Page:Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son.djvu/75

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LETTERS TO HIS SON

eggs, with a little spring water, for dinner. But coming from Harvard to the packinghouse will give you change enough this year to keep you in good trim, even if you didn't have a fortnight's leeway to run loose.

You will always find it a safe rule to take a thing just as quick as it is offered—especially a job. It is never easy to get one except when you don't want it; but when you have to get work, and go after it with a gun, you'll find it as shy as an old crow that every farmer in the county has had a shot at.

When I was a young fellow and out of a place, I always made it a rule to take the first job that offered, and to use it for bait. You can catch a minnow with a worm, and a bass will take your minnow. A good fat bass will tempt an otter, and then you've got something worth skinning. Of course, there's no danger of your not being able to get a job with the house—in fact, there is no real way in which you can escape getting

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