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He plunged his hands into his hair and leaned his elbows on his knees, and fell to rocking himself back and forth in anguish. Mrs. Hawkins sprang in, beaming:
“Well, Si?”
“Oh, con-found the con-founded—con-found it, Nancy. I’ve gone and done it, now!”
“Done what Si for mercy’s sake!”
“Done everything! Ruined everything!”
“Tell me, tell me, tell me! Don’t keep a body in such suspense. Didn’t he buy, after all? Didn’t he make an offer?”
“Offer? He offered $10,000 for our land, and——”
“Thank the good providence from the very bottom of my heart of hearts! What sort of ruin do you call that, Si!”
“Nancy, do you suppose I listened to such a preposterous proposition? No! Thank fortune I’m not a simpleton! I saw through the pretty scheme in a second. It’s a vast iron speculation!—millions upon millions in it! But fool as I am I told him he could have half the iron property for thirty thousand—and if I only had him back here he couldn’t touch it for a cent less than a quarter of a million!”
Mrs. Hawkins looked up white and despairing:
“You threw away this chance, you let this man go, and we in this awful trouble? You don’t mean it, you can’t mean it!”
“Throw it away? Catch me at it! Why woman, do you suppose that man don’t know what he is about? Bless you, he’ll be back fast enough to-morrow.”
“Never, never, never. He never will comeback. I don’t know what is to become of us. I don’t know what in the world is to become of us.”
A shade of uneasiness came into Hawkins’s face. He said:
“Why, Nancy, you—you can’t believe what you are saying.”
“Believe it, indeed? I know it, Si. And I know that we haven’t a cent in the world, and we’ve sent ten thousand dollars a-begging.”
“Nancy, you frighten me. Now could that man—is it possible that I—hanged if I don’t believe I have missed a chance! Don’t grieve, Nancy, don’t grieve. I’ll go right after him. I’ll take—I’ll take—what a fool I am!—I’ll take anything he’ll give!”
The next instant he left the house on a run. But the man was no longer in the town. Nobody knew where he belonged or whither he had gone. Hawkins came slowly back, watching wistfully but hopelessly for the stranger, and lowering his price steadily with his sinking heart. And when his foot finally pressed his own threshold, the value he held the entire Tennessee property at was five hundred dollars—two hundred down and the rest in three equal annual payments, without interest.
There was a sad gathering at the Hawkins fireside the next night. All the children were present but Clay. Mr. Hawkins said:
“Washington, we seem to be hopelessly fallen, hopelessly involved. I am ready to give up. I do not know where to turn—I never have been down so low before, I never have seen things so dismal. There are many mouths to feed; Clay is at work; we must lose you, also, for a little while, my boy. But it will not be long—the Tennessee land——”
He stopped, and was conscious of a blush. There was silence for a moment, and then Washington—now a lank, dreamy-eyed stripling between twenty-two and twenty-three years of age—said:
“If Col. Sellers would come for me, I would go and stay with him a while, till the Tennessee land is sold. He has often wanted me to come, ever since he moved to Hawkeye.”
“I’m afraid he can’t well come for you, Washington. From what I can hear—not from him of course, but from others—he is not far from as bad off as we are—and his family is as large, too. He might find something for you to do, maybe, but you’d better try to get to him yourself, Washington—it’s only thirty miles.”
“But how can I, father? There’s no stage or anything.”
“And if there were, stages require money. A stage goes from Swansea, five miles from here. But it would be cheaper to walk.”
“Father, they must know you there, and no doubt they would credit you in a moment, for a little stage ride like that. Couldn’t you write and ask them?”
“Couldn’t you, Washington—seeing it’s you that wants the ride? And what do you think you’ll do, Washington, when you get to Hawkeye? Finish your invention for making window-glass opaque?”
“No, sir, I have given that up. I almost knew I could do it, but it was so tedious and troublesome I quit it.”
“I was afraid of it, my boy. Then I suppose you’ll finish your plan of coloring hen’s eggs by feeding a peculiar diet to the hen?”
“No, sir. I believe I have found out the stuff that will do it, but it kills the hen; so I have dropped that for the present, though I can take it up again some day when I learn how to manage the mixture better.”
“Well, what have you got on hand—anything?”
