Page:Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son.djvu/174

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

called up on the carpet and made to promise that it will never happen again. With the first you needn't bother. There's no use feeding expensive "hen-food" to an old Dominick that sucks eggs. The chances are that the car weighed out more than it was billed, and that the fellow played the hose on it himself and added a thousand pounds of cheap salt before he jobbed it out to his trade.

Where you're going to slip up at first is in knowing which is which, but if you don't learn pretty quick you'll not travel very far for the house. For your own satisfaction I will say right here that you may know you are in a fair way of becoming a good drummer by three things:

First—When you send us Orders.

Second—More Orders.

Third—Big Orders.

If you do this you won't have a great deal of time to write long letters, and we won't have a great deal of time to read them, for

134