The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today

Mrs. Hawkins was out of the room in a moment. Within a minute she was back again with a business-looking stranger, whom she seated, and then she took her leave again. Hawkins said to himself, “How can a man ever lose faith? When the blackest hour comes, Providence always comes with it—ah, this is the very timeliest help that ever poor harried devil had; if this blessed man offers but a thousand I’ll embrace him like a brother!”

The stranger said:

“I am aware that you own 75,000 acres, of land in East Tennessee, and without sacrificing your time, I will come to the point at once. I am agent of an iron manufacturing company, and they empower me to offer you ten thousand dollars for that land.”

Hawkins’s heart bounded within him. His whole frame was racked and wrenched with fettered hurrahs. His first impulse was to shout “Done! and God bless the iron company, too!”

But a something flitted through his mind, and his opened lips uttered nothing. The enthusiasm faded away from his eyes, and the look of a man who is thinking took its place. Presently, in a hesitating, undecided way, he said:

“Well, I—it don’t seem quite enough. That—that is a very valuable property—very valuable. It’s brim full of iron-ore, sir—brim full of it! And copper, coal,—everything—everything you can think of! Now, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll reserve everything except the iron, and I’ll sell them the iron property for $15,000 cash, I to go in with them and own an undivided interest of one-half the concern—or the stock, as you may say. I’m out of business, and I’d just as soon help run the thing as not. Now how does that strike you?”

“Well, I am only an agent of these people, who are friends of mine, and I am not even paid for my services. To tell you the truth, I have tried to persuade them not to go into the thing; and I have come square out with their offer, without throwing out any feelers—and I did it in the hope that you would refuse. A man pretty much always refuses another man’s first offer, no matter what it is. But I have performed my duty, and will take pleasure in telling them what you say.”

He was about to rise. Hawkins said,

“Wait a bit.”

Hawkins thought again. And the substance of his thought was: “This is a deep man; this is a very deep man; I don’t like his candor; your ostentatiously candid business man’s a deep fox—always a deep fox; this man’s that iron company himself—that’s what he is; he wants that property, too; I am not so blind but I can see that; he don’t want the company to go into this thing—O, that’s very good; yes, that’s very good indeed—stuff! he’ll be back here tomorrow, sure, and take my offer; take it? I’ll risk anything he is suffering to take it now; here—I must mind what I’m about. What has started this sudden excitement about iron? I wonder what is in the wind? just as sure as I’m alive this moment, there’s something tremendous stirring in iron speculation” [here Hawkins got up and began to pace the floor with excited eyes and with gesturing hands]—“something enormous going on in iron, without the shadow of a doubt, and here I sit mousing in the dark and never knowing anything about it; great heaven, what an escape I’ve made! this underhanded mercenary creature might have taken me up—and ruined me! but I have escaped, and I warrant me I’ll not put my foot into—”

He stopped and turned toward the stranger; saying:

“I have made you a proposition, you have not accepted it, and I desire that you will consider that I have made none. At the same time my conscience will not allow me to—. Please alter the figures I named to thirty thousand dollars, if you will, and let the proposition go to the company—I will stick to it if it breaks my heart!” The stranger looked amused, and there was a pretty well defined touch of surprise in his expression, too, but Hawkins never noticed it. Indeed he scarcely noticed anything or knew what he was about. The man left; Hawkins flung himself into a chair; thought a few moments, then glanced around, looked frightened, sprang to the door——

“Too late—too late! He’s gone! Fool that I am! always a fool! Thirty thousand—ass that I am! Oh, why didn’t I say fifty thousand!”

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.”

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.

CHAPTER VII.

Via, Pecunia! when she’s run and gone
And fled, and dead, then will I fetch her again
With 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!”

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.

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.

CHAPTER VIII.

—Whan pe horde is thynne, as of seruyse,
Nought replenesshed with grete diuersite
Of mete & drinke, good chere may then suffise
With honest talkyng—— The Book of Curtesye.

MAMMON. Come on, sir. Now, you set your foot on shore
In 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——”

“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!”

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.

General Boswell was in his office; a comfortable looking place, with plenty of outline maps hanging about the walls and in the windows, and a spectacled man was marking out another one on a long table. The office was in the principal street. The General received Washington with a kindly but reserved politeness. Washington rather liked his looks. He was about fifty years old, dignified, well preserved and well dressed. After the Colonel took his leave, the General talked a while with Washington—his talk consisting chiefly of instructions about the clerical duties of the place. He seemed satisfied as to Washington’s ability to take care of the books, he was evidently a pretty fair theoretical bookkeeper, and experience would soon harden theory into practice. By and by dinner-time came, and the two walked to the General’s house; and now Washington noticed an instinct in himself that moved him to keep not in the General’s rear, exactly, but yet not at his side—somehow the old gentleman’s dignity and reserve did not inspire familiarity.

CHAPTER IX.

Washington dreamed his way along the street, his fancy flitting from grain to hogs, from hogs to banks, from banks to eye-water, from eye-water to Tennessee Land, and lingering but a feverish moment upon each of these fascinations. He was conscious of but one outward thing, to wit, the General, and he was really not vividly conscious of him.

Arrived at the finest dwelling in the town, they entered it and were at home. Washington was introduced to Mrs. Boswell, and his imagination was on the point of flitting into the vapory realms of speculation again, when a lovely girl of sixteen or seventeen came in. This vision swept Washington’s mind clear of its chaos of glittering rubbish in an instant. Beauty had fascinated him before; many times he had been in love even for weeks at a time with the same object but his heart had never suffered so sudden and so fierce an assault as this, within his recollection.

Louise Boswell occupied his mind and drifted among his multiplication tables all the afternoon. He was constantly catching himself in a reverie—reveries made up of recalling how she looked when she first burst upon him; how her voice thrilled him when she first spoke; how charmed the very air seemed by her presence. Blissful as the afternoon was, delivered up to such a revel as this, it seemed an eternity, so impatient was he to see the girl again. Other afternoons like it followed. Washington plunged into this love affair as he plunged into everything else—upon impulse and without reflection. As the days went by it seemed plain that he was growing in favor with Louise,—not sweepingly so, but yet perceptibly, he fancied. His attentions to her troubled her father and mother a little, and they warned Louise, without stating particulars or making allusions to any special person, that a girl was sure to make a mistake who allowed herself to marry anybody but a man who could support her well.

Some instinct taught Washington that his present lack of money would be an obstruction, though possibly not a bar, to his hopes, and straightway his poverty became a torture to him which cast all his former sufferings under that held into the shade. He longed for riches now as he had never longed for them before.

He had been once or twice to dine with Col. Sellers, and had been discouraged to note that the Colonel’s bill of fare was falling off both in quantity and quality—a sign, he feared, that the lacking ingredient in the eye-water still remained undiscovered—though Sellers always explained that these changes in the family diet had been ordered by the doctor, or suggested by some new scientific work the Colonel had stumbled upon. But it always turned out that the lacking ingredient was still lacking—though it always appeared, at the same time, that the Colonel was right on its heels.

Every time the Colonel came into the real estate office Washington’s heart bounded and his eyes lighted with hope, but it always turned out that the Colonel was merely on the scent of some vast, undefined landed speculation—although he was customarily able to say that he was nearer to the all-necessary ingredient than ever, and could almost name the hour when success would dawn. And then Washington’s heart would sink again and a sigh would tell when it touched bottom.

About this time a letter came, saying that Judge Hawkins had been ailing for a fortnight, and was now considered to be seriously ill. It was thought best that Washington should come home. The news filled him with grief, for he loved and honored his father; the Boswells were touched by the youth’s sorrow, and even the General unbent and said encouraging things to him. —There was balm in this; but when Louise bade him good-bye, and shook his hand and said, “Don’t be cast down—it will all come out right—I know it will all come out right,” it seemed a blessed thing to be in misfortune, and the tears that welled up to his eyes were the messengers of an adoring and a grateful heart; and when the girl saw them and answering tears came into her own eyes, Washington could hardly contain the excess of happiness that poured into the cavities of his breast that were so lately stored to the roof with grief.

All the way home he nursed his woe and exalted it. He pictured himself as she must be picturing him: a noble, struggling young spirit persecuted by misfortune, but bravely and patiently waiting in the shadow of a dread calamity and preparing to meet the blow as became one who was all too used to hard fortune and the pitiless buffetings of fate. These thoughts made him weep, and weep more broken-heartedly than ever; and he wished that she could see his sufferings now.