“Yes, sir, three or four things. I think they are all good and can all be done, but they are tiresome, and besides they require money. But as soon as the land is sold——”
“Emily, were you about to say something?” said Hawkins.
“Yes, sir. If you are willing, I will go to St. Louis. That will make another mouth less to feed. Mrs. Buckner has always wanted me to come.”
“But the money, child?”
“Why I think she would send it, if you would write her—and I know she would wait for her pay till——”
“Come, Laura, let’s hear from you, my girl.”
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Emily and Laura were about the same age—between seventeen and eighteen. Emily was fair and pretty, girlish and diffident—blue eyes and light hair. Laura had a proud bearing, and a somewhat mature look; she had fine, clean-cut features, her complexion was pure white and contrasted vividly with her black hair and eyes; she was not what one calls pretty—she was beautiful. She said:
“I will go to St. Louis, too, sir. I will find a way to get there. I will make a way. And I will find a way to help myself along, and do what I can to help the rest, too.”
She spoke it like a princess. Mrs. Hawkins smiled proudly and kissed her, saying in a tone of fond reproof:
“So one of my girls is going to turn out and work for her living! It’s like your pluck and spirit, child, but we will hope that we haven’t got quite down to that, yet.”
The girl’s eyes beamed affection under her mother’s caress. Then she straightened up, folded her white hands in her lap and became a splendid ice-berg. Clay’s dog put up his brown nose for a little attention, and got it. He retired under the table with an apologetic yelp, which did not affect the iceberg.
Judge Hawkins had written and asked Clay to return home and consult with him upon family affairs. He arrived the evening after this conversation, and the whole household gave him a rapturous welcome. He brought sadly needed help with him, consisting of the savings of a year and a half of work—nearly two hundred dollars in money.
It was a ray of sunshine which (to this easy household) was the earnest of a clearing sky.
Bright and early in the morning the family were astir, and all were busy preparing Washington for his journey—at least all but Washington himself, who sat apart, steeped in a reverie. When the time for his departure came, it was easy to see how fondly all loved him and how hard it was to let him go, notwithstanding they had often seen him go before, in his St. Louis schooling days. In the most matter-of-course way they had borne the burden of getting him ready for his trip, never seeming to think of his helping in the matter; in the same matter-of-course way Clay had hired a horse and cart; and now that the good-byes were ended he bundled Washington’s baggage in and drove away with the exile.
At Swansea Clay paid his stage fare, stowed him away in the vehicle, and saw him off. Then he returned home and reported progress, like a committee of the whole.
Clay remained at home several days. He held many consultations with his mother upon the financial condition of the family, and talked once with his father upon the same subject, but only once. He found a change in that quarter which was distressing; years of fluctuating fortune had done their work; each reverse had weakened the father’s spirit and impaired his energies; his last misfortune seemed to have left hope and ambition dead within him; he had no projects, formed no plans—evidently he was a vanquished man. He looked worn and tired. He inquired into Clay’s affairs and prospects, and when he found that Clay was doing pretty well and was likely to do still better, it was plain that he resigned himself with easy facility to look to the son for a support; and he said, “Keep yourself informed of poor Washington’s condition and movements, and help him along all you can, Clay.”
The younger children, also, seemed relieved of all fears and distresses, and very ready and willing to look to Clay for a livelihood. Within three days a general tranquility and satisfaction reigned in the household. Clay’s hundred and eighty or ninety, dollars had worked a wonder. The family were as contented, now, and as free from care as they could have been with a fortune. It was well that Mrs. Hawkins held the purse otherwise the treasure would have lasted but a very little while.
It took but a trifle to pay Hawkins’s outstanding obligations, for he had always had a horror of debt.
When Clay bade his home good-bye and set out to return to the field of his labors, he was conscious that henceforth he was to have his father’s family on his hands as pensioners; but he did not allow himself to chafe at the thought, for he reasoned that his father had dealt by him with a free hand and a loving one all his life, and now that hard fortune had broken his spirit it ought to be a pleasure, not a pain, to work for him. The younger children were born and educated dependents. They had never been taught to do anything for themselves, and it did not seem to occur to them to make an attempt now.
