Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son quotes

You’ll find that education’s about the only thing lying around loose in this world, and that it’s about the only thing a fellow can have as much of as he’s willing to haul away.

Everything else is screwed down tight and the screw-driver lost.

I didn’t have your advantages when I was a boy, and you can’t have mine. 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;

If you didn’t, it doesn’t make any special difference how you cured it—the ham-tryer’s going to strike the sour spot around the bone.

And it doesn’t make any difference how much sugar and fancy pickle you soak into a fellow, he’s no good unless he’s sound and sweet at the core.

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.

… sensation every minute, but if you’ll simply use a little conscience as a tryer, and probe into a thing which looks sweet and sound on the skin, to see if you can’t fetch up a sour smell from around the bone, you’ll be all right.

I’m anxious that you should be a good scholar, but I’m more anxious that you should be a good clean man.

And if you graduate with a sound conscience, I shan’t care so much if there are a few holes in your Latin.

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.

I can’t hand out any ready-made success to you. It would do you no good, and it would do the house harm.

There is plenty of room at the top here, but there is no elevator in the building.

Starting, as you do, with a good education, you should be able to climb quicker than the fellow who hasn’t got it;

I want you to learn right at the outset not to play with the spoon before you take the medicine. Putting off an easy thing makes it hard, and putting off a hard one makes it impossible.

Procrastination is the longest word in the language, but there’s only one letter between its ends when they occupy their proper places in the alphabet.

Old Dick Stover, for whom I once clerked in Indiana, was the worst hand at procrastinating that I ever saw.

I don’t want to seem pessimistic, but I have seen hundreds of boys graduate from college and go over with the same idea, and they didn’t bring back a great deal except a few trunks of badly fitting clothes.

Seeing the world is like charity—it covers a multitude of sins, and, like charity, it ought to begin at home.

Culture is not a matter of a change of climate. You’ll hear more about Browning to the square foot in the Mississippi Valley than you will in England. And there’s as much Art talk on the Lake front as in the Latin Quarter.

and when I got back I found out that they had been painted by a measly little fellow who went to Paris to study art, after Bill Harris had found out that he was no good as a settling clerk.

I keep ’em to remind myself that there’s no fool like an old American fool when he gets this picture paresis.

The fellow who tried to fit me out with a coat-of-arms didn’t find me so easy. I picked mine when I first went into business for myself—a charging steer—and it’s registered at Washington.

Dear Pierrepont: Yours of the fourth has the right ring, and it says more to the number of words used than any letter that I have ever received from you.

I remember reading once that some fellows use language to conceal thought; but it’s been my experience that a good many more use it instead of thought.

A business man’s conversation should be regulated by fewer and simpler rules than any other function of the human animal. They are:

for when a man’s listening he isn’t telling on himself and he’s flattering the fellow who is. Give most men a good listener and most women enough note-paper and they’ll tell all they know.

Money talks—but not unless its owner has a loose tongue, and then its remarks are always offensive.

Poverty talks, too, but nobody wants to hear what it has to say.

Give most men a good listener and most women enough note-paper and they’ll tell all they know. Money talks—but not unless its owner has a loose tongue, and then its remarks are always offensive.

Poverty talks, too, but nobody wants to hear what it has to say.

I simply mention these things in passing because I’m afraid you’re apt to be the fellow who’s doing the talking;

It doesn’t make any difference how mean and trifling the thing he’s doing may seem, that’s the big thing and the only thing for him just then.

Business is like oil—it won’t mix with anything but business.

You can resolve everything in the world, even a great fortune, into atoms. And the fundamental principles which govern the handling of postage stamps and of millions are exactly the same.

And the fundamental principles which govern the handling of postage stamps and of millions are exactly the same. They are the common law of business, and the whole practice of commerce is founded on them.

They are so simple that a fool can’t learn them; so hard that a lazy man won’t.

Boys are constantly writing me for advice about how to succeed, and when I send them my receipt they say that I am dealing out commonplace generalities.

Old men have tender feet, and apologies are poor salve for aching corns.

Remember that when you’re in the right you can afford to keep your temper, and that when you’re in the wrong you can’t afford to lose it.

