Page:Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son.djvu/241

Rh can hide your meanness from your brain and your tongue, but the eye and the backbone won't keep secrets. When the tongue lies, the eyes tell the truth.

I know you'll think that the old man is bucking and kicking up a lot of dust over a harmless little flyer. But I've kept a heap smarter boys than you out of Joliet when they found it easy to feed the Board of Trade hog out of my cash drawer, after it had sucked up their savings in a couple of laps.

You must learn not to overwork a dollar any more than you would a horse. Three per cent, is a small load for it to draw; six, a safe one; when it pulls in ten for you it's likely working out West and you've got to watch to see that it doesn't buck; when it makes twenty you own a blame good critter or a mighty foolish one, and you want to make dead sure which; but if it draws a hundred it's playing the races or something just as hard on horses and dollars, and the