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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Aladdin & Co., by Herbert Quick
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Aladdin & Co.
+       A Romance of Yankee Magic
+
+Author: Herbert Quick
+
+Release Date: December 5, 2007 [EBook #23745]
+[Last update: December 17, 2012]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALADDIN & CO. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+ALADDIN & CO.
+
+A ROMANCE OF YANKEE MAGIC
+
+BY
+HERBERT QUICK
+
+Author of
+"Virginia of the Air Lanes," "Double Trouble," etc.
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP
+Publishers--New York
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Copyright 1904
+Henry Holt and Company
+
+Copyright 1907
+The Bobbs-Merrill Company
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Contents.
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+CHAPTER I.
+Which is of an Introductory Character                                  1
+
+CHAPTER II.
+Still Introductory                                                    13
+
+CHAPTER III.
+Reminiscentially Autobiographical                                     20
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+Jim Discovers his Coral Island                                        39
+
+CHAPTER V.
+We Reach the Atoll                                                    46
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+I am Inducted into the Cave, and Enlist                               55
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+We Make our Landing                                                   67
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+A Welcome to Wall Street and Us                                       77
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+I Go Abroad and We Unfurl the Jolly Roger                             86
+
+CHAPTER X.
+We Dedicate Lynhurst Park                                             96
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+The Empress and Sir John Meet Again                                  112
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+In which the Burdens of Wealth Begin to Fall upon Us                 120
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+A Sitting or Two in the Game with the World and Destiny              137
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+In which we Learn Something of Railroads, and Attend
+Some Remarkable Christenings                                         152
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+Some Affairs of the Heart Considered in their Relation
+to Dollars and Cents                                                 169
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+Some Things which Happened in our Halcyon Days                       185
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+Relating to the Disposition of the Captives                          201
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+The Going Away of Laura and Clifford, and the
+Departure of Mr. Trescott                                            214
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+In which Events Resume their Usual Course--at a
+Somewhat Accelerated Pace                                            231
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+I Twice Explain the Condition of the Trescott Estate                 248
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+Of Conflicts, Within and Without                                     260
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+In which I Win my Great Victory                                      270
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+The "Dutchman's Mill" and What it Ground                             281
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+The Beginning of the End                                             291
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+That Last Weird Battle in the West                                   306
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+The End--and a Beginning                                             320
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+ALADDIN & CO
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+THE PERSONS OF THE STORY.
+
+James Elkins, the "man who made Lattimore," known as "Jim."
+
+Albert Barslow, who tells the tale; the friend and partner of Jim.
+
+Alice Barslow, his wife; at first, his sweetheart.
+
+William Trescott, known as "Bill," a farmer and capitalist.
+
+Josephine Trescott, his daughter.
+
+Mrs. Trescott, his wife.
+
+Mr. Hinckley, a banker of Lattimore.
+
+Mrs. Hinckley, his wife; devoted to the emancipation of woman.
+
+Antonia, their daughter.
+
+Aleck Macdonald, pioneer and capitalist.
+
+General Lattimore, pioneer, soldier, and godfather of Lattimore.
+
+Miss Addison, the general's niece.
+
+Captain Marion Tolliver, Confederate veteran and Lattimore boomer.
+
+Mrs. Tolliver, his wife.
+
+Will Lattimore, a lawyer.
+
+Mr. Ballard, a banker.
+
+J. Bedford Cornish, a speculator, who with Elkins, Barslow,
+and Hinckley make up the great Lattimore "Syndicate."
+
+Clifford Giddings, editor and proprietor of the Lattimore Herald.
+
+De Forest Barr-Smith, an Englishman "representing capital."
+
+Cecil Barr-Smith, his brother.
+
+Avery Pendleton, of New York, a railway magnate; head
+of the "Pendleton System."
+
+Allen G. Wade, of New York; head of the Allen G. Wade Trust Co.
+
+Halliday, a railway magnate; head of the "Halliday System."
+
+Watson, a reporter.
+
+Schwartz, a locomotive engineer on the Lattimore & Great Western.
+
+Hegvold, a fireman.
+
+Citizens of Lattimore, Politicians, Live-stock Merchants,
+Railway Clerks and Officials, etc.
+
+Scene: Principally in the Western town of Lattimore,
+but partly in New York and Chicago.
+
+Time: Not so very long ago.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+ALADDIN & CO
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Which is of Introductory Character.
+
+
+Our National Convention met in Chicago that year, and I was one of the
+delegates. I had looked forward to it with keen expectancy. I was now,
+at five o'clock of the first day, admitting to myself that it was a
+bore.
+
+The special train, with its crowd of overstimulated enthusiasts, the
+throngs at the stations, the brass bands, bunting, and buncombe all
+jarred upon me. After a while my treason was betrayed to the boys by the
+fact that I was not hoarse. They punished me by making me sing as a solo
+the air of each stanza of "Marching Through Georgia," "Tenting To-night
+on the Old Camp-ground," and other patriotic songs, until my voice was
+assimilated to theirs. But my gorge rose at it all, and now, at five
+o'clock of the first day, I was seeking a place of retirement where I
+could be alone and think over the marvelous event which had suddenly
+raised me from yesterday's parity with the fellows on the train to my
+present state of exaltation.
+
+I should have preferred a grotto in Vau Vau or some south-looking
+mountain glen; but in the absence of any such retreat in Chicago, I
+turned into the old art-gallery in Michigan Avenue. As I went floating
+in space past its door, my eye caught through the window the gleam of
+the white limbs of statues, and my being responded to the soul
+vibrations they sent out. So I paid my fee, entered, and found the
+tender solitude for which my heart longed. I sat down and luxuriated in
+thoughts of the so recent marvelous experience. Need I explain that I
+was young and the experience was one of the heart?
+
+I was so young that my delegateship was regarded as a matter to excite
+wonder. I saw my picture in the papers next morning as a youth of
+twenty-three who had become his party's leader in an important
+agricultural county. Some, in the shameless laudation of a sensational
+press, compared me to the younger Pitt. As a matter of fact, I had some
+talent for organization, and in any gathering of men, I somehow never
+lacked a following. I was young enough to be an honest partisan,
+enthusiastic enough to be useful, strong enough to be respected,
+ignorant enough to believe my party my country's safeguard, and I was
+prominent in my county before I was old enough to vote. At twenty-one I
+conducted a convention fight which made a member of Congress. It was
+quite natural, therefore, that I should be delegate to this convention,
+and that I had looked forward to it with keen expectancy. The remarkable
+thing was my falling off from its work now by virtue of that recent
+marvelous experience which as I have admitted was one of the heart. Do
+not smile. At three-and-twenty even delegates have hearts.
+
+My mental and sentimental state is of importance in this history, I
+think, or I should not make so much of it. I feel sure that I should not
+have behaved just as I did had I not been at that moment in the
+iridescent cloudland of newly-reciprocated love. Alice had accepted me
+not an hour before my departure for Chicago. Hence my loathing for such
+things as nominating speeches and the report of the Committee on
+Credentials, and my yearning for the Vau Vau grotto. She had yielded
+herself up to me with such manifold sweetnesses, uttered and unutterable
+(all of which had to be gone over in my mind constantly to make sure of
+their reality), that the contest in Indiana, and the cause of our own
+State's Favorite Son, became sickening burdens to me, which rolled away
+as I gazed upon the canvases in the gallery. I lay back upon a seat,
+half closed my eyes, and looked at the pictures. When one comes to
+consider the matter, an art gallery is a wonderfully different thing
+from a national convention!
+
+As I looked on them, the still paintings became instinct with life.
+Yonder shepherdess shielding from the thorns the little white lamb was
+Alice, and back behind the clump of elms was myself, responding to her
+silvery call. The cottage on the mountain-side was ours. That lady
+waving her handkerchief from the promontory was Alice, too; and I was
+the dim figure on the deck of the passing ship. I was the knight and
+she the wood-nymph; I the gladiator in the circus, she the Roman lady
+who agonized for me in the audience; I the troubadour who twanged the
+guitar, she the princess whose fair shoulder shone through the lace at
+the balcony window. They lived and moved before my very eyes. I knew the
+unseen places beyond the painted mountains, and saw the secret things
+the artists only dreamed of. Doves cooed for me from the clumps of
+thorn; the clouds sailed in pearly serenity across the skies, their
+shadows mottling mountain, hill, and plain; and out from behind every
+bole, and through every leafy screen, glimpsed white dryads and fleeing
+fays.
+
+Clearly the convention hall was no place for me. "Hang the speech of the
+temporary chairman, anyhow!" thought I; "and as for the platform, let it
+point with pride, and view with apprehension, to its heart's content; it
+is sure to omit all reference to the overshadowing issue of the
+day--Alice!"
+
+All the world loves a lover, and a true lover loves all the
+world,--especially that portion of it similarly blessed. So, when I
+heard a girl's voice alternating in intimate converse with that of a
+man, my sympathies went out to them, and I turned silently to look. They
+must have come in during my reverie; for I had passed the place where
+they were sitting and had not seen them. There was a piece of grillwork
+between my station and theirs, through which I could see them plainly.
+The gallery had seemed deserted when I went in, and still seemed so,
+save for the two voices.
+
+Hers was low and calm, but very earnest; and there was in it some
+inflection or intonation which reminded me of the country girls I had
+known on the farm and at school. His was of a peculiarly sonorous and
+vibrant quality, its every tone so clear and distinct that it would have
+been worth a fortune to a public speaker. Such a voice and enunciation
+are never associated with any mind not strong in the qualities of
+resolution and decision.
+
+On looking at her, I saw nothing countrified corresponding to the voice.
+She was dressed in something summery and cool, and wore a sort of
+flowered blouse, the presence of which was explained by the easel before
+which she sat, and the palette through which her thumb protruded. She
+had laid down her brush, and the young man was using her mahlstick in a
+badly-directed effort to smear into a design some splotches of paint on
+the unused portion of her canvas.
+
+He was by some years her senior, but both were young--she, very young.
+He was swarthy of complexion, and his smoothly-shaven, square-set jaw
+and full red lips were bluish with the subcutaneous blackness of his
+beard. His dress was so distinctly late in style as to seem almost
+foppish; but there was nothing of the exquisite in his erect and
+athletic form, or in his piercing eye.
+
+She was ruddily fair, with that luxuriant auburn-brown hair which goes
+with eyes of amberish-brown and freckles. These latter she had, I
+observed with a renewal of the thought of the country girls and the old
+district school. She was slender of waist, full of bust, and, after a
+lissome, sylph-like fashion, altogether charming in form. With all her
+roundness, she was slight and a little undersized.
+
+So much of her as there was, the young fellow seemed ready to absorb,
+regarding her with avid eyes--a gaze which she seldom met. But whenever
+he gave his attention to the mahlstick, her eyes sought his countenance
+with a look which was almost scrutiny. It was as if some extrinsic force
+drew her glance to his face, until the stronger compulsion of her
+modesty drove it away at the return of his black orbs. My heart
+recognized with a throb the freemasonry into which I had lately been
+initiated, and, all unknown to them, I hailed them as members of the
+order.
+
+Their conversation came to me in shreds and fragments, which I did not
+at all care to hear. I recognized in it those inanities with which youth
+busies the lips, leaving the mind at rest, that the interplay of
+magnetic discharges from heart to heart may go on uninterruptedly. It is
+a beautiful provision of nature, but I did not at that time admire it. I
+pitied them. Alice and I had passed through that stage, and into the
+phase marked by long and eloquent silences.
+
+"I was brought up to think," I remember to have heard the fair stranger
+say, following out, apparently, some subject under discussion between
+them, "that the surest way to make a child steal jam is to spy upon him.
+I should feel ashamed."
+
+"Quite right," said he, "but in Europe and in the East, and even here in
+Chicago, in some circles, it is looked upon as indispensable, you
+know."
+
+"In art, at least," she went on, "there is no sex. Whoever can help me
+in my work is a companion that I don't need any chaperon to protect me
+from. If I wasn't perfectly sure of that, I should give up and go back
+home."
+
+"Now, don't draw the line so as to shut me out," he protested. "How can
+I help you with your work?"
+
+She looked him steadily in the face now, her intent and questioning
+regard shading off into a somewhat arch smile.
+
+"I can't think of any way," said she, "unless it would be by posing for
+me."
+
+"There's another way," he answered, "and the only one I'd care about."
+
+She suddenly became absorbed in the contemplation of the paints on her
+palette, at which she made little thrusts with a brush; and at last she
+queried, doubtfully, "How?"
+
+"I've heard or read," he answered, "that no artist ever rises to the
+highest, you know, until after experiencing some great love. I--can't
+you think of any other way besides the posing?"
+
+She brought the brush close to her eyes, minutely inspecting its point
+for a moment, then seemed to take in his expression with a swift
+sweeping glance, resumed the examination of the brush, and finally
+looked him in the face again, a little red spot glowing in her cheek,
+and a glint of fire in her eye. I was too dense to understand it, but I
+felt that there was a trace of resentment in her mien.
+
+"Oh, I don't know about that!" she said. "There may be some other way. I
+haven't met all your friends, and you may be the means of introducing me
+to the very man."
+
+I did not hear his reply, though I confess I tried to catch it. She
+resumed her work of copying one of the paintings. This she did in a
+mechanical sort of way, slowly, and with crabbed touches, but with some
+success. I thought her lacking in anything like control over the medium
+in which she worked; but the results promised rather well. He seemed
+annoyed at her sudden accession of industry, and looked sometimes
+quizzically at her work, often hungrily at her. Once or twice he touched
+her hand as she stepped near him; but she neither reproved him nor
+allowed him to retain it.
+
+I felt that I had taken her measure by this time. She was some Western
+country girl, well supplied with money, blindly groping toward the
+career of an artist. Her accent, her dress, and her occupation told of
+her origin and station in life, and of her ambitions. The blindness I
+guessed,--partly from the manner of her work, partly from the inherent
+probabilities of the case. If the young man had been eliminated from
+this problem with which my love-sick imagination was busying itself, I
+could have followed her back confidently to some rural neighborhood, and
+to a year or two of painting portraits from photographs, and landscapes
+from "studies," and exhibiting them at the county fair; the teaching of
+some pupils, in an unnecessary but conscientiously thrifty effort to get
+back some of the money invested in an "art education" in Chicago; and a
+final reversion to type after her marriage with the village lawyer,
+doctor or banker, or the owner of the adjoining farm. I was young; but I
+had studied people, and had already seen such things happen.
+
+But the young man could not be eliminated. He sat there idly, his every
+word and look surcharged with passion. As I wondered how long it would
+be until they were as happy as Alice and I, the thought grew upon me
+that, however familiar might be the type to which she belonged, he was
+unclassified. His accent was Eastern--of New York, I judged. He looked
+like the young men in the magazine illustrations--interesting, but
+outside my field of observation. And I could not fail to see that girl
+must find herself similarly at odds with him. "But," thought I, "love
+levels all!" And I freshly interrogated the pictures and statues for
+transportation to my own private Elysium, forgetful of my unconscious
+neighbors.
+
+My attention was recalled to them, however, by their arrangements for
+departure, and a concomitant slightly louder tone in their conversation.
+
+"It's just a spectacular show," said he; "no plot or anything of that
+sort, you know, but good music and dancing; and when we get tired of it
+we can go. We'll have a little supper at Auriccio's afterward, if you'll
+be so kind. It's only a step from McVicker's."
+
+"Won't it be pretty late?" she queried.
+
+"Not for Chicago," said he, "and you'll find material for a picture at
+Auriccio's about midnight. It's quite like the Latin Quarter,
+sometimes."
+
+"I want to see the real Latin Quarter, and no imitation," she answered.
+"Oh, I guess I'll go. It'll furnish me with material for a letter to
+mamma, however the picture may turn out."
+
+"I'll order supper for the Empress," said he, "and--"
+
+"And for the illustrious Sir John," she added. "But you mustn't call me
+that any more. I've been reading her history, and I don't like it. I'm
+glad he died on St. Helena, now: I used to feel sorry for him."
+
+"Transfer your pity to the downtrodden Sir John," he replied, "and make
+a real living man happy."
+
+They passed out and left me to my dreams. But visions did not return. My
+idyl was spoiled. Old-fashioned ideas emerged, and took form in the
+plain light of every-day common-sense. I knew the wonderfully gorgeous
+spectacle these two young people were going to see at the play that
+night, with its lights, its music, its splendidly meretricious
+Orientalism. And I knew Auriccio's,--not a disreputable place at all,
+perhaps; but free-and-easy, and distinctly Bohemian. I wished that this
+little girl, so arrogantly and ignorantly disdainful (as Alice would
+have been under the same circumstances) of such European conventions as
+the chaperon, so fresh, so young, so full of allurement, so under the
+influence of this smooth, dark, and passionate wooer with the vibrant
+voice, could be otherwise accompanied on this night of pleasure than by
+himself alone.
+
+"It's none of your business," said the voice of that cold-hearted and
+slothful spirit which keeps us in our groove, "and you couldn't do
+anything, anyhow. Besides, he's abjectly in love with her: would there
+be any danger if it were you and your Alice?"
+
+"I'm not at all sure about him or his abjectness," replied my uneasy
+conscience. "He knows better than to do this."
+
+"What do you know of either of them?" answered this same Spirit of
+Routine. "What signify a few sentences casually overheard? She may be
+something quite different; there are strange things in Chicago."
+
+"I'll wager anything," said I hotly, "that she's a good American girl of
+the sort I live among and was brought up with! And she may be in
+danger."
+
+"If she's that sort of girl," said the Voice, "you may rely upon her to
+take care of herself."
+
+"That's pretty nearly true," I admitted.
+
+"Besides," said the Voice illogically, "such things happen every night
+in such a city. It's a part of the great tragedy. Don't be Quixotic!"
+
+Here was where the Voice lost its case: for my conscience was stirred
+afresh; and I went back to the convention-hall carrying on a joint
+debate with myself. Once in the hall, however, I was conscripted into a
+war which was raging all through our delegation over the succession in
+our membership in the National Committee. I thought no more of the idyl
+of the art-gallery until the adjournment for the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Still Introductory.
+
+
+The great throng from the hall surged along the streets in an Amazonian
+network of streams, gathering in boiling lakes in the great hotels,
+dribbling off into the boarding-house districts in the suburbs, seeping
+down into the slimy fens of vice. Again I found myself out of touch with
+it all. I gave my companions the slip, and started for my hotel.
+
+All at once it occurred to me that I had not dined, and with the thought
+came the remembrance of my pair of lovers, and their supper together.
+With a return of the feeling that these were the only people in Chicago
+possessing spirits akin to mine, I shaped my course for Auriccio's. My
+country dazedness led me astray once or twice, but I found the place,
+retreated into the farthest corner, sat down, and ordered supper.
+
+It was not one of the places where the out-of-town visitors were likely
+to resort, and it was in fact rather quieter than usual. The few who
+were at the tables went out before my meal was served, and for a few
+minutes I was alone. Then the Empress and Sir John entered, followed by
+half a dozen other playgoers. The two on whom my sentimental interest
+was fixed came far down toward my position, attracted by the quietude
+which had lured me, and seated themselves at a table in a sort of
+alcove, cut off from the main room by columns and palms, secluded enough
+for privacy, public enough, perhaps, for propriety. So far as I was
+concerned I could see them quite plainly, looking, as I did, from my
+gloomy corner toward the light of the restaurant; and I was sufficiently
+close to be within easy earshot. I began to have the sensation of
+shadowing them, until I recalled the fact that, so far, it had been a
+case of their following me.
+
+I thought his manner toward her had changed since the afternoon. There
+was now an openness of wooing, an abandonment of reserve in glance and
+attitude, which should have admonished her of an approaching crisis in
+their affairs. Yet she seemed cooler and more self-possessed than
+before. Save for a little flutter in her low laugh, I should have
+pronounced her entirely at ease. She looked very sweet and girlish in
+her high-necked dress, which helped make up a costume that she seemed to
+have selected to subdue and conceal, rather than to display, her charms.
+If such was her plan, it went pitifully wrong: his advances went on from
+approach to approach, like the last manoeuvres of a successful siege.
+
+"No," I heard her say, as I became conscious that we three were alone
+again; "not here! Not at all! Stop!"
+
+When I looked at them they were quietly sitting at the table; but her
+face was pale, his flushed. Pretty soon the waiter came and served
+champagne. I felt sure that she had never seen any before.
+
+"How funny it looks," said she, "with the bubbles coming up in the
+middle like a little fountain; and how pretty! Why, the stem is hollow,
+isn't it?"
+
+He laughed and made some foolish remark about love bubbling up in his
+heart. When he set his glass down, I could see that his hands were
+trembling as with palsy,--so much so that it was tipped over and broken.
+
+"I'll fill another," said he. "Aren't you sorry you broke it?"
+
+"I?" she queried. "You're not going to lay that to me, are you?"
+
+"You're the only one to blame!" he replied. "You must hold it till it's
+steady. I'll hold your glass with the other. Why, you don't take any at
+all! Don't you like it, dear?"
+
+She shrank back, looked toward the door, and then took the hand in both
+of hers, holding it close to her side, and drank the wine like a child
+taking medicine. His arm, his hand still holding the glass, slipped
+about her waist, but she turned swiftly and silently freed herself and
+sat down by the chair in which he had meant that both should sit,
+holding his hands. Then in a moment I saw her sitting on the other side
+of the table, and he was filling the glasses again. The guests had all
+departed. The well-disciplined waiters had effaced themselves. Only we
+three were there. I wondered if I ought to do anything.
+
+They sat and talked in low tones. He was drinking a good deal of the
+champagne; she, little; and neither seemed to be eating anything. He sat
+opposite to her, leaning over as if to consume her with his eyes. She
+returned his gaze often now, and often smiled; but her smile was drawn
+and tremulous, and, to my mind, pitifully appealing. I no longer
+wondered if I ought to do anything; for, once, when I partly rose to go
+and speak to them, the impossibility of the thing overcame my half
+resolve, and I sat down. The anti-quixotic spirit won, after all.
+
+At last a waiter, returning with the change for the bill with which I
+had paid my score, was hailed by Sir John, and was paid for their
+supper. I looked to see them as they started for home. The girl rose and
+made a movement toward her wrap. He reached it first and placed it about
+her shoulders. In so doing, he drew her to him, and began speaking
+softly and passionately to her in words I could not hear. Her face was
+turned upward and backward toward him, and all her resistance seemed
+gone. I should have been glad to believe this the safe and triumphant
+surrender to an honest love; but here, after the dances and Stamboul
+spectacles, hidden by the palms, beside the table with its empty bottles
+and its broken glass, how could I believe it such? I turned away, as if
+to avoid the sight of the crushing of some innocent thing which I was
+powerless to aid, and strode toward the door.
+
+Then I heard a little cry, and saw her come flying down the great hall,
+leaving him standing amazedly in the archway of the palm alcove.
+
+She passed me at the door, her face vividly white, went out into the
+street, like a dove from the trap at a shooting tournament, and sprang
+lightly upon a passing street-car. I could act now, and I would see her
+to a place of safety; so I, too, swung on by the rail of the rear car.
+She never once turned her face; but I saw Sir John come to the door of
+the restaurant and look both ways for her, and as he stood perplexed and
+alarmed, our train turned the curve at the next corner, we were swept
+off toward the South Side, and the dark young man passed, as I supposed,
+"into my dreams forever." I made my way forward a few seats and saw her
+sitting there with her head bowed upon the back of the seat in front of
+her. I bitterly wished that he, if he had a heart, might see her there,
+bruised in spirit, her little ignorant white soul, searching itself for
+smutches of the uncleanness it feared. I wished that Alice might be
+there to go to her and comfort her without a word. I paid her fare, and
+the conductor seemed to understand that she was not to be disturbed. A
+drunken man in rough clothes came into the car, walked forward and
+looked at her a moment, and as I was about to go to him and make him sit
+elsewhere, he turned away and came back to the rear, as if he had some
+sort of maudlin realization that the front of the train was sacred
+ground.
+
+At last she looked about, signalled for the car to stop, and alighted. I
+followed, rather suspecting that she did not know her way. She walked
+steadily on, however, to a big, dark house with a vine-covered porch,
+close to the sidewalk. A stout man, coatless, and in a white shirt,
+stood at the gate. He wore a slouch hat, and I knew him, even in that
+dim light, for a farmer. She stopped for a moment, and without a word,
+sprang into his arms.
+
+"Wal, little gal, ain't yeh out purty late?" I heard him say, as I
+walked past. "Didn't expect yer dad to see yeh, did yeh? Why, yeh ain't
+a-cryin', be yeh?"
+
+"O pa! O pa!" was all I heard her say; but it was enough. I walked to
+the corner, and sat down on the curbstone, dead tired, but happy. In a
+little while I went back toward the street-car line, and as I passed the
+vine-clad porch, heard the farmer's bass voice, and stopped to listen,
+frankly an eavesdropper, and feeling, somehow, that I had earned the
+right to hear.
+
+"Why, o' course, I'll take yeh away, ef yeh don't like it here, little
+gal," he was saying. "Yes, we'll go right in an' pack up now, if yeh say
+so. Only it's a little suddent, and may hurt the Madame's feelin's, y'
+know--"
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the hotel I was forced by the crowded state of the city to share the
+bed of one of my fellow delegates. He was a judge from down the state,
+and awoke as I lay down.
+
+"That you, Barslow?" said he. "Do you know a fellow by the name of
+Elkins, of Cleveland?"
+
+"No," said I, "why?"
+
+"He was here to see you, or rather to inquire if you were Al Barslow who
+used to live in Pleasant Valley Township," the Judge went on. "He's the
+fellow who organized the Ohio flambeau brigade. Seems smart."
+
+"Pleasant Valley Township, did he say? Yes, I know him. It's Jimmie
+Elkins."
+
+And I sank to sleep and to dreams, in which Jimmie Elkins, the Empress,
+Sir John, Alice, and myself acted in a spectacular drama, like that at
+McVicker's. And yet there are those who say there is nothing in dreams!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Reminiscentially Autobiographical.
+
+
+This Jimmie Elkins was several years older than I; but that did not
+prevent us, as boys, from being fast friends. At seventeen he had a
+coterie of followers among the smaller fry of ten and twelve, his tastes
+clinging long to the things of boyhood. He and I played together, after
+the darkening of his lip suggested the razor, and when the youths of his
+age were most of them acquiring top buggies, and thinking of the long
+Sunday-night drives with their girls. Jim preferred the boys, and the
+trade of the fisher and huntsman.
+
+Why, in spite of parental opposition, I loved Jimmie, is not hard to
+guess. He had an odd and freakish humor, and talked more of
+Indian-fighting, filibustering in gold-bearing regions, and of moving
+accidents by flood and field, than of crops, live-stock, or bowery
+dances. He liked me just as did the older men who sent me to the
+National Convention,--in spite of my youth. He was a ne'er-do-weel, said
+my father, but I snared gophers and hunted and fished with him, and we
+loved each other as brothers seldom do.
+
+At last, I began teaching school, and working my way to a better
+education than our local standard accepted as either useful or
+necessary, and Jim and I drifted apart. He had always kept up a
+voluminous correspondence with that class of advertisers whose
+black-letter "Agents Wanted" is so attractive to the farmer-boy; and he
+was usually agent for some of their wares. Finally, I heard of him as a
+canvasser for a book sold by subscription,--a "Veterinarians' Guide," I
+believe it was,--and report said that he was "making money." Again I
+learned that he had established a publishing business of some kind; and,
+later, that reverses had forced him to discontinue it,--the old farmer
+who told me said he had "failed up." Then I heard no more of him until
+that night of the convention, when I had the adventure with the Empress
+and Sir John, all unknown to them; and Jim made the ineffectual attempt
+to find me. His family had left the old neighborhood, and so had mine;
+and the chances of our ever meeting seemed very slight. In fact it was
+some years later and after many of the brave dreams of the youthful
+publicist had passed away, that I casually stumbled upon him in the
+smoking-room of a parlor-car, coming out of Chicago.
+
+I did not know him at first. He came forward, and, extending his hand,
+said, "How are you, Al?" and paused, holding the hand I gave him,
+evidently expecting to enjoy a period of perplexity on my part. But with
+one good look in his eyes I knew him. I made him sit down by me, and for
+half an hour we were too much engrossed in reminiscences to ask after
+such small matters as business, residence, and general welfare.
+
+"Where all have you been, Jim, and what have you been doing, since you
+followed off the 'Veterinarians' Guide,' and I lost you?" I inquired at
+last.
+
+"I've been everywhere, and I've done everything, almost," said he. "Put
+it in the 'negative case,' and my history'll be briefer."
+
+"I should regard organizing a flambeau brigade," said I, "as about the
+last thing you would engage in."
+
+"Ah!" he replied, "His Whiskers at the hotel told you I called that
+time, did he? Well, I didn't think he had the sense. And I doubted the
+memory on your part, and I wasn't at all sure you were the real Barslow.
+But about the flambeaux. The fact is, I had some stock in the flambeau
+factory, and I was a rabid partisan of flambeaux. They seemed so
+patriotic, you know, so sort of ennobling, and so convincing, as to the
+merits of the tariff controversy!"
+
+It was the same old Jim, I thought.
+
+"We used to have a scheme," I remarked, "our favorite one, of occupying
+an island in the Pacific,--or was it somewhere in the vicinity of the
+Spanish Main--"
+
+"If it was the place where we were to make slaves of all the natives,
+and I was to be king, and you Grand Vizier," he answered, as if it were
+a weighty matter, and he on the witness-stand, "it was in the
+Pacific--the South Pacific, where the whale-oil comes from. A coral
+atoll, with a crystal lagoon in the middle for our ships, and a fringe
+of palms along the margin--coco-palms, you remember; and the lagoon was
+green, sometimes, and sometimes blue; and the sharks never came over the
+bar, but the porpoises came in and played for us, and made fireworks in
+the phosphorescent waves...."
+
+His eyes grew almost tender, as he gazed out of the window, and ceased
+to speak without finishing the sentence,--which it took me some minutes
+to follow out to the end, in my mind. I was delighted and touched to
+find these foolish things so green in his memory.
+
+"The plan involved," said I soberly, "capturing a Spanish galleon filled
+with treasure, finding two lovely ladies in the cabin, and offering them
+their liberty. And we sailed with them for a port; and, as I remember
+it, their tears at parting conquered us, and we married them; and lived
+richer than oil magnates, and grander than Monte Cristos forever after:
+do you remember?"
+
+"Remember! Well, I should smile!"--he had been laughing like a boy, with
+his old frank laugh. "Them's the things we don't forget.... Did you ever
+gather any information as to what a galleon really was? I never did."
+
+"I had no more idea than I now have of the Rosicrucian Mysteries; and I
+must confess," said I, "that I'm a little hazy on the galleon question
+yet. As to piracy, now, and robbers and robbery, actual life fills out
+the gaps in the imagination of boyhood, doesn't it, Jim?"
+
+"Apt to," he assented, "but specifically? As to which, you know?"
+
+"Well, I've had my share of experience with them," I answered, "though
+not so much in the line of rob-or, as we planned, but more as rob-ee."
+
+Jim looked at me quizzically.
+
+"Board of Trade, faro, or ... what?" he ventured.
+
+"General business," I responded, "and ... politics."
+
+"Local, state, or national?" he went on, craftily ignoring the general
+business.
+
+"A little national, some state, but the bulk of it local. I've been
+elected County Treasurer, down where I live, for four successive terms."
+
+"Good for you!" he responded. "But I don't see how that can be made to
+harmonize with your remark about rob-or and rob-ee. It's been your own
+fault, if you haven't been on the profitable side of the game, with the
+dear people on the other. And I judge from your looks that you eat three
+meals a day, right along, anyhow. Come, now, b'lay this rob-ee business
+(as Sir Henry Morgan used to say) till you get back to Buncombe County.
+As a former partner in crime, I won't squeal; and the next election is
+some ways off, anyhow. No concealment among pals, now, Al, it's no fair,
+you know, and it destroys confidence and breeds discord. Many a good,
+honest, piratical enterprise has been busted up by concealment and lack
+of confidence. Always trust your fellow pirates,--especially in things
+they know all about by extrinsic evidence,--and keep concealment for the
+great world of the unsophisticated and gullible, and to catch the
+sucker vote with. But among ourselves, my beloved, fidelity to truth,
+and openness of heart is the first rule, right out of Hoyle. With dry
+powder, mutual confidence, and sharp cutlasses, we are invincible; and
+as the poet saith,
+
+    "'Far as the tum-te-tum the billows foam
+    Survey our empire and behold our home,'
+
+or words to that effect. And to think of your trying to deceive me, your
+former chieftain, who doesn't even vote in your county or state, and
+moreover always forgets election! Rob-ee indeed! rats! Al, I'm ashamed
+of you, by George, I am!"
+
+This speech he delivered with a ridiculous imitation of the tricks of
+the elocutionist. It was worthy of the burlesque stage. The conductor,
+passing through, was attracted by it, and notified us that the solitude
+of the smoking-room had been invaded, by a slight burst of applause at
+Jim's peroration, followed by the vanishing of the audience.
+
+"No need for any further concealment on my part, so far as elections are
+concerned," said I, when we had finished our laugh, "for I go out of
+office January first, next."
+
+"Oh, well, that accounts for it, then," said he. "I notice, say, three
+kinds of retirement from office: voluntary (very rare), post-convention,
+and post-election. Which is yours?"
+
+"Post-convention, I'm sorry to say. I wish it had been voluntary."
+
+"It _is_ the cheapest; but you're in great luck not to get licked at the
+polls. Altogether, you're in great luck. You've been betting on a game
+in which the percentage is mighty big in favor of the house, and you've
+won three or four consecutive turns out of the box. You've got no kick
+coming: you're in big luck. Don't you know you are?"
+
+I did not feel called upon to commit myself; and we smoked on for some
+time in silence.
+
+"It strikes me, Jim," said I, at last, "that you've done all the
+cross-examination, and that it is time to listen to your report. How
+about you and your conduct?"
+
+"As for my conduct," was the prompt answer, "it's away up in the
+neighborhood of G. I've managed to hold the confounded world up for a
+living, ever since I left Pleasant Valley Township. Some of the time the
+picking has been better than at others; but my periods of starvation
+have been brief. By practicing on the 'Veterinarians' Guide' and other
+similar fakes, I learned how to talk to people so as to make them
+believe what I said about things, with the result, usually, of wooing
+the shrinking and cloistered dollar from its lair. When a fellow gets
+this trick down fine, he can always find a market for his services. I
+handled hotel registers, city directories, and like literature,
+including county histories--"
+
+"Sh-h-h!" said I, "somebody might hear you."
+
+"--and at last, after a conference with my present employers, the error
+of my way presented itself to me, and I felt called to a higher and
+holier profession. I yielded to my good angel, turned my better nature
+loose, and became a missionary."
+
+"A what!" I exclaimed.
+
+"A missionary," he responded soberly. "That is, you understand, not one
+of these theological, India's-coral-strand guys; but one who goes about
+the United States of America in a modest and unassuming way, doing good
+so far as in him lies."
+
+"I see," said I, punning horribly, "'in him lies.'"
+
+"Eh?... Yes. Have another cigar. Well, now, you can't defend this
+foreign-mission business to me for a minute. The hills, right in this
+vicinity, are even now white to the harvest. Folks here want the light
+just as bad as the foreign heathen; and so I took up my burden, and went
+out to disseminate truth, as the soliciting agent of the Frugality and
+Indemnity Life Association, which presented itself to me as the capacity
+in which I could best combine repentance with its fruits."
+
+"I perceive," said I.
+
+"Perfectly plain, isn't it, to the seeing eye?" he went on. "You see it
+was like this: Charley Harper and I had been together in the Garden City
+Land Company, years ago, during the boom--by the way, I didn't mention
+that in my report, did I? Well, of course, that company went up just as
+they all did, and neither Charley nor I got to be receiver, as we'd sort
+of laid out to do, and we separated. I went back to my literature--hotel
+registers, with an advertising scheme, with headquarters at Cleveland.
+That's how I happened to be an Ohio man at that national convention.
+Charley always had a leaning toward insurance, and went down into
+Illinois, and started a mutual-benefit organization, which he kept
+going a few years down on the farm--Springfield, or Jacksonville, or
+somewhere down there; and when I ketched up with him again, he was just
+changing it to the old-line plan, and bringing it to the metropolis.
+Well, I helped him some to enlist capital, and he offered me the
+position of Superintendent of Agents. I accepted, and after serving
+awhile in the ranks to sort of get onto the ropes, here I am, just
+starting out on a trip which will take me through a number of states."
+
+"How does it agree with you?" I inquired.
+
+"Not well," said he, "but the good I accomplish is a great comfort to
+me. On this trip, now, I expect to do much in the way of stimulating the
+boys up to their great work of spreading the light of the gospel of true
+insurance. Sometimes, in these days of apathy and error, I find my
+burden a heavy one; and notwithstanding the quiet of conscience I gain,
+if it weren't for the salary, I'd quit to-morrow, Al, danged if I
+wouldn't. It makes me tired to have even you sort of hint that I'm
+actuated by some selfish motive, when, in truth and in fact, I live but
+to gather widows and orphans under my wing, so to speak, and give second
+husbands a good start, by means of policies written on the only true
+plan, combining participation in profits with pure mutuality, and--"
+
+"Never mind!" said I with a silence-commanding gesture. "I've heard all
+that before. You're onto the ropes thoroughly; but don't practice your
+infernal arts on me! I hope the salary is satisfactory?"
+
+"Fairish; but not high, considering what they get for it."
+
+"You used to be more modest," said I. "I remember that you once nearly
+broke your heart because you couldn't summon up courage to ask Creeshy
+Hammond to go to the 'Fourth' with you; d'ye remember?"
+
+"Well, I guess, yes!" he replied. "Wasn't I a miserable wretch for a few
+days! And I've never been able to ask any woman I cared about, the
+fateful question, yet."
+
+We went into the parlor-car, and talked over old times and new for an
+hour. I told him of my marriage and my home, and I studied him. I saw
+that he still preserved his humorous, mock-serious style of
+conversation, and that his hand-to-hand battle with the world had made
+him good-humoredly cynical. He evinced a knowledge of more things than I
+should have expected; and had somehow acquired an imposing manner, in
+spite of his rather slangy, if expressive, vocabulary. He had the power
+of making statements of mere opinion, which, from some vibration of
+voice or trick of expression, struck the hearer as solid facts, thrice
+buttressed by evidence. He bore no marks of dissipation, unless the
+occasional use of terms traceable to the turf or the gaming-table might
+be considered such; but these expressions, I considered, are so
+constantly before every reader of the newspapers that the language of
+the pulpit, even, is infected by them. Their evidential value being thus
+destroyed, they ought not to be weighed at all, as against firm,
+wholesome flesh, a good complexion, and a clear eye, all of which Mr.
+Elkins possessed.
+
+"It's funny," said I, "how seldom I meet any of the old neighbor-boys.
+Do you see any of them in your travels?"
+
+"Not often," he answered, "but you remember little Ed Smith, who lived
+on the Hayes place for a while, and brought the streaked snake into the
+schoolhouse while Julia Fanning was teaching? Well, he was an architect
+at Garden City, and lives in Chicago now. We sort of chum together: saw
+him yesterday. He left Garden City when the land company went up. I tell
+you, that was a hot town for a while! Railroads, and factories, and
+irrigation schemes, and prices scooting toward the zenith, till you
+couldn't rest. If I'd got into that push soon enough, I shouldn't have
+made a thing but money; as it was, I didn't lose only what I had. A good
+many of the boys lost a lot more. But I tell you, Al, a boom properly
+boomed is a sure thing."
+
+"You're a constant source of surprise to me, Jim," said I. "I should
+have thought them sure to lose."
+
+"They're sure to win," said he earnestly.
+
+I demurred. "I don't see how that can possibly be," said I, "for of all
+things, booms seem to me the most fickle and incalculable."
+
+"They seem so," said he, smiling, but still in earnest, "to your rustic
+and untaught mind, and to most others, because they haven't been
+studied. The comet, likewise, doesn't seem very stable or dependable;
+but to the eye of the astronomer its orbit is plain, and the time of its
+return engagement pretty certain. It's the same with seventeen-year
+locusts--and booms; their visits are so far apart that the masses forget
+their birthmarks and the W's on their backs. But if you'll follow their
+appearances from place to place, as I've done, putting up my ante right
+along for the privilege, you'll become an accomplished boomist; and from
+the first gentle stirrings of boom-sprouts in the soil, so to speak, you
+can forecast their growth, maturity, and collapse."
+
+"I must be permitted to doubt it," said I.
+
+"It's easy, my son," he resumed, "dead easy, and it's psychology on the
+hugest scale; and among the results of its study is constant improvement
+of the mind, going on coincidentally with the preparation of the way to
+the ownership of steam-yachts and racing-stables, or any other similar
+trifles you hanker for."
+
+"Great brain, Jim! Massive intellect!" said I, laughing at the fantastic
+absurdity of his assertion. "Why, such knowledge as you possess is
+better than straight tips on all the races ever to be run. It's better
+than our tropical island and Spanish galleons. You get richer, and you
+don't have to look out for men-of-war. Do I hold my job as Grand
+Vizier?"
+
+"You hold any job you'll take: I'll make out the appointment with the
+position and salary blank, and you can fill it up. And if you get
+dissatisfied with that, the old grand hailing-sign of distress will
+catch the speaker's eye, any old time. But, I tell you, Al, in all
+seriousness, I'm right about this boom business. They're all alike, and
+they all have the same history. With the conditions right, one can be
+started anywhere in a growing country. I've had my ear to the ground for
+a while back, and I've heard things. I'm sure I detect some of the
+premonitory symptoms: money piling up in the financial centers; property
+away down, but strengthening, in the newer regions; and, lately, a
+little tendency to take chances in investments, forgetting the scorching
+of ten or twelve years ago. A new generation of suckers is gettin' ready
+to bite. Look into this thing, Al, and don't be a chump."
+
+"The same old Jim," said I; "you were manipulating a corner in
+tobacco-tags while I was learning my letters."
+
+"Do you ever forget anything?" he inquired. "I have about forgotten that
+myself. How was that tobacco-tag business, Al?"
+
+Then with the painstaking circumstantiality of two old schoolmates
+luxuriating in memories, we talked over the tobacco-tag craze which
+swept through our school one winter. Everything in life takes place in
+school, and the "tobacco-tag craze" has quite often recurred to me as
+showing boys acting just as men act, and Jimmie Elkins as the born
+stormy petrel of financial seas.
+
+It all came back to our minds, and we reconstructed this story. The
+manufacturers of "Tomahawk Plug" had offered a dozen photographs of
+actresses and dancers to any one sending in a certain number of the tin
+hatchets concealed in their tobacco. The makers of "Broad-axe Navy"
+offered something equally cheap and alluring for consignments of their
+brass broad-axes. The older boys began collecting photographs, and a
+market for tobacco-tags of certain kinds was established. We little
+fellows, though without knowledge of the mysterious forces which had
+given value to these bits of metal, began to pick up stray tags from
+sidewalk, foot-path, and floor. A marked upward tendency soon manifested
+itself. Boys found their "Broad-axe" or "Door-key" tags, picked up at
+night, doubled in value by morning. The primary object in collecting
+tags was forgotten in the speculative mania which set in. Who would
+exchange "Tomahawk" tags for the counterfeit presentment of décolleté
+dancers, when by holding them he could make cent-per-cent on his
+investment of hazel-nuts and slate-pencils?
+
+The playground became a Board of Trade. We learned nothing but mental
+arithmetic applied to deals in "Door-keys," "Arrow-heads," and other tag
+properties. We went about with pockets full of tags.
+
+Jim, not yet old enough to admire the beauties of the photographs, came
+forward in a week as the Napoleon of tobacco-tag finance. He acquired
+tags in the slumps, and sold them in the bulges. He raided particular
+brands with rumors of the vast supply with which the village boys were
+preparing to flood us. He converted his holdings into marbles and tops.
+Finally, he planned his master-stroke. He dropped mysterious hints
+regarding some tag considered worthless. He asked us in whispers if we
+had any. Others followed his example, and "Door-key" tags went above all
+others and were scarce at any price. Then Jimmie Elkins brought out the
+supply which he had "cornered," threw it on the market, and before it
+had time to drop took in a large part of the playground currency. I lost
+to him a good drawing-slate and a figure-4 trap.
+
+Jimmie pocketed his winnings, but the trouble attracted the attention of
+the teacher, and under adverse legislation a period of liquidation set
+in. The distress was great. Many found themselves with property which
+was not convertible into photographs or anything else. To make matters
+worse, the discovery was made that the big boys had left school to begin
+the spring's work, and no one wanted the photographs. Bankrupt and
+disillusioned, we returned to the realities of kites, marbles, and
+knives, most of which we had to obtain from Jimmie Elkins.
+
+"Yes," said he, "it's a good deal the same with booms. But if you
+understand 'em ... eh, Al?"
+
+"Well," said I, really impressed now, "I'll look into it. And when you
+get ready to sow your boom-seed, let me know. I change cars in a few
+minutes, and you go on. Come down and see me sometimes, can't you? We
+haven't had our talk half out yet. Doesn't your business ever bring you
+down our way?"
+
+"It hasn't yet, but I'm coming down into that neck of the woods within
+six weeks, and I guess I can fix it so's to stop off,--mingling pleasure
+and business. It's the only way the hustling philanthropist of my style
+ever gets any recreation."
+
+"Do it," said I; "I'll have plenty of time at my disposal; for I go out
+of office before that time; and I may want to go into your
+boom-hatchery."
+
+"On the theory that the great adversary of mankind runs an employment
+agency for ex's? There's the whistle for your junction. By George, Al, I
+can't tell you how glad I am to have ketched up with you again! I've
+wondered about you a million times. Don't let's lose track of each other
+again."
+
+"No, no, Jim, we won't!" The train was coming to a stop. "Don't allow
+anything to side-track you and prevent that visit."
+
+"Well, I should say not," he answered, following me out upon the
+platform of the station. "We'll have a regular piratical reunion--a sort
+of buccaneers' camp-fire. I've a curiosity to see some of the fellows
+who acted the part of rob-or to your rob-ee. I want to hear their side
+of the story. Good-by, Al. Confound it, I wish you were going on with
+me!"
+
+He wrung my hand at parting, reminding me of the old Jim who studied
+from the same geography with me, more than at any time since we met. He
+stayed with me until after his train had started, caught hold of the
+hand-rail as the rear car went by, and passed out of view, waving his
+hand to me.
+
+I sat down on a baggage-truck waiting for my train, thinking of my
+encounter with Jim. All the way home I was busy pondering over a
+thousand things thus suddenly recalled to me. I could see every
+fence-corner and barn, every hill and stream of our old haunts; and
+after I got home I told Alice all about it.
+
+"He seems quite a remarkable fellow," said I, "and a perfect specimen of
+the pusher and hustler--a quick-witted man of affairs. If he is ever
+put down, he can't be kept down."
+
+"I think I prefer a more refined type of man," said Alice.
+
+"In the sixteenth century," I went on with that excessive perspicacity
+which our wives have to put up with, "he'd have been a Drake or a
+Dampier; in the seventeenth, the commander of a privateer or slaver; in
+this age, I shall not be at all surprised if he turns out a great
+railway or financial magnate. It's like a whiff of boyhood to talk with
+him; though he's a greatly different sort of man from what I should have
+expected to find him. I think you'll like him."
+
+She seemed dubious about this. Our wives instinctively disapprove of
+people we used to know prior to that happy meeting which led to
+marriage. This prejudice, for some reason, is stronger against our
+feminine acquaintances than the others. I am not analytical enough to do
+more than point out this feeling, which will, I think, be admitted by
+all husbands to exist.
+
+"That sort of man," said she, "lacks the qualities of bravery and
+intrepidity which make up a Drake or a Dampier. They are so a-scheming
+and calculating!"
+
+"The last time I saw Jim until to-day," said I, "he did something which
+seems to show that he had those more admirable qualities."
+
+Then I told her that story of Jim and the mad dog, which is remembered
+in Pleasant Valley to this day. Some say the dog was not mad; but I, who
+saw his terrible, insane look as he came snapping and frothing down the
+road, believe that he was. Jim had left the school for a year or so, and
+I was a "big boy" ready to leave it. It was at four one afternoon, and
+as the children filed into the road, there met them the shouts of men
+and cries of "Run! Run! Mad dog!"
+
+The children scattered like a covey of quail; but a pair of little
+five-year-olds, forgotten by the others, walked on hand in hand, looking
+into each other's faces, right toward the poor crazed, hunted brute,
+which trotted slowly toward the children, gnashing its frothing jaws at
+sticks and weeds, at everything it met, ready to bury its teeth in the
+first baby to come within reach.
+
+A young man with a canvasser's portfolio stood behind a fence over which
+he had jumped to avoid the dog. Suddenly he saw the children, knew their
+danger, and leaped back into the road. It was like a bull-fighter
+vaulting the barriers into the perils of the arena,--only it was to
+save, not to destroy. The dog had passed him and was nearer the children
+than he was. I wondered what he expected to do as I saw him running
+lightly, swiftly, and yet quietly behind the terrible beast. As he
+neared the animal, he stooped, and my blood froze as I saw him seize the
+dog with both hands by the hinder legs. The head curled sidewise and
+under, and the teeth almost grazed the young man's hands with a vicious,
+metallic snap. Then we saw what the contest was. The young man, with a
+powerful circling sweep of his arms, whirled the dog so swiftly about
+his head that the lank frame swung out in a straight line, and the snap
+could not be repeated. But what of the end? No muscles could long stand
+such a strain, and when they yielded, then what?
+
+Then we saw that as he swung his loathsome foe, the young man was
+gradually approaching the schoolhouse. We saw the horrible snapping head
+whirl nearer and nearer at every turn to the corner of the building.
+Then we saw the young man strike a terrible blow at the stone wall,
+using the dog as a club; and in a moment I saw the stones splashed with
+red, and the young man lying on the ground, where the violence of his
+effort had thrown him, and by him lay the quivering form of what we had
+fled from. And the young man was James Elkins.
+
+Alice breathed hard as I finished, and stood straight with her chin held
+high.
+
+"That was fine!" said she. "I want to see that man!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Jim discovers his Coral Island.
+
+
+There has long been abroad in the world a belief that events which bear
+some controlling relation to one's destiny are announced by premonition,
+some spiritual trepidation, some movement of that curtain which cuts off
+our view of the future. I believe this notion to be false, but feel that
+it is true; and the manner in which that adventure of mine in the old
+art gallery and at Auriccio's impressed my mind, and the way in which my
+memory clung to it, seem to justify my feeling rather than my belief.
+Whenever I visited Chicago, I went to the gallery, more in the hope of
+seeing the girl whose only name to me was "the Empress" than to gratify
+my cravings for art. I felt a boundless pity for her--and laughed at
+myself for taking so seriously an incident which, in all likelihood, she
+herself dismissed with a few tears, a few retrospective burnings of
+heart and cheek. But I never saw her. Once I loitered for an hour about
+the boarding-house with the vine-clad porch, while the boarders (mostly
+students, I judged) came and went; but though I saw many young girls,
+the Empress was not among them. And all this time the years were rolling
+on, and I was permitting my once bright political career to blight and
+wither by my own neglect, as a growth not worth caring for.
+
+I became a private citizen in due time, but found no comfort in leisure.
+I was in those doldrums which beset the politician when rivals justle
+him from his little eminence. One who, for years, is annually or
+biennially complimented by the suffrages of even a few thousands of his
+fellow citizens, and is invited into the penetralia of a great political
+party, is apt to regard himself, after a while, as peculiarly deserving
+of the plaudits of the humble and the consideration of the powerful.
+Then comes the inevitable hour when pussy finds himself without a
+corner. The deep disgust for party and politics which then takes
+possession of him demands change of scene and new surroundings. Any
+flagging in partisan enthusiasm is sure to be attributed to
+sore-headedness, and leads to charges of perfidy and thanklessness. Yet,
+for him, the choice lies between abated zeal and hypocrisy, inasmuch as
+no man can normally be as zealous for his party as the fanatic into
+which the candidate or incumbent converts himself.
+
+Underlying my whole frame of mind was the knowledge that, so far as
+making a career was concerned, I had wasted several years of my life,
+and had now to begin anew. Add to this a slight sense of having played
+an unworthy part in life (although here I was unable to particularize),
+and a new sense of aloofness from the people with whom I had been for
+so long on terms of hearty and back-slapping familiarity, and no further
+reason need be sought for a desire which came mightily upon me to go
+away and begin life over again in a new _milieu_. In spite of the mild
+opposition of my wife, this desire grew to a resolve; and I came to look
+upon myself as a temporary sojourner in my own home.
+
+Such was the state of our affairs, when a letter came from Mr. Elkins
+(in lieu of the promised visit) urging me to remove to the then obscure
+but since celebrated town of Lattimore.
+
+"I got to be too rich for Charley Harper's blood," said the letter,
+among other things. "I wanted as much in the way of salary as I could
+earn, working for myself, and Charley kicked--said the directors
+wouldn't consent, and that such a salary list would be a black eye for
+the Frugality and Indemnity if it showed up in its statements. So I
+quit. I am loan agent for the company here, which gives me a visible
+means of support, and keeps me from being vagged. But, in confidence, I
+want to tell you that my main graft here is the putting in operation of
+my boom-hatching scheme. Come out, and I'll enroll you as a member of
+the band once more; for this is the coral atoll for me. You ought to get
+out of that stagnant pond of yours, and come where the natatory medium
+is fresh, clean, and thickly peopled with suckers, and a new run of 'em
+coming on right soon. In other words, get into the swim."
+
+After reading this letter and considering it as a whole, I was so much
+impressed by it that Lattimore was added to the list of places I meant
+to visit, on a tour I had planned for myself.
+
+In the West, all roads run to or from Chicago. It is nearer to almost
+any place by the way of Chicago than by any other route: so Alice and I
+went to the city by the lake, as the beginning of our prospecting tour.
+I took her to the art gallery and showed her just where my two lovers
+had stood,--telling her the story for the first time. Then she wanted to
+eat a supper at Auriccio's; and after the play we went there, and I was
+forced to describe the whole scene over again.