The girls would not have been permitted to work for a living under any circumstances whatever. It was a southern family, and of good blood; and for any person except Laura, either within or without the household to have suggested such an idea would have brought upon the suggester the suspicion of being a lunatic.
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Via, Pecunia! when she’s run and goneAnd fled, and dead, then will I fetch her againWith aqua vita, out of an old hogshead!While there are lees of wine, or dregs of beer,I’ll never want her! Coin her out of cobwebs,Dust, but I’ll have her! raise wool upon egg-shells,Sir, and make grass grow out of marrow-bones,To make her come!B. Jonson.
Via, Pecunia! when she’s run and goneAnd fled, and dead, then will I fetch her againWith aqua vita, out of an old hogshead!While there are lees of wine, or dregs of beer,I’ll never want her! Coin her out of cobwebs,Dust, but I’ll have her! raise wool upon egg-shells,Sir, and make grass grow out of marrow-bones,To make her come!B. Jonson.
Bearing Washington Hawkins and his fortunes, the stage-coach tore out of Swansea at a fearful gait, with horn tooting gaily and half the town admiring from doors and windows. But it did not tear any more after it got to the outskirts; it dragged along stupidly enough, then—till it came in sight of the next hamlet; and then the bugle tooted gaily again and again the vehicle went tearing by the horses. This sort of conduct marked every entry to a station and every exit from it; and so in those days children grew up with the idea that stage-coaches always tore and always tooted; but they also grew up with the idea that pirates went into action in their Sunday clothes, carrying the black flag in one hand and pistolling people with the other, merely because they were so represented in the pictures—but these illusions vanished when later years brought their disenchanting wisdom. They learned then that the stagecoach is but a poor, plodding, vulgar thing in the solitudes of the highway; and that the pirate is only a seedy, unfantastic “rough,” when he is out of the pictures.
Toward evening, the stage-coach came thundering into Hawkeye with a perfectly triumphant ostentation—which was natural and proper, for Hawkey a was a pretty large town for interior Missouri. Washington, very stiff and tired and hungry, climbed out, and wondered how he was to proceed now. But his difficulty was quickly solved. Col. Sellers came down the street on a run and arrived panting for breath. He said:
“Lord bless you—I’m glad to see you, Washington—perfectly delighted to see you, my boy! I got your message. Been on the look-out for you. Heard the stage horn, but had a party I couldn’t shake off—man that’s got an enormous thing on hand—wants me to put some capital into it—and I tell you, my boy, I could do worse, I could do a deal worse. No, now, let that luggage alone; I’ll fix that. Here, Jerry, got anything to do? All right-shoulder this plunder and follow me. Come along, Washington. Lord I’m glad to see you! Wife and the children are just perishing to look at you. Bless you, they won’t know you, you’ve grown so. Folks all well, I suppose? That’s good—glad to hear that. We’re always going to run down and see them, but I’m into so many operations, and they’re not things a man feels like trusting to other people, and so somehow we keep putting it off. Fortunes in them! Good gracious, it’s the country to pile up wealth in! Here we are—here’s where the Sellers dynasty hangs out. Hump it on the door-step, Jerry—the blackest niggro in the State, Washington, but got a good heart—mighty likely boy, is Jerry. And now I suppose you’ve got to have ten cents, Jerry. That’s all right—when a man works for me—when a man—in the other pocket, I reckon—when a man—why, where the mischief as that portmonnaie!—when a—well now that’s odd—Oh, now I remember, must have left it at the bank; and b’George I’ve left my check-book, too—Polly says I ought to have a nurse—well, no matter. Let me have a dime, Washington, if you’ve got—ah, thanks. Now clear out, Jerry, your complexion has brought on the twilight half an hour ahead of time. Pretty fair joke—pretty fair. Here he is, Polly! Washington’s come, children! come now, don’t eat him up—finish him in the house. Welcome, my boy, to a mansion that is proud to shelter the son of the best man that walks on the ground. Si Hawkins has been a good friend to me, and I believe I can say that whenever I’ve had a chance to put him into a good thing I’ve done it, and done it pretty cheerfully, too. I put him into that sugar speculation—what a grand thing that was, if we hadn’t held on too long!”