There was nothing significant in the fact that Louise, dreamy and distraught, stood at her bedroom bureau that night, scribbling “Washington” here and there over a sheet of paper. But there was something significant in the fact that she scratched the word out every time she wrote it; examined the erasure critically to see if anybody could guess at what the word had been; then buried it under a maze of obliterating lines; and finally, as if still unsatisfied, burned the paper.

When Washington reached home, he recognized at once how serious his father’s case was. The darkened room, the labored breathing and occasional moanings of the patient, the tip-toeing of the attendants and their whispered consultations, were full of sad meaning. For three or four nights Mrs. Hawkins and Laura had been watching by the bedside; Clay had arrived, preceding Washington by one day, and he was now added to the corps of watchers. Mr. Hawkins would have none but these three, though neighborly assistance was offered by old friends. From this time forth three-hour watches were instituted, and day and night the watchers kept their vigils. By degrees Laura and her mother began to show wear, but neither of them would yield a minute of their tasks to Clay. He ventured once to let the midnight hour pass without calling Laura, but he ventured no more; there was that about her rebuke when he tried to explain, that taught him that to let her sleep when she might be ministering to her father’s needs, was to rob her of moments that were priceless in her eyes; he perceived that she regarded it as a privilege to watch, not a burden. And, he had noticed, also, that when midnight struck, the patient turned his eyes toward the door, with an expectancy in them which presently grew into a longing but brightened into contentment as soon as the door opened and Laura appeared. And he did not need Laura’s rebuke when he heard his father say:

“Clay is good, and you are tired, poor child; but I wanted you so.”

“Clay is not good, father—he did not call me. I would not have treated him so. How could you do it, Clay?”

Clay begged forgiveness and promised not to break faith again; and as he betook him to his bed, he said to himself: “It’s a steadfast little soul; whoever thinks he is doing the Duchess a kindness by intimating that she is not sufficient for any undertaking she puts her hand to, makes a mistake; and if I did not know it before, I know now that there are surer ways of pleasing her than by trying to lighten her labor when that labor consists in wearing herself out for the sake of a person she loves.”

A week drifted by, and all the while the patient sank lower and lower. The night drew on that was to end all suspense. It was a wintry one. The darkness gathered, the snow was falling, the wind wailed plaintively about the house or shook it with fitful gusts. The doctor had paid his last visit and gone away with that dismal remark to the nearest friend of the family that he “believed there was nothing more that he could do”—a remark which is always overheard by some one it is not meant for and strikes a lingering half-conscious hope dead with a withering shock; the medicine phials had been removed from the bedside and put out of sight, and all things made orderly and meet for the solemn event that was impending; the patient, with closed eyes, lay scarcely breathing; the watchers sat by and wiped the gathering damps from his forehead while the silent tears flowed down their faces; the deep hush was only interrupted by sobs from the children, grouped about the bed.

After a time—it was toward midnight now—Mr. Hawkins roused out of a doze, looked about him and was evidently trying to speak. Instantly Laura lifted his head and in a failing voice he said, while something of the old light shone in his eyes:

“Wife—children—come nearer—nearer. The darkness grows. Let me see you all, once more.”

The group closed together at the bedside, and their tears and sobs came now without restraint.

“I am leaving you in cruel poverty. I have been—so foolish—so short-sighted. But courage! A better day is—is coming. Never lose sight of the Tennessee Land! Be wary. There is wealth stored up for you there—wealth that is boundless! The children shall hold up their heads with the best in the land, yet. Where are the papers? —Have you got the papers safe? Show them—show them to me!”

Under his strong excitement his voice had gathered power and his last sentences were spoken with scarcely a perceptible halt or hindrance. With an effort he had raised himself almost without assistance to a sitting posture. But now the fire faded out of his eyes and he fell back exhausted. The papers were brought and held before him, and the answering smile that flitted across his face showed that he was satisfied. He closed his eyes, and the signs of approaching dissolution multiplied rapidly. He lay almost motionless for a little while, then suddenly partly raised his head and looked about him as one who peers into a dim uncertain light. He muttered:

“Gone? No—I see you—still. It is—it is-over. But you are—safe. Safe. The Ten——-”

The voice died out in a whisper; the sentence was never finished. The emaciated fingers began to pick at the coverlet, a fatal sign. After a time there were no sounds but the cries of the mourners within and the gusty turmoil of the wind without. Laura had bent down and kissed her father’s lips as the spirit left the body; but she did not sob, or utter any ejaculation; her tears flowed silently. Then she closed the dead eyes, and crossed the hands upon the breast; after a season, she kissed the forehead reverently, drew the sheet up over the face, and then walked apart and sat down with the look of one who is done with life and has no further interest in its joys and sorrows, its hopes or its ambitions. Clay buried his face in the coverlet of the bed; when the other children and the mother realized that death was indeed come at last, they threw themselves into each others’ arms and gave way to a frenzy of grief.

CHAPTER X.

Only two or three days had elapsed since the funeral, when something happened which was to change the drift of Laura’s life somewhat, and influence in a greater or lesser degree the formation of her character.

Major Lackland had once been a man of note in the State—a man of extraordinary natural ability and as extraordinary learning. He had been universally trusted and honored in his day, but had finally, fallen into misfortune; while serving his third term in Congress, and while upon the point of being elevated to the Senate—which was considered the summit of earthly aggrandizement in those days—he had yielded to temptation, when in distress for money wherewith to save his estate; and sold his vote. His crime was discovered, and his fall followed instantly. Nothing could reinstate him in the confidence of the people, his ruin was irretrievable—his disgrace complete. All doors were closed against him, all men avoided him. After years of skulking retirement and dissipation, death had relieved him of his troubles at last, and his funeral followed close upon that of Mr. Hawkins. He died as he had latterly lived—wholly alone and friendless. He had no relatives—or if he had they did not acknowledge him. The coroner’s jury found certain memoranda upon his body and about the premises which revealed a fact not suspected by the villagers before-viz. , that Laura was not the child of Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins.

The gossips were soon at work. They were but little hampered by the fact that the memoranda referred to betrayed nothing but the bare circumstance that Laura’s real parents were unknown, and stopped there. So far from being hampered by this, the gossips seemed to gain all the more freedom from it. They supplied all the missing information themselves, they filled up all the blanks. The town soon teemed with histories of Laura’s origin and secret history, no two versions precisely alike, but all elaborate, exhaustive, mysterious and interesting, and all agreeing in one vital particular—to-wit, that there was a suspicious cloud about her birth, not to say a disreputable one.

Laura began to encounter cold looks, averted eyes and peculiar nods and gestures which perplexed her beyond measure; but presently the pervading gossip found its way to her, and she understood them—then. Her pride was stung. She was astonished, and at first incredulous. She was about to ask her mother if there was any truth in these reports, but upon second thought held her peace. She soon gathered that Major Lackland’s memoranda seemed to refer to letters which had passed between himself and Judge Hawkins. She shaped her course without difficulty the day that that hint reached her.

That night she sat in her room till all was still, and then she stole into the garret and began a search. She rummaged long among boxes of musty papers relating to business matters of no interest to her, but at last she found several bundles of letters. One bundle was marked “private,” and in that she found what she wanted. She selected six or eight letters from the package and began to devour their contents, heedless of the cold.

By the dates, these letters were from five to seven years old. They were all from Major Lackland to Mr. Hawkins. The substance of them was, that some one in the east had been inquiring of Major Lackland about a lost child and its parents, and that it was conjectured that the child might be Laura.

Evidently some of the letters were missing, for the name of the inquirer was not mentioned; there was a casual reference to “this handsome-featured aristocratic gentleman,” as if the reader and the writer were accustomed to speak of him and knew who was meant.

In one letter the Major said he agreed with Mr. Hawkins that the inquirer seemed not altogether on the wrong track; but he also agreed that it would be best to keep quiet until more convincing developments were forthcoming.

Another letter said that “the poor soul broke completely down when he saw Laura’s picture, and declared it must be she.”

Still another said:

“He seems entirely alone in the world, and his heart is so wrapped up in this thing that I believe that if it proved a false hope, it would kill him; I have persuaded him to wait a little while and go west when I go.”

