p499-030 CHAPTER I.

[figure description] 499EAF. Page 017. In-line image of a man sitting on a step smoking a pipe outside in front of a house.[end figure description]

Nibiwa win o-dibendan aki.

Eng. A gallant tract
Of land it is!
Meercraft. 'Twill yield a pound an acre:
We must let cheap ever at first. But, sir,
This looks too large for you, I see.

JUNE, 18—. Squire Hawkins
sat upon the pyramid of large
blocks, called the “stile,” in
front of his house, contemplating
the morning.

The locality was Obedstown,
East Tennessee. You would
not know that Obedstown
stood on the top of a mountain,
for there was nothing
about the landscape to indicate
it—but it did: a mountain that
stretched abroad over whole counties, and rose very gradually.
The district was called the “Knobs of East Tennessee,” and
had a reputation like Nazareth, as far as turning out any good
thing was concerned.

The Squire's house was a double log cabin, in a state of
decay; two or three gaunt hounds lay asleep about the threshold,
and lifted their heads sadly whenever Mrs. Hawkins or
the children stepped in and out over their bodies. Rubbish
was scattered about the grassless yard; a bench stood near

p499-031 THE SQUIRE'S HOUSE. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 018. In-line image of a log cabin in the woods with two children in the front yard looking at a cooking fire.[end figure description]

the door with a tin wash basin on it and a pail of water and
a gourd; a cat had begun to drink from the pail, but the
exertion was overtaxing her energies, and she had stopped to
rest. There was an ash-hopper by the fence, and an iron pot,
for soft-soap-boiling, near it.

This dwelling constituted one-fifteenth of Obedstown; the
other fourteen houses were scattered about among the tall
pine trees and among the corn-fields in such a way that a man
might stand in the midst of the city and not know but that
he was in the country if he only depended on his eyes for
information.

“Squire” Hawkins got his title from being postmaster of
Obedstown—not that the title properly belonged to the office,
but because in those regions the chief citizens always must
have titles of some sort, and so the usual courtesy had been
extended to Hawkins. The mail was monthly, and sometimes
amounted to as much as three or four letters at a single
delivery. Even a rush like this did not fill up the postmaster's

p499-032 THE U.S. MAIL. [figure description] Page 019. In-line image of man riding on an old horse that looks very tired.[end figure description]

whole month, though, and therefore he “kept store” in the
intervals.

The Squire was contemplating the morning. It was balmy
and tranquil, the vagrant breezes were laden with the odor
of flowers, the murmur of bees was in the air, there was
everywhere that suggestion of repose that summer woodlands
bring to the senses, and the vague, pleasurable melancholy
that such a time and such surroundings inspire.

Presently the United States mail arrived, on horseback.
There was but one letter, and it was for the postmaster. The
long-legged youth who carried the mail tarried an hour to
talk, for there was no hurry; and in a little while the male
population of the village had assembled to help. As a general
thing, they were dressed in homespun “jeans,” blue or yellow—
there were no other varieties of it; all wore one suspender and
sometimes two—yarn ones knitted at home,—some wore vests,
but few wore coats. Such coats and vests as did appear, however,
were rather picturesque than otherwise, for they were
made of tolerably fanciful patterns of calico—a fashion which
prevails there to this day among those of the community who
have tastes above the common level and are able to afford
style. Every individual arrived with his hands in his
pockets; a hand came out occasionally for a purpose, but it
always went back again after service; and if it was the

p499-033 OBEDSTOWN MALES. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 020. In-line image of a group of man sitting around outside of a post office. There is a short man with a fishing pole who looks bewildered.[end figure description]

head that was served, just the cant that the dilapidated
straw hat got by being uplifted and rooted under, was
retained until the next call altered the inclination; many hats
were present, but none were erect and no two were canted
just alike. We are speaking impartially of men, youths and
boys. And we are also speaking of these three estates when
we say that every individual was either chewing natural leaf
tobacco prepared on his own premises, or smoking the same
in a corn-cob pipe. Few of the men wore whiskers; none
wore moustaches; some had a thick jungle of hair under the
chin and hiding the throat—the only pattern recognized there
as being the correct thing in whiskers; but no part of any
individual's face had seen a razor for a week.

These neighbors stood a few moments looking at the mail
carrier reflectively while he talked; but fatigue soon began
to show itself, and one after another they climbed up and
occupied the top rail of the fence, hump-shouldered and grave,

[figure description] Page 021.[end figure description]

like a company of buzzards assembled for supper and listening
for the death-rattle. Old Damrell said:

“Tha hain't no news 'bout the jedge, hit ain't likely?”

“Cain't tell for sartin; some thinks he's gwyne to be 'long
toreckly, and some thinks 'e hain't. Russ Mosely he tole ole
Hanks he mought git to Obeds tomorrer or nex' day he
reckoned.”

“Well, I wisht I knowed. I got a prime sow and pigs in
the cote-house, and I hain't got no place for to put 'em. If
the jedge is a gwyne to hold cote, I got to roust 'em out, I
reckon. But tomorrer'll do, I 'spect.”

The speaker bunched his thick lips together like the stemend
of a tomato and shot a bumble-bee dead that had lit on a
weed seven feet away. One after another the several chew-ers
expressed a charge of tobacco juice and delivered it at
the deceased with steady aim and faultless accuracy.

“What's a stirrin', down 'bout the Forks?” continued Old
Damrell.

“Well, I dunno, skasely. Ole Drake Higgins he's ben
down to Shelby las' week. Tuck his crap down; couldn't git
shet o' the most uv it; hit warn't no time for to sell, he say,
so he fotch it back agin, 'lowin' to wait tell fall. Talks 'bout
goin' to Mozouri—lots uv 'ems talkin' that-away down thar,
Ole Higgins say. Cain't make a livin' here no mo', sich
times as these. Si Higgins he's ben over to Kaintuck n'
married a high-toned gal thar, outen the fust families, an' he's
come back to the Forks with jist a hell's-mint o' whoop-jamboree
notions, folks says. He's tuck an' fixed up the ole
house like they does in Kaintuck, he say, an' tha's ben folks
come cler from Turpentine for to see it. He's tuck an'
gawmed it all over on the inside with plarsterin'.”

“What's plarsterin'?”

“I dono. Hit's what he calls it. Ole Mam Higgins, she
tole me. She say she warn't gwyne to hang out in no sich a
dern hole like a hog. Says it's mud, or some sich kind o'
nastness that sticks on n' kivers up everything. Plarsterin',
Si calls it.”

This marvel was discussed at considerable length; and

p499-035 HURRYING. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 022. In-line image of a line of men walking together in front of a log cabin. There are a number of prarie dogs running around.[end figure description]

almost with animation. But presently there was a dog-fight
over in the neighborhood of the blacksmith shop, and the
visitors slid off their perch like so many turtles and strode to
the battle-field with an interest bordering on eagerness. The
Squire remained, and read his letter. Then he sighed, and
sat long in meditation. At intervals he said:

“Missouri. Missouri. Well, well, well, everything is so
uncertain.”

At last he said:

“I believe I'll do it.—A man will just rot, here. My house,
my yard, everything around me, in fact, shows that I am
becoming one of these cattle—and I used to be thrifty in
other times.”

He was not more than thirty-five, but he had a worn look
that made him seem older. He left the stile, entered that
part of his house which was the store, traded a quart of thick
molasses for a coonskin and a cake of beeswax to an old dame
in linsey-woolsey, put his letter away, and went into the
kitchen. His wife was there, constructing some dried apple
pies; a slovenly urchin of ten was dreaming over a rude
weather-vane of his own contriving; his small sister, close
upon four years of age, was sopping corn-bread in some gravy
left in the bottom of a frying-pan and trying hard not to sop

p499-036 THE SQUIRE'S KITCHEN. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 023. In-line image of a 2 women, one is presumably a servant in the kitchen, next to a hearth. Two small children are playing in the foreground.[end figure description]

over a finger-mark that divided the pan through the middle—
for the other side belonged to the brother, whose musings
made him forget his stomach for the moment; a negro
woman was busy cooking, at a vast fire-place. Shiftlessness
and poverty reigned in the place.

“Nancy, I've made up my mind. The world is done with
me, and perhaps I ought to be done with it. But no matter—
I can wait. I am going to Missouri. I won't stay in this
dead country and decay with it. I've had it on my mind
some time. I'm going to sell out here for whatever I can get,
and buy a wagon and team and put you and the children in
it and start.”

“Anywhere that suits you, suits me, Si. And the children
can't be any worse off in Missouri than they are here, I
reckon.”

Motioning his wife to a private conference in their own
room, Hawkins said: “No, they'll be better off. I've looked
out for them, Nancy,” and his face lighted. “Do you see
these papers? Well, they are evidence that I have taken up
Seventy-five Thousand Acres of Land in this county—think
what an enormous fortune it will be some day! Why, Nancy,
enormous don't express it—the word's too tame! I tell you,
Nancy——”

“For goodness sake, Si——”

p499-037

“FOR GOODNESS SAKES, SI.” [figure description] 499EAF. Page 024. In-line image of a man and a woman sitting together by a window talking together.[end figure description]

“Wait, Nancy, wait—let me finish—I've been secretly
boiling and fuming with this grand inspiration for weeks, and
I must talk or I'll burst! I haven't whispered to a soul—not
a word—have had my countenance under lock and key, for
fear it might drop something that would tell even these animals
here how to discern the gold mine that's glaring under
their noses. Now all that is necessary to hold this land and
keep it in the family is to pay the trifling taxes on it yearly—
five or ten dollars—the whole tract would not sell for over
a third of a cent an acre now, but some day people will be
glad to get it for twenty dollars, fifty dollars, a hundred dollars
an acre! What should you say to” [here he dropped
his voice to a whisper and looked anxiously around to see
that there were no eavesdroppers,] “a thousand dollars an
acre!

“Well you may open your eyes and stare! But it's so.
You and I may not see the day, but they'll see it. Mind I

[figure description] Page 025.[end figure description]

tell you, they'll see it. Nancy, you've heard of steamboats,
and may be you believed in them—of course you did. You've
heard these cattle here scoff at them and call them lies and
humbugs,—but they're not lies and humbugs, they're a reality
and they're going to be a more wonderful thing some
day than they are now. They're going to make a revolution
in this world's affairs that will make men dizzy to contemplate.
I've been watching—I've been watching while some
people slept, and I know what's coming.

“Even you and I will see the day that steamboats will come
up that little Turkey river to within twenty miles of this
land of ours—and in high water they'll come right to it!
And this is not all, Nancy—it isn't even half! There's a
bigger wonder—the railroad! These worms here have never
even heard of it—and when they do they'll not believe in it.
But it's another fact. Coaches that fly over the ground
twenty miles an hour—heavens and earth, think of that,
Nancy! Twenty miles an hour. It makes a man's brain
whirl. Some day, when you and I are in our graves, there'll
be a railroad stretching hundreds of miles—all the way down
from the cities of the Northern States to New Orleans—and
its got to run within thirty miles of this land—may be even
touch a corner of it. Well, do you know, they've quit burning
wood in some places in the Eastern States? And what
do you suppose they burn? Coal!” [He bent over and
whispered again:] “There's whole worlds of it on this land!
You know that black stuff that crops out of the bank of the
branch?—well, that's it. You've taken it for rocks; so has
every body here; and they've built little dams and such
things with it. One man was going to build a chimney out of it.
Nancy I expect I turned as white as a sheet! Why, it might have
caught fire and told everything. I showed him it was too
crumbly. Then he was going to build it of copper ore—
splendid yellow forty-per-cent. ore! There's fortunes upon
fortunes of copper ore on our land! It scared me to death,
the idea of this fool starting a smelting furnace in his house

[figure description] Page 026.[end figure description]

without knowing it, and getting his dull eyes opened. And
then he was going to build it of iron ore! There's mountains
of iron ore here, Nancy—whole mountains of it. I wouldn't
take any chances. I just stuck by him—I haunted him—I
never let him alone till he built it of mud and sticks like all
the rest of the chimneys in this dismal country. Pine forests,
wheat land, corn land, iron, copper, coal—wait till the rail-roads
come, and the steamboats! We'll never see the day,
Nancy—never in the world—never, never, never, child.
We've got to drag along, drag along, and eat crusts in toil
and poverty, all hopeless and forlorn—but they'll ride in
coaches, Nancy! They'll live like the princes of the earth;
they'll be courted and worshiped; their names will be
known from ocean to ocean! Ah, well-a-day! Will they
ever come back here, on the railroad and the steamboat, and
say `This one little spot shall not be touched—this hovel
shall be sacred—for here our father and our mother suffered
for us, thought for us, laid the foundations of our future as
solid as the hills!' ”

“You are a great, good, noble soul, Si Hawkins, and I am
an honored woman to be the wife of such a man”—and the
tears stood in her eyes when she said it. “We will go to
Missouri. You are out of your place, here, among these
groping dumb creatures. We will find a higher place, where
you can walk with your own kind, and be understood when
you speak—not stared at as if you were talking some foreign
tongue. I would go anywhere, anywhere in the wide world
with you. I would rather my body should starve and die
than your mind should hunger and wither away in this lonely
land.”

“Spoken like yourself, my child! But we'll not starve,
Nancy. Far from it. I have a letter from Eschol Sellers—
just came this day. A letter that—I'll read you a line
from it!”