+
+"Didn't she see you at all?" she asked.
+
+"Not at all," said I.
+
+"You are a good boy," said my wife, judging me by one act which she
+approved. "Kiss me."
+
+This occurred after we reached our lodgings. I suggested as a change of
+subject that my next day's engagements took me to the Stock Yards, and I
+assumed that she would scarcely wish to accompany me.
+
+"I think I prefer the stores," said she, "and the pictures. Maybe _I_
+shall have an adventure."
+
+At the big Exchange Building, I found that the acquaintance whom I
+sought was absent from his office, and I roamed up and down the
+corridors in search of him. As usual the gathering here was intensely
+Western. There were bronzed cattlemen from every range from Amarillo to
+the Belle Fourche, sturdy buyers of swine from Iowa and Illinois,
+sombreroed sheepmen from New Mexico, and vikingesque Swedes from North
+Dakota. Men there were wearing thousand-dollar diamonds in red flannel
+shirts, solid gold watch-chains made to imitate bridle-bits, and heavy
+golden bullocks sliding on horse-hair guards. It pleased me, as such a
+crowd always does. The laughter was loud but it was free, and the hunted
+look one sees on State Street and Michigan Avenue was absent.
+
+"I wish Alice had come," said I, noting the flutter of skirts in a group
+of people in the corridor; and then, as I came near, the press divided,
+and I saw something which drew my eyes as to a sight in which lay
+mystery to be unraveled.
+
+Facing me stood a stout farmer in a dark suit of common cut and texture.
+He seemed, somehow, not entirely strange; but the petite figure of the
+girl whose back was turned to me was what fixed my attention.
+
+She wore a smart traveling-gown of some pretty gray fabric, and bore
+herself gracefully and with the air of dominating the group of
+commission men among whom she stood. I noted the incurved spine, the
+deep curves of the waist, and the liberal slope of the hips belonging to
+a shapely little woman in whom slimness was mitigated in adorable ways,
+which in some remote future bade fair to convert it into matronliness.
+Under a broad hat there showed a wealth of red-brown hair, drawn up like
+a sunburst from a slender little neck.
+
+"I have provided a box at Hooley's," said the head of a great commission
+firm. "Mrs. Johnson will be with us. We may count upon you?"
+
+"I think so," said the girl, "if papa hasn't made any engagements."
+
+The stout farmer blushed as he looked down at his daughter.
+
+"Engagements, eh? No, sir!" he replied. "She runs things after the
+steers is unloaded. Whatever the little gal says goes with me."
+
+They turned, and as they came on down the hall, still chatting, I saw
+her face, and knew it. It was the Empress! But even in that glimpse I
+saw the change which years had brought. Now she ruled instead of
+submitting; her voice, still soft and low, had lost its rustic
+inflections; and in spite of the change in the surroundings,--the leap
+from the art gallery to the Stock Yards,--there was more of the artist
+now, and less of the farmer's lass. They turned into a suite of offices
+and disappeared.
+
+"Well, Mr. Barslow," said my friend, coming up. "Glad to see you. I've
+been hunting for you."
+
+"Who is that girl and her father?" I asked.
+
+"One of the Johnson Commission Company's Shippers," said he, "Prescott,
+from Lattimore; I wish I could get his shipments."
+
+"No!" said I, "Not Lattimore!"
+
+"Prescott of Lattimore," he repeated. "Know anything of him?"
+
+"N-no," said I. "I have friends in that town."
+
+"I wish I had," was the reply; "I'd try to get old Prescott's business."
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There's destiny in this," said Alice, when I told her of my encounter
+with the Empress and her father. "Her living in Lattimore is not an
+accident."
+
+"I doubt," said I, "if anybody's is."
+
+"She looked nice, did she?" Alice went on, "and dressed well?" and
+without waiting for an answer added: "Let's leave Chicago. I'm anxious
+to get to Lattimore!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+We Reach the Atoll.
+
+
+So we journeyed on to Duluth, to St. Paul and Minneapolis, and to the
+cities on the Missouri. It was at one of those recurrent periods when
+the fever of material and industrial change and development breaks out
+over the whole continent. The very earth seemed to send out tingling
+shocks of some occult stimulus; the air was charged with the ozone of
+hope; and subtle suggestions seemed to pass from mind to mind, impelling
+men to dare all, to risk all, to achieve all. In every one of these
+young cities we were astonished at the changes going on under our very
+eyes. Streets were torn up for the building of railways, viaducts, and
+tunnels. Buildings were everywhere in course of demolition, to make room
+for larger edifices. Excavations yawned like craters at street-corners.
+Steel pillars, girders, and trusses towered skyward,--skeletons to be
+clothed in flesh of brick and stone.
+
+Suburbs were sprouting, almost daily, from the mould of the
+market-gardens in the purlieus. Corporations were contending for the
+possession of the natural highway approaches to each growing city.
+Street-railway companies pushed their charters to passage at midnight
+sessions of boards of aldermen, seized streets in the night-time, and
+extended their metallic tentacles out into the fields of dazed farmers.
+
+On the frontiers, counties were organized and populated in a season.
+Every one of them had its two or three villages, which aped in puny
+fashion the achievements of the cities. New pine houses dotted prairies,
+unbroken save for the mile-long score of the delimiting plow. Long
+trains of emigrant-cars moved continually westward. The world seemed
+drunk with hope and enthusiasm. The fulfillment of Jim's careless
+prophecy had burst suddenly upon us.
+
+Such things as these were fresh in our memories when we reached
+Lattimore. I had wired Elkins of our coming, and he met us at the
+station with a carriage. It was one sunny September afternoon when he
+drove us through the streets of our future home to the principal hotel.
+
+"We have supper at six, dinner at twelve-thirty, breakfast from seven to
+ten," said Jim, as we alighted at the hotel. "That's the sort of bucolic
+municipality you've struck here; we'll shove all these meals several
+hours down, when we get to doubling our population. You'll have an hour
+to get freshened up for supper. Afterwards, if Mrs. Barslow feels equal
+to the exertion, we'll take a drive about the town."
+
+Lattimore was a pretty place then. Low, rounded hills topped with green
+surrounded it. The river flowed in a broad, straight reach along its
+southern margin. A clear stream, Brushy Creek, ran in a miniature
+canyon of limestone, through the eastern edge of the town. On each side
+of this brook, in lawns of vivid green, amid natural groves of oak and
+elm, interspersed with cultivated greenery, stood the houses of the
+well-to-do. Trees made early twilight in most of the streets.
+
+People were out in numbers, driving in the cool autumnal evening. As a
+handsome girl, a splendid blonde, drove past us, my wife spoke of the
+excellent quality of the horseflesh we saw. Jim answered that Lattimore
+was a center of equine culture, and its citizens wise in breeders' lore.
+The appearance of things impressed us favorably. There was an air of
+quiet prosperity about the place, which is unusual in Western towns,
+where quietude and progress are apt to be thought incompatible. Jim
+pointed out the town's natural advantages as we drove along.
+
+"What do you think of that, now?" said he, waving his whip toward the
+winding gorge of Brushy Creek.
+
+"It's simply lovely!" said Alice, "a little jewel of a place."
+
+"A bit of mountain scenery on the prairie," said Jim. "And more than
+that, or less than that, just as you look at it, it's the source from
+which inexhaustible supplies of stone will be quarried when we begin to
+build things."
+
+"But won't that spoil it?" said Alice.
+
+"Well, yes; and down on that bottom we've found as good clay for
+pottery, sewer-pipes, and paving-brick as exists anywhere. Back there
+where you saw that bluff along the river--looks as if it's sliding down
+into the water--remember it? Well, there's probably the only place in
+the world where there's just the juxtaposition of sand and clay and
+chalk to make Portland cement. Supply absolutely unlimited! Why, there
+ought to be a thousand men employed right now in those cement works. Oh,
+I tell you, things'll hum here when we get these schemes working!"
+
+We laughed at him: his visualization of the cement works was so
+complete.
+
+"I suppose you know where all the capital is coming from," said I, "to
+do all these things? For my part, I see no way of getting it except our
+old plan of buccaneering."
+
+"Exactly my idea!" said he. "Didn't I write you that I'd enroll you as a
+member of the band? Has Al ever told you, Mrs. Barslow, of our old
+times, when we, as individuals, were passing through our
+sixteenth-century stage?"
+
+"Often," Alice replied. "He looks back upon his pirate days as a time of
+Arcadian simplicity, 'Untouched by sorrow, and unsoiled by sin.'"
+
+"I can easily understand," said Jim reflectively, "how piracy might
+appear in that roseate light after a few years of practical politics.
+Now from the moral heights of a life-insurance man's point of view it's
+different."
+
+So we rode on chatting and chaffing, now of the old time, now of the
+new; and all the time I felt more and more impressed by the dissolving
+views which Jim gave us of different parts of his program for making
+Lattimore the metropolis of "the world's granary," as he called the
+surrounding country. As we topped a low hill on our way back, he pulled
+up, to give us a general view of the town and suburbs, and of the great
+expanse of farming country beyond. Between us and Lattimore was a mile
+stretch of gently descending road, with grain-fields and farm-houses on
+each side.
+
+"By the way," said he, "do you see that white house and red barn in the
+maple grove off to the right? Well, you remember Bill Trescott?"
+
+Neither of us could call such a person to mind.
+
+"Well, it's all right, I suppose," he went on in a tone implying injury
+forgiven, "but you mustn't let Bill know you've forgotten him. The
+Trescotts used to live over by the Whitney schoolhouse in Greenwood
+Township,--right on the Pleasant Valley line, you know. He remembers you
+folks, Al. I'll drive over that way."
+
+There were beds of petunias and four-o'clocks to be seen dimly
+glimmering in the dusk, as we drove through the broad gate. Men and
+women were gathered in a group about the base of the windmill, as Jim's
+loud "whoa" announced our arrival. The women melted away in the
+direction of the house. The men stood at gaze.
+
+"Hello, Bill!" shouted Jim. "Come out here!"
+
+"Oh, it's you, is it, Mr. Elkins," said a deep voice. "I didn't know
+yeh."
+
+"Thought it was the sheriff with a summons, eh? Well, I guess hardly!"
+said Jim. "Mr. Trescott, I want you to shake hands with our old friend
+Mr. Barslow."
+
+A heavy figure detached itself from the group, and, as it approached,
+developed indistinctly the features of a brawny farmer, with a short,
+heavy, dark beard.
+
+"Wal, I declare, I'm glad to see yeh!" said he, as he grasped my hand.
+"I'd a'most forgot yeh, till Mr. Elkins told me you remembered my
+whalin' them Dutch boys at a scale onct."
+
+I had had no recollection of him; yet form and voice seemed vaguely
+familiar. I assured him that my memory for names and faces was
+excellent. After being duly presented to Mrs. Barslow, he urged us to
+alight and come in. We offered as an excuse the lateness of the hour.
+
+"Why, you hain't seen my family yet, Mr. Barslow," said he. "They'll be
+disappointed if yeh don't come in."
+
+I suggested that we were staying for a few days at the Centropolis; and
+Alice added that we should be glad to see himself and Mrs. Trescott
+there at any time during our stay. Elkins promised that we should all
+drive out again.
+
+"Wal, now, you must," said Mr. Trescott. "We must talk over ol' times
+and--"
+
+"Fight over old battles," replied Jim. "All the battles were yours,
+though, eh, Bill?"
+
+"Huh, huh!" chuckled Bill; "fightin's no credit to any man; but I 'spose
+I fit my sheer when I was a boy--when I was a boy, y' know, Mrs.
+Barslow, and had more sand than sense. Here, Josie, here's Mr. Elkins
+and some old friends of mine. Mr. and Mrs. Barslow, my daughter."
+
+She was a little slim slip of a thing, in white, and emerged from the
+shrubbery at Mr. Trescott's call. She bowed to us, and said she was
+sorry that we could not stop. Her voice was sweet, and there was
+something unexpectedly cool and self-possessed in her intonation. It was
+not in the least the speech of the ordinary neat-handed Phyllis or
+Neæra; nor was her attitude at all countrified as she stood with her
+hand on her father's arm. The increasing darkness kept us from seeing
+her features.
+
+"Josie's my right-hand man," said her father. "Half the business of the
+farm stops when Josie goes away."
+
+My wife expressed her admiration for Lattimore and its environs, and
+especially for so much of the Trescott farm as could be seen in the
+deepening gloaming. The flowers, she said, took her back to her
+childhood's home.
+
+"Let me give you these," said the girl, handing Alice a great bunch of
+blossoms which she had been cutting when her father called, and had held
+in her hands as we talked. My wife thanked her, and buried her face in
+them, as we bade the Trescotts good-night and drove home.
+
+"That girl," said Jim, as we spun along the road in the light of the
+rising moon, "is a crackerjack. Bill thinks the world of her, and she
+certainly gives him a mother's care!"
+
+"She seems nice," said Alice, "and so refined, apparently."
+
+"Been well educated," said Jim, "and got a head, besides. You'll like
+her; she knows Europe better than some folks know their own front
+yard."
+
+"I was surprised at the vividness of my memory of Bill's youthful
+combats," said I.
+
+Jim's laugh rang out heartily through the Brushy Creek gorge.
+
+"Well, I supposed you remembered those things, of course," said he, "and
+so I insinuated some impression of the delight with which you dwell upon
+the stories of his prowess. It made him feel good.... I'm spoiling Bill,
+I guess, with these tales. He'll claim to have a private graveyard next.
+As harmless a fellow as you ever saw, and the best cattle-feeder
+hereabouts. Got a good farm out there, Bill has; we may need it for
+stock yards or something, later on."
+
+"Why not hire a corps of landscape-gardeners, and make a park of it?" I
+inquired sarcastically. "We'll certainly need breathing-spaces for the
+populace."
+
+"Good idea!" he returned gravely. And as he halted the equipage at the
+hotel, he repeated meditatively: "A mighty good idea, Al; we must figure
+on that a little."
+
+We were tired to silence when we reached our rooms; so much so that
+nothing seemed to make a defined and sharp impression upon my mind. I
+kept thinking all the time that I must have been mistaken in my first
+thought that I had never known the Trescotts.
+
+"Their voices seem familiar to me," said I, "and yet I can't associate
+them with the old home at all. It's very odd!"
+
+As Alice stood before the mirror shaking down and brushing her hair, she
+said: "Do you suppose he thought you in earnest about that absurd park?"
+
+"No," I answered, "he understood me well enough; but what puzzles me is
+the question, was _he_ in earnest?"
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the middle of the night I woke with a perfectly clear idea as to the
+identity of the Trescotts! Prescott, Trescott! Josie, Josephine the
+"Empress"! And then the voice and figure!
+
+"Why are you sitting up in bed?" inquired Alice.
+
+"I have made a discovery," said I. "That man at the Stock Yards meant
+Trescott, not Prescott."
+
+"I don't understand," said she sleepily.
+
+"In a word," said I, "the girl who gave you the flowers is the Empress!"
+
+"Albert Barslow!" said Alice. "Why--"
+
+My wife was silent for a long time.
+
+"I knew we'd meet her," she said at last. "It is fate."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+I am Inducted into the Cave, and Enlist.
+
+
+"Here's the cave," said Jim, at the door of his office, next morning.
+"As prospective joint-proprietor and co-malefactor, I bid you welcome."
+
+The smiles with which the employees resumed their work indicated that
+the extraordinary character of this welcome was not lost upon them. The
+office was on the ground-floor of one of the more pretentious buildings
+of Lattimore's main street. The post-office was on one side of it, and
+the First National Bank on the other. Over it were the offices of
+lawyers and physicians. It was quite expensively fitted up; and the
+plate-glass front glittered with gold-and-black sign-lettering. The
+chairs and sofas were upholstered in black leather. On the walls hung
+several decorative advertisements of fire-insurance companies, and maps
+of the town, county, and state. Rolls of tracing-paper and blueprints
+lay on the flat-topped tables, reminding one of the office of an
+architect or civil engineer. A thin young man worked at books, standing
+at a high desk; and a plump young woman busily clicked off typewritten
+matter with an up-to-date machine.
+
+"You'll find some books and papers on the table in the next room," said
+Jim, as I finished my first look about. "I'll ask you to amuse yourself
+with 'em for a little while, until I can dispose of my morning's mail;
+after which we'll resume our hunt for resources. We haven't any morning
+paper yet, and the evening _Herald_ is shipped in by freight and edited
+with a saw. But it's the best we've got--yet."
+
+He read his letters, ran his eyes over his newspapers and a magazine or
+two, and dictated some correspondence, interrupted occasionally by
+callers, some of whom he brought into the room where I was whiling away
+the time, examining maps, and looking over out-of-date copies of the
+local papers. One of these callers was Mr. Hinckley, the cashier of the
+bank, who came to see about some insurance matters. He was spare,
+aquiline, and white-mustached; and very courteously wished Lattimore the
+good fortune of securing so valuable an acquisition as ourselves. It
+would place Lattimore under additional obligations to Mr. Elkins, who
+was proving himself such an effective worker in all public matters.
+
+"Mr. Elkins," said he, "has to a wonderful degree identified himself
+with the material progress of the city. He is constantly bringing here
+enterprising and energetic business men; and we could better afford to
+lose many an older citizen."
+
+I asked Mr. Hinckley as to the length of his own residence in Lattimore.
+
+"I helped to plat the town, sir," said he. "I carried the chain when
+these streets were surveyed,--a boy just out of Bowdoin College. That
+was in '55. I staged it for four hundred miles to get here. Aleck
+Macdonald and I came together, and we've both staid from that day. The
+Indians were camped at the mouth of Brushy Creek; and except for old
+Pierre Lacroix, a squaw-man, we were for a month the only white men in
+these parts. Then General Lattimore came with a party of surveyors, and
+by the fall there was quite a village here."
+
+Jim came in with another gentleman, whom he introduced as Captain
+Tolliver. The Captain shook my hand with profuse politeness.
+
+"I am delighted to see you, suh," said he. "Any friend of Mr. Elkins I
+shall be proud to know. I heah that Mrs. Barslow is with you. I trust,
+suh, that she is well?"
+
+I informed him that my wife was in excellent health, being completely
+recovered from the fatigue of her journey.
+
+"Ah! this aiah, this aiah, Mr. Barslow! It is like wine in its
+invigorating qualities, like wine, suh. Look at Mr. Hinckley, hyah,
+doing the work of two men fo' a lifetime; and younge' now than any of
+us. Come, suh, and make yo' home with us. You nevah can regret it.
+Delighted to have you call at my office, suh. I am proud to have met
+you, and hope to become better acquainted with you. I hope Mrs. Tulliver
+and Mrs. Barslow may soon meet. Good-morning, gentlemen." And he hurried
+out, only to reappear as soon as Mr. Hinckley was gone.
+
+"By the way, Mr. Barslow," he whispered, "should you come to Lattimore,
+as I have no doubt you will, I have some of the choicest residence
+property in the city, which I shall be mo' than glad to show you. Title
+perfect, no commissions to pay, city water, gas, and electric light in
+prospect. Cain't yo' come and look it ovah now, suh?"
+
+"Who is this Captain Tolliver, Jim," I asked as we went out of the
+office together, "and what is he?"
+
+"In other words, 'Who and what art thou, execrable shape?' Well, now,
+don't ask me. I've known him for years; in fact, he suggested to me the
+possibilities of this burg. In a way, the city is indebted to him for my
+presence here. But don't ask me about him--study him. And don't buy lots
+from him. The Captain has his failings, but he has also his strong
+points and his uses; and I'll be mistaken if he isn't cast for a fairly
+prominent part in the drama we're about to put on here. But don't spoil
+your enjoyment by having him described to you. Let him dawn on you by
+degrees."
+
+That day I met most of the prominent men of the town. Jim took me into
+the banks, the shops, and the offices of the leading professional
+gentlemen. He informed them that I was considering the matter of coming
+to live among them; and I found them very friendly, and much interested
+in our proposed change of residence. They all treated Jim with respect,
+and his manner toward them had a dignity which I had not looked for.
+Evidently he was making himself felt in the community.
+
+When we returned to the Centropolis at noon, we found Mrs. Trescott and
+her daughter chatting with my wife. The elder woman was ill-groomed, as
+are all women of her class in comparison with their town sisters, and
+angular. I knew the type so well that I could read the traces of farm
+cares in her face and form. The serving of gangs of harvesters and
+threshers, the ever-recurring problems of butter, eggs, and berries, the
+unflagging fight, without much domestic help, for neatness and order
+about the house, had impressed their stamp upon Mrs. Trescott. But she
+was chatting vivaciously, and assuring Mrs. Barslow that such a thing as
+staying longer in town that morning was impossible.
+
+"I can feel in my bones," said she, "that there's something wrong at the
+farm."
+
+"You always have that feeling," said her daughter, "as soon as you pass
+outside the gate."
+
+"And I'm usually right about it," said Mrs. Trescott. "It isn't any use.
+My system has got into that condition in which I'm in misery if I'm off
+that farm. Josie drags me away from it sometimes; and I do enjoy meeting
+people! But I like to meet 'em out there the best; and I want to urge
+you to come often, Mrs. Barslow, while you're here. And in case you move
+here, I hope you'll like us and the farm well enough so that we'll see a
+good deal of you."
+
+I was presented to Mrs. Trescott, and reintroduced to the young lady,
+with whom Alice seemed already on friendly terms. I was surprised at
+this, for she was not prone to sudden friendships. There was something
+so attractive in the girl, however, that it went far to explain the
+phenomenon. For one thing, there was in her manner that same steadiness
+and calm which I had noticed in her voice in the dusk last night. It
+gave one the impression that she could not be surprised or startled,
+that she had seen or thought out all possible combinations of events,
+and knew of their sequences, or adjusted herself to things by some
+all-embracing rule, by which she attained that repose of hers. The
+surprising thing about it, to my mind, was to find this exterior in Bill
+Trescott's daughter. I had seen the same thing once or twice in people
+to whom I thought it had come as the fruit of wide experience in the
+world.
+
+While Miss Trescott was slim, and rather below the medium in height, she
+was not at all thin; and had the great mass of ruddy dark hair and fine
+brown eyes which I remembered so well, and a face which would have been
+pale had it not been for the tan--the only thing about her which
+suggested those occupations by which she became her father's "right-hand
+man." There was intelligence in her face, and a grave smile in her eyes,
+which rarely extended to her handsome mouth. If mature in face, form,
+and manner, she was young in years--some years younger than Alice. I
+hoped that she might stay to dinner; but she went away with her mother.
+In her absence, I devoted some time to praising her. Jim failed to join
+in my pæans further than to give a general assent; but he grew
+unaccountably mirthful, as if something good had happened to him of
+which he had not yet told us.
+
+"I have invited a few people to my parlors this evening," said he, "and,
+of course, you will be the guests of honor."
+
+My wife demurred. She had nothing to wear, and even if she had, I was
+without evening dress. The thing seemed out of the question.
+
+"Oh, we can't let that stand in the way," said he. "So far as your own
+toilet is concerned, I have nothing to say except that you are known to
+be making a hurried visit, and I have an abiding faith, based on your
+manner of stating your trouble, that it can be remedied. I saw your eye
+take on a far-away look as you planned your costume, even while you were
+declaring that you couldn't do it. Didn't I, now?"
+
+"You certainly did not," said Alice; and then I noticed the absorbed
+look myself. "But even if I can manage it, how about Albert?"
+
+"I'll tell you about Albert. I'll bet two to one there won't be a suit
+of evening clothes worn. The dress suit may come in here with street
+cars and passenger elevators, but it lacks a good deal of being here
+yet, except in the most sporadic and infrequent way. And this thing is
+to be so absolutely informal that it would make the natives stare. You
+wouldn't wear it if you had it, Al."
+
+"Who will come?" said Mrs. Barslow.
+
+"Oh, a couple of dozen ladies and gentlemen, business men and doctors
+and lawyers and their women-folks. They'll stray in from eight to ten
+and find something to eat on the sideboard. They'll have the happiness
+of meeting you, and you can see what the people you are thinking of
+living among and doing business with are like. It's a necessary part of
+your visit; and you can't get out of it now, for I've taken the liberty
+of making all the arrangements. And, as a matter of fact, you don't
+want to do so, do you, now?"
+
+Thus appealed to, Alice consented. Nothing was said to me about it, my
+willingness being presumed.
+
+The guests that evening were almost exclusively men whom I had met
+during the day, and members of their families. In the absence of any
+more engaging topic, we discussed Lattimore as our possible future home.
+
+"I have always felt," said Mr. Hinckley, who was one of the guests,
+"that this is the natural site of a great city. These valleys, centering
+here like the spokes of a wheel, are ready-made railway-routes. In the
+East there is a city of from fifty thousand to three times that, every
+hundred miles or so. Why shouldn't it be so here?"
+
+"Suh," said Captain Tolliver, "the thing is inevitable. Somewhah in this
+region will grow up a metropolis. Shall it be hyah, o' at Fairchild, o'
+Angus Falls? If the people of Lattimore sit supinely, suh, and let these
+country villages steal from huh the queenship which God o'dained fo' huh
+when He placed huh in this commandin' site, then, suh, they ah too base
+to be wo'thy of the suhvices of gentlemen."
+
+"I've always been taught," said Mrs. Trescott, "that the credit of
+placing her in this site belonged to either Mr. Hinckley or General
+Lattimore."
+
+"Really," said Miss Addison to me, "I don't see how they can laugh at
+such irreverence!"
+
+"I think," said Miss Hinckley in my other ear, "that Mr. Elkins
+expressed the whole truth in the matter of the rivalry of these three
+towns, when he said that when two ride on a horse, one must ride behind.
+Aren't his quotations so--so--illuminating?"
+
+I looked about at the company. There were Mr. Hinckley, Mrs. Hinckley,
+their daughter, whom I recognized as the splendid blonde whose pacers
+had passed us when we were out driving, Mrs. Trescott and her daughter,
+and Captain and Mrs. Tolliver. Those present were plainly of several
+different sets and cliques. Mrs. Hinckley hoped that my wife would join
+the Equal Rights Club, and labor for the enfranchisement of women. She
+referred, too, to the eloquence and piety of her pastor, the
+Presbyterian minister, while Mrs. Tolliver quoted Emerson, and invited
+Alice to join, as soon as we removed, the Monday Club of the Unitarian
+Church, devoted to the study of his works. Mr. Macdonald, red-whiskered,
+weather-beaten, and gigantic, fidgeted about the punch-bowl a good deal;
+and replying to some chance remark made by Alice, ventured the opinion
+that the grass was gettin' mighty short on the ranges. Miss Addison, who
+came with her cousins the Lattimores, looked with disapproval upon the
+punch, and disclosed her devotion to the W. C. T. U. and the Ladies' Aid
+Society of the Methodist Church. The Lattimores were Will Lattimore and
+his wife. I learned that he was the son of the General, and Jim's
+lawyer; and that they went rarely into society, being very exclusive.
+This was communicated to me by Mrs. Ballard, who brought Miss Ballard
+with her. She asked in tones of the intensest interest if we played
+whist; while Miss Ballard suggested that about the only way we could
+find to enjoy ourselves in such a little place would be to identify
+ourselves with the dancing-party and card-club set. I began to suspect
+that life in Lattimore would not be without its complexities.
+
+Mr. Trescott came in for a moment only, for his wife and daughter. Miss
+Trescott was not to be found at first, but was discovered in the
+bay-window with Jim and Miss Hinckley, looking over some engravings. Mr.
+Elkins took her down to her carriage, and I thought him a long time
+gone, for the host. As soon as he returned, however, the conversation
+again turned to the dominant thought of the gathering, municipal
+expansion. And I noted that the points made were Jim's. He had already
+imbued the town with his thoughts, and filled the mouths of its citizens
+with his arguments.
+
+After they left, we sat with Jim and talked.
+
+"Well, how do you like 'em?" said he.
+
+"Why," said Alice, "they're very cordial."
+
+"Heterogeneous, eh?" he queried.
+
+"Yes," said she, "but very cordial. I am surprised to feel how little I
+dislike them."
+
+As for me, I began to look upon Lattimore with more favor. I began to
+catch Jim's enthusiasm and share his confidence. As we smoked together
+in his rooms that evening, he made me the definite proposal that I go
+into partnership with him. We talked about the business, and discussed
+its possibilities.
+
+"I don't ask you to believe all my prophecies," said he; "but isn't the
+situation fairly good, just as it is?"
+
+"I think well of it," I answered, "and it's mighty kind of you to ask me
+to come. I'll go as far as to say that if it depends solely on me, we
+shall come. As for these prophecies of yours, I am in candor bound to
+say that I half believe them."
+
+"Now you _are_ shouting," said he. "Never better prophecies anywhere.
+But consider the matter aside from them. Then all we clean up in the
+prophecy department will be velvet, absolute velvet!"
+
+"I can add something to the output of the prophecy department," said
+Alice, when I repeated the phrase; "and that is that there will be some
+affairs of the heart mingled with the real estate and insurance before
+long. I can see them in embryo now."
+
+"If it's Jim and Miss Trescott you mean, I wish the affair well," said
+I. "I'm quite charmed with her."
+
+"Well," said Alice, "from the standpoint of most men, Miss Hinckley
+isn't to be left out of the reckoning in such matters. What a face and
+figure she has! Miss Addison is too prudish and churchified; but I like
+Miss Hinckley."
+
+"Yes," said I; "but Miss Trescott seems, somehow, to have been known to
+one, in some tender and touching relation. There's that about her which
+appeals to one, like some embodiment of the abstract idea of woman.
+That's why one feels as if he had risked his life for her, and protected
+her, and seen her suffer wrong, and all that--"
+
+"That's only because of that affair you told me of," said my wife.
+"Since I've seen her, I've made up my mind that you misconstrued the
+matter utterly. There was really nothing to it."
+
+In a week I wrote to Mr. Elkins, accepting his proposal, and promising
+to close up my affairs, remove to Lattimore, and join with him.
+
+"I do not feel myself equal to playing the part of either Romulus or
+Remus in founding your new Rome," I wrote; "but I think as a writer of
+fire-insurance policies, and keeping the office work up, I may prove
+myself not entirely a deadhead. My wife asks how the breathing-spaces
+for the populace are coming on?"
+
+And the die was cast!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+We make our Landing.
+
+
+Had I known how cordially our neighbors would greet our return, or how
+many of them would view our departure with apparently sincere regret, I
+might have been slower in giving Jim my promise. I proceeded, however,
+to carry it out; but it was nearly six months before I could pull myself
+and my little fortune out of the place into which we had grown.
+
+Mr. Elkins kept me well informed regarding Lattimore affairs; and the
+_Herald_ followed me home. Jim's letters were long typewritten
+communications, dictated at speed, and mailed, sometimes one a day, at
+other times at intervals of weeks.
+
+"This is a sure-enough 'winter of our discontent,'" one of these letters
+runs, "but the scope of our operations will widen as the frost comes out
+of the ground. We're now confined to the psychical field. Subjectively
+speaking, though, the plot thickens. Captain Tolliver is in the
+secondary stages of real-estate dementia, and spreads the contagion
+daily. There's no quarantine regulation to cover the case, and Lattimore
+seems doomed to the acme of prosperity. This is the age of great cities,
+saith the Captain, and that Lattimore is not already a town of 150,000
+people is one of the strangest, one of the most inexplicable things in
+the world, in view of the distance we are lag of the country about us,
+so far as development is concerned. And as our beginning has been tardy,
+so will our progress be rapid, even as waters long dammed up rush out to
+devour the plains, etc., etc.
+
+"In this we are all agreed. We want a good, steady, natural growth--and
+no boom.
+
+"When a boom recognizes itself as such, it's all over, and the stuff
+off. The time for letting go of a great wheel is when it starts down
+hill. But our wheels are all going up--even if they are all in our
+heads, as yet.
+
+"You will remember the railway connection of which I spoke to you? Well,
+that thing has assumed, all of a sudden, a concreteness as welcome as it
+is unexpected. Ballard showed me a telegram yesterday from lower
+Broadway (the heart of Darkest N. Y.) which tends to prove that people
+there are ready to finance the deal. It would have amused you to see the
+horizontality of the coat-tails of the management of the Lattimore &
+Great Western, as they flaxed round getting up a directors' meeting, so
+as to have a real, live directorate of this great transcontinental line
+for the wolves of Wall Street to do business with! Things like this are
+what you miss by hibernating there, instead of dropping everything and
+applying here for your pro rata share of the gayety of nations and the
+concomitant scads.
+
+"I was elected president of the road, and as soon as we get a little
+track, and an engine, I expect to obtain an exchange of passes with all
+my fellow monopolists in North America. I at once fired back an answer
+to Ballard's telegram, which must have produced an impression upon the
+Gould and Vanderbilt interests--if they got wind of it. If the L. & G.
+W. should pass the paper stage next summer, it will do a whole lot
+towards carrying this burg beyond the hypnotic period of development.
+
+"The Angus Falls branch is going to build in next summer, I am
+confident, and that means another division headquarters and, probably,
+machine-shops. I'm working with some of the trilobites here to form a
+pool, and offer the company grounds for additional yards and a
+roundhouse and shops. Captain Tolliver interviewed General Lattimore
+about it, and got turned down.
+
+"'He told me, suh,' reported the Captain, in a fine white passion, 'that
+if any railway system desiahs to come to Lattimore, it has his
+puhmission! That the Injuns didn't give him any bonus when he came; and
+that he had to build his own houses and yahds, by gad, at his own
+expense, and defend 'em, too, and that if any railroad was thinkin' of
+comin' hyah, it was doubtless because it was good business fo' 'em to
+come; and that if they wanted any of his land, were willing to pay him
+his price, there wouldn't be any difficulty about theiah getting it. And
+that if there should arise any difference, which he should deeply
+regret, but would try to live through, the powah of eminent domain with
+which railways ah clothed will enable the company to get what land is
+necessary by legal means.
+
+"'I could take these observations,' said the Captain, 'as nothing except
+a gratuitous insult to one who approached him, suh, in a spirit of pure
+benevolence and civic patriotism. It shows the kind of tyrants who
+commanded the oppressors of the South, suh! Only his gray hairs
+protected him, suh, only his gray hairs!'"
+
+"It's a little hard to separate the General from the Captain, in this
+report of the committee on railway extensions," said my wife.
+
+"The only thing that's clear about it," said I, "is that Jim is having a
+good deal of fun with the Captain."
+
+This became clearer as the correspondence went on.
+
+"Tolliver thinks," said he, in another letter, "that the Angus Falls
+extension can be pulled through. However, I recall that only yesterday
+the Captain, in private, denounced the citizens of Lattimore as beneath
+the contempt of gentlemen of breadth of view. 'I shall dispose of my
+holdin's hyah,' said he, with a stately sweep indicative of their
+extent, 'at any sacrifice, and depaht, cuhsin' the day I devoted myself
+to the redemption of such cattle.'
+
+"But, at that particular moment, he had just failed in an attempt to
+sell Bill Trescott a bunch of choice outlying gold bricks, and was
+somewhat heated with wine. This to the haughty Southron was ample
+excuse for confiding to me the round, unvarnished truth about us
+mudsills.
+
+"Josie and I often talk of you and your wife. I don't know what I'd do
+out here if it weren't for Josie. She refuses to enthuse over our
+'natural, healthy growth,' which we look for; but I guess that's because
+she doesn't care for the things that the rest of us are striving for.
+But she's the only person here with whom one can really converse. You'd
+be astonished to see how pretty she is in her furs, and set like a jewel
+in my new sleigh; but I'm becoming keenly aware of the fact."
+
+We were afterwards told that the trilobites had shaken off their
+fossilhood, and that the Angus Falls extension, with the engine-house
+and machine-shops, had been "landed."
+
+"This," he wrote, "means enough new families to make a noticeable
+increase in our population. Things will be popping here soon. Come on
+and help shake the popper; hurry up with your moving, or it will all be
+over, including the shouting."
+
+We were not entirely dependent upon Jim's letters for Lattimore news.
+Mrs. Barslow kept up a desultory correspondence with Miss Trescott,
+begun upon some pretext and continued upon none at all. In one of these
+letters Josie (for so we soon learned to call her) wrote:
+
+"Our little town is changing so that it no longer seems familiar. Not
+that the change is visible. Beyond an unusual number of strangers or
+recent comers, there is nothing new to strike the eye. But the talk
+everywhere is of a new railroad and other improvements. One needs only
+to shut one's eyes and listen, to imagine that the town is already a
+real city. Mr. Elkins seems to be the center of this new civic
+self-esteem. The air is full of it, and I admit that I am affected by
+it. I have
+
+    "'A feeling, as when eager crowds await,
+    Before a palace gate,
+    Some wondrous pageant.'
+
+"You are indebted to Captain Tolliver for the quotation, and to Mr.
+Elkins for the idea. The Captain induced me to read the book in which I
+found the lines. He stigmatizes the preference given to the Northern
+poets--Longfellow, for instance--over Timrod as 'the crowning infamy of
+American letters.' He has taken the trouble to lay out a course of study
+for me, the object of which is to place me right in my appreciation of
+the literary men of the South. It includes Pollard's 'Lost Cause' and
+the works of W. G. Simms. I have not fully promised to follow it to the
+end. Timrod, however, is a treat."
+
+That last quiet winter will always be set apart in my memory, as a time
+like no other. It was a sitting down on a milestone to rest. Back of us
+lay the busy past--busy with trivial things, it seemed to me, but full
+of varied activity nevertheless. A boy will desire mightily to finish a
+cob-house; and when it is done he will smilingly knock it about the barn
+floor. So I was tearing down and leaving the fabric of relationship
+which I had once prized so highly.
+
+The life upon which I expected to enter promised well. In fact, to a man
+of medium ability, only, and no training in large affairs, it promised
+exceedingly well. I knew that Jim was strong, and that his old regard
+for me had taken new life and a firm hold upon him. But when, removed
+from his immediate influence, I looked the situation in the face, the
+future loomed so mysteriously bizarre that I shrank from it. All his
+skimble-skamble talk about psychology and hypnotism, and that other
+rambling discourse of pirate caves and buccaneering cruises, made me
+feel sometimes as if I were about to form a partnership with Aladdin, or
+the King of the Golden Mountain. If he had asked me, merely, to come to
+Lattimore and go into the real estate and insurance business with him, I
+am sure I should have had none of this mental vertigo. Yet what more had
+he done?
+
+As to the boom, I had, as yet, not a particle of objective confidence in
+it; but, subconsciously, I felt, as did the town "doomed to prosperity,"
+a sense of impending events. In spite of some presentiments and doubts,
+it was, on the whole, with high hopes that we, on an aguish spring day,
+reached Lattimore with our stuff (as the Scriptures term it), and knew
+that, for weal or woe, it was our home.
+
+Jim was again at the station to meet us, and seemed delighted at our
+arrival. I thought I saw some sort of absent-mindedness or absorbedness
+in his manner, so that he seemed hardly like himself. Josie was there
+with him, and while she and Alice were greeting each other, I saw Jim
+scanning the little crowd at the station as if for some other arrival.
+At last, his eye told me that whatever it was for which he was looking,
+he had found it; and I followed his glance. It rested on the last person
+to alight from the train--a tall, sinewy, soldierly-built youngish man,
+who wore an overcoat of black, falling away in front, so as to reveal a
+black frock coat tightly buttoned up and a snowy shirt-front with a
+glittering gem sparkling from the center of it. On his head was a
+shining silk hat--a thing so rare in that community as to be noticeable,
+and to stamp the wearer as an outsider. His beard was clipped close, and
+at the chin ran out into a pronounced Vandyke point. His mustaches were
+black, heavy, and waxed. His whole external appearance betokened wealth,
+and he exuded mystery. He had not taken two steps from the car before
+the people on the platform were standing on tiptoe to see him.
+
+"Bus to the Centropolis?" queried the driver of the omnibus.
+
+The stranger looked at the conveyance, filled as it was with a load of
+traveling men and casuals; and, frowning darkly, turned to the negro who
+accompanied him, saying, "Haven't you any carriage here, Pearson?"
+
+"Yes, sah," responded the servant, pointing to a closed vehicle. "Right
+hyah, sah."
+
+My wife stood looking, with a little amused smile, at the picturesque
+group, so out of the ordinary at the time and place. Miss Trescott was
+gazing intently at the stranger, and at the moment when he spoke she
+clutched my wife's arm so tightly as to startle her. I heard Alice make
+some inquiry as to the cause of her agitation, and as I looked at her,
+I could see in the one glance her face, gone suddenly white as death,
+and the dark visage of the tall stranger. And it seemed to me as if I
+had seen the same thing before.
+
+Then, the negro pointing the way to the closed carriage, the group
+separated to left and right, the stranger passed through to the
+carriage, and the picture, and with it my odd mental impression,
+dissolved. The negro lifted two or three heavy bags to the coachman,
+gave the transfer man some baggage-checks, and the equipage moved away
+toward the hotel. All this took place in a moment, during which the
+usual transactions on the platform were suspended. The conductor failed
+to give the usual signal for the departure of the train. The engineer
+leaned from the cab and gazed.
+
+Jim's eye rested on the stranger and his servant for an instant only;
+but during that time he seemed to take an observation, come to a
+conclusion, and dismiss the whole matter.
+
+"Here, John," said he to the drayman, "take these trunks to the
+Centropolis. We'd like 'em this week, too. None of that old trick of
+yours of dumping 'em in the crick, you know!"
+
+"They'll be up there in five minutes all right, Mr. Elkins," said John,
+grinning at Jim's allusion to some accident, the knowledge of which
+appeared to be confined to himself and Mr. Elkins, and to constitute a
+bond of sympathy between them. Jim turned to us with redoubled
+heartiness, all his absent-mindedness gone.
+
+"I'll drive you to the hotel," said Jim. "You'll--"
+
+"Miss Trescott is ill--" said Alice.
+
+"Not at all," said Josie; "it has passed entirely! Only, when you have
+taken Mr. and Mrs. Barslow to the hotel, will you please take me home?
+Our little supper-party--I don't feel quite equal to it, if you will
+excuse me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A Welcome to Wall Street and Us.
+
+
+"Welcome!" intoned Captain Tolliver, with his hat in his hand, bowing
+low to Mrs. Barslow. "Welcome, Madam and suh, in the capacity of
+Lattimoreans! That we shall be the bettah fo' yo' residence among us
+the' can be no doubt. That you will be prospahed beyond yo' wildest
+dreams I believe equally cehtain. Welcome!"
+
+This address was delivered within thirty seconds of the time of our
+arrival at our old rooms in the Centropolis. The Captain saluted us in a
+manner extravagantly polite, mysteriously enthusiastic. The air of
+mystery was deepened when he called again to see Mr. Elkins in the
+evening and was invited in.
+
+"Did you-all notice that distinguished and opulent-looking gentleman who
+got off the train this evening?" said he in a stage whisper. "Mahk my
+words, the coming of such men, _his_ coming, is fraught with the deepest
+significance to us all. All my holdin's ah withdrawn from mahket until
+fu'the' developments!"
+
+"Seems to travel in style," said Jim; "all sorts of good clothes,
+colored body-servant, closed carriage ordered by wire--it does look
+juicy, don't it, now?"
+
+"He has the entiah second flo' front suite. The niggah has already sent
+out fo' a bahbah," said the Captain. "Lattimore has at last attracted
+the notice of adequate capital, and will now assume huh true place in
+the bright galaxy of American cities. Mr. Barslow, I shall ask
+puhmission to call upon you in the mo'nin' with reference to a project
+which will make the fo'tunes of a dozen men, and that within the next
+ninety days. Good evenin', suh; good evenin', Madam. I feel that you
+have come among us at a propitious moment!"
+
+"The Captain merely hints at the truth which struggles in him for
+utterance," said Jim. "I prove this by informing you that I couldn't get
+you a house. This shows, too, that the census returns are a calumny upon
+Lattimore. You'll have to stay at the Centropolis until something turns
+up or you can build."
+
+"Oh, dear!" said Alice. "Hotel life isn't living at all. I hope it won't
+be long."
+
+"It will have its advantages for Al," said Mr. Elkins. "This financial
+maelstrom, which will draw everything to Lattimore, will have its core
+right in this hotel--a mighty good place to be. Things of all kinds have
+been floating about in the air for months; the precipitation is
+beginning now. The psychological moment has arrived--you have brought it
+with you, Mrs. Barslow. The moon-flower of Lattimore's 'gradual, healthy
+growth' is going to burst, and that right soon."
+
+"Has Captain Tolliver infected you?" inquired Alice. "He told us the
+same thing, with less of tropes and figures."
+
+"On any still morning," said Jim, "you can hear the wheels go round in
+the Captain's head; but his instinct for real-estate conditions is as
+accurate as a pocket-gopher's. The Captain, in a hysterical sort of way,
+is right: I consider that a cinch. Good-night, friends, and pleasant
+dreams. I expect to see you at breakfast; but if I shouldn't, Al, you'll
+come aboard at nine, won't you, and help run up the Jolly Roger? I think
+I smell pieces-of-eight in the air! And, by the way, Miss Trescott says
+for me to assure you that her vertigo, which she had for the first time
+in her life, is gone, and she never felt better."
+
+As Mr. Elkins passed from our parlor, he let in a bell-boy with the card
+of Mr. Clifford Giddings, representing the Lattimore Morning _Herald_.
+
+"See him down in the lobby," said Alice.
+
+"I want a story," said he as we met, "on the city and its future. The
+_Herald_ readers will be glad of anything from Mr. Barslow, whose coming
+they have so long looked forward to, as intimately connected with the
+city's development."
+
+"My dear sir," I replied, somewhat astonished at the importance which he
+was pleased to attach to my arrival, "abstractly, my removal to
+Lattimore is my best testimony on that; concretely, I ought to ask
+information of you."
+
+We sat down in a corner of the lobby, our chairs side by side, facing
+opposite ways. He lighted a cigar, and gave me one. In looks he was
+young; in behavior he had the self-possession and poise of maturity. He
+wore a long mackintosh which sparkled with mist. His slouch hat looked
+new and was carefully dinted. His dress was almost natty in an
+unconventional way, and his manners accorded with his garb. He acted as
+if for years we had casually met daily. His tone and attitude evinced
+respect, was entirely free from presumption, equally devoid of reserve,
+carried with it no hint of familiarity, but assumed a perfect
+understanding. The barrier which usually keeps strangers apart he
+neither broke down, which must have been offensive, nor overleaped,
+which would have been presumptuous. He covered it with that demeanor of
+his, and together we sat down upon it.
+
+"I thought the _Herald_ was an evening paper," said I.
+
+"It was, in the days of yore," he replied; "but Mr. Elkins happened to
+see me in Chicago one day, and advised me to come out and look the old
+thing over with a view to purchasing the plant. You observe the result.
+As fellow immigrants, I hope there will be a bond of sympathy between
+us. You think, of course, that Lattimore is a coming city?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Its geographical situation seems to render its development inevitable,
+doesn't it? And," he went on, "the railway conditions seem peculiarly
+promising just now?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "but the natural resources of the city and the
+surrounding country appeal most strongly to me."
+
+"They are certainly very exceptional, aren't they?" said he, as if the
+matter had never occurred to him before. Then he went on telling me
+things, more than asking questions, about the jobbing trades, the brick
+and tile and associated industries, the cement factory, which he spoke
+of as if actually _in esse_, the projected elevators, the
+flouring-mills, and finally returned to railway matters.
+
+"What is your opinion of the Lattimore & Great Western, Mr. Barslow?" he
+asked.
+
+"I cannot say that I have any," I answered, "except that its
+construction would bring great good to Lattimore."
+
+"It could scarcely fail," said he, "to bring in two or three systems
+which we now lack, could it?"
+
+I very sincerely said that I did not know. After a few more questions
+concerning our plans for the future, Mr. Giddings vanished into the
+night, silently, as an autumn leaf parting from its bough. I thought of
+him no more until I unfolded the _Herald_ in the morning as we sat at
+breakfast, and saw that my interview was made a feature of the day's
+news.
+
+"Mr. Albert F. Barslow," it read, "of the firm of Elkins & Barslow, is
+stopping at the Centropolis. He arrived by the 6:15 train last evening,
+and with his family has taken a suite of rooms pending the erection of a
+residence. They have not definitely decided as to the location of their
+new home; but it may confidently be stated that they will build
+something which will be a notable addition to the architectural beauties
+of Lattimore--already proud of her title, the City of Homes."
+
+"I am very glad to know about this," said Alice.
+
+"Your man Giddings has nerve, whatever else he may lack," said I to the
+smiling Elkins across the table. "Am I obliged to make good all these
+representations? I ask, that I may know the rules of the game, merely."
+
+"One rule is that you mustn't deny any accusations of future
+magnificence, for two reasons: they may come true, and they help things
+on. You are supposed to have left your modesty in cold storage
+somewhere. Read on."
+
+"Mr. Barslow," I read, "has long been a most potent political factor in
+his native state, but is, first of all, a business man. He brings his
+charming young wife--"
+
+"Really, a most discriminating journalist," interjected Alice.
+
+"--and social circles, as well as the business world, will find them a
+most desirable accession to Lattimore's population."
+
+"Why this is absolute, slavish devotion to facts," said Jim; "where does
+the word-painting come in?"
+
+"Here it is," said I.
+
+"Mr. Barslow is some years under middle age, and looks the intense
+modern business man in every feature. His mind seems to have already
+become saturated with the conception of the enormous possibilities of
+Lattimore. He impresses those who have met him as one of the few men
+capable of pulling his share in double harness with James R. Elkins."
+
+"The fellow piles it on a little strong at times, doesn't he, Mrs.
+Barslow?" said Jim.
+
+"He brings to our city," I read on, "his vigorous mind, his fortune, and
+a determination never to rest until the city passes the 100,000 mark. To
+a _Herald_ representative, last night, he spoke strongly and eloquently
+of our great natural resources."
+
+Then followed a skillfully handled expansion of our _tête-à-tête_ talk
+in the lobby.
+
+"Mr. Barslow," the report went on, "very courteously declined to discuss
+the L. & G. W. situation. It seems evident, however, from remarks
+dropped by him, that he regards the construction of this road as
+inevitable, and as a project which, successfully carried out, cannot
+fail to make Lattimore the point to which all the Western and
+Southwestern systems of railways must converge."
+
+"You're doing it like a veteran!" cried Jim. "Admirable! Just the proper
+infusion of mystery; I couldn't have done better myself."
+
+"Credit it all to Giddings," I protested. "And note that the center of
+the stage is reserved to our mysterious fellow lodger and co-arrival."
+
+"Yes, I saw that," said Jim. "Isn't Giddings a peach? Let Mrs. Barslow
+hear it."
+
+"She ought to be able to hear these headlines," said I, "without any
+reading: 'J. Bedford Cornish arrives! Wall Street's Millions On the
+Ground in the Person of One of Her Great Financiers! Bull Movement in
+Real Estate Noted Last Night! Does He Represent the Great Railway
+Interests?'"
+
+"Real estate and financial circles," ran the article under these
+headlines, "are thrown into something of a fever by the arrival, on the
+6:15 express last evening, of a gentleman of distinguished appearance,
+who took five rooms _en suite_ on the second floor of the Centropolis,
+and registered in a bold hand as J. Bedford Cornish, of New York. Mr.
+Cornish consented to see a _Herald_ representative last night, but was
+very reticent as to his plans and the objects of his visit. He simply
+says that he represents capital seeking investment. He would not admit
+that he is connected with any of the great railway interests, or that
+his visit has any relation to the building of the Lattimore & Great
+Western. The _Herald_ is able to say, however, that its New York
+correspondent informs it that Mr. Cornish is a member of the firm of
+Lusch, Carskaddan & Mayer, of Wall Street. This firm is well known as
+one of the concerns handling large amounts of European capital, and said
+to be intimately associated with the Rothschilds. Financial journals
+have recently noted the fact that these concerns are becoming
+embarrassed by the plethora of funds seeking investment, and are turning
+their attention to the development of railway systems and cities in the
+United States. Their South American and Australian investments have not
+proven satisfactory, especially the former, owing to the character of
+the people of Latin America. It has been pointed out that no real-estate
+investment can be more than moderately profitable in climates which
+render the people content with a mere living, and that the restless and
+unsatisfied vigor of the Anglo-Saxon alone can make lands and railways
+permanently remunerative. Mr. Cornish admitted these facts when they
+were pointed out to him, and immediately changed the subject.
+
+"Mr. Cornish is a very handsome and opulent-looking gentleman, and seems
+to live in a style somewhat luxurious for the Occident. He has a colored
+body-servant, who seems to reflect the mystery of his master; but if he
+has any other reflections, the _Herald_ is none the wiser for them.
+Admittance to the suite of rooms was obtained by sending in the
+reporter's card, which vanished into a sybaritic gloom, borne on a
+golden salver. Mr. Cornish seems to be very exclusive, his meals being
+served in his rooms; and even his barber has instructions to call upon
+him each morning. One wonders why the barber is called in so frequently,
+until one marks the smooth-shaven cheeks above the close-clipped,
+pointed, black, Vandyke beard. He is withal very cordial and courtly in
+his manners.
+
+"James R. Elkins, when seen last evening, refused to talk, except to say
+that, in financial circles, it has been known for some days that
+important developments may be now momently expected, and that some such
+thing as the visit of Mr. Cornish was imminent. Captain Marion Tolliver
+expressed himself freely, and to the effect that this mysterious visit
+is of the utmost importance to Lattimore, and a thing of national if not
+world-wide importance."
+
+"Now, that justifies my confidence in Giddings," said Mr. Elkins,
+"fulfilling at the same time the requirements of journalism and
+hypnotism. Come, Al, our bark is on the sea, our boat is on the shore.
+The Spanish galleons are even now hiding in the tall grass, in
+expectation of our cruise. Let us hence to the office!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+I Go Aboard and We Unfurl the Jolly Roger.