Another letter had this paragraph in it:

“He is better one day and worse the next, and is out of his mind a good deal of the time. Lately his case has developed a something which is a wonder to the hired nurses, but which will not be much of a marvel to you if you have read medical philosophy much. It is this: his lost memory returns to him when he is delirious, and goes away again when he is himself-just as old Canada Joe used to talk the French patois of his boyhood in the delirium of typhus fever, though he could not do it when his mind was clear. Now this poor gentleman’s memory has always broken down before he reached the explosion of the steamer; he could only remember starting up the river with his wife and child, and he had an idea that there was a race, but he was not certain; he could not name the boat he was on; there was a dead blank of a month or more that supplied not an item to his recollection. It was not for me to assist him, of course. But now in his delirium it all comes out: the names of the boats, every incident of the explosion, and likewise the details of his astonishing escape—that is, up to where, just as a yawl-boat was approaching him (he was clinging to the starboard wheel of the burning wreck at the time), a falling timber struck him on the head. But I will write out his wonderful escape in full to-morrow or next day. Of course the physicians will not let me tell him now that our Laura is indeed his child—that must come later, when his health is thoroughly restored. His case is not considered dangerous at all; he will recover presently, the doctors say. But they insist that he must travel a little when he gets well—they recommend a short sea voyage, and they say he can be persuaded to try it if we continue to keep him in ignorance and promise to let him see L. as soon as he returns.”

The letter that bore the latest date of all, contained this clause:

“It is the most unaccountable thing in the world; the mystery remains as impenetrable as ever; I have hunted high and low for him, and inquired of everybody, but in vain; all trace of him ends at that hotel in New York; I never have seen or heard of him since, up to this day; he could hardly have sailed, for his name does not appear upon the books of any shipping office in New York or Boston or Baltimore. How fortunate it seems, now, that we kept this thing to ourselves; Laura still has a father in you, and it is better for her that we drop this subject here forever.”

That was all. Random remarks here and there, being pieced together gave Laura a vague impression of a man of fine presence, about forty-three or forty-five years of age, with dark hair and eyes, and a slight limp in his walk—it was not stated which leg was defective. And this indistinct shadow represented her father. She made an exhaustive search for the missing letters, but found none. They had probably been burned; and she doubted not that the ones she had ferreted out would have shared the same fate if Mr. Hawkins had not been a dreamer, void of method, whose mind was perhaps in a state of conflagration over some bright new speculation when he received them.

She sat long, with the letters in her lap, thinking—and unconsciously freezing. She felt like a lost person who has traveled down a long lane in good hope of escape, and, just as the night descends finds his progress barred by a bridge-less river whose further shore, if it has one, is lost in the darkness. If she could only have found these letters a month sooner! That was her thought. But now the dead had carried their secrets with them. A dreary, melancholy settled down upon her. An undefined sense of injury crept into her heart. She grew very miserable.

She had just reached the romantic age—the age when there is a sad sweetness, a dismal comfort to a girl to find out that there is a mystery connected with her birth, which no other piece of good luck can afford. She had more than her rightful share of practical good sense, but still she was human; and to be human is to have one’s little modicum of romance secreted away in one’s composition. One never ceases to make a hero of one’s self, (in private,) during life, but only alters the style of his heroism from time to time as the drifting years belittle certain gods of his admiration and raise up others in their stead that seem greater.

The recent wearing days and nights of watching, and the wasting grief that had possessed her, combined with the profound depression that naturally came with the reaction of idleness, made Laura peculiarly susceptible at this time to romantic impressions. She was a heroine, now, with a mysterious father somewhere. She could not really tell whether she wanted to find him and spoil it all or not; but still all the traditions of romance pointed to the making the attempt as the usual and necessary course to follow; therefore she would some day begin the search when opportunity should offer.

Now a former thought struck her—she would speak to Mrs. Hawkins. And naturally enough Mrs. Hawkins appeared on the stage at that moment.

She said she knew all—she knew that Laura had discovered the secret that Mr. Hawkins, the elder children, Col. Sellers and herself had kept so long and so faithfully; and she cried and said that now that troubles had begun they would never end; her daughter’s love would wean itself away from her and her heart would break. Her grief so wrought upon Laura that the girl almost forgot her own troubles for the moment in her compassion for her mother’s distress. Finally Mrs. Hawkins said:

“Speak to me, child—do not forsake me. Forget all this miserable talk. Say I am your mother! —I have loved you so long, and there is no other. I am your mother, in the sight of God, and nothing shall ever take you from me!”

All barriers fell, before this appeal. Laura put her arms about her mother’s neck and said:

“You are my mother, and always shall be. We will be as we have always been; and neither this foolish talk nor any other thing shall part us or make us less to each other than we are this hour.”

There was no longer any sense of separation or estrangement between them. Indeed their love seemed more perfect now than it had ever been before. By and by they went down stairs and sat by the fire and talked long and earnestly about Laura’s history and the letters. But it transpired that Mrs. Hawkins had never known of this correspondence between her husband and Major Lackland. With his usual consideration for his wife, Mr. Hawkins had shielded her from the worry the matter would have caused her.

Laura went to bed at last with a mind that had gained largely in tranquility and had lost correspondingly in morbid romantic exaltation. She was pensive, the next day, and subdued; but that was not matter for remark, for she did not differ from the mournful friends about her in that respect. Clay and Washington were the same loving and admiring brothers now that they had always been. The great secret was new to some of the younger children, but their love suffered no change under the wonderful revelation.

It is barely possible that things might have presently settled down into their old rut and the mystery have lost the bulk of its romantic sublimity in Laura’s eyes, if the village gossips could have quieted down. But they could not quiet down and they did not. Day after day they called at the house, ostensibly upon visits of condolence, and they pumped away at the mother and the children without seeming to know that their questionings were in bad taste. They meant no harm they only wanted to know. Villagers always want to know.

The family fought shy of the questionings, and of course that was high testimony “if the Duchess was respectably born, why didn’t they come out and prove it? —why did they, stick to that poor thin story about picking her up out of a steamboat explosion?”

Under this ceaseless persecution, Laura’s morbid self-communing was renewed. At night the day’s contribution of detraction, innuendo and malicious conjecture would be canvassed in her mind, and then she would drift into a course of thinking. As her thoughts ran on, the indignant tears would spring to her eyes, and she would spit out fierce little ejaculations at intervals. But finally she would grow calmer and say some comforting disdainful thing—something like this:

“But who are they? —Animals! What are their opinions to me? Let them talk—I will not stoop to be affected by it. I could hate——. Nonsense—nobody I care for or in any way respect is changed toward me, I fancy.”

She may have supposed she was thinking of many individuals, but it was not so—she was thinking of only one. And her heart warmed somewhat, too, the while. One day a friend overheard a conversation like this:—and naturally came and told her all about it:

“Ned, they say you don’t go there any more. How is that?”

“Well, I don’t; but I tell you it’s not because I don’t want to and it’s not because I think it is any matter who her father was or who he wasn’t, either; it’s only on account of this talk, talk, talk. I think she is a fine girl every way, and so would you if you knew her as well as I do; but you know how it is when a girl once gets talked about—it’s all up with her—the world won’t ever let her alone, after that.”

The only comment Laura made upon this revelation, was:

“Then it appears that if this trouble had not occurred I could have had the happiness of Mr. Ned Thurston’s serious attentions. He is well favored in person, and well liked, too, I believe, and comes of one of the first families of the village. He is prosperous, too, I hear; has been a doctor a year, now, and has had two patients—no, three, I think; yes, it was three. I attended their funerals. Well, other people have hoped and been disappointed; I am not alone in that. I wish you could stay to dinner, Maria—we are going to have sausages; and besides, I wanted to talk to you about Hawkeye and make you promise to come and see us when we are settled there.”

But Maria could not stay. She had come to mingle romantic tears with Laura’s over the lover’s defection and had found herself dealing with a heart that could not rise to an appreciation of affliction because its interest was all centred in sausages.

But as soon as Maria was gone, Laura stamped her expressive foot and said:

“The coward! Are all books lies? I thought he would fly to the front, and be brave and noble, and stand up for me against all the world, and defy my enemies, and wither these gossips with his scorn! Poor crawling thing, let him go. I do begin to despise this world!”

She lapsed into thought. Presently she said:

“If the time ever comes, and I get a chance, Oh, I’ll——”

She could not find a word that was strong enough, perhaps. By and by she said:

“Well, I am glad of it—I’m glad of it. I never cared anything for him anyway!”

And then, with small consistency, she cried a little, and patted her foot more indignantly than ever.

CHAPTER XI.

Two months had gone by and the Hawkins family were domiciled in Hawkeye. Washington was at work in the real estate office again, and was alternately in paradise or the other place just as it happened that Louise was gracious to him or seemingly indifferent—because indifference or preoccupation could mean nothing else than that she was thinking of some other young person. Col. Sellers had asked him several times, to dine with him, when he first returned to Hawkeye, but Washington, for no particular reason, had not accepted. No particular reason except one which he preferred to keep to himself—viz. that he could not bear to be away from Louise. It occurred to him, now, that the Colonel had not invited him lately—could he be offended? He resolved to go that very day, and give the Colonel a pleasant surprise. It was a good idea; especially as Louise had absented herself from breakfast that morning, and torn his heart; he would tear hers, now, and let her see how it felt.