He flew out of the room. A shadow blurred the sunlight
in Nancy's face—there was uneasiness in it, and

[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]

disappointment. A procession of disturbing thoughts began to troop
through her mind. Saying nothing aloud, she sat with her
hands in her lap; now and then she clasped them, then unclasped
them, then tapped the ends of the fingers together;
sighed, nodded, smiled—occasionally paused, shook her head.
This pantomime was the elocutionary expression of an unspoken
soliloquy which had something of this shape:

“I was afraid of it—was afraid of it. Trying to make
our fortune in Virginia, Eschol Sellers nearly ruined us—
and we had to settle in Kentucky and start over again.
Trying to make our fortune in Kentucky he crippled us
again and we had to move here. Trying to make our fortune
here, he brought us clear down to the ground, nearly. He's
an honest soul, and means the very best in the world, but
I'm afraid, I'm afraid he's too flighty. He has splendid
ideas, and he'll divide his chances with his friends with a free
hand, the good generous soul, but something does seem to
always interfere and spoil everything. I never did think he
was right well balanced. But I don't blame my husband,
for I do think that when that man gets his head full of a new
notion, he can out-talk a machine. He'll make anybody believe
in that notion that'll listen to him ten minutes—why I
do believe he would make a deaf and dumb man believe in
it and get beside himself, if you only set him where he could
see his eyes talk and watch his hands explain. What a head
he has got! When he got up that idea there in Virginia of
buying up whole loads of negroes in Delaware and Virginia
and Tennessee, very quiet, having papers drawn to have them
delivered at a place in Alabama and take them and pay for
them, away yonder at a certain time, and then in the meantime
get a law made stopping everybody from selling negroes
to the south after a certain day—it was somehow that way—
mercy how the man would have made money! Negroes
would have gone up to four prices. But after he'd spent
money and worked hard, and traveled hard, and had heaps
of negroes all contracted for, and everything going along

p499-041 THE LAST COG WHEEL. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 028. In-line image of three men crowded around a barrell with a candle lighting the room.[end figure description]

just right, he couldn't get the laws passed and down the
whole thing tumbled. And there in Kentucky, when he
raked up that old numskull that had been inventing away at
a perpetual motion machine for twenty-two years, and Eschol
Sellers saw at a glance where just one more little cog-wheel
would settle the business, why I could see it as plain as day
when he came in wild at midnight and hammered us out of
bed and told the whole thing in a whisper with the doors
bolted and the candle in an empty barrel. Oceans of money
in it—anybody could see that. But it did cost a deal to buy
the old numskull out—and then when they put the new cog-wheel
in they'd overlooked something somewhere and it
wasn't any use—the troublesome thing wouldn't go. That
notion he got up here did look as handy as anything in the
world; and how him and Si did sit up nights working at it
with the curtains down and me watching to see if any neighbors
were about. The man did honestly believe there was
a fortune in that black gummy oil that stews out of the bank
Si says is coal; and he refined it himself till it was like
water, nearly, and it did burn, there's no two ways about
that; and I reckon he'd have been all right in Cincinnati
with his lamp that he got made, that time he got a house full
of rich speculators to see him exhibit only in the middle of

p499-042 GONE UP. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 029. In-line image of a group of people around a table looking very surprised by the explosion on the table.[end figure description]

his speech it let go and almost blew the heads off the whole
crowd. I haven't got over grieving for the money that cost,
yet. I am sorry enough Eschol Sellers is in Missouri, now,
but I was glad when he went. I wonder what his letter
says. But of course it's cheerful; he's never down-hearted—
never had any trouble in his life—didn't know it if he had.
It's always sunrise with that man, and fine and blazing, at
that—never gets noon, though—leaves off and rises again.
Nobody can help liking the creature, he means so well—but
I do dread to come across him again; he's bound to set us
all crazy, of course. Well, there goes old widow Hopkins—
it always takes her a week to buy a spool of thread and trade
a hank of yarn. May be Si can come with the letter, now.”

And he did:

“Widow Hopkins kept me—I haven't any patience with
such tedious people. Now listen, Nancy—just listen at
this:

“ `Come right along to Missouri! Don't wait and worry about a good price
but sell out for whatever you can get, and come along, or you might be too late.
Throw away your traps, if necessary, and come empty-handed. You'll never
regret it. It's the grandest country—the loveliest land—the purest atmosphere—
I can't describe it; no pen can do it justice. And it's filling up, every day—
people coming from everywhere. I've got the biggest scheme on earth—and I'll
take you in; I'll take in every friend I've got that's ever stood by me, for there's

p499-043 [figure description] 499EAF. Page 030. Tail-piece image of a sunset with a man standing on a path in front of the sun.[end figure description]

enough for all, and to spare. Mum's the word—don't whisper—keep yourself
to yourself. You'll see! Come!—rush!—hurry!—don't wait for anything!'

“It's the same old boy, Nancy, just the same old boy—
ain't he?”

“Yes, I think there's a little of the old sound about his
voice yet. I suppose you—you'll still go, Si?”

“Go! Well, I should think so, Nancy. It's all a chance,
of course, and chances haven't been kind to us, I'll admit—
but whatever comes, old wife, they're provided for. Thank
God for that!”

“Amen,” came low and earnestly.

And with an activity and a suddenness that bewildered
Obedstown and almost took its breath away, the Hawkinses
hurried through with their arrangements in four short months
and flitted out into the great mysterious blank that lay
beyond the Knobs of Tennessee.

p499-044 CHAPTER II.

[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]

[figure description] Epigraph.[end figure description]

TOWARD the close of the third day's journey the wayfarers
were just beginning to think of camping, when they came
upon a log cabin in the woods. Hawkins drew rein and entered
the yard. A boy about ten years old was sitting in the cabin
door with his face bowed in his hands. Hawkins approached,
expecting his footfall to attract attention, but it did not.
He halted a moment, and then said:

“Come, come, little chap, you mustn't be going to sleep
before sundown.”

With a tired expression, the small face came up out of the
hands,— a face down which tears were flowing.

“Ah, I'm sorry I spoke so, my boy. Tell me—is anything
the matter?”

The boy signified with a scarcely perceptible gesture that
the trouble was in the house, and made room for Hawkins to
pass. Then he put his face in his hands again and rocked
himself about as one suffering a grief that is too deep to find
help in moan or groan or outcry. Hawkins stepped within. It
was a poverty stricken place. Six or eight middle-aged country
people of both sexes were grouped about an object in the
middle of the room; they were noiselessly busy and they
talked in whispers when they spoke. Hawkins uncovered
and approached. A coffin stood upon two backless chairs.
These neighbors had just finished disposing the body of a
woman in it—a woman with a careworn, gentle face that had
more the look of sleep about it than of death. An old lady
motioned toward the door and said to Hawkins in a whisper:

[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]

“His mother, po' thing. Died of the fever, last night.
Tha warn't no sich thing as saving of her. But it's better
for her—better for her. Husband and the other two children
died in the spring, and she hain't ever hilt up her head sence.
She jest went around broken-hearted like, and never took no intrust
in anything but Clay—that's the boy thar. She jest worshiped
Clay—and Clay he worshiped her. They didn't 'pear
to live at all, only when they was together, looking at each
other, loving one another. She's ben sick three weeks; and
if you believe me that child has worked, and kep' the run of
the med'cin, and the times of giving it, and sot up nights and
nussed her, and tried to keep up her sperits, the same as a
grown-up person. And last night when she kep' a sinking
and sinking, and turned away her head and didn't know him
no mo', it was fitten to make a body's heart break to see him
climb onto the bed and lay his cheek agin hern and call her
so pitiful and she not answer. But bymeby she roused up,
like, and looked around wild, and then she see him, and she
made a great cry and snatched him to her breast and hilt him
close and kissed him over and over agin; but it took the last
po' strength she had, and so her eyelids begin to close down,
and her arms sort o' drooped away and then we see she was
gone, po' creetur. And Clay, he—Oh, the po' motherless
thing—I cain't talk about it—I cain't bear to talk about it.”

Clay had disappeared from the door; but he came in, now,
and the neighbors reverently fell apart and made way for him.
He leaned upon the open coffin and let his tears course silently.
Then he put out his small hand and smoothed the hair and
stroked the dead face lovingly. After a bit he brought his
other hand up from behind him and laid three or four fresh
wild flowers upon the breast, bent over and kissed the unresponsive
lips time and time again, and then turned away and
went out of the house without looking at any of the company.
The old lady said to Hawkins:

“She always loved that kind o' flowers. He fetched 'em
for her every morning, and she always kissed him. They was
from away north somers—she kep' school when she fust come.
Goodness knows what's to become o' that po' boy. No father,

p499-046 THE ORPHAN'S LAST GIFT. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 033. In-line image of a child weeping over a coffin, while a number of people look on at him.[end figure description]

no mother, no kin folks of no kind. Nobody to go to, nobody
that k'yers for him—and all of us is so put to it for to get
along and families so large.”

Hawkins understood. All eyes were turned inquiringly
upon him. He said:

“Friends, I am not very well provided for, myself, but
still I would not turn my back on a homeless orphan. If he
will go with me I will give him a home, and loving regard—
I will do for him as I would have another do for a child of
my own in misfortune.”

One after another the people stepped forward and wrung
the stranger's hand with cordial good will, and their eyes
looked all that their hands could not express or their lips
speak.

“Said like a true man,” said one.

“You was a stranger to me a minute ago, but you ain't
now,” said another.

“It's bread cast upon the waters—it'll return after many
days,” said the old lady whom we have heard speak before

p499-047

[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]

“You got to camp in my house as long as you hang out
here,” said one. “If tha hain't room for you and yourn my
tribe'll turn out and camp in the hay loft.”

A few minutes afterward, while the preparations for the
funeral were being concluded, Mr. Hawkins arrived at his
wagon leading his little waif by the hand, and told his wife
all that had happened, and asked her if he had done right in
giving to her and to himself this new care? She said:

“If you've done wrong, Si Hawkins, it's a wrong that will
shine brighter at the judgment day than the rights that many
a man has done before you. And there isn't any compliment
you can pay me equal to doing a thing like this and finishing
it up, just taking it for granted that I'll be willing to it.
Willing? Come to me, you poor motherless boy, and let me
take your grief and help you carry it.”

When the child awoke in the morning, it was as if from a
troubled dream. But slowly the confusion in his mind took
form, and he remembered his great loss; the beloved form
in the coffin; his talk with a generous stranger who offered
him a home; the funeral, where the stranger's wife held him
by the hand at the grave, and cried with him and comforted
him; and he remembered how this new mother tucked him
in his bed in the neighboring farm house, and coaxed him to
talk about his troubles, and then heard him say his prayers
and kissed him good night, and left him with the soreness in
his heart almost healed and his bruished spirit at rest.

And now the new mother came again, and helped him to
dress, and combed his hair, and drew his mind away by
degrees from the dismal yesterday, by telling him about the
wonderful journey he was going to take and the strange things
he was going to see. And after breakfast they two went
alone to the grave, and his heart went out to his new friend
and his untaught eloquence poured the praises of his buried
idol into her ears without let or hindrance. Together they
planted roses by the headboard and strewed wild flowers upon
the grave; and then together they went away, hand in hand,
and left the dead to the long sleep that heals all heart-aches and ends all sorrows.

MRS. HAWKINS AND CLAY AT THE GRAVE OF HIS MOTHER. [figure description] 499EAF. Illustration page of a small child in the arms of a woman standing over top of a grave covered in flowers.[end figure description]

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

p499-050 CHAPTER III.

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—Babillebalon! (disoit-il) voici pis qu'antan. Fuyons! C'est, par la mort
bœuf! Leviathan, descript par le noble prophete Mosis en la vie du sainet
home Job. Il nous avallera tous, comme pilules..... Voy le cy. O
que tu es horrible et abhominable!.... Ho ho! Diable, Satanas, Leviathan!
Je ne te peux veoir, tant tu es ideux et detestable.

WHATEVER the lagging dragging journey may have
been to the rest of the emigrants, it was a wonder and
delight to the children, a world of enchantment; and they
believed it to be peopled with the mysterious dwarfs and
giants and goblins that figured in the tales the negro slaves
were in the habit of telling them nightly by the shuddering
light of the kitchen fire.

At the end of nearly a week of travel, the party went into
camp near a shabby village which was caving, house by house,
into the hungry Mississippi. The river astonished the children
beyond measure. Its mile-breadth of water seemed an
ocean to them, in the shadowy twilight, and the vague riband
of trees on the further shore, the verge of a continent which
surely none but they had ever seen before.

“Uncle Dan'l” (colored,) aged 40; his wife, “aunt Jinny,”
aged 30, “Young Miss” Emily Hawkins, “Young Mars”
Washington Hawkins and “Young Mars” Clay, the new
member of the family, ranged themselves on a log, after supper,
and contemplated the marvelous river and discussed it.
The moon rose and sailed aloft through a maze of shredded
cloud-wreaths; the sombre river just perceptibly brightened
under the veiled light; a deep silence pervaded the air and
was emphasized, at intervals, rather than broken, by the hooting
of an owl, the baying of a dog, or the muffled crash of a
caving bank in the distance.

The little company assembled on the log were all children,

p499-051 “CHILDREN, DAH'S SUMFIN' A COMIN'!” [figure description] 499EAF. Page 036. In-line image of a family of slaves on the banks of a river pointing at a steam boat off in the distance.[end figure description]

(at least in simplicity and broad and comprehensive ignorance,)
and the remarks they made about the river were in keeping
with the character; and so awed were they by the grandeur
and the solemnity of the scene before them, and by their
belief that the air was filled with invisible spirits and that the
faint zephyrs were caused by their passing wings, that all
their talk took to itself a tinge of the supernatural, and their
voices were subdued to a low and reverent tone. Suddenly
Uncle Dan'l exclaimed:

“Chil'en, dah's sumfin a comin!”

