Letters From A Self-Made Merchant To His Son Book

This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

Publishers Weekly

Perhaps this book was a big hit when it first appeared in 1902, but it is preachy and unquaintly old-fashioned to the contemporary reader. Lorimer was an editor at the Saturday Evening Post, and this appears to be nothing more than a puffed-up piece from that magazine. The first ``letter,'' written to Pierrepont Graham, a freshman at Harvard, by his pork-packing father in Chicago, contains all sorts of fatherly advice about college life, and what a young man should and should not do. But, as Pierrepont ages and goes to work in Dad's company, the homilies continue with few variations, and the folksy examples (one per chapter) of how not to behave, plus endless metaphors, become boring, and the book's conceit wears thin. There is much advice (indeed, that is all the book contains), but as Graham senior himself notes, it is the same advice that young men always hear. However, there are a few bright spots. Graham's rules for business conversation are useful and still timely: ``Have something to say. Say it. Stop talking.'' (May)