The Sellers family were just starting to dinner when Washington burst upon them with his surprise. For an instant the Colonel looked nonplussed, and just a bit uncomfortable; and Mrs. Sellers looked actually distressed; but the next moment the head of the house was himself again, and exclaimed:

“All right, my boy, all right—always glad to see you—always glad to hear your voice and take you by the hand. Don’t wait for special invitations—that’s all nonsense among friends. Just come whenever you can, and come as often as you can—the oftener the better. You can’t please us any better than that, Washington; the little woman will tell you so herself. We don’t pretend to style. Plain folks, you know—plain folks. Just a plain family dinner, but such as it is, our friends are always welcome, I reckon you know that yourself, Washington. Run along, children, run along; Lafayette,—[**In those old days the average man called his children after his most revered literary and historical idols; consequently there was hardly a family, at least in the West, but had a Washington in it—and also a Lafayette, a Franklin, and six or eight sounding names from Byron, Scott, and the Bible, if the offspring held out. To visit such a family, was to find one’s self confronted by a congress made up of representatives of the imperial myths and the majestic dead of all the ages. There was something thrilling about it, to a stranger, not to say awe inspiring.] —stand off the cat’s tail, child, can’t you see what you’re doing? —Come, come, come, Roderick Dhu, it isn’t nice for little boys to hang onto young gentlemen’s coat tails—but never mind him, Washington, he’s full of spirits and don’t mean any harm. Children will be children, you know. Take the chair next to Mrs. Sellers, Washington—tut, tut, Marie Antoinette, let your brother have the fork if he wants it, you are bigger than he is.”

Washington contemplated the banquet, and wondered if he were in his right mind. Was this the plain family dinner? And was it all present? It was soon apparent that this was indeed the dinner: it was all on the table: it consisted of abundance of clear, fresh water, and a basin of raw turnips—nothing more.

Washington stole a glance at Mrs. Sellers’s face, and would have given the world, the next moment, if he could have spared her that. The poor woman’s face was crimson, and the tears stood in her eyes. Washington did not know what to do. He wished he had never come there and spied out this cruel poverty and brought pain to that poor little lady’s heart and shame to her cheek; but he was there, and there was no escape. Col. Sellers hitched back his coat sleeves airily from his wrists as who should say “Now for solid enjoyment!” seized a fork, flourished it and began to harpoon turnips and deposit them in the plates before him “Let me help you, Washington—Lafayette, pass this plate to Washington—ah, well, well, my boy, things are looking pretty bright, now, I tell you. Speculation—my! the whole atmosphere’s full of money. I would’nt take three fortunes for one little operation I’ve got on hand now—have anything from the casters? No? Well, you’re right, you’re right. Some people like mustard with turnips, but—now there was Baron Poniatowski—Lord, but that man did know how to live! —true Russian you know, Russian to the back bone; I say to my wife, give me a Russian every time, for a table comrade. The Baron used to say, ‘Take mustard, Sellers, try the mustard,—a man can’t know what turnips are in perfection without, mustard,’ but I always said, ‘No, Baron, I’m a plain man and I want my food plain—none of your embellishments for Beriah Sellers—no made dishes for me! And it’s the best way—high living kills more than it cures in this world, you can rest assured of that. —Yes indeed, Washington, I’ve got one little operation on hand that—take some more water—help yourself, won’t you? —help yourself, there’s plenty of it. —You’ll find it pretty good, I guess. How does that fruit strike you?”

Washington said he did not know that he had ever tasted better. He did not add that he detested turnips even when they were cooked—loathed them in their natural state. No, he kept this to himself, and praised the turnips to the peril of his soul.

“I thought you’d like them. Examine them—examine them—they’ll bear it. See how perfectly firm and juicy they are—they can’t start any like them in this part of the country, I can tell you. These are from New Jersey—I imported them myself. They cost like sin, too; but lord bless me, I go in for having the best of a thing, even if it does cost a little more—it’s the best economy, in the long run. These are the Early Malcolm—it’s a turnip that can’t be produced except in just one orchard, and the supply never is up to the demand. Take some more water, Washington—you can’t drink too much water with fruit—all the doctors say that. The plague can’t come where this article is, my boy!”

“Plague? What plague?”

“What plague, indeed? Why the Asiatic plague that nearly depopulated London a couple of centuries ago.”

“But how does that concern us? There is no plague here, I reckon.”

“Sh! I’ve let it out! Well, never mind—just keep it to yourself. Perhaps I oughtn’t said anything, but its bound to come out sooner or later, so what is the odds? Old McDowells wouldn’t like me to—to—bother it all, I’ll jest tell the whole thing and let it go. You see, I’ve been down to St. Louis, and I happened to run across old Dr. McDowells—thinks the world of me, does the doctor. He’s a man that keeps himself to himself, and well he may, for he knows that he’s got a reputation that covers the whole earth—he won’t condescend to open himself out to many people, but lord bless you, he and I are just like brothers; he won’t let me go to a hotel when I’m in the city—says I’m the only man that’s company to him, and I don’t know but there’s some truth in it, too, because although I never like to glorify myself and make a great to-do over what I am or what I can do or what I know, I don’t mind saying here among friends that I am better read up in most sciences, maybe, than the general run of professional men in these days. Well, the other day he let me into a little secret, strictly on the quiet, about this matter of the plague.

“You see it’s booming right along in our direction—follows the Gulf Stream, you know, just as all those epidemics do, and within three months it will be just waltzing through this land like a whirlwind! And whoever it touches can make his will and contract for the funeral. Well you can’t cure it, you know, but you can prevent it. How? Turnips! that’s it! Turnips and water! Nothing like it in the world, old McDowells says, just fill yourself up two or three times a day, and you can snap your fingers at the plague. Sh! —keep mum, but just you confine yourself to that diet and you’re all right. I wouldn’t have old McDowells know that I told about it for anything—he never would speak to me again. Take some more water, Washington—the more water you drink, the better. Here, let me give you some more of the turnips. No, no, no, now, I insist. There, now. Absorb those. They’re, mighty sustaining—brim full of nutriment—all the medical books say so. Just eat from four to seven good-sized turnips at a meal, and drink from a pint and a half to a quart of water, and then just sit around a couple of hours and let them ferment. You’ll feel like a fighting cock next day.”

Fifteen or twenty minutes later the Colonel’s tongue was still chattering away—he had piled up several future fortunes out of several incipient “operations” which he had blundered into within the past week, and was now soaring along through some brilliant expectations born of late promising experiments upon the lacking ingredient of the eye-water. And at such a time Washington ought to have been a rapt and enthusiastic listener, but he was not, for two matters disturbed his mind and distracted his attention. One was, that he discovered, to his confusion and shame, that in allowing himself to be helped a second time to the turnips, he had robbed those hungry children. He had not needed the dreadful “fruit,” and had not wanted it; and when he saw the pathetic sorrow in their faces when they asked for more and there was no more to give them, he hated himself for his stupidity and pitied the famishing young things with all his heart. The other matter that disturbed him was the dire inflation that had begun in his stomach. It grew and grew, it became more and more insupportable. Evidently the turnips were “fermenting.” He forced himself to sit still as long as he could, but his anguish conquered him at last.

He rose in the midst of the Colonel’s talk and excused himself on the plea of a previous engagement. The Colonel followed him to the door, promising over and over again that he would use his influence to get some of the Early Malcolms for him, and insisting that he should not be such a stranger but come and take pot-luck with him every chance he got. Washington was glad enough to get away and feel free again. He immediately bent his steps toward home.

In bed he passed an hour that threatened to turn his hair gray, and then a blessed calm settled down upon him that filled his heart with gratitude. Weak and languid, he made shift to turn himself about and seek rest and sleep; and as his soul hovered upon the brink of unconciousness, he heaved a long, deep sigh, and said to himself that in his heart he had cursed the Colonel’s preventive of rheumatism, before, and now let the plague come if it must—he was done with preventives; if ever any man beguiled him with turnips and water again, let him die the death.

If he dreamed at all that night, no gossiping spirit disturbed his visions to whisper in his ear of certain matters just then in bud in the East, more than a thousand miles away that after the lapse of a few years would develop influences which would profoundly affect the fate and fortunes of the Hawkins family.