All crowded close together and every heart beat faster.
Uncle Dan'l pointed down the river with his bony finger.

A deep coughing sound troubled the stillness, way toward
a wooded cape that jutted into the stream a mile distant.
All in an instant a fierce eye of fire shot out from behind the
cape and sent a long brilliant pathway quivering athwart the
dusky water. The coughing grew louder and louder, the
glaring eye grew larger and still larger, glared wilder and

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

still wilder. A huge shape developed itself out of the
gloom, and from its tall duplicate horns dense volumes of
smoke, starred and spangled with sparks, poured out and
went tumbling away into the farther darkness. Nearer and
nearer the thing came, till its long sides began to glow with
spots of light which mirrored themselves in the river and
attended the monster like a torchlight procession.

“What is it! Oh, what is it, Uncle Dan'l!”

With deep solemnity the answer came:

“It's de Almighty! Git down on yo' knees!”

It was not necessary to say it twice. They were all kneeling,
in a moment. And then while the mysterious coughing
rose stronger and stronger and the threatening glare reached
farther and wider, the negro's voice lifted up its supplications:

“O Lord, we's ben mighty wicked, an' we knows dat we
'zerve to go to de bad place, but good Lord, deah Lord, we
ain't ready yit, we ain't ready—let dese po' chil'en hab one
mo' chance, jes' one mo' chance. Take de ole niggah if you's
got to hab somebody.—Good Lord, good deah Lord, we don't
know whah you's a gwyne to, we don't know who you's got
yo' eye on, but we knows by de way you's a comin', we
knows by de way you's a tiltin' along in yo' charyot o' fiah
dat some po' sinner's a gwyne to ketch it. But good Lord,
dese chil'en don't b'long heah, dey's f'm Obedstown whah dey
don't know nuffin, an' you knows, yo' own sef, dat dey ain't
'sponsible. An' deah Lord, good Lord, it ain't like yo'
mercy, it ain't like yo' pity, it ain't like yo' long-sufferin'
lovin'-kindness for to take dis kind o' 'vantage o' sich little
chil'en as dese is when dey's so many ornery grown folks
chuck full o' cussedness dat wants roastin' down dah. Oh,
Lord, spah de little chil'en, don't tar de little chil'en away
f'm dey frens, jes' let 'em off jes' dis once, and take it out'n
de ole niggah. Heah I is, Lord, heah I is! De ole niggah's
ready, Lord, de ole ——”

The flaming and churning steamer was right abreast the
party, and not twenty steps away. The awful thunder of a

p499-053 “HEAH I IS, LORD, HEAH I IS!” [figure description] 499EAF. Page 038. In-line image of a family running through the dark woods. The man is carrying two of the children, while the wife and the other kids run behind.[end figure description]

mud-valve suddenly burst forth, drowning the prayer, and
as suddenly Uncle Dan'l snatched a child under each arm
and scoured into the woods with the rest of the pack at his
heels. And then, ashamed of himself, he halted in the deep
darkness and shouted, (but rather feebly:)

“Heah I is, Lord, heah I is!”

There was a moment of throbbing suspense, and then, to
the surprise and the comfort of the party, it was plain that
the august presence had gone by, for its dreadful noises were
receding. Uncle Dan'l headed a cautious reconnoissance in
the direction of the log. Sure enough “the Lord” was
just turning a point a short distance up the river, and while
they looked the lights winked out and the coughing diminished
by degrees and presently ceased altogether.

“H'wsh! Well now dey's some folks says dey ain't no
'ficiency in prah. Dis chile would like to know whah we'd
a ben now if it warn't fo' dat prah? Dat's it. Dat's it!”

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

“Uncle Dan'l, do you reckon it was the prayer that saved
us?” said Clay.

“Does I reckon? Don't I know it! Whah was yo' eyes?
Warn't de Lord jes' a comin' chow! chow! CHOW! an' a
goin' on turrible—an' do de Lord carry on dat way 'dout
dey's sumfin don't suit him? An' warn't he a lookin' right at
dis gang heah, an' warn't he jes' a reachin' for 'em? An'
d'you spec' he gwyne to let 'em off 'dout somebody ast him
to do it? No indeedy!”

“Do you reckon he saw us, Uncle Dan'l?”

“De law sakes, chile, didn't I see him a lookin' at us?”

“Did you feel scared, Uncle Dan'l?”

“No sah! When a man is 'gaged in prah, he ain't fraid
o' nuffin—dey can't nuffin tetch him.”

“Well what did you run for?”

“Well, I—I—mars Clay, when a man is under de influence
ob de sperit, he do-no what he's 'bout—no sah; dat man
do-no what he's 'bout. You mout take an' tah de head off'n
dat man an' he wouldn't scasely fine it out. Dah's de Hebrew
chil'en dat went frough de fiah; dey was burnt considable—
ob coase dey was; but dey didn't know nuffin 'bout it—heal
right up agin; if dey'd ben gals dey'd missed dey long haah,
(hair,) maybe, but dey wouldn't felt de burn.”

“I don't know but what they were girls. I think they
were.”

“Now mars Clay, you knows bettern dat. Sometimes a
body can't tell whedder you's a sayin' what you means or
whedder you's a sayin' what you don't mean, 'case you says
'em bofe de same way.”

“But how should I know whether they were boys or
girls?”

“Goodness sakes, mars Clay, don't de Good Book say?
'Sides, don't it call 'em de he-brew chil'en? If dey was gals
wouldn't dey be de she-brew chil'en? Some people dat kin
read don't 'pear to take no notice when dey do read.”

“Well, Uncle Dan'l, I think that—— My! here comes
another one up the river! There can't be two!”

p499-055

[figure description] Page 040. Tail-piece image of a boat in a river in front of a cliff.[end figure description]

“We gone dis time—we done gone dis time, sho'! Dey ain't
two, mars Clay—dat's de same one. De Lord kin 'pear
eberywhah in a second. Goodness, how de fiah and de smoke
do belch up! Dat mean business, honey. He comin' now
like he fo'got sumfin. Come 'long, chil'en, time you's gwyne
to roos'. Go 'long wid you—ole Uncle Daniel gwyne out in
de woods to rastle in prah—de ole nigger gwyne to do what
he kin to sabe you agin.”

He did go to the woods and pray; but he went so far that
he doubted, himself, if the Lord heard him when He went
by.

p499-056 CHAPTER IV.

[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

—Seventhly, Before his Voyage, He should make his peace with God, satisfie
his Creditors if he be in debt; Pray earnestly to God to prosper him in his
Voyage, and to keep him from danger, and, if he be sui juris, he should make
his last will, and wisely order all his affairs, since many that go far abroad,
return not home. (This good and Christian Counsel is given by Martinus Zeilerus
in his Apodemical Canons before his Itinerary of Spain and Portugal.)

EARLY in the morning Squire Hawkins took passage in a
small steamboat, with his family and his two slaves, and
presently the bell rang, the stage-plank was hauled in, and
the vessel proceeded up the river. The children and the
slaves were not much more at ease after finding out that
this monster was a creature of human contrivance than they
were the night before when they thought it the Lord of
heaven and earth. They started, in fright, every time the
gauge-cocks sent out an angry hiss, and they quaked from
head to foot when the mud-valves thundered. The shivering
of the boat under the beating of the wheels was sheer
misery to them.

But of course familiarity with these things soon took away
their terrors, and then the voyage at once became a glorious
adventure, a royal progress through the very heart and home
of romance, a realization of their rosiest wonder-dreams.
They sat by the hour in the shade of the pilot house on the
hurricane deck and looked out over the curving expanses of
the river sparkling in the sunlight. Sometimes the boat
fought the mid-stream current, with a verdant world on either
hand, and remote from both; sometimes she closed in under
a point, where the dead water and the helping eddies were,
and shaved the bank so closely that the decks were swept by
the jungle of over-hanging willows and littered with a spoil
of leaves; departing from these “points” she regularly
crossed the river every five miles, avoiding the “bight” of
the great bends and thus escaping the strong current;

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

sometimes she went out and skirted a high “bluff” sand-bar in the
middle of the stream, and occasionally followed it up a little
too far and touched upon the shoal water at its head—and
then the intelligent craft refused to run herself aground, but
“smelt” the bar, and straightway the foamy streak that
streamed away from her bows vanished, a great foamless
wave rolled forward and passed her under way, and in this
instant she leaned far over on her side, shied from the bar
and fled square away from the danger like a frightened thing—
and the pilot was lucky if he managed to “straighten her
up” before she drove her nose into the opposite bank; sometimes
she approached a solid wall of tall trees as if she meant
to break through it, but all of a sudden a little crack would
open just enough to admit her, and away she would go plowing
through the “chute” with just barely room enough
between the island on one side and the main land on the
other; in this sluggish water she seemed to go like a racehorse;
now and then small log cabins appeared in little clearings,
with the never-failing frowsy women and girls in soiled
and faded linsey-woolsey leaning in the doors or against woodpiles
and rail fences, gazing sleepily at the passing show;
sometimes she found shoal water, going out at the head of
those “chutes” or crossing the river, and then a deck-hand
stood on the bow and hove the lead, while the boat slowed
down and moved cautiously; sometimes she stopped a moment
at a landing and took on some freight or a passenger while a
crowd of slouchy white men and negroes stood on the bank
and looked sleepily on with their hands in their pantaloons
pockets,—of course—for they never took them out except to
stretch, and when they did this they squirmed about and
reached their fists up into the air and lifted themselves on
tip-toe in an ecstasy of enjoyment.

When the sun went down it turned all the broad river to a
national banner laid in gleaming bars of gold and purple and
crimson; and in time these glories faded out in the twilight
and left the fairy archipelagoes reflecting their fringing foliage
in the steely mirror of the stream.

p499-058

NOT ENCOURAGED. [figure description] Page 043. In-line image of two boys teasing a bear that is chained up.[end figure description]

At night the boat forged on through the deep solitudes of
the river, hardly ever discovering a light to testify to a
human presence—mile after mile and league after league the
vast bends were guarded by unbroken walls of forest that
had never been disturbed by the voice or the foot-fall of a
man or felt the edge of his sacrilegious axe.

An hour after supper the moon came up, and Clay and
Washington ascended to the hurricane deck to revel again in
their new realm of enchantment. They ran races up and
down the deck; climbed about the bell; made friends with
the passenger-dogs chained under the life-boat; tried to make
friends with a passenger-bear fastened to the vergè-staff but
were not encouraged; “skinned the cat” on the hog-chains;
in a word, exhausted the amusement-possibilities of the deck.
Then they looked wistfully up at the pilot house, and finally,
little by little, Clay ventured up there, followed diffidently
by Washington. The pilot turned presently to “get his
stern-marks,” saw the lads and invited them in. Now their
happiness was complete. This cosy little house, built entirely
of glass and commanding a marvelous prospect in every
direction was a magician's throne to them and their enjoyment
of the place was simply boundless.

They sat them down on a high bench and looked miles
ahead and saw the wooded capes fold back and reveal the
bends beyond; and they looked miles to the rear and saw

[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

the silvery highway diminish its breadth by degrees and close
itself together in the distance. Presently the pilot said:

“By George, yonder comes the Amaranth!”

A spark appeared, close to the water, several miles down
the river. The pilot took his glass and looked at it steadily
for a moment, and said, chiefly to himself:

“It can't be the Blue Wing. She couldn't pick us up this
way. It's the Amaranth, sure.”

He bent over a speaking-tube and said:

“Who's on watch down there?”

A hollow, unhuman voice rumbled up through the tube
in answer:

“I am. Second engineer.”

“Good! You want to stir your stumps, now, Harry—the
Amaranth's just turned the point—and she's just a-humping
herself, too!”

The pilot took hold of a rope that stretched out forward,
jerked it twice, and two mellow strokes of the big bell
responded. A voice out on the deck shouted:

“Stand by, down there, with that labboard lead!”

“No, I don't want the lead,” said the pilot, “I want you.
Roust out the old man—tell him the Amaranth's coming.
And go and call Jim—tell him.”

“Aye-aye, sir!”

The “old man” was the captain—he is always called so,
on steamboats and ships; “Jim” was the other pilot. Within
two minutes both of these men were flying up the pilothouse
stairway, three steps at a jump. Jim was in his shirt-sleeves,
with his coat and vest on his arm. He said:

“I was just turning in. Where's the glass?”

He took it and looked:

“Don't appear to be any night-hawk on the jack-staff—it's
the Amaranth, dead sure!”

The captain took a good long look, and only said:

“Damnation!”

George Davis, the pilot on watch, shouted to the nightwatchman
on deck:

“How's she loaded?”

p499-060

SHE'S GAINING. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 045. In-line image of three men in a ship. Two of the men are looking out of the windows, while the third is stearing the ship with a ship's wheel.[end figure description]

“Two inches by the head, sir.”

“'T ain't enough!”

The captain shouted, now:

“Call the mate. Tell him to call all hands and get a lot
of that sugar forrard—put her ten inches by the head. Lively,
now!”

“Aye-aye, sir!”

A riot of shouting and trampling floated up from below,
presently, and the uneasy steering of the boat soon showed
that she was getting “down by the head.”

The three men in the pilot house began to talk in short,
sharp sentences, low and earnestly. As their excitement
rose, their voices went down. As fast as one of them put
down the spy-glass another took it up—but always with a
studied air of calmness. Each time the verdict was:

“She's a gaining!”

The captain spoke through the tube:

“What steam are you carrying?”

“A hundred and forty-two, sir! But she's getting hotter
and hotter all the time.”