+
+
+"We must act, and act at once!" said the Captain, his voice thrilling
+with intensity. "This piece of property will be gone befo' night! All it
+takes is a paltry three thousand dolla's, and within ninety days--no man
+can say what its value will be. We can plat it, and within ten days we
+may have ouah money back. Allow me to draw on you fo' three thou--"
+
+"But," said I, "I can make no move in such a matter at this time without
+conference with Mr.--"
+
+"Very well, suh, very well!" said the Captain, regarding me with a look
+that showed how much better things he had expected of me. "Opportunity,
+suh, knocks once--By the way, excuse me, suh!"
+
+And he darted from the office, took the trail of Mr. Macdonald, whom he
+had seen passing, brought him to bay in front of the post-office, and
+dragged him away to some doom, the nature of which I could only surmise.
+
+This took place on the morning of my first day with Elkins & Barslow. I
+was to take up the office work.
+
+"That will be easy for you from the first," said Jim. "Your experience
+as rob-ee down there in Posey County makes you a sort of specialist in
+that sort of thing; and pretty soon all other things shall be added unto
+it."
+
+The Captain's onslaught in the first half-hour admonished me that a good
+deal was already added to it. On that very day, too, we had our first
+conference with Mr. Hinckley. We wanted to handle securities, said Mr.
+Elkins, and should have a great many of them, and that was quite in Mr.
+Hinckley's line. To carry them ourselves would soon absorb all our
+capital. We must liberate it by floating the commercial paper which we
+took in. Mr. Hinckley's bank was known to be strong, his standing was of
+the highest, and a trust company in alliance with him could not fail to
+find a good market for its paper. With an old banker's timidity,
+Hinckley seemed to hesitate; yet the prospects seemed so good that I
+felt that this consent was sure to be given. Jim courted him
+assiduously, and the intimacy between him and the Hinckley family became
+noticeable.
+
+"Jim," said I, one day, "you have an unerring eye for the pleasant
+things of life. I couldn't help thinking of this to-day when I saw you
+for the twentieth time spinning along the street in Miss Hinckley's
+carriage, beside its owner. She's one of the handsomest girls, in her
+flaxen-haired way, that I know of."
+
+"Isn't she a study in curves and pink and white?" said Jim. "And she
+understands this trust company business as well as her father."
+
+The trust company's stock, he went on to explain, ignoring Antonia,
+seemed to be already oversubscribed. Our firm, Hinckley, and Jim's
+Chicago and New York friends, including Harper, all stood ready to take
+blocks of it, and there was no reason for requiring Hinckley to put much
+actual money in for this. He could pay for it out of his profits soon,
+and make a fortune without any outlay. Good credit was the prime
+necessity, and that Mr. Hinckley certainly had. So the celebrated Grain
+Belt Trust Company was begun--a name about which such mighty interests
+were to cluster, that I know I should have shrunk from the
+responsibility had I known what a gigantic thing we were creating.
+
+As the days wore on, Captain Tolliver's dementia spread and raged
+virulently. The dark-visaged Cornish, with his air of mystery, his
+habits so at odds with the society of Lattimore, was in the very focus
+of attention.
+
+For a day or so, the effect which Mr. Giddings's report attributed to
+his invasion failed to disclose itself to me. Then the delirium became
+manifest, and swept over the town like a were-wolf delusion through a
+medieval village.
+
+Its immediate occasion seemed to be a group of real-estate conveyances,
+announced in the _Herald_ one morning, surpassing in importance anything
+in the history of the town. Some of the lands transferred were acreage;
+some were waste and vacant tracts along Brushy Creek and the river; one
+piece was a suburban farm; but the mass of it was along Main Street and
+in the business district. The grantees were for the most part strange
+names in Lattimore, some individuals, some corporations. All the sales
+were at prices hitherto unknown. It was to be remarked, too, that in
+most cases the property had been purchased not long before, by some of
+the group of newer comers and at the old modest prices. Our firm seemed
+to have profited heavily in these transactions, as had Captain Tolliver
+also. We of the "new crowd" had begun our mock-trading to "establish the
+market." Prices were going up, up; and all one had to do was to buy
+to-day and sell to-morrow. Real values, for actual use, seemed to be
+forgotten.
+
+The most memorable moment in this first, acutest stage in our
+development was one bright day, within a week or so of our coming. The
+lawns were taking on their summer emerald, robins were piping in the
+maples, and down in the cottonwoods and lindens on the river front crows
+and jays were jargoning their immemorial and cheery lingo. Surveyors
+were running lines and making plats in the suburbs, peeped at by
+gophers, and greeted by the roundelays of meadow-larks. But on the
+street-corners, in the offices of lawyers and real-estate agents, and in
+the lobbies of the hotels, the trading was lively.
+
+Then for the first time the influx of real buyers from the outside
+became noticeable. The landlord of the Centropolis could scarcely care
+for his guests. They talked of blocks, quarter-blocks, and the choice
+acreage they had bought, and of the profits they had made in this and
+other cities and towns (where this same speculative fever was epidemic),
+until Alice fled to the Trescott farm--as she said, to avoid the
+mixture of real estate with her meals. The telegraph offices were gorged
+with messages to non-resident property owners, begging for prices on
+good inside lots. Staid, slow-going lot-owners, who had grown old in
+patiently paying taxes on patches of dog-fennel and sand-burrs, dazedly
+vacillated between acceptance and rejection of tempting propositions,
+dreading the missing of the chance so long awaited, fearing misjudgment
+as to the height of the wave, dreading a future of regret at having sold
+too low.
+
+One of these, an old woman, toothless and bent, hobbled to our office
+and asked for Mr. Elkins. He was busy, and so I received her.
+
+"It's about that quarter-block with the Donegal ruin on it," said Jim;
+"the one I showed you yesterday. Offer her five thousand, one-fourth
+down, balance in one, two, and three years, eight per cent."
+
+"I wanted to ask Mr. Elkins about me home," said she. "I tuk in washin'
+to buy it, an' me son, poor Patsy, God rist 'is soul, he helped wid th'
+bit of money from the Brotherhood, whin he was kilt betune the cars. It
+was sivin hundred an' fifty dollars, an' now Thronson offers me four
+thousan'. I told him I'd sell, fer it's a fortune for a workin' woman;
+but befure I signed papers, I wanted to ask Mr. Elkins; he's such a
+fair-spoken man, an' knowin' to me min-folks in Peoria."
+
+"If you want to sell, Mrs. Collins," said I, "we will take your property
+at five thousand dollars."
+
+She started, and regarded me, first in amazement, then with distrust,
+shading off into hostility.
+
+"Thank ye kindly, sir," said she; "I'll be goin' now. I've med up me
+moind, if that bit of land is wort all that money t' yees, it's wort
+more to me. Thank ye kindly!" and she fled from the presence of the
+tempter.
+
+"The town is full of Biddy Collinses," commented Jim. "Well, we can't
+land everything, and couldn't handle the catch if we did. In fact, for
+present purposes, isn't it better to have her refuse?"
+
+This incident was the hint upon which our "Syndicate," as it came to be
+called, acted from time to time, in making fabulous offers to every
+Biddy Collins in town. "Offer twenty thousand," Jim would say. "The more
+you bid the less apt is he to accept; he's a Biddy Collins." And
+whatever Mr. Elkins advised was done.
+
+There were eight or ten of us in the "Syndicate," dubbed by Jim "The
+Crew," among whom were Tolliver, Macdonald, and Will Lattimore. But the
+inner circle, now drawing closer and closer together, were Elkins, our
+ruling spirit; Hinckley, our great force in the banking world; and
+myself. Soon, I was given to understand, Mr. Cornish was to take his
+place as one of us. He and Jim had long known each other, and Mr. Elkins
+had the utmost confidence in Mr. Cornish's usefulness in what he called
+"the thought-transference department."
+
+Elkins & Barslow kept their offices open night and day, almost, and the
+number of typewriters and bookkeepers grew astoundingly. I became almost
+a stranger to my wife. I got hurried glimpses of Miss Trescott and her
+mother at the hotel, and knew that she and Alice were becoming fast
+friends; but so far the social prominence which the _Herald_ had
+predicted for us had failed to arrive.
+
+This, to be sure, was our own fault. Miss Addison soon gave us up as not
+available for the church and Sunday-school functions to which she
+devoted herself. Her family connections would have made her _the_ social
+leader had it not been for the severity of her views and her assumption
+of the character of the devotee--in spite of which she protestingly went
+almost everywhere. Antonia Hinckley, however, was frankly fond of a good
+time, and with her dashing and almost hoydenish character easily took
+the leadership from Miss Addison; and Miss Hinckley sought diligently
+for means by which we could be properly launched. As I left the office
+one day, a voice from the curb called my name. It was Miss Hinckley in a
+smart trap, to which was harnessed a beautiful horse, standard bred, one
+could see at a glance. I obeyed the summons, and stepped beside the
+equipage.
+
+"I want to scold you," said she. "Society is being defrauded of the good
+things which your coming promised. Have you taken a vow of seclusion, or
+what?"
+
+"I've been spinning about in the maelstrom of business," I replied. "But
+do not be uneasy; some time we shall take up the matter of inflicting
+ourselves, and pursue it as vigorously as we now follow our vocation."
+
+"Wouldn't you like to get into the trap, and take a spin of another
+sort?" said she. "I'll deposit you safely with Mrs. Barslow in time for
+tea."
+
+I got in, glad of the drive, and for ten minutes her horse was sent at
+such a pace that conversation was difficult. Then he was slowed down to
+a walk, his head toward home. We chatted of casual things--the scenery,
+the horse, the splendid color of the sunset. I was becoming interested
+in her.
+
+"I had almost forgotten that there were such things in Lattimore," said
+I, referring to the topics of our talk. "I have become so saturated with
+lands and lots."
+
+"I don't know much about business," said she, "and I think I'll improve
+my opportunity by learning something. And, first, aren't men sometimes
+losers by the dishonesty of those who act for them--agents, they are
+called, aren't they?"
+
+Such, I admitted, was unfortunately the case.
+
+"I should be sorry for--any one I liked--to be injured in such a way....
+Now you must understand how the things you men are interested in
+permeate the society of us women. Why, mamma has almost forgotten the
+enslavement of our sex, in these new things which have changed our old
+town so much; so you mustn't wonder if I have heard something of a
+purely business nature. I heard that Captain Tolliver was about to sell
+Mr. Elkins the land where the old foundry is, over there, for twenty
+thousand dollars. Now, papa says it isn't worth it; and I know--Sadie
+Allen and I were in school together, and she comes over from Fairchild
+several times a year to see me, and I go there, you know; and that land
+is in her father's estate--I know that the executor has told Captain
+Tolliver to sell it for ever so much less than that. And it seemed so
+funny, as the Captain was doing the business for both sides--isn't it
+odd, now?"
+
+"It does seem so," said I, "and it is very kind of you. I'll talk with
+Mr. Elkins about it. Please be careful, Miss Hinckley, or you'll drop
+the wheel in that washout!"
+
+She reined up her horse and began speeding him again. I could see that
+this conversation had embarrassed her somehow. Her color was high, and
+her grip of the reins not so steady as at starting. This attempt to do
+Jim a favor was something she considered as of a good deal of
+consequence. I began to note more and more what a really splendid woman
+she was--tall, fair, her tailor-made gown rounding to the full, firm
+curves of her figure, her fearless horsemanship hinting at the
+possession of large and positive traits of character.
+
+"We women," said she, "might as well abandon all the things commonly
+known as feminine. What good do they do us?"
+
+"They gratify your sense of the beautiful," suggested I.
+
+"You know, Mr. Barslow," said she, "that it's not our own sense of the
+beautiful, mainly, that we seek to gratify; and if the eyes for which
+they are intended are looking into ledgers and blind to everything
+except dollar-signs, what's the use?"
+
+"Go down to the seashore," said I, "where the people congregate who have
+nothing to do."
+
+"Not I," said she; "I'll go into real estate, and become as blind as the
+rest!"
+
+Jim paid no attention to my chaffing when I spoke of his conquest, as I
+called Antonia. In fact, he seemed annoyed, and for a long time said
+nothing.
+
+"You can see how the Allen estate proposition stands," said he, at last.
+"To let that sell for less than twenty thousand might cost us ten times
+that amount in lowering the prevailing standard of values. The old rule
+that we should buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest is
+suspended. Base is the slave who pays--less than the necessary and
+proper increase."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+We Dedicate Lynhurst Park.
+
+
+The Hindu adept sometimes suspends before the eyes of his subject a
+bright ball of carnelian or crystal, in the steady contemplation of
+which the sensitive swims off into the realms of subjectivity--that
+mysterious bourn from whence no traveler brings anything back. J.
+Bedford Cornish was Mr. Elkins's glittering ball; his psychic subject
+was the world in general and Lattimore in particular. Scientific
+principles, confirmed by experience, led us to the conclusion that the
+attitude of fixed contemplation carried with it some nervous strain,
+ought to be of limited duration, and hence that Mr. Cornish should
+remove from our midst the glittering mystery of his presence, lest
+familiarity should breed contempt. So in about ten days he went away,
+giving to the _Herald_ a parting interview, in which he expressed
+unbounded delight with Lattimore, and hinted that he might return for a
+longer stay. Editorially, the _Herald_ expressed the hope that this
+characteristically veiled allusion to a longer sojourn might mean that
+Mr. Cornish had some idea of becoming a citizen of Lattimore. This would
+denote, the editorial continued, that men like Mr. Cornish, accustomed
+to the mighty world-pulse of New York, could find objects of pursuit
+equally worthy in Lattimore.
+
+"Which is mixed metaphor," Mr. Giddings admitted in confidence; "but,"
+he continued, "if metaphors, like drinks, happen to be more potent
+mixed, the _Herald_ proposes to mix 'em."
+
+All these things consumed time, and still our life was one devoted to
+business exclusively. At last Mr. Elkins himself, urged, I feel sure, by
+Antonia Hinckley, gave evidence of weariness.
+
+"Al," said he one day, "don't you think it's about time to go ashore for
+a carouse?"
+
+"Unless something in the way of a let-up comes soon," said I, "the
+position of lieutenant, or first mate, or whatever my job is piratically
+termed, will become vacant. The pace is pretty rapid. Last night I
+dreamed that the new Hotel Elkins was founded on my chest; and I have
+had troubles enough of the same kind before to show me that my nervous
+system is slowly ravelling out."
+
+"I have arrangements made, in my mind, for a sort of al fresco function,
+to come off about the time Cornish gets back with our London visitor,"
+he replied, "which ought to knit up the ravelled sleeve better than new.
+I'm going to dedicate Lynhurst Park to the nymphs and deities of
+sport--which wrinkled care derides."
+
+"I hadn't heard of Lynhurst Park," I was forced to say. "I'm curious to
+know, first, who named it, and, second, where it is."
+
+"Didn't I show you those blueprints?" he asked. "An oversight I assure
+you. As for the scheme, you suggested it yourself that night we first
+drove out to Trescott's. Don't you remember saying something about
+'breathing space for the populace'? Well, I had the surveys made at
+once; contracted for the land, all but what Bill owns of it, which we'll
+have to get later; and had a landscapist out from Chicago to direct us
+as to what we ought to admire in improving the place. As for the name,
+I'm indebted to kind nature, which planted the valley in basswood, and
+to Josie, who contributed the philological knowledge and the taste.
+That's the street-car line," said he, unrolling an elaborate plat and
+pointing. "We may throw it over to the west to develop section seven, if
+we close for it. Otherwise, that line is the very thing."
+
+Our street-railway franchise had been granted by the Lattimore city
+council--they would have granted the public square, had we asked for it
+in the potent name of "progress"--and Cornish was even now making
+arrangements for placing our bonds. The impossible of less than a year
+ago was now included in the next season's program, as an inconsiderable
+feature of a great project for a street-railway system, and the
+"development" of hundreds of acres of land.
+
+The place so to be named Lynhurst Park was most agreeably reached by a
+walk up Brushy Creek from Lattimore. Such a stroll took one into the
+gorge, where the rocks shelved toward each other, until their crowning
+fringes of cedar almost interlocked, like the eyelashes of drowsiness.
+Down there in the twilight one felt a sense of being defrauded, in
+contemplation of the fact that the stream was troutless: it was such an
+ideal place for trout. The quiet and mellow gloom made the gorge a
+favorite trysting-place, and perhaps the cool-blooded stream-folk had
+fled from the presence of the more fervid dwellers on the banks. In the
+crevices of the rocks were the nests of the village pigeons. The
+combined effects of all these causes was to make this a spot devoted to
+billing and cooing.
+
+Farther up the stream the rock walls grew lower and parted wider,
+islanding a rich bottom of lush grass-plot, alternating with groves of
+walnut, linden, and elm. This was the Lynhurst Park of the blueprints
+and plats. Trescott's farm lay on the right bank, and others on either
+side; but the houses were none of them near the stream, and the entire
+walk was wild and woodsy-looking. None but nature-lovers came that way.
+Others drove out by the road past Trescott's, seeing more of corn and
+barn, but less of rock, moss, and fern.
+
+Mr. Cornish was to return on Friday with the Honorable De Forest
+Barr-Smith, who lived in London and "represented English capital." To us
+Westerners the very hyphen of his name spoke eloquently of £ s. d.
+Through him we hoped to get the money to build that street railway.
+Cornish had written that Mr. Barr-Smith wanted to look the thing over
+personally; and that, given the element of safety, his people would much
+prefer an investment of a million to one of ten thousand. Cornish
+further hinted that the London gentleman acted like a man who wanted a
+side interest in the construction company; as to which he would sound
+him further by the way.
+
+"He'll expect something in the way of birds and bottles," observed
+Elkins; "but they won't mix with the general society of this town, where
+the worm of the still is popularly supposed to be the original Edenic
+tempter. And he'll want to inspect Lynhurst Park. I want him to see our
+beauty and our chivalry,--meaning the ladies and Captain Tolliver,--and
+the rest of our best people. I guess we'll have to make it a temperate
+sort of orgy, making up in the spectacular what it lacks in
+spirituousness."
+
+Mr. Cornish came, gradually moulting his mystery; but still far above
+the Lattimore standard in dress and style of living. In truth, he always
+had a good deal of the swell in his make-up, and can almost be acquitted
+of deceit in the impressions conveyed at his coming. The Honorable De
+Forest Barr-Smith fraternized with Cornish, as he could with no one
+else. No one looking at Mr. Cornish could harbor a doubt as to his
+morning tub; and his evening dress was always correct. With Jim, Mr.
+Barr-Smith went into the discussion of business propositions freely and
+confidentially. I feel sure that had he greatly desired a candid
+statement of the very truth as to local views, or the exact judgment of
+one on the spot, he would have come to me. But between him and Cornish
+there was the stronger sympathy of a common understanding of the occult
+intricacies of clothes, and a view-point as to the surface of things,
+embracing manifold points of agreement. Cornish's unerring conformity
+of vogue in the manner and as to the occasion of wearing the tuxedo or
+the claw-hammer coat was clearly restful to Mr. Barr-Smith, in this new
+and strange country, where, if danger was to be avoided, things had to
+be approached with distended nostril and many preliminary snuffings of
+the wind.
+
+There came with these two a younger brother of Mr. Barr-Smith, Cecil--a
+big young civil engineer, just out of college, and as like his brother
+in accent and dress as could be expected of one of his years; but
+national characteristics are matters of growth, and college boys all
+over the world are a good deal alike. Cecil Barr-Smith, with his red
+mustache, his dark eyes, and his six feet of British brawn, was nearer
+in touch with our younger people that first day than his honorable
+brother ever became. To Antonia, especially, he took kindly, and
+respectfully devoted himself.
+
+"At this distance," said Mr. Barr-Smith, as he saw his brother sitting
+on the grass at Miss Hinckley's feet, "I'd think them brother and
+sister. She resembles sister Gritty remarkably; the same complexion and
+the same style, you know. Quite so!"
+
+The Lynhurst function was the real introduction of these three gentlemen
+to Lattimore society. I knew nothing of the arrangements, except what I
+could deduce from Jim's volume of business with caterers and other
+handicraftsmen; and I looked forward to the fête with much curiosity.
+The weather, that afternoon, made an outing quite the natural thing; for
+it was hot. The ladies in their most summery gowns fluttered like white
+dryads from shade to shade, uttering bird-like pipings of surprise at
+the preparations made for their entertainment.
+
+The ravine had been transformed. At an available point in its bed Jim
+had thrown a dam across the stream, and a beautiful little lake rippled
+in the breeze, bearing on its bosom a bright-colored boat, which in our
+ignorance of things Venetian we mistakenly dubbed a gondola. At the
+upper end of this water the canvas of a large pavilion gleamed whitely
+through the greenery, displaying from its top the British and American
+flags, their color reflected in a particolored streak on the wimpling
+face of the lake. The groves, in the tops of which the woodpeckers,
+warblers, and vireos disturbedly carried on the imperatively necessary
+work of rearing their broods, were gay with festoons of Chinese lanterns
+in readiness for the evening. Hammocks were slung from tree to tree,
+cushions and seats were arranged in cosy nooks; and when my wife and I
+stepped from our carriage, all these appliances for the utilization of
+shade and leisure were in full use. The "gondola" was making, trips from
+the cascade (as the dam was already called) to the pavilion, carrying
+loads of young people from whom came to our ears those peals of
+merriment which have everywhere but one meaning, and that a part of the
+world-old mystery of the way of a man with a maid.
+
+Jim was on the ground early, to receive the guests and keep the
+management in hand. Josie Trescott and her mother walked down through
+the Trescott pasture, and joined Alice and me under one of the splendid
+lindens, where, as we lounged in the shade, the sound of the little
+waterfall filled the spaces in our talk. Long before any one else had
+seen them coming through the trees, Mr. Elkins had spied them, and went
+forward to meet them with something more than the hospitable solicitude
+with which he had met the others. In fact, the principal guests of the
+day had alighted from their carriage before Jim, ensconced in a hammock
+with Josie, was made aware of their arrival. I am not quick to see such
+things; but to my eyes, even, the affair had assumed interest as a sort
+of public flirtation. I had not thought that Josie would so easily fall
+into deportment so distinctly encouraging. She was altogether in a
+surprising mood,--her eyes shining as with some stimulant, her cheeks a
+little flushed, her lips scarlet, her whole appearance suggesting
+suppressed excitement. And when Jim rose to meet his guests, she
+dismissed him with one of those charmingly inviting glances and gestures
+with which such an adorable woman spins the thread by which the banished
+one is drawn back,--and then she disappeared until the dinner was
+served.
+
+The green crown of the western hill was throwing its shadow across the
+valley, when Mr. Hinckley came with Mr. Cornish and Mr. Barr-Smith in a
+barouche; followed by Antonia, who brought Mr. Cecil in her trap--and a
+concomitant thrill to the company. Mr. Cornish, in his dress, had struck
+a happy medium between the habiliments of business and those of sylvan
+recreation. Mr. Barr-Smith on the other hand, was garbed cap-a-pie for
+an outing, presenting an appearance with which the racket, the bat, or
+even the alpenstock might have been conjoined in perfect harmony. As for
+the men of Lattimore, any one of them would as soon have been seen in
+the war-dress of a Sioux chief as in this entirely correct costume of
+our British visitor. We walked about in the every-day vestments of the
+shops, banks, and offices, illustrating the difference between a state
+of society in which apparel is regarded as an incident in life, and one
+rising to the height of realizing its true significance as a religion.
+Mr. Barr-Smith bowed not the knee to the Baal of western
+clothes-monotone, but daily sent out his sartorial orisons, keeping his
+windows open toward the Jerusalem of his London tailor, in a manner
+which would have delighted a Teufelsdröckh.
+
+He was a short man, with protruding cheeks, and a nose ending in an
+amorphous flare of purple and scarlet. His mustache, red like that of
+his brother, and constituting the only point of physical resemblance
+between them, grew down over a receding chin, being forced thereto by
+the bulbous overhang of the nose. He had rufous side-whiskers, clipped
+moderately close, and carroty hair mixed with gray. His erect shoulders
+and straight back were a little out of keeping with the rotundity of his
+figure in other respects; but the combination, hinting, as it did, of
+affairs both gastronomic and martial, taken with a manner at once
+dignified, formal, and suave, constituted the most intensely respectable
+appearance I ever saw. To the imagination of Lattimore he represented
+everything of which, Cornish fell short, piling Lombard upon Wall
+Street.
+
+The arrival of these gentlemen was the signal for gathering in the
+pavilion where dinner was served. The tables were arranged in a great L,
+at the apex of which sat Jim and the distinguished guests. On one side
+of him sat Mr. Barr-Smith, who listened absorbedly to the conversation
+of Mrs. Hinckley, filling every pause with a husky "Quite so!" On the
+other sat Josie Trescott, who was smiling upon a very tall and spare old
+man who wore a beautiful white mustache and imperial. I had never met
+him, but I knew him for General Lattimore. His fondness for Josie was
+well known; and to him Jim attributed that young lady's lack of
+enthusiasm over our schemes for city-building. His presence at this
+gathering was somewhat of a surprise to me.
+
+Antonia and Cecil Barr-Smith, the Tollivers, Mr. Hinckley and Alice,
+myself, Mr. Giddings, and Miss Addison sat across the table from the
+host. Mrs. Trescott, after expressing wonder at the changes wrought in
+the ravine, and confiding to me her disapproval of the useless expense,
+had returned to the farm, impelled by that habitual feeling that
+something was wrong there. Mr. Giddings was exceedingly attentive to
+Miss Addison.
+
+"I know why you're trying to look severe," said he to her, as the
+consommé was served; "and it's the only thing I can imagine you making a
+failure of, unless it would be looking anything but pretty. But you are
+trying it, and I know why. You think they ought to have had some one say
+grace before pulling this thing off."
+
+"I'm not trying to look--anyhow," she answered. "But you are right in
+thinking that I believe such duties should not be transgressed, for fear
+that the world may call us provincial or old-fashioned."
+
+And she shot a glance at Cornish and Barr-Smith as the visible
+representatives of the "world."
+
+"Don't listen to that age-old clash between fervor and unregeneracy,"
+said Josie across the narrow table, her remarks made possible by the
+music of the orchestra, "but tell us about Mr. Barr-Smith and--the other
+gentlemen."
+
+"I wanted to ask you about the Britons," said I; "are they good
+specimens of the men you saw in England?"
+
+"An art-student, with a consciousness of guilt in slowly eating up the
+year's shipment of steers, isn't likely to know much more of the
+Barr-Smiths' London than she can see from the street. But I think them
+fine examples of not very rare types. I should like to try drawing the
+elder brother!"
+
+"Before he goes away, I predict--" I began, when my villainous pun was
+arrested in mid-utterance by the voice of Captain Tolliver, suddenly
+becoming the culminating peak in the table-talk.
+
+"The Anglo-Saxon, suh," he was saying, "is found in his greatest purity
+of blood in ouah Southe'n states. It is thah, suh, that those qualities
+of virility and capacity fo' rulership which make the race what is ah
+found in theiah highest development--on this side of the watah, suh, on
+this side!"
+
+"Quite so! I dare say, quite so!" responded Mr. Barr-Smith. "I hope to
+know the people of the South better. In fact, I may say, really, you
+know, an occasion like this gives one the desire to become acquainted
+with the whole American people."
+
+General Lattimore, whose nostrils flared as he leaned forward listening,
+like an opponent in a debate, to the remarks of Captain Tolliver,
+subsided as he heard the Englishman's diplomatic reply.
+
+"What's the use?" said he to Josie. "He may be nearer right than I can
+understand."
+
+"We hope," said Mr. Elkins, "that this desire may be focalized locally,
+and grow to anything short of a disease. I assure you, Lattimore will
+congratulate herself."
+
+Mr. Barr-Smith's fingers sought his glass, as if the impulse were on him
+to propose a toast; but the liquid facilities being absent, he relapsed
+into a conversation with Mrs. Hinckley.
+
+"I'd say those things, too, if I were in his place," came the words of
+Giddings, overshooting their mark, the ear of Miss Addison; "but it's
+all rot. He's disgusted with the whole barbarous outfit of us."
+
+"I am becoming curious," was the _sotto voce_ reply, "to know upon what
+model you found your conduct, Mr. Giddings."
+
+"I know what you mean," said Mr. Giddings. "But I have adopted Iago."
+
+"Why, Mr. Giddings! How shocking! Iago--"
+
+"Now, don't be horrified," said Giddings, with an air of candor, "but
+look at it from a practical standpoint. If Othello hadn't been such a
+fool, Iago would have made his point all right. He had a right to be
+sore at Othello for promoting Cassio over his head, and his scheme was a
+good one, if Othello hadn't gone crazy. Iago is dominated by reason and
+the principle of the survival of the fittest. He is an agreeable
+fellow--"
+
+Miss Addison, with a charming mixture of tragedy and archness,
+suppressed this blasphemy by a gesture suggestive of placing her hand
+over the editor's mouth.
+
+"Ah, Mrs. Hinckley, you shouldn't do us such an injustice!" It was Mr.
+Cornish, who took the center of the stage now. "You seem to fail to
+realize the fact that, in any given gathering, the influence of woman is
+dominant; and as the entire life of the nation is the sum total of such
+gatherings, woman is already in control. Now how can you fail to admit
+this?"
+
+I missed the rather extended reply of Mrs. Hinckley, in noting the
+evident impression made upon the company by this first utterance of the
+mysterious Cornish. It was not what he said: that was not important. It
+was the dark, bearded face, the jetty eyes, and above all, I think, the
+voice, with its clear, carrying quality, combining penetrativeness with
+a repression of force which gave one the feeling of being addressed in
+confidence. Every man, and especially every woman, in the company,
+looked fixedly upon him, until he ceased to speak--all except Josie.
+She darted at him one look, a mere momentary scrutiny, and as he
+discoursed of woman and her power, she seemed to lose herself in
+contemplation of her plate. The blush upon her cheek became more rosy,
+and a little smile, with something in it which was not of pleasure,
+played about the corners of her mouth. I was about to offer her the
+traditional bargain-counter price for her thoughts, when my attention
+was commanded by Jim's voice, answering some remark of Antonia's.
+
+"This is the merest curtain-riser, just a sort of kick-off," he was
+saying. "In a year or two this valley will be _the_ pleasure-ground of
+all the countryside, a hundred miles around. This tent will be replaced
+by a restaurant and auditorium. The conventions and public gatherings of
+the state will be held here--there is no other place for 'em; and our
+railway will bring the folks out from town. There will be baseball
+grounds, and facilities for all sorts of sports; and outings and games
+will center here. I promise you the next regatta of the State Rowing
+Association, and a street-car line landing passengers where we now sit."
+
+"Hear, hear!" said Mr. Barr-Smith, and the company clapped hands in
+applause.
+
+Mr. Hinckley was introduced by Jim as "one who had seen Lynhurst Park
+when it was Indian hunting-ground"; and made a speech in which he
+welcomed Mr. Cornish as a new citizen who was already prominent. Dining
+in this valley, he said, reminded him of the time when he and two other
+guests now present had, on almost the identical spot, dined on venison
+dressed and cooked where it fell. Then Lattimore was a trading-post on
+the frontier, surrounded by the tepees of Indians, and uncertain as to
+its lease of life. General Lattimore, who shot the deer, or Mr.
+Macdonald, who helped eat it, could either of them tell more about it.
+Mr. Barr-Smith and our other British guest might judge of the rapidity
+of development in this country, where a man may see in his lifetime
+progress which in the older states and countries could be discerned by
+the student of history only.
+
+Mr. Cornish very briefly thanked Mr. Hinckley for his words of welcome;
+but begged to be excused from making any extended remarks. Deeds were
+rather more in his line than words.
+
+"Title-deeds," said Giddings under his breath, "as the real-estate
+transfers show!"
+
+General Lattimore verified Mr. Hinckley's statement concerning the meal
+of venison; and, politely expressing pleasure at being present at a
+function which seemed to be regarded as of so much importance to the
+welfare of the town in which he had always taken the pride of a
+godfather, resumed his seat without adding anything to the oratory of
+the boom.
+
+"In fact," said Captain Tolliver to me, "I wahned Mr. Elkins against
+having him hyah. In any mattah of progress he's a wet blanket, and has
+proved himself such by these remahks."
+
+Mr. Barr-Smith, in response to the allusions to him, assured us that the
+presence of people such as he had had the pleasure of meeting in
+Lattimore was sufficient in itself to account for the forward movement
+in the community, which the visitor could not fail to observe.
+
+"In a state of society where people are not averse to changing their
+abodes," he said, "and where the social atom, if I may so express
+myself, is in a state of mobility, the presence of such magnets as our
+toastmaster, and the other gentlemen to whose courteous remarks I am
+responding, must draw 'em to themselves, you may be jolly well assured
+of that! And if the gentlemen should fail, the thing which should resist
+the attractive power of the American ladies must be more fixed in its
+habits than even the conservative English gentleman, who prides himself
+upon his stability, er--ah--his taking a position and sticking by it, in
+spite of the--of anything, you know."
+
+As his only contribution to the speechmaking, Mr. Cecil Barr-Smith
+greeted this sentiment with a hearty "Hear, hear!" He fell into step
+with Antonia as we left the pavilion. Then he went back as if to look
+for something; and I saw Antonia summon Mr. Elkins to her side so that
+she might congratulate him on the success of this "carouse."
+
+Everything seemed going well. There was, however, in that gathering, as
+in the day, material for a storm, and I, of all those in attendance,
+ought to have seen it, had my memory been as unerring as I thought it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+The Empress and Sir John Meet Again.
+
+
+The company emerged from the tent into the enchanted outdoors of the
+star-dotted valley. The moon rode high, and flooded the glades with
+silvery effulgency. The heat of the day had bred a summer storm-cloud,
+which, all quivery with lightning, seemed sweeping around from the
+northwest to the north, giving us the delicious experience of enjoying
+calm, in view of storm.
+
+The music of the orchestra soon told that the pavilion had been cleared
+for dancing. I heard Giddings urging upon Miss Addison that it would be
+much better for them to walk in the moonlight than to encourage by their
+presence such a worldly amusement, and one in which he had never been
+able to do anything better than fail, anyhow. Sighing her pain at the
+frivolity of the world, she took his arm and strolled away. I noticed
+that she clung closely to him, frightened, I suppose, at the mysterious
+rustlings in the trees, or something.
+
+They made up the dances in such a way as to leave me out. I rather
+wanted to dance with Antonia; but Mr. Cecil was just leaving her in
+disappointment, in the possession of Mr. Elkins, when I went for her. I
+decided that a cigar and solitude were rather to be chosen than anything
+else which presented itself, and accordingly I took possession of one of
+the hammocks, in which I lay and smoked, and watched the towering
+thunder-head, as it stood like a mighty and marvelous mountain in the
+northern sky, its rounded and convoluted summits serenely white in the
+moonlight, its mysterious caves palpitant with incessant lightning. The
+soothing of the cigar; the new-made lake reflecting the gleam of
+hundreds of lanterns; the illuminated pavilion, its whirling company of
+dancers seen under the uprolled walls; the night, with its strange
+contrast of a calm southern sky on the one hand pouring down its flood
+of moonlight, and in the north the great mother-of-pearl dome with its
+core of vibrant fire; the dance-music throbbing through the lindens; and
+all this growing out of the unwonted and curious life of the past few
+months, bore to me again that feeling of being yoked with some
+thaumaturge of wondrous power for the working of enchantments. Again I
+seemed in a partnership with Aladdin; and fairy pavilions, sylvan
+paradises, bevies of dancing girls, and princes bearing gifts of gold
+and jewels, had all obeyed our conjuration. I could have walked down to
+the naphtha pleasure-boat and bidden the engineer put me down at
+Khorassan, or some dreamful port of far Cathay, with no sense of
+incongruity.
+
+Two figures came from the tent and walked toward me. As I looked at
+them, myself in darkness, they in the light, I had again that feeling of
+having seen them in some similar way before. That same old sensation,
+thought I, that the analytic novelist made trite ages ago. Then I saw
+that it was Mr. Cornish and Miss Trescott. I could hear them talking;
+but lay still, because I was loth to have my reveries disturbed. And
+besides, to speak would seem an unwarranted assumption of confidential
+relations on their part. They stopped near me.
+
+"Your memory is not so good as mine," said he. "I knew you at once. Knew
+you! Why--"
+
+"I'm not very good at keeping names and faces in mind," she replied,
+"unless they belong to people I have known very well."
+
+"Indeed!" his voice dropped to the 'cello-like undertone now; "isn't
+that a little unkind? I fancied that _we_ knew each other very well! My
+conceit is not to be pandered to, I perceive."
+
+"Ye-e-s--does it seem that way?" said she, ignoring the last remark.
+"Well, you know it was only for a few days, and you kept calling
+yourself by some ridiculous alias, and scarcely used your surname at
+all, and I believe they called you Johnny--and you can't think what a
+disguise such a beard is! But I remember you now perfectly. It quite
+brings back those short months, when I was so young--and was finding
+things out! I can see the vine-covered porch, and Madame Lamoreaux's
+boarding-house on the South Side--"
+
+"And the old art gallery?"
+
+"Why, there was one, wasn't there?" said she, "somewhere along the lake
+front, wasn't it?... Such a pleasant meeting, and so odd!"
+
+I sat up in the hammock, and stared at them as they went on their
+promenade. The old art gallery, the vine-covered porch, the young man
+with the smooth-shaven dark face and the thrilling, vibrant voice, and
+the young, young girl with the ruddy hair, and the little, round form!
+She seemed taller now, and there was more of maturity in the figure; but
+it was the same lissome waist and petite gracefulness which had so fully
+explained to me the avid eyes of her lover on that day when I had fled
+from the report of the Committee on Permanent Organization. It was the
+Empress Josephine, I had known that--and her Sir John!
+
+Then I thought of her flying from him into the street, and the little
+bowed head on the street-car; and the old pity for her, the old
+bitterness toward him, returned upon me. I wondered how he could speak
+to her in this nonchalant way; what they were saying to each other;
+whether they would ever refer to that night at Auriccio's; what Alice
+would think of him if she ever found it out; whether he was a villain,
+or only erred passionately; what was actually said in that palm alcove
+that night so long ago; whether this man, with the eyes and voice so
+fascinating to women, would renew his suit in this new life of ours;
+what Jim would think about it; and, more than all, how Josie herself
+would regard him.
+
+"She ought never to have spoken to him again!" I hear some one say.
+
+Ah, Madam, very true. But do you remember any authentic case of a woman
+who failed to forgive the man whose error or offense had for its excuse
+the irresistible attraction of her own charms?
+
+They were coming back now, still talking.
+
+"You dropped out of sight, like a partridge into a thicket," said he.
+"Some of them said you had gone back to--to--"
+
+"To the farm," she prompted.
+
+"Well, yes," he conceded; "and others said you had left Chicago for New
+York; and some, even Paris."
+
+"I fail to see the warrant," said Josie, as they approached the limit of
+earshot, "for any of the people at Madame Lamoreux's giving themselves
+the trouble to investigate."
+
+"So far as that is concerned," said he, "I should think that I--" and
+his voice quite lost intelligibility.
+
+My cigar had gone out, and the cessation of the music ought to have
+apprised me of the breaking up of the dance, and still I lay looking at
+the sky and filled with my thoughts.
+
+"Here he is," said Alice, "asleep in the hammock! For shame, Albert!
+This would not have occurred, once!"
+
+"I am free to admit that," said I, "but why am I now disturbed?"
+
+"We're going on a cruise in the gondola," said Antonia, "and Mr. Elkins
+says you are lieutenant, and we can't sail without you. Come, it's
+perfectly beautiful out there."
+
+"We're going to the head of navigation and back," said Jim, "and then
+our revels will be ended. --Hang it!" to me, "they left the skull and
+crossbones off all the flags!"
+
+Mr. Barr-Smith at once engaged the engineer in conversation, and seemed
+worming from him all his knowledge of the construction of the boat. The
+rest of us lounged on cushions and seats. We threaded our way up the new
+pond, winding between clumps of trees, now in broad moonlight, now in
+deepest shade. The shower had swept over to the northeast, just one dark
+flounce of its skirt reaching to the zenith. A cool breeze suddenly
+sprang up from the west, stirred by the suction of the receding storm,
+and a roar came from the trees on the hilltops.
+
+"Better run for port," said Jim; "I'd hate to have Mr. Barr-Smith suffer
+shipwreck where the charts don't show any water!"
+
+As we ran down the open way, the remark seemed less and less of a joke.
+The gale poured over the hills, and struck the boat like the buffet of a
+great hand. She heeled over alarmingly, bumped upon a submerged stump,
+righted, heeled again, this time shipping a little sea, and then the
+sharp end of a hidden oak-limb thrust up through the bottom, and ripped
+its way out again, leaving us afloat in the deepest part of the lake,
+with a spouting fountain in the middle of the vessel, and the chopping
+waves breaking over the gunwale. All at once, I noticed Cecil
+Barr-Smith, with his coat off, standing near Antonia, who sat as cool as
+if she had been out on some quiet road driving her pacers. The boat sank
+lower in the water, and I had no doubt that she was sinking. Antonia
+rose, and stretched her hands towards Jim. I do not see how he could
+avoid seeing this; but he did, and, as if abandoning her to her fate, he
+leaped to Josie's side. Cornish had seized _her_ by the arm, and seemed
+about to devote himself to her safety, when Jim, without a word, lifted
+her in his arms, and leaped lightly upon the forward deck, the highest
+and driest place on the sinking craft. Then, as everything pointed to a
+speedy baptism in the lake for all of us, we saw that the very speed of
+the wind had saved us, and felt the gondola bump broadside upon the dam.
+Jim sprang to the abutment with Josie, and Cecil Barr-Smith half carried
+and half led Antonia to the shore. Alice and I sat calmly on the
+windward rail; and Barr-Smith, laughing with delight, helped us across,
+one at a time, to the masonry.
+
+"I'm glad it turned out no worse," said Jim. "I hope you will all excuse
+me if I leave you now. I must see Miss Trescott to a safe and dry place.
+Here's the carriage, Josie!"
+
+"Are you quite uninjured?" said Cecil to Antonia, as Mr. Elkins and
+Josie drove away.
+
+"Oh, quite so!" said Antonia, unwittingly adopting Barr-Smith's phrase.
+"But for a moment I was awfully frightened!"
+
+"It looked a little damp, at one time, for farce-comedy," said Cornish.
+"I wonder how deep it was out there!"
+
+"Miss Trescott was quite drenched," said Mr. Barr-Smith, as we got into
+the carriages. "Too bad, by Jove!"
+
+"You may write home," said Antonia, "an account of being shipwrecked in
+the top of a tree!"
+
+"Good, good!" said Cecil, and we all joined in the laugh, until we were
+suddenly sobered by the fact that Antonia had bowed her head on Alice's
+lap, and was sobbing as if her heart was broken.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+In which the Burdens of wealth begin to fall upon Us.
+
+
+If the town be considered as a quiescent body pursuing its unluminous
+way in space, Mr. Elkins may stand for the impinging planet which
+shocked it into vibrant life. I suggested this nebular-hypothesis simile
+to Mr. Giddings, one day, as the germ of an editorial.
+
+"It's rather seductive," said he, "but it won't do. Carry your
+interplanetary collision business to its logical end, and what do you
+come to? Gaseousness. And that's just what the Angus Falls _Times_, the
+Fairchild Star, and the other loathsome sheets printed in prairie-dog
+towns around here accuse us of, now. No; much obliged; but as a field
+for comparisons the tried old solar system is good enough for the
+_Herald_."
+
+I couldn't help thinking, however, that the thing had some illustrative
+merit. There was Jim's first impact, felt locally, and jarring things
+loose. Then came the atomic vivification, the heat and motion, which
+appeared in the developments which we have seen taking form. After the
+visit of the Barr-Smiths, and the immigration of Cornish, the new star
+Lattimore began to blaze in the commercial firmament, the focus of
+innumerable monetary telescopes, pointed from the observatories of
+counting-rooms, banks, and offices, far and wide.
+
+There was a shifting of the investment and speculative equilibrium, and
+things began coming to us spontaneously. The Angus Falls railway
+extension was won only by strenuous endeavor. Captain Tolliver's
+interviews with General Lattimore, in which he was so ruthlessly "turned
+down," he always regarded as a sort of creative agony, marking the
+origin of the roundhouse and machine-shops, and our connection with the
+great Halliday railway system of which it made us a part. The street-car
+project went more easily; and, during the autumn, the geological and
+manufacturing experts sent out to report on the cement-works enterprise,
+pronounced favorably, and gangs of men, during the winter, were to be
+seen at work on the foundations of the great buildings by the scarped
+chalk-hill.
+
+The tension of my mind just after the Lynhurst Park affair was such as
+to attune it to no impulses but the financial vibrations which pulsated
+through our atmosphere. True, I sometimes felt the wonder return upon me
+at the finding of the lovers of the art-gallery together once more, in
+Josie and Cornish; and at other times Antonia's agitation after our
+escape from shipwreck recurred to me in contrast with her smiling
+self-possession while the boat was drifting and filling; but mostly I
+thought of nothing, dreamed of nothing, but trust companies, additions,
+bonds and mortgages.
+
+Mr. Barr-Smith returned to London soon, giving a parting luncheon in his
+rooms, where wine flowed freely, and toasts of many colors were pushed
+into the atmosphere. There was one to the President and the Queen,
+proposed by the host and drunk in bumpers, and others to Mr. Barr-Smith,
+his brother, and the members of the "Syndicate." The enthusiasm grew
+steadily in intensity as the affair progressed. Finally Mr. Cecil
+solemnly proposed "The American Woman." In offering this toast, he said,
+he was taking long odds, as it was a sport for which he hadn't had the
+least training; but he couldn't forego the pleasure of paying a tribute
+where tribute was due. The ladies of America needed no encomiums from
+him, and yet he was sure that he should give no offense by saying that
+they were of a type unknown in history. They were up to anything, you
+know, in the way of intellectuality, and he was sure that in a certain
+queenly, blonde way they were--
+
+"Hear, hear!" said his brother, and burst into a laugh in which we all
+joined, while Cecil went on talking, in an uproar which drowned his
+words, though one could see that he was trying to explain something, and
+growing very hot in the process.
+
+Pearson announced that their train would soon arrive, and we all went
+down to see them off. Barr-Smith assured us at parting that the
+tram-road transaction might be considered settled. He believed, too,
+that his clients might come into the cement project. We were all the
+more hopeful of this, for the knowledge that he carried somewhere in
+his luggage a bond for a deed to a considerable interest in the cement
+lands. Things were coming on beautifully; and it seemed as if Elkins and
+Cornish, working together, were invincible.
+
+We still lived at the hotel, but our architect, "little Ed. Smith, who
+lived over on the Hayes place" when we were boys, and who was once at
+Garden City with Jim, was busy with plans for a mansion which we were to
+build in the new Lynhurst Park Addition the next spring. Mr. Elkins was
+preparing to erect a splendid house in the same neighborhood.
+
+"Can I afford it?" said I, in discussing estimates.
+
+"Afford it!" he replied, turning on me in astonishment. "My dear boy,
+don't you see we are up against a situation that calls on us to bluff to
+the limit, or lay down? In such a case, luxury becomes a duty, and
+lavishness the truest economy. Not to spend is to go broke. Lay your
+Poor Richard on the shelf, and put a weight on him. Stimulate the outgo,
+and the income'll take care of itself. A thousand spent is five figures
+to the good. No, while we've as many boom-irons in the fire as we're
+heating now, to be modest is to be lost."
+
+"Perhaps," said I, "you may be right, and no doubt are. We'll talk it
+over again some time. And your remark about irons in the fire brings up
+another matter which bothers me. It's something unusual when we don't
+open up a set of books for some new corporation, during the working day.
+Aren't we getting too many?"
+
+"Do you remember Mule Jones, who lived down near Hickory Grove?" said
+he, after a long pause. "Well, you know, in our old neighborhood, the
+mule was regarded with a mixture of contempt, suspicion, and fear, the
+folks not understanding him very well, and being especially uninformed
+as to his merits. Therefore, Mule Jones, who dealt in mules, bought,
+sold, and broke 'em, was a man of mark, and identified in name with his
+trade, as most people used to be before our time. I was down there one
+Sunday, and asked him how he managed to break the brutes. 'It's easy,'
+said he, 'when you know how. I never hook up less'n six of 'em at a
+time. Then they sort o' neutralize one another. Some on 'em'll be
+r'arin' an' pitchin', an' some tryin' to run; but they'll be enough of
+'em down an' a-draggin' all the time, to keep the enthusiastic ones kind
+o' suppressed, and give me the castin' vote. It's the only right way to
+git the bulge on mules.' Whenever you get to worrying about our various
+companies, think of the Mule Jones system and be calm."
+
+"I'm a little shy of being ruled by one case, even though so exactly in
+point," said I.
+
+"Well, it's all right," he continued, "and about these houses. Why, we'd
+have to build them, even if we preferred to live in tents. Put the cost
+in the advertising account of Lynhurst Park Addition, if it worries you.
+Let me ask you, now, as a reasonable man, how can we expect the rest of
+the world to come out here and spring themselves for humble dwellings
+with stationary washtubs, conservatories, and _porte cochères_, if we
+ourselves haven't any more confidence in the deal than to put up Jim
+Crow wickiups costing not more than ten or fifteen thousand dollars
+apiece? That addition has got to be the Nob Hill of Lattimore. Nothing
+in the 'poor but honest' line will do for Lynhurst; and we've got to set
+the pace. When you see my modest bachelor quarters going up, you'll
+cease to think of yours in the light of an extravagance. By next fall
+you'll be infested with money, anyhow, and that house will be the least
+of your troubles."
+
+Alice and I made up our minds that Jim was right, and went on with our
+plans on a scale which sometimes brought back the Aladdin idea to my
+mind, accustomed as I was to rural simplicity. But Alice,
+notwithstanding that she was the daughter of a country physician of not
+very lucrative practice, rose to the occasion, and spent money with a
+spontaneous largeness of execution which revealed a genius hitherto
+unsuspected by either of us. Jim was thoroughly delighted with it.
+
+"The Republic," he argued, "cannot be in any real danger when the modest
+middle classes produce characters of such strength in meeting great
+emergencies!"
+
+Jim was at his best this summer. He revelled in the work of filling the
+morning paper with scare-heads detailing our operations. He enjoyed
+being It, he said. Cornish, after the first few days, during which, in
+spite of inside information as to his history, I felt that he would make
+good the predictions of the _Herald_, ceased to be, in my mind, anything
+more than I was--a trusted aide of Jim, the general. Both men went
+rather frequently out to the Trescott farm--Jim with the bluff freedom
+of a brother, Cornish with his rather ceremonious deference. I
+distrusted the dark Sir John where women were concerned, noting how they
+seemed charmed by him; but I could not see that he had made any headway
+in regaining Josie's regard, though I had a lurking feeling that he
+meant to do so. I saw at times in his eyes the old look which I
+remembered so well.
+
+Josie, more than ever this season, was earning her father's commendation
+as his "right-hand man." She insisted on driving the four horses which
+drew the binder in the harvest. In the haying she operated the
+horse-rake, and helped man the hay-fork in filling the barns. She grew
+as tanned as if she had spent the time at the seashore or on the links;
+and with every month she added to her charm. The scarlet of her lips,
+the ruddy luxuriance of her hair, the arrowy straightness of her
+carriage, the pulsing health which beamed from her eye, and dyed cheek
+and neck, made their appeal to the women, even.
+
+"How sweet she is!" said Alice, as she came to greet us one day when we
+drove to the farm, and waited for her to come to us. "How sweet she is,
+Albert!"
+
+Her father came up, and explained to us that he didn't ask any of his
+women folks to do any work except what there was in the house. He was
+able to hire the outdoors work done, but Josie he couldn't keep out of
+the fields.
+
+"Why, pa," said she, "don't you see you would spoil my chances of
+marrying a fairy prince? They absolutely never come into the house; and
+my straw hat is the only really becoming thing I've got to wear!"
+
+"Don't give a dum if yeh never marry," said Bill. "Hain't seen the man
+yit that was good enough fer yeh, from my standpoint."
+
+Bill's reputation was pretty well known to me by this time. He had been
+for years a successful breeder and shipper of live-stock, in which
+vocation he had become well-to-do. On his farm he was forceful and
+efficient, treading his fields like an admiral his quarter-deck. About
+town he was given to talking horses and cattle with the groups which
+frequented the stables and blacksmith-shops, and sometimes grew a little
+noisy and boisterous with them. Whenever her father went with a shipment
+of cattle to Chicago or other market, Josie went too, taking a regular
+passenger train in time to be waiting when Bill's stock train arrived;
+and after the beeves were disposed of, Bill became her escort to opera
+and art-gallery; on such a visit I had seen her at the Stock Yards. She
+was fond of her father; but this alone did not explain her constant
+attendance upon him. I soon came to understand that his prompt return
+from the city, in good condition, was apt to be dependent upon her
+influence. It was one of those cases of weakness, associated with
+strength, the real mystery of which does not often occur to us because
+they are so common.
+
+He came into our office one day with a tremor in his hand and a hunted
+look in his eye. He took a chair at my invitation, but rose at once,
+went to the door, and looked up and down the street, as if for pursuers.
+I saw Captain Tolliver across the street, and Bill's air of excitement
+was explained. I was relieved, for at first I had thought him
+intoxicated.
+
+"What's the matter, Bill?" said I, after he had looked at me earnestly,
+almost pantingly, for a few moments. "You look nervous."
+
+"They're after me," he answered in repressed tones, "to sell; and I'll
+be blasted if I know what to do! Wha' d'ye' 'spose they're offerin' me
+for my land?"
+
+"The fact is, Bill," said I, "that I know all about it. I'm interested
+in the deal, somewhat."
+
+"Then you know they've bid right around a thousand dollars an acre?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "or at least that they intended to offer that."
+
+"An' you're one o' the company," he queried, "that's doin' it?"
+
+"Yes," I admitted.
+
+"Wal," said he, "I'm kinder sorry you're in it, becuz I've about
+concluded to sell; an' it seems to me that any concern that buys at that
+figger is a-goin' to bust, sure. W'y, I bought that land fer two dollars
+and a haff an acre. But, see here, now; I 'xpect you know your business,
+an' see some way of gittin' out in the deal, 'r you wouldn't pay that.