CHAPTER XII.

“Oh, it’s easy enough to make a fortune,” Henry said.

“It seems to be easier than it is, I begin to think,” replied Philip.

“Well, why don’t you go into something? You’ll never dig it out of the Astor Library.”

If there be any place and time in the world where and when it seems easy to “go into something” it is in Broadway on a spring morning, when one is walking city-ward, and has before him the long lines of palace-shops with an occasional spire seen through the soft haze that lies over the lower town, and hears the roar and hum of its multitudinous traffic.

To the young American, here or elsewhere, the paths to fortune are innumerable and all open; there is invitation in the air and success in all his wide horizon. He is embarrassed which to choose, and is not unlikely to waste years in dallying with his chances, before giving himself to the serious tug and strain of a single object. He has no traditions to bind him or guide him, and his impulse is to break away from the occupation his father has followed, and make a new way for himself.

Philip Sterling used to say that if he should seriously set himself for ten years to any one of the dozen projects that were in his brain, he felt that he could be a rich man. He wanted to be rich, he had a sincere desire for a fortune, but for some unaccountable reason he hesitated about addressing himself to the narrow work of getting it. He never walked Broadway, a part of its tide of abundant shifting life, without feeling something of the flush of wealth, and unconsciously taking the elastic step of one well-to-do in this prosperous world.

Especially at night in the crowded theatre—Philip was too young to remember the old Chambers’ Street box, where the serious Burton led his hilarious and pagan crew—in the intervals of the screaming comedy, when the orchestra scraped and grunted and tooted its dissolute tunes, the world seemed full of opportunities to Philip, and his heart exulted with a conscious ability to take any of its prizes he chose to pluck.

Perhaps it was the swimming ease of the acting, on the stage, where virtue had its reward in three easy acts, perhaps it was the excessive light of the house, or the music, or the buzz of the excited talk between acts, perhaps it was youth which believed everything, but for some reason while Philip was at the theatre he had the utmost confidence in life and his ready victory in it.

Delightful illusion of paint and tinsel and silk attire, of cheap sentiment and high and mighty dialogue! Will there not always be rosin enough for the squeaking fiddle-bow?

Do we not all like the maudlin hero, who is sneaking round the right entrance, in wait to steal the pretty wife of his rich and tyrannical neighbor from the paste-board cottage at the left entrance? and when he advances down to the foot-lights and defiantly informs the audience that, “he who lays his hand on a woman except in the way of kindness,” do we not all applaud so as to drown the rest of the sentence?

Philip never was fortunate enough to hear what would become of a man who should lay his hand on a woman with the exception named; but he learned afterwards that the woman who lays her hand on a man, without any exception whatsoever, is always acquitted by the jury.

The fact was, though Philip Sterling did not know it, that he wanted several other things quite as much as he wanted wealth. The modest fellow would have liked fame thrust upon him for some worthy achievement; it might be for a book, or for the skillful management of some great newspaper, or for some daring expedition like that of Lt. Strain or Dr. Kane. He was unable to decide exactly what it should be. Sometimes he thought he would like to stand in a conspicuous pulpit and humbly preach the gospel of repentance; and it even crossed his mind that it would be noble to give himself to a missionary life to some benighted region, where the date-palm grows, and the nightingale’s voice is in tune, and the bul-bul sings on the off nights. If he were good enough he would attach himself to that company of young men in the Theological Seminary, who were seeing New York life in preparation for the ministry.

Philip was a New England boy and had graduated at Yale; he had not carried off with him all the learning of that venerable institution, but he knew some things that were not in the regular course of study. A very good use of the English language and considerable knowledge of its literature was one of them; he could sing a song very well, not in time to be sure, but with enthusiasm; he could make a magnetic speech at a moment’s notice in the class room, the debating society, or upon any fence or dry-goods box that was convenient; he could lift himself by one arm, and do the giant swing in the gymnasium; he could strike out from his left shoulder; he could handle an oar like a professional and pull stroke in a winning race. Philip had a good appetite, a sunny temper, and a clear hearty laugh. He had brown hair, hazel eyes set wide apart, a broad but not high forehead, and a fresh winning face. He was six feet high, with broad shoulders, long legs and a swinging gait; one of those loose-jointed, capable fellows, who saunter into the world with a free air and usually make a stir in whatever company they enter.

After he left college Philip took the advice of friends and read law. Law seemed to him well enough as a science, but he never could discover a practical case where it appeared to him worth while to go to law, and all the clients who stopped with this new clerk in the ante-room of the law office where he was writing, Philip invariably advised to settle—no matter how, but settle—greatly to the disgust of his employer, who knew that justice between man and man could only be attained by the recognized processes, with the attendant fees. Besides Philip hated the copying of pleadings, and he was certain that a life of “whereases” and “aforesaids” and whipping the devil round the stump, would be intolerable.

[Note: these few paragraphs are nearly an autobiography of the life of Charles Dudley Warner whose contributions to the story start here with Chapter XII. D. W.]

His pen therefore, and whereas, and not as aforesaid, strayed off into other scribbling. In an unfortunate hour, he had two or three papers accepted by first-class magazines, at three dollars the printed page, and, behold, his vocation was open to him. He would make his mark in literature.

Life has no moment so sweet as that in which a young man believes himself called into the immortal ranks of the masters of literature. It is such a noble ambition, that it is a pity it has usually such a shallow foundation.

At the time of this history, Philip had gone to New York for a career. With his talent he thought he should have little difficulty in getting an editorial position upon a metropolitan newspaper; not that he knew anything about newspaper work, or had the least idea of journalism; he knew he was not fitted for the technicalities of the subordinate departments, but he could write leaders with perfect ease, he was sure. The drudgery of the newspaper office was too distasteful, and besides it would be beneath the dignity of a graduate and a successful magazine writer. He wanted to begin at the top of the ladder.

To his surprise he found that every situation in the editorial department of the journals was full, always had been full, was always likely to be full. It seemed to him that the newspaper managers didn’t want genius, but mere plodding and grubbing. Philip therefore read diligently in the Astor library, planned literary works that should compel attention, and nursed his genius. He had no friend wise enough to tell him to step into the Dorking Convention, then in session, make a sketch of the men and women on the platform, and take it to the editor of the Daily Grapevine, and see what he could get a line for it.

One day he had an offer from some country friends, who believed in him, to take charge of a provincial daily newspaper, and he went to consult Mr. Gringo—Gringo who years ago managed the Atlas—about taking the situation.

“Take it of course,” says Gringo, “take anything that offers, why not?”

“But they want me to make it an opposition paper.”

“Well, make it that. That party is going to succeed, it’s going to elect the next president.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Philip, stoutly, “its wrong in principle, and it ought not to succeed, but I don’t see how I can go for a thing I don’t believe in.”

“O, very well,” said Gringo, turning away with a shade of contempt, “you’ll find if you are going into literature and newspaper work that you can’t afford a conscience like that.”

But Philip did afford it, and he wrote, thanking his friends, and declining because he said the political scheme would fail, and ought to fail. And he went back to his books and to his waiting for an opening large enough for his dignified entrance into the literary world.

It was in this time of rather impatient waiting that Philip was one morning walking down Broadway with Henry Brierly. He frequently accompanied Henry part way down town to what the latter called his office in Broad Street, to which he went, or pretended to go, with regularity every day. It was evident to the most casual acquaintance that he was a man of affairs, and that his time was engrossed in the largest sort of operations, about which there was a mysterious air. His liability to be suddenly summoned to Washington, or Boston or Montreal or even to Liverpool was always imminent. He never was so summoned, but none of his acquaintances would have been surprised to hear any day that he had gone to Panama or Peoria, or to hear from him that he had bought the Bank of Commerce.

The two were intimate at that time,—they had been classmates—and saw a great deal of each other. Indeed, they lived together in Ninth Street, in a boarding-house, there, which had the honor of lodging and partially feeding several other young fellows of like kidney, who have since gone their several ways into fame or into obscurity.

It was during the morning walk to which reference has been made that Henry Brierly suddenly said, “Philip, how would you like to go to St. Jo?”

“I think I should like it of all things,” replied Philip, with some hesitation, “but what for.”

“Oh, it’s a big operation. We are going, a lot of us, railroad men, engineers, contractors. You know my uncle is a great railroad man. I’ve no doubt I can get you a chance to go if you’ll go.”

“But in what capacity would I go?”

“Well, I’m going as an engineer. You can go as one.”

“I don’t know an engine from a coal cart.”