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True enough; but holding on too long had utterly ruined both of them; and the saddest part of it was, that they never had had so much money to lose before, for Sellers’s sale of their mule crop that year in New Orleans had been a great financial success. If he had kept out of sugar and gone back home content to stick to mules it would have been a happy wisdom. As it was, he managed to kill two birds with one stone—that is to say, he killed the sugar speculation by holding for high rates till he had to sell at the bottom figure, and that calamity killed the mule that laid the golden egg—which is but a figurative expression and will be so understood. Sellers had returned home cheerful but empty-handed, and the mule business lapsed into other hands. The sale of the Hawkins property by the Sheriff had followed, and the Hawkins hearts been torn to see Uncle Dan’l and his wife pass from the auction-block into the hands of a negro trader and depart for the remote South to be seen no more by the family. It had seemed like seeing their own flesh and blood sold into banishment.
Washington was greatly pleased with the Sellers mansion. It was a two-story-and-a-half brick, and much more stylish than any of its neighbors. He was borne to the family sitting room in triumph by the swarm of little Sellerses, the parents following with their arms about each other’s waists.
The whole family were poorly and cheaply dressed; and the clothing, although neat and clean, showed many evidences of having seen long service. The Colonel’s “stovepipe” hat was napless and shiny with much polishing, but nevertheless it had an almost convincing expression about it of having been just purchased new. The rest of his clothing was napless and shiny, too, but it had the air of being entirely satisfied with itself and blandly sorry for other people’s clothes. It was growing rather dark in the house, and the evening air was chilly, too. Sellers said:
“Lay off your overcoat, Washington, and draw up to the stove and make yourself at home—just consider yourself under your own shingles my boy—I’ll have a fire going, in a jiffy. Light the lamp, Polly, dear, and let’s have things cheerful—just as glad to see you, Washington, as if you’d been lost a century and we’d found you again!”
By this time the Colonel was conveying a lighted match into a poor little stove. Then he propped the stove door to its place by leaning the poker against it, for the hinges had retired from business. This door framed a small square of isinglass, which now warmed up with a faint glow. Mrs. Sellers lit a cheap, showy lamp, which dissipated a good deal of the gloom, and then everybody gathered into the light and took the stove into close companionship.
The children climbed all over Sellers, fondled him, petted him, and were lavishly petted in return. Out from this tugging, laughing, chattering disguise of legs and arms and little faces, the Colonel’s voice worked its way and his tireless tongue ran blithely on without interruption; and the purring little wife, diligent with her knitting, sat near at hand and looked happy and proud and grateful; and she listened as one who listens to oracles and, gospels and whose grateful soul is being refreshed with the bread of life. Bye and bye the children quieted down to listen; clustered about their father, and resting their elbows on his legs, they hung upon his words as if he were uttering the music of the spheres.
A dreary old hair-cloth sofa against the wall; a few damaged chairs; the small table the lamp stood on; the crippled stove—these things constituted the furniture of the room. There was no carpet on the floor; on the wall were occasional square-shaped interruptions of the general tint of the plaster which betrayed that there used to be pictures in the house—but there were none now. There were no mantel ornaments, unless one might bring himself to regard as an ornament a clock which never came within fifteen strokes of striking the right time, and whose hands always hitched together at twenty-two minutes past anything and traveled in company the rest of the way home.
“Remarkable clock!” said Sellers, and got up and wound it. “I’ve been offered—well, I wouldn’t expect you to believe what I’ve been offered for that clock. Old Gov. Hager never sees me but he says, ‘Come, now, Colonel, name your price—I must have that clock!’ But my goodness I’d as soon think of selling my wife. As I was saying to—silence in the court, now, she’s begun to strike! You can’t talk against her—you have to just be patient and hold up till she’s said her say. Ah well, as I was saying, when—she’s beginning again! Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twen——ah, that’s all.—Yes, as I was saying to old Judge——go it, old girl, don’t mind me.—Now how is that?——isn’t that a good, spirited tone? She can wake the dead! Sleep? Why you might as well try to sleep in a thunder-factory. Now just listen at that. She’ll strike a hundred and fifty, now, without stopping,—you’ll see. There ain’t another clock like that in Christendom.”