The boat was straining and groaning and quivering like a
monster in pain. Both pilots were at work now, one on each
side of the wheel, with their coats and vests off, their bosoms
and collars wide open and the perspiration flowing down their
faces. They were holding the boat so close to the shore that

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

the willows swept the guards almost from stem to stern.

“Stand by!” whispered George.

“All ready!” said Jim, under his breath.

“Let her come!”

The boat sprang away from the bank like a deer, and
darted in a long diagonal toward the other shore. She closed
in again and thrashed her fierce way along the willows as
before. The captain put down the glass:

“Lord how she walks up on us! I do hate to be beat!”

“Jim,” said George, looking straight ahead, watching the
slightest yawing of the boat and promptly meeting it with
the wheel, “how'll it do to try Murderer's Chute?”

“Well, it's—it's taking chances. How was the cotton-wood
stump on the false point below Boardman's Island this
morning?”

“Water just touching the roots.”

“Well it's pretty close work. That gives six feet scant in
the head of Murderer's Chute. We can just barely rub
through if we hit it exactly right. But it's worth trying.
She don't dare tackle it!”—meaning the Amaranth.

In another instant the Boreas plunged into what seemed a
crooked creek, and the Amaranth's approaching lights were
shut out in a moment. Not a whisper was uttered, now, but
the three men stared ahead into the shadows and two of them
spun the wheel back and forth with anxious watchfulness
while the steamer tore along. The chute seemed to come to
an end every fifty yards, but always opened out in time.
Now the head of it was at hand. George tapped the big bell
three times, two leadsmen sprang to their posts, and in a
moment their weird cries rose on the night air and were
caught up and repeated by two men on the upper deck:

“No-o bottom!”

“De-e-p four!”

“Half three!”

“Quarter three!”

“Mark under wa-a-ter three!”

“Half twain!”

“Quarter twain!——”

p499-062

“BY THE MARK TWAIN!” [figure description] Page 047. In-line image of a man on the deck of a ship swinging a rope around.[end figure description]

Davis pulled a couple of ropes—there was a jingling of
small bells far below, the boat's speed slackened, and the pent
steam began to whistle and the gauge-cocks to scream:

“By the mark twain!”

“Quar-ter-her-erless
twain!”

“Eight and a half!”

“Eight feet!”

“Seven-ana-half!——”

Another jingling of little
bells and the wheels
ceased turning altogether.
The whistling of the steam
was something frightful,
now—it almost drowned
all other noises.

“Stand by to meet her!”

George had the wheel
hard down and was standing
on a spoke.

“All ready!”

The boat hesitated—
seemed to hold her breath, as did the captain and pilots—
and then she began to fall away to starboard and every eye
lighted:

“Now then!—meet her! meet her! Snatch her!”

The wheel flew to port so fast that the spokes blended into
a spider-web—the swing of the boat subsided—she steadied
herself——

“Seven feet!”

“Sev—six and a half!”

“Six feet! Six f——”

Bang! She hit the bottom! George shouted through
the tube:

“Spread her wide open! Whale it at her!”

Pow—wow—chow! The escape-pipes belched snowy
pillars of steam aloft, the boat ground and surged and

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

trem-bled—and slid over into——

“M-a-r-k twain!”

“Quarter-her——”

“Tap! tap! tap!” (to signify “Lay in the leads.”)

And away she went, flying up the willow shore, with the
whole silver sea of the Mississippi stretching abroad on every
hand.

No Amaranth in sight!

“Ha-ha, boys, we took a couple of tricks that time!” said
the captain.

And just at that moment a red glare appeared in the head
of the chute and the Amaranth came springing after them!

“Well, I swear!”

“Jim, what is the meaning of that?”

“I'll tell you what's the meaning of it. That hail we had
at Napoleon was Wash Hastings, wanting to come to Cairo—
and we didn't stop. He's in that pilot house, now, showing
those mud turtles how to hunt for easy water.”

“That's it! I thought it wasn't any slouch that was running
that middle bar in Hog-eye Bend. If it's Wash
Hastings—well, what he don't know about the river ain't
worth knowing—a regular gold-leaf, kid-glove, diamondbreastpin
pilot Wash Hastings is. We won't take any tricks
off of him, old man!”

“I wish I'd a stopped for him, that's all.”

The Amaranth was within three hundred yards of the
Boreas, and still gaining. The “old man” spoke through
the tube:

“What is she carrying now?”

“A hundred and sixty-five, sir!”

“How's your wood?”

“Pine all out—cypress half gone—eating up cotton-wood
like pie!”

“Break into that rosin on the main deck—pile it in, the
boat can pay for it!”

Soon the boat was plunging and quivering and screaming

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

FAST TOGETHER. [figure description] 499EAF. Illustration page of two men dueling inside with a large crowd gathering around them.[end figure description]

p499-066 [figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]

more madly than ever. But the Amaranth's head was almost
abreast the Boreas's stern:

“How's your steam, now, Harry?”

“Hundred and eighty-two, sir!”

“Break up the casks of bacon in the forrard hold! Pile
it in! Levy on that turpentine in the fantail—drench every
stick of wood with it!”

The boat was a moving earthquake by this time:

“How is she now?”

“A hundred and ninety-six and still a-swelling!—water
below the middle gauge-cocks!—carrying every pound she
can stand!—nigger roosting on the safety-volve!”

“Good! How's your draft?”

“Bully! Every time a nigger heaves a stick of wood into
the furnace he goes out the chimney with it!”

The Amaranth drew steadily up till her jack-staff breasted
the Boreas's wheel-house—climbed along inch by inch till her
chimneys breasted it—crept along, further and further till
the boats were wheel to wheel—and then they closed up with
a heavy jolt and locked together tight and fast in the middle
of the big river under the flooding moonlight! A roar and
a hurrah went up from the crowded decks of both steamers—
all hands rushed to the guards to look and shout and gesticulate—
the weight careened the vessels over toward each
other—officers flew hither and thither cursing and storming,
trying to drive the people amidships—both captains were
leaning over their railings shaking their fists, swearing and
threatening—black volumes of smoke rolled up and canopied
the scene, delivering a rain of sparks upon the vessels—two
pistol shots rang out, and both captains dodged unhurt and
the packed masses of passengers surged back and fell apart
while the shrieks of women and children soared above the
intolerable din——

And then there was a booming roar, a thundering crash,
and the riddled Amaranth dropped loose from her hold and
drifted helplessly away!

Instantly the fire-doors of the Boreas were thrown open

[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]

and the men began dashing buckets of water into the furnaces—
for it would have been death and destruction to stop
the engines with such a head of steam on.

As soon as possible the Boreas dropped down to the floating
wreck and took off the dead, the wounded and the unhurt—
at least all that could be got at, for the whole forward half
of the boat was a shapeless ruin, with the great chimneys
lying crossed on top of it, and underneath were a dozen victims
imprisoned alive and wailing for help. While men with
axes worked with might and main to free these poor fellows,
the Boreas's boats went about, picking up stragglers from the
river.

And now a new horror presented itself. The wreck took
fire from the dismantled furnaces! Never did men work
with a heartier will than did those stalwart braves with the
axes. But it was of no use. The fire ate its way steadily,
despising the bucket brigade that fought it. It scorched the
clothes, it singed the hair of the axemen—it drove them
back, foot by foot—inch by inch—they wavered, struck a
final blow in the teeth of the enemy, and surrendered. And
as they fell back they heard prisoned voices saying:

“Don't leave us! Don't desert us! Don't, don't do it!”

And one poor fellow said:

“I am Henry Worley, striker of the Amaranth! My
mother lives in St. Louis. Tell her a lie for a poor devil's
sake, please. Say I was killed in an instant and never knew
what hurt me—though God knows I've neither scratch nor
bruise this moment! It's hard to burn up in a coop like this
with the whole wide world so near. Good-bye boys—we've
all got to come to it at last, anyway!”

The Boreas stood away out of danger, and the ruined
steamer went drifting down the stream an island of wreathing
and climbing flame that vomited clonds of smoke from
time to time, and glared more fiercely and sent its luminous
tongues higher and higher after each emission. A shriek at
intervals told of a captive that had met his doom. The
wreck lodged upon a sandbar, and when the Boreas turned

p499-068 ONE OF THE VICTIMS. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 051. In-line image of a man lying in bed with another man, presumably a doctor standing over him.[end figure description]

the next point on her upward journey it was still burning with
scarcely abated fury.

When the boys came down into the main saloon of the
Boreas, they saw a pitiful sight and heard a world of pitiful
sounds. Eleven poor creatures lay dead and forty more lay
moaning, or pleading or screaming, while a score of Good
Samaritans moved among them doing what they could to relieve
their sufferings; bathing their skinless faces and bodies
with linseed oil and lime water and covering the places with
bulging masses of raw cotton that gave to every face and
form a dreadful and unhuman aspect.

A little wee French midshipman of fourteen lay fearfully
injured, but never uttered a sound till a physician of Memphis
was about to dress his hurts. Then he said:

“Can I get well? You need not be afraid to tell me.”

“No—I—I am afraid you can not.”

“Then do not waste your time with me—help those that
can get well.”

“But——”

“Help those that can get well! It is not for me to be a
girl. I carry the blood of eleven generations of soldiers in
my veins!”

The physician—himself a man who had seen service in the

[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]

navy in his time—touched his hat to this little hero, and
passed on.

The head engineer of the Amaranth, a grand specimen of
physical manhood, struggled to his feet a ghastly spectacle
and strode toward his brother, the second engineer, who was
unhurt. He said:

“You were on watch. You were boss. You would not
listen to me when I begged you to reduce your steam. Take
that!—take it to my wife and tell her it comes from me by
the hand of my murderer! Take it—and take my curse
with it to blister your heart a hundred years—and may you
live so long!”

And he tore a ring from his finger, stripping flesh and
skin with it, threw it down and fell dead!

But these things must not be dwelt upon. The Boreas
landed her dreadful cargo at the next large town and delivered
it over to a multitude of eager hands and warm southern
hearts—a cargo amounting by this time to 39 wounded
persons and 22 dead bodies. And with these she delivered a
list of 96 missing persons that had drowned or otherwise
perished at the scene of the disaster.

A jury of inquest was impaneled, and after due deliberation
and inquiry they returned the inevitable American verdict
which has been so familiar to our ears all the days of
our lives—“Nobody to blame.”*

p499-070 CHAPTER V.

[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]

[figure description] Epigraph.[end figure description]

Il veut faire sécher de la neige au four et la vendre pour du sel blanc.

WHEN the Boreas backed away from the land to continue
her voyage up the river, the Hawkinses were
richer by twenty-four hours of experience in the contemplation
of human suffering and in learning through honest hard
work how to relieve it. And they were richer in another
way also. In the early turmoil an hour after the explosion,
a little black-eyed girl of five years, frightened and crying
bitterly, was struggling through the throng in the Boreas'
saloon calling her mother and father, but no one answered.—
Something in the face of Mr. Hawkins attracted her and
she came and looked up at him; was satisfied, and took
refuge with him. He petted her, listened to her troubles,
and said he would find her friends for her. Then he put
her in a state-room with his children and told them to be kind
to her (the adults of his party were all busy with the wounded)
and straightway began his search.

It was fruitless. But all day he and his wife made inquiries,
and hoped against hope. All that they could learn was
that the child and her parents came on board at New Orleans,
where they had just arrived in a vessel from Cuba; that
they looked like people from the Atlantic States; that the
family name was Van Brunt and the child's name Laura.
This was all. The parents had not been seen since the
explosion. The child's manners were those of a little lady,
and her clothes were daintier and finer than any Mrs. Hawkins
had ever seen before.

As the hours dragged on the child lost heart, and cried so

[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]

piteously for her mother that it seemed to the Hawkinses
that the moanings and the wailings of the mutilated men and
women in the saloon did not so strain at their heart-strings
as the sufferings of this little desolate creature. They tried
hard to comfort her; and in trying, learned to love her; they
could not help it, seeing how she clung to them and put her
arms about their necks and found no solace but in their kind
eyes and comforting words. There was a question in both
their hearts—a question that rose up and asserted itself with
more and more pertinacity as the hours wore on—but both
hesitated to give it voice—both kept silence and waited.
But a time came at last when the matter would bear delay
no longer. The boat had landed, and the dead and the wounded
were being conveyed to the shore. The tired child was
asleep in the arms of Mrs. Hawkins. Mr. Hawkins came
into their presence and stood without speaking. His eyes met
his wife's; then both looked at the child—and as they looked
it stirred in its sleep and nestled closer; an expression of
contentment and peace settled upon its face that touched the
mother-heart; and when the eyes of husband and wife met
again, the question was asked and answered.

When the Boreas had journeyed some four hundred miles
from the time the Hawkinses joined her, a long rank of
steamboats was sighted, packed side by side at a wharf like
sardines in a box, and above and beyond them rose the domes
and steeples and general architectural confusion of a city—a
city with an imposing umbrella of black smoke spread over
it. This was St. Louis. The children of the Hawkins family
were playing about the hurricane deck, and the father and
mother were sitting in the lee of the pilot house essaying
to keep order and not greatly grieved that they were not
succeeding.

“They're worth all the trouble they are, Nancy.”

“Yes, and more, Si.”

“I believe you! You wouldn't sell one of them at a good
round figure?”

“Not for all the money in the bank, Si.”

“My own sentiments every time. It is true we are not

[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]

rich—but still you are not sorry—you haven't any misgivings
about the additions?”

“No. God will provide.”

“Amen. And so you wouldn't even part with Clay? Or
Laura!”