“Field engineer, civil engineer. You can begin by carrying a rod, and putting down the figures. It’s easy enough. I’ll show you about that. We’ll get Trautwine and some of those books.”

“Yes, but what is it for, what is it all about?”

“Why don’t you see? We lay out a line, spot the good land, enter it up, know where the stations are to be, spot them, buy lots; there’s heaps of money in it. We wouldn’t engineer long.”

“When do you go?” was Philip’s next question, after some moments of silence.

“To-morrow. Is that too soon?”

“No, its not too soon. I’ve been ready to go anywhere for six months. The fact is, Henry, that I’m about tired of trying to force myself into things, and am quite willing to try floating with the stream for a while, and see where I will land. This seems like a providential call; it’s sudden enough.”

The two young men who were by this time full of the adventure, went down to the Wall street office of Henry’s uncle and had a talk with that wily operator. The uncle knew Philip very well, and was pleased with his frank enthusiasm, and willing enough to give him a trial in the western venture. It was settled therefore, in the prompt way in which things are settled in New York, that they would start with the rest of the company next morning for the west.

On the way up town these adventurers bought books on engineering, and suits of India-rubber, which they supposed they would need in a new and probably damp country, and many other things which nobody ever needed anywhere.

The night was spent in packing up and writing letters, for Philip would not take such an important step without informing his friends. If they disapprove, thought he, I’ve done my duty by letting them know. Happy youth, that is ready to pack its valise, and start for Cathay on an hour’s notice.

“By the way,” calls out Philip from his bed-room, to Henry, “where is St. Jo.?”

“Why, it’s in Missouri somewhere, on the frontier I think. We’ll get a map.”

“Never mind the map. We will find the place itself. I was afraid it was nearer home.”

Philip wrote a long letter, first of all, to his mother, full of love and glowing anticipations of his new opening. He wouldn’t bother her with business details, but he hoped that the day was not far off when she would see him return, with a moderate fortune, and something to add to the comfort of her advancing years.

To his uncle he said that he had made an arrangement with some New York capitalists to go to Missouri, in a land and railroad operation, which would at least give him a knowledge of the world and not unlikely offer him a business opening. He knew his uncle would be glad to hear that he had at last turned his thoughts to a practical matter.

It was to Ruth Bolton that Philip wrote last. He might never see her again; he went to seek his fortune. He well knew the perils of the frontier, the savage state of society, the lurking Indians and the dangers of fever. But there was no real danger to a person who took care of himself. Might he write to her often and, tell her of his life. If he returned with a fortune, perhaps and perhaps. If he was unsuccessful, or if he never returned—perhaps it would be as well. No time or distance, however, would ever lessen his interest in her. He would say good-night, but not good-bye.

In the soft beginning of a Spring morning, long before New York had breakfasted, while yet the air of expectation hung about the wharves of the metropolis, our young adventurers made their way to the Jersey City railway station of the Erie road, to begin the long, swinging, crooked journey, over what a writer of a former day called a causeway of cracked rails and cows, to the West.

CHAPTER XIII.

What ever to say be toke in his entente,
his langage was so fayer & pertynante,
yt semeth unto manys herying not only the worde,
but veryly the thyng.
Caxton’s Book of Curtesye.

In the party of which our travelers found themselves members, was Duff Brown, the great railroad contractor, and subsequently a well-known member of Congress; a bluff, jovial Bost’n man, thick-set, close shaven, with a heavy jaw and a low forehead—a very pleasant man if you were not in his way. He had government contracts also, custom houses and dry docks, from Portland to New Orleans, and managed to get out of congress, in appropriations, about weight for weight of gold for the stone furnished.

Associated with him, and also of this party, was Rodney Schaick, a sleek New York broker, a man as prominent in the church as in the stock exchange, dainty in his dress, smooth of speech, the necessary complement of Duff Brown in any enterprise that needed assurance and adroitness.

It would be difficult to find a pleasanter traveling party, one that shook off more readily the artificial restraints of Puritanic strictness, and took the world with good-natured allowance. Money was plenty for every attainable luxury, and there seemed to be no doubt that its supply would continue, and that fortunes were about to be made without a great deal of toil. Even Philip soon caught the prevailing spirit; Barry did not need any inoculation, he always talked in six figures. It was as natural for the dear boy to be rich as it is for most people to be poor.

The elders of the party were not long in discovering the fact, which almost all travelers to the west soon find out; that the water was poor. It must have been by a lucky premonition of this that they all had brandy flasks with which to qualify the water of the country; and it was no doubt from an uneasy feeling of the danger of being poisoned that they kept experimenting, mixing a little of the dangerous and changing fluid, as they passed along, with the contents of the flasks, thus saving their lives hour by hour. Philip learned afterwards that temperance and the strict observance of Sunday and a certain gravity of deportment are geographical habits, which people do not usually carry with them away from home.

Our travelers stopped in Chicago long enough to see that they could make their fortunes there in two week’s time, but it did not seem worth while; the west was more attractive; the further one went the wider the opportunities opened.

They took railroad to Alton and the steamboat from there to St. Louis, for the change and to have a glimpse of the river.

“Isn’t this jolly?” cried Henry, dancing out of the barber’s room, and coming down the deck with a one, two, three step, shaven, curled and perfumed after his usual exquisite fashion.

“What’s jolly?” asked Philip, looking out upon the dreary and monotonous waste through which the shaking steamboat was coughing its way.

“Why, the whole thing; it’s immense I can tell you. I wouldn’t give that to be guaranteed a hundred thousand cold cash in a year’s time.”

“Where’s Mr. Brown?”

“He is in the saloon, playing poker with Schaick and that long haired party with the striped trousers, who scrambled aboard when the stage plank was half hauled in, and the big Delegate to Congress from out west.”

“That’s a fine looking fellow, that delegate, with his glossy, black whiskers; looks like a Washington man; I shouldn’t think he’d be at poker.”

“Oh, its only five cent ante, just to make it interesting, the Delegate said.”

“But I shouldn’t think a representative in Congress would play poker any way in a public steamboat.”

“Nonsense, you’ve got to pass the time. I tried a hand myself, but those old fellows are too many for me. The Delegate knows all the points. I’d bet a hundred dollars he will ante his way right into the United States Senate when his territory comes in. He’s got the cheek for it.”

“He has the grave and thoughtful manner of expectoration of a public man, for one thing,” added Philip.

“Harry,” said Philip, after a pause, “what have you got on those big boots for; do you expect to wade ashore?”

“I’m breaking ’em in.”

The fact was Harry had got himself up in what he thought a proper costume for a new country, and was in appearance a sort of compromise between a dandy of Broadway and a backwoodsman. Harry, with blue eyes, fresh complexion, silken whiskers and curly chestnut hair, was as handsome as a fashion plate. He wore this morning a soft hat, a short cutaway coat, an open vest displaying immaculate linen, a leathern belt round his waist, and top-boots of soft leather, well polished, that came above his knees and required a string attached to his belt to keep them up. The light hearted fellow gloried in these shining encasements of his well shaped legs, and told Philip that they were a perfect protection against prairie rattle-snakes, which never strike above the knee.

The landscape still wore an almost wintry appearance when our travelers left Chicago. It was a genial spring day when they landed at St. Louis; the birds were singing, the blossoms of peach trees in city garden plots, made the air sweet, and in the roar and tumult on the long river levee they found an excitement that accorded with their own hopeful anticipations.

The party went to the Southern Hotel, where the great Duff Brown was very well known, and indeed was a man of so much importance that even the office clerk was respectful to him. He might have respected in him also a certain vulgar swagger and insolence of money, which the clerk greatly admired.

The young fellows liked the house and liked the city; it seemed to them a mighty free and hospitable town. Coming from the East they were struck with many peculiarities. Everybody smoked in the streets, for one thing, they noticed; everybody “took a drink” in an open manner whenever he wished to do so or was asked, as if the habit needed no concealment or apology. In the evening when they walked about they found people sitting on the door-steps of their dwellings, in a manner not usual in a northern city; in front of some of the hotels and saloons the side walks were filled with chairs and benches—Paris fashion, said Harry—upon which people lounged in these warm spring evenings, smoking, always smoking; and the clink of glasses and of billiard balls was in the air. It was delightful.

Harry at once found on landing that his back-woods custom would not be needed in St. Louis, and that, in fact, he had need of all the resources of his wardrobe to keep even with the young swells of the town. But this did not much matter, for Harry was always superior to his clothes. As they were likely to be detained some time in the city, Harry told Philip that he was going to improve his time. And he did. It was an encouragement to any industrious man to see this young fellow rise, carefully dress himself, eat his breakfast deliberately, smoke his cigar tranquilly, and then repair to his room, to what he called his work, with a grave and occupied manner, but with perfect cheerfulness.