When you’ve got an uncertain cow it’s all O.K. to tie a figure eight in her tail, if you ain’t thirsty, and it’s excitement you’re after;

He isn’t the brightest man in the office, but he is loyal to me and to the house, and when you have been in business as long as I have you will be inclined to put a pretty high value on loyalty.

It is the one commodity that hasn’t any market value, and it’s the one that you can’t pay too much for.

You can trust any number of men with your money, but mighty few with your reputation. Half the men who are with the house on pay day are against it the other six.

… men who have done something that makes them worth meeting you will find that there are no “keep off the grass” or “beware of the dog” signs around their premises, and that they don’t motion to the orchestra to play slow music while they talk.

Superiority makes every man feel its equal.

It is courtesy without condescension; affability without familiarity; self-sufficiency without selfishness; simplicity without snide. It weighs sixteen ounces to the pound without the package, and it doesn’t need a four-colored label to make it go.

I have always found that, whenever I thought a heap of anything I owned, there was nothing like getting the other fellow’s views expressed in figures; and the other fellow is usually a pessimist when he’s buying.

The lady on the dollar is the only woman who hasn’t any sentiment in her make-up.

And if you really want a look at the solid facts of a thing you must strain off the sentiment first.

If a fellow has got poetry in him it’s bound to come out sooner or later in the papers or the street cars; and the longer you keep it bottled up the harder it comes, and the longer it takes the patient to recover.

There’s no easier way to cure foolishness than to give a man leave to be foolish.

And the only way to show a fellow that he’s chosen the wrong business is to let him try it. If it really is the wrong thing you won’t have to argue with him to quit, and if it isn’t you haven’t any right to.

for I will do Simpkins the justice to say that there was nothing slow about him. He and his father split up, temporarily, over it, and, of course, it cost me the old man’s trade and friendship.

I want to say right here that the easiest way in the world to make enemies is to hire friends.

I lost sight of Simpkins for a while, and then he turned up at the office one morning as friendly and familiar as ever. Said he was a reporter and wanted to interview me on the December wheat deal.

I was a little uncertain about you at first, but I guess the Lord intended you to hunt with the pack. Get the scent in your nostrils and keep your nose to the ground, and don’t worry too much about the end of the chase.

The fun of the thing’s in the run and not in the finish.

Your affectionate father, John Graham.

I want to say right here that there always comes a time to the fellow who blows fifty-two dollars at a lick on roses when he thinks how many staple groceries he could have bought with the money.

After all, there’s no fool like a young fool, because in the nature of things he’s got a long time to live.

I suppose I’m fanning the air when I ask you to be guided by my judgment in this matter, because, while a young fellow will consult his father about buying a horse, he’s cock-sure of himself when it comes to picking a wife.

I suppose I’m fanning the air when I ask you to be guided by my judgment in this matter, because, while a young fellow will consult his father about buying a horse, he’s cock-sure of himself when it comes to picking a wife.

Marriages may be made in Heaven, but most engagements are made in the back parlor with the gas so low that a fellow doesn’t really get a square look at what he’s taking.

While a man doesn’t see much of a girl’s family when he’s courting, he’s apt to see a good deal of it when he’s housekeeping;

A man can’t pick his own mother, but he can pick his son’s mother, and when he chooses a father-in-law who plays the bucket shops, he needn’t be surprised if his own son plays the races.

Never marry a poor girl who’s been raised like a rich one.

She’s simply traded the virtues of the poor for the vices of the rich without going long on their good points. To marry for money or to marry without money is a crime.

but the girls did.

You can trust a woman’s taste on everything except men; and it’s mighty lucky that she slips up there or we’d pretty nigh all be bachelors.

I might add that you can’t trust a man’s taste on women, either, and that’s pretty lucky, too, because there are a good many old maids in the world as it is.

for you looked so blamed important and chesty that I am inclined to think you will tell the first customer who says he doesn’t like our sausage that he knows what he can do about it.

Repartee makes reading lively, but business dull.

And what the house needs is more orders.

But you can figure on one thing—that you will never become the pride of the pond by starting out to cut figure eights before you are firm on your skates.

A real salesman is one-part talk and nine-parts judgment; and he uses the nine-parts of judgment to tell when to use the one-part of talk.

