
Sol, and with the fact that I had promoted him so
soon, that he concluded he must have let a good
man get by him, and hired him himself.
Sol was a failure
as a musician because, while he knew all the
notes, he had nothing in himself to add to them
when he played them. It’s easy to learn all
the notes that make good music and all the rules
that make good business, but a fellow’s got
to add the fine curves to them himself if he
wants to do anything more than beat the bass-drum
all his life. Some men think that rules should be
made of cast iron; I believe that they should be
made of rubber, so that they can be stretched to
fit any particular case and then spring back into
shape again. The really important part of a rule
is the exception to it.
Your affectionate
father,
JOHN GRAHAM.
P.S.--Leave for
home to-morrow.
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