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Mornin' Mail |
To Your Good Health
By Paul G. Donohue, M.D.
DEAR DR. DONOHUE: I’m
my own boss. I live not far from my office, and I
go home for lunch. I take a short nap after
eating. It really refreshes me. My wife thinks I
might be throwing my body clock out of sync by
taking the nap. Am I? -- G.K.
ANSWER: A nap of less
than 30 minutes invigorates many people and
increases their afternoon performance. One less
than 10 minutes doesn’t do much good.
After a nap, many people
experience a light lull in mental functions for
about half an hour, but they make no more errors
in that time than they would have if they
hadn’t taken a nap. From then on, their
performance improves. Napping doesn’t throw
off your biological clock.
DEAR DR. DONOHUE: Do
migraine headaches result from a magnesium
deficiency? I heard an infomercial on TV that
said low levels of magnesium are responsible for
migraines. The commercial’s sponsor just
happened to be selling a product that contains
magnesium. Would it be worth my while to send for
it? -- R.P.
ANSWER: Some studies
have shown that magnesium can block migraine
headaches in a few people. It’s not a
universal antidote for all migraine headaches,
and not many, if any, migraine specialists
believe that all such headaches are due to
magnesium deficiency.
The daily magnesium requirement
for women 31 and older is 320 mg and for men of
the same ages, 420 mg. If you want to try a
supplement that doesn’t exceed those
requirements by very much, it would be safe to
experiment.
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. 1
From John Graham to
his son, Pierrepont. The old man is laid up
temporarily for repairs, and Pierrepont has
written asking if his father doesn’t feel
that he is qualified now to relieve him of some
of the burden of active management.
I
CARLSBAD, October
4, 189-.
Dear Pierrepont:
I’m sorry you ask so many questions that you
haven’t a right to ask, because you put
yourself in the position of the inquisitive
bull-pup who started out to smell the third rail
on the trolley right-of-way--you’re going to
be full of information in a minute.
In the first
place, it looks as if business might be pretty
good this fall, and I’m afraid you’ll
have your hands so full in your place as
assistant manager of the lard department that you
won’t have time to run my job, too.
Then I don’t
propose to break any quick-promotion records with
you, just because you happened to be born into a
job with the house. A fond father and a fool son
hitch up into a bad team, and a good business
makes a poor family carryall. Out of business
hours I like you better than any one at the
office, but in them there are about twenty men
ahead of you in my affections. The way for you to
get first place is by racing fair and square, and
not by using your old daddy as a spring-board
from which to jump over their heads. A man’s
son is entitled to a chance in his business, but
not to a cinch.
It’s been my
experience that when an office begins to look
like a family tree, you’ll find worms tucked
away snug and cheerful in most of the apples. A
fellow with an office full of relatives is like a
sow with a litter of pigs--apt to get a little
thin and peaked as the others fat up. A receiver
is next of kin to a business man’s
relatives, and after they are all nicely settled
in the office they’re not long in finding a
job for him there, too. I want you to get this
firmly fixed in your mind, because while you
haven’t many relatives to hire, if you ever
get to be the head of the house, you’ll no
doubt marry a few with your wife.
For every man that
the Lord makes smart enough to help himself, He
makes two who have to be helped. When your two
come to you for jobs, pay them good salaries to
keep out of the office. Blood is thicker than
water, I know, but when it’s the blood of
your wife’s second cousin out of a job,
it’s apt to be thicker than molasses--and
stickier than glue when it touches a good thing.
After you have found ninety-nine sound reasons
for hiring a man, it’s all right to let his
relationship to you be the hundredth. It’ll
be the only bad reason in the bunch.
I simply mention
this in passing, because, as I have said, you
ain’t likely to be hiring men for a little
while yet. But so long as the subject is up, I
might as well add that when I retire it will be
to the cemetery. And I should advise you to
anchor me there with a pretty heavy monument,
because it wouldn’t take more than two such
statements of manufacturing cost as I have just
received from your department to bring me back
from the graveyard to the Stock Yards on the
jump. And until I do retire you don’t want
to play too far from first base. The man at the
bat will always strike himself out quick enough
if he has forgotten how to find the
pitcher’s curves, so you needn’t worry
about that. But you want to be ready all the time
in case he should bat a few hot ones in your
direction.