+But if I sell, I've got to have help with my folks."
+
+"Ah," said I, scenting the usual obstacle in such cases, "Mrs. Trescott
+a little unwilling to sign the deeds?"
+
+"No," answered he, "strange as it may seem, ma's kinder stuck on comin'
+to town to live. How she'll feel after she's tried it fer a month 'r so,
+with no chickens 'r turkeys 'r milk to look after, I'm dubious; but jest
+now she seems to be all right."
+
+"Well, what's the matter then?" said I.
+
+"Wal, it's Josie, to tell the truth," said he. "She's sort o' hangin'
+back. An' it's for her sake that I want to make the deal! I've told her
+an' told her that there's no dum sense in raisin' corn on
+thousand-dollar land; but it's no use, so fur; an' here's the only
+chanst I'll ever hev, mebbe, a-slippin' by. She ortn't to live her life
+out on a farm, educated as she is. W'y, did you ever hear how she's been
+educated?"
+
+I told him that in a general way I knew, but not in detail.
+
+"W'l, I want yeh to know all about it, so's yeh c'n see this movin'
+business as it is," said he. "You know I was allus a rough cuss. Herded
+cattle over there by yer father's south place, an' never went to school.
+Ma, Josie's ma, y' know, kep' the Greenwood school, an' crossed the
+prairie there where I was a-herdin', an' I used to look at her mighty
+longin' as she went by, when the cattle happened to be clost along the
+track, which they right often done. You know how them things go. An'
+fin'ly one morning a blue racer chased her, as the little whelps will,
+an' got his dummed little teeth fastened in her dress, an' she
+a-hyperin' around haff crazy, and a-screamin' every jump, so's't I hed
+to just grab her, an' hold her till I could get the blasted snake
+off,--harmless, y' know, but got hooked teeth, an' not a lick o'
+sense,--an' he kinder quirled around my arm, an' I nacherally tore him
+to ribbins a-gittin' of him off. An' then she sort o' dropped off, an'
+when she come to, I was a-rubbin' her hands an' temples. Wa'n't that a
+funny interduction?"
+
+"It's very interesting," said I; "go on."
+
+"W'l you remember ol' Doc Maxfield?" said Bill, well started on a
+reminiscence. "Wal, he come along, an' said it was the worst case of
+collapse, whatever that means, that he ever see--her lips an' hands an'
+chin all a-tremblin', an' flighty as a loon. Wal, after that I used to
+take her around some, an' her folks objected becuz I was ignorant, an'
+she learnt me some things, an' bein' strong an' a good dancer an' purty
+good-lookin' she kind o' forgot about my failin's, an' we was married.
+Her folks said she'd throwed herself away; but I could buy an' sell the
+hull set of 'em now!"
+
+This seemed conclusive as to the merits of the case, and I told him as
+much.
+
+"W'l Josie was born an' growed up," continued Bill, "an' it's her I
+started to tell about, wa'n't it? She was allus a cute little thing, an'
+early she got this art business in her head. She'd read about fellers
+that had got to be great by paintin' an' carvin', an' it made her wild
+to do the same thing. Wa'n't there a feller that pulled hair outer the
+cat to paint Injuns with? Yes, I thought they was; I allus thought they
+could paint theirselves good enough; but that story an' some others she
+read an' read when she was a little gal, an' she was allus a-paintin'
+an' makin' things with clay. She took a prize at the county fair when
+she was fourteen, with a picter of Washin'ton crossin' the
+Delaware--three dollars, by gum! An' then we hed to give her lessons;
+an' they wasn't any one thet knew anything around here, she said, an'
+she went to Chicago. An' I went in to visit her when she hedn't ben
+there more'n six weeks, on an excursion one convention time, an' I found
+her all tore up, a good deal as her ma was with the blue racer,--I don't
+think she's ever ben the same light-hearted little gal sence,--an' from
+there I took her to New York; an' there she fell in with a nice woman
+that was awful good to her, an' they went to Europe, an' it cost a heap.
+An' you may've noticed thet Josie knows a pile more'n the other women
+here?"
+
+I admitted that this had occurred to me.
+
+"W'l, she was allus apt to take her head with her," said Bill, "but this
+travelin' has fixed her like a hoss thet's ben druv in Chicago: nothin'
+feazes her, street-cars, brass bands, circuses, overhead trains--it's
+all the same to her, she's seen 'em all. Sometimes I git the notion that
+she'd enjoy things more if she hadn't seen so dum many of 'em an' so
+much better ones, y' know! Wal, after she'd ben over there a long time,
+she wrote she was a-comin' home; an' we was tickled to death. Only I was
+surprised by her writin' that she wanted us to take all them old picters
+of hern, and put 'em out of sight! An' if you'll b'lieve it, she won't
+talk picters nor make any sence she got back--only, jest after she got
+back, she said she didn't see any use o' her goin' on dobbin' good
+canvas up with good paint, an' makin' nothin' but poor picters; an' she
+cried some.... I thought it was sing'lar that this art business that she
+thought was the only thing thet'd ever make her happy was the only thing
+I ever see her cry about."
+
+"It's the way," said I, "with a great many of our cherished hopes."
+
+"W'l, anyhow, you can see thet it's the wrong thing to put as much time
+an' money into fixin' a child up f'r a different kind o' life as we hev,
+an' then keep her on a farm out here. An' thet's why I want you to help
+this sale through, an' bring influence to bear on her. I give up; I'm
+all in."
+
+To me Bill seemed entirely in the right. The new era made it absurd for
+the Trescotts to use their land longer as a farm. Lattimore was changing
+daily. The streets were gashed with trenches for gas- and water-mains;
+piled-up materials for curbing, paving, office buildings, new hotels,
+and all sorts of erections made locomotion a peril; but we were happy.
+
+The water company was organized in our office, the gas and
+electric-light company in Cornish's; but every spout led into the same
+bin.
+
+Mr. Hinckley had induced some country dealers who owned a line of local
+grain-houses to remove to Lattimore and put up a huge terminal elevator
+for the handling of their trade. Captain Tolliver had been for a long
+time working upon a project for developing a great water-power, by
+tunneling across a bend in the river, and utilizing the fall. The
+building of the elevator attracted the attention of a company of
+Rochester millers, and almost before we knew it their forces had been
+added to ours, and the tunnel was begun, with the certainty that a
+two-thousand-barrel mill would be ready to grind the wheat from the
+elevator as soon as the flume began carrying water. This tunnel cut
+through an isthmus between the Brushy Creek valley and the river, and
+brought to bear on our turbines the head from a ten-mile loop of shoals
+and riffles. It opened into the gorge near the southern edge of Lynhurst
+Park, and crossed the Trescott farm. So it was that Bill awoke one day
+to the fact that his farm was coveted by divers people, who saw in his
+fields and feed-yards desirable sites for railway tracks, mills,
+factories, and the cottages of a manufacturing suburb. This it was that
+had put the Captain, like a blood-hound, on his trial, to the end that
+he was run to earth in my office, and made his appeal for help in
+managing Josie.
+
+"There she comes now," said he. "Labor with her, won't yeh?"
+
+"Bring her with us to the hotel," said I, "to take dinner. If my wife
+and Elkins can't fix the thing, no one can."
+
+So we five dined together, and after dinner discussed the Trescott
+crisis. Bill put the case, with all a veteran dealer's logic, in its
+financial aspects.
+
+"But we don't want to be rich," said Josie.
+
+"What've we ben actin' all these years like we have for, then?" inquired
+Bill. "Seem's if I'd been lab'rin' under a mistake f'r some time past.
+When your ma an' me was a-roughin' it out there in the old log-house,
+an' she a-lookin' out at the Feb'uary stars through the holes in the
+roof, a-holdin' you, a little baby in bed, we reckoned we was a-doin' of
+it to sort o' better ourselves in a property way. Wouldn't you
+'a'thought so, Jim?"
+
+"Well," said Mr. Elkins, with an air of judicial perpension, "if you had
+asked me about it, I should have said that, if you wanted to stay poor,
+you could have held your own better by staying in Pleasant Valley
+Township as a renter. This was no place to come to if you wanted to
+conserve your poverty."
+
+"But, pa, we're not adapted to town life and towns," urged Josie. "I'm
+not, and you are not, and as for mamma, she'll never be contented. Oh,
+Mr. Elkins, why did you come out here, making us all fortunes which we
+haven't earned, and upsetting everything?"
+
+"Now, don't blame me, Josie," Jim protested. "You ought to consider the
+fallacy of the _post hoc, propter hoc_ argument. But to return to the
+point under discussion. If you could stay there, a rural Amaryllis,
+sporting in Arcadian shades, having seen you doing it once or twice, I
+couldn't argue against it, it's so charmingly becoming."
+
+"If that were all the argument--" began Josie.
+
+"It's the most important one--to my mind," said Jim, resuming the
+discussion, "and you fail on that point; for you can't live in that way
+long. If you don't sell, the Development Company will condemn grounds
+for railway tracks and switch-yards; you'll find your fields and
+meadows all shot to pieces; and your house will be surrounded by
+warehouses, elevators, and factories. Your larks and bobolinks will be
+scared off by engines and smokestacks, and your flowers spoiled with
+soot. Don't parley with fate, but cash in and put your winnings in some
+safe investment."
+
+"Once I thought I couldn't stay on the old farm a day longer; but I feel
+otherwise now! What business has this 'progress' of yours to interfere?"
+
+"It pushes you out of the nest," answered Jim. "It gives you the chance
+of your lives. You can come out into Lynhurst Park Addition, and build
+your house near the Barslow and Elkins dwellings. We've got about
+everything there--city water, gas, electric light, sewers, steam heat
+from the traction plant, beautiful view, lots on an established grade--"
+
+"Don't, don't!" said Josie. "It sounds like the advertisements in the
+_Herald_."
+
+"Well, I was just leading up to a statement of what we lack," continued
+Jim. "It's the artistic atmosphere. We need a dash of the culture of
+Paris and Dresden and the place where they have the dinky little
+windmills which look so nice on cream-pitchers, but wouldn't do for one
+of our farmers a minute. Come out and supply our lack. You owe it to the
+great cause of the amelioration of local savagery; and in view of my
+declaration of discipleship, and the effective way in which I have
+always upheld the standard of our barbarism, I claim that you owe it to
+me."
+
+"I've abandoned the brush."
+
+"Take it up again."
+
+"I have made a vow."
+
+"Break it!"
+
+She refused to yield, but was clearly yielding. Alice and I showed
+Trescott, on a plat, the place for his new home. He was quite taken with
+the idea, and said that ma would certainly be tickled with it.
+
+Josie sat apart with Mr. Elkins, in earnest converse, for a long time.
+She looked frequently at her father, Jim constantly at her. Mr. Cornish
+dropped in for a little while, and joined us in presenting the case for
+removal. While he was there the girl seemed constrained, and not quite
+so fully at her ease; and I could detect, I thought, the old tendency to
+scrutinize his face furtively. When he went away, she turned to Jim more
+intimately than before, and almost promised that she would become his
+neighbor in Lynhurst. After the Trescotts' carriage had come and taken
+them away, Jim told us that it was for her father, and the temptations
+of idleness in the town, that Miss Trescott feared.
+
+"This fairy-godmother business," said he, "ain't what the prospectus
+might lead one to expect. It has its drawbacks. Bill is going to cash in
+all right, and I think it's for the best; but, Al, we've got to take
+care of the old man, and see that he doesn't go up in the air."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+A Sitting or Two in the Game with the World and Destiny.
+
+
+Our game at Lattimore was one of those absorbing ones in which the
+sunlight of next morning sifts through the blinds before the players are
+aware that midnight is past. Day by day, deal by deal, it went on, card
+followed card in fateful fall upon the table, and we who sat in, and
+played the World and Destiny with so pitifully small a pile of chips at
+the outset, saw the World and Destiny losing to us, until our hands
+could scarcely hold, our eyes hardly estimate, the high-piled stacks of
+counters which were ours.
+
+We saw the yellowing groves and brown fields of our first autumn; we
+heard the long-drawn, wavering, mounting, falling, persistent howl of
+the thresher among the settings of hive-shaped stacks; we saw the loads
+of red and yellow corn at the corn-cribs,--as men at the board of the
+green cloth hear the striking of the hours. And we heeded them as
+little. The cries of southing wild-fowl heralded the snow; winter came
+for an hour or so, and melted into spring; and some of us looked up from
+our hands for a moment, to note the fact that it was the anniversary of
+that aguish day when three of us had first taken our seats at the table:
+and before we knew it, the dust and heat and summer clouds, like that
+which lightened over the fete in the park, admonished us that we were
+far into our second year. And still shuffle, cut, deal, trick, and hand
+followed each other, and with draw and bluff and showdown we played the
+World and Destiny, and playing won, and saw our stacks of chips grow
+higher and higher, as our great and absorbing game went on.
+
+Moreover, while we won and won, nobody seemed to lose. Josie spoke that
+night of fortunes which people had not earned; but surely they were
+created somehow; and as the universe, when the divine fiat had formed
+the world, was richer, rather than poorer, so, we felt, must these
+values so magically growing into our fortunes be good, rather than evil,
+and honestly ours, so far as we might be able to secure them to
+ourselves. I said as much to Jim one day, at which he smiled, and
+remarked that if we got to monkeying with the ethics of the trade,
+piracy would soon be a ruined business.
+
+"Better, far better keep the lookout sweeping the horizon for sails,"
+said he, "and when one appears, serve out the rum and gunpowder to the
+crew, and stand by to lower away the boats for a boarding-party!"
+
+I am afraid I have given the impression that our life at this time was
+solely given over to cupidity and sordidness; and that idea I may not be
+able to remove. Yet I must try to do so. We were in the game to win; but
+our winnings, present and prospective, were not in wealth only. To
+surmount obstacles; to drive difficulties before us like scattering
+sparrows; to see a town marching before us into cityhood; to feel
+ourselves the forces working through human masses so mightily that, for
+hundreds of miles about us, social and industrial factors were compelled
+to readjust themselves with reference to us; to be masters; to
+create--all these things went into our beings in thrilling and dizzying
+pulsations of a pleasure which was not ignoble.
+
+For instance, let us take the building of the Lattimore & Great Western
+Railway. Before Mr. Elkins went to Lattimore this line had been surveyed
+by the coöperation of Mr. Hinckley, Mr. Ballard, the president of the
+opposition bank, and some others. It was felt that there was little real
+competition among the railways centering there, and the L. & G.W. was
+designed as a hint to them of a Lattimore-built connection with the
+Halliday system, then a free-lance in the transportation field, and
+ready to make rates in an independent and competitive way. The Angus
+Falls extension brought this system in, but too late to do the good
+expected; for Mr. Halliday, in his dealings with us, convinced us of the
+truth of the rumors that he had brought the other roads to terms, and
+was a free-lance no longer. Month by month the need of real competition
+in our carrying trade grew upon us. Rates accorded to other cities on
+our commercial fighting line we could not get, in spite of the most
+persistent efforts. In the offices of presidents and general managers,
+in St. Louis, Chicago, St. Paul and Minneapolis, Kansas City, Omaha and
+New York we were received by suave princes of the highways, who each
+blandly assured us that his road looked with especial favor upon our
+town, and that our representations should receive the most solicitous
+attention. But the word of promise was ever broken to the hope.
+
+After one of these embassies the syndicate held a meeting in Cornish's
+elegant offices on the ground-floor of the new "Hotel Elkins" building.
+We sent Giddings away to prepare an optimistic news-story for
+to-morrow's _Herald_, and an editorial leader based upon it, both of
+which had been formulated among us before going into executive session
+on the state of the nation. Hinckley, who had an admirable power of
+seeing the crux of a situation, was making a rather grave prognosis for
+us.
+
+"If we can't get rates which will let us into a broader territory, we
+may as well prepare for reverses," said he. "Foreign cement comes almost
+to our doors, in competition with ours. Wheat and live-stock go from
+within twenty miles to points five hundred miles away. Who is furnishing
+the brick and stone for the new Fairchild court-house and the big
+normal-school buildings at Angus Falls? Not our quarries and kilns, but
+others five times as far away. If you want to figure out the reason of
+this, you will find it in nothing else in the world but the freight
+rates."
+
+"It's a confounded outrage," said Cornish. "Can't we get help from the
+legislature?"
+
+"I understand that some action is expected next winter," said I;
+"Senator Conley had in here the other day a bill he has drawn; and it
+seems to me we should send a strong lobby down at the proper time in
+support of it."
+
+"Ye-e-s," drawled Jim, "but I believe in still stronger measures; and
+rather than bother with the legislature, owned as it is by the roads,
+I'd favor writing cuss-words on the water-tanks, or going up the track a
+piece and makin' faces at one of their confounded whistling-posts or
+cattle-guards--or something real drastic like that!"
+
+Cornish, galled, as was I, by this irony, flushed crimson, and rose.
+
+"The situation," said he, "instead of being a serious one, as I have
+believed, seems merely funny. This conference may as well end. Having
+taken on things here under the impression that this was to be a city; it
+seems that we are to stay a village. It occurs to me that it's time to
+stand from under! Good-evening!"
+
+"Wait!" said Hinckley. "Don't go, Cornish; it isn't as bad as that!"
+
+As he spoke he laid his hand on Cornish's arm, and I saw that he was
+pale. He felt more keenly than did I the danger of division and strife
+among us.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Hinckley," said Jim, as Cornish sat down again, "it _is_ as
+bad as that! This thing amounts to a crisis. For one, I don't propose to
+adopt the 'stand-from-under' tactics. They make an unnecessary disaster
+as certain as death; but if we all stand under and lift, we can win more
+than we've ever thought. In the legislature they hold the cards and can
+beat us. It's no use fooling with that unless we seek martyrs' deaths in
+the bankruptcy courts. But there is a way to meet these men, and that is
+by bringing to our aid their greatest rival."
+
+"Do you mean--" said Hinckley.
+
+"I mean Avery Pendleton and the Pendleton system," replied Elkins. "I
+mean that we've got to meet them on their own ground. Pendleton won't
+declare war on the Halliday combination by building in here, but there
+is no reason why we can't build to him, and that's what I propose to do.
+We'll take the L. & G. W., swing it over to the east from the Elk Fork
+up, make a junction with Pendleton's Pacific Division, and, in one week
+after we get trains running, we'll have the freight combine here shot so
+full of holes that it won't hold corn-stalks! That's what we'll do:
+we'll do a little rate-making ourselves; and we'll make this danger the
+best thing that ever happened to us. Do you see?"
+
+Cornish saw, sooner than any one else. As he spoke, Jim had unrolled a
+map, and pointed out the places as he referred to them, like a general,
+as he was, outlining the plan of a battle. He began this speech in that
+quiet, convincing way of his, only a little elevated above the sarcasm
+of a moment before. As he went on, his voice deepened, his eye gleamed,
+and in spite of his colloquialisms, which we could not notice, his words
+began to thrill us like potent oratory. We felt all that ecstasy of
+buoyant and auspicious rebellion which animated Hotspur the night he
+could have plucked bright honor from the pale-faced moon. At Jim's
+final question, Cornish, forgetting his pique, sprang to the map, swept
+his finger along the line Elkins had described, followed the main ribs
+of Pendleton's great gridiron, on which the fat of half a dozen states
+lay frying, on to terminals on lakes and rivers; and as he turned his
+black eyes upon us, we knew from the fire in them that he saw.
+
+"By heavens!" he cried, "you've hit it, Elkins! And it can be done! From
+to-night, no more paper railroads for us; it must be grading-gangs and
+ties, and steel rails!"
+
+So, also, there was good fighting when Cornish wired from New York for
+Elkins and me to come to his aid in placing our Lattimore & Great
+Western bonds. Of course, we never expected to build this railway with
+our own funds. For two reasons, at least: it is bad form to do eccentric
+things, and we lacked a million or two of having the money. The line
+with buildings and rolling stock would cost, say, twelve thousand
+dollars per mile. Before it could be built we must find some one who
+would agree to take its bonds for at least that sum. As no one would pay
+quite par for bonds of a new and independent road, we must add, say,
+three thousand dollars per mile for discount. Moreover, while the
+building of the line was undertaken from motives of self-preservation,
+there seemed to be no good reason why we should not organize a
+construction company to do the actual work of building, and that at a
+profit. That this profit might be assured, something like three thousand
+dollars per mile more must go in. Of course, whoever placed the bonds
+would be asked to guarantee the interest for two or three years; hence,
+with two thousand more for that and good measure, we made up our
+proposed issue of twenty thousand dollars per mile of first-mortgage
+bonds, to dispose of which "the former member of the firm of Lusch,
+Carskaddan & Mayer" was revisiting the glimpses of Wall Street, and
+testing the strength of that mighty influence which the _Herald_ had
+attributed to him.
+
+"You've just _got_ to win," said Giddings, who was admitted to the
+secret of Cornish's embassy, "not only because Lattimore and all the
+citizens thereof will be squashed in the event of your slipping up; but,
+what is of much more importance, the _Herald_ will be laid in a lie
+about your Wall Street pull. Remember that when foes surround thee!"
+
+When we joined him, Cornish admitted that he was fairly well
+"surrounded." He had failed to secure the aid of Barr-Smith's friends,
+who said that, with the street-car system and the cement works, they had
+quite eggs enough in the Lattimore basket for their present purposes. In
+fact, he had felt out to blind ends nearly all the promising burrows
+supposedly leading to the strong boxes of the investing public, of which
+he had told us. He accounted for this lack of success on the very
+natural theory that the Halliday combination had found out about his
+mission, and was fighting him through its influence with the banks and
+trust companies. So he had done at last what Jim had advised him to do
+at first--secured an appointment with the mighty Mr. Pendleton; and,
+somewhat humbled by unsuccess, had telegraphed for us to come on and
+help in presenting the thing to that magnate.
+
+Whom, being fenced off by all sorts of guards, messengers, clerks, and
+secretaries, we saw after a pilgrimage through a maze of offices. He had
+not the usual features which make up an imposing appearance; but command
+flowed from him, and authority covered him as with a mantle. We knew
+that he possessed and exerted the power to send prosperity in this
+channel, or inject adversity into that, as a gardener directs water
+through his trenches, and this knowledge impressed us. He was rather
+thin; but not so much so as his sharp, high nose, his deep-set eyes, and
+his bony chin at first sight seemed to indicate. Whenever he spoke, his
+nostrils dilated, and his gray eyes said more than his lips uttered. He
+was courteous, with a sort of condensed courtesy--the shorthand of
+ceremoniousness. He turned full upon us from his desk as we entered,
+rose and met us as his clerk introduced us.
+
+"Mr. Barslow, I'm happy to meet you; and you also, Mr. Cornish. Mr.
+Wilson 'phoned about your enterprise just now. Mr. Elkins," as he took
+Jim's hand, "I have heard of you also. Be seated, gentlemen. I have
+given you a time appropriation of thirty minutes. I hope you will excuse
+me for mentioning that at the end of that period my time will be no
+longer my own. Kindly explain what it is you desire of me, and why you
+think that I can have any interest in your project."
+
+And, with a judgment trained in the valuing of men, he turned to Jim as
+our leader.
+
+"If our enterprise doesn't commend itself to your judgment in twenty
+minutes," said Jim, with a little smile, and in much the same tone that
+he would have used in discussing a cigar, "there'll be no need of
+wasting the other ten; for it's perfectly plain. I'll expedite matters
+by skipping what we desire, for the most part, and telling you why we
+think the Pendleton system ought to desire the same thing. Our plan, in
+a word, is to build a hundred and fifty miles of line, and from it
+deliver two full train-loads of through east-bound freight per day to
+your road, and take from you a like amount of west-bound tonnage, not
+one pound of which can be routed over your lines at present."
+
+Mr. Pendleton smiled.
+
+"A very interesting proposition, Mr. Elkins," said he; "my business is
+railroading, and I am always glad to perfect myself in the knowledge of
+it. Make it plain just how this can be done, and I shall consider my
+half-hour well expended."
+
+Then began the fateful conversation out of which grew the building of
+the Lattimore & Great Western Railway. Jim walked to the map which
+covered one wall of the room, and dropped statement after statement into
+the mind of Pendleton like round, compact bullets of fact. It was the
+best piece of expository art imaginable. Every foot of the road was
+described as to gradients, curves, cuts, fills, trestles, bridges, and
+local traffic. Then he began with Lattimore; and we who breathed in
+nothing but knowledge of that city and its resources were given new
+light as to its shipments and possibilities of growth. He showed how the
+products of our factories, the grain from our elevators, the live-stock
+from our yards, and the meats from our packing-houses could be sent
+streaming over the new road and the lines of Pendleton.
+
+Then he turned to our Commercial Club, and showed that the merchants,
+both wholesale and retail, of Lattimore were welded together in its
+membership, in such wise that their merchandise might be routed from the
+great cities over the proposed track. He piled argument on argument. He
+hammered down objection after objection before they could be suggested.
+He met Mr. Pendleton in the domain of railroad construction and
+management, and showed himself familiar with the relative values of
+Pendleton's own lines.
+
+"Your Pacific Division," said he, "must have disappointed some of the
+expectations with which it was built. Its earnings cannot, in view of
+the distance they fall below those of your other lines, be quite
+satisfactory to you. Give us the traffic agreement we ask; and your next
+report after we have finished our line will show the Pacific Division
+doing more than its share in the great showing of revenue per mile which
+the Pendleton system always makes. I see that my twenty minutes is about
+up. I hope I have made good our promises as to showing cause for coming
+to you with our project."
+
+Mr. Pendleton, after a moment's thought, said: "Have you made an
+engagement for lunch?"
+
+We had not. He turned to the telephone, and called for a number.
+
+"Is this Mr. Wade's office?... Yes, if you please.... Is this Mr.
+Wade?... This is Pendleton talking to you.... Yes, Pendleton.... There
+are some gentlemen in my office, Mr. Wade, whom I want you to meet, and
+I should be glad if you could join us at lunch at the club.... Well,
+can't you call that off, now?... Say, at one-thirty.... Yes.... Very
+kind of you.... Thanks! Good-by."
+
+Having made his arrangements with Mr. Wade, he hung up the telephone,
+and pushed an electric button. A young man from an outer office
+responded.
+
+"Tell Mr. Moore," said Pendleton to him, "that he will have to see the
+gentlemen who will call at twelve--on that lake terminal matter--he will
+understand. And see that I am not disturbed until after lunch.... And,
+say, Frank! See if Mr. Adams can come in here--at once, please."
+
+Mr. Adams, who turned out to be some sort of a freight expert, came in,
+and the rest of the interview was a bombardment of questions, in which
+we all took turns as targets. When we went to lunch we felt that Mr.
+Pendleton had possessed himself of all we knew about our enterprise, and
+filed the information away in some vast pigeon-hole case with his own
+great stock of knowledge.
+
+We met Mr. Wade over an elaborate lunch. He said, as he shook hands with
+Cornish, that he believed they had met somewhere, to which Cornish bowed
+a frigid assent. Mr. Wade was the head of The Allen G. Wade Trust
+Company, and seemed in a semi-comatose condition, save when cakes,
+wine, or securities were under discussion. He addressed me as "Mr.
+Corning," and called Cornish "Atkins," and once in a while opened his
+mouth to address Jim by name, but halted, with a distressful look, at
+the realization of the fact that he could not remember names enough to
+go around. He made an appointment with me for the party for the next
+morning.
+
+"If you will come to my office before you call on Mr. Wade," said Mr.
+Pendleton, "I will have a memorandum prepared of what we will do with
+you in the way of a traffic agreement: it may be of some use in
+determining the desirability of your bonds. I'm very glad to have met
+you, gentlemen. When Lattimore gets into my world--by which I mean our
+system and connections--I hope to visit the little city which has so
+strong a business community as to be able to send out such a committee
+as yourselves; good-afternoon!"
+
+"Well," said I, as we went toward our hotel, "this looks like progress,
+doesn't it?"
+
+"I sha'n't feel dead sure," said Jim, "until the money is in bank,
+subject to the check of the construction company. But doesn't it look
+juicy, right now! Why, boys, with that traffic agreement we can get the
+money anywhere--on the prairie, out at sea--anywhere under the shining
+sun! They can't beat us. What do you say, Cornish? Will, your friend
+Wade jar loose, or shall we have to seek further?"
+
+"He'll snap at your bonds now," said Cornish, rather glumly, I thought,
+considering the circumstances; "but don't call him a friend of mine!
+Why, damn him, not a week ago he turned me out of his office, saying
+that he didn't want to look into any more Western railway schemes! And
+now he says he believes we've met before!"
+
+This seemed to strike Mr. Elkins as the best practical joke he had ever
+heard of; and Cornish suggested that for a man to stop in Homeric
+laughter on Broadway might be pleasant for him, but was embarrassing to
+his companions. By this time Cornish himself was better-natured. Jim
+took charge of our movements, and commanded us to a dinner with him, in
+the nature of a celebration, with a theater-party afterward.
+
+"Let us," said he, "hear the chimes at midnight, or even after, if we
+get buncoed doing it. Who cares if we wind up in the police court! We've
+done the deed; we've made our bluff good with Halliday and his gang of
+highwaymen; and I feel like taking the limit off, if it lifts the roof!
+Al, hold your hand over my mouth or I shall yell!"
+
+"Come into my parlor, and yell for me," said Cornish, "and you may do my
+turn in police court, too. Come in, and behave yourself!"
+
+I began writing a telegram to my wife, apprising her of our good luck.
+The women in our circle knew our hopes, ambitions, and troubles, as the
+court ladies know the politics of the realm, and there were anxious
+hearts in Lattimore.
+
+"I'm going down to the telegraph-office with this," said I; "can I take
+yours, too?"
+
+When I handed the messages in, the man who received them insisted on my
+reading them over with him to make sure of correct transmission. There
+was one to Mr. Hinckley, one to Mr. Ballard, and two to Miss Josephine
+Trescott. One ran thus, "Success seems assured. Rejoice with me. J. B.
+C." The other was as follows: "In game between Railway Giants and
+Country Jakes here to-day, visiting team wins. Score, 9 to 0. Barslow,
+catcher, disabled. Crick in neck looking at high buildings. Have Mrs. B.
+prepare porous plaster for Saturday next. Sell Halliday stock short, and
+buy L. & G. W. And in name all things good and holy don't tell Giddings!
+J. R. E."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+In which we Learn Something of Railroads, and Attend Some Remarkable
+Christenings.
+
+
+And so, in due time, it came to pass that, our Aladdin having rubbed the
+magic ring with which his Genius had endowed him, there came, out of
+some thunderous and smoky realm, peopled with swart kobolds, and lit by
+the white fire of gushing cupolas and dazzling billets, a train of
+carriages, drawn by a tamed volcanic demon, on a wonderful way of steel,
+armed strongly to deliver us from the Castle Perilous in which we were
+besieged by the Giants. The way was marvelously prepared by theodolite
+and level, by tented camps of men driving, with shouts and cracking
+whips, straining teams in circling mazes, about dark pits on grassy
+hillsides, and building long, straight banks of earth across swales; by
+huge machines with iron fists thrusting trunks of trees into the earth;
+by mighty creatures spinning great steel cobwebs over streams.
+
+At last, a short branch of steel shot off from Pendleton's Pacific
+Division, grew daily longer and longer, pushed across the level
+earth-banks, the rows of driven tree-trunks, and the spun steel cobwebs,
+through the dark pits, nearer and nearer to Lattimore, and at last
+entered the beleaguered city, amid rejoicings of the populace. Most of
+whom knew but vaguely the facts of either siege or deliverance; but who
+shouted, and tossed their caps, and blew the horns and beat the drums,
+because the _Herald_ in a double-leaded editorial assured them that this
+was _the_ event for which Lattimore had waited to be raised to complete
+parity with her envious rivals. Furthermore, Captain Tolliver,
+magniloquently enthusiastic, took charge of the cheering, artillery, and
+band-music, and made a tumultuous success of it.
+
+"He told me," said Giddings, "that when the people of the North can be
+brought for a moment into that subjection which is proper for the
+masses, 'they make devilish good troops, suh, devilish good troops!'"
+
+And so it also happened that Mr. Elkins found himself the president of a
+real railway, with all the perquisites that go therewith. Among these
+being the power to establish town-sites and give them names. The former
+function was exercised according to the principles usually governing
+town-site companies, and with ends purely financial in view. The latter
+was elevated to the dignity of a ceremony. The rails were scarcely laid,
+when President Elkins invited a choice company to go with him over the
+line and attend the christening of the stations. He convinced the rest
+of us of the wisdom of this, by showing us that it would awaken local
+interest along the line, and prepare the way for the auction sales of
+lots the next week.
+
+"It's advertising of the choicest kind," said he. "Giddings will sow it
+far and wide in the press dispatches, and it will attract attention; and
+attention is what we want. We'll start early, run to the station
+Pendleton has called Elkins Junction, at the end of the line, lie over
+for a couple of hours, and come home, bestowing names as we come. Help
+me select the party, and we'll consider it settled."
+
+As the train was to be a light one, consisting of a buffet-car and a
+parlor-car, the party could not be very large. The officers of the road,
+Mr. Adams, who was general traffic manager, and selected by the
+bondholders, and Mr. Kittrick, the general manager, who was found in
+Kansas City by Jim, went down first as a matter of course. Captain
+Tolliver and his wife, the Trescotts, the Hinckleys, with Mr. Cornish
+and Giddings, were put down by Jim; and to these we added the
+influential new people, the Alexanders, who came with the cement-works,
+of which Mr. Alexander was president, Mr. Densmore, who controlled the
+largest of the elevators, and Mr. Walling, whose mill was the first to
+utilize the waters of our power-tunnel, and who was the visible
+representative of millions made in the flouring trade. Smith, our
+architect, was included, as was Cecil Barr-Smith, sent out by his
+brother to be superintendent of the street-railway, and looking upon the
+thing in the light of an exile, comforted by the beautiful native
+princess Antonia. We left Macdonald out, because he always called the
+young man "Smith," and could not be brought to forget an early
+impression that he and the architect were brothers; besides, said Jim,
+Macdonald was afraid of the cars as he was of the hyphen, being most of
+the time on the range with the cattle belonging to himself and Hinckley.
+Which, being interpreted, meant that Mr. Macdonald would not care to go.
+
+Mr. Ballard was invited on account of his early connection with the L. &
+G. W. project, although he was holding himself more and more aloof from
+the new movements, and held forth often upon the value of conservatism.
+Miss Addison, who was related to the Lattimore family, was commissioned
+to invite the old General, who very unexpectedly consented. His son
+Will, as solicitor for the railway company and one of the directors, was
+to be one of us if he could. These with their wives and some invited
+guests from near-by towns made up the party.
+
+We were well acquainted with each other by this time, so that it was
+quite like a family party or a gathering of old friends. Captain
+Tolliver was austerely polite to General Lattimore, whose refusal to
+concern himself with the question as to whether our city grew to a
+hundred thousand or shrunk to five he accounted for on the ground that a
+man who had led hired ruffians to trample out the liberty of a brave
+people must be morally warped.
+
+The General came, tall and spare as ever, wearing his beautiful white
+moustache and imperial as a Frenchman would wear the cross of the Legion
+of Honor. He was quite unable to sympathize with our lot-selling, our
+plenitude of corporations, or our feverish pushing of "developments."
+But the building of the railway attracted him. He looked back at the
+new-made track as we flew along; and his eyes flashed under the bushy
+white brows. He sat near Josie, and held her in conversation much of the
+outward trip; but Jim he failed to appreciate, and treated
+indifferently.
+
+"He is History incarnate," said Mrs. Tolliver, "and cannot rejoice in
+the passing of so much that is a part of himself."
+
+Giddings said that this was probably true; and under the circumstances
+he couldn't blame him. He, Giddings, would feel a little sore to see
+things which were a part of _himself_ going out of date. It was a
+natural feeling. Whereupon Mrs. Tolliver addressed her remarks very
+pointedly elsewhere; and Antonia Hinckley privately admonished Giddings
+not to be mean; and Giddings sought the buffet and smoked. Here I joined
+him, and over our cigars he confessed to me that life to him was an
+increasing burden, rapidly becoming intolerable.
+
+We had noticed, I informed him, an occasional note of gloom in his
+editorials. This ought not to be, now that the real danger to our
+interests seemed to be over, and we were going forward so wonderfully.
+To which he replied that with the gauds of worldly success he had no
+concern. The editorials I criticised were joyous and ebulliently
+hilarious compared with those which might be expected in the future. If
+we could find some blithesome ass to pay him for the _Herald_ enough
+money to take him out of our scrambled Bedlam of a town, bring the idiot
+on, and he (Giddings) would arrange things so we could have our touting
+done as we liked it!
+
+Now the _Herald_ had become a very valuable property, and of all men
+Giddings had the least reason to speak despitefully of Lattimore; and
+his frame of mind was a mystery to me, until I remembered that there was
+supposed to be something amiss between him and Laura Addison. Craftily
+leading the conversation to the point where confidences were easy, I was
+rewarded by a passionate disclosure on his part, which would have
+amounted to an outburst, had it not been restrained by the presence of
+Cornish, Hinckley, and Trescott at the other end of the compartment.
+
+"Oh, pshaw!" said I, "you've no cause for despair. On your own showing,
+there's every reason for you to hope."
+
+"You don't know the situation, Barslow," he insisted, shaking his head
+gloomily, "and there's no use in trying to tell you. She's too exalted
+in her ideals ever to accept me. She's told me things about the
+qualities she must have in the one who should be nearest to her that
+just simply shut me out; and I haven't called since. Oh, I tell you,
+Barslow, sometimes I feel as if I could--Yes, sir, it'll be accepted as
+the best piece of railroad building for years!"
+
+I was surprised at the sudden transition, until I saw that our fellow
+passengers were crowding to our end of the car in response to the
+conductor's announcement that we were coming into Elkins Junction. I
+made a note of Giddings's state of mind, as the subject of a conference
+with Jim. The _Herald_ was of too much importance to us for this to be
+neglected. The disciple of Iago must in some way be restored to his
+normal view of things. I could not help smiling at the vast difference
+between his view of Laura and mine. I, wrongly perhaps, thought her
+affectedly pietistic, with ideals likely to be yielding in spirit if the
+letter were preserved.
+
+Elkins Junction was a platform, a depot, an eating-house, and a Y; and
+it was nothing else.
+
+"We've come up here," said Jim, "to show you probably the smallest town
+in the state, and the only one in the world named after me. We wanted to
+show you the whole line, and Mr. Schwartz felt as if he'd prefer to turn
+his engine around for the return trip. The last two towns we came
+through, and hence the first two going back, are old places. The third
+station is a new town, and Conductor Corcoran will take us back there,
+where we'll unveil the name of the station, and permit the people to
+know where they live. While we're doing the sponsorial act, lunch will
+be prepared and ready for us to discuss during the next run."
+
+On the way back there was a stir of suppressed excitement among the
+passengers.
+
+"It's about this name," said Miss Addison to her seat-mate. "The town is
+on the shore of Mirror Lake, and they say it will be an important one,
+and a summer resort; and no one knows what the name is to be but Mr.
+Elkins."
+
+"Really, a very odd affair!" said Miss Allen, of Fairchild, Antonia's
+college friend. "It makes a social function of the naming of a town!"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Elkins, "and it is one of the really enduring things we
+can do. Long after the memory of every one here is departed, these
+villages will still bear the names we give them to-day. If there's any
+truth in the belief that some people have, that names have an influence
+for good or evil, the naming of the towns may be important as building
+the railroad."
+
+I was sitting with Antonia. Miss Allen and Captain Tolliver were with
+us, our faces turned toward one another. General Lattimore, with Josie
+and her father, was on the opposite side of the car. Most of the company
+were sitting or standing near, and the conversation was quite general.
+
+"Oh, it's like a romance!" half whispered Antonia to us. "I envy you men
+who build roads and make towns. Look at Mr. Elkins, Sadie, as he stands
+there! He is master of everything; to me he seems as great as Napoleon!"
+
+She neither blushed nor sought to conceal from us her adoration for Jim.
+It was the day of his triumph, and a fitting time to acknowledge his
+kinghood; and her admission that she thought him the greatest, the most
+excellent of men did not surprise me. Yet, because he was older than
+she, and had never put himself in a really loverlike attitude toward
+her, I thought it was simply an exalted girlish regard, and not at all
+what we usually understand by an affair of the heart. Moreover, at that
+time such praise as she gave him would not have been thought
+extravagant in almost any social gathering in Lattimore. Let me confess
+that to me it does not now seem so ... Cecil Barr-Smith walked out and
+stood on the platform.
+
+General Lattimore was apparently thinking of the features of the
+situation which had struck Antonia as romantic.
+
+"You young men," said he, "are among the last of the city-builders and
+road-makers. My generation did these things differently. We went out
+with arms in our hands, and hewed out spaces in savagery for homes. You
+don't seem to see it; but you are straining every nerve merely to shift
+people from many places to one, and there to exploit them. You wind your
+coils about an inert mass, you set the dynamo of your power of
+organization at work, and the inert mass becomes a great magnet. People
+come flying to it from the four quarters of the earth, and the
+first-comers levy tribute upon them, as the price of standing-room on
+the magnet!"
+
+"I nevah hea'd the real merit and strength and safety of ouah
+real-estate propositions bettah stated, suh!" said Captain Tolliver
+ecstatically.
+
+Jim stood looking at the General with sober regard.
+
+"Go on, General," said he.
+
+"Not only that," went on the General, "but people begin forestalling the
+standing-room, so as to make it scarcer. They gamble on the power of the
+magnet, and the length of time it will draw. They buy to-day and sell
+to-morrow; or cast up what they imagine they might sell for, and call
+the increase profit. Then comes the time when the magnet ceases to draw,
+or the forestallers, having, in their greed, grasped more than they can
+keep, offer too much for the failing market, and all at once the thing
+stops, and the dervish-dance ends in coma, in cold forms and still
+hands, in misery and extinction!"
+
+There was a pause, during which the old soldier sat looking out of the
+widow, no one else finding aught to say. Elkins remained standing, and
+once or twice gave that little movement of the head which precedes
+speech, but said nothing. Cornish smiled sardonically. Josie looked
+anxiously at Jim, apprehensive as to how he would take it. At last it
+was Ballard the conservative who broke silence.
+
+"I hope, General," said he, "that our little movement won't develop into
+a dervish-dance. Anyhow, you will join in our congratulations upon the
+completion of the railroad. You know you once did some railroad-building
+yourself, down there in Tennessee--I know, for I was there. And I've
+always taken an interest in track-laying ever since."
+
+"So have I," said the General; "that's what brought me out to-day."
+
+"Oh, tell us about it," said Josie, evidently pleased at the change of
+subject; "tell us about it, please."
+
+"No, no!" he protested, "you may read it better in the histories,
+written by young fellows who know more about it than we who were there.
+You'll find, when you read it, that it was something like this: Grant's
+host was over around Chattanooga, starving for want of means for
+carrying in provisions. We were marching eastward to join him, when a
+message came telling us to stop at Decatur and rebuild the railroad to
+Nashville. So, without a thought that there was such a thing as an
+impossibility, we stopped--we seven or eight thousand common Americans,
+volunteer soldiers, picked at random from the legions of heroes who
+saved liberty to the world--and without an engineering corps, without
+tools or implements, with nothing except what any like number of our
+soldiers had, we stopped and built the road. That is all. The rails had
+been heated, and wound about trees and stumps. The cross-ties were
+burned to heat the rails. The cars had been destroyed by fire, and their
+warped ironwork thrown into ditches. The engines lay in scrap-heaps at
+the bottoms of ravines and rivers. The bridges were gone. Out of the
+chaos to which the structure had been resolved, there was nothing left
+but the road-bed.
+
+"When I think of what we did, I know that with liberty and intelligence
+men with their naked hands could, in short space, re-create the
+destroyed wealth of the world. We made tools of the scraps of iron and
+steel we found along the line. We felled trees. We impressed little
+sawmills and sawed the logs into timbers for bridges and cars. Out of
+the battle-scarred and march-worn ranks came creative and constructive
+genius in such profusion as to astound us, who thought we knew them so
+well. Those blue-coated fellows, enlisted and serving as food for
+powder, and used to destruction, rejoiced in once more feeling the
+thrill there is in making things."
+
+"Out of the ranks came millers, and ground the grain the foragers
+brought in; came woodmen, and cut the trees; came sawyers, and sawed the
+lumber. We asked for blacksmiths; and they stepped from the ranks, and
+made their own tools and the tools of the machinists. We called for
+machinists; and out of the ranks they stepped, and rebuilt the engines,
+and made the cars ready for the carpenters. When we wanted carpenters,
+out of the same ranks of common soldiers they walked, and made the cars.
+From the ranks came other men, who took the twisted rails, unwound them
+from the stumps and unsnarled them from one another, as women unwind
+yarn, and laid them down fit to carry our trains. And in forty days our
+message went back to Grant that we had 'stopped and built the road,' and
+that our engines were even then drawing supplies to his hungry army.
+Such was the incomparable army which was commanded by that silent genius
+of war; and to have been one of such an army is to have lived!"
+
+The withered old hand trembled, as the great past surged back through
+his mind. We all sat in silence; and I looked at Captain Tolliver,
+doubtful as to how he would take the old Union general's speech. What
+the Captain's history had been none of us knew, except that he was a
+Southerner. When the general ceased, Tolliver was sitting still, with no
+indication of being conscious of anything special in the conversation,
+except that a red spot burned in each dark cheek. As the necessity for
+speech grew with the lengthening silence, he rose and faced General
+Lattimore.
+
+"Suh," said he, "puhmit a man who was with the victohs of Manasses; who
+chahged with mo' sand than sense at Franklin; and who cried like a child
+aftah Nashville, and isn't ashamed of it, by gad! to offah his hand, and
+to say that he agrees with you, suh, in youah tribute to the soldiers of
+the wah, and honahs you, suh, as a fohmah foe, and a worthy one, and he
+hopes, a future friend!"
+
+Somehow, the Captain's swelling phrases, his sonorous allusions to
+himself in the third person, had for the moment ceased to be ridiculous.
+The environment fitted the expression. The general grasped his hand and
+shook it. Then Ballard claimed the right, as one of the survivors of
+Franklin, to a share in the reunion, and they at once removed the strain
+which had fallen upon us with the General's first speech, by relating
+stories and fraternizing soldierwise, until Conductor Corcoran called in
+at the door, "Mystery Number One! All out for the christening!"
+
+As we gathered on the platform, we saw that the signboard on the
+station-building, for the name of the town, had been put up, but was
+veiled by a banner draped over it. Tents were pitched near, in which
+people lived waiting for the lot-auction, that they might buy sites for
+shops and homes. The waters of the lake shone through the trees a few
+rods away; and in imagination I could see the village of the future,
+sprinkled about over the beautiful shore. The future villagers gathered
+near the platform; and when Jim stepped forward to make the speech of
+the occasion, he had a considerable audience.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," said he, "our visit is for the purpose of
+showing the interest which the Lattimore & Great Western takes and will
+continue to take in the towns on its line, and to add a name to what, I
+notice, has already become a local habitation. In conferring that name,
+we are aware that the future citizens of the place have claims upon us.
+So one has been selected which, as time passes, will grow more and more
+pleasant to your ears; and one which the person bestowing it regards as
+an honor to the town as high as could be conferred in a name. No station
+on our lines could have greater claims upon our regard than the
+possession of this name. And now, gentlemen--"
+
+Mr. Elkins removed his hat, and we all followed his example. Some one
+pulled a cord, the banner fell away, and the name was revealed. It was
+"JOSEPHINE." The women looked at it, and turned their eyes on Josie, who
+blushed rosily, and shrank back behind her father, who burst into a loud
+laugh of unalloyed pleasure.
+
+"I propose three cheers for the town of Josephine," went on Mr. Elkins,
+"and for the lady for whom it is named!"
+
+They were real cheers--good hearty ones; followed by an address, in the
+name of the town, by a bright young man who pushed forward and with
+surprising volubility thanked President Elkins for his selection of the
+name, and closed with flowery compliments to the blushing Miss Trescott,
+whose identity Jim had disclosed by a bow. He was afterwards a thorn in
+our flesh in his practice as a personal-injury lawyer. At the time,
+however, we warmed to him, as under his leadership the dwellers in the
+tents and round about the waters of Mirror Lake all shook hands with Jim
+and Josie.
+
+Cornish stood with a saturnine smile on his face, and glared at some of
+the more pointed hits of the young lawyer. Cecil Barr-Smith beamed
+radiant pleasure, as he saw the evident linking in this public way of
+Jim's name and Josie's. Antonia stood close to Cecil's side, and chatted
+vivaciously to him--not with him; for her words seemed to have no
+correlation with his.
+
+"Quite like the going away of a bridal party!" said she with exaggerated
+gayety, and with a little spitefulness, I thought. "Has any one any
+rice?"
+
+"All aboard!" said Corcoran; and the joyful and triumphant party, with
+their outward intimacy and their inward warfare of passions and desires,
+rolled on toward "Mystery Number Two," which was duly christened
+"Cornish," and celebrated in champagne furnished by its godfather.
+
+"Don't you ever drink champagne?" said Cornish, as Josie declined to
+partake.
+
+"Never," said she.
+
+"What, _never_?" he went on, Pinaforically.
+
+"My God!" thought I, "the assurance of the man!" And the palm-encircled
+alcove at Auriccio's, as it was wont so often to do, came across my
+vision, and shut out everything but the Psyche face in its ruddy halo,
+speeding by me into the street, and the vexed young man in the faultless
+attire slowly following.
+
+Mystery Number Three was "Antonia," a lovely little place in embryo;
+"Barslow" came next, followed by "Giddings" and "Tolliver." We were
+tired of it when we reached "Hinckley," platted on a farm owned by
+Antonia's father, and where we ceased to perform the ceremony of
+unveiling. It was a memorable trip, ending with sunset and home. Captain
+Tolliver assisted General Lattimore to alight from the train, and they
+went arm in arm up to the old General's home.
+
+That night, according to his wont, Jim came to smoke with me in the late
+evening. "Let's take a car," said he, "and go up and have a look at the
+houses."
+
+These were our new mansions up in Lynhurst Park Addition, now in process
+of erection. In the moonlight we could see them dimly, and at a little
+distance they looked like masses of ruins--the second childhood of
+houses. A stranger could have seen, from the polished columns and the
+piles of carved stone, that they were to be expensive and probably
+beautiful structures.
+
+"What do you think of the General in the rôle of Cassandra?" asked Jim,
+as we sat in the skeleton room which was to be his library.
+
+"It struck me," said I, "as a particularly artistic bit of croaking!"
+
+"The Captain says frequently," said Jim, his cigar glowing like a
+variable star, "that opportunity knocks once. The General, I'm afraid,
+knocks all the time. But if it should turn out that he's right about
+the--the--dervish-dance ... it would be ... to put it mildly ... a
+horse on us, Al, wouldn't it?"
+
+I had no answer to this fanciful speech, and made none. Instead, I told
+him of Giddings's love-sickness.
+
+"The philosophy of Iago has broken down," said he, "and the boy is sort
+of short-circuited. Antonia can take him in hand, and turn him out full
+of confidence; and with that, I'll answer for the lady. That can be
+fixed easy, and ought to be. Let's walk back."
+
+"What was it he said?" he asked, as we parted. "'Coma, cold forms, still
+hands, and extinction.' Well, if the dervish-dance does wind up in that
+sort of thing, it's only a short-cut to the inevitable. Those are pretty
+houses up there; we'd have been astounded over them when we used to fish
+together on Beaver Creek;--but suppose they are?
+
+    "'They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
+    The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep;
+    And Bahram, that great hunter--the Wild Ass
+    Stamps o'er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep!'
+
+Good-night, Al!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Some Affairs of the Heart Considered in their Relation to Dollars and
+Cents.
+
+
+Antonia was sitting in a hammock. Josie and Alice were not far away
+watching Cecil Barr-Smith, who was wading into the lake to get
+water-lilies for them, contrary to the ordinances of the city of
+Lattimore in such cases made and provided. The six were dawdling away
+our time one fine Sunday in Lynhurst Park. I forgot to say Mr. Elkins
+and myself were discussing affairs of state with Miss Hinckley.
+
+"He's such a ninny," said Antonia.
+
+"Aren't all people when in his forlorn condition?" asked Jim.
+
+Antonia looked away at the clouds, and did not reply.
+
+"But if he had a morsel of the cynical philosophy he boasts of," said
+she, "he could see."
+
+"I don't know about that," said Jim lazily, looking over at the other
+group; "a woman can conceal her feelings in such a case pretty
+completely."
+
+"I don't know about that," echoed Antonia. "I wish I did; it would
+simplify things."
+
+"I believe," said I, "that it's a simple enough matter for you to solve
+and manage as it is."
+
+"But it's so absurd to bother with!" said she; "and what's the use?"
+
+"Doesn't it seem that way?" said Jim. "And yet you know we brought him
+here for a definite purpose; and in his present state he can't make
+good. Just read his editorial this morning: it would add gloom to the
+proceedings, read at a funeral. We want things whooped up, and he wants
+to whoop 'em; but long screeds on 'The Sacred Right of Self-destruction'
+hurt things, and bring the paper into disrepute, and crowd out
+optimistic matter that we desire. And as long as both families want the
+thing brought about, and there is good reason to think that Laura will
+not prove eternally immovable, I take it to be an important enough
+matter, from the standpoint of dollars and cents, for the exercise of
+our diplomacy."
+
+"Well, then," said Antonia, "get the people together on some social
+occasion, and we'll try."
+
+"I've thought," said Jim, "of having a house-warming--as soon as the
+weather gets so that the very name of the function won't keep folks
+away. My house is practically done, you know."
+
+"Just the thing," said Antonia. "There are cosy nooks and deep retreats
+enough to make it a sort of labyrinth for the ensnaring of our victims."
+
+"Isn't it a queer thing in language," said Jim, "that these retreats are
+the places where advances are made!"
+
+"Not when you consider," said Antonia, "that retreats follow repulses."
