Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son | Page 4

going into
muscle, but you don't have to be very bright to figure out which one
started the demand for painkiller in your insides, or to guess, next
morning, which one made you believe in a personal devil the night
before. And so, while a fellow can't figure out to an ounce whether it's
Latin or algebra or history or what among the solids that is building
him up in this place or that, he can go right along feeding them in and
betting that they're not the things that turn his tongue fuzzy. It's down
among the sweets, among his amusements and recreations, that he's
going to find his stomach-ache, and it's there that he wants to go slow
and to pick and choose.
It's not the first half, but the second half of a college education which
merchants mean when they ask if a college education pays. It's the
Willie and the Bertie boys; the chocolate eclair and tutti-frutti boys; the
la-de-dah and the baa-baa-billy-goat boys; the high cock-a-lo-rum and
the cock-a-doodle-do boys; the Bah Jove!, hair-parted-in-the-middle,
cigaroot-smoking, Champagne-Charlie, up-all-night-and-in-all-day
boys that make 'em doubt the cash value of the college output, and
overlook the roast-beef and blood-gravy boys, the shirt-sleeves and
high-water-pants boys, who take their college education and make
some fellow's business hum with it.
Does a College education pay? Does it pay to feed in pork trimmings at

five cents a pound at the hopper and draw out nice, cunning, little
"country" sausages at twenty cents a pound at the other end? Does it
pay to take a steer that's been running loose on the range and living on
cactus and petrified wood till he's just a bunch of barb-wire and
sole-leather, and feed him corn till he's just a solid hunk of porterhouse
steak and oleo oil?
You bet it pays. Anything that trains a boy to think and to think quick
pays; anything that teaches a boy to get the answer before the other
fellow gets through biting the pencil, pays.
College doesn't make fools; it develops them. It doesn't make bright
men; it develops them. A fool will turn out a fool, whether he goes to
college or not, though he'll probably turn out a different sort of a fool.
And a good, strong boy will turn out a bright, strong man whether he's
worn smooth in the
grab-what-you-want-and-eat-standing-with-one-eye-skinned-for-the-do
g school of the streets and stores, or polished up and slicked down in
the give-your-order-to-the-waiter-and-get-a-sixteen-course-dinner
school of the professors. But while the lack of a college education can't
keep No. 1 down, having it boosts No. 2 up.
It's simply the difference between jump in, rough-and-tumble,
kick-with-the-heels-and-butt-with-the-head nigger fighting, and this
grin-and-look-pleasant,
dodge-and-save-your-wind-till-you-see-a-chance-to-land-on-the-solar-p
lexus style of the trained athlete. Both styles win fights, but the fellow
with a little science is the better man, providing he's kept his muscle
hard. If he hasn't, he's in a bad way, for his fancy sparring is just going
to aggravate the other fellow so that he'll eat him up.
Of course, some men are like pigs, the more you educate them, the
more amusing little cusses they become, and the funnier capers they cut
when they show off their tricks. Naturally, the place to send a boy of
that breed is to the circus, not to college.
Speaking of educated pigs, naturally calls to mind the case of old man
Whitaker and his son, Stanley. I used to know the old man mighty well

ten years ago. He was one of those men whom business narrows,
instead of broadens. Didn't get any special fun out of his work, but kept
right along at it because he didn't know anything else. Told me he'd had
to root for a living all his life and that he proposed to have Stan's
brought to him in a pail. Sent him to private schools and dancing
schools and colleges and universities, and then shipped him to Oxford
to soak in a little "atmosphere," as he put it. I never could quite lay hold
of that atmosphere dodge by the tail, but so far as I could make out, the
idea was that there was something in the air of the Oxford ham-house
that gave a fellow an extra fancy smoke.
Well, about the time Stan was through, the undertaker called by for the
old man, and when his assets were boiled down and the water drawn
off, there wasn't enough left to furnish Stan with a really nourishing
meal. I had a talk with Stan about what he was going to do, but some
ways he didn't strike me as having the making of a good private of
industry, let alone a captain, so I started in to get him a job that would
suit his talents. Got him in a bank, but