Some men are like
oak leaves--they don’t know when
they’re dead, but still hang right on; and
there are others who let go before anything has
really touched them. Of course, I may be in the
first class, but you can be dead sure that I
don’t propose to get into the second, even
though I know a lot of people say I’m an old
hog to keep right along working after I’ve
made more money than I know how to spend, and
more than I could spend if I knew how. It’s
a mighty curious thing how many people think that
if a man isn’t spending his money their way
he isn’t spending it right, and that if he
isn’t enjoying himself according to their
tastes he can’t be having a good time. They
believe that money ought to loaf; I believe that
it ought to work. They believe that money ought
to go to the races and drink champagne; I believe
that it ought to go to the office and keep sober.
When a man makes a
specialty of knowing how some other fellow ought
to spend his money, he usually thinks in millions
and works for hundreds. There’s only one
poorer hand at figures than these over-the-left
financiers, and he’s the fellow who inherits
the old man’s dollars without his sense.
When a fortune comes without calling, it’s
apt to leave without asking. Inheriting money is
like being the second husband of a Chicago
grass-widow--mighty uncertain business, unless a
fellow has had a heap of experience. There’s
no use explaining when I’m asked why I keep
on working, because fellows who could put that
question wouldn’t understand the answer. You
could take these men and soak their heads
overnight in a pailful of ideas, and they
wouldn’t absorb anything but the few loose
cuss-words that you’d mixed in for
flavoring. They think that the old boys have
corralled all the chances and have tied up the
youngsters where they can’t get at them;
when the truth is that if we all simply quit work
and left them the whole range to graze over,
they’d bray to have their fodder brought to
them in bales, instead of starting out to hunt
the raw material, as we had to. When an ass gets
the run of the pasture he finds thistles.
I don’t mind
owning up to you, though, that I don’t hang
on because I’m indispensable to the
business, but because business is indispensable
to me. I don’t take much stock in this
indispensable man idea, anyway. I’ve never
had one working for me, and if I had I’d
fire him, because a fellow who’s as smart as
that ought to be in business for himself; and if
he doesn’t get a chance to start a new one,
he’s just naturally going to eat up yours.
Any man can feel reasonably well satisfied if
he’s sure that there’s going to be a
hole to look at when he’s pulled up by the
roots.
I started business
in a shanty, and I’ve expanded it into half
a mile of factories; I began with ten men working
for me, and I’ll quit with 10,000; I found
the American hog in a mud-puddle, without a
beauty spot on him except the curl in his tail,
and I’m leaving him nicely packed in fancy
cans and cases, with gold medals hung all over
him. But after I’ve gone some other fellow
will come along and add a post-graduate course in
pork packing, and make what I’ve done look
like a country school just after the
teacher’s been licked. And I want you to be
that fellow. For the present, I shall report at
the office as usual, because I don’t know
any other place where I can get ten hours’
fun a day, year in and year out.
After forty years
of close acquaintance with it, I’ve found
that work is kind to its friends and harsh to its
enemies. It pays the fellow who dislikes it his
exact wages, and they’re generally pretty
small; but it gives the man who shines up to it
all the money he wants and throws in a heap of
fun and satisfaction for good measure.
A broad-gauged
merchant is a good deal like our friend Doc
Graver, who’d cut out the washerwoman’s
appendix for five dollars, but would charge a
thousand for showing me mine--he wants all the
money that’s coming to him, but he really
doesn’t give a cuss how much it is, just so
he gets the appendix.
I’ve never
taken any special stock in this modern theory
that no fellow over forty should be given a job,
or no man over sixty allowed to keep one. Of
course, there’s a dead-line in business,
just as there is in preaching, and fifty’s a
good, convenient age at which to draw it; but
it’s been my experience that there are a lot
of dead ones on both sides of it. When a man
starts out to be a fool, and keeps on working
steady at his trade, he usually isn’t going
to be any Solomon at sixty. But just because you
see a lot of bald-headed sinners lined up in the
front row at the show, you don’t want to get
humorous with every bald-headed man you meet,
because the first one you tackle may be a deacon.