Goods ain’t sold under Marquess of Queensberry rules any more, and you’ll find that knowing how many rounds the Old ’Un can last against the Boiler-Maker won’t really help you to load up the junior partner with our Corn-fed brand hams.

Smith; that’s a blamed sight better lard than I thought Muggins & Co. were making.” And you’d have driven a spike right through that fellow’s little joke and have nailed down his order hard and tight with the same blow.

What you know is a club for yourself, and what you don’t know is a meat-ax for the other fellow.

That is why you want to be on the lookout all the time for information about the business, and to nail a fact just as a sensible man nails a mosquito—the first time it settles near him.

… a good many pulls in my time, but I never saw one strong enough to lift a man any higher than he could raise himself by his boot straps, or long enough to reach through the cashier’s window for more money than its owner earned.

When a fellow brags that he has a pull, he’s a liar or his employer’s a fool.

And when a fellow whines that he’s being held down, the truth is, as a general thing, that his boss can’t hold him up.

He just picks a nice, soft spot, stretches out flat on his back, and yells that some heartless brute has knocked him down and is sitting on his chest.

A good man is as full of bounce as a cat with a small boy and a bull terrier after him.

When he’s thrown to the dog from the second-story window, he fixes while he’s sailing through the air to land right, and when the dog jumps for the spot where he hits, he isn’t there, but in the top of the tree across the street.

He knew his business. And when a fellow knows his business, he doesn’t have to explain to people that he does. It isn’t what a man knows, but what he thinks he knows that he brags about.

Big talk means little knowledge.

There’s a vast difference between having a carload of miscellaneous facts sloshing around loose in your head and getting all mixed up in transit, and carrying the same assortment properly boxed and crated for convenient handling and immediate delivery.

and when you’ve soaked up all the information you can hold, you will have to forget half of it before you will be of any real use to the house. If there’s anything worse than knowing too little, it’s knowing too much.

Education will broaden a narrow mind, but there’s no known cure for a big head.

The best you can hope is that it will swell up and bust; and then, of course, there’s nothing left. Poverty never spoils a good man, but prosperity often does.

Education will broaden a narrow mind, but there’s no known cure for a big head. The best you can hope is that it will swell up and bust; and then, of course, there’s nothing left.

Poverty never spoils a good man, but prosperity often does.

It’s easy to stand hard times, because that’s the only thing you can do, but in good times the fool-killer has to do night work.

Education will broaden a narrow mind, but there’s no known cure for a big head. The best you can hope is that it will swell up and bust; and then, of course, there’s nothing left. Poverty never spoils a good man, but prosperity often does.

It’s easy to stand hard times, because that’s the only thing you can do, but in good times the fool-killer has to do night work.

I simply mention these things in a general way. A good many of them don’t apply to you, no doubt, but it won’t do any harm to make sure.

A good many of them don’t apply to you, no doubt, but it won’t do any harm to make sure. Most men get cross-eyed when they come to size themselves up, and see an angel instead of what they’re trying to look at.

There’s nothing that tells the truth to a woman like a mirror, or that lies harder to a man.

What I am sure of is that you have got the sulks too quick. If you knew all that you’ll have to learn before you’ll be a big, broad-gauged merchant, you might have something to be sulky about.

But if the man had had a little tact he would have kept them in separate houses, and have let each one think that she was getting a trifle the best of it, without really giving it to either.

Tact is the knack of keeping quiet at the right time; of being so agreeable yourself that no one can be disagreeable to you; of making inferiority feel like equality.

A tactful man can pull the stinger from a bee without getting stung.

Tact is the knack of keeping quiet at the right time; of being so agreeable yourself that no one can be disagreeable to you; of making inferiority feel like equality.

A tactful man can pull the stinger from a bee without getting stung.

Some men deal in facts, and call Bill Jones a liar. They get knocked down.

Own up. The time to sort out rotten eggs is at the nest. The deeper you hide them in the case the longer they stay in circulation, and the worse impression they make when they finally come to the breakfast-table.

A mistake sprouts a lie when you cover it up.

And one lie breeds enough distrust to choke out the prettiest crop of confidence that a fellow ever cultivated.