Harry would take off his coat, remove his cravat, roll up his shirt-sleeves, give his curly hair the right touch before the glass, get out his book on engineering, his boxes of instruments, his drawing paper, his profile paper, open the book of logarithms, mix his India ink, sharpen his pencils, light a cigar, and sit down at the table to “lay out a line,” with the most grave notion that he was mastering the details of engineering. He would spend half a day in these preparations without ever working out a problem or having the faintest conception of the use of lines or logarithms. And when he had finished, he had the most cheerful confidence that he had done a good day’s work.

It made no difference, however, whether Harry was in his room in a hotel or in a tent, Philip soon found, he was just the same. In camp he would get himself up in the most elaborate toilet at his command, polish his long boots to the top, lay out his work before him, and spend an hour or longer, if anybody was looking at him, humming airs, knitting his brows, and “working” at engineering; and if a crowd of gaping rustics were looking on all the while it was perfectly satisfactory to him.

“You see,” he says to Philip one morning at the hotel when he was thus engaged, “I want to get the theory of this thing, so that I can have a check on the engineers.”

“I thought you were going to be an engineer yourself,” queried Philip.

“Not many times, if the court knows herself. There’s better game. Brown and Schaick have, or will have, the control for the whole line of the Salt Lick Pacific Extension, forty thousand dollars a mile over the prairie, with extra for hard-pan—and it’ll be pretty much all hardpan I can tell you; besides every alternate section of land on this line. There’s millions in the job. I’m to have the sub-contract for the first fifty miles, and you can bet it’s a soft thing.”

“I’ll tell you what you do, Philip,” continued Larry, in a burst of generosity, “if I don’t get you into my contract, you’ll be with the engineers, and you jest stick a stake at the first ground marked for a depot, buy the land of the farmer before he knows where the depot will be, and we’ll turn a hundred or so on that. I’ll advance the money for the payments, and you can sell the lots. Schaick is going to let me have ten thousand just for a flyer in such operations.”

“But that’s a good deal of money.”

“Wait till you are used to handling money. I didn’t come out here for a bagatelle. My uncle wanted me to stay East and go in on the Mobile custom house, work up the Washington end of it; he said there was a fortune in it for a smart young fellow, but I preferred to take the chances out here. Did I tell you I had an offer from Bobbett and Fanshaw to go into their office as confidential clerk on a salary of ten thousand?”

“Why didn’t you take it?” asked Philip, to whom a salary of two thousand would have seemed wealth, before he started on this journey.

“Take it? I’d rather operate on my own hook;” said Harry, in his most airy manner.

A few evenings after their arrival at the Southern, Philip and Harry made the acquaintance of a very agreeable gentleman, whom they had frequently seen before about the hotel corridors, and passed a casual word with. He had the air of a man of business, and was evidently a person of importance.

The precipitating of this casual intercourse into the more substantial form of an acquaintanceship was the work of the gentleman himself, and occurred in this wise. Meeting the two friends in the lobby one evening, he asked them to give him the time, and added:

“Excuse me, gentlemen—strangers in St. Louis? Ah, yes-yes. From the East, perhaps? Ah; just so, just so. Eastern born myself—Virginia. Sellers is my name—Beriah Sellers.

“Ah! by the way—New York, did you say? That reminds me; just met some gentlemen from your State, a week or two ago—very prominent gentlemen—in public life they are; you must know them, without doubt. Let me see—let me see. Curious those names have escaped me. I know they were from your State, because I remember afterward my old friend Governor Shackleby said to me—fine man, is the Governor—one of the finest men our country has produced—said he, ‘Colonel, how did you like those New York gentlemen? —not many such men in the world,—Colonel Sellers,’ said the Governor—yes, it was New York he said—I remember it distinctly. I can’t recall those names, somehow. But no matter. Stopping here, gentlemen—stopping at the Southern?”

In shaping their reply in their minds, the title “Mr.” had a place in it; but when their turn had arrived to speak, the title “Colonel” came from their lips instead.

They said yes, they were abiding at the Southern, and thought it a very good house.

“Yes, yes, the Southern is fair. I myself go to the Planter’s, old, aristocratic house. We Southern gentlemen don’t change our ways, you know. I always make it my home there when I run down from Hawkeye—my plantation is in Hawkeye, a little up in the country. You should know the Planter’s.”

Philip and Harry both said they should like to see a hotel that had been so famous in its day—a cheerful hostelrie, Philip said it must have been where duels were fought there across the dining-room table.

“You may believe it, sir, an uncommonly pleasant lodging. Shall we walk?”

And the three strolled along the streets, the Colonel talking all the way in the most liberal and friendly manner, and with a frank open-heartedness that inspired confidence.

“Yes, born East myself, raised all along, know the West—a great country, gentlemen. The place for a young fellow of spirit to pick up a fortune, simply pick it up, it’s lying round loose here. Not a day that I don’t put aside an opportunity; too busy to look into it. Management of my own property takes my time. First visit? Looking for an opening?”

“Yes, looking around,” replied Harry.

“Ah, here we are. You’d rather sit here in front than go to my apartments? So had I. An opening eh?”

The Colonel’s eyes twinkled. “Ah, just so. The country is opening up, all we want is capital to develop it. Slap down the rails and bring the land into market. The richest land on God Almighty’s footstool is lying right out there. If I had my capital free I could plant it for millions.”

“I suppose your capital is largely in your plantation?” asked Philip.

“Well, partly, sir, partly. I’m down here now with reference to a little operation—a little side thing merely. By the way gentlemen, excuse the liberty, but it’s about my usual time”—

The Colonel paused, but as no movement of his acquaintances followed this plain remark, he added, in an explanatory manner,

“I’m rather particular about the exact time—have to be in this climate.”

Even this open declaration of his hospitable intention not being understood the Colonel politely said,

“Gentlemen, will you take something?”

Col. Sellers led the way to a saloon on Fourth street under the hotel, and the young gentlemen fell into the custom of the country.

“Not that,” said the Colonel to the bar-keeper, who shoved along the counter a bottle of apparently corn-whiskey, as if he had done it before on the same order; “not that,” with a wave of the hand. “That Otard if you please. Yes. Never take an inferior liquor, gentlemen, not in the evening, in this climate. There. That’s the stuff. My respects!”

The hospitable gentleman, having disposed of his liquor, remarking that it was not quite the thing—“when a man has his own cellar to go to, he is apt to get a little fastidious about his liquors”—called for cigars. But the brand offered did not suit him; he motioned the box away, and asked for some particular Havana’s, those in separate wrappers.

“I always smoke this sort, gentlemen; they are a little more expensive, but you’ll learn, in this climate, that you’d better not economize on poor cigars.”

Having imparted this valuable piece of information, the Colonel lighted the fragrant cigar with satisfaction, and then carelessly put his fingers into his right vest pocket. That movement being without result, with a shade of disappointment on his face, he felt in his left vest pocket. Not finding anything there, he looked up with a serious and annoyed air, anxiously slapped his right pantaloon’s pocket, and then his left, and exclaimed,

“By George, that’s annoying. By George, that’s mortifying. Never had anything of that kind happen to me before. I’ve left my pocket-book. Hold! Here’s a bill, after all. No, thunder, it’s a receipt.”

“Allow me,” said Philip, seeing how seriously the Colonel was annoyed, and taking out his purse.

The Colonel protested he couldn’t think of it, and muttered something to the barkeeper about “hanging it up,” but the vender of exhilaration made no sign, and Philip had the privilege of paying the costly shot; Col. Sellers profusely apologizing and claiming the right “next time, next time.”

As soon as Beriah Sellers had bade his friends good night and seen them depart, he did not retire apartments in the Planter’s, but took his way to his lodgings with a friend in a distant part of the city.

CHAPTER XIV.

The letter that Philip Sterling wrote to Ruth Bolton, on the evening of setting out to seek his fortune in the west, found that young lady in her own father’s house in Philadelphia. It was one of the pleasantest of the many charming suburban houses in that hospitable city, which is territorially one of the largest cities in the world, and only prevented from becoming the convenient metropolis of the country by the intrusive strip of Camden and Amboy sand which shuts it off from the Atlantic ocean. It is a city of steady thrift, the arms of which might well be the deliberate but delicious terrapin that imparts such a royal flavor to its feasts.