+
+"We ought to have the Captain and the General here, if this military
+conversation is to continue," said I. "And here comes Cecil. Stop before
+he comes, or we shall never get through with the explanation of the
+jokes."
+
+This remark elicited the laughter which the puns failed to provoke; for
+Cecil was color-blind in all things relating to the American joke. The
+humor of _Punch_ appealed to him, and the wit of Sterne and Dean Swift;
+but the funny column and the paragrapher's niche of our newspapers he
+regarded as purely pathological phenomena. I sometimes feel that Cecil
+was right about this. Can the mind which continues to be charmed by
+these paragraphic strainings be really sound?--but this is not a
+dissertation. Cecil reconciled himself to his position as the local
+exemplification of the traditional Englishman whose trains of ideas run
+on the freight schedule--and was one of the most popular fellows in
+Lattimore. He gloried in his slavery to Antonia, and seemed to glean
+hope from the most sterile circumstances.
+
+It was easy to hope, in Lattimore, then. It was not many days after our
+talk in the park before I noticed a change for the better in Giddings,
+even. Just before Jim's house-warming, he came to me with something like
+optimism in his appearance. I started to cheer him up, and went wrong.
+
+"I'm glad to see by your cheerful looks," said I, "that the philosophy
+of Iago--"
+
+"Say, now!" cried he, "don't remind me of that, for Heaven's sake!"
+
+"Why, certainly not," said I, "if you object."
+
+"I do object," said he most earnestly; "why, that damned-fool philosophy
+may have ruined my life, you know."
+
+"Of course I know what you mean," said I; "but I'm convinced, and so are
+all your friends, that if you fail, it'll be your own lack of nerve, and
+nothing else, that you'll owe the disaster to. You should--"
+
+"I should have refrained from trampling under foot the dearest ideals of
+the only girl-- However, I can't talk of these things to any one,
+Barslow. But I have some hope now. Antonia and Josie have both been very
+kind lately--and say, Barslow, I see now how little foundation there is
+for that old gag about the women hating each other!"
+
+"I've always felt," said I, anxious to draw him out so that I might see
+what the conspirators had been doing, "that there's nothing in _that_
+idea. But what has changed your view?"
+
+"Antonia, and Josie, and even your wife," said he, "have been keeping up
+a regular lobby in my behalf with Laura. They think they've got the deal
+plugged up now, so that she'll give me a show again, and--"
+
+"Why, surely," said I; "in my opinion, there never was any need for you
+to feel downcast."
+
+"Barslow," he said, with the air of a man who has endured to the limit,
+"you are a good fellow, but you make me tired when you talk like that.
+Why, four weeks ago I had no more show than a snowball in--in the
+crater of Vesuvius. But now I'm encouraged. These girls have been doing
+me good, as I just said, and I'm convinced that my series of editorials
+on 'The Influence of Christianity on Civilization,' in which I've given
+the Church the credit of being the whole thing, has helped some."
+
+"They ought to do good somewhere," said I, "they certainly haven't
+boomed Lattimore any."
+
+"Damn Lattimore!" said he bitterly. "When a man's very life--But see
+here, Barslow, I know you're not in earnest about this. And I'll be all
+right in a day or two, or I'll be eternally wrong. I'm going to make one
+final cast of the die. I may go down to bottomless perdition, or I may
+be caught up to the battlements of heaven; but such a mass of doubts and
+miseries as I've been lately, I'll no longer be! Pray for me, Barslow,
+pray for me!"
+
+This despairing condition of Giddings's was a sort of continuing
+sensation with us at that time. We discussed it quite freely in all its
+aspects, humorous and tragic. It was so unexpected a development in the
+young man's character, and, with all due respect to the discretion and
+resisting powers of Miss Addison, so entirely gratuitous and factitious.
+
+"He has ability as a writer," said the Captain; "but in such a mattah
+anybody but a fool ought to see that the thing to do is to chahge the
+intrenchments. I trust that I may not be misunde'stood when I say that,
+in my opinion, a good rattling chahge would not be a fo'lo'n hope!"
+
+"It bothers," said Jim; "and if it weren't for that, I'd feel
+conscience-stricken at doing anything to rob the idiot of a most
+delicious grief."
+
+The coolness of early autumn was in the air the night of Jim's
+house-warming. To describe his dwelling, in these days when fortunes are
+spent on the details of a stairway, and a king's ransom for the
+tapestries of a salon, all of which luxuries are spread before the eyes
+of the public in the columns of Sunday papers and magazines, would be to
+court an anticlimax. But this was before the multimillionaire had made
+the need for an augmentative of the word "luxury"; and Jim's house was
+noteworthy for its beauty: its cunningly wrought iron and wood; and
+columned halls and stairways; and wide-throated fireplaces, each a
+picture in tile, wood, and metalwork; and vistas like little fairylands
+through silken portières; and carven chairs and couches, reminiscent of
+royal palaces; and chambers where lovely color-schemes were worked out
+in rug, and bed, and canopy. There were decorations made by men whose
+names were known in London and Paris. From out-of-the-way places Mr.
+Elkins had brought collections of queer and interesting and pretty
+things which, all his life, he had been accumulating; and in his library
+were broad areas of well-worn book-backs. Somehow, people looked upon
+the Mr. Elkins who was master of all these as a more important man than
+the Elkins who had blown into the town on some chance breeze of
+speculation, and taken rooms at the Centropolis.
+
+It was all light and color, that night. Even the formal flower-beds of
+the grounds and the fountain spouting on the lawn were like scenery in
+the lime-light. Only, back in the shrubbery there were darker nooks in
+summer-houses and arbors for those who loved darkness rather than light,
+because their deeds, to the common mind, were likely to seem foolish. I
+remember thinking that if Mr. Giddings really wanted a chance to take
+the high dive of which he had spoken to me, the opportunity was before
+him.
+
+His Laura was there, her devotee-like expression striving with an
+exceedingly low-cut dress to sound the distinguishing note of her
+personality. Giddings was at the punch-bowl as on their arrival she
+swept past with the General. When he saw the nun-like glance over the
+swelling bosom, the poor stricken cynic blushed, turned pale, and
+wheeled to flee. But Cecil, as if following orders, arrested him and
+began plying him with the punch--from which Giddings seemed to draw
+courage: for I saw him, soon, gravitate to her whom he loved and so
+mysteriously dreaded.
+
+"It's a pe'fect jewel-case of a house!" said the Captain, as he moved
+with the trooping company through the mansion.
+
+"Indeed, indeed it is," said Mrs. Tolliver to Alice; "the jewel, whoever
+it may be, is to be envied."
+
+"I hope," said Jim to Josie, "that you agree with Mrs. Tolliver?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Josie, "but you attach far too much importance to my
+judgment. If it is any comfort to you, however, I want to
+praise--everything--unreservedly."
+
+"I won't know, for a while," said Jim, "whether it is to be my house
+only, or home in the full sense of the word."
+
+"One doesn't know about that, I fancy," said Cecil; "for a long time--"
+
+"I mean to know soon," said Jim.
+
+Josie was looking intently at the carving on one of the chairs, and paid
+no heed, though the remark seemed to be addressed to her.
+
+"What I mean, you know," said Cecil, "is that, no matter how well the
+house may be built and furnished, it's the associations, the history of
+the place, the things that are in the air, that makes 'Ome!"
+
+There was in the manner of his capitalizing the word as he uttered it,
+and in the unwonted elision of the H, that tribute to his dear island
+which the exiled Briton (even when soothed by the consolation offered by
+street-car systems to superintend, and rose-pink blondes to serve),
+always pays when he speaks of Home.
+
+"Associations," said Jim, "may be historical or prophetic. In the former
+case, we have to take them on trust; but as to those of the future, we
+are sure of them."
+
+"Yahs," said Cecil, using the locution which he always adopted when
+something subtle was said to him, "I dare say! I dare say!"
+
+"Well, then," Jim went on, "I have this matter of the atmosphere or
+associations under my own control."
+
+"Just so," said Cecil. "Clever conceit, Miss Trescott, isn't it, now?"
+
+But Miss Trescott had apparently heard nothing of Jim's speech, and
+begged pardon; and wouldn't they go and show her the bronzes in the
+library?
+
+"This mansion, General," said the Captain, "takes one back, suh, to the
+halcyon days of American history. I refeh, suh, to those times when the
+plantahs of the black prairie belt of Alabama lived like princes, in the
+heart of an enchanted empire!"
+
+"A very interesting period, Captain," said the General. "It is a pity
+that the industrial basis was one which could not endure!"
+
+"In the midst of fo'ests, suh," went on the Captain, "we had ouah
+mansions, not inferio' to this--each a little kingdom with its complete
+wo'ld of amusements, its cote, and its happy populace, goin' singin' to
+the wo'k which supported the estate!"
+
+"Yes," said the General, "I thought, when we were striking down that
+state of things, that we were doing a great thing for that populace. But
+I now see that I was only helping the black into a new slavery, the
+fruits of which we see here, around us, to-night."
+
+"I hahdly get youah meaning, suh--"
+
+"Well," said the General, looking about at the little audience. (It was
+in the smoking-room, and those present were smokers only.) "Well, now,
+take my case. I have some pretty valuable grounds down there where I
+live. When I got them, they were worthless. I could build as good a
+mansion as this or any of your ante-bellum Alabama houses for what I can
+get out of that little tract. What is that value? Merely the expression
+in terms of money of the power of excluding the rest of mankind from
+that little piece of ground. I make people give me the fruits of their
+labor, myself doing nothing. That's what builds this house and all these
+great houses, and breeds the luxury we are beginning to see around us;
+and the consciousness that this slavery exists, and is increasing, and
+bids fair to grow greatly, is what is making men crazy over these little
+spots of ground out here in the West! It is this slavery--"
+
+"Suh," exclaimed the Captain, rising and grasping the General's hand,
+"you have done me the favo' of making me wisah! I nevah saw so cleahly
+the divine decree which has fo'eo'dained us to this opulence. Nothing so
+satisfactory, suh, as a basis and reason foh investment, has been
+advanced in my hearing since I have been in the real-estate business!
+Let us wo'k this out a little mo' in detail, if you please, suh--"
+
+"Let us escape while there is yet time!" said Cornish; and we fled.
+
+After supper there was a cotillion. The spacious ballroom, with its roof
+so high that the lights up there were as stars, was a sight which could
+scarcely be reconciled with the village community which he had found and
+changed. The palms, and flowers, and lights which decorated the room;
+the orchestra's river of dance-music; the men, all in the black livery
+which--on the surface--marks the final conquest of civilization over
+barbarism; the beautiful gowns, the sparkling jewels, and the white
+shoulders and arms of the ladies--all these made me wonder if I had not
+been transported to some Mayfair or Newport, so pictorial, so
+decorative, so charged with art, it seemed to be. The young people,
+carrying on their courtships in these unfamiliar halls, their
+disappearances into the more remote and tenebrous outskirts of the
+assembly--all seemed to me to be taking place on the stage, or in some
+romance.
+
+I told Alice about this as we walked home--it was only across the
+street--to our own new house.
+
+"Don't tell any one about this feeling of yours," said she. "It betrays
+your provincialism, my dear. You should feel, for the first time in your
+life, perfectly at home. 'Armor, rusting on his walls, On the blood of
+Clifford calls,' you know."
+
+"Mine didn't hear the call," said I; "I'm probably the first of my race
+to wear this--But I enjoyed it."
+
+"Well, I am too full of something that took place to discuss the
+matter," said she, as we sat down at home. "I am perplexed. You know
+about Mr. Cornish and Josie, don't you?"
+
+She startled me, for I had never told her a word.
+
+"Know about them!" I cried, a little dramatically. "What do you mean?
+No, I don't!"
+
+"Why, what's the matter, Albert?" she queried. "I haven't charged them
+with midnight assassination, or anything like that! Only, it seems that
+he has been making love to her, for some time, in his cool and
+self-contained way. I've known it, and she's been perfectly conscious,
+that I knew; but never said anything to me of it, and seemed unwilling
+even to approach the subject. But to-night Cecil and I found her out in
+the canopied seat by the fountain, and I knew something was the matter,
+and sent Cecil away. Something told me that Mr. Cornish was concerned
+in it, and I asked her at once where he went.
+
+"'He is gone!' said she. 'I don't know where he is, and I don't care! I
+wish I might never see him any more!'
+
+"You may imagine my surprise. When a young woman uses such language
+about a man, it is a certainty that she isn't voicing her true feelings,
+or that it isn't a normal love affair. So I wormed out of her that he
+had made her an offer."
+
+"'Well,' said I, 'if, as I infer from your conversation, you have
+refused him, there's an end of the matter; and you need not worry about
+seeing him any more.'
+
+"'But,' said she, 'Alice, I haven't refused him!'
+
+"That took me aback a little," went on Alice, "for I had other plans for
+her; so I said: 'You haven't accepted the fellow, have you?'
+
+"'Oh, no, no!' said she, in a sort of quivery way, 'but what right have
+you to speak of him in that way?' And that is all I could get out of
+her. She was so unreasonable and disconnected in her talk, and the
+others came out, and I tell you what, Albert Barslow, that man Cornish
+will do evil yet, among us! I have always thought so!"
+
+"I don't see any ground for any such prediction," said I, "in anything
+you have told me. Her inability to make up her mind--"
+
+"Means that there's something wrong," said my wife dogmatically. "It
+means that he has some sinister influence over her, as he has over
+almost everybody, with those coal-black eyes of his and his satanic
+ways. And worse than all else, it means that he'll finally get her, in
+spite of herself!"
+
+"Pshaw!" said I.
+
+"Go away, Albert!" said she, "or we shall quarrel. Go back and find my
+fan--I left it on the mantel in the library. The house is lighted yet;
+and I was going to send you back anyhow. Kiss me, and go, please."
+
+I felt that if Alice had had in her memory my vision of the supper at
+Auriccio's, she would have been confirmed in her fears; but to me, in
+spite of the memory, they seemed absurd. My only apprehension was that
+she might be right as to the final outcome, to the wreck of Jim's hopes.
+I did not take the matter at all seriously, in fact. I think we men must
+usually have such an affair worked out to some conclusion, for weal or
+woe, before we regard it otherwise than lightly. That was the reason
+that Giddings's distraught condition was only a matter of laughter to
+all of us. And as something like this passed through my mind, Giddings
+himself collared me as I crossed the street.
+
+"Old man!" said he, "congratulate me! It's all right, Barslow, it's all
+right."
+
+"Up on the battlements, are you?" said I. "Well, I congratulate you,
+Giddings; and don't make such an ass of yourself, please, any more. I
+never noticed until this evening what a fine girl Laura is. You're
+really a very fortunate fellow indeed!"
+
+"You never noticed it!" said he with utter scorn. "Well, if--"
+
+"It's late," said I. "Come and see me in the morning! Good-night."
+
+I went in at the front door of the house. It stood wide open, as if the
+current of guests passing out had removed its tendency to swing shut. It
+seemed lonely now, inside, with all the decorations of the assembly
+still in place in the empty hall. I passed into the library, and found
+Jim sitting idly in a great leather chair. He seemed not to see me; or
+if he did, he paid no attention. I went to the mantel, picked up Alice's
+fan, and turned to Jim.
+
+"Sit down," said he.
+
+"Having a sort of 'oft in the stilly night' experience, Jim, or a case
+of William the Conqueror on the Field of Hastings?"
+
+"Yes," said he. "Something like that."
+
+"Well, your house-warming has been a success, Jim," said I, "though a
+fellow wouldn't think so to look at you. And the house is faultless. I
+envy you the house, but the ability to plan and furnish it still more. I
+didn't think it was in you, old man! Where did you learn it all?"
+
+"You may have the house, if you want it, Al," said he. "I don't think
+it's going to be of any use to me."
+
+"Why, Jim," said I, seeing that it was something more than a mere mood
+with him, "what is it? Has anything gone wrong?"
+
+"Nothing that I've any right to complain of," said he. "Of course, no
+man puts as much of his life into such a thing as I have into
+this--without thinking of more than living in it--alone. I've never had
+what you can really call a home--not since I was a little chap, when it
+was home wherever there were trees and mother. I've filled this--with
+those associations I spoke to Barr-Smith about--to-night--a little more
+than I seem to have had any warrant to do. I tried to make sure about
+the jewel for the jewel-case to-night, and it went wrong, Al; and that's
+all there is of it. I don't think I shall need the house, and if you
+like it you can have it."
+
+"Do you mean that Josie has refused you?" said I.
+
+"She didn't put it that way," said he, "but it amounts to that."
+
+"Nothing that isn't a refusal," said I, "ought to be accepted as such.
+What did she say?"
+
+"Nothing definite," he answered wearily, "only that it couldn't be
+'yes,' and when I urged her to make it 'yes' or 'no,' she refused to say
+either; and asked me to forget that I had ever said anything to her
+about the matter. There have been some things which--led me to hope--for
+a different answer; and I'm a good deal taken down, Al ... I wouldn't
+like to talk this way--with any one else."
+
+There seemed to be no reason for abandonment of hope, I urged upon him,
+and after a cigar or so I left him, evidently impressed with this view
+of the case, but nevertheless bitterly disappointed. It meant delay and
+danger to his hopes; and Jim was not a man to brook delay, or suffer
+danger to go unchallenged. I dared not tell him of Cornish's offer, and
+of its fate, so similar to his.
+
+"I wonder if it is coquetry on her part," thought I, as I went back with
+the fan. "I wonder if it will cause things to go wrong in our business
+affairs. I wonder if it is possible for her to be sincerely unable to
+make up her mind, or if there is anything in Alice's malign-influence
+theory. Anyhow, in the department of Cupid business certainly is picking
+up!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+Some Things which Happened in Our Halcyon Days.
+
+
+If there was any tension among us just after the house-warming, it was
+not noticeable. Mr. Cornish and Mr. Elkins seemed unaware of their
+rivalry. Had either of the two been successful, it might have made
+mischief; but as it was, neither felt that his rejection was more than
+temporary. Neither knew much of the other's suit, and both seemed full
+of hope and good spirits.
+
+Altogether, these were our halcyon days. It seemed to crew and captain a
+time for the putting off of armor, and the donning of the garlands of
+complacent respite from struggle. The work we had undertaken seemed
+accomplished--our village was a city. The great wheel we had set
+whirling went spinning on with power. Long ago we had ceased to treat
+the matter jocularly; and to regard our operations as applied psychology
+only, or as a piratical reunion, no longer occurred to us. There is such
+a thing, I believe, as self-hypnotism; but if we knew it, we made no
+application of our knowledge to our own condition. This great,
+scattered, ebullient town, grown from the drowsy Lattimore of a few
+years ago, must surely be, even now, what we had willed it to be: and
+therefore, could we not pause and take our ease?
+
+There was the General, of course. He, Jim said, "'knocked' so constantly
+as to be sort of ex-officio President of the Boiler-makers' Union," and
+talked of the inevitable collapse. But who ever heard of a city built by
+people of his way of thinking? And there was Josie Trescott, with her
+agreement on broad lines with the General, and her deprecation of the
+giving of fortunes to people who had not earned them; but Josie was only
+a woman, who, to be sure, knew more of most matters than the rest of us,
+but could not have any very valuable knowledge of the prospects for
+commercial prosperity.
+
+That we were in the midst of an era of the most wonderful commercial
+prosperity none denied. How could they? The streets, so lately bordered
+with low stores, hotels, and banks, were now craggy with tall office
+buildings and great hostelries, through which the darting elevators shot
+hurrying passengers. Those trees which made early twilight in the
+streets that night when Alice, Jim, and I first rode out to the Trescott
+farm were now mostly cut down to make room for "improvements."
+
+Brushy Creek gorge was no longer dark and cool, with its double sky-line
+of trees drowsing toward one another, like eyelashes, from the friendly
+cliffs. The cooing of the pigeons was gone forever. The muddied water
+from the great flume raced down through the ravine, turning many wheels,
+but nowhere gathering in any form or place which seemed good for trout.
+On either side stood shanties, and ramshackle buildings where such
+things as stonecutting and blacksmithing were done. Along the waterside
+ran the tracks of our Terminal and Belt Line System, on which trains of
+flat-cars always stood, engaged in the work of carrying away the cliffs,
+in which they were aided and abetted by giant derricks and the fiends of
+dynamite and nitro-glycerin. Limekilns burned all the time, turning the
+companionable gray ledges into something offensive and corrosive. One
+must now board a street-car, and ride away beyond Lynhurst Park before
+one could find the good and pure little Brushy Creek of yore.
+
+The dwellers in the houses which stood in their lawns of vivid green had
+gone away into the new "additions," to be in the fashion, and to escape
+from the smoke and clang of engine and factory. Their old houses were
+torn away, or converted, by new and incongruous extensions, into cheap
+boarding-houses. Only the Lattimore house kept faith with the past, and
+stood as of old, in its five acres of trees and grass, untouched of the
+fever for platting and subdivision, its very skirts drawn up from the
+asphalt by austere retaining-walls. And here went on the preparation for
+the time when Laura and Clifford were to stand up and declare their
+purposes and intentions with reference to each other. The first wedding
+this was to be, in all our close-knit circle.
+
+"I am glad," said I, "that they are all so sensible as not to permit
+rivalries to breed discord among us. It might be disastrous."
+
+"There is time," said Alice, "for that to develop yet."
+
+Not that everything happened as we wished. Indeed, some things gave us
+much anxiety. Bill Trescott, for instance, began at last to show signs
+of that going up in the air which Jim had said we must keep him from.
+Even Captain Tolliver complained that Bill's habits were getting bad:
+and he was the last person in the world to censure excess in the vices
+which he deemed gentlemanly. His own idea of morning, for instance, was
+that period of the day when the bad taste in the mouth so natural to a
+gentleman is removed by a stiff toddy, drunk just before prayers. He
+would, no doubt, have conceded to the inventor of the alphabet a higher
+place among men than that of the discoverer of the mint julep, had the
+matter been presented to him in concrete form; but would have qualified
+the admission by adding, with a seriousness incompatible with the
+average conception of a joke: "But the question is sutt'nly one not
+entiahly free from doubt, suh; not entiahly free from doubt!"
+
+However, the Captain had his standards, and prescribed for himself
+limits of time, place, and degree, to which he faithfully conformed. But
+he had been for a long time doing business under a sort of partnership
+arrangement with Bill, and their affairs had become very much
+interwoven. So he came to us, one day, in something like a panic, on
+finding that Bill had become a frequenter of one of the local
+bucket-shops, and had been making maudlin boasts of the profitable deals
+he had made.
+
+"This means, gentlemen," said the Captain, "that influences entiahly
+fo'eign to ouah investments hyah ah likely to bring a crash, which will
+not only wipe out Mr. Trescott, but, owin' to ouah association in the
+additions we have platted, cyah'y me down also! You can see that with
+sev'al hundred thousand dolla's of deferred payments on what we have
+sold, most of which have been rediscounted in the East by the G. B. T.,
+Mr. Trescott's condition becomes something of serious conce'n fo'
+you-all, as well as fo' me. Nothing else, I assuah you, gentlemen, could
+fo'ce me to call attention to a mattah so puahly pussonal as a diffe'nce
+between gentlemen in theiah standahds of inebriety! Nothing else,
+believe me!"
+
+By the G. B. T. the Captain meant the Grain Belt Trust Company, and
+anything which affected its solvency or welfare was, as he said, a
+matter of serious concern for all of us. In fact, at that very moment
+there were in Lattimore two officers of New England banks with whom we
+had placed a rather heavy line of G. B. T. securities, and who had made
+the trip for the purpose of looking us up. Suppose that they found out
+that the notes and mortgages of William S. Trescott & Co. really had
+back of them only some very desirable suburban additions, and the
+personal responsibility of a retired farmer, who was daily handing his
+money to board-of-trade gamblers, with whom he was getting an education
+in the great strides we are making in the matter of mixed drinks? This
+thought occurred to all of us at once.
+
+"Well," said Cornish, stating the point of agreement after the Captain's
+trouble had been fully discussed, "unfortunately 'the right to be a
+cussed fool is safe from all devices human,' and there doesn't seem to
+be any remedy."
+
+It all came, thought I, as Jim and I sat silent after Cornish and the
+Captain went out, from the fact that Bill's present condition in life
+gave those tendencies to which he had always been prone to yield, a
+chance for unrestricted growth. He ought to have staid with his steers.
+Cattle and corn were the only things in which he could take an interest
+sufficiently keen to keep him from drink. These habits of his were
+enacting the old story of the lop-eared rabbits in
+Australia--overrunning the country. Bill had been as sober a citizen as
+one could desire, as long as his house-building occupied his time; and
+he and Josie had worked together as companionably as they used to do in
+the hay and wheat. But now he was drifting away from her. Her father
+should have staid on the farm.
+
+"Do you know," said I, "that Giddings is making about as great a fool of
+himself as Bill?"
+
+"Yes," said Jim, "but that's because he's in a terrible state of mind
+about his marriage. If we can keep him from delirium tremens until after
+the wedding, he'll be all right. Some Italian brain-sharp has written up
+cases like his, and he'll be all right. But with Bill it's different....
+Do you remember our old Shep?"
+
+"No," I returned wonderingly, almost impatiently. "What about him?"
+
+"Well," he mused, "I've been picking up knowledge of men for a while
+along back; and I've come to prize more highly the personal history of
+dogs; and Shep was worth a biography for its own sake, to say nothing of
+the value of a typical case. He was a woolly collie, who would
+cheerfully have given up his life for the cows and sheep. Anything in
+his line, that a dog could grasp, Shep knew, and he was busier than a
+cranberry-merchant the year around, and the happiest thing on the farm.
+Then our folks moved to Mayville, and took him along. He wasn't fitted
+for town life at all. He'd lie on the front piazza, and search the
+street for cows and sheep, and when one came along he'd stick his sharp
+nose through the fence, and whine as if some one was whipping him. In
+less than six weeks he bit a baby; in two months he was the most
+depraved dog in Mayville, and in three ... he died."
+
+I had no answer for the apologue--not even for the self-condemnatory
+tone in which he told it. Presently he rose to go, and said that he
+would not be back.
+
+"Don't forget our date at the club this evening," said he, as he passed
+out. "Your style of diplomacy always seems to win with these down-East
+bankers. Your experience as rob-ee gives you the right handshake and the
+subscribed-and-sworn-to look that does their business for 'em every
+time. Good-by until then."
+
+Our club was the terminal bud of our growth, and was housed in a
+building of which we were enormously proud. It was managed by a steward
+imported from New York, whose salary was made large to harmonize with
+his manners--that being the only way in which the majority of our
+members felt equal to living up to them. So far as money could make a
+club, ours was of high rank. There were meat-cooks and pastry-cooks in
+incredible numbers, under the command of a French chef, who ruled the
+house committee with a rod of iron. We were all members as a matter of
+public duty. I have often wondered what the servants, brought from
+Eastern cities, thought of it all. To see Bill Trescott and Aleck
+Macdonald going in through the great door, noiselessly swung open for
+them by an attendant in livery, was a sight to be remembered. The chief
+ornament of the club was Cornish, who lived there.
+
+"I want to see Mr. Cornish," said I to the servant who took my overcoat,
+that evening.
+
+"Right this way, sir," said he. "Mr. Giddings is with him. He gave
+orders for you to be shown up."
+
+Cornish sat at a little round table on which there were some bottles and
+glasses. The tipple was evidently ale, and Mr. Giddings was standing
+opposite, lifting a glass in one hand and pointing at it with the other,
+in evident imitation of the attitude in which the late Mr. Gough loved
+to have himself pictured; but the sentiments of the two speakers were
+quite different.
+
+    "'Turn out more ale; turn up the light!'"
+
+Giddings glanced at the electric light-fixtures, and then looked about
+as if for a servant to turn them up.
+
+    "'I will not go to bed to-night!
+    For, of all foes that man should dread,
+    The first and worst one is a bed!
+    Friends I have had, both old and young;
+    Ale have we drunk, and songs we've sung.
+    Enough you know when this is said,
+    That, one and all, they died in bed!'"
+
+Here Giddings's voice broke with grief, and he stopped to drink the rest
+of the glassful, and went on:
+
+    "'In bed they died, and I'll not go
+    Where all my friends have perished so!
+    Go, ye who fain would buried be;
+    But not to-night a bed for me!'"
+
+"Do you often have these Horatian fits?" I inquired.
+
+"Base groveler!" said he, "if you can't rise to the level of the
+occasion, don't butt in."
+
+    "'For me to-night no bed prepare,
+    But set me out my oaken chair,
+    And bid me other guests beside
+    The ghosts that shall around me glide!'"
+
+"You will, of course," said Cornish, "permit us to withdraw for the
+purpose of having our conference with our Eastern friends? If I take
+your meaning, you'll not be alone."
+
+"Not by a jugful, I'll not be alone!" said Giddings, tossing off another
+glass:
+
+    "'In curling smoke-wreaths I shall see
+    A fair and gentle company.
+    Though silent all, fair revelers they,
+    Who leave you not till break of day!
+    Go, ye who would not daylight see;
+    But not to-night a bed for me!
+    For I've been born, and I've been wed,
+    And all man's troubles come of bed!'"
+
+Here Giddings sank down in his chair and began weeping.
+
+"The divinest attribute of poetry," said he, "is that of bringing tears.
+Let me weep awhile, fellows, and then I'll give you the last stanza.
+Last stanza's the best--"
+
+And in the midst of his critique he went to sleep, thereby breaking his
+rule adopted in "_Dum Vivemus Vigilemus_."
+
+"Is he this way often?" said I to Cornish, as we went down to meet Jim
+and the bankers.
+
+"Pretty often," said Cornish. "I don't know how I'd amuse my evenings if
+it weren't for Giddings. He's too far gone to-night, though, to be
+entertaining. Gets worse, I think, as the wedding-day approaches. Trying
+to drown his apprehensions, I suspect. Funny fellow, Giddings. But he's
+all right from noon to nine P.M."
+
+"I think we'll have to organize a dipsomaniacs' hospital for our crowd,"
+said I, "if things keep going on as they are tending now! I didn't think
+Giddings was so many kinds of an ass!"
+
+My complainings were cut short by our entrance into the presence of Mr.
+Elkins and the New England bankers. I asked to be excused from partaking
+of the refreshments which were served. I had seen and heard enough to
+spoil my appetite. I was agreeably surprised to find that their
+independent investigations of conditions in Lattimore had convinced them
+of the safety of their investments. Really, they said, were it not for
+the pleasure of meeting us here at our home, they should feel that the
+time and expense of looking us up were wasted. But, handling, as they
+did, the moneys of estates and numerous savings accounts, their
+customers were of a class in whom timidity and nervousness reach their
+maximum, and they were obliged to keep themselves in position to give
+assurances as to the safety of their investments from their personal
+investigations.
+
+Mr. Hinckley, who was with us, assured them that his life as a banker
+enabled him fully to realize the necessity of their carefulness, which
+we, for our own parts, were pleased to know existed. We were only too
+glad to exhibit our books to them, make a complete showing as to our
+condition generally, and even take them to see each individual piece of
+property covered by our paper. Mr. Hinckley went with them to their
+hotel, having proposed enough work in the way of investigation to keep
+them with us for several months. They were to leave on the evening of
+the next day.
+
+"But," said Jim, as we put on our overcoats to go home, "it shows our
+good will, you see."
+
+At that moment the steward, with an anxious look, asked Mr. Elkins for a
+word in private.
+
+"Ask Mr. Barslow if he will kindly step over here," I heard Jim say; and
+I joined them at once.
+
+"I was just saying, sir, to Mr. Elkins," said the steward, "that
+ordinarily I'd not think of mentioning such a thing as a gentleman's
+being indisposed but should see that he was cared for here. But Mr.
+Trescott being in such a state, I felt it was a case for his friends or
+the hospital. He's been--a--seeing things this afternoon; and while
+he's better now in that regard, his--"
+
+"Have a closed carriage brought at once," said Mr. Elkins. "Al, you'd
+better go up to the house, and let them know we're coming. I'll take him
+home!"
+
+I shrank from the meeting with Mrs. Trescott and Josie, more, I think,
+than if it had been Bill's death which I was to announce. As I
+approached the house, I got from it, somehow, the impression that it was
+a place of night-long watchfulness; and I was not surprised by the fact
+that before I had time to ring or knock at the door Mrs. Trescott
+herself opened it, with an expression on her face which spoke of long
+vigils, and of fear passing on to certainty. She peered past me for an
+expected Something on the street. Her leisure and its new habits had
+assimilated her in dress and make-up to the women of the wealthier sort
+in the city; but there was an immensity of trouble in the agonized eye
+and the pitiful droop of her mouth, which I should have rejoiced to see
+exchanged again for the ill-groomed exterior and the old fret of the
+farm. Her first question ignored all reference to the things leading to
+my being there, "in the dead vast and middle of the night," but went
+past me to the core of her trouble, as her eye had gone on from me to
+the street, in the search for the thing she dreaded.
+
+"Where is he, Mr. Barslow?" said she, in a hushing whisper; "where is
+he?"
+
+"He is a little sick," said I, "and Mr. Elkins is bringing him home. I
+came on to tell you." "Then he is not--" she went on, still in that
+hushed voice, and searching me with her gaze.
+
+"No, I assure you!" I answered. "He is in no immediate danger, even."
+
+Josie came quietly forward from the dusk of the room beyond, where I saw
+she had been listening, reminding me, in spite of the incongruity of the
+idea, of that time when she emerged from the obscurity of her garden,
+and stood at the foot of the windmill tower, leaning on her father's
+arm, her hands filled with petunias, the night we first visited the
+Trescott farm. And then my mind ran back to that other night when she
+had thrown herself into his arms and begged him to take her away; and he
+had said, "W'y, yes, little gal, of course I'll take yeh away, if yeh
+don't like it here!" I think that I, perhaps, was more nearly able than
+any one else in the world beside herself to gauge her grief at this long
+death in which she was losing him, and he himself.
+
+She took my hand, pressed it silently, and began caressing her mother
+and whispering to her things which I could not hear. Mrs. Trescott sat
+upon a sort of divan, shaking with terrible, soundless sobs, and
+clasping and unclasping her hands, but making no other gesture. I stood
+helpless at the hidden abyss of woe so suddenly uncovered before me and
+until this very moment screened by the conventions which keep our souls
+apart like prisoners in the cells in some great prison. These two women
+had been bearing this for a long time, and we, their nearest friends,
+had stood aloof from them. As I stood thinking of this, the
+carriage-wheels ground upon the pavement in the _porte cochère_; and a
+moment later Jim came in, his face graver than I had ever seen it. He
+sat down by Mrs. Trescott, and gently took one of her hands.
+
+"Dr. Aylesbury has given him a morphia injection," said he, "and he is
+sound asleep. The doctor thinks it best for us to carry him right to his
+room. There is a man here from the hospital, who will stay and nurse
+him; and the doctor came, too."
+
+Mrs. Trescott started up, saying that she must arrange his room. Soon
+the four of us had placed him in bed, where he lay, puffy and purple,
+with a sort of pasty pallor overspreading his face. His limbs
+occasionally jerked spasmodically; but otherwise he was still under the
+spell of the opiate. His wife, now that there was something definite to
+do, was self-possessed and efficient, taking the physician's
+instructions with ready apprehension. The fact that Bill had now assumed
+the character of a patient rather than that of a portent seemed to make
+the trouble, somehow, more normal and endurable. The wife and daughter
+insisted upon assuming the care of him, but assented to the nurse's
+remaining as a help in emergencies. It was nearing dawn when I took my
+leave. As I approached the door, I saw Jim and Josie in the hall, and
+heard him making some last tenders of aid and comfort before his
+departure. He put out his hand, and she clasped it in both of hers.
+
+"I want to thank you," said she, "for what you have done."
+
+"I have done nothing," he replied. "It is what I wish to do that I want
+you to think of. I do not know whether I shall ever be able to forgive
+myself--"
+
+"No, no!" said she. "You must not talk--you must not allow yourself to
+feel in that way. It is unjust--to yourself and to--me--for you to feel
+so!"
+
+I advanced to them, but she still stood looking into his face and
+holding his hand clasped in hers. There was something of appeal, of an
+effort to express more than the words said, in her look and attitude. He
+answered her regard by a gaze so pathetically wistful that she averted
+her face, pressed his hand, and turned to me.
+
+"Good-night to you both, and thank you both, a thousand times!" said
+she.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I wonder if old Shep's relations and friends," said Jim, as we stood
+under the arc light in front of my house, "ever came to forgive the
+people who took him away from his flocks and herds."
+
+"After what I've seen in the last few minutes," said I, "I haven't the
+least doubt of it."
+
+"Al," said he, "these be troublous times, but if I believed all that
+what you say implies, I'd go home happy, if not jolly. And I almost
+believe you're right."
+
+"Well," said I, assuming for once the rôle of the mentor, "I think that
+you are foolish to worry about it. We have enough actual, well-defined,
+surveyed and platted grief on our hands, without any mooning about
+hunting for the speculative variety. Go home, sleep, and bring down a
+clear brain for to-morrow's business."
+
+"To-day's," said he gaily. "Tear off yesterday's leaf from the calendar,
+Al. For, look! the morn, dressed as usual, 'walks o'er the dew of yon
+high eastern hill.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+Relating to the Disposition of the Captives.
+
+
+It was not later than the next day but one, that I met Giddings, alert,
+ingratiating, and natty as ever.
+
+"When am I to have the third stanza?" I inquired, "the one that's 'the
+best of all.'"
+
+This question he seemed to take as a rebuke; for he reddened, while he
+tried to laugh.
+
+"Barslow," said he, "there isn't any use in our discussing this thing.
+You couldn't understand it. A man like you, who can calculate to a hair
+just how far he is going and just where to turn back, and--Oh, damn!
+There's no use!"
+
+I sympathize with Giddings, at this present moment, in his despair of
+making people understand; for I doubt, sometimes, whether it is possible
+for me to make the reader understand the conditions with us in Lattimore
+at the time when poor Trescott lay there in his fine house, fighting for
+life, and for many things more important, and while the wedding
+preparations were going forward at the General's house.
+
+To the steady-going, stationary, passionless community these conditions
+approach the incomprehensible. No one seemed to doubt the city's future
+now. Sometimes the abnormal basis upon which our great new industries
+had been established struck the stranger with distrust, if he happened
+to have the insight to notice it; but the concerns _were there_ most
+undeniably, and had shifted population in their coming, and were turning
+out products for the markets of the world.
+
+That they had been evolved magically, and set in operation, not by any
+slow process of meeting a felt want, but for this sole purpose of
+shifting population, might be, and undoubtedly was, unusual; but given
+the natural facilities for carrying the business on, and how did this
+forced genesis adversely affect their prospects?
+
+I, for one, could see no reason for apprehension. Yet when the story of
+Trescott's maudlin plunging came to our ears, and the effect of his
+possible failure received consideration, or I thought of the business
+explosion which would follow any open breach between Jim and Cornish
+(though this seemed too remote for serious consideration), I began to
+ponder on the enormously complex system of credits we had built up.
+
+Besides the regular line of bonds and mortgages growing out of debts due
+us on our real-estate sales, and against which we had issued the
+debentures and the guaranteed rediscounts of the Grain Belt Trust
+Company, the factories, stock yards, terminals, street-car system, and
+most of our other properties were pretty heavily bonded. Some of them
+were temporarily unproductive, and funds had from time to time to be
+provided, from sources other than their own earnings, for the payment of
+their interest-charges. On the whole, however, we had been able to carry
+the entire line forward from position to position with such success that
+the people were kept in a fever, and accessions to our population kept
+pouring in which, of their own force, added fuel to the fire of
+expectancy.
+
+This one thing began to make me uneasy--there was no place to stop. A
+failure among us would quench this expectancy, and values would no
+longer increase. And everything was organized on the basis of the
+continued crescendo. That was the reason why every uplift in prices had
+been followed by a new and strenuous effort on our part to hoist them
+still higher. For that reason, we, who had become richer than we had
+ever hoped to be, kept toiling on to rear to greater and greater heights
+an edifice which the eternal forces of nature itself clutched, to drag
+down.
+
+I was the first to suggest this feature in conference. The Trescott
+scare had made me more thoughtful. True, outwardly things were more than
+ever booming. The very signs on the streets spoke of the boom. It was
+"Lumber, Coal, and Real Estate"; "Burbank's Livery, Feed, and Sale
+Stable. Office of Burbank Realty Co."; or "Thronson & Larson, Grocers.
+Choice Lots in Thronson's Addition." Even Giddings had platted the
+"_Herald_ Addition," and was offering a choice quarter-block as a prize
+to the person who could guess nearest to the average monthly increase in
+values in the addition, as shown by the record of sales. Real estate
+appeared as a part of the business of hardware stores and milliners'
+shops, so that one was constantly reminded of the heterogeneous
+announcements on the signboard of Mr. Wegg. But while all this went on,
+and transactions "in dirt" were larger than ever, one could see
+indications that there was in them a larger and larger element of
+credit, and less and less cash. So one day, at a syndicate conference, I
+sought to ease my mind by asking where this thing was to stop, and when
+we could hope for a time when the town would not have to be held up by
+main strength.
+
+"Why, that's a very remarkable question!" said Mr. Hinckley. "We surely
+haven't reached the point where we can think of stopping. Why, with the
+history before us of the cities of America which, without half our
+natural advantages, have grown to so many times the size of this, I'm
+surprised that such a thing should be thought of! Just think of what
+Chicago was in '54 when I came through. A village without a harbor,
+built along the ditches of a frog-pond! And see it now; see it now!"
+
+There was a little quiver in Mr. Hinckley's voice, a little infirmity of
+his chin, which told of advancing years. His ideas were becoming more
+fixed. It was plain that the notion of Lattimore's continued and
+uninterrupted progress was one to which he would cling with the mild and
+unreasoning stubbornness of gentlemanly senility. But Cornish welcomed
+the discussion with something like eagerness.
+
+"I'm glad the matter has come up," said he. "We've had a few good years
+here; but, in the nature of things, won't the time come when things
+will be--slower? We've got our first plans pretty well worked out. The
+mills, factories, and live-stock industries are supporting population,
+and making tonnage which the railroad is carrying. But what next? We
+can't expect to build any more railroads soon. No line of less than five
+hundred miles will do any good, strategically speaking, and sending out
+stubs just to annex territory for our shippers is too slow and expensive
+business for this crowd. Things are booming along now; but the Eastern
+banks are getting finicky about paper, and--I think things are going to
+be--slower--and that we ought to act accordingly."
+
+There was a long silence, broken only by a dry laugh from Hinckley, and
+the remark that Barslow and Cornish must be getting dyspeptic from high
+living.
+
+"Well," said Elkins at last, ignoring Hinckley and facing Cornish, "get
+down to brass nails! What policy would you adopt?"
+
+"Oh, our present policy is all right," answered he of the Van Dyke
+beard--
+
+"Yes, yes!" interjected Hinckley. "My view exactly. A wonderfully
+successful policy!"
+
+"--and," Cornish continued, "I would only suggest that we cease
+spreading out--not cease talking it, but only just sort of stop doing
+it--and begin to realize more rapidly on our holdings. Not so as to
+break the market, you understand; but so as to keep the demand fairly
+well satisfied."
+
+Mr. Elkins was slow in replying, and when the reply came it was of the
+sort which does not answer.
+
+"A most important, not to say momentous question," said he. "Let's
+figure the thing over and take it up again soon. We'll not begin to
+disagree at this late day. Mr. Hinckley has warned us that he has an
+engagement in thirty minutes. It seems to me we ought to dispose of the
+matter of the appropriation for the interest on those Belt Lines bonds.
+Wade's mash on 'Atkins, Corning & Co.' won't last long in the face of a
+default."
+
+Mr. Hinckley staid his thirty minutes and withdrew. Mr. Cornish went to
+the telephone and ordered his dog-cart.
+
+"Immediately," he instructed, "over here at the Grain Belt Trust
+Building."
+
+"Make it in half an hour, can't you, Cornish?" said Jim. "There are some
+more things we ought to go over."
+
+"Say!" shouted Cornish into the transmitter. "Make that in half an hour
+instead of at once."
+
+He hung up the telephone, and turned to Elkins inquiringly. Jim was
+walking up and down on the rug, his hands clasped behind him.
+
+"Since we've spread out into that string of banks," said he, still
+keeping up his walk, "and made Mr. Hinckley the president of each of
+'em, he's reverting to his old banker's timidity. Which consists, in all
+cases, in an aversion to any change in conditions. To suggest any
+change, even from an old, dangerous policy to a new safe one, startles a
+'conservative' banker. If we had gone on a little longer with our talk
+about shutting off steam and taking the nigger off the safety-valve,
+you'd have seen him scared into a numbness. But, now that the question
+has been brought up, let's talk it over. What's your notion about it,
+anyhow, Al?"
+
+"I'm seeking light," said I. "The people are rushing in, and the town's
+doing splendidly. But prices, there's no denying it, are beginning to
+sort of strangle things. They prevent doing, any more, what we did at
+first. Kreuger Brothers' failure yesterday was small; but it's a clear
+case of a retailer's being eaten up with fixed charges--or so Macdonald
+told me this morning; and I know that frontage on Main Street is
+demanding fully as much as the traffic will bear. And then our fright
+over Trescott's gambling gave me some bad dreams over our securities. It
+has bothered me to see how to adjust our affairs to a stationary
+condition of things; that's all."
+
+"Of course," said Cornish, "we must keep boosting. Fortunately society
+here is now thoroughly organized on the principle of whooping it up for
+Lattimore. I could get up a successful lynching-party any time to attend
+to the case of any miscreant who should suggest that property is too
+high, or rents unreasonable, or anything but a steady up-grade before
+us. But I think we ought to stop buying--except among ourselves, and
+keep the transfers from falling off--and begin salting down."
+
+"If you can suggest any way to do that, and still take care of our
+paper," said Jim, "I shall be with you."
+
+"I've never anticipated," said Cornish, "that such a mass of business
+could be carried through without some losses. Investors can't expect
+it."
+
+"The first loss in the East through our paper," said Jim, "means a
+taking up of the Grain Belt securities everywhere, and no market for
+more. And you know what that spells."
+
+"It mustn't be allowed to happen--yet awhile," answered Cornish. "As I
+just now said, we must keep on boosting."
+
+"You know where the Grain Belt debentures and other obligations are
+mostly held, of course?" asked Mr. Elkins.
+
+"When a bond or mortgage is sold," was the answer, "my interest in it
+ceases. I conclusively presume that the purchaser himself personally
+looked to the security, or accepted the guaranty of the negotiating
+trust company. _Caveat emptor_ is my rule."
+
+Mr. Elkins looked out of the window, as if he had forgotten us.
+
+"We should push the sale of the Lattimore & Great Western," said he,
+"and the Belt Line System."
+
+"I concur," said Cornish. "Our interest in those properties is a
+two-million-dollar cash item."
+
+"It wouldn't be two million cents," said Jim, "if our friends on Wall
+Street could hear this talk. They'd wait to buy at receiver's sale after
+some Black Friday. Of course, that's what Pendleton and Wade have been
+counting on from the first."
+
+"You ought to see Halliday and Pendleton at once," said I.
+
+"Yes, I think so, too," he rejoined. "Pendleton'll pay us more than our
+price, rather than see the Halliday system get the properties. They're
+deep ones; but we ought to be able to play them off against each other,
+so long as we can keep strong at home. I'll begin the flirtation at
+once."
+
+Cornish, assuming that Jim had fully concurred in his views, bade us a
+pleasant good-day, and went out.
+
+"My boy," said Jim, "cheer up. If gloom takes hold of you like this
+while we're still running before a favoring wind, it'll bother you to
+keep feeling worse and worse, as you ought, as we approach the real
+thing. Cheer up!"
+
+"Oh, I'm all right!" said I. "I was just trying to make out Cornish's
+position."
+
+"Let's make out our own," he replied, "that's the first thing. Bear in
+mind that this is a buccaneering proposition, and you're first mate:
+remember? Well, Al, we've had the merriest cruise in the books. If any
+crew ever had doubloons to throw to the birds, we've had 'em. But, you
+know, we always draw the line somewhere, and I'm about to ask you to
+join me in drawing the line, and see just what moral level piracy has
+risen or sunk to."
+
+He still walked back and forth, and, as he spoke of drawing the line, he
+drew an imaginary one with his fingers on the green baize of the
+flat-topped desk.
+
+"You remember what those fellows, Dorr and Wickersham, said the other
+night, about having invested the funds of estates, and savings accounts
+in our obligations?" he went on. "But I never told you what Wickersham
+said privately to me. The infernal fool has more of our paper than his
+bank's whole capital stock, with the surplus added, amounts to! And he
+calls himself a 'conservative New England banker'! It wouldn't be so bad
+if the states back East weren't infested with the same sort of
+idiots--I've had Hinckley make me a report on it since that night. It
+means that women and children and sweaty breadwinners have furnished the
+money for all these things we're so proud of having built, including the
+Mt. Desert cottages and the Wyoming hunting-lodge. It means that we've
+got to be able to read our book of the Black Art backwards as well as
+forwards, or the Powers we've conjured up will tear piecemeal both them
+and us. God! it makes me crawl to think of what would happen!"
+
+He sat down on the flat-topped desk, and I saw the beaded pallor of a
+fixed and digested anxiety on his brow. He went on, in a lighter way:
+
+"These poor people, scattered from the Missouri to the Atlantic, are our
+prisoners, Al. I think Cornish is ready to make them walk the plank.
+But, Al, you know, in our bloodiest days, down on the Spanish Main, we
+used to spare the women and children! What do you say now, Al?"
+
+The way in which he repeated the old nickname had an irresistible appeal
+in it; but I hope no appeal was needed. I said, and said truly, that I
+should never consent to any policy which was not mindful of the
+interests of which he spoke; and that I knew Hinckley would be with us.
+So, if Cornish took any other view, there would be three to one against
+him.
+
+"I knew you'd be with me," he continued. "It would have been a
+sure-enough case of _et tu, Brute_, if you hadn't been. But don't let
+yourself think for a minute that we can't fight this thing to a finish
+and come off more than conquerors. We'll look back at this talk some
+time, and laugh at our fears. The troublous times that come every so
+often are nearer than they were five years ago, but they're some ways
+off yet, and forewarned is insured."
+
+"But the hard times always catch people unawares," said I.
+
+"They do," he admitted, "but they never tried to stalk a covey of boom
+specialists before.... You remember all that rot I used to talk about
+the mind-force method, and psychological booms? We've been false to that
+theory, by coming to believe so implicitly in our own preaching. Why,
+Al, this work we've begun here has got to go on! It must go on! There
+mustn't be any collapse or failure. When the hard times come, we must be
+prepared to go right on through, cutting a little narrower swath, but
+cutting all the same. Stand by the guns with me, and, in spite of all,
+we'll win, and save Lattimore--and spare the captives, too!"
+
+There was the fire of unconquerable resolution in his eye, and a
+resonance in his voice that thrilled me. After all he had done, after
+the victories we had won under his leadership, the admiration and love I
+felt for him rose to the idolatry of a soldier for his general, as I
+saw him stiffening his limbs, knotting his muscles, and, with teeth set
+and nostrils dilated, rising to the load which seemed falling on him
+alone.
+
+"I'll make the turn with these railroad properties," he went on. "We
+must make Pendleton and Halliday bid each other up to our figure. And
+there'll be no 'salting down' done, either--yet awhile. I hope things
+won't shrink too much in the washing; but the real-estate hot air of the
+past few years must cause some trouble when the payments deferred begin
+to make the heart sick. The Trust Company will be called on to make good
+some of its guaranties--and must do it. The banks must be kept strong;
+and with two millions to sweeten the pot we shall be with 'em to the
+finish. Why, they can't beat us! And don't forget that right now is the
+most prosperous time Lattimore ever saw; and put on a look that will
+corroborate the statement when you go out of here!"
+
+"Bravo, bravo!" said a voice from near the door. "I don't understand any
+of it, but the speech sounded awfully telling! Where's papa?"
+
+It was Antonia, who had come in unobserved. She wore a felt hat with one
+little feather on it, driving-gloves, and a dark cloth dress. She stood,
+rosy with driving, her blonde curls clustering in airy confusion about
+her forehead, a tailor-gowned Brunhilde.
+
+"Why, hello, Antonia!" said Jim. "He went away some time ago. Wasn't
+that a corking good speech? Ah! You never know the value of an old
+friend until you use him as audience at the dress rehearsal of a speech!
+Pacers or trotters?"
+
+"Pacers," said she, "Storm and The Friar."
+
+"If you'll let me drive," he stipulated, "I'd like to go home with you."
+
+"Nobody but myself," said she, "ever drives this team. You'd spoil The
+Friar's temper with that unyielding wrist of yours; but if you are good,
+you may hold the ends of the lines, and say 'Dap!' occasionally."
+
+And down to the street we went together, our cares dismissed. Jim handed
+Antonia into the trap, and they spun away toward Lynhurst, apparently
+the happiest people in Lattimore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+The Going Away of Laura and Clifford, and the Departure of Mr. Trescott.
+
+
+"Thet little quirly thing there," said Mr. Trescott, spreading a map out
+on my library table and pointing with his trembling and knobby
+forefinger, "is Wolf Nose Crick. It runs into the Cheyenne, down about
+there, an' 's got worlds o' water fer any sized herds, an' carries yeh
+back from the river fer twenty-five miles. There's a big spring at the
+head of it, where the ranch buildin's is; an' there's a clump o' timber
+there--box elders an' cottonwoods, y' know. Now see the advantage I'll
+have. Other herds'll hev to traipse back an' forth from grass to water
+an' from water to grass, a-runnin' theirselves poor; an' all the time
+I'll hev livin' water right in the middle o' my range."
+
+His wife and daughter had carefully nursed him through the fever, as Dr.
+Aylesbury called it, and for two weeks Mr. Trescott was seen by no one
+else. Then from our windows Alice and I could see him about his grounds,
+at work amongst his shrubbery, or busying himself with his horses and
+carriages. Josie had transformed herself into a woman of business, and
+every day she went to her father's office, opened his mail, and held
+business consultations. Whenever it was necessary for papers to be
+executed, Josie went with the lawyer and notary to the Trescott home for
+the signing.