When you make a mistake, don’t make the second one—keeping it to yourself. Own up.

The time to sort out rotten eggs is at the nest.

The deeper you hide them in the case the longer they stay in circulation, and the worse impression they make when they finally come to the breakfast-table. A mistake sprouts a lie when you cover it up.

Of course, clothes don’t make the man, but they make all of him except his hands and face during business hours, and that’s a pretty considerable area of the human animal.

A dirty shirt may hide a pure heart, but it seldom covers a clean skin.

If you look as if you had slept in your clothes, most men will jump to the conclusion that you have, and you will never get to know them well enough to explain that your head is so full of noble thoughts that you haven’t …

Naturally, as the old man’s son, you have a lot of fellows watching you and betting that you are no good.

If you succeed they will say it was an accident; and if you fail they will say it was a cinch.

There are two unpardonable sins in this world—success and failure. Those who succeed can’t forgive a fellow for being a failure, and those who fail can’t forgive him for being a success.

Naturally, as the old man’s son, you have a lot of fellows watching you and betting that you are no good. If you succeed they will say it was an accident; and if you fail they will say it was a cinch.

There are two unpardonable sins in this world—success and failure.

Those who succeed can’t forgive a fellow for being a failure, and those who fail can’t forgive him for being a success. If you do succeed, though, you will be too busy to bother very much about what the failures think.

will fire you if you do. Trading on margin is a good deal like paddling around the edge of the old swimming hole—it seems safe and easy at first, but before a fellow knows it he has stepped off the edge into deep water.

The wheat pit is only thirty feet across, but it reaches clear down to Hell.

And trading on margin means trading on the ragged edge of nothing. When a man buys, he’s buying something that the other fellow hasn’t got. When a man sells, he’s selling something that he hasn’t got.

And trading on margin means trading on the ragged edge of nothing. When a man buys, he’s buying something that the other fellow hasn’t got. When a man sells, he’s selling something that he hasn’t got.

And it’s been my experience that the net profit on nothing is nit.

When a speculator wins he don’t stop till he loses, and when he loses he can’t stop till he wins.

Because you are the son of a pork packer you may think that you know a little more than the next fellow about paper pork. There’s nothing in it.

The poorest men on earth are the relations of millionaires.

When I sell futures on ’Change, they’re against hogs that are traveling into dry salt at the rate of one a second, and if the market goes up on me I’ve got the solid meat to deliver.

Most men think that they can figure up all their assets in dollars and cents, but a merchant may owe a hundred thousand dollars and be solvent.

A man’s got to lose more than money to be broke.

When a fellow’s got a straight backbone and a clear eye his creditors don’t have to lie awake nights worrying over his liabilities. You can hide your meanness from your brain and your tongue, but the eye and the backbone won’t keep secrets.

and that when he reaches down to pick up the money there’s usually a string tied to it and a small boy in the bushes to give it a yank.

Easy-come money never draws interest; easy-borrowed dollars pay usury.

Of course, the Board of Trade and every other commercial exchange have their legitimate uses, but all you need to know just now is that speculation by a fellow who never owns more pork at a time than he sees on his breakfast plate isn’t …

Consider carefully before you say a hard word to a man, but never let a chance to say a good one go by.

Praise judiciously bestowed is money invested.

Never learn anything about your men except from themselves. A good manager needs no detectives, and the fellow who can’t read human nature can’t manage it.

A good manager needs no detectives, and the fellow who can’t read human nature can’t manage it. The phonograph records of a fellow’s character are lined in his face, and a man’s days tell the secrets of his nights.

Be slow to hire and quick to fire.

The time to discover incompatibility of temper and curl-papers is before the marriage ceremony. But when you find that you’ve hired the wrong man, you can’t get rid of him too quick. Pay him an extra month, but don’t let him stay another day.

The time to discover incompatibility of temper and curl-papers is before the marriage ceremony. But when you find that you’ve hired the wrong man, you can’t get rid of him too quick. Pay him an extra month, but don’t let him stay another day.

A discharged clerk in the office is like a splinter in the thumb—a centre of soreness.

There are no exceptions to this rule, because there are no exceptions to human nature.