“Not for anything in the world. I love them just the
same as I love my own. They pet me and spoil me even
more than the others do, I think. I reckon we'll get along,
Si.”

“Oh yes, it will all come out right, old mother. I wouldn't
be afraid to adopt a thousand children if I wanted to, for
there's that Tennessee Land, you know—enough to make an
army of them rich. A whole army, Nancy! You and I
will never see the day, but these little chaps will. Indeed
they will. One of these days it will be `the rich Miss Emily
Hawkins—and the wealthy Miss Laura Van Brunt Hawkins—
and the Hon. George Washington Hawkins, millionaire—
and Gov. Henry Clay Hawkins, millionaire!' That is the
way the world will word it! Don't let's ever fret about the
children, Nancy—never in the world. They're all right.
Nancy, there's oceans and oceans of money in that land—
mark my words!”

The children had stopped playing, for the moment, and
drawn near to listen. Hawkins said:

“Washington, my boy, what will you do when you get to
be one of the richest men in the world?”

“I don't know, father. Sometimes I think I'll have a
balloon and go up in the air; and sometimes I think I'll
have ever so many books; and sometimes I think I'll have
ever so many weather-cocks and water-wheels; or have a
machine like that one you and Colonel Sellers bought; and
sometimes I think I'll have—well, somehow I don't know—
somehow I ain't certain; maybe I'll get a steamboat first.”

“The same old chap!—always just a little bit divided
about things.—And what will you do when you get to be
one of the richest men in the world, Clay?”

“I don't know, sir. My mother—my other mother that's

[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]

gone away—she always told me to work along and not be
much expecting to get rich, and then I wouldn't be disappointed
if I didn't get rich. And so I reckon it's better for
me to wait till I get rich, and then by that time maybe I'll
know what I'll want—but I don't now, sir.”

“Careful old head!—Governor Henry Clay Hawkins!—
that's what you'll be, Clay, one of these days. Wise old
head! weighty old head! Go on, now, and play—all of you.
It's a prime lot, Nancy, as the Obedstown folk say about
their hogs.”

A smaller steamboat received the Hawkinses and their fortunes,
and bore them a hundred and thirty miles still higher
up the Mississippi, and landed them at a little tumble-down
village on the Missouri shore in the twilight of a mellow
October day.

The next morning they harnessed up their team and for
two days they wended slowly into the interior through almost
roadless and uninhabited forest solitudes. And when for the
last time they pitched their tents, metaphorically speaking,
it was at the goal of their hopes, their new home.

By the muddy roadside stood a new log cabin, one story
high—the store; clustered in the neighborhood were ten or
twelve more cabins, some new, some old.

In the sad light of the departing day the place looked
homeless enough. Two or three coatless young men sat in
front of the store on a dry-goods box, and whittled it with
their knives, kicked it with their vast boots, and shot tobaccojuice
at various marks. Several ragged negroes leaned comfortably
against the posts of the awning and contemplated
the arrival of the wayfarers with lazy curiosity. All these
people presently managed to drag themselves to the vicinity
of the Hawkins' wagon, and there they took up permanent
positions, hands in pockets and resting on one leg; and thus
anchored they proceeded to look and enjoy. Vagrant dogs
came wagging around and making inquiries of Hawkins's
dog, which were not satisfactory and they made war on him
in concert. This would have interested the citizens but it

[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]

was too many on one to amount to anything as a fight, and
so they commanded the peace and the foreign dog furled his
tail and took sanctuary under the wagon. Slatternly negro
girls and women slouched along with pails deftly balanced
on their heads, and joined the group and stared. Little half
dressed white boys, and little negro boys with nothing whatever
on but tow-linen shirts with a fine southern exposure,
came from various directions and stood with their hands
locked together behind them and aided in the inspection.
The rest of the population were laying down their employments
and getting ready to come, when a man burst through
the assemblage and seized the new-comers by the hands in a
frenzy of welcome, and exclaimed—indeed almost shouted:

“Well who could have believed it! Now is it you sure
enough—turn around! hold up your heads! I want to look
at you good! Well, well, well, it does seem most too good
to be true, I declare! Lord, I'm so glad to see you! Does
a body's whole soul good to look at you! Shake hands
again! Keep on shaking hands! Goodness gracious alive.
What will my wife say?—Oh yes indeed, it's so!—married
only last week—lovely, perfectly lovely creature, the noblest
woman that ever—you'll like her, Nancy! Like her? Lord
bless me you'll love her—you'll dote on her—you'll be
twins! Well, well, well, let me look at you again! Same
old—why bless my life it was only just this very morning
that my wife says, `Colonel'—she will call me Colonel spite
of everything I can do—she says `Colonel, something tells
me somebody's coming!' and sure enough here you are, the
last people on earth a body could have expected. Why she'll
think she's a prophetess—and hanged if I don't think so
too—and you know there ain't any country but what a
prophet's an honor to, as the proverb says. Lord bless me—
and here's the children, too! Washington, Emily, don't you
know me? Come, give us a kiss. Won't I fix you, though!—
ponies, cows, dogs, everything you can think of that'll
delight a child's heart—and——. Why how's this? Little
strangers? Well you won't be any strangers here, I can tell

p499-075 THE PROCESSION — FORWARD, MARCH! [figure description] 499EAF. Page 058. In-line image of a procession of people in formal clothes walking past a group of slave children.[end figure description]

you. Bless your souls we'll make you think you never was
at home before—'deed and 'deed we will, I can tell you!
Come, now, bundle right along with me. You can't glorify
any hearth stone but mine in this camp, you know—can't eat
anybody's bread but mine—can't do anything but just make
yourselves perfectly at home and comfortable, and spread
yourselves out and rest! You hear me! Here—Jim, Tom,
Pete, Jake, fly around! Take that team to my place—put
the wagon in my lot—put the horses under the shed, and get
out hay and oats and fill them up! Ain't any hay and oats?
Well get some—have it charged to me—come, spin around,
now! Now, Hawkins, the procession's ready; mark time,
by the left flank, forward—march!”

And the Colonel took the lead, with Laura astride his
neck, and the newly-inspired and very grateful immigrants
picked up their tired limbs with quite a spring in them and
dropped into his wake.

Presently they were ranged about an old-time fire-place
whose blazing logs sent out rather an unnecessary amount of
heat, but that was no matter—supper was needed, and to have
it, it had to be cooked. This apartment was the family

p499-076 COL. SELLERS' LITTLE WIFE. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 059. In-line image of a woman carrying a tea kettle and a steaming hot plate of food.[end figure description]

bedroom, parlor, library and kitchen, all in one. The matronly
little wife of the Colonel moved hither and thither and in
and out with her pots and pans in her hands, happiness in
her heart and a world of admiration of her husband in her
eyes. And when at last she had spread the cloth and loaded
it with hot corn bread, fried chickens, bacon, buttermilk,
coffee, and all manner of country luxuries, Col. Sellers modified
his harangue and for a moment throttled it down to the
orthodox pitch for a blessing, and then instantly burst forth
again as from a parenthesis and clattered on with might and
main till every stomach in the party was laden with all it
could carry. And when the new-comers ascended the ladder
to their comfortable feather beds on the second floor—to wit,
the garret—Mrs. Hawkins was obliged to say:

“Hang the fellow, I do believe he has gone wilder than
ever, but still a body can't help liking him if they would—
and what is more, they don't ever want to try when they see
his eyes and hear him talk.”

Within a week or two the Hawkinses were comfortably
domiciled in a new log house, and were beginning to feel at
home. The children were put to school; at least it was

[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]

what passed for a school in those days: a place where tender
young humanity devoted itself for eight or ten hours a day
to learning incomprehensible rubbish by heart out of books
and reciting it by rote, like parrots; so that a finished education
consisted simply of a permanent headache and the ability
to read without stopping to spell the words or take breath.
Hawkins bought out the village store for a song and proceeded
to reap the profits, which amounted to but little more than
another song.

The wonderful speculation hinted at by Col. Sellers in his
letter turned out to be the raising of mules for the Southern
market; and really it promised very well. The young stock
cost but a trifle, the rearing but another trifle, and so Hawkins
was easily persuaded to embark his slender means in the
enterprise and turn over the keep and care of the animals to
Sellers and Uncle Dan'l.

All went well. Business prospered little by little. Hawkins
even built a new house, made it two full stories high and
put a lightning rod on it. People came two or three miles
to look at it. But they knew that the rod attracted the
lightning, and so they gave the place a wide berth in a storm,
for they were familiar with marksmanship and doubted if
the lightning could hit that small stick at a distance of a mile
and a half oftener than once in a hundred and fifty times.
Hawkins fitted out his house with “store” furniture from
St. Louis, and the fame of its magnificence went abroad in
the land. Even the parlor carpet was from St. Louis—though
the other rooms were clothed in the “rag” carpeting of the
country. Hawkins put up the first “paling” fence that had
ever adorned the village; and he did not stop there, but
whitewashed it. His oil-cloth window-curtains had noble
pictures on them of castles such as had never been seen anywhere
in the world but on window-curtains. Hawkins
enjoyed the admiration these prodigies compelled, but he
always smiled to think how poor and cheap they were, compared
to what the Hawkins mansion would display in a future
day after the Tennessee Land should have borne its minted
fruit. Even Washington observed, once, that when the

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

Tennessee Land was sold he would have a “store” carpet in
his and Clay's room like the one in the parlor. This pleased
Hawkins, but it troubled his wife. It did not seem wise, to
her, to put one's entire earthly trust in the Tennessee Land
and never think of doing any work.

Hawkins took a weekly Philadelphia newspaper and a
semi-weekly St. Louis journal—almost the only papers that
came to the village, though Godey's Lady's Book found a
good market there and was regarded as the perfection of
polite literature by some of the ablest critics in the place.
Perhaps it is only fair to explain that we are writing of a by
gone age—some twenty or thirty years ago. In the two
newspapers referred to lay the secret of Hawkins's growing
prosperity. They kept him informed of the condition of the
crops south and east, and thus he knew which articles were
likely to be in demand and which articles were likely to be
unsalable, weeks and even months in advance of the simple
folk about him. As the months went by he came to be regarded
as a wonderfully lucky man. It did not occur to the
citizens that brains were at the bottom of his luck.

His title of “Squire” came into vogue again, but only for
a season; for, as his wealth and popularity augmented, that
title, by imperceptible stages, grew up into “Judge;” indeed
it bade fair to swell into “General” bye and bye. All
strangers of consequence who visited the village gravitated
to the Hawkins Mansion and became guests of the “Judge.”

Hawkins had learned to like the people of his section very
much. They were uncouth and not cultivated, and not particularly
industrious; but they were honest and straightforward,
and their virtuous ways commanded respect. Their
patriotism was strong, their pride in the flag was of the old-fashioned
pattern, their love of country amounted to idolatry.
Whoever dragged the national honor in the dirt won their
deathless hatred. They still cursed Benedict Arnold as if he
were a personal friend who had broken faith but a week
gone by.

p499-079 CHAPTER VI.

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

[figure description] Epigraph.[end figure description]

WE skip ten years and this history finds certain changes
to record.

Judge Hawkins and Col. Sellers have made and lost two
or three moderate fortunes in the meantime and are now
pinched by poverty. Sellers has two pairs of twins and four
extras. In Hawkins's family are six children of his own and
two adopted ones. From time to time, as fortune smiled,
the elder children got the benefit of it, spending the lucky
seasons at excellent schools in St. Louis and the unlucky ones
at home in the chafing discomfort of straightened circumstances.

Neither the Hawkins children nor the world that knew
them ever supposed that one of the girls was of alien blood
and parentage. Such difference as existed between Laura
and Emily is not uncommon in a family. The girls had
grown up as sisters, and they were both too young at the
time of the fearful accident on the Mississippi to know that
it was that which had thrown their lives together.

And yet any one who had known the secret of Laura's
birth and had seen her during these passing years, say at the
happy age of twelve or thirteen, would have fancied that he

p499-080 LAURA. [figure description] Page 063. In-line image of a young woman in a big straw hat.[end figure description]

knew the reason why she was more winsome than her school
companion.

Philosophers dispute whether it is the promise of what she
will be in the careless school-girl, that makes her attractive,
the undeveloped maidenhood, or the mere natural, careless
sweetness of childhood. If Laura at twelve was beginning
to be a beauty, the thought of it had never entered her head.
No, indeed. Her mind was filled with more important
thoughts. To her simple school-girl dress she was beginning
to add those mysterious little adornments of ribbon-knots
and ear-rings, which were the subject of earnest consultations
with her grown friends.

When she tripped down the street on a summer's day with
her dainty hands propped into the ribbon-broidered pockets
of her apron, and elbows consequently more or less akimbo
with her wide Leghorn hat flapping down and hiding her
face one moment and blowing straight up against her forehead
the next and making its revealment of fresh young
beauty; with all her pretty girlish airs and graces in full

[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]

play, and that sweet ignorance of care and that atmosphere
of innocence and purity all about her that belong to her
gracious time of life, indeed she was a vision to warm the
coldest heart and bless and cheer the saddest.

Willful, generous, forgiving, imperious, affectionate, improvident,
bewitching, in short—was Laura at this period.
Could she have remained there, this history would not need
to be written. But Laura had grown to be almost a woman
in these few years, to the end of which we have now come—
years which had seen Judge Hawkins pass through so many
trials.

