Page:Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son.djvu/281

Rh he's so recent that they can only pretend to have forgotten it; but in Chicago they can't lose it because the ancestor is hustling on the Board of Trade or out at the Stock Yards. I want to say right here that I don't propose to be an ancestor until after I'm dead. Then, if you want to have some fellow whose grandfather sold bad whiskey to the Indians sniff and smell pork when you come into the room, you can suit yourself.

Of course, I may be off in sizing this thing up, because it's a little out of my line. But it's been my experience that these people who think that they are all the choice cuts off the critter, and that the rest of us are only fit for sausage, are usually chuck steak when you get them under the knife. I've tried two or three of them, who had gone broke, in the office, but when you separate them from their money there's nothing left, not even their friends.

I never see a fellow trying to crawl or to buy his way into society that I don't think