When a boss has to spend his days swearing at his assistant and the clerks have to sit up nights hating him, they haven’t much time left to swear by the house.

Satisfaction is the oil of the business machine.

Some fellows can only see those above them, and others can only see those under them, but a good man is cross-eyed and can see both ends at once.

I simply mention this in passing, because I see in the Chicago papers which have been sent me that you were among the players on the links one afternoon a fortnight ago.

Golf’s a nice, foolish game, and there ain’t any harm in it so far as I know except for the balls—the stiff balls at the beginning, the lost balls in the middle, and the highballs at the end of the game.

But a young fellow who wants to be a boss butcher hasn’t much daylight to waste on any kind of links except sausage links.

Of course, I want you to enjoy good society, but any society is good society where congenial men and women meet together for wholesome amusement. But I want you to keep away from people who choose play for a profession.

A man’s as good as he makes himself, but no man’s any good because his grandfather was.

Your affectionate father, John Graham.

Of course, you want to have your eyes open all the time for a good man, but follow the old maid’s example—look under the bed and in the closet, not in the mirror, for him.

A man who does big things is too busy to talk about them. When the jaws really need exercise, chew gum.

Some men go through life on the Sarsaparilla Theory—that they’ve got to give a hundred doses of talk about themselves for every dollar which they take in; and that’s a pretty good theory when you’re getting a dollar for ten cents’ worth of ingredients.

but sooner or later they’re bound to swoop back to their dead horse, and you’ll get the buzzard smell.

Hot air can take up a balloon a long ways, but it can’t keep it there.

And when a fellow’s turning flip-flops up among the clouds, he’s naturally going to have the farmers gaping at him. But in the end there always comes a time when the parachute fails to work.

though some men can manage to fall down the hall stairs and break their necks. The path isn’t the shortest way to the top, but it’s usually the safest way.

Life isn’t a spurt, but a long, steady climb.

You can’t run far up-hill without stopping to sit down. Some men do a day’s work and then spend six lolling around admiring it. They rush at a thing with a whoop and use up all their wind in that.

They rush at a thing with a whoop and use up all their wind in that. And when they’re rested and have got it back, they whoop again and start off in a new direction.

They mistake intention for determination, and after they have told you what they propose to do and get right up to doing it, they simply peter out.

I’ve heard a good deal in my time about the foolishness of hens, but when it comes to right-down, plum foolishness, give me a rooster, every time. He’s always strutting and stretching and crowing and bragging about things with which he had nothing to do.

when he meets another rooster, he crows; and when the other rooster licks him, he crows; and so he keeps it up straight through the day. He even wakes up during the night and crows a little on general principles.

But when you hear from a hen, she’s laid an egg, and she don’t make a great deal of noise about it, either.

I speak of these things in a general way, because I want you to keep in mind all the time that steady, quiet, persistent, plain work can’t be imitated or replaced by anything just as good, and because your request for a job for Courtland …

That was a twelve-grain dose, without any sugar coat, but it sweat more cant and false pride out of my system than I could get back into it for the next twenty years.

I learned right there how to be humble, which is a heap more important than knowing how to be proud.

There are mighty few men that need any lessons in that.

I reckon there hasn’t been a time in twenty years when there wasn’t a nice “Gates Ajar” piece all made up and ready for me in some office near the Board of Trade.

But the first essential of a quiet funeral is a willing corpse.

And I’m still sitting up and taking nourishment.

But the first essential of a quiet funeral is a willing corpse. And I’m still sitting up and taking nourishment.

There are two things you never want to pay any attention to—abuse and flattery. The first can’t harm you and the second can’t help you.

Some men are like yellow dogs—when you’re coming toward them they’ll jump up and try to lick your hands; and when you’re walking away from them they’ll sneak up behind and snap at your heels.

you worry because you’re afraid your business is going to smash, and your health busts up instead.

Worrying is the one game in which, if you guess right, you don’t get any satisfaction out of your smartness.

A busy man has no time to bother with it. He can always find plenty of old women in skirts or trousers to spend their days worrying over their own troubles and to sit up nights waking his.

If she isn’t, it doesn’t make any special difference how you start out, you’re going to end up all wrong.

Money ought never to be the consideration in marriage, but it always ought to be a consideration.