+
+The Trescott and Tolliver business brought her into daily contact with
+the Captain. He used to open the doors between their offices, and have
+the mail sorted for Josie when she came in. There was something of
+homage in the manner in which he received her into the office, and laid
+matters of business before her. It was something larger and more
+expansive than can be denoted by the word courtesy or politeness.
+
+"Captain," she would say, with the half-amused smile with which she
+always rewarded him, "here is this notice from the Grain Belt Trust
+Company about the interest on twenty-five thousand dollars of bonds
+which they have advanced to us. Will you please explain it?"
+
+"Sutt'nly, Madam, sutt'nly," replied he, using a form of address which
+he adopted the first time she appeared as Bill's representative in the
+business, and which he never cheapened by use elsewhere. "Those bonds ah
+debentures, which--"
+
+"But what _are_ debentures, Captain?" she inquired.
+
+"Pahdon me, my deah lady," said he, "fo' not explaining that at fuhst!
+Those ah the debentures of the Trescott Development Company, fawmed to
+build up Trescott's Addition. We sold those lands on credit, except fo'
+a cash payment of one foath the purchase-price. This brought to us, as
+you can see, Madam, a lahge amount of notes, secured by fuhst mortgages
+on the Trescott's Addition properties. These notes and mortgages we
+deposited with the Grain Belt Trust Company, and issued against them the
+bonds of the Trescott Development Company--debentures--and the G. B. T.
+people floated these bonds in the East and elsewhah. This interest
+mattah was an ovahsight; I should have looked out fo' it, and not put
+the G. B. T. to the trouble of advancing it; but as we have this mawnin'
+on deposit with them several thousand dollahs from the sale of the
+Tolliver's Subdivision papah, the thing becomes a mattah of no
+impo'tance whatevah!"
+
+"But," went on Josie, "how shall we be able to pay the next installment
+of interest, and the principal, when it falls due?"
+
+"Amply provided foh, my deah Madam," said the Captain, waving his arm;
+"the defe'ed payments and the interest on them will create an ample
+sinking fund!"
+
+"But if they don't?" she inquired.
+
+"That such a contingency can possibly arise, Madam," said the Captain in
+his most impressive orotund, and with his hand thrust into the bosom of
+his Prince Albert coat, "is something which my loyalty to Lattimore, my
+faith in my fellow citizens, my confidence in Mr. Elkins and Mr.
+Barslow, and my regahd fo' my own honah, pledged as it is to those to
+whom I have sold these properties on the representations I have made as
+to the prospects of the city, will not puhmit me to admit!"
+
+This seemed to him entirely conclusive, and cut off the investigation.
+Conversation like this, in which Josie questioned the Captain and seemed
+ever convinced by his answers, gave her high rank in the Captain's
+estimation.
+
+"Like most ladies," said he, "Miss Trescott is a little inclined to
+ovah-conservatism; but unlike most people of both sexes, she is quite
+able to grasp the lahgest views when explained to huh, and huh mental
+processes ah unerring. I have nevah failed to make the most complicated
+situation cleah to huh--nevah!"
+
+And all this time Mr. Trescott was safeguarded at home, looking after
+his horses, carriages, and grounds, and at last permitted to come over
+to our house and pass the evening with me occasionally. It was on one of
+these visits that he spread out the map on the table and explained to me
+the advantages of his ranch on Wolf Nose Creek. The very thought of the
+open range and the roaming herds seemed to strengthen him.
+
+"You talk," said I, "as if it were all settled. Are you really going out
+there?"
+
+"Wal," said he, after some hesitation, "it kind o' makes me feel good to
+lay plans f'r goin'. I've made the deal with Aleck Macdonald f'r the
+water front--it's a good spec if I never go near it--an' I guess I'll
+send a bunch o' steers out to please Josie an' her ma. They're
+purtendin' to be stuck on goin', an' I've made the bargain to pacify
+'em; but, say, do you know what kind of a place it is out on one o' them
+ranches?"
+
+"In a general way, yes," said I.
+
+"W'l, a general way wun't do," said he. "You've got to git right down to
+p'ticklers t' know about it, so's to know. It's seventy-five miles from
+a post-office an' twenty-five to the nearest house. How would you like
+to hev a girl o' yourn thet you'd sent t' Chicago an' New York and the
+ol' country, an' spent all colors o' money on so's t' give her all the
+chanst in the world, go out to a place like that to spend her life?"
+
+"I don't know," said I, for I was in doubt; "it might be all right."
+
+"You wouldn't say that if it was up to you to decide the thing," said
+he. "W'y it would mean that this girl o' mine, that's fit for to
+be--wal, you know Josie--would hev to leave this home we've built--that
+she's built--here, an' go out where there hain't nobody to be seen from
+week's end to week's end but cowboys, an' once in a while one o' the
+greasy women o' the dugouts. Do you know what happens to the nicest
+girls when they don't see the right sort o' men--at all, y' know?"
+
+I nodded. I knew what he meant. Then I shook my head in denial of the
+danger.
+
+"I don't b'lieve it nuther," said he; "but is it any cinch, now? An'
+anyhow, she'll be where she wun't ever hear a bit o' music, 'r see a
+picter, 'r see a friend. She'll swelter in the burnin' sun an' parch in
+the hot winds in the summer, an' in the winter she'll be shet in by
+blizzards an' cold weather. She'll see nothin' but kioats, prairie-dogs,
+sage-brush, an' cactus. An' what fer! Jest for nothin' but me! To git me
+away from things she's afraid've got more of a pull with me than what
+she's got. An' I say, by the livin' Lord, I'll go under before I'll give
+up, an' say I've got as fur down as that!"
+
+It is something rending and tearing to a man like Bill, totally
+unaccustomed to the expression of sentiment, to give utterance to such
+depths of feeling. Weak and trembling as he was, the sight of his
+agitation was painful. I hastened to say to him that I hoped there was
+no necessity for such a step as the one he so strongly deprecated.
+
+"I d' know," said he dubiously. "I thought one while that I'd never want
+to go near town, 'r touch the stuff agin. But I'll tell yeh something
+that happened yisterday!"
+
+He drew up his chair and looked behind him like a child preparing to
+relate some fearsome tale of goblin or fiend, and went on:
+
+"Josie had the team hitched up to go out ridin', an' I druv around the
+block to git to the front step. An' somethin' seemed to pull the nigh
+line when I got to the cawner! It wa'n't that I wanted to go--and don't
+you say anything about this thing, Mr. Barslow; but somethin' seemed to
+pull the nigh line an' turn me toward Main Street; an' fust thing I
+knew, I was a-drivin' hell-bent for O'Brien's place! Somethin' was
+a-whisperin' to me, 'Go down an' see the boys, an' show 'em that yeh can
+drink 'r let it alone, jest as yeh see fit!' And the thought come over
+me o' Josie a-standin' there at the gate waitin' f'r me, an' I set my
+teeth, an' jerked the hosses' heads around, an' like to upset the buggy
+a-turnin'. 'You look pale, pa,' says Josie. 'Maybe we'd better not go.'
+'No,' says I, 'I'm all right.' But what ... gits me ... is thinkin'
+that, if I'll be hauled around like that when I'm two miles away, how
+long would I last ... if onst I was to git right down in the midst of
+it!"
+
+I could not endure the subject any longer; it was so unutterably fearful
+to see him making this despairing struggle against the foe so strongly
+lodged within his citadel. I talked to him of old times and places known
+to us both, and incidentally called to his mind instances of the
+recovery of men afflicted as he was. Soon Josie came after him, and Jim
+dropped in, as he was quite in the habit of doing, making one of those
+casual and informal little companies which constituted a most
+distinctive feature of life in our compact little Belgravia.
+
+Josie insisted that life in the cow country was what she had been
+longing for. She had never shot any one, and had never painted a cowboy,
+an Indian, or a coyote--things she had always longed to do.
+
+"You must take me out there, pa," said she. "It's the only way to
+utilize the capital we've foolishly tied up in the department of the
+fine arts!"
+
+"I reckon we'll hev to do it, then, little gal," said Bill.
+
+"My mind," said Jim, "is divided between your place up on the headwaters
+of Bitter Creek and Paris. Paris seems to promise pretty well, when this
+fitful fever of business is over and we've cleaned up the mill run."
+
+Art, he went on, seemed to be a career for which he was really fitted.
+In the foreground, as a cowboy, or in the middle distance, in his
+proper person as a tenderfoot, it seemed as if there was a vocation for
+him. Josie made no reply to this, and Jim went away downcast.
+
+The Addison-Giddings wedding drew on out of the future, and seemed to
+loom portentously like doom for the devoted Clifford. It may have
+suggested itself to the reader that Mr. Giddings was an abnormally timid
+lover. The eternal feminine at this time seemed personified in Laura,
+and worked upon him like an obsession. I have never seen a case quite
+like his. The manner in which the marriage was regarded, and the extent
+to which it was discussed, may have had something to do with this.
+
+The boom period anywhere is essentially an era in which public events
+dominate those of a private character, and publicity and promotion, hand
+in hand, occupy the center of the stage. Giddings, as editor and
+proprietor of the _Herald_, was one of the actors on whom the lime-light
+was pretty constantly focussed. Miss Addison, belonging to the Lattimore
+family, and prominent in good works, was more widely known than he among
+Lattimoreans of the old days, sometimes referred to by Mr. Elkins as the
+trilobites, who constituted a sort of ancient and exclusive caste among
+us, priding themselves on having become rich by the only dignified and
+purely automatic mode, that of sitting heroically still, and allowing
+their lands to rise in value. These regarded Laura as one of themselves,
+and her marriage as a sacrament of no ordinary character.
+
+Giddings, on the other hand, as the type of the new crowd who had done
+such wonders, and as the embodiment of its spirit, was dimly sensed by
+all classes as a sort of hero of obscure origin, who by strong blows had
+hewed his way to the possession of a princess of the blood. So the
+interest was really absorbing. Even the _Herald's_ rival, the _Evening
+Times_, dropped for a time the normal acrimony of its references to the
+_Herald_, and sent a reporter to make a laudatory write-up of the
+wedding.
+
+On the night before the event, deep in the evening, Giddings and a
+bibulous friend insisted on having refreshments served to them in the
+parlor of the clubhouse. This was a violation of rules. Moreover, they
+had involuntarily assumed sitting postures on the carpet, rendering
+waiting upon them a breach of decorum as well. At least this was the
+view of Pearson, who was now attached to the club.
+
+"You must excuse me, gentlemen," he said, "but Ah'm bound to obey
+rules."
+
+"Bring us," said Giddings, "two cocktails."
+
+"Can't do it, sah," said Pearson, "not hyah, sah!"
+
+"Bring us paper to write resignations on!" said Giddings. "We won't
+belong to a club where we are bullied by niggers."
+
+Pearson brought the paper.
+
+"They's no rule, suh," said he, "again' suhvin' resignation papah
+anywhah in the house. But let me say, Mistah Giddings, that Ah wouldn't
+be hasty: it's a heap hahder to get inter this club now than what it was
+when you-all come in!"
+
+This suggestion of Pearson's was in every one's mouth as the most
+amusing story of the time. Even Giddings laughed about it. But all his
+laughter was hollow.
+
+Some bets were offered that one of two things would happen on the
+wedding-day: either Giddings (who had formerly been of abstemious
+habits) would overdo the attempt to nerve himself up to the occasion and
+go into a vinous collapse, or he would stay sober and take to his heels.
+Thus, in fear and trembling, did the inexplicable disciple of Iago
+approach his happiness; but, like most soldiers, when the battle was
+actually on, he went to the fighting-line dazed into bravery.
+
+It was quite a spectacular affair. The church was a floral grotto, and
+there were, in great abundance, the adjuncts of ribbon barriers, special
+electric illuminations, special music, full ritual, ushers, bridesmaids,
+and millinery. Antonia was chief bridesmaid, and Cornish best man. The
+severe conformity to vogue, and preservation of good form, were
+generally attributed to his management. It was a great success.
+
+There was an elaborate supper, of which Giddings partook in a manner
+which tended to prove that his sense of taste was still in his
+possession, whatever may have been the case with his other senses. Josie
+was there, and Jim was her shadow. She was a little pale, but not at all
+sad; her figure, which had within the past year or so acquired something
+of the wealth commonly conceded to matronliness, had waned to the
+slenderness of the day I first saw her in the art-gallery, but now, as
+then, she was slim, not thin. To two, at least, she was a vision of
+delight, as one might well see by the look of adoration which Jim poured
+into her eyes from time to time, and the hungry gaze with which Cornish
+took in the ruddy halo of her hair, the pale and intellectual face
+beneath it, and the sensuous curves of the compact little form. For my
+own part, my vote was for Antonia, for the belle of the gathering; but
+she sailed through the evening, "like some full-breasted swan,"
+accepting no homage except the slavish devotion of Cecil, whose constant
+offering of his neck to her tread gave him recognition as entitled to
+the reward of those who are permitted only to stand and wait.
+
+Mr. Elkins had furnished a special train over the L. & G. W. to make the
+run with the bridal party to Elkins Junction, connecting there with the
+east-bound limited on the Pendleton line, thence direct to Elysium.
+
+Laura, rosy as a bride should be, and actually attractive to me for the
+first time in her life, sat in her traveling-dress trying to look
+matter-of-fact, and discussing time-tables with her bridegroom, who
+seemed to find less and less of dream and more of the actual in the
+situation,--calm returning with the cutaway. Cecil and the coterie of
+gilded youth who followed him did their share to bring Giddings back to
+earth by a series of practical jokes, hackneyed, but ever fresh. The
+largest trunk, after it reached the platform, blossomed out in a sign
+reading: "The Property of the Bride and Groom. You can Identify the
+Owners by that Absorbed Expression!" Divers revelatory incidents were
+arranged to eventuate on the limited train. Precipitation of rice was
+produced, in modes known to sleight-of-hand only. So much of this
+occurred that Captain Tolliver showed, by a stately refusal to see the
+joke, his disapproval of it--a feeling which he expressed in an aside to
+me.
+
+"Hoss-play of this so't, suh," said he, "ought not to be tolerated among
+civilized people, and I believe is not! In the state of society in which
+I was reahed such niggah-shines would mean pistols at ten paces, within
+fo'ty-eight houahs, with the lady's neahest male relative! And propahly
+so, too, suh; quite propahly!"
+
+"Shall we go to the train, Albert?" said Alice, as the party made ready
+to go.
+
+"No," said I, "unless you particularly wish it; we shall go home."
+
+"Mr. Barslow," said one of the maids, "you are wanted at the telephone."
+
+"Is this you, Al?" said Jim's voice over the wire. "I'm up here at
+Josie's, and I am afraid there's trouble with her father. When we got
+here we found him gone. Hadn't you better go out and look around for
+him?"
+
+"Have you any idea where I'm likely to find him?" I asked. I saw at once
+the significance of Bill's absence. He had taken advantage of the fact
+of his wife and daughter's going to the wedding, and had yielded to the
+thing which drew him away from them.
+
+"Try the Club, and then O'Brien's," answered Jim. "If you don't find
+him in one place or the other, call me up over the 'phone. Call me up
+anyhow; I'll wait here."
+
+The _Times_ man heard my end of the conversation, saw me hastily give
+Alice word as to the errand which kept me from going home with her,
+observed my preparations for leaving the company, and, scenting news,
+fell in with me as I was walking toward the Club.
+
+"Any story in this, Mr. Barslow?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, is that you, Watson?" I answered. "I was going on an errand which
+concerns myself. I was going alone."
+
+"If you're looking for any one," he said, trotting along beside me, "I
+can find him a good deal quicker than you can, probably. And if there's
+news in it, I'll get it anyhow; and I'll naturally know it more from
+your standpoint, and look at it more as you do, if we go together. Don't
+you think so?"
+
+"See here, Watson," said I, "you may help if you wish. But if you print
+a word without my consent, I can and will scoop the _Times_ every day,
+from this on, with every item of business news coming through our
+office. Do you understand, and do you promise?"
+
+"Why, certainly," said he. "You've got the thing in your own hands. What
+is it, anyhow?"
+
+I told him, and found that Trescott's dipsomania was as well known to
+him as myself.
+
+"He's been throwing money to the fowls for a year or two," he remarked.
+"It's better than two to one you don't find him at the Club: the
+atmosphere won't be congenial for him there."
+
+At the Club we found Watson's forecast verified. At O'Brien's our
+knocking on the door aroused a sleepy bartender, who told us that no one
+was there, but refused to let us in. Watson called him aside, and they
+talked together for a few minutes.
+
+"All right," said the reporter, turning away from him, "much obliged,
+Hank; I believe you've struck it."
+
+Watson was leader now, and I followed him toward Front Street, near the
+river. He said that Hank, the barkeeper, had told him that Trescott had
+been in his saloon about nine o'clock, drinking heavily; and from the
+company he was in, it was to be suspected that he would be steered into
+a joint down on the river front. We passed through an alley, and down a
+back basement stairway, came to a door, on which Watson confidently
+knocked, and which was opened by a negro who let us in as soon as he saw
+the reporter. The air was sickening with an odor which I then perceived
+for the first time, and which Watson called the dope smell. There was an
+indefinable horror about the place, which so repelled me that nothing
+but my obligation could have held me there. The lights were dim, and at
+first I could see nothing more than that the sides of the room were
+divided into compartments by dull-colored draperies, in a manner
+suggesting the sections of a sleeping-car. There were sounds of dreadful
+breathings and inarticulate voices, and over all that sickening smell. I
+saw, flung aimlessly from the crepuscular and curtained recesses, here
+the hairy brawn of a man's arm, there a woman's leg in scarlet silk
+stocking, the foot half withdrawn from a red slipper with a high French
+heel. The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows had opened for me, and I stood as if
+gazing, with eyes freshly unsealed to its horrors, into some dim
+inferno, sibilant with hisses, and enwrapped in indeterminate
+dragon-folds--and I in quest of a lost soul.
+
+"He wouldn't go with his pal, boss," I heard the negro say. "Ah tried to
+send him home, but he said he had some medicine to take, an' he 'nsisted
+on stayin'."
+
+As he ceased to speak, I knew that Watson had been interrogating him,
+and that he was referring to the man we sought.
+
+"Show me where he is," I commanded.
+
+"Yes, boss! Right hyah, sah!"
+
+In an inner room, on a bed, not a pallet like those in the first
+chamber, was Trescott, his head lying peacefully on a pillow, his hands
+clasped across his chest. Somehow, I was not surprised to see no
+evidence of life, no rise and fall of the breast, no sound of breathing.
+But Watson started forward in amazement, laid his hand for a moment on
+the pallid forehead, lifted for an instant and then dropped the inert
+hand, turned and looked fixedly in my face, and whispered, "My God! He's
+dead!"
+
+As if at some great distance, I heard the negro saying, "He done said he
+hed ter tek some medicine, boss. Ah hopes you-all won't make no trouble
+foh me, boss--!"
+
+"Send for a doctor!" said I. "Telephone Mr. Elkins, at Trescott's home!"
+
+Watson darted out, and for an eternity, as it seemed to me, I stood
+there alone. There was a scurrying of the vermin in the place to snatch
+up a few valuables and flee, as if they had been the crawling things
+under some soon-to-be-lifted stone, to whom light was a calamity. I was
+left with the Stillness before me, and the dreadful breathings and
+inarticulate voices outside. Then came the clang and rattle of ambulance
+and patrol, and in came a policeman or two, a physician, a _Herald_ man
+and Watson, who was bitterly complaining of Bill for having had the bad
+taste to die on the morning paper's time.
+
+And soon came Jim, in a carriage, whirled along the street like a racing
+chariot--with whom I rode home, silent, save for answering his
+questions. Now the wife, gazing out of her door, saw in the street the
+Something for which she had peered past me the other night.
+
+The men carried it in at the door, and laid it on the divan. Josie, her
+arms and shoulders still bare in the dress she had worn to the wedding,
+broke away from Cornish, who was bending over her and saying things to
+comfort her, and swept down the hall to the divan where Bill lay, white
+and still, and clothed with the mystic majesty of death. The shimmering
+silk and lace of her gown lay all along the rug and over the divan, like
+drapery thrown there to conceal what lay before us. She threw her arms
+across the still breast, and her head went down on his.
+
+"Oh, pa! Oh, pa!" she moaned, "you never did any one any harm!... You
+were always good and kind!... And always loving and forgiving.... And
+why should they come to you, poor pa ... and take you from the things
+you loved ... and ... murder you ... like this!"
+
+Jim fell back, as if staggering from a blow. Cornish came forward, and
+offered to raise up the stricken girl, whose eyes shone in her grief
+like the eyes of insanity. Alice stepped before Cornish, raised Josie
+up, and supported her from the room.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+Again it was morning, when we--Alice, Jim, and I--sat face to face in
+our home. An untasted breakfast was spread before us. Jim's eyes were on
+the cloth, and nothing served to rouse him. I knew that the blow from
+which he had staggered still benumbed his faculties.
+
+"Come," said I, "we shall need your best thought down at the Grain Belt
+Building in a couple of hours. This brings things to a crisis. We shall
+have a terrible dilemma to face, it's likely. Eat and be ready to face
+it!"
+
+"God!" said he, "it's the old tale over again, Al: throw the dead and
+wounded overboard to clear the decks, and on with the fight!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+In Which Events Resume their Usual Course--at a Somewhat Accelerated
+Pace.
+
+
+The death of Mr. Trescott was treated with that consideration which the
+affairs of the locally prominent always receive in towns where local
+papers are in close financial touch with the circle affected. Nothing
+was said of suicide, or of the place where the body was found; and in
+fact I doubt if the family ever knew the real facts; but the property
+matters were looked upon as a legitimate subject for comment.
+
+"Yesterday," said, in due time, the _Herald_, "the Trescott estate
+passed into the hands of Will Lattimore, as administrator. He was
+appointed upon the petition of Martha D. Trescott, the widow. His bond,
+in the sum of $500,000, was signed by James R. Elkins, Albert F.
+Barslow, J. Bedford Cornish, and Marion Tolliver, as sureties, and is
+said to be the largest in amount ever filed in our local Probate Court.
+
+"Mr. Lattimore is non-committal as to the value of the estate. The bond
+is not to be taken as altogether indicative of this value, as additional
+bonds may be called for at any time, and the individual responsibility
+of the administrator is very large. He will at once enter upon the work
+of settling up the estate, receiving and filing claims, and preparing
+his report. He estimates the time necessary to a full understanding of
+the extent and condition of his trust at weeks and even months.
+
+"The petition states that the deceased died intestate, leaving surviving
+him the petitioner and an only child, a daughter, Josephine. As Miss
+Trescott has attained her majority, she will at once come into the
+possession of the greater part of this estate, becoming thereby the
+richest heiress in this part of the West. This fact of itself would
+render her an interesting person, an interest to which her charming
+personality adds zest. She is a very beautiful girl, petite in figure,
+with splendid brown hair and eyes. She is possessed of a strong
+individuality, has had the advantages of the best American and
+Continental schools, and is said to be an artist of much ability. Mrs.
+Trescott comes of the Dana family, prominent in central Illinois from
+the earliest settlement of the state.
+
+"President Elkins, of the L. & G. W., who, perhaps, knows more than any
+other person as to the situation and value of the various Trescott
+properties, could not be seen last night. He went to Chicago on
+Wednesday, and yesterday wired his partner, Mr. Barslow, that business
+had called him on to New York, where he would remain for some time."
+
+In another column of the same issue was a double-leaded news-story,
+based on certain rumors that Jim's trip to New York was taken for the
+purpose of financing extensions of the L. & G. W. which would develop it
+into a system of more than a thousand miles of line.
+
+"Their past successes have shown," said the _Herald_ in editorial
+comment on this, "that Mr. Elkins and his associates are resourceful
+enough to bring such an undertaking, gigantic as it is, quite within
+their abilities. The world has not seen the best that is in the power of
+this most remarkable group of men to accomplish. Lattimore, already a
+young giantess in stature and strength, has not begun to grow, in
+comparison with what is in the future for her, if she is to be made the
+center of such a vast railway system as is outlined in the news item
+referred to."
+
+From which one gathers that the young men left by Mr. Giddings in charge
+of his paper were entirely competent to carry forward his policy.
+
+Jim had gone to Chicago to see Halliday, hoping to rouse in him an
+interest in the Belt Line and L. & G. W. properties; but on arriving
+there had telegraphed to me that he must go to New York. This message
+was followed by a letter of explanation and instructions.
+
+"Halliday spends a good deal of his time in New York now," the letter
+read, "and is there at present. His understudy here advised me to go on
+East. I should rather see him there than here, on account of the greater
+likelihood that Pendleton may detect us: so I'm going. I shall stay as
+long as I can do any good by it. Lattimore won't get the condition of
+the estate worked out for a month, and until we know about that, there
+won't anything come up of the first magnitude, and even if there should,
+you can handle it. I don't really expect to come back with the two
+million dollars for the L. & G. W., but I do hope to have it in sight!
+
+"In all your prayers let me be remembered; 'if it don't do no good, it
+won't do no harm,' and I'll need all the help I can get. I'm going where
+the lobster à la Newburg and the Welsh rabbit hunt in couples in the
+interest of the Sure-Thing game; where the bird-and-bottle combine is
+the stalking-horse for the Frame-up; and where the Flim-flam (I use the
+word on the authority of Beaumont, Fletcher & Giddings) has its natural
+habitat. I go to foster the entente cordiale between our friends
+Pendleton and Halliday into what I may term a mutual cross-lift, of
+which we shall be the beneficiaries--in trust, however, for the use and
+behoof of the captives below decks.
+
+"Giddings and Laura are here. I had them out to a box party last night.
+They are most insufferably happy. Clifford is not sane yet, but is
+rallying. He is rallying considerably; for he spoke of plans for pushing
+the _Herald_ Addition harder than ever when he gets home. And you know
+such a thing as business has never entered his mind for six
+months--unless it was business to write that 'Apostrophe to the Heart,'
+which he called a poem, and which, I don't mind admitting now, I hired
+his foreman to pi after the copy was lost.
+
+"Keep everything as near ship-shape as you can. Watch the papers, or
+they may do us more harm in a single fool story than can be remedied by
+wise counter-mendacity in a year. Especially watch the _Times_, although
+there's mighty little choice between them. You and Alice ought to spend
+as much time at the Trescotts' as you can spare. You'll hear from me
+almost daily. Wire anything of importance fully. Keep the L. & G. W.
+extension story before the people; it may make some impression even in
+the East, but it's sure to do good in the local fake market. Don't miss
+a chance to jolly our Eastern banks. I should declare a dividend--say
+4%--on Cement stock. At Atlas Power Company meeting ask Cornish to move
+passing earnings to surplus in lieu of dividend, on the theory of
+building new factories--anyhow, consult with the fellows about it: that
+money will be handy to have in the treasury before the year is out,
+unless I am mistaken. Sorry I can't be at these meetings. Will be back
+for those of Rapid Transit and Belt Line Companies.
+
+                                                        "Yours,
+                                                            "Jim.
+
+"P. S.--Coming in, I saw a group of children dancing on a bridge, close
+to a schoolhouse, down near the Mississippi. I guess no one but myself
+knew what they were doing; but I recognized our old 'Weevilly Wheat'
+dance. I could imagine the ancient Scotch air, which the noise of the
+train kept me from hearing, and the old words you and I used to sing,
+dancing on the Elk Creek bridge:
+
+    "'We want no more of your weevilly wheat,
+      We want no more your barley;
+    But we want some of your good old wheat,
+      To make a cake for Charley!'
+
+"You remember it all! How we used to swing the little girls around, and
+when we remembered it afterwards, how we would float off into realms of
+blissful companionship with freckled, short-skirted, bare-legged angels!
+Things were simpler then, Al, weren't they? And to emphasize that fact,
+my mind ran along the trail of the 'Weevilly Wheat' into the domain of
+tickers, margins, puts and calls, and all the cussedness of the Board of
+Trade, and came bump against poor Bill's bucket-shop deals, and settled
+down to the chronic wonder as to just how badly crippled he was when he
+died. If Will gets it figured out soon, at all accurately, wire me.
+
+                                                                 "J."
+
+The wedding tour came to an end, and the bride and groom returned long
+before Mr. Elkins did. Giddings dropped into my office the day after
+their return, and, quite in his old way, began to discuss affairs in
+general.
+
+"I'm going to close out the _Herald_ Addition," said he. "Real estate
+and newspaper work don't mix, and I shall unload the real estate. What
+do you say to an auction?"
+
+"How can you be sure of anything like an adequate scale of prices?" said
+I; "and won't you demoralize things?"
+
+"It'll strengthen prices," he replied, "the way I'll manage it. This is
+the age of the sensational--the yellow--and you people haven't been
+yellow enough in your methods of selling dirt. If you say sensationalism
+is immoral, I won't dispute it, but just simply ask how the fact happens
+to be material?"
+
+I saw that he was going out of his way to say this, and avoided
+discussion by asking him to particularize as to his methods.
+
+"We shall pursue a progressively startling course of advertising, to the
+end that the interest shall just miss acute mania. I'll have the best
+auctioneer in the world. On the day of the auction we'll have a series
+of doings which will leave the people absolutely no way out of buying.
+We'll have a scale of upset prices which will prevent loss. Why, I'll
+make such a killing as never was known outside of the Fifteen Decisive
+Battles. I sha'n't seem to do all this personally. I shall turn the work
+over to Tolliver; but I'll be the power behind the movement. The
+gestures and stage business will be those of Esau, but the word-painting
+will be that of Jacob."
+
+"Well," said I, "I see nothing wrong about your plan; and it may be
+practicable."
+
+"There being nothing wrong about it is no objection from my standpoint,"
+said he. "In fact, I think I prefer to have it morally right rather than
+otherwise, other things being equal, you know. As for its
+practicability, you watch the Captain, and you'll see!"
+
+This talk with Giddings convinced me that he was entirely himself again;
+and also that the boom was going on apace. It had now long reached the
+stage where the efforts of our syndicate were reinforced by those of
+hundreds of men, who, following the lines of their own interests, were
+powerfully and effectively striving to accomplish the same ends. I
+pointed this out in a letter to Mr. Elkins in New York.
+
+"I am glad to note," said he in reply, "that affairs are going on so
+cheerfully at home. Don't imagine, however, that because a horde of
+volunteers (most of them nine-spots) have taken hold, our old guard is
+of any less importance. Do you remember what a Prince Rupert's drop is?
+I absolutely know you don't, and to save you the trouble of looking it
+up, I'll explain that it is a glass pollywog which holds together all
+right until you snap off the tip of its tail. Then a job lot of
+molecular stresses are thrown out of balance, and the thing develops the
+surprising faculty of flying into innumerable fragments, with a very
+pleasing explosion. Whether the name is a tribute of Prince Rupert's
+propensity to fly off the handle, or whether he discovered the drop, or
+first noted its peculiarities, I leave for the historian of the
+Cromwellian epoch to decide. The point I make is this. Our syndicate is
+the tail of the Lattimore Rupert's drop; and the Grain Belt Trust Co. is
+the very slenderest and thinnest tip of the pollywog's propeller. Hence
+the writer's tendency to count the strokes of the clock these nights."
+
+Dating from the night of Trescott's death, and therefore covering the
+period of Jim's absence, I could not fail to notice the renewed ardor
+with which Cornish devoted himself to the Trescott family. Alice and I,
+on our frequent visits, found him at their home so much that I was
+forced to the conclusion that he must have had some encouragement.
+During this period of their mourning his treatment of both mother and
+daughter was at once so solicitously friendly, and so delicate, that no
+one in their place could have failed to feel a sense of obligation. He
+sent flowers to Mrs. Trescott, and found interesting things in books and
+magazines for Josie. Having known him as a somewhat cold and formal man,
+Mrs. Trescott was greatly pleased with this new view of his character.
+He diverted her mind, and relieved the monotony of her grief. Cornish
+was a diplomat (otherwise Jim would have had no use for him in the first
+place), and he skilfully chose this sad and tender moment to bring about
+a closer intimacy than had existed between him and the afflicted family.
+It was clearly no affair of mine. Nevertheless, after several
+experiences in finding Cornish talking with Josie by the Trescott grate,
+I considered Jim's interests menaced.
+
+"Well," said Alice, when I mentioned this feeling, "Mr. Cornish is
+certainly a desirable match, and it can scarcely be expected that Josie
+will remain permanently unattached."
+
+There was a little resentment in her voice, for which I could see no
+reason, and therefore protested that, under all circumstances, it was
+scarcely fair to blame me for the lady's unappropriated state.
+
+"Under other conditions," said I, "I assure you that I should not
+permit such an anomaly to exist--if I could help it."
+
+The incident was then declared closed.
+
+During this absence of Jim's, which, I think, was the real cause of
+Alice's displeasure, the _Herald_ Addition sale went forward, with all
+the "yellow" features which the minds of Giddings and Tolliver could
+invent. It began with flaring advertisements in both papers. Then, on a
+certain day, the sale was declared open, and every bill-board and fence
+bore posters puffing it. A great screen was built on a vacant lot on
+Main Street, and across the street was placed, every night, the biggest
+magic lantern procurable, from which pictures of all sorts were
+projected on the screen, interlarded with which were statements of the
+_Herald_ Addition sales for the day, and quotations showing the advance
+in prices since yesterday. And at all times the coming auction was cried
+abroad, until the interest grew to something wonderful. Every farmer and
+country merchant within a hundred miles of the city was talking of it.
+Tolliver was in his highest feather. On the day of the auction he
+secured excursion rates on all of the railroads, and made it a holiday.
+Porter's great military band, then touring the country, was secured for
+the afternoon and evening. Thousands of people came in on the excursions
+and it seemed like a carnival. Out at the piece of land platted as the
+_Herald_ Addition, whither people were conveyed in street-cars and
+carriages during the long afternoon the great band played about the
+stands erected for the auctioneer, who went from stand to stand, crying
+off the lots, the precise location of the particular parcel at any
+moment under the hammer being indicated by the display of a flag, held
+high by two strong fellows, who lowered the banner and walked to another
+site in obedience to signals wigwagged by the enthusiastic Captain. The
+throng bid excitedly, and the clerks who made out the papers worked
+desperately to keep up with the demands for deeds. It was clear that the
+sale was a success. As the sun sank, handbills were scattered informing
+the crowd that in the evening Tolliver & Company, as a slight evidence
+of their appreciation of the splendid business of the day, would throw
+open to their friends the new Cornish Opera House, where Porter's
+celebrated band would give its regular high-class concert. Tolliver &
+Company, the bill went on, took pleasure in further informing the public
+that, in view of the great success of the day's sale, and the very small
+amount to which their holdings in the _Herald_ Addition were reduced,
+the remainder of this choice piece of property would be sold from the
+stage to the highest bidder, absolutely without any reservation or
+restriction as to the price!
+
+I had received a telegram from Jim saying that he would return on a
+train arriving that evening, and asking that Cornish, Hinckley, and
+Lattimore be at the office to meet him. I was on the street early in the
+evening, looking with wonder at the crowds making merry after the dizzy
+day of speculative delirium. At the opera house, filled to overflowing
+with men admitted on tickets, the great band was discoursing its music,
+in alternation with the insinuating oratory of the auctioneer, under
+whose skilful management the odds and ends of the _Herald_ Addition were
+changing owners at a rate which was simply bewildering.
+
+"Don't you see," said Giddings delightedly, "that this is the only way
+to sell town lots?"
+
+Jim came into the office, fresh and buoyant after his long trip, his
+laugh as hearty and mirth-provoking as ever. After shaking hands with
+all, he threw himself into his own chair.
+
+"Boys," said he, "I feel like a mouse just returning from a visit to a
+cat convention. But what's this crowd for? It's nearly as bad as
+Broadway."
+
+We explained what Giddings and Tolliver had been doing.
+
+"But," said he, "do you mean to tell me that he's sold that Addition to
+this crowd of reubs?"
+
+"He most certainly has," said Cornish.
+
+"Well, fellows," replied Jim, "put away the accounts of this as
+curiosities! You'll have some difficulty in making posterity believe
+that there was ever a time or place where town lots were sold with magic
+lanterns and a brass band! And don't advertise it too much with Dorr,
+Wickersham and those fellows. They think us a little crazy now. But a
+brass band! That comes pretty near being the limit."
+
+"Gentlemen," said Mr. Lattimore, "I shall have to leave you soon; and
+will you kindly make use of me as soon as you conveniently can, and let
+me go?"
+
+"Have you got the condition of the Trescott estate figured out?" said
+Mr. Elkins.
+
+"Yes," said the lawyer.
+
+We all leaned forward in absorbed interest; for this was news.
+
+"Have you told these gentlemen?" Jim went on.
+
+"I have told no one."
+
+"Please give us your conclusions."
+
+"Gentlemen," said Mr. Lattimore, "I am sorry to report that the Trescott
+estate is absolutely insolvent! It lacks a hundred thousand dollars of
+being worth anything!"
+
+There was a silence for some moments.
+
+"My God!" said Hinckley, "and our trust company is on all that paper of
+Trescott's scattered over the East!"
+
+"What's become of the money he got on all his sales?" asked Jim.
+
+"From the looks of the check-stubs, and other indications," said Mr.
+Lattimore, "I should say the most of it went into Board of Trade deals."
+
+Cornish was swearing in a repressed way, and above his black beard his
+face was pale. Elkins sat drumming idly on the desk with his fingers.
+
+"Gentlemen," said he, "I take it to be conceded that unless the Trescott
+paper is cared for, things will go to pieces here. That's the same as
+saying that it must be taken up at all hazards."
+
+"Not exactly," said Cornish, "at _all_ hazards."
+
+"Well," said Jim, "it amounts to that. Has any one any suggestions as to
+the course to be followed?"
+
+Mr. Cornish asked whether it would not be best to take time, allow the
+probate proceedings to drag along, and see what would turn up.
+
+"But the Trust Company's guaranties," said Mr. Hinckley, with a banker's
+scent for the complications of commercial paper, "must be made good on
+presentation, or it may as well close its doors."
+
+"The thing won't 'drag along' successfully," said Jim. "Have you a
+schedule of the assets?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Lattimore. "The life-insurance money and the home are
+exempt from liability for debts, and I've left them out; but the other
+properties you'll find listed here."
+
+And he threw down on the desk a folded document in a legal wrapper.
+
+"The family," said Jim gravely, "must be told of the condition of
+things. It is a hard thing to do, but it must be done. Then conveyances
+must be obtained of all the property, subject to debts; and we must take
+the property and pay the debts. That also will be a hard thing to do--in
+several ways; but it must be done. It must be done--do you all agree?"
+
+"Let me first ask," said Mr. Cornish, turning to Mr. Hinckley, "how long
+would it be before there would have to be trouble on this paper?"
+
+"It couldn't possibly be postponed more than sixty days," was the
+answer.
+
+"Is there any prospect," Cornish went on, addressing Mr. Elkins, "of
+closing out the railway properties within sixty days?"
+
+"A prospect, yes," said Jim.
+
+"Anything like a certainty?"
+
+"No, not in sixty days."
+
+"Then," said Cornish reluctantly, "there seems to be no way out of it,
+and I agree. But I feel as if I were being held up, and I assent on this
+ground only: that Halliday and Pendleton will never deal on equal terms
+with a set of financial cripples, and that any trouble here will seal
+the fate of the railway transaction. But, lest this be taken as a
+precedent, I wish it to be understood that I'm not jeopardizing my
+fortune, or any part of it, out of any sentimental consideration for
+these supposed claims of any one who holds Lattimore paper, in the East
+or elsewhere!"
+
+Jim sat drumming on the desk.
+
+"As we are all agreed on what to do," said he drawlingly, "we can skip
+the question why we do it. Prepare the necessary papers, Mr. Lattimore.
+And perhaps you are the proper person to apprise the family as to the
+true condition of things. We'll have to get together to-morrow and begin
+to dig for the funds. I think we can do no more to-night."
+
+We walked down the street and dropped into the opera house in time to
+hear the grand finale of the last piece by the band. As the great
+outburst of music died away, Captain Tolliver radiantly stepped to the
+footlights, dividing the applause with the musicians.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," said he, "puhmit me to say, in bidding you-all
+good-night, that I congratulate the republic on the possession of a
+citizenship so awake to theiah true interests as you have shown
+you'selves to-day! I congratulate the puhchasers of propahty in the
+_Herald_ Addition upon the bahgains they have secuahed. Only five
+minutes' walk from the cyahs, and well within the three-mile limit, the
+time must soon come when these lots will be covahed with the mansions of
+ouah richah citizens. Even since the sales of this afternoon, I am
+infawmed that many of the pieces have been resold at an advance, netting
+the puhchasers a nice profit without putting up a cent. Upon all this I
+congratulate you. Lattimore, ladies and gentlemen, has nevah been cuhsed
+by a boom, and I pray God she nevah may! This rathah brisk growth of
+ouahs, based as it is on crying needs of ouah trade territory, is really
+unaccountably slow, all things considered. But I may say right hyah that
+things ah known to be in sto' foh us which will soon give ouah city an
+impetus which will cyahy us fo'ward by leaps and bounds--by leaps and
+bounds, ladies and gentlemen--to that highah and still mo' commandin'
+place in the galaxy of American cities which is ouahs by right! And now
+as you-all take youah leave, I propose that we rise and give three
+cheers fo' Lattimore and prosperity."
+
+The cheers were given thunderously, and the crowd bustled out, filling
+the street.
+
+"Well, wouldn't that jar you!" said Jim. "This is a case of 'Gaze first
+upon this picture, then on that' sure enough, isn't it, Al?"
+
+Captain Tolliver joined us, so full of excitement of the evening that he
+forgot to give Mr. Elkins the greeting his return otherwise would have
+evoked.
+
+"Gentlemen," said he, "it was glorious! Nevah until this moment have I
+felt true fawgiveness in my breast faw the crime of Appomattox! But
+to-night we ah truly a reunited people!"
+
+"Glad to know it," said Jim, "mighty glad, Captain. The news'll send
+stocks up a-whooping, if it gets to New York!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+I Twice Explain the Condition of the Trescott Estate.
+
+
+Nothing had remained unchanged in Lattimore, and our old offices in the
+First National Bank edifice had long since been vacated by us. The very
+building had been demolished, and another and many-storied structure
+stood in its place. Now we were in the big Grain Belt Trust Company's
+building, the ground-floor of which was shared between the Trust Company
+and the general offices of the Lattimore and Great Western. In one
+corner, and next to the private room of President Elkins, was the office
+of Barslow & Elkins, where I commanded. Into which entered Mrs. Trescott
+and her daughter one day, soon after Mr. Lattimore had been given his
+instructions concerning the offer of our syndicate to pay the debts of
+their estate and take over its properties.
+
+"Josie and I have called," said the widow, "to talk with you about the
+estate matters. Mr. Lattimore came to see us last night and--told us."
+
+She seemed a little agitated, but in nowise so much cast down as might
+be expected of one who, considering herself rich, learns that she is
+poor. She had in her manner that mixture of dignity and constraint
+which marks the bearing of people whose relations with their friends
+have been affected by some great grief. A calamity not only changes our
+own feelings, but it makes us uncertain as to what our friends expect of
+us.
+
+"What we wish explained," said Josie, "is just how it comes that our
+property must be deeded away."
+
+"I can see," said I, "that that is a matter which demands investigation
+on your part. Your request is a natural and a proper one."
+
+"It is not that," said she, evidently objecting to the word
+investigation; "we are not so very much surprised, and we have no doubt
+as to the necessity of doing it. But we want to know as much as possible
+about it before we act."
+
+"Quite right," said I. "Mr. Elkins is in the next office; let us call
+him in. He sees and can explain these things as clearly as any one."
+
+Jim came in response to a summons by one of his clerks. He shook hands
+gravely with my visitors.
+
+"We are told," said Mrs. Trescott, "that our debts are a good deal more
+than we can pay--that we really have nothing."
+
+"Not quite that," said Jim; "the law gives to the widow the home and the
+life insurance. That is a good deal more than nothing."
+
+"As to whether we can keep that," said Josie, "we are not discussing
+now; but there are some other things we should like cleared up."
+
+"We don't understand Mr. Cornish's offer to take the property and pay
+the debts," said Mrs. Trescott.
+
+Jim's glance sought mine in a momentary and questioning astonishment;
+then he calmly returned the widow's look. Josie's eyes were turned
+toward the carpet, and a slight blush tinged her cheeks.
+
+"Ah," said Jim, "yes; Mr. Cornish's offer. How did you learn of it?"
+
+"I got my understanding of it from Mr. Lattimore," said Mrs. Trescott,
+"and told Josie about it."
+
+"Before we consent to carry out this plan," said Josie, "we ... I want
+to know all about the motives and considerations back of it. I want to
+know whether it is based on purely business considerations, or on some
+fancied obligation ... or ... or ... on merely friendly sentiments."
+
+"As to motives," said Mr. Elkins, "if the purely business requirements
+of the situation fully account for the proposition, we may waive the
+discussion of motives, can't we, Josie?"
+
+"I imagine," said Mrs. Trescott, finding that Jim's question remained
+unanswered, "that none of us will claim to be able to judge Mr.
+Cornish's motives."
+
+"Certainly not," acquiesced Mr. Elkins. "None of us."
+
+"This is not what we came to ask about," said Josie. "Please tell us
+whether our house and the insurance money would be mamma's if this plan
+were not adopted--if the courts went on and settled the estate in the
+usual way?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "the law gives her that, and justly. For the creditors
+knew all about the law when they took those bonds. So you need have no
+qualms of conscience on that."
+
+"As none of it belongs to me," said Josie, "I shall leave all that to
+mamma. I avoid the necessity of settling it by ceasing to be 'the
+richest heiress in this part of the West'--one of the uses of adversity.
+But to proceed. Mamma says that there is a corporation, or something,
+forming to pay our debts and take our property, and that it will take a
+hundred thousand dollars more to pay the debts than the estate is worth.
+I must understand why this corporation should do this. I can see that it
+will save pa's good name in the business world, and save us from public
+bankruptcy; but ought we to be saved these things at such a cost? And
+can we permit--a corporation--or any one, to do this for us?"
+
+Mr. Elkins nodded to me to speak.
+
+"My dear," said I, "it's another illustration of the truth that no man
+liveth unto himself alone--"
+
+She shrank, as if she feared some fresh hurt was about to be touched,
+and I saw that it was the second part of the text the anticipation of
+which gave her pain. Quotation is sometimes ill for a green wound.
+
+"The fact is," I went on, "that things in Lattimore are not in condition
+to bear a shock--general money conditions, I mean, you know."
+
+"I know," she said, nodding assent; "I can see that."
+
+"Your father did a very large business for a time," I continued; "and
+when he sold lands he took some cash in payment, and for the balance
+notes of the various purchasers, secured by mortgages on the properties.
+Many of these persons are mere adventurers, who bought on speculation,
+and when their first notes came due failed to pay. Now if you had these
+notes, you could hold them, or foreclose the mortgages, and, beyond
+being disappointed in getting the money, no harm would be done."
+
+"I understand," said Josie. "I knew something of this before."
+
+"But if we haven't the notes," inquired her mother, "where are they?"
+
+"Well," I went on, "you know how we have all handled these matters here.
+Mr. Trescott did as we all did: he negotiated them. The Grain Belt Trust
+Company placed them for him, and his are the only securities it has
+handled except those of our syndicate. He took them to the Trust Company
+and signed them on the back, and thus promised to pay them if the first
+signer failed. Then the trust company attached its guaranty to them, and
+they were resold all over the East, wherever people had money to put out
+at interest."
+
+"I see," said Josie; "we have already had the money on these notes."
+
+"Yes," said I, "and now we find that a great many of these notes, which
+are being sent on for payment, will not be paid. Your father's estate is
+not able to pay them, and our trust company must either take them up or
+fail. If it fails, everyone will think that values in Lattimore are
+unstable and fictitious, and so many people will try to sell out that we
+shall have a smashing of values, and possibly a panic. Prices will
+drop, so that none of our mortgages will be good for their face.
+Thousands of people will be broken, the city will be ruined, and there
+will be hard and distressful times, both here and where our paper is
+held. But if we can keep things as they are until we can do some large
+things we have in view, we are not afraid of anything serious happening.
+So we form this new corporation, and have it advance the funds on the
+notes, so as not to weaken the trust company--and because we can't
+afford to do it otherwise--and we know you would not permit it anyhow;
+and we ask you to give to the new corporation all the property which the
+creditors could reach, which will be held, and sold as opportunity
+offers, so as to make the loss as small as possible. But we must keep
+off this panic to save ourselves."
+
+"I must think about this," said Josie. "I don't see any way out of it;
+but to have one's affairs so wrapped up in such a great tangle that one
+loses control of them seems wrong, somehow. And so far as I am
+concerned, I think I should prefer to turn everything over to the
+creditors--house and all--than to have even so good friends as yourself
+take on such a load for us. It seems as if we were saying to you, 'Pay
+our debts or we'll ruin you!' I must think about it."
+
+"You understand it now?" said Jim.
+
+"Yes, in a way."
+
+"Let me come over this evening," said he, "and I think I can remove this
+feeling from your mind. And by the way, the new corporation is not going
+to have the ranch out on the Cheyenne Range. The syndicate says it
+isn't worth anything. And I'm going to take it. I still believe in the
+headwaters of Bitter Creek as an art country."
+
+"Thank you," said she vaguely.
+
+Somehow, the explanation of the estate affairs seemed to hurt her. Her
+color was still high, but her eyes were suffused, her voice grew choked
+at times, and she showed the distress of her recent trials, in something
+like a loss of self-control. Her pretty head and slender figure, the
+flexile white hands clasped together in nervous strain to discuss these
+so vital matters, and, more than all, the departure from her habitual
+cool and self-possessed manner, was touching, and appealed powerfully to
+Jim. He walked up to her, as she stood ready to leave, and laid his hand
+lightly on her arm.
+
+"The way Barslow puts these property matters," said he, "you are called
+upon to think that all arrangements have been made upon a cold cash
+basis; and, actually, that's the fact. But you mustn't either of you
+think that in dealing with you we have forgotten that you are dear to
+us--friends. We should have had to act in the same way if you had been
+enemies, perhaps, but if there had been any way in which our--regard
+could have shown itself, that way would have been followed."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Trescott, "we understand that. Mr. Lattimore said
+almost the same thing, and we know that in what he did Mr. Cornish--"
+
+"We must go now, mamma," said Josie. "Thank you both very much. It won't
+do any harm for me to take a day or so for considering this in all its
+phases; but I know now what I shall do. The thought of the distress that
+might come to people here and elsewhere as a result of these mistakes
+here is a new one, and a little big for me, at first."
+
+Jim sat by the desk, after they went away, folding insurance blotters
+and savagely tearing them in pieces.
+
+"I wish to God," said he, "that I could throw my hand into the deck and
+quit!"
+
+"What's the matter?" said I.
+
+"Oh--nothing," he returned. "Only, look at the situation. She comes in,
+filled with the idea that it was Cornish who proposed this plan, and
+that he did it for her sake. I couldn't very well say, like a boy,
+''Twasn't Cornish; 'twas me!', could I? And in showing her the purely
+mercenary character of the deal, I'm put in the position of backcapping
+Cornish, and she goes away with that impression! Oh, Al, what's the good
+of being able to convince and control every one else, if you are always
+further off than Kamschatka with the only one for whose feelings you
+really care?"
+
+"I don't think it struck her in that way at all," said I. "She could see
+how it was, and did, whatever her mother may think. But what possessed
+Lattimore to tell Mrs. Trescott that Cornish story?"
+
+"Oh, Lattimore never said anything like that!" he returned disgustedly.
+"He told her that it was proposed by a friend, or one of the syndicate,
+or something like that; and they are so saturated with the Cornish idea
+up there lately, that they filled up the blank out of their own minds.
+Another mighty encouraging symptom, isn't it?"
+
+Not more than a day or two after this, and after the news of the
+"purchase" of the Trescott estate was being whispered about, my
+telephone rang, just before my time for leaving the office, and, on
+answering, I found that Antonia was at the other end of the wire.
+
+"Is this Mr. Barslow?" said she. "How do you do? Alice is with us this
+afternoon, and she and mamma have given me authority to bring you home
+to dinner with us. Do you surrender?"
+
+"Always," said I, "at such a summons."
+
+"Then I'll come for you in ten minutes, if you'll wait for me. It's ever
+so good of you."
+
+From her way of finishing the conversation, I knew she was coming to the
+office. So I waited in pleasurable anticipation of her coming, thinking
+of the perversity of the scheme of things which turned the eyes of both
+Jim and Cornish to Josie, while this girl coming to fetch me yearned so
+strongly toward one of them that her sorrow--borne lightly and
+cheerfully as it was--was an open secret. When she came she made her way
+past the clerks in the first room and into my private den. Not until the
+door closed behind her, and we were alone, did I see that she was not in
+her usual spirits. Then I saw that unmistakable quiver in her lips, so
+like a smile, so far from mirth, which my acquaintance with the girl, so
+sensitive and free from secretiveness, had made me familiar with.
+
+"I want to know about some things," said she, "that papa hints about in
+a blind sort of a way, but doesn't tell clearly. Is it true that Josie
+and her mother are poor?"
+
+"That is something which ought not to be known yet," said I, "but it is
+true."
+
+"Oh," said she tearfully, "I am so sorry, so sorry!"
+
+"Antonia," said I, as she hastily brushed her eyes, "these tears do your
+kind heart credit!"
+
+"Oh, don't, don't talk to me like that!" she exclaimed passionately. "My
+kind heart! Why, sometimes I hate her; and I would be glad if she was
+out of the world! Don't look like that at me! And don't pretend to be
+surprised, or say you don't understand me. I think every one understands
+me, and has for a long time. I think everybody on the street says, after
+I pass, 'Poor Antonia!' I _must_ talk to somebody! And I'd rather talk
+to you because, even though you are a man and can't possibly know how I
+feel, you understand _him_ better than any one else I know--and _you_
+love him too!"