When the judge's first bankruptcy came upon him, a
homely human angel intruded upon him with an offer of
$1,500 for the Tennessee Land. Mrs. Hawkins said take it.
It was a grievous temptation, but the judge withstood it.
He said the land was for the children—he could not rob them
of their future millions for so paltry a sum. When the
second blight fell upon him, another angel appeared and
offered $3,000 for the land. He was in such deep distress
that he allowed his wife to persuade him to let the papers be
drawn; but when his children came into his presence in their
poor apparel, he felt like a traitor and refused to sign.

But now he was down again, and deeper in the mire than
ever. He paced the floor all day, he scarcely slept at night.
He blushed even to acknowledge it to himself, but treason
was in his mind—he was meditating, at last, the sale of the
land. Mrs. Hawkins stepped into the room. He had not
spoken a word, but he felt as guilty as if she had caught him
in some shameful act. She said:

“Si, I do not know what we are going to do. The children
are not fit to be seen, their clothes are in such a state.
But there's something more serious still.—There is scarcely
a bite in the house to eat.”

“Why, Nancy, go to Johnson ——.”

“Johnson indeed! You took that man's part when he
hadn't a friend in the world, and you built him up and made
him rich. And here's the result of it: He lives in our fine

p499-082 READY TO SELL. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 065. In-line image of a woman weeping in the corner as her husband looks at her inside a cabin.[end figure description]

house, and we live in his miserable log cabin. He has hinted
to our children that he would rather they wouldn't come
about his yard to play with his children,—which I can bear,
and bear easy enough, for they're not a sort we want to associate
with much—but what I can't bear with any quietness
at all, is his telling Franky our bill was running pretty high
this morning when I sent him for some meal—and that was
all he said, too—didn't give him the meal—turned off and
went to talking with the Hargrave girls about some stuff they
wanted to cheapen.”

“Nancy, this is astounding!”

“And so it is, I warrant you. I've kept still, Si, as long
as ever I could. Things have been getting worse and worse,
and worse and worse, every single day; I don't go out of
the house, I feel so down; but you had trouble enough, and
I wouldn't say a word—and I wouldn't say a word now, only
things have got so bad that I don't know what to do, nor
where to turn.” And she gave way and put her face in her
hands and cried.

“Poor child, don't grieve so. I never thought that of
Johnson. I am clear at my wit's end. I don't know what
in the world to do. Now if somebody would come along
and offer $3,000—Oh, if somebody only would come along

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

and offer $3,000 for that Tennessee Land——”

“You'd sell it, Si?” said Mrs. Hawkins excitedly.

“Try me!”

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

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

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 to-morrow, 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

p499-085 STOCK RISING. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 068. In-line image of two men conversing, one is wearing a suit, while the other is stretching out his suspenders.[end figure description]

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!”

[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]

“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 come back. 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

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]

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

p499-089 A FAMILY COUNCIL. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 072. In-line image of a family meeting at a table. All of the children are looking at the father who is seated in front of them.[end figure description]

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.

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]

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

p499-091 [figure description] 499EAF. Page 074. Tail-piece image of a small house with a picket fence in the front yard.[end figure description]

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.

p499-092 CHAPTER VII.

[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]

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
houses. 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 stage-coach
is but a poor, plodding, vulgar thing in the solitudes

[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]

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 Hawkeye 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. Dump 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 is 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

p499-094 ATTEMPTED CORNER IN SPECIE. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 077. In-line image of two men talking while a slave stands next to them with a luggage trunk.[end figure description]

—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

[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]

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 peo-ple'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

[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]

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

p499-098 A BRILLIANT IDEA. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 081. In-line image of a family gathered around their father who is sitting near a fire place. He has a small child on his knee.[end figure description]

—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

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

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.

p499-100 CHAPTER VIII.

[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

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 that
will make a mere livelihood a trifling thing. I'll put you in
a way to make more money than 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

p499-102 BIG THINGS SHOWN UP. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 085. In-line image of two men and a woman sitting at a table talking. The woman has her head in her hands.[end figure description]

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, yet—a 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

[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]

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 under
stand——”

——“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

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

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 Eschol 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

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

—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

p499-106 COL. SELLERS BLOWING BUBBLES FOR WASHINGTON. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 089. In-line image of two men looking at a bubble which contains a bank, money, and straw in it.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

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

p499-108 GEN'L BOSWELL'S OFFICE. [figure description] Page 091. In-line image of three men standing next to a railing in an office.[end figure description]

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

p499-109 [figure description] 499EAF. Page 092. Tail-piece image of three men chasing after a group of pigs that are running away. The men are in top hats and are grabbing for piggy tails.[end figure description]

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.

p499-110 CHAPTER IX.

[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]

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 head 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 allnecessary
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

p499-112 CONSOLATION. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 095. In-line image of a young woman trying to comfort a young man in plaid pants.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]

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 brokenheartedly
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

[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]

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 scareely 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

p499-115 THE DYING FATHER. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 098. In-line image of a person on a death bed with young men and women weeping around her body.[end figure description]

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

p499-116 [figure description] 499EAF. Page 099. Tail-piece image of a river with broken branches popping out of the water's surface.[end figure description]

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.

p499-117 CHAPTER X.

[figure description] Page 100.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

LAURA SEARCHING FOR EVIDENCES OF HER BIRTH. [figure description] 499EAF. Illustration of a young woman leaning against a stack of packages, with pieces of paper in her hands, reading the content.[end figure description]

p499-120 [figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 102.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 103.[end figure description]

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 bridgeless
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

[figure description] Page 104.[end figure description]

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

p499-124 EVER TRUE. [figure description] Page 105. In-line image of two women embracing and kissing next to a fire.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 107.[end figure description]

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.

p499-127 CHAPTER XI.

[figure description] Page 108.[end figure description]

[figure description] Epigraph.[end figure description]

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—

[figure description] Page 109.[end figure description]

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,* 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

p499-129 A HEALTHY MEAL. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 110. In-line image of a dinner table with the mother and father looking at their old balding dinner guest.[end figure description]

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 Eschol Sellers—no made dishes for

[figure description] Page 111.[end figure description]

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—its 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 just 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

[figure description] Page 112.[end figure description]

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! Aud 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

[figure description] Page 113.[end figure description]

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.

p499-133 CHAPTER XII.

[figure description] Page 114.[end figure description]

[figure description] Epigraph.[end figure description]

“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,

p499-134 PHILIP AT THEATRE. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 115. In-line image of a theatre scene in which a man is peering at the action on stage through opera glasses.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 116.[end figure description]

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 datepalm
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

p499-136 WHAT PHILIP LEARNED AT COLLEGE. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 117. In-line image of a river scene with rowing boats, people doing pull-ups, and a public speech.[end figure description]

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.

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.

[figure description] Page 118.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 119.[end figure description]

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, its a big operation. We are going, a lot of us, rail-road
men, engineers, contractors. You know my uncle is a

[figure description] Page 120.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 121.[end figure description]

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.

p499-141 CHAPTER XIII.

[figure description] Page 122.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 123.[end figure description]

spirit; Harry 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

p499-143 THE DELEGATE'S INTERESTING GAME. [figure description] Page 124. In-line image of a poker game inside a saloon.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 125.[end figure description]

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,

[figure description] Page 126.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 127.[end figure description]

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 hard-pan 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 Harry, in a
burst of generosity, “if I don't get you into my contract,
you'll be with the engineers, and you just stick a stake at the
first ground marked for a dêpot, buy the land of the farmer
before he knows where the dêpot 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

p499-147 THE PERSON OF IMPORTANCE. [figure description] Page 128. In-line image of three men in top hats talking.[end figure description]

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—Eschol 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?—

[figure description] Page 129.[end figure description]

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 Plant-er'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 whole
country is opening up, all we want is capital to develope it.
Slap down the rails and bring the land into market. The

[figure description] Page 130.[end figure description]

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

p499-150 “NOT THAT.” [figure description] 499EAF. Page 131. In-line image of a group of men around a saloon bar talking with the bar keeper.[end figure description]

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 bar-keeper 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 Eschol Sellers had bade his friends good night
and seen them depart, he did not retire to apartments
in the Planter's, but took his way to his lodgings with a
friend in a distant part of the city.

p499-151 CHAPTER XIV.

[figure description] Page 132.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 133.[end figure description]

seating himself 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

p499-153 RUTH'S MOTHER MAKES ENQUIRIES. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 134. In-line image of two women in a parlor talking with one another. One is sitting and the other is by the piano.[end figure description]

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?

[figure description] Page 135.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 136.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 137.[end figure description]

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,

p499-157 THE LETTER. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 138. In-line image of a man reading a letter with a hate and a cane.[end figure description]

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.

Ruth was glad to hear
that Philip had made a push into the world, and she was
sure that his talent and courage would make a way for him.
She should pray for his success at any rate, and especially that
the Indians, in St. Louis, would not take his scalp.

Philip looked rather dubious at this sentence, and wished
that he had written nothing about Indians.

p499-158 CHAPTER XV.

[figure description] Page 139.[end figure description]

ELI BOLTON and his wife talked over Ruth's case, as
they had often done before, with no little anxiety.
Alone of all their children she was impatient of the restraints
and monotony of the Friends' Society, and wholly indisposed
to accept the “inner light” as a guide into a life of acceptance
and inaction. When Margaret told her husband of
Ruth's newest project, he did not exhibit so much surprise as
she looked for. In fact he said that he did not see why a
woman should not enter the medical profession if she felt a
call to it.

“But,” said Margaret, “consider her total inexperience of
the world, and her frail health. Can such a slight little body
endure the ordeal of the preparation for, or the strain of, the
practice of the profession?”

“Did thee ever think, Margaret, whether she can endure
being thwarted in an object on which she has so set her heart,
as she has on this? Thee has trained her thyself at home, in
her enfeebled childhood, and thee knows how strong her will
is, and what she has been able to accomplish in self-culture by
the simple force of her determination. She never will be
satisfied until she has tried her own strength.”

“I wish,” said Margaret, with an inconsequence that is not
exclusively feminine, “that she were in the way to fall in
love and marry by and by. I think that would cure her of

[figure description] Page 140.[end figure description]

some of her notions. I am not sure but if she went away to
some distant school, into an entirely new life, her thoughts
would be diverted.”

Eli Bolton almost laughed as he regarded his wife, with
eyes that never looked at her except fondly, and replied,

“Perhaps thee remembers that thee had notions also, before
we were married, and before thee became a member of
Meeting. I think Ruth comes honestly by certain tendencies
which thee has hidden under the Friend's dress.”

Margaret could not say no to this, and while she paused, it
was evident that memory was busy with suggestions to shake
her present opinions.

“Why not let Ruth try the study for a time,” suggested
Eli; “there is a fair beginning of a Woman's Medical College
in the city. Quite likely she will soon find that she needs
first a more general culture, and fall in with thy wish that
she should see more of the world at some large school.”

There really seemed to be nothing else to be done, and
Margaret consented at length without approving. And it was
agreed that Ruth, in order to spare her fatigue, should take
lodgings with friends near the college and make a trial in the
pursuit of that science to which we all owe our lives, and
sometimes as by a miracle of escape.

That day Mr. Bolton brought home a stranger to dinner,
Mr. Bigler of the great firm of Pennybacker, Bigler & Small,
railroad contractors. He was always bringing home somebody,
who had a scheme; to build a road, or open a mine, or
plant a swamp with cane to grow paper-stock, or found a
hospital, or invest in a patent shad-bone separator, or start a
college somewhere on the frontier, contiguous to a land
speculation.

The Bolton house was a sort of hotel for this kind of people.
They were always coming. Ruth had known them from
childhood, and she used to say that her father attracted them
as naturally as a sugar hogshead does flies. Ruth had an idea
that a large portion of the world lived by getting the rest of
the world into schemes. Mr. Bolton never could say “no”
to any of them, not even, said Ruth again, to the society for

[figure description] Page 141.[end figure description]

to any of them, not even, said Ruth again, to the society for
stamping oyster shells with scripture texts before they were
sold at retail.

Mr. Bigler's plan this time, about which he talked
loudly, with his mouth full, all dinner time, was the building
of the Tunkhannock, Rattlesnake and Youngwomanstown
railroad, which would not only be a great highway to
the west, but would open to market inexhaustible coal-fields
and untold millions of lumber. The plan of operations
was very simple.

“We'll buy the lands,” explained he, “on long time, backed
by the notes of good men; and then mortgage them for
money enough to get the road well on. Then get the towns
on the line to issue their bonds for stock, and sell their bonds
for enough to complete the road, and partly stock it, especially
if we mortgage each section as we complete it. We can then
sell the rest of the stock on the prospect of the business of
the road through an improved country, and also sell the lands
at a big advance, on the strength of the road. All we want,”
continued Mr. Bigler in his frank manner, “is a few thousand
dollars to start the surveys, and arrange things in the legislature.
There is some parties will have to be seen, who might
make us trouble.”

“It will take a good deal of money to start the enterprise,”
remarked Mr. Bolton, who knew very well what “seeing” a
Pennsylvania Legislature meant, but was too polite to tell Mr.
Bigler what he thought of him, while he was his guest; “what
security would one have for it?”

Mr. Bigler smiled a hard kind of smile, and said, “You'd
be inside, Mr. Bolton, and you'd have the first chance in
the deal.”

This was rather unintelligible to Ruth, who was nevertheless
somewhat amused by the study of a type of character she had
seen before. At length she interrupted the conversation by
asking,

“You'd sell the stock, I suppose, Mr. Bigler, to anybody
who was attracted by the prospectus?”

p499-161

CARING FOR THE POOR. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 142. In-line image of an old pompous man and his slave in a a doorway.[end figure description]

“O, certainly, serve all alike,” said Mr. Bigler, now noticing
Ruth for the first time, and a little puzzled by the serene,
intelligent face that was turned towards him.