Washington hoped that this might be true, for the din was distracting—though the family, one and all, seemed filled with joy; and the more the clock “buckled down to her work” as the Colonel expressed it, and the more insupportable the clatter became, the more enchanted they all appeared to be. When there was silence, Mrs Sellers lifted upon Washington a face that beamed with a childlike pride, and said:
“It belonged to his grandmother.”
The look and the tone were a plain call for admiring surprise, and therefore Washington said (it was the only thing that offered itself at the moment:)
“Indeed!”
“Yes, it did, didn’t it father!” exclaimed one of the twins. “She was my great-grandmother—and George’s too; wasn’t she, father! You never saw her, but Sis has seen her, when Sis was a baby-didn’t you, Sis! Sis has seen her most a hundred times. She was awful deef—she’s dead now. Ain’t she, father!”
All the children chimed in, now, with one general Babel of information about deceased—nobody offering to read the riot act or seeming to discountenance the insurrection or disapprove of it in any way—but the head twin drowned all the turmoil and held his own against the field:
“It’s our clock, now—and it’s got wheels inside of it, and a thing that flutters every time she strikes—don’t it, father! Great-grandmother died before hardly any of us was born—she was an Old-School Baptist and had warts all over her—you ask father if she didn’t. She had an uncle once that was bald-headed and used to have fits; he wasn’t our uncle, I don’t know what he was to us—some kin or another I reckon—father’s seen him a thousand times—hain’t you, father! We used to have a calf that et apples and just chawed up dishrags like nothing, and if you stay here you’ll see lots of funerals—won’t he, Sis! Did you ever see a house afire? I have! Once me and Jim Terry——”
But Sellers began to speak now, and the storm ceased. He began to tell about an enormous speculation he was thinking of embarking some capital in—a speculation which some London bankers had been over to consult with him about—and soon he was building glittering pyramids of coin, and Washington was presently growing opulent under the magic of his eloquence. But at the same time Washington was not able to ignore the cold entirely.
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He was nearly as close to the stove as he could get, and yet he could not persuade himself that he felt the slightest heat, notwithstanding the isinglass’ door was still gently and serenely glowing. He tried to get a trifle closer to the stove, and the consequence was, he tripped the supporting poker and the stove-door tumbled to the floor. And then there was a revelation—there was nothing in the stove but a lighted tallow-candle! The poor youth blushed and felt as if he must die with shame. But the Colonel was only disconcerted for a moment—he straightway found his voice again:
“A little idea of my own, Washington—one of the greatest things in the world! You must write and tell your father about it—don’t forget that, now. I have been reading up some European Scientific reports—friend of mine, Count Fugier, sent them to me—sends me all sorts of things from Paris—he thinks the world of me, Fugier does. Well, I saw that the Academy of France had been testing the properties of heat, and they came to the conclusion that it was a nonconductor or something like that, and of course its influence must necessarily be deadly in nervous organizations with excitable temperaments, especially where there is any tendency toward rheumatic affections. Bless you I saw in a moment what was the matter with us, and says I, out goes your fires!—no more slow torture and certain death for me, sir. What you want is the appearance of heat, not the heat itself—that’s the idea. Well how to do it was the next thing. I just put my head to work, pegged away a couple of days, and here you are! Rheumatism? Why a man can’t any more start a case of rheumatism in this house than he can shake an opinion out of a mummy! Stove with a candle in it and a transparent door—that’s it—it has been the salvation of this family. Don’t you fail to write your father about it, Washington. And tell him the idea is mine—I’m no more conceited than most people, I reckon, but you know it is human nature for a man to want credit for a thing like that.”
Washington said with his blue lips that he would, but he said in his secret heart that he would promote no such iniquity. He tried to believe in the healthfulness of the invention, and succeeded tolerably well; but after all he could not feel that good health in a frozen body was any real improvement on the rheumatism.