+
+I started to say something, but the situation did not lend itself to
+words. Neither could I pat her on the shoulders, or press her hand, as I
+might have done with a man. Pale and beautiful, her jaunty hat a little
+awry, her blonde ringlets in some disorder, she sat unapproachable in
+her grief.
+
+"You look at me," said she, with a little gasping laugh, "as if I were a
+drowning girl, and you chained to the bank. If you haven't pitied me in
+the past, Albert, don't pity me now; for the mere saying openly to some
+human being that I love him seems almost to make me happy!"
+
+I lamely murmured some inanity, of which she took not the slightest
+notice.
+
+"Is it true," she asked, "that Mr. Elkins is to pay their debts, and
+that they are to be--married?"
+
+"No," said I, glad, for some reason which is not very clear, to find
+something to deny. "Nothing of the sort, I assure you."
+
+And again, this time something wearily, for it was the second time over
+it in so short a time, I explained the disposition of the Trescott
+estate.
+
+"But he urged it?" she said. "He insisted upon it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She arose, buttoned her jacket about her, and stood quietly as if to
+test her mastery of herself, once or twice moving as if to speak, but
+stopping short, with a long, quivering sigh. I longed to take her in my
+arms and comfort her; for, in a way, she attracted me strongly.
+
+"Mr. Barslow," said she at last, "I have no apology to make to you; for
+you are my friend. And I have no feeling toward Mr. Elkins of which, in
+my secret heart, and so long as he knows nothing of it, I am not proud.
+To know him ... and love him may be death ... but it is honor!... I am
+sorry Josie is poor, because it is a hard thing for her; but more
+because I know he will be drawn to her in a stronger way by her poverty.
+Shake hands with me, Albert, and be jolly, I'm jollier, away down deep,
+than I've been for a long, long time; and I thank you for that!"
+
+We shook hands warmly, like comrades, and passed down to her carriage
+together. At dinner she was vivacious as ever; but I was downcast. So
+much so that Mrs. Hinckley devoted herself to me, cheering me with a
+dissertation on "Sex in Mind." I asked myself if the atmosphere in which
+she had been reared had not in some degree contributed to the attitude
+of Antonia toward the expression to me of her regard for Jim.
+
+So the Trescott estate matter was arranged. In a few days the boom was
+strengthened by newspaper stories of the purchase, by heavy financial
+interests, of the entire list of assets in the hands of the
+administrator.
+
+"This immense deal," said the _Herald_, "is new proof of the
+desirability of Lattimore property. The Acme Investment Company, which
+will handle the properties, has bought for investment, and will hold for
+increased prices. It may be taken as certain that in no other city in
+the country could so large and varied a list of holdings be so quickly
+and advantageously realized upon."
+
+This was cheering--to the masses. But to us it was like praise for the
+high color of a fever patient. Even while the rehabilitated Giddings
+thus lifted his voice in pæans of rejoicing, the lurid signals of danger
+appeared in our sky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+Of Conflicts, Within and Without.
+
+
+I have often wished that some sort of a business weather-chart might be
+periodically got out, showing conditions all over the world. It seems to
+me that with such a map one could forecast financial storms and squalls
+with an accuracy quite up to the weather-bureau standard.
+
+Had we at Lattimore been provided with such a chart, and been reminded
+of the wisdom of referring to it occasionally, we might have saved
+ourselves some surprises. We should have known of certain areas of
+speculative high pressure in Australasia, Argentina, and South Africa,
+which existed even prior to my meeting with Jim that day in the Pullman
+smoking-room coming out of Chicago. These we should have seen changing
+month by month, until at the time when we were most gloriously carrying
+things before us in Lattimore, each of these spots on the other side of
+the little old world showed financial disturbances--pronounced "lows."
+We should have seen symptoms of storm on the European bourses; and we
+should have thought of the natural progress of the moving areas, and
+derived much benefit from such consideration. We should certainly have
+paid some attention to it, if we could have seen the black isobars
+drawn about London, when the great banking house of Fleischmann Brothers
+went down in the wreck of their South African and Argentine investments.
+But having no such chart, and being much engrossed in the game against
+the World and Destiny, we glanced for a moment at the dispatches, seeing
+nothing in them of interest to us, congratulated ourselves that we were
+not as other investors and speculators, and played on.
+
+Once in a while we found some over-cautious banker or broker who had
+inexplicable fears for the future.
+
+"Here is an idiot," said Cornish, while we were placing the paper to
+float the Trescott deal, "who is calling his loans; and why, do you
+think?"
+
+"Can't guess," said Jim, "unless he needs the money. How does _he_
+account for it?"
+
+"Read his letter," said Cornish. "Says the Fleischmann failure in London
+is making his directors cautious. I'm calling his attention to the now
+prevailing sun-spots, as bearing on Lattimore property."
+
+Mr. Elkins read the letter carefully, turned it over, and read it again.
+
+"Don't," said he; "he may be one of those asses who fail to see the
+business value of the _reductio ad absurdum_.... Fellows, we must push
+this L. & G. W. business with Pendleton. Some of us ought to be down
+there now."
+
+"That is wise counsel," I agreed, "and you're the man."
+
+"No," said he positively, "I'm not the man. Cornish, can't you go,
+starting, say, to-morrow?"
+
+"No indeed," said Cornish with equal positiveness; "since my turn-down
+by Wade on that bond deal, I'm out of touch with the lower Broadway and
+Wall Street element. It seems clear to me that you are the only one to
+carry this negotiation forward."
+
+"I can't go, absolutely," insisted Jim. "Al, it seems to be up to you."
+
+I knew that Jim ought to do this work, and could not understand the
+reasons for both himself and Cornish declining the mission. Privately, I
+told him that it was nonsense to send me; but he found reasons in plenty
+for the course he had determined upon. He had better control of the hot
+air, he said, but as a matter of fact I was more in Pendleton's class
+than he was, I was more careful in my statements, and I saw further into
+men's minds.
+
+"And if, as you say," said he, "Pendleton thinks me the whole works
+here, it will show a self-possession and freedom from anxiety on our
+part to accredit a subordinate (as you call yourself) as envoy to the
+court of St. Scads. Again, affairs here are likely to need me at any
+time; and if we go wrong here, it's all off. I don't dare leave. Anyhow,
+down deep in your subconsciousness, you know that in diplomacy you
+really have us all beaten to a pulp: and this is a matter as purely
+diplomatic as draw-poker. You'll do all right."
+
+My wife was skeptical as to the necessity of my going.
+
+"Why doesn't Mr. Cornish go, then?" she inquired, after I had explained
+to her the position of Mr. Elkins. "He is a native of Wall Street, I
+believe."
+
+"Well," I repeated, "they both say positively that they can't go."
+
+"Your natural specialty may be diplomacy," said she pityingly, "but if
+you take the reasons they give as the real ones, I must be permitted to
+doubt it. It's perfectly obvious that if Josie were transferred to New
+York, the demands of business would take them both there at once."
+
+This remark struck me as very subtle, and as having a good deal in it.
+Josie had never permitted the rivalry between Jim and Cornish to become
+publicly apparent; but in spite of the mourning which kept the
+Trescott's in semi-retirement, it was daily growing more keen. Elkins
+was plainly anxious at the progress Cornish had seemed to make during
+his last long absence, and still doubtful of his relations with Josie
+after that utterance over her father's body. But he was not one to give
+up, and so, whenever she came over for an evening with Alice, Jim was
+sure to drop in casually and see us. I believe Alice telephoned him. On
+the other hand, Cornish was calling at the Trescott house with
+increasing frequency. Mrs. Trescott was decidedly favorable to him,
+Alice a pronounced partisan of Elkins; and Josie vibrated between the
+two oppositely charged atmospheres, calmly non-committal, and apparently
+pleased with both. But the affair was affecting our relations. There was
+a new feeling, still unexpressed, of strain and stress, in spite of the
+familiarity and comradeship of long and intimate intercourse. Moreover,
+I felt that Mr. Hinckley was not on the same terms with Jim as formerly,
+and I wondered if he was possessed of Antonia's secret.
+
+It was with a prevision of something out of the ordinary, therefore,
+that I received through Alice a request from Josie for a private
+interview with me. She would come to us at any time when I would
+telephone that I was at home and would see her. Of course I at once
+decided I would go to her. Which, that evening, my last in Lattimore
+before starting for the East, I did.
+
+There was a side door to my house, and a corresponding one in the
+Trescott home across the street. We were all quite in the habit, in our
+constant visiting between the households, of making a short cut by
+crossing the road from one of these doors to the other. This I did that
+evening, rapped at the door, and imagining I heard a voice bid me come
+in, opened it, and stepping into the library, found no one. The door
+between the library and the front hall stood open, and through it I
+heard the voice of Miss Trescott and the clear, carrying tones of Mr.
+Cornish, in low but earnest conversation.
+
+"Yes," I heard him say, "perhaps. And if I am, haven't I abundant
+reason?"
+
+"I have told you often," said she pleadingly, "that I would give you a
+definite answer whenever you definitely demand it--"
+
+"And that it would in that case be 'No,'" he added, completing the
+sentence. "Oh, Josie, my darling, haven't you punished me enough for my
+bad conduct toward you in that old time? I was a young fool, and you a
+strange country girl; but as soon as you left us, I began to feel your
+sweetness. And I was seeking for you everywhere I went until I found you
+that night up there by the lake. Does that seem like slighting you? Why,
+I hope you don't deem me capable of being satisfied in this hole
+Lattimore, under any circumstances, if it hadn't been for the hope and
+comfort your being here has given me!"
+
+"I thought we were to say no more about that old time," said she; "I
+thought the doings of Johnny Cornish were not to be remembered by or of
+Bedford."
+
+"The name I've asked you to call me by!" said he passionately. "Does
+that mean--"
+
+"It means nothing," said she. "Oh, please, please!--Good-night!"
+
+I retired to the porch, and rapped again. She came to the door blushing
+redly, and so fluttered by their leave-taking that I thanked God that
+Jim was not in my place. There would have been division in our ranks at
+once; for it seemed to me that her conduct to Cornish was too
+complaisant by far.
+
+"I came over," said I, "because Alice said you wanted to see me."
+
+I think there must have been in my tone something of the reproach in my
+thoughts; for she timidly said she was sorry to have given me so much
+trouble.
+
+"Oh, don't, Josie!" said I. "You know I'd not miss the chance of doing
+you a favor for anything. Tell me what it is, my dear girl, and don't
+speak of trouble."
+
+"If you forbid reference to trouble," said she, smiling, "it will stop
+this conference. For my troubles are what I want to talk to you about.
+May I go on?--You see, our financial condition is awfully queer. Mamma
+has some money, but not much. And we have this big house. It's absurd
+for us to live in it, and I want to ask you first, can you sell it for
+us?"
+
+It was doubtful, I told her. A year or so ago, I went on, it would have
+been easy; but somehow the market for fine houses was dull now. We would
+try, though, and hoped to succeed. We talked at length, and I took
+copious memoranda for my clerks.
+
+"There is another thing," said she when we had finished the subject of
+the house, "upon which I want light, something upon which depends my
+staying here or going away. You know General Lattimore and I are
+friends, and that I place great trust in his conclusions. He says that
+the most terrible hard times here would result from anything happening
+to your syndicate. You have said almost the same thing once or twice,
+and the other day you said something about great operations which you
+have in view which will, somehow, do away with any danger of that kind.
+Is it true that you would all be--ruined by a--breaking up--or anything
+of that sort?"
+
+"Just now," I confessed, "such a thing would be dangerous; but I hope we
+shall soon be past all that."
+
+I told her, as well as I could, about our hopes, and of my mission to
+New York.
+
+"You must suspect," said she, "that my presence here is danger to your
+harmony; and through you, to all these people whose names even we have
+never heard. Shall I go away? I can go almost anywhere with mamma, and
+we can get along nicely. Now that pa is gone, my work here is over, and
+I want to get into the world."
+
+I thought of the parallelism between her discontent and the speech Mr.
+Cornish had made, referring so contemptuously to Lattimore. I began to
+see the many things in common between them, and I grew anxious for Jim.
+
+"Of all things," said she, "I want to avoid the rôle of Helen setting a
+city in flames. It would be so absurd--and so terrible; and rather than
+do such a hackneyed and harmful thing, I want to go away."
+
+"Do you really mean that?" I asked, "Haven't you a desire to make your
+choice, and stay?"
+
+"You mustn't ask that question, Albert," said she. "The answer is a
+secret--from every one. But I will say--that if you succeed in this
+mission, so as to put people here quite out of danger--I may not go
+away--not for some time!"
+
+She was blushing again, just as she blushed when she admitted me. I
+thought once more of the fluttering cry, "Oh, please--please!" and the
+pause before she added the good-night, and my jealousy for Jim rose
+again.
+
+"Well," said I, rising, "all I can say is that I hope all will be safe
+when I return, and that you will find it quite possible to--remain. My
+advice is: do nothing looking toward leaving until I return."
+
+"Don't be cross with me, Mr. Barslow," said she, "for really, really--I
+am in great perplexity."
+
+"I am not cross," said I, "but don't you see how hard it is for me to
+advise? Things conflict so, and all among your friends!"
+
+"They do conflict," she assented, "they do conflict, every way, and all
+the time--and do, do give me a little credit for keeping the conflict
+from getting beyond control for so long; for there are conflicts within,
+as well as without! Don't blame Helen altogether, or me, whatever
+happens!"
+
+She hung on my arm, as she took me to the door, and seemed deeply
+troubled. I left her, and walked several times around the block,
+ruminating upon the extraordinary way in which these dissolving views of
+passion were displaying themselves to me. Not that the mere matter of
+outburst of confidences surprised me; for people all my life have bored
+me with their secret woes. I think it is because I early formed a habit
+of looking sympathetic. But these concerned me so nearly that their
+gradual focussing to some sort of climax filled me with anxious
+interest.
+
+The next day I spent in the sleeping-car, running into Chicago. As the
+clickety-_clack_, clickety-_clack_, clickety-_clack_ of the wheels
+vibrated through my couch, I pondered on the ridiculous position of that
+cautious Eastern bank as to the Fleischmann Brothers' failure; then on
+the Lattimore & Great Western and Belt Line sale; and finally worked
+around through the Straits of Sunda, in a suspicious lateen-rigged
+craft manned by Malays and Portuguese. Finally, I was horrified at
+discovering Cornish, in a slashed doublet, carrying Josie away in one of
+the boats, having scuttled the vessel and left Jim bound to the mast.
+
+"Chicago in fifteen minutes, suh," said the porter, at this critical
+point. "Just in time to dress, suh."
+
+And as I awoke, my approach toward New York brought to me a sickening
+consciousness of the struggle which awaited me there, and the fatal
+results of failure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+In which I Win my Great Victory.
+
+
+My plan was our old one--to see both Pendleton and Halliday, and, if
+possible, to allow both to know of the fact that we had two strings to
+our bow, playing the one off against the other. Whether or not there was
+any likelihood of this course doing any good was dependent on the
+existence of the strained personal relations, as well as the business
+rivalry, generally supposed to prevail between the two Titans of the
+highways. As conditions have since become, plans like mine are quite
+sure to come to naught; but in those days the community of interests in
+the railway world had not reached its present perfection of
+organization. Men like Pendleton and Halliday were preparing the way for
+it, but the personal equation was then a powerful factor in the problem,
+and these builders of their own systems still carried on their private
+wars with their own forces. In such a war our properties were important.
+
+The Lattimore & Great Western with the Belt Line terminals would make
+the Pendleton system dominant in Lattimore. In the possession of
+Halliday it would render him the arbiter of the city's fortunes, and
+would cut off from his rival's lines the rich business from this feeder.
+Both men were playing with the patience of Muscovite diplomacy the old
+and tried game of permitting the little road to run until it got into
+difficulties, and then swooping down upon it; but either, we thought,
+and especially Pendleton, would pay full value for the properties rather
+than see them fall into his opponent's net.
+
+I wired Pendleton's office from home that I was coming. At Chicago I
+received from his private secretary a telegram reading: "Mr. Pendleton
+will see you at any time after the 9th inst.                 SMITH."
+
+We had been having some correspondence with Mr. Halliday's office on
+matters of disputed switching and trackage dues. The controversy had
+gone up from subordinate to subordinate to the fountain of power itself.
+A contract had been sent on for examination, embodying a _modus vivendi_
+governing future relations. I had wired notice of my coming to him also,
+and his answer, which lay alongside Pendleton's in the same box, was
+evidently based on the supposition that it was this contract which was
+bringing me East, and was worded so as to relieve me of the journey if
+possible.
+
+"Will be in New York on evening of 11th," it read, "not before. With
+slight modifications, contract submitted as to L. & G. W. and Belt Line
+matter will be executed.                                   HALLIDAY."
+
+I spent no time in Chicago, but pushed on, in the respectable isolation
+of a through sleeper on a limited train. Once in a while I went forward
+into the day coach, to give myself the experience of the complete
+change in the social atmosphere. On arrival, I began killing time by
+running down every scrap of our business in New York. My gorge rose at
+all forms of amusement; but I had a sensation of doing something while
+on the cars, and went to Boston, and down to Philadelphia, all the time
+feeling the pulse of business. There was a lack of that confident
+hopefulness which greeted us on our former visits. I heard the
+Fleischmann failure spoken of rather frequently. One or two financial
+establishments on this side of the water were looked at askance because
+of their supposed connections with the Fleischmanns. Mr. Wade, in hushed
+tones, advised me to prepare for some little stringency after the
+holidays.
+
+"Nothing serious, you know, Mr. Borlish," said he, still paying his
+mnemonic tribute to the other names of our syndicate; "nothing to be
+spoken of as hard times; and as for panic, the financial world is too
+well organized for _that_ ever to happen again! But a little tightening
+of things, Mr. Cornings, to sort of clear the decks for action on lines
+of conservatism for the year's business."
+
+I talked with Mr. Smith, Mr. Pendleton's private secretary, and with Mr.
+Carson, who spoke for Mr. Halliday. In fact I went over the L. & G. W.
+proposition pretty fully with each of them, and each office had a
+well-digested and succinct statement of the matter for the examination
+of the magnates when they came back. Once while Mr. Carson and I were on
+our way to take luncheon together, we met Mr. Smith, and I was glad to
+note the glance of marked interest which he bestowed upon us. The
+meeting was a piece of unexpected good fortune.
+
+On the 10th I had my audience with Mr. Pendleton. He had the typewritten
+statement of the proposition before him, and was ready to discuss it
+with his usual incisiveness.
+
+"I am willing to say to you, Mr. Barslow," said he, "that we are willing
+to take over your line when the propitious time comes. We don't think
+that now is such a time. Why not run along as we are?"
+
+"Because we are not satisfied with the railroad business as a side line,
+Mr. Pendleton," said I. "We must have more mileage or none at all, and
+if we begin extensions, we shall be drawn into railroading as an
+exclusive vocation. We prefer to close out that department, and to put
+in all our energies to the development of our city."
+
+"When must you know about this?" he asked.
+
+"I came East to close it up, if possible," I answered. "You are familiar
+with the situation, and we thought must be ready to decide."
+
+"Two and a quarter millions," he objected, "is out of the question. I
+can't expect my directors to view half the price with any favor. How can
+I?"
+
+"Show them our earnings," I suggested.
+
+"Yes," said he, "that will do very well to talk to people who can be
+made to forget the fact that you've been building a city there from a
+country village, and your line has been pulling in everything to build
+it with. The next five years will be different. Again, while I feel sure
+the business men of your town will still throw things our way, as they
+have your way--tonnage I mean--there might be a tendency to divide it up
+more than when your own people were working for the trade. And the next
+five years will be different anyhow."
+
+"Do you remember," said I, "how skeptical you were as to the past five?"
+
+"I acknowledge it," said he, laughing. "The fact is I didn't give you
+credit for being as big men as you are. But even a big man, or a big
+town, can reach only as high as it can. But we can't settle that
+question. I shouldn't expect a Lattimore boomer ever to adopt my view of
+it. I shall give this matter some attention to-day, and while I feel
+sure we are too far apart ever to come together, come in in the morning,
+and we will look at it again."
+
+"I hope we may come together," said I, rising; "we built the line to
+bring you into Lattimore, and we want to keep you there. It has made our
+town, and we prize the connection highly."
+
+"Ah, yes," he answered, countering. "Well, we are spread out a good deal
+now, you know; and some of our directors look with suspicion upon your
+sudden growth, and would not feel sorry to withdraw. I don't agree with
+'em, you know, but I must defer to others sometimes. Good-morning."
+
+I passed the evening with Carson at the theatre, and supped with him
+afterward. He gave me every opportunity to indulge in champagne, and
+evinced a desire to know all about business conditions in Lattimore, and
+the affairs of the L. & G. W. I suspected that the former fact had some
+connection with the latter. I went to my hotel, however, in my usual
+state of ebriety, while Mr. Carson had attained a degree of friendliness
+toward me bordering on affection, as a direct result of setting the pace
+in the consumption of wine. I listened patiently to his complaints of
+Halliday's ungratefulness toward him in not giving him the General
+Managership of one of the associated roads; but when he began to confide
+to me the various pathological conditions of his family, including Mrs.
+Carson, I drew the line, and broke up the party. I retired, feeling a
+little resentful toward Carson. His device seemed rather cheap to try on
+a full-grown man. Yet his entertainment had been undeniably good.
+
+Next morning I was admitted to the presence of the great man with less
+than half an hour's delay. He turned to me, and plunged at once into the
+midst of the subject. Evidently some old misunderstanding of the
+question came up in his mind by association of ideas, as a rejected
+paper will be drawn with its related files from a pigeon-hole.
+
+"That terminal charge," said he, "has not counted for much against the
+success of your road, yet; but the contract provides for increasing
+rentals, and it is already too much. The trackage and depots aren't
+worth it. It will be a millstone about your necks!"
+
+"Well," said I, "you can understand the reason for making the rentals
+high. We had to show revenue for the Belt Line system in order to float
+the bonds, but the rentals become of no consequence when once you own
+both properties--and that's our proposal to you."
+
+"Oh, yes!" said he, and at once changed the subject.
+
+This was the only instance, in all my observation of him, in which he
+forgot anything, or failed correctly to see the very core of the
+situation. I felt somehow elated at being for a moment his superior in
+any respect.
+
+We began discussing rates and tonnage, and he sent for his freight
+expert again. I took from my pocket some letters and telegrams and made
+computations on the backs of them. Some of these figures he wanted to
+keep for further reference.
+
+"Please let me have those figures until this afternoon," said he. "I
+must ask you to excuse me now. At two I'll give the matter another
+half-hour. Come back, Mr. Barslow, prepared to name a reasonable sum,
+and I will accept or reject, and finish the matter."
+
+I left the envelopes on his desk and went out. At the hotel I sat down
+to think out my program and began arranging things for my departure. Was
+it the 11th or the 12th that Mr. Halliday was to return? I would look at
+his message. I turned over all my telegrams, but it was gone.
+
+Then I thought. That was the telegram I had left with Pendleton! Would
+he suspect that I had left it as a trick, and resent the act? No, this
+was scarcely likely, for he himself had asked for it. Suddenly the
+construction of which it was susceptible flashed into my mind. "With
+slight modifications contract submitted as to L. & G. W. and Belt Line
+matter will be executed.                                   HALLIDAY."
+
+I was feverish until two o'clock; for I could not guess the effect of
+this telegram, should it be read by Pendleton. I found him impassive and
+keen-eyed, and I waited longer than usual for that aquiline swoop of
+his, as he turned in his revolving chair. I felt sure then that he had
+not read the message. I think differently now.
+
+"Well, Mr. Barslow," said he smilingly, "how far down in the millions
+are we to-day?"
+
+"Mr. Pendleton," I replied, steady as to tone, but with a quiver in my
+legs, "I can say nothing less than an even two millions."
+
+"It's too much," said he cheerfully, and my heart sank, "but I like
+Lattimore, and you men who live there, and I want to stay in the town.
+I'll have the legal department prepare a contract covering the whole
+matter of transfers and future relations, and providing for the price
+you mention. You can submit it to your people, and in a short time I
+shall be in Chicago, and, if convenient to you, we can meet there and
+close the transaction. As a matter of form, I shall submit it to our
+directors; but you may consider it settled, I think."
+
+"One of our number," said I, as calmly as if a two-million-dollar
+transaction were common at Lattimore, "can meet you in Chicago at any
+time. When will this contract be drawn?"
+
+"Call to-morrow morning--say at ten. Show them in," this last to his
+clerk, "Good-morning, Mr. Barslow."
+
+One doesn't get as hilarious over a victory won alone as when he goes
+over the ramparts touching elbows with his charging fellows. The hurrah
+is a collective interjection. So I went in a sober frame of mind and
+telegraphed Jim and Alice of my success, cautioning my wife to say
+nothing about it. Then I wandered about New York, contrasting my way of
+rejoicing with the demonstration when we three had financed the
+Lattimore & Great Western bonds. I went to a vaudeville show and
+afterward walked miles and miles through the mysteries of the night in
+that wilderness. I was unutterably alone. The strain of my solitary
+mission in the great city was telling upon me.
+
+"Telegram for you, Mr. Barslow," said the night clerk, as I applied for
+my key.
+
+It was a long message from Jim, and in cipher. I slowly deciphered it,
+my initial anxiety growing, as I progressed, to an agony.
+
+"Come home at once," it read. "Cornish deserting. Must take care of the
+hound's interest somehow. Threatens litigation. A hold-up, but he has
+the drop. Am in doubt whether to shoot him now or later. Stop at
+Chicago, and bring Harper. Bring him, understand? Unless Pendleton deal
+is made, this means worse things than we ever dreamed of; but don't
+wait. Leave Pendleton for later, and come home. If I follow my
+inclinations, you will find me in jail for murder.           ELKINS."
+
+All night I sat, turning this over in my mind. Was it ruin, or would my
+success here carry us through? Without a moment's sleep I ate my
+breakfast, braced myself with coffee, engaged a berth for the return
+journey, and promptly presented myself at Pendleton's office at ten.
+Wearily we went over the precious contract, and I took my copy and
+left.
+
+All that day I rode in a sort of trance, in which I could see before my
+eyes the forms of the hosts of those whom Jim had called "the captives
+below decks," whose fortunes were dependent upon whether we striving,
+foolish, scheming, passionate men went to the wall. A hundred times I
+read in Jim's telegram the acuteness of our crisis; and a sense of our
+danger swept dauntingly over my spirit. A hundred times I wished that I
+might awake and find that the whole thing--Aladdin and his ring, the
+palaces, gnomes, genies, and all--could pass away like a tale that is
+told, and leave me back in the rusty little town where it found me.
+
+I slept heavily that night, and was very much much more myself when I
+went to see Harper in Chicago. He had received a message from Jim, and
+was ready to go. He also had one for me, sent in his care, and just
+arrived.
+
+"You have saved the fight," said the message; "your success came just as
+they were counting nine on us. With what you have done we can beat the
+game yet. Bring Harper, and come on."
+
+Harper, cool and collected, big and blonde, with a hail-fellow-well-met
+manner which spoke eloquently of the West, was a great comfort to me. He
+made light of the trouble.
+
+"Cornish is no fool," said he, "and he isn't going to saw off the limb
+he stands on."
+
+I tried to take this view of it; but I knew, as he did not, the real
+source of the enmity between Elkins and Cornish, and my fears returned.
+Business differences might be smoothed over; but with two such men, the
+quarrel of rivals in love meant nothing but the end of things between
+them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+The "Dutchman's Mill" and What It Ground.
+
+
+We sat in conclave about the table. I saw by the lined faces of Elkins
+and Hinckley that I had come back to a closely-beleaguered camp, where
+heavy watching had robbed the couch of sleep, and care pressed down the
+spirit. I had returned successful, but not to receive a triumph: rather,
+Harper and myself constituted a relief force, thrown in by stratagem,
+too weak to raise the siege, but bearing glad tidings of strong succor
+on the way.
+
+It was our first full meeting without Cornish; and Harper sat in his
+place. He was unruffled and buoyant in manner, in spite of the stock in
+the Grain Belt Trust Company which he held, and the loans placed with
+his insurance company by Mr. Hinckley.
+
+"I believe," said he, "that we are here to consider a communication from
+Mr. Cornish. It seems that we ought to hear the letter."
+
+"I'll read it in a minute," said Jim, "but first let me say that this
+grows out of a talk between Mr. Cornish and myself. Hinckley and Barslow
+know that there have been differences between us here for some time."
+
+"Quite natural," said Harper; "according to all the experience-tables,
+you ought to have had a fight somewhere in the crowd long before this."
+
+"Mr. Cornish," went on Mr. Elkins, "has favored the policy of converting
+our holdings into cash, and letting the obligations we have floated
+stand solely on the assets by which they are secured. The rest of us
+have foreseen such rapid liquidation, as a certain result of such a
+policy, that not only would our town receive a blow from which it could
+never recover, but the investment world would suffer in the collapse."
+
+"I should say so," said Harper; "we'll have to look closely to the
+suicide clause in our policies held in New England, if that takes
+place!"
+
+"Well," said Jim, continuing, "last Tuesday the matter came to an issue
+between us, and some plain talk was indulged in; perhaps the language
+was a little strong on my part, and Mr. Cornish considered himself
+aggrieved, and said, among other things, that he, for one, would not
+submit to extinguishment, and he would show me that I could not go on in
+opposition to his wishes."
+
+"What did you say to that?" asked Hinckley.
+
+"I informed him," said Jim, "that I was from Missouri, or words to that
+effect; and that my own impression was, the majority of the stock in our
+concerns would control. My present view is that he's showing me."
+
+A ghost of a smile went round at this, and Jim began reading Cornish's
+letter.
+
+"Events of the recent past convince me," the secessionist had written,
+"that no good can come from the further continuance of our syndicate. I
+therefore propose to sell all my interest in our various properties to
+the other members, and to retire. Should you care to consider such a
+thing, I am prepared to make you an alternative offer, to buy your
+interests. As the purchase of three shares by one is a heavier load than
+the taking over of one share by three, I should expect to buy at a lower
+proportional price than I should be willing to sell for. As the
+management of our enterprises seems to have abandoned the tried
+principles of business, for some considerations the precise nature of
+which I am not acute enough to discern, and as a sale to me would balk
+the very benevolent purposes recently avowed by you, I assume that I
+shall not be called upon to make an offer.
+
+"There is at least one person among those to whom this is addressed who
+knows that in beginning our operations in Lattimore it was understood
+that we should so manage affairs as to promote and take advantage of a
+bulge in values, and then pull out with a profit. Just what may be his
+policy when this reaches him I cannot, after my experience with his
+ability as a lightning change artist, venture to predict; but my last
+information leads me to believe that he is championing the utopian plan
+of running the business, not only past the bulge, but into the slump. I,
+for one, will not permit my fortune to be jeopardized by so palpable a
+piece of perfidy.
+
+"I may be allowed to add that I am prepared to take such measures as may
+seem to my legal advisers best to protect my interests. I am assured
+that the funds of one corporation will not be permitted by the courts
+to be donated to the bolstering up of another, over the protest of a
+minority stockholder. You may confidently assume that this advice will
+be tested to the utmost before the acts now threatened are permitted to
+be actually done.
+
+"I attach hereto a schedule of our holdings, with the amount of my
+interest in each, and the price I will take. I trust that I may have an
+answer to this at your earliest convenience. I beg to add that any great
+delay in answering will be taken by me as a refusal on your part to do
+anything, and I shall act accordingly.
+
+                                    "Very respectfully,
+                                            "J. Bedford Cornish."
+
+"Huh!" ejaculated Harper, "would he do it, d'ye think?"
+
+"He's a very resolute man," said Hinckley.
+
+"He calculates," said Jim, "that if he begins operations, he can have
+receiverships and things of that kind in his interest, and in that way
+swipe the salvage. On the other hand, he must know that his loss would
+be proportioned to ours, and would be great. He's sore, and that counts
+for something. I figure that the chances are seven out of ten that he'll
+do it--and that's too strong a game for us to go up against."
+
+"What would be the worst that could happen if he began proceedings?"
+said I.
+
+"The worst," answered Jim laconically. "I don't say, you know," he went
+on after a pause, "that Cornish hasn't some reason for his position.
+From a cur's standpoint he's entirely right. We didn't anticipate the
+big way in which things have worked out here, nor how deep our roots
+would strike; and we did intend to cash in when the wave came. And a cur
+can't understand our position in the light of these developments. He
+can't see that in view of the number of people sucked down with her when
+a great ship like ours sinks, nobody but a murderer would needlessly see
+her wrecked. What he proposes is to scuttle her. Sell to him! I'd as
+soon sell Vassar College to Brigham Young!"
+
+This tragic humorousness had the double effect of showing us the
+dilemma, and taking the edge off the horror of it.
+
+"If it were my case," said Harper, "I'd call him. I don't believe he'll
+smash things; but you fellows know each other best, and I'm here to give
+what aid and comfort I can, and not to direct. I accept your judgment as
+to the danger. Now let's do business. I've got to get back to Chicago by
+the next train, and I want to go feeling that my stock in the Grain Belt
+Trust Company is an asset and not a liability. Let's do business."
+
+"As for going back on the next train," said Mr. Elkins, "you've got
+another guess coming: this one was wrong. As for doing business, the
+first thing in my opinion is to examine the items of this bill of
+larceny, and see about scaling them down."
+
+"We might be able," said I, "to turn over properties instead of cash,
+for some of it."
+
+Elkins appointed Harper and Hinckley to do the negotiating with
+Cornish. It was clear, he said, that neither he nor I was the proper
+person to act. They soon went out on their mission and left me with Jim.
+
+"Do you see what a snowfall we've had?" he asked. "It fell deeper and
+deeper, until I thought it would never stop. No such sleighing for
+years. And funny as it may seem, it was that that brought on this
+crisis. Josie and I went sleighing, and the hound was furious. Next time
+we met he started this business going."
+
+I was studying the schedule, and said nothing. After a while he began
+talking again, in a slow manner, as if the words came lagging behind a
+labored train of thought.
+
+"Remember the mill the Dutchman had?... Ground salt, and nothing but
+salt ... Ours won't grind anything but mortgages ... Well, the hair of
+the dog must cure the bite ... Fight fire with fire ... _Similia
+similibus curantur_ ... We can't trade horses, nor methods, in the
+middle of the ford.... The mill has got to go on grinding mortgages
+until we're carried over; and Hinckley and the Grain Belt Trust must
+float 'em. Of course the infernal mill ground salt until it sent the
+whole shooting-match to the bottom of the sea; but you mustn't be misled
+by analogies. The Dutchman hadn't any good old Al to lose telegrams in
+an absent-minded way where they would do the most good, and sell
+railroads to old man Pendleton ... As for us, it's the time-worn case of
+electing between the old sheep and the lamb. We'll take the adult
+mutton, and go the whole hog ... And if we lose, the tail'll have to go
+with the hide.... But we won't lose, Al, we won't lose. There isn't
+treason enough in all the storehouses of hell to balk or defeat us. It's
+a question of courage and resolution and confidence, and imparting all
+those feelings to every one else. There isn't malice enough, even if it
+were a whole pack, instead of one lone hyena, to put out the fires in
+those furnaces over there, or stop the wheels in that flume, or make our
+streets grow grass. The things we've built are going to stay built, and
+the word of Lattimore will stand!"
+
+"My hand on that!" said I.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was little in the way of higgling: for Cornish proudly refused
+much to discuss matters; and when we found what we must pay to prevent
+the explosion, it sickened us. Jim strongly urged upon Harper the taking
+of Cornish's shares.
+
+"No," said Harper, "the Frugality and Indemnity is too good a thing to
+drop; and I can't carry both. But if you can show me how, within a short
+time, you can pay it back, I'll find you the cash you lack."
+
+We could not wait for the two millions from Pendleton; and the interim
+must be bridged over by any desperate means. We took, for the moment
+only, the funds advanced through Harper; and Cornish took his price.
+
+The day after Harper went away we were busy all day long, drawing notes
+and mortgages. Every unincumbered piece of our property, the orts,
+dregs, and offcast of our operations, were made the subjects of
+transfers to the rag-tag and bobtail of Lattimore society. A lot worth
+little or nothing was conveyed to Tom, Dick, or Harry for a great
+nominal price, and a mortgage for from two-thirds to three-fourths of
+the sum given back by this straw-man purchaser. Our mill was grinding
+mortgages.
+
+I do not expect that any one will say that this course was justified or
+justifiable; but, if anything can excuse it, the terrible difficulty of
+our position ought to be considered in mitigation, if not excuse.
+Pressed upon from without, and wounded by blows dealt in the dark from
+within; with dreadful failure threatening, and with brilliant success,
+and the averting of wide-spread calamity as the reward of only a little
+delay, we used the only expedient at hand, and fought the battle
+through. We were caught in the mighty swirl of a modern business
+maelstrom, and, with unreasoning reflexes, clutched at man or log
+indifferently, as we felt the waters rising over us; and broadcast all
+over the East were sown the slips of paper ground out by our mill,
+through the spout of the Grain Belt Trust Company; and wherever they
+fell they were seized upon by the banks, which had through years of
+experience learned to look upon our notes and bonds as good.
+
+"Past the bulge," quoted Jim, "and into the slump! We'll see what the
+whelp says when he finds that, in spite of all his attempts to scuttle,
+there isn't going to be any slump!"
+
+By which observation it will appear that, as our operations began to
+bring in returns in almost their old abundance, our courage rose. At the
+very last, some bank failures in New York, and a bad day on 'Change in
+Chicago, cut off the stream, and we had to ask Harper to carry over a
+part of the Frugality and Indemnity loan until we could settle with
+Pendleton; but this was a small matter running into only five figures.
+
+Perhaps it was because we saw only a part of the situation that our
+courage rose. We saw things at Lattimore with vivid clearness. But we
+failed to see that like centers of stress were sprinkled all over the
+map, from ocean to ocean; that in the mountains of the South were the
+Lattimores of iron, steel, coal, and the winter-resort boom; and in the
+central valleys were other Lattimores like ours; that among the peaks
+and canyons further west were the Lattimores of mines; that along the
+Pacific were the Lattimores of harbors and deep-water terminals; that
+every one of these Lattimores had in the East and in Europe its
+clientage of Barr-Smiths, Wickershams, and Dorrs, feeding the flames of
+the fever with other people's money; and that in every village and
+factory, town and city, where wealth had piled up, seeking investment,
+were the "captives below decks," who, in the complex machinery of this
+end-of-the-century life, were made or marred by the same influences
+which made or marred us.
+
+The low area had swept across the seas, and now rested on us. The clouds
+were charged with the thunder and lightning of disaster. Almost any
+accidental disturbance might precipitate a crash. Had we known all this,
+as we now know it, the consciousness of the tragical race we were
+running to reach the harbor of a consummated sale to Pendleton might
+have paralyzed our efforts. Sometimes one may cross in the dark, on
+narrow footing, a chasm the abyss of which, if seen, would dizzily draw
+one down to destruction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+The Beginning of the End.
+
+
+Court parties and court factions are always known to the populace, even
+down to the groom and scullions. So the defection of Cornish soon became
+a matter of gossip at bars, in stables, and especially about the desks
+of real-estate offices. Had it been a matter of armed internecine
+strife, the Elkins faction would have mustered an overwhelming majority;
+for Jim's bluff democratic ways, and his apparent identity of fibre with
+the mass of the people, would have made him a popular idol, had he been
+a thousand times a railroad president.
+
+While these rumors of a feud were floating about, Captain Tolliver went
+to Jim's office several times, dressed with great care, and sat in
+silence, and in stiff and formal dignity, for a matter of five minutes
+or so, and then retired, with the suggestion that if there was any way
+in which he could serve Mr. Elkins he should be happy.
+
+"Do you know," said Jim to me, "that I'm afraid Hamlet's 'bugs and
+goblins' are troubling Tolliver; in other words, that he's getting
+bughouse?"
+
+"No," said I; "while I haven't the slightest idea what ails him, you'll
+find that it's something quite natural for him when you get a full view
+of his case."
+
+Finally, Jim, in thanking him for his proffered assistance, inquired
+diplomatically after the thing which weighed upon the Captain's mind.
+
+"I may be mistaken, suh," said he, drawing himself up, and thrusting one
+hand into the tightly-buttoned breast of his black Prince Albert,
+"entiahly mistaken in the premises; but I have the impression that
+diffe'ences of a pussonal nature ah in existence between youahself and a
+gentleman whose name in this connection I prefuh to leave unmentioned.
+Such being the case, I assume that occasion may and naturally will arise
+foh the use of a friend, suh, who unde'stands the code--the code,
+suh--and is not without experience in affaiahs of honah. I recognize the
+fact that in cehtain exigencies nothing, by Gad, but pistols, ovah a
+measu'ed distance, meets the case. In such an event, suh, I shall be mo'
+than happy to suhve you; mo' than happy, by the Lord!"
+
+"Captain," said Jim feelingly, "you're a good fellow and a true friend,
+and I promise you I shall have no other second."
+
+"In that promise," replied the Captain gravely, "you confeh an honah,
+suh!"
+
+After this it was thought wise to permit the papers to print the story
+of Cornish's retirement; otherwise the Captain might have fomented an
+insurrection.
+
+"The reasons for this step on the part of Mr. Cornish are purely
+personal," said the _Herald_. "While retaining his feeling of interest
+in Lattimore, his desire to engage in certain broader fields of
+promotion and development in the tropics had made it seem to him
+necessary to lay down the work here which up to this time he has so well
+done. He will still remain a citizen of our city. On the other hand,
+while we shall not lose Mr. Cornish, we shall gain the active and
+powerful influence of Mr. Charles Harper, the president of the Frugality
+and Indemnity Life Insurance Company. It is thus that Lattimore rises
+constantly to higher prosperity, and wields greater and greater power.
+The remarkable activity lately noted in the local real-estate market,
+especially in the sales of unconsidered trifles of land at high prices,
+is to be attributed to the strengthening of conditions by these steps in
+the ascent of the ladder of progress."
+
+Cornish, however, was not without his partisans. Cecil Barr-Smith almost
+quarreled with Antonia because she struck Cornish off her books, Cecil
+insisting that he was an entirely decent chap. In this position Cecil
+was in accord with the clubmen of the younger sort, who had much in
+common with Cornish, and little with the overworked and busy railway
+president. Even Giddings, to me, seemed to remain unduly intimate with
+Cornish; but this did not affect the utterances of his paper, which
+still maintained what he called the policy of boost.
+
+The behavior of Josie, however, was enigmatical. Cornish's attentions to
+her redoubled, while Jim seemed dropped out of the race--and therefore
+my wife's relations with Miss Trescott were subjected to a severe
+strain. Naturally, being a matron, and of the age of thirty-odd years,
+she put on some airs with her younger friend, still in the chrysalis of
+maidenhood. Sometimes, in a sweet sort of a way, she almost domineered
+over her. On this Elkins-Cornish matter, however, Josie held her at
+arms' length, and refused to make her position plain; and Alice nursed
+that simulated resentment which one dear friend sometimes feels toward
+another, because of a real or imagined breach of the obligations of
+reciprocity.
+
+One night, as we sat about the grate in the Trescott library, some
+veiled insinuations on Alice's part caused a turning of the worm.
+
+"If there is anything you want to say, Alice," said Josie, "there seems
+to be no good reason why you shouldn't speak out. I have asked your
+advice--yours and Albert's--frequently, having really no one else to
+trust; and therefore I am willing to hear your reproof, if you have it
+for me. What is it?"
+
+"Oh, Josie," said I, seeking cover. "You are too sensitive. There isn't
+anything, is there, Alice?"
+
+Here I scowled violently, and shook my head at my wife; but all to no
+effect.
+
+"Yes, there is," said Alice. "We have a dear friend, the best in the
+world, and he has an enemy. The whole town is divided in allegiance
+between them, about nine on one side to one on the other--"
+
+"Which proves nothing," said Josie.
+
+"And now," Alice went on, "you, who have had every opportunity of
+seeing, and ought to know, that one of them is, in every look, and
+thought, and act, a _man_, while the other is--"
+
+"A friend of mine and of my mother's," said Josie; "please omit the
+character-sketch. And remember that I refuse even to consider these
+business differences. Each claims to be right; and I shall judge them by
+other things."
+
+"Business differences, indeed!" scoffed Alice, albeit a little impressed
+by the girl's dignity. "As if you did not know what these differences
+came from! But it isn't because you remain neutral that we com--"
+
+"_You_ complain, Alice," said I; "I am distinctly out of this."
+
+"That I complain, then," amended Alice reproachfully. "It is because you
+dismiss the _man_ and keep the--other! You may say I have no right to be
+heard in this, but I'm going to complain Josie Trescott, just the same!"
+
+This seemed to approach actual conflict, and I was frightened. Had it
+been two men, I should have thought nothing of it, but with women such
+differences cut deeper than with us. Josie stepped to her writing-desk
+and took from it a letter.
+
+"We may as well clear this matter up," said she, "for it has stood
+between us for a long time. I think that Mr. Elkins will not feel that
+any confidences are violated by my showing you this--you who have been
+my dearest friends--"
+
+She stopped for no reason, unless it was agitation.
+
+"Are," said I, "I hope, not 'have been.'"
+
+"Well," said she, "read the letter, and then tell me who has been
+'dismissed.'"
+
+I shrank from reading it; but Alice was determined to know all. It was
+dated the day before I left New York.
+
+"Dear Josie," it read, "I have told you so many times that I love you
+that it is an old story to you; yet I must say it once more. Until that
+night when we brought your father home, I was never able to understand
+why you would never say definitely yes or no to me; but I felt that you
+could not be expected to understand my feeling that the best years of
+our lives were wasting--you are so much younger than I--and so I hoped
+on. Sometimes I feared that somebody else stood in the way, and do fear
+it now, but that alone would have been a much simpler thing, and of that
+I could not complain. But on that fearful night you said something which
+hurt me more than anything else could, because it was an accusation of
+which I could not clear myself in the court of my own conscience--except
+so far as to say that I never dreamed of doing your father anything but
+good. Surely, surely you must feel this!
+
+"Since that time, however, you have been so kind to me that I have
+become sure that you see that terrible tragedy as I do, and acquit me of
+all blame, except that of blindly setting in motion the machinery which
+did the awful deed. This is enough for you to forgive, God knows; but I
+have thought lately that you had forgiven it. You have been very kind
+and good to me, and your presence and influence have made me look at
+things in a different way from that of years ago, and I am now doing
+things which ought to be credited to you, so far as they are good. As
+for the bad, I must bear the blame myself!"
+
+Thus far Alice had read aloud.
+
+"Don't, don't," said Josie, hiding her face. "Don't read it aloud,
+please!"
+
+"But now I am writing, not to explain anything which has taken place,
+but to set me right as to the future. You gave me reason to think, when
+we met, that I might have my answer. Things which I cannot explain have
+occurred, which may turn out very evilly for me, and for any one
+connected with me. Therefore, until this state of things passes, I shall
+not see you. I write this, not that I think you will care much, but that
+you may not believe that I have changed in my feelings toward you. If my
+time ever comes, and I believe it will, and that before very long, you
+will find me harder to dispose of without an answer than I have been in
+the past. I shall claim you in spite of every foe that may rise up to
+keep you from me. You may change, but I shall not.
+
+    "'Love is not love
+    Which alters when it alteration finds.'
+
+And mine will not alter. J. R. E."
+
+"My dear," said Alice very humbly, "I beg your pardon. I have misjudged
+you. Will you forgive me?"
+
+Josie came to take her letter, and, in lieu of other answer, stood with
+her arm about Alice's waist.
+
+"And now," said Alice, "have you no other confidences for us?"
+
+"No!" she cried, "no! there is nothing more! Nothing, absolutely
+nothing, believe me! But, now, confidence for confidence, Albert, what
+is this great danger? Is it anything for which any one here--for which I
+am to blame? Does it threaten any one else? Can't something be done
+about it? Tell me, tell me!"
+
+"I think," said I, "that the letter was written before my telegram from
+New York came, and after--some great difficulties came upon us. I don't
+believe he would have written it five hours later; and I don't believe
+he would have written it to any one in anything but the depression
+of--the feeling he has for you."
+
+"If that is true," said she, "why does he still avoid me? Why does he
+still avoid me? You have not told me all; or there is something you do
+not know."
+
+As we went home, Alice kept referring to Jim's letter, and was as much
+troubled by it as was Josie.
+
+"How do you explain it?" she asked.
+
+"I explain it," said I, "by ranging it with the well-known phenomenon of
+the love-sick youth of all lands and in every time, who revels in the
+thought of incurring danger or death, and heralding the fact to his
+loved one. Even Jim is not exempt from the feelings of the boy who
+rejoices in delicious tears at the thought of being found cold and dead
+on the doorstep of the cruel maiden of his dreams. And that letter, with
+a slight substratum of fact, is the result. Don't bother about it for a
+moment."
+
+This answer may not have been completely frank, or quite expressive of
+my views; but I was tired of the subject. It was hardly a time to play
+with mammets or to tilt with lips, and it seemed that the matter might
+wait. There was a good deal of the pettishness of nervousness among us
+at that time, and I had my full share of it. Insomnia was prevalent, and
+gray hairs increased and multiplied. The time was drawing near for our
+meeting with Pendleton in Chicago. We had advices that he was coming in
+from the West, on his return from a long journey of inspection, and
+would pass over his Pacific Division. We asked him to run down to
+Lattimore over our road, but Smith answered that the running schedule
+could not be altered.
+
+There seemed to be no reason for doubting that the proposed contract
+would be ratified; for the last desperate rally on our part appeared to
+have put a crash out of the question, for some time at least. To him
+that hath shall be given; and so long as we were supposed to possess
+power, we felt that we were safe. Yet the blow dealt by Cornish had
+maimed us, no matter how well we hid our hurt; and we were all too
+keenly conscious of the law of the hunt, by which it is the wounded
+buffalo which is singled out and dragged down by the wolves.
+
+On Wednesday Jim and I were to start for Chicago, where Mr. Pendleton
+would be found awaiting us. On Sunday the weather, which had been cold
+and snowy for weeks, changed; and it blew from the southeast, raw and
+chill, but thawy. All day Monday the warmth increased; and the farmers
+coming into town reported great ponds of water dammed up in the swales
+and hollows against the enormous snow-drifts. Another warm day, and
+these waters would break through, and the streams would go free in
+freshets. Tuesday dawned without a trace of frost, and still the strong
+warm wind blew; but now it was from the east, and as I left the carriage
+to enter my office I was wet by a scattering fall of rain. In a few
+moments, as I dictated my morning's letters, my stenographer called
+attention to the beating on the window of a strong and persistent
+downpour.
+
+Elkins, too much engrossed in his thoughts to be able to confine himself
+to the details of his business, came into my office, where, sometimes
+sitting and sometimes walking uneasily about, he seemed to get some sort
+of comfort from my presence. He watched the rain, as one seeing visions.
+
+"By morning," said he, "there ought to be ducks in Alderson's pond.
+Can't we do our chores early and get into the blind before daylight, and
+lay for 'em?"
+
+"I heard Canada geese honking overhead last night," said I.
+
+"What time last night?"
+
+"Two o'clock."
+
+"Well, that lets us out on the Alderson's pond project," said he; "the
+boys who hunted there weren't out walking at two. In those days they
+slept. It can't be that we're the fellows.... Why, there's Antonia,
+coming in through the rain!"
+
+"I wonder," said I, "if la grippe isn't taking a bad turn with her
+father."
+
+She came in, shedding the rain from her mackintosh like a water-fowl,
+radiant with health and the air of outdoors.
+
+"Gentlemen," said she gaily, "who but myself would come out in anything
+but a diving-suit to-day!"
+
+"It's almost an even thing," said Jim, "between a calamity, which brings
+you, and good fortune, which keeps you away. I hope it's only your
+ordinary defiance of the elements."
+
+"The fact is," said she, "that it's a very funny errand. But don't laugh
+at me if it's absurd, please. It's about Mr. Cornish."
+
+"Yes!" said Jim, "what of him?"
+
+"You know papa has been kept in by la grippe for a day or so," she went
+on, "and we haven't been allowing people to see him very much; but Mr.
+Cornish has been in two or three times, and every time when he went away
+papa was nervous and feverish. To-day, after he left, papa asked--" here
+she looked at Mr. Elkins, as he stood gravely regarding her, and went on
+with redder cheeks--"asked me some questions, which led to a long talk
+between us, in which I found out that he has almost persuaded papa
+to--to change his business connections completely."
+
+"Yes!" said Jim. "Change, how?"
+
+"Why, that I didn't quite understand," said Antonia, "except that there
+was logwood and mahogany and Mexico in it, and--and that he had made
+papa feel very differently toward you. After what has taken place
+recently I knew that was wrong--you know papa is not as firm in his
+ideas as he used to be; and I felt that he--and you, were in danger,
+somehow. At first I was afraid of being laughed at--why, I'd rather
+you'd laugh at me than to look like _that_!"
+
+"You're a good girl, Antonia," said Jim, "and have done the right thing,
+and a great favor to us. Thank you very much; and please excuse me a
+moment while I send a telegram. Please wait until I come back."
+
+"No, I'm going, Albert," said she, when he was gone to his own office.
+"But first you ought to know that man told papa something--about me."
+
+"How do you know about this?" said I.
+
+"Papa asked me--if I had--any complaints to make--of Mr. Elkins's
+treatment of me! What do you suppose he dared to tell him?"
+
+"What did you tell your father?" I asked.
+
+"What could I tell him but 'No'?" she exclaimed. "And I just had a
+heart-to-heart talk with papa about Mr. Cornish and the way he has
+acted; and if his fever hadn't begun to run up so, I'd have got the
+rubber, or Peruvian-bark idea, or whatever it was, entirely out of his
+mind. Poor papa! It breaks my heart to see him changing so! And so I
+gave him a sleeping-capsule, and came down through this splendid rain;
+and now I'm going! But, mind, this last is a secret."
+
+And so she went away.
+
+"Where's Antonia?" asked Jim, returning.
+
+"Gone," said I.
+
+"I wanted to talk further about this matter."
+
+"I don't like it, Jim. It means that the cruel war is not over."
+
+"Wait until we pass Wednesday," said Jim, "and we'll wring his neck.