And because a fellow has failed once or twice, or
a dozen times, you don’t want to set him
down as a failure--unless he takes failing too
easy. No man’s a failure till he’s dead
or loses his courage, and that’s the same
thing. Sometimes a fellow that’s been batted
all over the ring for nineteen rounds lands on
the solar plexus of the proposition he’s
tackling in the twentieth. But you can have a
regiment of good business qualities, and still
fail without courage, because he’s the
colonel, and he won’t stand for any
weakening at a critical time.
I learned a long
while ago not to measure men with a foot-rule,
and not to hire them because they were young or
old, or pretty or homely, though there are
certain general rules you want to keep in mind.
If you were spending a million a year without
making money, and you hired a young man,
he’d be apt to turn in and double your
expenses to make the business show a profit, and
he’d be a mighty good man; but if you hired
an old man, he’d probably cut your expenses
to the bone and show up the money saved on the
profit side; and he’d be a mighty good man,
too. I hire both and then set the young man to
spending and the old man to watching expenses.
Of course, the
chances are that a man who hasn’t got a good
start at forty hasn’t got it in him, but you
can’t run a business on the law of averages
and have more than an average business. Once an
old fellow who’s just missed everything
he’s sprung at gets his hooks in, he’s
a tiger to stay by the meat course. And I’ve
picked up two or three of these old man-eaters in
my time who are drawing pretty large salaries
with the house right now.
Whenever I hear
any of this talk about carting off old fellows to
the glue factory, I always think of Doc Hoover
and the time they tried the
"dead-line-at-fifty" racket on him,
though he was something over eighty when it
happened.
After I left
Missouri, Doc stayed right along, year after
year, in the old town, handing out hell to the
sinners in public, on Sundays, and distributing
corn-meal and side-meat to them on the quiet,
week-days. He was a boss shepherd, you bet, and
he didn’t stand for any church rows or such
like nonsense among his sheep. When one of them
got into trouble the Doc was always on hand with
his crook to pull him out, but let an old ram try
to start any
stampede-and-follow-the-leader-over-the-precipice
foolishness, and he got the sharp end of the
stick.
There was one old
billy-goat in the church, a grocer named Deacon
Wiggleford, who didn’t really like the
Elder’s way of preaching. Wanted him to soak
the Amalekites in his sermons, and to leave the
grocery business alone. Would holler Amen! when
the parson got after the money-changers in the
Temple, but would shut up and look sour when he
took a crack at the short-weight prune-sellers of
the nineteenth century. Said he "went to
church to hear the simple Gospel preached,"
and that may have been one of the reasons, but he
didn’t want it applied, because there
wasn’t any place where the Doc could lay it
on without cutting him on the raw. The real
trouble with the Deacon was that he’d never
really got grace, but only a pretty fair
imitation.
Well, one time
after the Deacon got back from his fall trip
North to buy goods, he tried to worry the Doc by
telling him that all the ministers in Chicago
were preaching that there wasn’t any
super-heated hereafter, but that each man lived
through his share of hell right here on earth.
Doc’s face fell at first, but he cheered up
mightily after nosing it over for a moment, and
allowed it might be so; in fact, that he was sure
it was so, as far as those fellows were
concerned--they lived in Chicago. And next Sunday
he preached hell so hot that the audience fairly
sweat.
He wound up his
sermon by deploring the tendency to atheism which
he had noticed "among those merchants who
had recently gone up with the caravans to Babylon
for spices" (this was just his high-toned
way of describing Deacon Wiggleford’s trip
to Chicago in a day-coach for groceries), and
hoped that the goods which they had brought back
were better than the theology. Of course, the old
folks on the mourners’ bench looked around
to see how the Deacon was taking it, and the
youngsters back on the gigglers’ bench
tittered, and everybody was happy but the Deacon.
He began laying for the Doc right there. And
without meaning to, it seems that I helped his
little game along.
Doc Hoover used to
write me every now and then, allowing that hams
were scarcer in Missouri and more plentiful in my
packing-house than they had any right to be, if
the balance of trade was to be maintained. Said
he had the demand and I had the supply, and he
wanted to know what I was going to do about it. I
always shipped back a tierce by fast freight,
because I was afraid that if I tried to argue the
point he’d come himself and take a car-load.
He made a specialty of seeing that every one in
town had enough food and enough religion, and he
wasn’t to be trifled with when he discovered
a shortage of either. A mighty good salesman was
lost when Doc got religion.