“Well, what would become of the poor people who had
been led to put their little money into the speculation, when
you got out of it and left it half way?”

It would be no more true to say of Mr. Bigler that he was
or could be embarrassed, than to say that a brass counterfeit
dollar-piece would change color when refused; the question
annoyed him a little, in Mr. Bolton's presence.

“Why, yes, Miss, of course, in a great enterprise for the
benefit of the community there will little things occur, which,
which—and, of course, the poor ought to be looked to; I tell
my wife, that the poor must be looked to; if you can tell
who are poor—there's so many impostors. And then, there's

[figure description] Page 143.[end figure description]

so many poor in the legislature to be looked after,” said the
contractor with a sort of a chuckle, “isn't that so, Mr.
Bolton?”

Eli Bolton replied that he never had much to do with the
legislature.

“Yes,” continued this public benefactor, “an uncommon
poor lot this year, uncommon. Consequently an expensive
lot. The fact is, Mr. Bolton, that the price is raised so high
on United States Senator now, that it affects the whole market;
you can't get any public improvement through on
reasonable terms. Simony is what I call it, Simony,” repeated
Mr. Bigler, as if he had said a good thing.

Mr. Bigler went on and gave some very interesting details
of the intimate connection between railroads and politics, and
thoroughly entertained himself all dinner time, and as much
disgusted Ruth, who asked no more questions, and her father
who replied in monosyllables.

“I wish,” said Ruth to her father, after the guest had
gone, “that you wouldn't bring home any more such horrid
men. Do all men who wear big diamond breast-pins, flourish
their knives at table, and use bad grammar, and cheat?”

“O, child, thee mustn't be too observing. Mr. Bigler is
one of the most important men in the state; nobody has
more influence at Harrisburg. I don't like him any more
than thee does, but I'd better lend him a little money than
to have his ill will.”

“Father, I think thee'd better have his ill-will than his
company. Is it true that he gave money to help build the
pretty little church of St. James the Less, and that he is one
of the vestrymen?”

“Yes. He is not such a bad fellow. One of the men in
Third street asked him the other day, whether his was a high
church or a low church? Bigler said he didn't know; he'd
been in it once, and he could touch the ceiling in the side
aisle with his hand.”

“I think he's just horrid,” was Ruth's final summary of
him, after the manner of the swift judgment of women, with

[figure description] Page 144.[end figure description]

no consideration of the extenuating circumstances. Mr.
Bigler had no idea that he had not made a good impression
on the whole family; he certainly intended to be agreeable.
Margaret agreed with her daughter, and though she never
said anything to such people, she was grateful to Ruth for
sticking at least one pin into him.

Such was the serenity of the Bolton household that a stranger
in it would never have suspected there was any opposition
to Ruth's going to the Medical School. And she went
quietly to take her residence in town, and began her attendance
of the lectures, as if it were the most natural thing in
the world. She did not heed, if she heard, the busy and
wondering gossip of relations and acquaintances, gossip that
has no less currency among the Friends than elsewhere
because it is whispered slyly and creeps about in an undertone.

Ruth was absorbed, and for the first time in her life
thoroughly happy; happy in the freedom of her life, and in
the keen enjoyment of the investigation that broadened its
field day by day. She was in high spirits when she came
home to spend First Days; the house was full of her gaiety
and her merry laugh, and the children wished that Ruth
would never go away again. But her mother noticed, with
a little anxiety, the sometimes flushed face, and the sign of
an eager spirit in the kindling eyes, and, as well, the serious
air of determination and endurance in her face at unguarded
moments.

The college was a small one and it sustained itself not
without difficulty in this city, which is so conservative, and is
yet the origin of so many radical movements. There were
not more than a dozen attendants on the lectures all together,
so that the enterprise had the air of an experiment, and the
fascination of pioneering for those engaged in it. There was
one woman physician driving about town in her carriage,
attacking the most violent diseases in all quarters with persistent
courage, like a modern Bellona in her war chariot,
who was popularly supposed to gather in fees to the amount

p499-164 ANATOMICAL INVESTIGATIONS. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 145. In-line image of two women sitting at a desk working on dissections in a medical room with skeletons in the backroom.[end figure description]

of ten to twenty thousand dollars a year. Perhaps some of
these students looked forward to the near day when they
would support such a practice and a husband besides, but it is
unknown that any of them ever went further than practice in
hospitals and in their own nurseries, and it is feared that some
of them were quite as ready as their sisters, in emergencies,
to “call a man.”

If Ruth had any exaggerated expectations of a professional
life, she kept them to herself, and was known to her fellows
of the class simply as a cheerful, sincere student, eager in her
investigations, and never impatient at anything, except an
insinuation that women had not as much mental capacity for
science as men.

They really say,” said one young Quaker sprig to another
youth of his age, “that Ruth Bolton is really going to be a
saw-bones, attends lectures, cuts up bodies, and all that. She's
cool enough for a surgeon, anyway.” He spoke feelingly,
for he had very likely been weighed in Ruth's calm eyes

[figure description] Page 146.[end figure description]

sometime, and thoroughly scared by the little laugh that
accompanied a puzzling reply to one of his conversational
nothings. Such young gentlemen, at this time, did not come
very distinctly into Ruth's horizon, except as amusing circumstances.

About the details of her student life, Ruth said very little
to her friends, but they had reason to know, afterwards, that
it required all her nerve and the almost complete exhaustion
of her physical strength, to carry her through. She began
her anatomical practice upon detached portions of the human
frame, which were brought into the demonstrating room—
dissecting the eye, the ear, and a small tangle of muscles
and nerves—an occupation which had not much more savor
of death in it than the analysis of a portion of a plant out of
which the life went when it was plucked up by the roots.
Custom inures the most sensitive persons to that which is at
first most repellant; and in the late war we saw the most
delicate women, who could not at home endure the sight of
blood, become so used to scenes of carnage, that they walked
the hospitals and the margins of battle-fields, amid the poor
remnants of torn humanity, with as perfect self-possession
as if they were strolling in a flower garden.

It happened that Ruth was one evening deep in a line of
investigation which she could not finish or understand without
demonstration, and so eager was she in it, that it seemed
as if she could not wait till the next day. She, therefore,
persuaded a fellow student, who was reading that evening
with her, to go down to the dissecting room of the college,
and ascertain what they wanted to know by an hour's work
there. Perhaps, also, Ruth wanted to test her own nerve,
and to see whether the power of association was stronger in
her mind than her own will.

The janitor of the shabby and comfortless old building
admitted the girls, not without suspicion, and gave them
lighted candles, which they would need, without other remark
than “there's a new one, Miss,” as the girls went up the
broad stairs.

They climbed to the third story, and paused before a door,

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

RUTH LOOKING AT THE "NEW ONE" BY CANDLE LIGHT. [figure description] 499EAF. Illustration of two women peeking under a sheet to look at a dead body.[end figure description]

p499-168 [figure description] Page 147.[end figure description]

which they unlocked, and which admitted them into a long
apartment, with a row of windows on one side and one at the
end. The room was without light, save from the stars and
the candles the girls carried, which revealed to them dimly
two long and several small tables, a few benches and chairs,
a couple of skeletons hanging on the wall, a sink, and clothcovered
heaps of something upon the tables here and there.

The windows were open, and the cool night wind came in
strong enough to flutter a white covering now and then, and
to shake the loose casements. But all the sweet odors of the
night could not take from the room a faint suggestion of
mortality.

The young ladies paused a moment. The room itself was
familiar enough, but night makes almost any chamber eerie,
and especially such a room of detention as this where the
mortal parts of the unburied might almost be supposed to be
visited, on the sighing night winds, by the wandering spirits
of their late tenants.

Opposite and at some distance across the roofs of lower
buildings, the girls saw a tall edifice, the long upper story
of which seemed to be a dancing hall. The windows of that
were also open, and through them they heard the scream of
the jiggered and tortured violin, and the pump, pump of the
oboe, and saw the moving shapes of men and women in quick
transition, and heard the prompter's drawl.

“I wonder,” said Ruth, “what the girls dancing there
would think if they saw us, or knew that there was such a
room as this so near them.”

She did not speak very loud, and, perhaps unconsciously,
the girls drew near to each other as they approached the long
table in the centre of the room. A straight object lay upon
it, covered with a sheet. This was doubtless “the new one”
of which the janitor spoke. Ruth advanced, and with a not
very steady hand lifted the white covering from the upper
part of the figure and turned it down. Both the girls started.
It was a negro. The black face seemed to defy the pallor of
death, and asserted an ugly life-likeness that was frightful.

[figure description] Page 148.[end figure description]

Ruth was as pale as the white sheet, and her comrade whispered,
“Come away, Ruth, it is awful.”

Perhaps it was the wavering light of the candles, perhaps
it was only the agony from a death of pain, but the repulsive
black face seemed to wear a scowl that said, “Haven't you
yet done with the outcast, persecuted black man, but you must
now haul him from his grave, and send even your women to
dismember his body?”

Who is this dead man, one of thousands who died yesterday,
and will be dust anon, to protest that science shall not
turn his worthless carcass to some account?

Ruth could have had no such thought, for with a pity in
her sweet face, that for the moment overcame fear and disgust,
she reverently replaced the covering, and went away to
her own table, as her companion did to hers. And there for
an hour they worked at their several problems, without
speaking, but not without an awe of the presence there, “the
new one,” and not without an awful sense of life itself, as
they heard the pulsations of the music and the light laughter
from the dancing-hall.

When, at length, they went away, and locked the dreadful
room behind them, and came out into the street, where people
were passing, they, for the first time, realized, in the relief
they felt, what a nervous strain they had been under.

p499-170 CHAPTER XVI.

[figure description] Page 149.[end figure description]

[figure description] Epigraph.[end figure description]

WHILE Ruth was thus absorbed in her new occupation,
and the spring was wearing away, Philip
and his friends were still detained at the Southern
Hotel. The great contractors had concluded their business
with the state and railroad officials and with the lesser contractors,
and departed for the East. But the serious illness
of one of the engineers kept Philip and Henry in the city
and occupied in alternate watchings.

Philip wrote to Ruth of the new acquaintance they had
made, Col. Sellers, an enthusiastic and hospitable gentleman,
very much interested in the development of the country, and
in their success. They had not had an opportunity to visit
at his place “up in the country” yet, but the Colonel often
dined with them, and in confidence, confided to them his projects,
and seemed to take a great liking to them, especially
to his friend Harry. It was true that he never seemed to
have ready money, but he was engaged in very large operations.

The correspondence was not very brisk between these two
young persons, so differently occupied; for though Philip
wrote long letters, he got brief ones in reply, full of sharp
little observations however, such as one concerning Col. Sellers,
namely, that such men dined at their house every week.

Ruth's proposed occupation astonished Philip immensely,

[figure description] Page 150.[end figure description]

but while he argued it and discussed it, he did not dare hint to
her his fear that it would interfere with his most cherished
plans. He too sincerely respected Ruth's judgment to make
any protest, however, and he would have defended her
course against the world.

This enforced waiting at St. Louis was very irksome to
Philip. His money was running away, for one thing, and he
longed to get into the field, and see for himself what chance
there was for a fortune or even an occupation. The contractors
had given the young men leave to join the engineer
corps as soon as they could, but otherwise had made no provision
for them, and in fact had left them with only the most
indefinite expectations of something large in the future.

Harry was entirely happy, in his circumstances. He very
soon knew everybody, from the governor of the state down
to the waiters at the hotel. He had the Wall street slang at
his tongue's end; he always talked like a capitalist, and
entered with enthusiasm into all the land and railway schemes
with which the air was thick.

Col. Sellers and Harry talked together by the hour and by
the day. Harry informed his new friend that he was going
out with the engineer corps of the Salt Lick Pacific Extension,
but that wasn't his real business.

“I'm to have, with another party,” said Harry, “a big
contract in the road, as soon as it is let; and, meantime, I'm
with the engineers to spy out the best land and the depot
sites.”

“It's everything,” suggested the Colonel, “in knowing
where to invest. I've known people throw away their money
because they were too consequential to take Sellers' advice.
Others, again, have made their pile on taking it. I've looked
over the ground, I've been studying it for twenty years.
You can't put your finger on a spot in the map of Missouri
that I don't know as if I'd made it. When you want to place
anything,” continued the Colonel, confldently, “just let
Eschol Sellers know. That's all.”

“Oh, I haven't got much in ready money I can lay my

p499-172 “ONLY FOR YOU, BRIERLY.” [figure description] 499EAF. Page 151. In-line image of two seated men talking in confidence with a person working at a desk in the background.[end figure description]

hands on now, but if a fellow could do anything with fifteen
or twenty thousand dollars, as a beginning, I shall draw for
that when I see the right opening.”

“Well, that's something, that's something, fifteen or twenty
thousand dollars, say twenty—as an advance,” said the Colonel
reflectively, as if turning over his mind for a project
that could be entered on with such a trifling sum.

“I'll tell you what it is—but only to you Mr. Brierly, only
to you, mind; I've got a little project that I've been keeping.
It looks small, looks small on paper, but it's got a big future.
What should you say, sir, to a city, built up like the rod of
Aladdin had touched it, built up in two years, where now you
wouldn't expect it any more than you'd expect a light-house
on the top of Pilot Knob? and you could own the land!
It can be done, sir. It can be done!”

The Colonel hitched up his chair close to Harry, laid his
hand on his knee, and, first looking about him, said in a low
voice, “The Salt Lick Pacific Extension is going to run
through Stone's Landing! The Almighty never laid out a
cleaner piece of level prairie for a city; and it's the natural
center of all that region of hemp and tobacco.”