It was a spring morning, and perhaps it was the influence of it that made Ruth a little restless, satisfied neither with the out-doors nor the in-doors. Her sisters had gone to the city to show some country visitors Independence Hall, Girard College and Fairmount Water Works and Park, four objects which Americans cannot die peacefully, even in Naples, without having seen. But Ruth confessed that she was tired of them, and also of the Mint. She was tired of other things. She tried this morning an air or two upon the piano, sang a simple song in a sweet but slightly metallic voice, and then seating herself by the open window, read Philip’s letter. Was she thinking about Philip, as she gazed across the fresh lawn over the tree tops to the Chelton Hills, or of that world which his entrance, into her tradition-bound life had been one of the means of opening to her? Whatever she thought, she was not idly musing, as one might see by the expression of her face. After a time she took up a book; it was a medical work, and to all appearance about as interesting to a girl of eighteen as the statutes at large; but her face was soon aglow over its pages, and she was so absorbed in it that she did not notice the entrance of her mother at the open door.

“Ruth?”

“Well, mother,” said the young student, looking up, with a shade of impatience.

“I wanted to talk with thee a little about thy plans.”

“Mother; thee knows I couldn’t stand it at Westfield; the school stifled me, it’s a place to turn young people into dried fruit.”

“I know,” said Margaret Bolton, with a half anxious smile, “thee chafes against all the ways of Friends, but what will thee do? Why is thee so discontented?”

“If I must say it, mother, I want to go away, and get out of this dead level.”

With a look half of pain and half of pity, her mother answered, “I am sure thee is little interfered with; thee dresses as thee will, and goes where thee pleases, to any church thee likes, and thee has music. I had a visit yesterday from the society’s committee by way of discipline, because we have a piano in the house, which is against the rules.”

“I hope thee told the elders that father and I are responsible for the piano, and that, much as thee loves music, thee is never in the room when it is played. Fortunately father is already out of meeting, so they can’t discipline him. I heard father tell cousin Abner that he was whipped so often for whistling when he was a boy that he was determined to have what compensation he could get now.”

“Thy ways greatly try me, Ruth, and all thy relations. I desire thy happiness first of all, but thee is starting out on a dangerous path. Is thy father willing thee should go away to a school of the world’s people?”

“I have not asked him,” Ruth replied with a look that might imply that she was one of those determined little bodies who first made up her own mind and then compelled others to make up theirs in accordance with hers.

“And when thee has got the education thee wants, and lost all relish for the society of thy friends and the ways of thy ancestors, what then?”

Ruth turned square round to her mother, and with an impassive face and not the slightest change of tone, said,

“Mother, I’m going to study medicine?”

Margaret Bolton almost lost for a moment her habitual placidity.

“Thee, study medicine! A slight frail girl like thee, study medicine! Does thee think thee could stand it six months? And the lectures, and the dissecting rooms, has thee thought of the dissecting rooms?”

“Mother,” said Ruth calmly, “I have thought it all over. I know I can go through the whole, clinics, dissecting room and all. Does thee think I lack nerve? What is there to fear in a person dead more than in a person living?”

“But thy health and strength, child; thee can never stand the severe application. And, besides, suppose thee does learn medicine?”

“I will practice it.”

“Here?”

“Here.”

“Where thee and thy family are known?”

“If I can get patients.”

“I hope at least, Ruth, thee will let us know when thee opens an office,” said her mother, with an approach to sarcasm that she rarely indulged in, as she rose and left the room.

Ruth sat quite still for a time, with face intent and flushed. It was out now. She had begun her open battle.

The sight-seers returned in high spirits from the city. Was there any building in Greece to compare with Girard College, was there ever such a magnificent pile of stone devised for the shelter of poor orphans? Think of the stone shingles of the roof eight inches thick! Ruth asked the enthusiasts if they would like to live in such a sounding mausoleum, with its great halls and echoing rooms, and no comfortable place in it for the accommodation of any body? If they were orphans, would they like to be brought up in a Grecian temple?

And then there was Broad street! Wasn’t it the broadest and the longest street in the world? There certainly was no end to it, and even Ruth was Philadelphian enough to believe that a street ought not to have any end, or architectural point upon which the weary eye could rest.

But neither St. Girard, nor Broad street, neither wonders of the Mint nor the glories of the Hall where the ghosts of our fathers sit always signing the Declaration; impressed the visitors so much as the splendors of the Chestnut street windows, and the bargains on Eighth street. The truth is that the country cousins had come to town to attend the Yearly Meeting, and the amount of shopping that preceded that religious event was scarcely exceeded by the preparations for the opera in more worldly circles.

“Is thee going to the Yearly Meeting, Ruth?” asked one of the girls.

“I have nothing to wear,” replied that demure person. “If thee wants to see new bonnets, orthodox to a shade and conformed to the letter of the true form, thee must go to the Arch Street Meeting. Any departure from either color or shape would be instantly taken note of. It has occupied mother a long time, to find at the shops the exact shade for her new bonnet. Oh, thee must go by all means. But thee won’t see there a sweeter woman than mother.”

“And thee won’t go?”

“Why should I? I’ve been again and again. If I go to Meeting at all I like best to sit in the quiet old house in Germantown, where the windows are all open and I can see the trees, and hear the stir of the leaves. It’s such a crush at the Yearly Meeting at Arch Street, and then there’s the row of sleek-looking young men who line the curbstone and stare at us as we come out. No, I don’t feel at home there.”

That evening Ruth and her father sat late by the drawing-room fire, as they were quite apt to do at night. It was always a time of confidences.

“Thee has another letter from young Sterling,” said Eli Bolton.

“Yes. Philip has gone to the far west.”

“How far?”

“He doesn’t say, but it’s on the frontier, and on the map everything beyond it is marked ‘Indians’ and ‘desert,’ and looks as desolate as a Wednesday Meeting.”

“Humph. It was time for him to do something. Is he going to start a daily newspaper among the Kick-a-poos?”

“Father, thee’s unjust to Philip. He’s going into business.”

“What sort of business can a young man go into without capital?”

“He doesn’t say exactly what it is,” said Ruth a little dubiously, “but it’s something about land and railroads, and thee knows, father, that fortunes are made nobody knows exactly how, in a new country.”

“I should think so, you innocent puss, and in an old one too. But Philip is honest, and he has talent enough, if he will stop scribbling, to make his way. But thee may as well take care of theeself, Ruth, and not go dawdling along with a young man in his adventures, until thy own mind is a little more settled what thee wants.”

This excellent advice did not seem to impress Ruth greatly, for she was looking away with that abstraction of vision which often came into her grey eyes, and at length she exclaimed, with a sort of impatience,

“I wish I could go west, or south, or somewhere. What a box women are put into, measured for it, and put in young; if we go anywhere it’s in a box, veiled and pinioned and shut in by disabilities. Father, I should like to break things and get loose!”

What a sweet-voiced little innocent, it was to be sure.

“Thee will no doubt break things enough when thy time comes, child; women always have; but what does thee want now that thee hasn’t?”

“I want to be something, to make myself something, to do something. Why should I rust, and be stupid, and sit in inaction because I am a girl? What would happen to me if thee should lose thy property and die? What one useful thing could I do for a living, for the support of mother and the children? And if I had a fortune, would thee want me to lead a useless life?”

“Has thy mother led a useless life?”

“Somewhat that depends upon whether her children amount to anything,” retorted the sharp little disputant. “What’s the good, father, of a series of human beings who don’t advance any?”

Friend Eli, who had long ago laid aside the Quaker dress, and was out of Meeting, and who in fact after a youth of doubt could not yet define his belief, nevertheless looked with some wonder at this fierce young eagle of his, hatched in a Friend’s dove-cote. But he only said,

“Has thee consulted thy mother about a career, I suppose it is a career thee wants?”

Ruth did not reply directly; she complained that her mother didn’t understand her. But that wise and placid woman understood the sweet rebel a great deal better than Ruth understood herself. She also had a history, possibly, and had sometime beaten her young wings against the cage of custom, and indulged in dreams of a new social order, and had passed through that fiery period when it seems possible for one mind, which has not yet tried its limits, to break up and re-arrange the world.

Ruth replied to Philip’s letter in due time and in the most cordial and unsentimental manner. Philip liked the letter, as he did everything she did; but he had a dim notion that there was more about herself in the letter than about him. He took it with him from the Southern Hotel, when he went to walk, and read it over and again in an unfrequented street as he stumbled along. The rather common-place and unformed hand-writing seemed to him peculiar and characteristic, different from that of any other woman.