Letters From a Self-Made Merchant to His Son

Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son is a philosophical self-help book told in the form of a series of fictional letters from John Graham (a successful businessman) to his son Pierrepont (an indolent college student). John's advice tends toward the conventional and earnest, but with occasionally useful wisdom:

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.

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Some men learn the value of money by not having any and starting out to pry a few dollars loose from the odd millions that are lying around; and some learn it by having fifty thousand or so left to them and starting out to spend it as if it were fifty thousand a year. Some men learn the value of truth by having to do business with liars; and some by going to Sunday School. Some men learn the cussedness of whiskey by having a drunken father; and some by having a good mother. Some men get an education from other men and newspapers and public libraries; and some get it from professors and parchments — it doesn’t make any special difference how you get a half-nelson on the right thing, just so you get it and freeze on to it.

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The first thing that any education ought to give a man is character, and the second thing is education. That is where I’m a little skittish about this college business. I’m not starting in to preach to you, because I know a young fellow with the right sort of stuff in him preaches to himself harder than any one else can, and that he’s mighty often switched off the right path by having it pointed out to him in the wrong way.

There are two parts of a college education — the part that you get in the schoolroom from the professors, and the part that you get outside of it from the boys. That’s the really important part. For the first can only make you a scholar, while the second can make you a man.

Education’s a good deal like eating — a fellow can’t always tell which particular thing did him good, but he can usually tell which one did him harm.

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