Old Gorgon Graham. By George Horace Lorimer. (Methuen and Co.
8s.)—Readers of the "Letters from a Self-Made Merchant" will be glad to welcome another instalment of shrewd, practical, and sagacious advice from the same father to the same son. Except that the book is necessarily not so original a departure in fiction, this collection of letters is quite as good as the first. The reader, and even the reviewer, will be quite saddened by the evident hints at the end that the old man's course is almost run, and that he intends to hand over the business to his son, as a sequel to the pages of good advice which he has already bestowed upon him. As a matter of fact, the son, in spite of his father's affection for him, is not an attractive character. Perhaps, as he is never allowed to say a word for himself, he is not given a fair chance. But the impression remains on the reader's mind that old Gorgon Graham is worth a good half-dozen of his son Pierrepont. Tho book is as full as its predecessor of excellent hints on the conduct of affairs, conveyed in terse, pregnant sentences, as for instance : " Remember that when a man's asking for a job, he's not showing you himself, but the man he wants you to hire." And again as to uupunctuality in an applicant for a post : "A follow who can be late when his own interests are at stake is pretty sure to be when yours are." Though he expresses himself in twentieth-century American slang, instead of in Elizabethan English, there are many points of resemblance between the counsels of the "self-made merchant" and the parting words of Polonius to Laertes. A judicious com- bination of the advice of both these guides to youth would make an extraordinarily useful manual for a young man starting in business life.
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