When a boy and a girl don’t think enough about money before the ceremony, they’re going to have to think altogether too much about it after;

I might add, too, that I’ve met a good many husbands who had cut their wives’ expenses in half, and they fit naturally into any discussion of our business, because they are hogs.

There’s a point where economy becomes a vice, and that’s when a man leaves its practice to his wife.

An unmarried man is a good deal like a piece of unimproved real estate—he may be worth a whole lot of money, but he isn’t of any particular use except to build on.

There’s a point where economy becomes a vice, and that’s when a man leaves its practice to his wife.

An unmarried man is a good deal like a piece of unimproved real estate—he may be worth a whole lot of money, but he isn’t of any particular use except to build on.

The great trouble with a lot of these fellows is that they’re “made land,” and if you dig down a few feet you strike ooze and booze under the layer of dollars that their daddies dumped in on top.

Your Ma told me that Jack had nice instincts about these little things which women like, and always put a good deal of heavy thought into selecting his flowers for them.

It’s been my experience that a critter who has instincts instead of sense belongs in the bushes with the dicky-birds.

No one ever knew just what happened to Jack during the next three hours.

“

Hush it up! You might as well say ‘Shoo!’ to the Limited and expect it to stop for you.

”

Dear Pierrepont: If that’s what, it’s all right. And you can’t get married too quick to suit the old man.

I believe in short engagements and long marriages.

I don’t see any sense in a fellow’s sitting around on the mourner’s bench with the sinners, after he’s really got religion. The time to size up the other side’s strength is before the engagement.

You can punch your brother when he plays the martyr, but you’ve got to love your wife. A violent woman drives a fellow to drink, but a nagging one drives him crazy.

She takes his faults and ties them to him like a tin can to a yellow dog’s tail, and the harder he runs to get away from them the more he hears of them.

I simply mention these things in a general way, and in the spirit of the preacher at the funeral of the man who wasn’t “a professor”—because it’s customary to make a few appropriate remarks on these occasions.

You can punch your brother when he plays the martyr, but you’ve got to love your wife.

A violent woman drives a fellow to drink, but a nagging one drives him crazy.

She takes his faults and ties them to him like a tin can to a yellow dog’s tail, and the harder he runs to get away from them the more he hears of them.

there were a-plenty of old fashioned posies in the front yard, and a-plenty of rats in the cellar; there was half an acre of ground out back, but so little room inside that I had to sit with my feet out a window.

It was just the place to go for a picnic, but it’s been my experience that a fellow does most of his picnicking before he’s married.

Your Ma did the cooking, and I hustled for things to cook, though I would take a shy at it myself once in a while and get up my muscle tossing flapjacks.

It was pretty rough sailing, you bet, but one way and another we managed to get a good deal of satisfaction out of it, because we had made up our minds to take our fun as we went along.

With most people happiness is something that is always just a day off. But I have made it a rule never to put off being happy till to-morrow.

Don’t accept notes for happiness, because you’ll find that when they’re due they’re never paid, but just renewed for another thirty days.

With most people happiness is something that is always just a day off. But I have made it a rule never to put off being happy till to-morrow.

Don’t accept notes for happiness, because you’ll find that when they’re due they’re never paid, but just renewed for another thirty days.

I was clerking in a general store at that time, but I had a little weakness for livestock, even then;

… next day, I noticed that your Ma looked mighty solemn as she set the roast of pork down in front of me, but I strayed off, thinking of something else, as I carved, and my wits were off wool gathering sure enough when I said:

“Will you have a piece of Toby, my dear?”

Well sir, she just looked at me for a moment, and then she burst out crying and ran away from the table.

Instead of hiring women, I try to hire their husbands, and then I usually have them both working for me.

There’s nothing like a woman at home to spur on a man at the office.

A married man is worth more salary than a single one, because his wife makes him worth more. He’s apt to go to bed a little sooner and to get up a little earlier;

Instead of hiring women, I try to hire their husbands, and then I usually have them both working for me. There’s nothing like a woman at home to spur on a man at the office.

A married man is worth more salary than a single one, because his wife makes him worth more.

He’s apt to go to bed a little sooner and to get up a little earlier;