—Whan pe horde is thynne, as of seruyse,Nought replenesshed with grete diuersiteOf mete & drinke, good chere may then suffiseWith honest talkyng—— The Book of Curtesye.MAMMON. Come on, sir. Now, you set your foot on shoreIn Novo Orbe; here’s the rich Peru:And there within, sir, are the golden mines,Great Solomon’s Ophir!——B. Jonson
—Whan pe horde is thynne, as of seruyse,Nought replenesshed with grete diuersiteOf mete & drinke, good chere may then suffiseWith honest talkyng—— The Book of Curtesye.MAMMON. Come on, sir. Now, you set your foot on shoreIn Novo Orbe; here’s the rich Peru:And there within, sir, are the golden mines,Great Solomon’s Ophir!——B. Jonson
The supper at Col. Sellers’s was not sumptuous, in the beginning, but it improved on acquaintance. That is to say, that what Washington regarded at first sight as mere lowly potatoes, presently became awe-inspiring agricultural productions that had been reared in some ducal garden beyond the sea, under the sacred eye of the duke himself, who had sent them to Sellers; the bread was from corn which could be grown in only one favored locality in the earth and only a favored few could get it; the Rio coffee, which at first seemed execrable to the taste, took to itself an improved flavor when Washington was told to drink it slowly and not hurry what should be a lingering luxury in order to be fully appreciated—it was from the private stores of a Brazilian nobleman with an unrememberable name. The Colonel’s tongue was a magician’s wand that turned dried apples into figs and water into wine as easily as it could change a hovel into a palace and present poverty into imminent future riches.
Washington slept in a cold bed in a carpetless room and woke up in a palace in the morning; at least the palace lingered during the moment that he was rubbing his eyes and getting his bearings—and then it disappeared and he recognized that the Colonel’s inspiring talk had been influencing his dreams. Fatigue had made him sleep late; when he entered the sitting room he noticed that the old hair-cloth sofa was absent; when he sat down to breakfast the Colonel tossed six or seven dollars in bills on the table, counted them over, said he was a little short and must call upon his banker; then returned the bills to his wallet with the indifferent air of a man who is used to money. The breakfast was not an improvement upon the supper, but the Colonel talked it up and transformed it into an oriental feast. Bye and bye, he said:
“I intend to look out for you, Washington, my boy. I hunted up a place for you yesterday, but I am not referring to that,—now—that is a mere livelihood—mere bread and butter; but when I say I mean to look out for you I mean something very different. I mean to put things in your way than will make a mere livelihood a trifling thing. I’ll put you in a way to make more money that you’ll ever know what to do with. You’ll be right here where I can put my hand on you when anything turns up. I’ve got some prodigious operations on foot; but I’m keeping quiet; mum’s the word; your old hand don’t go around pow-wowing and letting everybody see his k’yards and find out his little game. But all in good time, Washington, all in good time. You’ll see. Now there’s an operation in corn that looks well. Some New York men are trying to get me to go into it—buy up all the growing crops and just boss the market when they mature—ah, I tell you it’s a great thing. And it only costs a trifle; two millions or two and a half will do it. I haven’t exactly promised yet—there’s no hurry—the more indifferent I seem, you know, the more anxious those fellows will get. And then there is the hog speculation—that’s bigger still. We’ve got quiet men at work,” [he was very impressive here,] “mousing around, to get propositions out of all the farmers in the whole west and northwest for the hog crop, and other agents quietly getting propositions and terms out of all the manufactories—and don’t you see, if we can get all the hogs and all the slaughter houses into our hands on the dead quiet—whew! it would take three ships to carry the money.—I’ve looked into the thing—calculated all the chances for and all the chances against, and though I shake my head and hesitate and keep on thinking, apparently, I’ve got my mind made up that if the thing can be done on a capital of six millions, that’s the horse to put up money on! Why Washington—but what’s the use of talking about it—any man can see that there’s whole Atlantic oceans of cash in it, gulfs and bays thrown in. But there’s a bigger thing than that, yes bigger——”
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“Why Colonel, you can’t want anything bigger!” said Washington, his eyes blazing. “Oh, I wish I could go into either of those speculations—I only wish I had money—I wish I wasn’t cramped and kept down and fettered with poverty, and such prodigious chances lying right here in sight! Oh, it is a fearful thing to be poor. But don’t throw away those things—they are so splendid and I can see how sure they are. Don’t throw them away for something still better and maybe fail in it! I wouldn’t, Colonel. I would stick to these. I wish father were here and were his old self again—Oh, he never in his life had such chances as these are. Colonel; you can’t improve on these—no man can improve on them!”