Well, one day
something more than ten years ago he wrote in,
threatening to make the usual raid on my
smoke-house, and when I answered, advising him
that the goods were shipped, I inclosed a little
check and told him to spend it on a trip to the
Holy Land which I’d seen advertised. He
backed and filled over going at first, but
finally the church took it out of his hands and
arranged for a young fellow not long out of the
Theological Seminary to fill the pulpit, and Doc
put a couple of extra shirts in a grip and
started off. I heard the rest of the story from
Si Perkins next fall, when he brought on a couple
of car-loads of steers to Chicago, and tried to
stick me half a cent more than the market for
them on the strength of our having come from the
same town.
It seems that the
young man who took Doc’s place was one of
these fellows with pink tea instead of red blood
in his veins. Hadn’t any opinions except
your opinions until he met some one else.
Preached pretty, fluffy little things, and used
eau de Cologne on his language. Never hit any
nearer home than the unspeakable Turk, and then
he was scared to death till he found out that the
dark-skinned fellow under the gallery was an
Armenian. (The Armenian left the church anyway,
because the unspeakable Turk hadn’t been
soaked hard enough to suit him.) Didn’t
preach much from the Bible, but talked on the
cussedness of Robert Elsmere and the low-downness
of Trilby. Was always wanting everybody to lead
the higher life, without ever really letting on
what it was, or at least so any one could lay
hold of it by the tail. In the end, I reckon
he’d have worked around to Hoyle’s
games--just to call attention to their
wickedness, of course.
The Pillars of the
church, who’d been used to getting their
religion raw from Doc Hoover, didn’t take to
the bottle kindly, and they all fell away except
Deacon Wiggleford. He and the youngsters seemed
to cotton to the new man, and just before Doc
Hoover was due to get back they called a special
meeting, and retired the old man with the title
of pastor emeritus. They voted him two donation
parties a year as long as he lived, and elected
the Higher Lifer as the permanent pastor of the
church. Deacon Wiggleford suggested the pastor
emeritus extra. He didn’t quite know what it
meant, but he’d heard it in Chicago, and it
sounded pretty good, and as if it ought to be a
heap of satisfaction to a fellow who was being
fired. Besides, it didn’t cost anything, and
the Deacon was one of those Christians who think
that you ought to be able to save a man’s
immortal soul for two bits.
The Pillars were
mighty hot next day when they heard what had
happened, and were for calling another special
meeting; but two or three of them got together
and decided that it was best to lay low and avoid
a row until the Doc got back.
He struck town the
next week with a jugful of water from the River
Jordan in one hand and a gripful of paper-weights
made of wood from the Mount of Olives in the
other. He was chockful of the joy of having been
away and of the happiness of getting back, till
they told him about the Deacon’s goings on,
and then he went sort of gray and old, and sat
for a minute all humped up.
Si Perkins, who
was one of the unregenerate, but a mighty good
friend of the Doc’s, was standing by, and he
blurted right out: "You say the word, Doc,
and we’ll make the young people’s
society ride this rooster out of town on a
rail."
That seemed to
wake up the Elder a bit, for he shook his head
and said, "No nonsense now, you Si";
and then, as he thought it over, he began to
bristle and swell up; and when he stood it was to
his full six feet four, and it was all man. You
could see that he was boss of himself again, and
when a man like old Doc Hoover is boss of himself
he comes pretty near being boss of every one
around him. He sent word to the Higher Lifer by
one of the Pillars that he reckoned he was
counting on him to preach a farewell sermon the
next Sunday, and the young man, who’d been
keeping in the background till whatever was going
to drop, dropped, came around to welcome him in
person. But while the Doc had been doing a heap
of praying for grace, he didn’t propose to
take any chances, and he didn’t see him. And
he wouldn’t talk to any one else, just
smiled in an aggravating way, though everybody
except Deacon Wiggleford and the few youngsters
who’d made the trouble called to remonstrate
against his paying any attention to their
foolishness.
The whole town
turned out the next Sunday to see the Doc step
down. He sat beside the Higher Lifer on the
platform, and behind them were the six deacons.
When it came time to begin the services the
Higher Lifer started to get up, but the Doc was
already on his feet, and he whispered to him:
"Set down,
young man"; and the young man sat. The Doc
had a way of talking that didn’t need a gun
to back it up.