“What makes you think the road will go there? It's

[figure description] Page 152.[end figure description]

twenty miles, on the map, off the straight line of the road?”

“You can't tell what is the straight line till the engineers
have been over it. Between us, I have talked with Jeff
Thompson, the division engineer. He understands the wants
of Stone's Landing, and the claims of the inhabitants—who
are to be there. Jeff says that a railroad is for the accommodation
of the people and not for the benefit of gophers; and
if he don't run this to Stone's Landing he'll be damned!
You ought to know Jeff; he's one of the most enthusiastic
engineers in this western country, and one of the best fellows
that ever looked through the bottom of a glass.”

The recommendation was not undeserved. There was
nothing that Jeff wouldn't do, to accommodate a friend, from
sharing his last dollar with him, to winging him in a duel.
When he understood from Col. Sellers how the land lay at
Stone's Landing, he cordially shook hands with that gentleman,
asked him to drink, and fairly roared out, “Why, God
bless my soul, Colonel, a word from one Virginia gentleman
to another is `nuff ced.' There's Stone's Landing been waiting
for a railroad more than four thousand years, and damme
if she shan't have it.”

Philip had not so much faith as Harry in Stone's Landing,
when the latter opened the project to him, but Harry talked
about it as if he already owned that incipient city.

Harry thoroughly believed in all his projects and inventions,
and lived day by day in their golden atmosphere.
Everybody liked the young fellow, for how could they help
liking one of such engaging manners and large fortune? The
waiters at the hotel would do more for him than for any other
guest, and he made a great many acquaintances among the
people of St. Louis, who liked his sensible and liberal views
about the development of the western country, and about St.
Louis. He said it ought to be the national capital. Harry
made partial arrangements with several of the merchants for
furnishing supplies for his contract on the Salt Lick Pacific
Extension; consulted the maps with the engineers, and went
over the profiles with the contractors, figuring out estimates

[figure description] Page 153.[end figure description]

for bids. He was exceedingly busy with those things when
he was not at the bedside of his sick acquaintance, or arranging
the details of his speculation with Col. Sellers.

Meantime the days went along and the weeks, and the
money in Harry's pocket got lower and lower. He was just
as liberal with what he had as before, indeed it was his nature
to be free with his money or with that of others, and he
could lend or spend a dollar with an air that made it seem
like ten. At length, at the end of one week, when his hotel
bill was presented, Harry found not a cent in his pocket to
meet it. He carelessly remarked to the landlord that he was
not that day in funds, but he would draw on New York, and
he sat down and wrote to the contractors in that city a glowing
letter about the prospects of the road, and asked them to
advance a hundred or two, until he got at work. No reply
came. He wrote again, in an unoffended business like tone,
suggesting that he had better draw at three days. A short
answer came to this, simply saying that money was very tight
in Wall street just then, and that he had better join the
engineer corps as soon as he could.

But the bill had to be paid, and Harry took it to Philip,
and asked him if he thought he hadn't better draw on his
uncle. Philip had not much faith in Harry's power of
“drawing,” and told him that he would pay the bill himself.
Whereupon Harry dismissed the matter then and thereafter
from his thoughts, and, like a light-hearted good fellow as he
was, gave himself no more trouble about his board-bills.
Philip paid them, swollen as they were with a monstrous list
of extras; but he seriously counted the diminishing bulk of
his own hoard, which was all the money he had in the world.
Had he not tacitly agreed to share with Harry to the last in
this adventure, and would not the generous fellow divide
with him if he, Philip, were in want and Harry had anything?

The fever at length got tired of tormenting the stout young
engineer, who lay sick at the hotel, and left him, very thin, a
little sallow but an “acclimated” man. Everybody said he
was “acclimated” now, and said it cheerfully. What it is to
be acclimated to western fevers no two persons exactly agree.

p499-175 AN ACCLIMATED MAN. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 154. In-line image of a skinny man with his hands in the pockets of his stripped pants.[end figure description]

Some say it is a sort of vaccination that renders death by some
malignant type of fever less probable. Some regard it as a sort
of initiation, like that into
the Odd Fellows, which
renders one liable to his
regular dues thereafter.
Others consider it merely
the acquisition of a habit
of taking every morning
before breakfast a dose of
bitters, composed of whiskey
and assafœtida, out of the
acclimation jug.

Jeff Thompson afterwards
told Philip that he once
asked Senator Atchison,
then acting Vice-President
of the United States, about
the possibility of acclimation;
he thought the opinion
of the second officer of our great government would be
valuable on this point. They were sitting together on a
bench before a country tavern, in the free converse permitted
by our democratic habits.

“I suppose, Senator, that you have become acclimated to
this country?”

“Well,” said the Vice-President, crossing his legs, pulling
his wide-awake down over his forehead, causing a passing
chicken to hop quickly one side by the accuracy of his aim,
and speaking with senatorial deliberation, “I think I have.
I've been here twenty-five years, and dash, dash my dash
to dash, if I haven't entertained twenty-five separate and distinct
earthquakes, one a year. The niggro is the only person
who can stand the fever and ague of this region.”

The convalescence of the engineer was the signal for breaking
up quarters at St. Louis, and the young fortune-hunters
started up the river in good spirits. It was only the second
time either of them had been upon a Mississippi steamboat,

p499-176 NO THANKS! GOOD BYE! [figure description] 499EAF. Page 155. In-line image of a bald man waving his top hat to a steam boat that is taken off from port.[end figure description]

and nearly everything they saw had the charm of novelty.
Col. Sellers was at the landing to bid them good-bye.

“I shall send you up that basket of champagne by the
next boat; no, no; no thanks; you'll find it not bad in
camp,” he cried out as the plank was hauled in. “My
respects to Thompson. Tell him to sight for Stone's. Let
me know, Mr. Brierly, when you are ready to locate; I'll
come over from Hawkeye. Good-bye.”

And the last the young fellows saw of the Colonel, he was
waving his hat, and beaming prosperity and good luck.

The voyage was delightful, and was not long enough to
become monotonous. The travelers scarcely had time indeed
to get accustomed to the splendors of the great saloon where
the tables were spread for meals, a marvel of paint and gilding,
its ceiling hung with fancifully cut tissue-paper of many
colors, festooned and arranged in endless patterns. The
whole was more beautiful than a barber's shop. The printed
bill of fare at dinner was longer and more varied, the

p499-177 [figure description] Page 156.[end figure description]

proprietors justly boasted, than that of any hotel in New York.
It must have been the work of an author of talent and imagination,
and it surely was not his fault if the dinner itself was
to a certain extent a delusion, and if the guests got something
that tasted pretty much the same whatever dish they ordered;
nor was it his fault if a general flavor of rose in all the dessert
dishes suggested that they had passed through the barber's
saloon on their way from the kitchen.

The travelers landed at a little settlement on the left bank,
and at once took horses for the camp in the interior, carrying
their clothes and blankets strapped behind the saddles. Harry
was dressed as we have seen him once before, and his long
and shining boots attracted not a little the attention of the
few persons they met on the road, and especially of the bright
faced wenches who lightly stepped along the highway, picturesque
in their colored kerchiefs, carrying light baskets, or
riding upon mules and balancing before them a heavier load.

Harry sang fragments of operas and talked about their fortune.
Philip even was excited by the sense of freedom and
adventure, and the beauty of the landscape. The prairie,
with its new grass and unending acres of brilliant flowers—
chiefly the innumerable varieties of phlox—bore the look of
years of cultivation, and the occasional open groves of white
oaks gave it a park-like appearance. It was hardly unreasonable
to expect to see at any moment, the gables and square windows
of an Elizabethan mansion in one of the well kept groves.

Towards sunset of the third day, when the young gentlemen
thought they ought to be near the town of Magnolia,
near which they had been directed to find the engineers'
camp, they descried a log house and drew up before it to
enquire the way. Half the building was store, and half was
dwelling house. At the door of the latter stood a negress
with a bright turban on her head, to whom Philip called,

“Can you tell me, auntie, how far it is to the town of
Magnolia?”

“Why, bress you chile,” laughed the woman, “you's dere
now.”

It was true. This log house was the compactly built town,

“YOU'S DERE NOW."
CAMP LIFE. [figure description] 499EAF. Illustration of a colony of African slaves with people on horseback, and other sitting around a fire talking.[end figure description]

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

p499-180 STRAIGHT FROM THE SHOULDER. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 157. In-line image of a three men standing next to each other as one drinks out of a large whisky vat.[end figure description]

and all creation was its suburbs. The engineers' camp was
only two or three miles distant.

“You's boun' to find it,” directed auntie, “if you don't
keah nuffin 'bout de road, and go fo' de sun-down.”

A brisk gallop brought the riders in sight of the twinkling
light of the camp, just as the stars came out. It lay in a
little hollow, where a small stream ran through a sparse
grove of young white oaks. A half dozen tents were pitched
under the trees, horses and oxen were corraled at a little
distance, and a group of men sat on camp stools or lay on
blankets about a bright fire. The twang of a banjo became
audible as they drew nearer, and they saw a couple of negroes,
from some neighboring plantation, “breaking down” a juba
in approved style, amid the “hi, hi's” of the spectators.

Mr. Jeff Thompson, for it was the camp of this redoubtable
engineer, gave the travelers a hearty welcome, offered
them ground room in his own tent, ordered supper, and set
out a small jug, a drop from which he declared necessary on
account of the chill of the evening.

p499-181

JEFF THOMPSON AS A NIGHTINGALE. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 158. In-line image of a man outside of his tent in the moonlight. He has his arms outstretched[end figure description]

“I never saw an Eastern man,” said Jeff, “who knew how
to drink from a jug with one hand. It's as easy as lying.
So.” He grasped the handle with the right hand, threw the
jug back upon his arm, and applied his lips to the nozzle. It
was an act as graceful as it was simple. “Besides,” said Mr.
Thompson, setting it down, “it puts every man on his honor
as to quantity.”

Early to turn in was the rule of the camp, and by nine
o'clock everybody was under his blanket, except Jeff himself,
who worked awhile at his table over his field-book, and then
arose, stepped outside the tent door and sang, in a strong and
not unmelodious tenor, the Star Spangled Banner from beginning
to end. It proved
to be his nightly practice
to let off the unexpended
steam of his conversational
powers, in the words of this
stirring song.

It was a long time before
Philip got to sleep. He
saw the fire light, he saw
the clear stars through the
tree-tops, he heard the gurgle
of the stream, the
stamp of the horses, the
occasional barking of the
dog which followed the
cook's wagon, the hooting
of an owl; and when these
failed he saw Jeff, standing
on a battlement, mid the
rocket's red glare, and heard him sing, “Oh, say, can you
see?” It was the first time he had ever slept on the ground.

p499-182 CHAPTER XVII.

[figure description] Page 159.[end figure description]

NOBODY dressed more like an engineer than Mr. Henry
Brierly. The completeness of his appointments was the
envy of the corps, and the gay fellow himself was the admiration
of the camp servants, axemen, teamsters and cooks.

“I reckon you didn't git them boots no wher's this side o'
Sent Louis?” queried the tall Missouri youth who acted as
commissariy's assistant.

“No, New York.”

“Yas, I've heern o' New York,” continued the butternut
lad, attentively studying each item of Harry's dress, and endeavoring
to cover his design with interesting conversation.
“'N there's Massachusetts.”

“It's not far off.”

“I've heern Massachusetts was a —— of a place. Les'
see, what state's Massachusetts in?”

“Massachusetts,” kindly replied Harry, “is in the state of
Boston.”

“Abolish'n wan't it? They must a cost right smart,” referring
to the boots.

Harry shouldered his rod and went to the field, tramped
over the prairie by day, and figured up results at night, with

[figure description] Page 160.[end figure description]

the utmost cheerfulness and industry, and plotted the line on the
profile paper, without, however, the least idea of engineering
practical or theoretical. Perhaps there was not a great deal
of scientific knowledge in the entire corps, nor was very much
needed. They were making what is called a preliminary
survey, and the chief object of a preliminary survey was to
get up an excitement about the road, to interest every town
in that part of the state in it, under the belief that the road
would run through it, and to get the aid of every planter
upon the prospect that a station would be on his land.

Mr. Jeff Thompson was the most popular engineer who
could be found for this work. He did not bother himself
much about details or practicabilities of location, but ran
merrily along, sighting from the top of one divide to the top
of another, and striking “plumb” every town site and big
plantation within twenty or thirty miles of his route. In his
own language he “just went booming.”

This course gave Harry an opportunity, as he said, to learn
the practical details of engineering, and it gave Philip a chance
to see the country, and to judge for himself what prospect of
a fortune it offered. Both he and Harry got the “refusal”
of more than one plantation as they went along, and wrote
urgent letters to their eastern correspondents, upon the
beauty of the land and the certainty that it would quadruple
in value as soon as the road was finally located. It seemed
strange to them that capitalists did not flock out there and
secure this land.

They had not been in the field over two weeks when Harry
wrote to his friend Col. Sellers that he'd better be on the
move, for the line was certain to go to Stone's Landing. Any
one who looked at the line on the map, as it was laid down
from day to day, would have been uncertain which way it
was going; but Jeff had declared that in his judgment the
only practicable route from the point they then stood on was
to follow the divide to Stone's Landing, and it was generally
understood that that town would be the next one hit.

p499-184

BOUND FOR STONE'S LANDING. [figure description] 499EAF. Page 161. In-line image of a group of men in a hot-air balloon, floating over the sea.[end figure description]