A sweet, compassionate smile played about the Colonel’s features, and he leaned over the table with the air of a man who is “going to show you” and do it without the least trouble:
“Why Washington, my boy, these things are nothing. They look large of course—they look large to a novice, but to a man who has been all his life accustomed to large operations—shaw! They’re well enough to while away an idle hour with, or furnish a bit of employment that will give a trifle of idle capital a chance to earn its bread while it is waiting for something to do, but—now just listen a moment—just let me give you an idea of what we old veterans of commerce call ‘business.’ Here’s the Rothschild’s proposition—this is between you and me, you understand——”
Washington nodded three or four times impatiently, and his glowing eyes said, “Yes, yes—hurry—I understand——”
——“for I wouldn’t have it get out for a fortune. They want me to go in with them on the sly—agent was here two weeks ago about it—go in on the sly” [voice down to an impressive whisper, now,] “and buy up a hundred and thirteen wild cat banks in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri—notes of these banks are at all sorts of discount now—average discount of the hundred and thirteen is forty-four per cent—buy them all up, you see, and then all of a sudden let the cat out of the bag! Whiz! the stock of every one of those wildcats would spin up to a tremendous premium before you could turn a handspring—profit on the speculation not a dollar less than forty millions!” [An eloquent pause, while the marvelous vision settled into W.’s focus.] “Where’s your hogs now? Why my dear innocent boy, we would just sit down on the front door-steps and peddle banks like lucifer matches!”
Washington finally got his breath and said:
“Oh, it is perfectly wonderful! Why couldn’t these things have happened in father’s day? And I—it’s of no use—they simply lie before my face and mock me. There is nothing for me but to stand helpless and see other people reap the astonishing harvest.”
“Never mind, Washington, don’t you worry. I’ll fix you. There’s plenty of chances. How much money have you got?”
In the presence of so many millions, Washington could not keep from blushing when he had to confess that he had but eighteen dollars in the world.
“Well, all right—don’t despair. Other people have been obliged to begin with less. I have a small idea that may develop into something for us both, all in good time. Keep your money close and add to it. I’ll make it breed. I’ve been experimenting (to pass away the time), on a little preparation for curing sore eyes—a kind of decoction nine-tenths water and the other tenth drugs that don’t cost more than a dollar a barrel; I’m still experimenting; there’s one ingredient wanted yet to perfect the thing, and somehow I can’t just manage to hit upon the thing that’s necessary, and I don’t dare talk with a chemist, of course. But I’m progressing, and before many weeks I wager the country will ring with the fame of Beriah Sellers’ Infallible Imperial Oriental Optic Liniment and Salvation for Sore Eyes—the Medical Wonder of the Age! Small bottles fifty cents, large ones a dollar. Average cost, five and seven cents for the two sizes.
“The first year sell, say, ten thousand bottles in Missouri, seven thousand in Iowa, three thousand in Arkansas, four thousand in Kentucky, six thousand in Illinois, and say twenty-five thousand in the rest of the country. Total, fifty five thousand bottles; profit clear of all expenses, twenty thousand dollars at the very lowest calculation. All the capital needed is to manufacture the first two thousand bottles—say a hundred and fifty dollars—then the money would begin to flow in. The second year, sales would reach 200,000 bottles—clear profit, say, $75,000—and in the meantime the great factory would be building in St. Louis, to cost, say, $100,000. The third year we could easily sell 1,000,000 bottles in the United States and——”
“O, splendid!” said Washington. “Let’s commence right away—let’s——”
“——1,000,000 bottles in the United States—profit at least $350,000—and then it would begin to be time to turn our attention toward the real idea of the business.”
“The real idea of it! Ain’t $350,000 a year a pretty real——”
“Stuff! Why what an infant you are, Washington—what a guileless, short-sighted, easily-contented innocent you are, my poor little country-bred know-nothing! Would I go to all that trouble and bother for the poor crumbs a body might pick up in this country? Now do I look like a man who——does my history suggest that I am a man who deals in trifles, contents himself with the narrow horizon that hems in the common herd, sees no further than the end of his nose? Now you know that that is not me—couldn’t be me. You ought to know that if I throw my time and abilities into a patent medicine, it’s a patent medicine whose field of operations is the solid earth! its clients the swarming nations that inhabit it! Why what is the republic of America for an eye-water country? Lord bless you, it is nothing but a barren highway that you’ve got to cross to get to the true eye-water market! Why, Washington, in the Oriental countries people swarm like the sands of the desert; every square mile of ground upholds its thousands upon thousands of struggling human creatures—and every separate and individual devil of them’s got the ophthalmia! It’s as natural to them as noses are—and sin. It’s born with them, it stays with them, it’s all that some of them have left when they die. Three years of introductory trade in the orient and what will be the result? Why, our headquarters would be in Constantinople and our hindquarters in Further India! Factories and warehouses in Cairo, Ispahan, Bagdad, Damascus, Jerusalem, Yedo, Peking, Bangkok, Delhi, Bombay—and Calcutta! Annual income—well, God only knows how many millions and millions apiece!”