The old man
conducted the services right through, just as he
always did, except that when he’d remembered
in his prayer every one in America and had worked
around through Europe to Asia Minor, he lingered
a trifle longer over the Turks than usual, and
the list of things which he seemed to think they
needed brought the Armenian back into the fold
right then and there.
By the time the
Doc got around to preaching, Deacon Wiggleford
was looking like a fellow who’d bought a
gold brick, and the Higher Lifer like the brick.
Everybody else felt and looked as if they were
attending the Doc’s funeral, and, as usual,
the only really calm and composed member of the
party was the corpse.
"You will
find the words of my text," Doc began,
"in the revised version of the works of
William Shakespeare, in the book--I mean play--of
Romeo and Juliet, Act Two, Scene Two:
‘Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall
say good-night till it be morrow,’" and
while the audience was pulling itself together he
laid out that text in four heads, each with six
subheads. Began on partings, and went on a still
hunt through history and religion for them. Made
the audience part with Julius Caesar with regret,
and had ‘em sniffling at saying good-by to
Napoleon and Jeff Davis. Made ‘em feel that
they’d lost their friends and their money,
and then foreclosed the mortgage on the old
homestead in a
this-is-very-sad-but-I-need-the-money tone. In
fact, when he had finished with Parting and was
ready to begin on Sweet Sorrow, he had not only
exhausted the subject, but left considerable of a
deficit in it.
They say that the
hour he spent on Sweet Sorrow laid over anything
that the town had ever seen for sadness. Put
‘em through every stage of grief from the
snuffles to the snorts. Doc always was a pretty
noisy preacher, but he began work on that head
with soft-pedal-tremolo-stop preaching and wound
up with a peroration like a steamboat explosion.
Started with his illustrations dying of
consumption and other peaceful diseases, and
finished up with railroad wrecks. He’d been
at it two hours when he got through burying the
victims of his last illustration, and he was just
ready to tackle his third head with six subheads.
But before he took the plunge he looked at his
watch and glanced up sort of surprised:
"I
find," he said, "that we have consumed
more time with these introductory remarks than I
had intended. We would all, I know, like to say
good-by till to-morrow, did our dear young
brother’s plans permit, but alas! he leaves
us on the 2:17. Such is life; to-day we are here,
to-morrow we are in St. Louis, to which our young
friend must return. Usually, I don’t approve
of traveling on the Sabbath, but in a case like
this, where the reasons are very pressing, I will
lay aside my scruples, and with a committee of
deacons which I have appointed see our pastor
emeritus safely off."
The Doc then
announced that he would preach a series of six
Sunday night sermons on the six best-selling
books of the month, and pronounced the
benediction while the Higher Lifer and Deacon
Wiggleford were trying to get the floor. But the
committee of deacons had ‘em by the
coat-tails, and after listening to their soothing
arguments the Higher Lifer decided to take the
2:17 as per schedule. When he saw the whole
congregation crowding round the Doc, and the
women crying over him and wanting to take him
home to dinner, he understood that there’d
been a mistake somewhere and that he was the
mistake.
Of course the Doc
never really preached on the six best-selling
books. That was the first and last time he ever
found a text in anything but the Bible. Si
Perkins wanted to have Deacon Wiggleford before
the church on charges. Said he’d been told
that this pastor emeritus business was Latin, and
it smelt of popery to him; but the Doc
wouldn’t stand for any foolishness. Allowed
that the special meeting was illegal, and that
settled it; and he reckoned they could leave the
Deacon’s case to the Lord. But just the
same, the small boys used to worry Wiggleford
considerably by going into his store and yelling:
"Mother says
she doesn’t want any more of those pastor
emeritus eggs," or, "She’ll send
it back if you give us any more of that dead-line
butter."
If the Doc had
laid down that Sunday, there’d probably have
been a whole lot of talk and tears over his
leaving, but in the end, the Higher Lifer or some
other fellow would have had his job, and
he’d have become one of those nice old men
for whom every one has a lot of respect but no
special use. But he kept right on, owning his
pulpit and preaching in it, until the Great Call
was extended to him.
I’m a good
deal like the Doc--willing to preach a farewell
sermon whenever it seems really necessary, but
some other fellow’s.
Your affectionate
father,
JOHN GRAHAM.
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