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Washington was so dazed, so bewildered—his heart and his eyes had wandered so far away among the strange lands beyond the seas, and such avalanches of coin and currency had fluttered and jingled confusedly down before him, that he was now as one who has been whirling round and round for a time, and, stopping all at once, finds his surroundings still whirling and all objects a dancing chaos. However, little by little the Sellers family cooled down and crystalized into shape, and the poor room lost its glitter and resumed its poverty. Then the youth found his voice and begged Sellers to drop everything and hurry up the eye-water; and he got his eighteen dollars and tried to force it upon the Colonel—pleaded with him to take it—implored him to do it. But the Colonel would not; said he would not need the capital (in his native magnificent way he called that eighteen dollars Capital) till the eye-water was an accomplished fact. He made Washington easy in his mind, though, by promising that he would call for it just as soon as the invention was finished, and he added the glad tidings that nobody but just they two should be admitted to a share in the speculation.
When Washington left the breakfast table he could have worshiped that man. Washington was one of that kind of people whose hopes are in the very clouds one day and in the gutter the next. He walked on air now. The Colonel was ready to take him around and introduce him to the employment he had found for him, but Washington begged for a few moments in which to write home; with his kind of people, to ride to-day’s new interest to death and put off yesterday’s till another time, is nature itself. He ran up stairs and wrote glowingly, enthusiastically, to his mother about the hogs and the corn, the banks and the eye-water—and added a few inconsequential millions to each project. And he said that people little dreamed what a man Col. Sellers was, and that the world would open its eyes when it found out. And he closed his letter thus:
“So make yourself perfectly easy, mother-in a little while you shall have everything you want, and more. I am not likely to stint you in anything, I fancy. This money will not be for me, alone, but for all of us. I want all to share alike; and there is going to be far more for each than one person can spend. Break it to father cautiously—you understand the need of that—break it to him cautiously, for he has had such cruel hard fortune, and is so stricken by it that great good news might prostrate him more surely than even bad, for he is used to the bad but is grown sadly unaccustomed to the other. Tell Laura—tell all the children. And write to Clay about it if he is not with you yet. You may tell Clay that whatever I get he can freely share in-freely. He knows that that is true—there will be no need that I should swear to that to make him believe it. Good-bye—and mind what I say: Rest perfectly easy, one and all of you, for our troubles are nearly at an end.”
Poor lad, he could not know that his mother would cry some loving, compassionate tears over his letter and put off the family with a synopsis of its contents which conveyed a deal of love to them but not much idea of his prospects or projects. And he never dreamed that such a joyful letter could sadden her and fill her night with sighs, and troubled thoughts, and bodings of the future, instead of filling it with peace and blessing it with restful sleep.
When the letter was done, Washington and the Colonel sallied forth, and as they walked along Washington learned what he was to be. He was to be a clerk in a real estate office. Instantly the fickle youth’s dreams forsook the magic eye-water and flew back to the Tennessee Land. And the gorgeous possibilities of that great domain straightway began to occupy his imagination to such a degree that he could scarcely manage to keep even enough of his attention upon the Colonel’s talk to retain the general run of what he was saying. He was glad it was a real estate office—he was a made man now, sure.
The Colonel said that General Boswell was a rich man and had a good and growing business; and that Washington’s work would be light and he would get forty dollars a month and be boarded and lodged in the General’s family—which was as good as ten dollars more; and even better, for he could not live as well even at the “City Hotel” as he would there, and yet the hotel charged fifteen dollars a month where a man had a good room.