+What a poisonous devil, to try and wean from us, to his ruin, an old man
+in his dotage!--I wish Antonia had stayed. I went out to set the boys
+wiring for news of washouts between here and Chicago. We mustn't miss
+that trip, if we have to start to-night. This rain will make trouble
+with the track.--No, I don't like it, either. Wasn't it thoughtful of
+Antonia to come down! We can line Hinckley up all right, now we know it;
+but if it had gone on--we can't stand a third solar-plexus blow...."
+
+The sky darkened, until we had to turn on the lights, and the rain fell
+more and more heavily. Once or twice there were jarring rolls of distant
+thunder. To me there was something boding and ominous in the weather.
+The day wore on interminably in the quiet of a business office under
+such a sky. Elkins sent in a telegram which he had received that no
+trouble with water was looked for along our way to Chicago, which was by
+the Halliday line. As the dark day was lowering down to its darker
+close, I went into President Elkins's office to take him home with me.
+As I entered through my private door, I saw Giddings coming in through
+the outer entrance.
+
+"Say," said he, "I wanted to see you two together. I know you have some
+business with Pendleton, and you've promised the boys a story for
+Thursday or Friday. Now, you've been a little sore on me because I
+haven't absolutely cut Cornish."
+
+"Not at all," said Jim. "You must have a poor opinion of our
+intelligence."
+
+"Well, you had no cause to feel that way," he went on, "because, as a
+newspaperman, I'm supposed to have few friends and no enemies. Besides,
+you can't tell what a man might sink to, deprived all at once of the
+friendship of three such men as you fellows!"
+
+"Quite right," said I; "but get to the point."
+
+"I'm getting to it," said he. "I violate no confidence when I say that
+Cornish has got it in for your crowd in great shape. The point is
+involved in that. I don't know what your little game is with old
+Pendleton, but whatever it is, Cornish thinks he can queer it, and at
+the same time reap some advantages from the old man, if he can have a
+few minutes' talk with Pen before you do. And he's going to do it, if he
+can. Now, I figure, with my usual correctness of ratiocination, that
+your scheme is going to be better for the town, and therefore for the
+_Herald_, than his, and hence this disclosure, which I freely admit has
+some of the ear-marks of bad form. Not that I blame Cornish, or am
+saying anything against him, you know. His course is ideally Iagoan: he
+stands in with Pendleton, benefits himself, and gets even with you all
+at one fell--"
+
+"Stop this chatter!" cried Jim, flying at him and seizing him by the
+collar. "Tell me how you know this, and how much you know!"
+
+"My God!" said Giddings, his lightness all departed, "is it as vital as
+that? He told me himself. Said it was something he wouldn't put on paper
+and must tell Pendleton by word of mouth, and he's on the train that
+just pulled out for Chicago."
+
+"He'll beat us there by twelve hours," said I, "and he can do all he
+threatens! Jim, we're gone!"
+
+Elkins leaped to the telephone and rang it furiously. There was the ring
+of command sounding through the clamor of desperate and dubious conflict
+in his voice.
+
+"Give me the L. & G. W. dispatcher's office, quick!" said he. "I can't
+remember the number ... it's 420, four, two, naught. Is this Agnew? This
+is Elkins talking. Listen! Without a moment's delay, I want you to find
+out when President Pendleton's special, east-bound on his Pacific
+Division, passes Elkins Junction. I'm at my office, and will wait for
+the information here.... Don't let me wait long, please, understand?
+And, say! Call Solan to the 'phone.... Is this Solan? Mr. Solan, get out
+the best engine you've got in the yards, couple to it a caboose, and put
+on a crew to make a run to Elkins Junction, as quick as God'll let you!
+Do you understand? Give me Schwartz and his fireman.... Yes, and
+Corcoran, too. Andy, this is a case of life and death--of life and
+death, do you understand? See that the line's clear, and no stops. I've
+got to connect east at Elkins Junction with a special on that line....
+_Got to_, d'ye see? Have the special wait at the State Street crossing
+until we come aboard!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+That Last Weird Battle in the West.
+
+
+There was still some remnant of daylight left when we stepped from a
+closed carriage at the State Street crossing and walked to the train
+prepared for us. The rain had all but ceased, and what there was came
+out of some northern quarter of the heavens mingled with stinging
+pellets of sleet, driven by a fierce gale. The turn of the storm had
+come, and I was wise enough in weather-lore to see that its rearguard
+was sweeping down upon us in all the bitterness of a winter's tempest.
+
+Beyond the tracks I could see the murky water of Brushy Creek racing
+toward the river under the State Street bridge.
+
+"I believe," said I, "that the surface-water from above is showing the
+flow from the flume."
+
+"Yes," said Jim absently, "it must be about ready to break up. I hope we
+can get out of the valley before dark."
+
+The engine stood ready, the superabundant power popping off in a
+deafening hiss. The fireman threw open the furnace-door and stoked the
+fire as we approached. Engineer Schwartz, the same who had pulled us
+over the road that first trip, was standing by his engine, talking with
+our old conductor, Corcoran.
+
+"Here's a message for you, Mr. Elkins," said Corcoran, handing Jim a
+yellow paper, "from Agnew."
+
+We read it by Corcoran's lantern, for it was getting dusky for the
+reading of telegraph operator's script.
+
+"Water out over bottoms from Hinckley to the Hills," so went the
+message. "Flood coming down valley. Snow and drifting wind reported from
+Elkins Junction and Josephine. Look out for washouts, and culverts and
+bridges damaged by running ice and water. Pendleton special fully up to
+running schedule, at Willow Springs."
+
+"Who've you got up there, Schwartz? Oh, is that you, Ole?" said Mr.
+Elkins. "Good! Boys, to-night our work has got to be done in time, or we
+might as well go to bed. It's a case of four aces or a four-flush, and
+no intermediate stations. Mr. Pendleton's special will pass the Junction
+right around nine--not ten minutes either way. Get us there before that.
+If you can do it safely, all right; but get us there. And remember that
+the regular rule in railroading is reversed to-night, and we are ready
+to take any chance rather than miss--_any_ chances, mind!"
+
+"We're ready and waiting, Mr. Elkins," said Schwartz, "but you'll have
+to get on, you know. Looks like there was time enough if we keep the
+wheels turning, but this snow and flood business may cut some figure.
+_Any_ chances, I believe you said, sir. All right! Ready when you are,
+Jack."
+
+"All aboard!" sang out Corcoran, and with a commonplace ding-dong of
+the bell, and an every-day hiss of steam, which seemed, somehow, out of
+keeping with the fearful and unprecedented exigency now upon us, we
+moved out through the yards, jolting over the frogs, out upon the main
+line; and soon began to feel a cheering acceleration in the recurrent
+sounds and shocks of our flight, as Schwartz began rolling back the
+miles under his flying wheels.
+
+We sat in silence on the oil-cloth cushions of the seats which ran along
+the sides of the caboose. Corcoran, the only person who shared the car
+with us, seemed to have some psychical consciousness of the peril which
+weighed down upon us, and moved quietly about the car, or sat in the
+cupola, as mute as we.
+
+There was no need for speech between my friend and me. Our minds,
+strenuously awake, found a common conclusion in the very nature of the
+case. Both doubtless had considered and rejected the idea of
+telegraphing Pendleton to wait for us at the Junction. No king upon his
+throne was more absolute than Avery Pendleton, and to ask him to waste a
+single quarter-hour of his time might give great offense to him whom we
+desired to find serene and complaisant. Again, any apparent anxiety for
+haste, any symptom of an attempt to rush his line of defenses, would
+surely defeat its object. No, we must quietly and casually board his
+train, and secure the signing of the contract before we reached Chicago,
+if possible.
+
+"You brought that paper, Al?" said Jim, as if my thoughts had been
+audible to him.
+
+"Yes," said I, "it's here."
+
+"I think we'd better be on our way to St. Louis," said he. "He can
+hardly refuse to oblige us by going through the form of signing, so as
+to let us turn south at the river."
+
+"Very well," said I, "St. Louis--yes."
+
+Out past the old Trescott farm, now covered with factories, cottages,
+and railway tracks, leaving Lynhurst Park off to our left, curving with
+the turnings of Brushy Creek Valley, through which our engineers had
+found such easy grades, dropping the straggling suburbs of the city
+behind us, we flew along the rails in the waning twilight of this
+grewsome day. On the windward windows and the roof rattled fierce
+flights of sleet and showers of cinders from the engine. Occasionally we
+felt the car sway in the howling gusts of wind, as we passed some
+opening in the hills and neared the more level prairie. Stories of cars
+blown from the rails flitted through my mind; and in contemplating such
+an accident my thoughts busied themselves with the details of plans for
+getting free from the wrecked car, and pushing on with the engine, the
+derailing of which somehow never occurred to me.
+
+"We're slowing down!" cried Jim, after a half-hour's run. "I wonder
+what's the matter!"
+
+"For God's sake, look ahead!" yelled Corcoran, leaping down from the
+cupola and springing to the door. We followed him to the platform, and
+each of us ran down on the step and, swinging out by the hand-rail,
+peered ahead into the dusk, the sleet stinging our cheeks like shot.
+
+We were running along the right bank of the stream, at a point where the
+valley narrowed down to perhaps sixty rods of bottom. At the first dim
+look before us we could see nothing unusual, except that the background
+of the scene looked somehow as if lifted by a mirage. Then I noticed
+that up the valley, instead of the ghostly suggestions of trees and
+hills which bounded the vista in other directions, there was an
+appearance like that seen on looking out to sea.
+
+"The flood!" said Jim. "He's not going to stop, is he Corcoran?"
+
+At this moment came at once the explanation of Schwartz's hesitation and
+the answer to Jim's question. We saw, reaching clear across the narrow
+bottom, a great wave of water, coming down the valley like a liquid
+wall, stretching across the track and seeming to forbid our further
+progress, while it advanced deliberately upon us, as if to drown engine
+and crew. Driven on by the terrific gale, it boiled at its base, and
+curled forward at its foamy and wind-whipped crest, as if the upper
+waters were impatient of the slow speed of those below. Beyond the wave,
+the valley, from bluff to bluff, was a sea, rolling white-capped waves.
+Logs, planks, and the other flotsam of a freshet moved on in the van of
+the flood.
+
+It looked like the end of our run. What engineer would dare to dash on
+at such speed over a submerged track--possibly floated from its bed,
+possibly barricaded by driftwood? Was not the wave high enough to put
+out the fires and kill the engine? As we met the roaring eagre we felt
+the engine leap, as Schwartz's hesitation left him and he opened the
+throttle. Like knight tilting against knight, wave and engine met. There
+was a hissing as of the plunging of a great red-hot bar into a vat. A
+roaring sheet of water, thrown into the air by our momentum, washed cab
+and tender and car, as a billow pours over a laboring ship; and we stood
+on the steps, drenched to the skin, the water swirling about our ankles
+as we rushed forward. Then we heard the scream of triumph from the
+whistle, with which Schwartz cheered us as the dripping train ran on
+through shallower and shallower water, and turning, after a mile or so,
+began climbing, dry-shod, the grade which led from the flooded valley
+and out upon the uplands.
+
+"Come in, Mr. Elkins," said Corcoran. "You'll both freeze out there, wet
+as you are."
+
+Not until I heard this did I realize that we were still standing on the
+steps, our clothes congealing about us, peering through the now dense
+gloom ahead, as if for the apparition of some other grisly foe to daunt
+or drive us back.
+
+We went in, and sat down by the roaring fire, in spite of which a chill
+pervaded the car. We were now running over the divide between the valley
+we had just left and that of Elk Fork. Up here on the highlands the wind
+more than ever roared and clutched at the corners of the car, and
+sometimes, as with the palm of a great hand, pressed us over, as if a
+giant were striving to overturn us. We could hear the engine struggling
+with the savage norther, like a runner breathing hard, as he nears
+exhaustion. Presently I noticed fine particles of snow, driven into the
+car at the crevices, falling on my hands and face, and striking the hot
+stove with little hissing explosions of steam.
+
+"We're running into a blizzard up here," said Corcoran. "It's a terror
+outside."
+
+"A terror; yes," said Jim. "What sort of time are we making?"
+
+"Just about holding our own," said Corcoran. "Not much to spare. Got to
+stop at Barslow for water. But there won't be any bad track from there
+on. This snow won't cut any figure for three hours yet, and mebbe not at
+all, there's so little of it."
+
+"Kittrick has been asking for an appropriation to rebuild the Elk Fork
+trestle," said Jim. "Will it stand this flood?"
+
+"Well," said Corcoran, "if the water ain't too high, and the ice don't
+run too swift in the Fork, it'll be all right. But if there's any such
+mixture of downpour and thaw as there was along the Creek back there, we
+may have to jump across a gap. It'll probably be all right."
+
+I remembered the Elk Fork, and the trestle just on the hither side of
+the Junction. I remembered the valley, green with trees, and populous
+with herds, winding down to the lake, and the pretty little town of
+Josephine. I remembered that gala day when we christened it. I groaned
+in spirit, as I thought of finding the trestle gone, after our
+hundred-and-fifty-mile dash through storm and flood. Yet I believed it
+would be gone. The blows showered upon us had beaten down my courage. I
+felt no shrinking from either struggle or danger; but this was merely
+the impulse which impels the soldier to fight on in despair, and sell
+his life dearly. I believed that ruin fronted us all; that our great
+system of enterprises was going down; that, East and West, where we had
+been so much courted and admired, we should become a by-word and a
+hissing. The elements were struggling against us. That vengeful flood
+had snatched at us, and barely missed; the ruthless hurricane was
+holding us back; and somehow fate would yet find means to lay us low. I
+had all day kept thinking of the lines:
+
+    "Nor ever yet had Arthur fought a fight
+    Like this last dim, weird battle of the west.
+    A death-white mist slept over land and sea:
+    Whereof the chill, to him who breathed it, drew
+    Down to his blood, till all his heat was cold
+    With formless fear: and even on Arthur fell
+    Confusion, since he saw not whom he fought."
+
+And this, thought I, was the end of the undertaking upon which we had
+entered so lightly, with frolic jests of piracy and Spanish galleons and
+pieces-of-eight, and with all that mock-seriousness with which we
+discussed hypnotic suggestion and psychic force! The bitterness grew
+sickening, as Corcoran, hearing the long whistle of the engine, said
+that we were coming into Barslow. The tragic foolery of giving that name
+to any place!
+
+Out upon the platform here, in the blinding whirl of snow. The night
+operator came out and talked to us of the news of the line, while the
+engine ran on to the tank for water. There was another telegram from
+Agnew, saying that the Pendleton special was on time, and that Mr.
+Kittrick was following us with another train "in case of need."
+
+The operator was full of wild stories of the Brushy Creek flood, caused
+by the thaw and the cloudburst. We cut him short in this narration, and
+asked him of the conditions along the Elk Fork.
+
+"She's up and boomin'," said he. "The trestle was most all under water
+an hour ago, and they say the ice was runnin' in blocks. You may find
+the track left without any underpinnin'. Look out for yourselves."
+
+"Al," said Jim slowly, "can you fire an engine?"
+
+"I guess so," said I, seeing his meaning dimly. "Why?"
+
+"Al," said he, as if stating the conclusion of a complicated
+calculation, "we must run this train in alone!"
+
+I saw his intent fully, and knew why he walked so resolutely up to the
+engine, now backed down to take us on again. Schwartz leaned out of his
+cab, a man of snow and ice. Ole stood with his shovel in his hand white
+and icy like his brother worker. Both had been drenched, as we had; but
+they had had no red-hot stove by which to sit; and buffeted by the
+blizzard and powdered by the snow, they had endured the benumbing cold
+of the hurricane-swept cab.
+
+"Get down here, boys," said Jim. "I want to talk with you."
+
+Ole leaped lightly down, followed by Schwartz, who hobbled laboriously,
+stiffened with cold. Youth and violent labor had kept the fireman warm.
+
+"Schwartz," said Jim, "there is a chance that we'll find the trestle
+weakened and dangerous. We'll stop and examine it if we have time, but
+if it is as close a thing as I think it will be, we propose to make a
+run for it and take chances. Barslow and I are the ones, and the only
+ones, who ought to do this, because we must make this connection. We can
+run the engine. You and Ole and Corcoran stay here. Mr. Kittrick will be
+along with another train in a few hours. Uncouple the caboose and we'll
+run on."
+
+Schwartz blew his nose with great deliberation.
+
+"Ole," said he, "what d'ye think of the old man's scheme?"
+
+"Ay tank," said Ole, "dat bane hellufa notion!"
+
+"Come," said Mr. Elkins, "we're losing time! Uncouple at once!"
+
+We started to mount the engine; but Schwartz and Ole were before us,
+barring the way.
+
+"Wait," said Schwartz. "Jest look at it, now. It's quite a run yet; and
+the chances are you'd have the cylinder-heads knocked out before you'd
+got half way; and then where'd you be with your connections?"
+
+"Do you mean to say," said Jim, "that there's any likelihood of the
+engine's dying on us between here and the Junction?"
+
+"It's a cinch!" said Schwartz.
+
+"For God's sake, then, let's get on!" said Jim. "I believe you're lying
+to me, Schwartz. But do this: As you come to the trestle, stop. From
+the approach we can see down the other track for ten miles. If
+Pendleton's train is far enough off so as to give us time, we'll see how
+the bridge is before we cross. If we're pressed for time too much for
+this, promise me that you'll stop and let us run the engine across
+alone."
+
+"I'll think about it," said Schwartz; "and if I conclude to, I will.
+It's got to clear up, if we can see even the headlight on the other road
+very far. Ready, Jack?"
+
+We wrung their hard and icy hands, leaped upon the train, and were away
+again, spinning down the grade toward the Elk Fork, and comforted by our
+speed. Jim and I climbed into the cupola and watched the track ahead,
+and the two homely heroes in the cab, as the light from the furnace
+blazed out upon them from time to time. Now we could see Schwartz
+stoking, to warm himself; now we could see him looking at his watch and
+peering anxiously out before him.
+
+It was wearing on toward nine, and still our goal was miles away.
+Overhead the sky was clearing, and we could see the stars; but down on
+the ground the light, new snow still glided whitely along before the
+lessening wind. Once or twice we saw, or thought we saw, far ahead,
+lights, like those of a little prairie town. Was it the Junction? Yes,
+said Corcoran, when we called him to look; and now we saw that we were
+rising on the long approach to the trestle.
+
+Would Schwartz stop, or would he run desperately across, as he had
+dashed through the flood? That was with him. His hand was on the lever,
+and we were helpless; but, if there was time, it would be mere
+foolhardiness to go upon the trestle at any but the slowest speed, and
+without giving all but one an opportunity to walk across. One, surely,
+was enough to go down with the engine, if it, indeed, went down.
+
+"Don't stay up there," shouted Corcoran, "go out on the steps so you can
+jump for it if you have to!"
+
+Out upon the platform we went in the biting wind, which still came
+fiercely on, sweeping over the waste of waters which covered the fields
+like a great lake. There was no sign of slowing down: right on, as if
+the road were rock-ballasted, and thrice secure, the engine drove toward
+the trestle.
+
+"She's there, anyhow, I b'lieve," said Corcoran, swinging out and
+looking ahead; "but I wouldn't bet on how solid she is!"
+
+"Can't you stop him?" said Jim.
+
+"Stop nothing!" said Corcoran. "Look over there!"
+
+We looked, and saw a light gleaming mistily, but distinct and
+unmistakable, across the water on the other track. It was the Pendleton
+special! Not much further from the station than were we, the train of
+moving palaces to which we were fighting our way was gliding to the
+point beyond which it must not pass without us. There was now no more
+thought of stopping; rather our desires yearned forward over the course,
+agonizing for greater speed. I did not see that we were actually upon
+the trestle until for some rods we had been running with the inky water
+only a few feet below us; but when I saw it my hopes leaped up, as I
+calculated the proportion of the peril which was passed. A moment more,
+and the solid approach would be under our spinning wheels.
+
+But the moment more was not to be given us! For, even as this joy rose
+in my breast, I felt a shock; I heard a confused sound of men's cries,
+and the shattering of timbers; the caboose whirled over cornerwise,
+throwing up into the air the step on which I stood; the sounds of the
+train went out in sudden silence as engine and car plunged off into the
+stream; and I felt the cold water close over me as I fell into the
+rushing flood. I arose and struck out for the shore; then I thought of
+Jim. A few feet above me in the stream I saw something like a hand or
+foot flung up out of the water, and sucked down again. I turned as well
+as I could toward the spot, and collided with some object under the
+surface. I caught at it, felt the skirt of a garment in my hand, and
+knew it for a man. Then, I remember helping myself with a plank from
+some washed-out bridge, and soon felt the ground under my feet, all the
+time clinging to my man. I tried to lift him out, but could not; and I
+locked my hands under his arm-pits and, slowly stepping backwards, I
+half carried, half dragged him, seeking a place where I could lay him
+down. I saw the dark line of the railroad grade, and made wearily toward
+it. I walked blindly into the water of the ditch beside the track, and
+had scarcely strength to pull myself and my burden out upon the bank.
+Then I stopped and peered into his face, and saw uncertainly that it
+was Jim--with a dark spot in the edge of the hair on his forehead, from
+which black streaks kept stealing down as I wiped them off; and with one
+arm which twisted unnaturally, and with a grating sound as I moved it;
+and from whom there came no other sound or movement whatever.
+
+And over across the stream gleamed the lights of the Pendleton special
+as it sped away toward Chicago.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+The End--and a Beginning.
+
+
+As to our desperate run from Lattimore to the place where it came to an
+end in a junk-heap which had been once an engine, a car reduced to
+matchwood, a broken trestle, and a chaos of crushed hopes, and of the
+return to our homes thereafter, no further details need be set forth.
+The papers in Lattimore were filled with the story for a day or two, and
+I believe there were columns about it in the Associated Press reports. I
+doubt not that Mr. Pendleton and Mr. Cornish each read it in the morning
+papers, and that the latter explained it to the former in Chicago. From
+these reports the future biographer may glean, if he happens to come
+into being and to care about it, certain interesting facts about the
+people of this history. He will learn that Mr. Barslow, having (with
+truly Horatian swimming powers) rescued President Elkins from a watery
+grave, waited with his unconscious derelict in great danger from
+freezing, until they were both rescued a second time by a crew of
+hand-car men who were near the trestle on special work connected with
+the flood and its ravages. That President Elkins was terribly injured,
+having sustained a broken arm and a dangerous wound in the forehead.
+Moreover, he was threatened with pneumonia from his exposure. Should
+this disease really fasten itself upon him, his condition would be very
+critical indeed. That Mr. Barslow, the hero of the occasion, was
+uninjured. And I am ashamed to say that such student of history will
+find in an inconspicuous part of the same news-story, as if by reason of
+its lack of importance, the statement that O. Hegvold, fireman, and J.
+J. Corcoran, conductor of the wrecked train, escaped with slight
+injuries. And that Julius Schwartz, the engineer, living at 2714 May
+Street, and the oldest engineer on the L. & G. W., being benumbed by the
+cold, sank like a stone and was drowned. Poor Schwartz! Magnificent
+Schwartz! No captain ever went down, refusing to leave the bridge of his
+sinking ship, with more heroism than he; who, clad in greasy overalls,
+and sapped of his strength by the icy hurricane, finding his homely duty
+inextricably entangled with death, calmly took them both, and went his
+way.
+
+This mine for the historian will also disclose to him the fact that the
+rescued crew and passengers were brought home by a relief-train in
+charge of General Manager Kittrick, and that Mr. Elkins was taken
+directly to the home of Mr. Barslow, where he at once became subject to
+the jurisdiction of physicians and nurses and "could not be seen." But
+as to the reasons for the insane dash in the dark the historian will
+look in vain. I am disposed now to think that our motives were entirely
+creditable; but for them we got no credit.
+
+Much less than a nine days' wonder, however, was this tragedy of the Elk
+Fork trestle, for other sensations came tumbling in an army upon its
+very heels. Times of war, great public calamities, and panic are the
+harvest seasons of the newspapers; and these were great days for the
+newspapers in Lattimore. Not that they learned or printed all the news.
+I received a telegram, for instance, the day after the accident, which
+merely entered up judgment on the verdict of the day before. It was a
+message from Mr. Pendleton in Chicago.
+
+"In matter of Lattimore & Great Western," this telegram read, "directors
+refuse to ratify contract. This sent to save you trip to Chicago."
+
+"No news in that," said I to Mr. Hinckley; "I wonder that he bothered to
+send it."
+
+But, in the era of slug heads which set in about three days after, and
+while Jim was still helpless up at my house, it would have received
+recognition as news--although they did very well without it.
+
+"Great Failure!" said the _Times_. "Grain Belt Trust Company Goes to the
+Wall! Business Circles Convulsed! Receiver Appointed at Suit of Charles
+Harper of Chicago! Followed by Assignment of Hinckley & Macdonald,
+Bankers! Western Portland Cement Company Assigns! Atlas Power Company
+Follows Suit! Reason, Money Tied up in Banks and Trust Company. Where
+will it Stop? A Veritable Black Friday!"
+
+Thus the headlines. In the news report itself the _Times_ remarked upon
+the intimate connection of Mr. Elkins and myself with all the failed
+concerns. The firm of Elkins & Barslow, being primarily a real-estate
+and insurance agency, would not assign. As to the condition of the
+business of James R. Elkins & Company, whose operations in bonds and
+debentures had been enormous, nothing could be learned on account of the
+critical illness of Mr. Elkins.
+
+"It is not thought," said the _Herald_, "that the failures will carry
+down any other concerns. The run on the First National Bank was one of
+those panicky symptoms which are dangerous because so unreasoning. It is
+to be hoped that it will not be renewed in the morning. The banks are
+not involved in the operations of the Grain Belt Trust Company, the
+failure of which, it must be admitted, is sure to cause serious
+disturbances, both locally and elsewhere, wherever its wide-spread
+operations have extended."
+
+The physical system adjusts itself to any permanent lesion in the body,
+and finally ceases even to send out its complaining messages of pain. So
+we in Lattimore, who a few weeks ago had been ready to sacrifice
+anything for the keeping of our good name; who by stealth justly
+foreclosed mortgages justly due, lest the world should wonder at their
+nonpayment; who so greatly had rejoiced in our own strength; who had
+felt that, surely, we who had wrought such wonders could not now
+fail:--even we numbly came to regard receiverships and assignments as
+quite the thing to be expected. The fact that, all over the country,
+panic, ruin, and business stagnation were spreading like a pestilence,
+from just such centers of contagion as Lattimore, made it easier for
+us. Surely, we felt, nobody could justly blame us for being in the path
+of a tempest which, like a tropic cyclone, ravaged a continent.
+
+This may have been weak self-justification; but, even yet, when I think
+of the way we began, and how the wave of "prosperity" rose and rose, by
+acts in themselves, so far as we could see, in every way praiseworthy;
+how with us, and with people engaged in like operations everywhere, the
+most powerful passions of society came to aid our projects; how the
+winds from the unknown, the seismic throbbings of the earth, and the
+very stars in their courses fought for us; and when, at last, these
+mightinesses turned upon us the cold and evil eye of their displeasure,
+how the heaped-up sea came pouring over here, trickling through there,
+and seeping under yonder, until our great dike toppled over in baleful
+tumult, "and all the world was in the sea"; how business, east, west,
+north, and south, went paralyzed with fear and distrust, and old
+concerns went out like strings of soap-bubbles, and shocks of pain and
+disease went round the world, and everywhere there was that hellish and
+portentous thing known to the modern world only, and called a
+"commercial panic": when I broadly consider these things, I am not vain
+enough seriously to blame myself.
+
+These thoughts are more than ever in my mind to-day, as I look back over
+the decade of years which have elapsed since our Waterloo at the Elk
+Fork trestle. I look out from the same library in which I once felt a
+sense of guilt at the expense of building it, and see the solid and
+prosperous town, almost as populous as we once saw it in our dreams. I
+am regarded locally as one of the creators of the city; but I know that
+this praise is as unmerited as was that blame of a dozen years ago. We
+rode on the crest of a wave, and we weltered in the trough of the sea;
+but we only seemed to create or control. I hold in my hand a letter from
+Jim, received yesterday, and eloquent of the changes which have taken
+place.
+
+"I am sorry," says he, "to be unable to come to your business men's
+banquet. The building of a great auditorium in Lattimore is proof that
+we weren't so insane, after all. I suppose that the ebb and flow of the
+tide of progress, which yearly gains upon the shore, is inevitable, as
+things are hooked up; but, after the ebb, it's comforting to see your
+old predictions as to gain coming true, even if you do find yourself in
+the discard. It would be worth the trip only to see Captain Tolliver,
+and to hear him eliminate the _r_'s from his mother tongue. Give the
+dear old secesh my dearest love!
+
+"But I can't come, Al. I must be in Washington at that time on business
+of the greatest (presumptive) importance to the cattle interests of the
+buffalo-grass country. I could change my own dates; but my wife has
+arranged a tryst for a day certain with some specialists in her line in
+New York. She's quite the queen of the cattle range--in New York: and,
+to be dead truthful, she comes pretty near it out here. It is rumored
+that even the sheepmen speak well of her.
+
+"These Eastern trips are great things for her and the children. I'm
+riding the range so constantly, and get so much fun out of it, that I
+feel sort of undressed and embarrassed out of the saddle. In Washington
+I'm pointed out as a typical cowboy, the descendant of a Spanish vaquero
+and a trapper's daughter. This helps me to represent my constituents in
+the sessions of the Third House, and to get Congressional attention to
+the ax I want ground. I am looked upon as in line for the presidency of
+the Amalgamated Association of American Ax-grinders.
+
+"If we can make it, we'll look in on you on our way back; but we don't
+promise. With cattle scattered over two counties of buttes and canyons,
+we feel in a hurry when we get started home, after an absence sure to
+have been longer than we intended. Then, you know how I feel;--I wish
+the old town well, but I don't enjoy _every_ incident of my visits
+there.
+
+"We expect to see the Cecil Barr-Smiths in New York. Cecil is the whole
+thing now with their companies--a sort of professional president in
+charge of the American properties; and Mrs. Cecil is as well known in
+some mighty good circles in London as she used to be in Lynhurst Park.
+
+"I am glad to know that things are going toward the good with you.
+Personally, I never expect to be a seven-figure man again, and don't
+care to be. I prefer to look after my few thousands of steers, laying on
+four hundred pounds each per year, far from the madding crowd. You know
+Riley's man who said that the little town of Tailholt was good enough
+for him? Well, that expresses my view of the 'J-Up-and-Down' Ranch as a
+hermitage. It'll do quite well. But these Eastern interests of Mrs. Jim
+are just now menacing to life in any hermitage. She has specifically
+stated on two or three occasions lately that this is no place to bring
+up a family. Think of a rough-rider like me in the wilds of New York! I
+can see plenty of ways of amusing myself down there, but not such
+peaceful ways as putting on my six-shooters and going out after timber
+wolves or mountain lions, or our local representative of the clan of the
+Hon. Maverick Brander. The future lowers dark with the multitudinous
+mouths of avenues of prosperity!"
+
+This letter was a disappointment to Mr. Giddings. His special edition of
+the _Herald_ commemorative of the opening of our Auditorium must now be
+deprived of its James R. Elkins feature, so far as his being the guest
+of honor goes. But there will be Jim's photograph on the first page, and
+a half-tone reproduction of a picture of the wreck at the Elk Fork
+trestle.
+
+"It is a matter of the deepest regret," said the _Herald_ this morning,
+"that Mr. Elkins cannot be with us on this auspicious occasion. He was
+the head of that most remarkable group of men who laid the foundations
+of Lattimore's greatness. Only one of them, Mr. Barslow, still lives in
+Lattimore, where he has devoted his life, since the crash of many years
+ago, to the reorganization of the failed concerns, and especially the
+Grain Belt Trust Company, and to the salving of their properties in the
+interests of the creditors. His present prominence grows out of the
+signal skill and ability with which he has done this work; and he must
+prove a great factor in the city's future development, as he has been in
+its past. Mr. Hinckley, the third member of the syndicate, now far
+advanced in years, is living happily with his daughter and her husband.
+The fourth, Mr. Cornish, resides in Paris, where he is well known as a
+daring and successful financial operator. He, of all the syndicate,
+retired from the Lattimore enterprises rich.
+
+"There have been years when the names of these men were not held in the
+respect and esteem they deserve. The town was going backward. People who
+had been rich were, many of them, in absolute distress for the
+necessaries of life. And these men, in a vague sort of way, were blamed
+for it. Now, however, we can begin to see the wisdom of their plans and
+the vastness of the scope of their combinations. Nothing but the element
+of time was wanting, abundantly to vindicate their judgment and
+sagacity. The industries they founded succeeded as soon as they were
+divorced from the real-estate speculation which unavoidably entered into
+their management at the outset. It is regrettable that their founders
+could not share in their success."
+
+"Nothing but the element of time," said I to Captain Tolliver, who sat
+by me in the car as I read this editorial, "prevents the hot-air balloon
+from carrying its load over the Rockies."
+
+"Nothing but luck," said the Captain, "evah could have beaten us. It was
+the Fleischmann failure, and it was nothing else. As to the great
+qualities of Mr. Elkins, suh, the editorial puts it too mild by fah. He
+was a Titan, suh, a Titan, and we shall not look upon his like again.
+This town at this moment is vegetating fo' the want of some fo'ceful
+Elkins to put life into it. The trilobites, as he so well dubbed them,
+ah in control again. What's this Auditorium we've built? A good thing
+fo' the city, cehtainly, a ve'y good thing: but see the difficulty, the
+humiliatin' difficulty we had, in gettin' togethah the paltry and
+trivial hundred and fifty thousand dolla's! Why in that elder day, in
+such a cause, we'd have called a meetin' in that old office of Elkins &
+Barslow's, and made it up out of ouah own funds in fifteen minutes. It's
+the so't of cattle we've got hyah as citizens that's handicappin' us;
+but in spite of this, suh, ouah unsuhpassed strategical position is
+winnin' fo' us. We ah just now on the eve of great developments,
+Barslow, great developments! All my holdin's ah withdrawn from mahket
+until fu'theh notice. Foh, as we ah so much behind the surroundin'
+country in growth, we must soon take a great leap fo'wahd. We ah past
+the boom stage, I thank God, and what we ah now goin' to get is a rathah
+brisk but entiahly healthy growth. A good, healthy growth, Barslow, and
+no boom!"
+
+The disposition to moralize comes on with advancing middle age, and I
+could not help philosophizing on this perennial optimism of the
+Captain's. He had used these very words when, so long ago, we had begun
+our "cruise." The financial cycle was complete. The world had passed
+from hope to intoxication, from intoxication to panic, from panic to the
+depths, from this depression, ascending the long slope of gradual
+recovery, to the uplands of hope once more. Now, as twenty years ago,
+this feeling covered the whole world, was most pronounced in the newer
+and more progressive lands, and was voiced by Captain Tolliver, the
+grizzled swashbuckler of the land market. In it I recognized the ripple
+on the sands heralding the approach of another wave of speculation,
+which must roll shoreward in splendor and might, and, like its
+predecessors, must spend itself in thunderous ruin.
+
+I often think of what General Lattimore was accustomed to say about
+these matters, and how Josie echoed his words as to the evil of fortunes
+coming to those who never earned them. Some time, I hope, we shall grow
+wise enough to--
+
+I humbly beg your pardon, Madam, and thank you. That charming gesture of
+impatience was the one thing needful to admonish me that lectures are
+dull, and that the time has come to write _finis_. The rest of the
+story? Cornish--Jim--Josie--Antonia? Oh, this proneness of the business
+man to talk shop! Left to myself, I should have allowed their history to
+remain to the end of time, unresolved as to entanglements, and them
+unhealed as to bruises, bodily and sentimental. And, yet, those were the
+things which most filled our minds in the dark days after we missed
+connection with the Pendleton special.
+
+In the first spasm of the crisis I was more concerned for Jim's safety
+than with the long-feared monetary cataclysm. _That_ was upon us in such
+power as to make us helpless; but Jim, wounded and prostrated as he was,
+his very life in danger, was a concrete subject of anxiety and a
+comfortingly promising object of care.
+
+"If we can keep this from assuming the character of true pneumonia,"
+said Dr. Aylesbury, "there's no reason why he shouldn't recover."
+
+He had been unconscious and then delirious from the time when he and I
+had been picked up there by the railroad-dump, until we were well on our
+way home on Kittrick's relief-train. At last he looked about him, and
+his eyes rested on Corcoran.
+
+"Hello, Jack!" said he weakly; and as his glance took in Ole, he smiled
+and said: "A hellufa notion, you tank, do you? Ole, where's Schwartz?"
+
+Ole twisted and squirmed, but found no words.
+
+"We couldn't find Schwartz," said Kittrick. "He was so cold, he went
+right down with the cab."
+
+"I see," said Jim. "It was bitter cold!"
+
+He said no more. I wondered at this, and almost blamed him, even in his
+stricken state, for not feeling the peculiar poignancy of our regret for
+the loss of Schwartz. And then, his face being turned away, I peeped
+over to see if he slept, and saw where his tears had dropped silently on
+the piled-up cushions of his couch.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Trescott came several times a day to inquire as to Mr. Elkins's
+welfare; but Josie not at all. Antonia's carriage stopped often at the
+door; and somebody stood always at the telephone, answering the stream
+of questions. But when, on that third evening, it became known that the
+last "battle in the west" had gone against us, that all our great Round
+Table was dissolved, and that Jim's was a sinking and not a rising sun,
+public interest suddenly fell off. And the poor fellow whose word but
+yesterday might have stood against the world, now lay there fighting for
+very life, and few so poor to do him reverence. I had been so proud of
+his splendid and dominant strength that this, I think, was the thing
+that brought the bitterness of failure most keenly home to me. I could
+not feel satisfied with Josie. There were good reasons why she might
+have refused to choose between Jim and the man who had ruined him, while
+there was danger of her choice itself becoming the occasion of war
+between them. But that was over now, and Cornish was victorious.
+Gradually the fear grew upon me that we had rated Josie's womanhood
+higher than she herself held it, and that Cornish was to win her also.
+He had that magnetism which so attracted her as a girl, but that I had
+believed incapable of holding her as a woman. And now he had wealth, and
+Jim was poor, and the whole world stood with its back to us, and Josie
+held aloof. I was afraid he would speak of it, every time he tried to
+talk.
+
+That night when the evening papers came out with all their plenitude of
+bad news (for we had pleased Watson by dying on the evening papers'
+time), it was a dark moment for us. Jim lay silent and unmoving, as if
+all his ebullient energy had gone forever. The physician omitted the
+dressing of his wound, because, he said, he feared the patient was not
+strong enough to bear it: and this, as well as the strange semi-stupor
+of the sufferer, frightened me. Jim had said little, and most of his
+words had been of the trivial things of the sick-room. Only once did he
+refer to the great affairs in which we had been for so long engrossed.
+
+"What day is this?" he asked.
+
+"Friday," said I, "the twenty-first."
+
+"By this time," said he feebly, "we must be pretty well shot to rags."
+
+"Never mind about that," said I, holding his hands in mine. "Never mind,
+Jim!"
+
+"Some of those gophers," said he, after a while, "used to learn to ...
+rub their noses ... in the dirt ... and always stick their heads
+up--outside the snare!"
+
+"Yes," said I, "I remember. Go to sleep, old man!"
+
+I thought him delirious, and he knew and resented it; being evidently
+convinced that he had just made a wise remark. It touched me to hear
+him, even in his extremity, return to those boyhood days when we trapped
+and hunted and fished together. He saw my pitying look.
+
+"I'm all right," said he; but he said no more.
+
+The nurse came in, and told me that Mrs. Barslow wished to see me in the
+library. I went down, and found Josie and Alice together.
+
+"I got a letter from--from Mr. Cornish," said she, "telling me that he
+was returning from Chicago to-night, and was coming to see me. I ran
+over, because--and told mamma to say that I couldn't see him."
+
+"See him by all means," said I with some bitterness. "You should make
+it a point to see him. Mr. Cornish is a success. He alone of us all has
+shown real greatness."
+
+And it dawned upon me, as I said it, what Jim had meant by his reference
+to the gopher which learns to stick its head up "outside the snare."
+
+"I want to ask you," said Josie, "is it all true--what was in the paper
+to-night about all of you, Mr. Hinckley and yourself, and--all of you
+having failed?"
+
+"It is only a part of the truth," I replied. "We are ruined absolutely."
+
+She said nothing by way of condolence, and uttered no expressions of
+regret or sympathy. She was apparently in a state of suppressed
+excitement, and started at sounds and movements.
+
+"Is Mr. Elkins very ill?" said she at length.
+
+"So ill," said Alice, "that unless he rallies soon, we shall look for
+the worst."
+
+No more at this than at the other ill news did Josie express any regret
+or concern. She sat with her fingers clasped together, gazing before her
+at the fire in the grate, as if making some deep and abstruse
+calculation. But when the door-bell rang, she started and listened
+attentively, as the servant went to the door, and then returned to us.
+
+"A gentleman, Mr. Cornish, to see Miss Trescott," said the maid. "And he
+says he must see her for a moment."
+
+"Alice," said Josie, under her breath, "you go, please! Say to him that
+I cannot see him--now! Oh, why did he follow me here?"
+
+"Josie," said Alice dramatically, "you don't mean to say that you are
+afraid of this man! Are you?"
+
+"No, no!" said the girl doubtfully and distressfully; "but it's so hard
+to say 'No' to him! If you only knew all, Alice, you wouldn't blame
+me--and you'd go!"
+
+"If you're so far gone--under his influence," said Alice, "that you
+can't trust yourself to say 'No,' Josephine Trescott, go, in Heaven's
+name, and say 'Yes,' and be the wife of a millionaire--and a traitor and
+scoundrel!"
+
+As Alice said this she came perilously near the histrionic standard of
+the tragic stage. Josie rose, looked at her in surprise, in which there
+seemed to be some defiance, and walked steadily out to the parlor. I was
+glad to be out of the affair, and went back to Jim. I stood regarding my
+broken and forsaken friend, in watching whose uneasy sleep I forgot the
+crisis downstairs, when I was startled and angered by the slamming of
+the front door, and heard a carriage rattle furiously away down the
+street.
+
+Soon I heard the rustle of skirts, and looked up, thinking to see my
+wife. But it was Josie. She came in, as if she were the regularly
+ordained nurse, and stepped to the bedside of the sleeping patient. The
+broken arm in its swathings lay partly uncovered; and across his wounded
+brow was stretched a broad bandage, below which his face showed pale and
+weary-looking, in the half-stupor of his deathlike slumber: for he had
+become strangely quiet. His uninjured arm lay inertly on the
+counterpane beside him.
+
+She took his hand, and, seating herself on the bed, began softly
+stroking and patting the hand, gazing all the time in his face. He
+stirred, and, turning his eyes toward her, awoke.
+
+"Don't move, my darling," said she quietly, and as if she had been for a
+long, long time quite in the habit of so speaking to him; "don't move,
+or you'll hurt your arm." Then she bent down her head, lower and lower,
+until her cheek touched his.
+
+"I've come to sit with you, Jim, dear," said she, softly--"if you want
+me--if I can do you any good."
+
+"I want you, always," said he.
+
+She stooped again, and this time laid her lips lingeringly on his; and
+his arm stole about the slim waist.
+
+"If you'll just get well," she whispered, "you may have me--always!"
+
+He passed his fingers over her hair, and kissed her again and again.
+Then he looked at her long and earnestly.
+
+"Where's Al?" said he; "I want Al!"
+
+I came forward promptly. I thought that this violation of the doctor's
+regulation requiring rest and quiet had gone quite far enough.
+
+"Al," said he, still holding her hand, "do you remember out there by the
+windmill tower that night, and the petunias and four-o'clocks?"
+
+"Yes, Jim, I remember," said I. "But you mustn't talk any more now."
+
+"No, I won't," said he, and went right on; "but even before that, and
+ever since, I haven't wanted anything we've been trying so hard to get,
+half as much as I've wanted Josie; and now--we lost the fight, didn't
+we? Things have been slipping away from us, haven't they? Gone, aren't
+they?"
+
+"Go to sleep now, Jim," said I. "Plenty of time for those things when
+you wake up."
+
+"Yes," said he; "but before I do, I want you to tell me one thing,
+honest injun, hope to die, you know!"
+
+"Yes," said I; "what is it, Jim?"
+
+"I've been seeing a lot of funny things in the dark corners about here;
+but this seems more real than any of them," he went on; "and I want you
+to tell me--_is this really Josie_?"
+
+"Really," I assured him, "really, it is."
+
+"Oh, Jim, Jim!" she cried, "have you learned to doubt my reality, just
+because I'm kind! Why, I'm going to be good to you now, dearest, always,
+always! And kinder than you ever dreamed, Jim. And I'm going to show you
+that everything has not slipped away from you, my poor, poor boy; and
+that, whatever may come, I shall be with you always. Only get well; only
+get well!"
+
+"Josie," said he, smiling wanly, "you couldn't kill me--now--not with an
+ax!"
+
+THE END.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
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+THE CIRCULAR STAIRCASE, By Mary Roberts Reinhart
+
+With illustrations by Lester Ralph.
+
+In an extended notice the _New York Sun_ says: "To readers who care for
+a really good detective story 'The Circular Staircase' can be
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+THE RED YEAR, By Louis Tracy
+
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+
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+
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+chum.
+
+LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL, By Geo. Cary Eggleston
+
+With illustrations by Hermann Heyer.
+
+In this "plantation romance" Mr. Eggleston has resumed the manner and
+method that made his "Dorothy South" one of the most famous books of its
+time.
+
+There are three tender love stories embodied in it, and two unusually
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+
+HEARTS AND THE CROSS, By Harold Morton Cramer
+
+With illustrations by Harold Matthews Brett.
+
+The hero is an unconventional preacher who follows the line of the Man
+of Galilee, associating with the lowly, and working for them in the ways
+that may best serve them. He is not recognized at his real value except
+by the one woman who saw clearly. Their love story is one of the
+refreshing things in recent fiction.
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+FAMOUS COPYRIGHT BOOKS IN POPULAR PRICED EDITIONS
+
+Re-issues of the great literary successes of the time. Library size.
+Printed on excellent paper--most of them with illustrations of marked
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+
+NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA,
+
+By Kate Douglas Wiggin With illustrations by F. C. Yohn
+
+Additional episodes in the girlhood of the delightful little heroine at
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+famous story. Rebecca is as distinct a creation in the second volume as
+in the first.
+
+THE SILVER BUTTERFLY, By Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
+
+With illustrations in colors by Howard Chandler Christy.
+
+A story of love and mystery, full of color, charm, and vivacity, dealing
+with a South American mine, rich beyond dreams, and of a New York
+maiden, beyond dreams beautiful--both known as the Silver Butterfly.
+_Well named is The Silver Butterfly!_ There could not be a better symbol
+of the darting swiftness, the eager love plot, the elusive mystery and
+the flashing wit.
+
+BEATRIX OF CLARE, By John Reed Scott
+
+With illustrations by Clarence F. Underwood.
+
+A spirited and irresistibly attractive historical romance of the
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+present hour. Beatrix is a fascinating daughter of Eve.
+
+A LITTLE BROTHER OF THE RICH,
+
+By Joseph Medill Patterson
+
+Frontispiece by Hazel Martyn Trudeau, and illustrations by Walter Dean
+Goldbeck.
+
+Tells the story of the idle rich, and is a vivid and truthful picture of
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+daring in its treatment, lashing society as it was never scourged
+before."--New York Sun.
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+FAMOUS COPYRIGHT BOOKS IN POPULAR PRICED EDITIONS
+
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+
+THE FAIR GOD; OR, THE LAST OF THE TZINS. By Lew Wallace. With
+illustrations by Eric Pape.
+
+"The story tells of the love of a native princess for Alvarado, and it
+is worked out with all of Wallace's skill * * * it gives a fine picture
+of the heroism of the Spanish conquerors and of the culture and nobility
+of the Aztecs."--_New York Commercial Advertiser_.
+
+"_Ben Hur_ sold enormously, but _The Fair God_ was the best of the
+General's stories--a powerful and romantic treatment of the defeat of
+Montezuma by Cortes."--_Athenæum_.
+
+THE CAPTAIN OF THE KANSAS. By Louis Tracy.
+
+A story of love and the salt sea--of a helpless ship whirled into the
+hands of cannibal Fuegians--of desperate fighting and tender romance,
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+
+A MIDNIGHT GUEST. A Detective Story. By Fred M. White. With a
+frontispiece.
+
+The scene of the story centers in London and Italy. The book is
+skilfully written and makes one of the most baffling, mystifying,
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+and mystery intact until the surprising discoveries which precede the
+end.
+
+THE HONOUR OF SAVELLI. A Romance. By S. Levett Yeats. With cover and
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+
+Those who enjoyed Stanley Weyman's _A Gentleman of France_ will be
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+sword-play, and deals with the agitating times in Italian history when
+Alexander II was Pope and the famous and infamous Borgias were tottering
+to their fall.
+
+SISTER CARRIE. By Theodore Drieser. With a frontispiece, and wrapper in
+color.
+
+In all fiction there is probably no more graphic and poignant study of
+the way in which man loses his grip on life, lets his pride, his
+courage, his self-respect slip from him, and, finally, even ceases to
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+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP--NEW YORK.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+FAMOUS COPYRIGHT BOOKS IN POPULAR PRICED EDITIONS
+
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+
+LAVENDER AND OLD LACE. By Myrtle Reed.
+
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+finds a modern parallel. One of the prettiest, sweetest, and quaintest
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+
+DOCTOR LUKE OF THE LABRADOR. By Norman Duncan. With a frontispiece and
+inlay cover.
+
+How the doctor came to the bleak Labrador coast and there in saving life
+made expiation. In dignity, simplicity, humor, in sympathetic etching of
+a sturdy fisher people, and above all in the echoes of the sea, _Doctor
+Luke_ is worthy of great praise. Character, humor, poignant pathos, and
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+
+THE DAY'S WORK. By Rudyard Kipling. Illustrated.
+
+The _London Morning Post_ says: "It would be hard to find better reading
+* * * the book is so varied, so full of color and life from end to end,
+that few who read the first two or three stories will lay it down till
+they have read the last--and the last is a veritable gem gem * * *
+contains some of the best of his highly vivid work * * * Kipling is a
+born story-teller and a man of humor into the bargain."
+
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+
+A story of married life, and attractive picture of wedded bliss * * * an
+entertaining story of a man's redemption through a woman's love * * * no
+one who knows anything of marriage or parenthood can read this story
+with eyes that are always dry * * * goes straight to the heart of every
+one who knows the meaning of "love" and "home."
+
+THE COLONEL OF THE RED HUZZARS. By John Reed Scott. Illustrated by
+Clarence F. Underwood.
+
+"Full of absorbing charm, sustained interest, and a wealth of thrilling
+and romantic situations. So naively fresh in its handling, so plausible
+through its naturalness, that it comes like a mountain breeze across the
+far-spreading desert of similar romances."--_Gazette-Times, Pittsburg_.
+"A slap-dashing day romance."--_New York Sun_.
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP--NEW YORK.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+
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+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Aladdin &amp; Co, by Herbert Quick.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+        /*<![CDATA[  XML blockout */
+        <!--
+        p                 {margin-top: 0.5em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: 0.5em;}
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+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Aladdin & Co., by Herbert Quick
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Aladdin & Co.
+       A Romance of Yankee Magic
+
+Author: Herbert Quick
+
+Release Date: December 5, 2007 [EBook #23745]
+[Last update: December 17, 2012]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALADDIN & CO. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<table style="margin: auto; border: black 1px solid; width:25em" summary=""><tr><td>
+<p style=" font-size:2.2em; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em;">ALADDIN &amp; CO.</p>
+<p style=" font-size:1.4em; margin-top:0em; margin-bottom:2em;">A ROMANCE OF YANKEE MAGIC</p>
+<p style=" font-size:1.0em; margin-top:0em; margin-bottom:0em;">BY</p>
+<p style=" font-size:1.4em; margin-top:0em; margin-bottom:3em;">HERBERT QUICK</p>
+<p style=" font-size:0.8em; margin-top:0em; margin-bottom:0em;">Author of</p>
+<p style=" font-size:0.8em; margin-top:0em; margin-bottom:10em;">&#8220;Virginia of the Air Lanes,&#8221; &#8220;Double Trouble,&#8221; etc.</p>
+<p style=" font-size:1.3em; margin-top:0em; margin-bottom:0em;">GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP</p>
+<p style=" font-size:1.2em; margin-top:0em; margin-bottom:1em;">Publishers&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;:&nbsp;&nbsp;:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;New York</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<hr class="dashed" />
+
+<p class="c" style="margin: 2em auto 0em auto; font-size:smaller;">
+Copyright 1904<br />
+Henry Holt and Company</p>
+<hr style="width:15%" />
+<p class="c" style="margin: 0em auto 2em auto; font-size:smaller;">Copyright 1907<br />
+The Bobbs-Merrill Company
+</p>
+
+<hr class="dashed" />
+
+<h2 class="toc"><a name="Contents" id="Contents"></a>Contents.</h2>
+<table border="0" width="500" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents" class="sc" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto">
+<col style="width:90%;" />
+<col style="width:10%;" />
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2" align="right"><span style="font-size:x-small">PAGE</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER I.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">Which is of Introductory Character.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#Which_is_of_Introductory_Character_164">1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER II.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">Still Introductory.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#Still_Introductory_467">13</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER III.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">Reminiscentially Autobiographical.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#Reminiscentially_Autobiographical_642">20</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER IV.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">Jim Discovers His Coral Island.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#Jim_Discovers_his_Coral_Island_1164">39</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER V.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">We Reach the Atoll.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#We_Reach_the_Atoll_1341">46</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER VI.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">I Am Inducted Into the Cave, and Enlist.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#I_am_Inducted_into_the_Cave_and_Enlist_1606">55</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER VII.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">We Make our Landing.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#We_make_our_Landing_1932">67</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER VIII.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">A Welcome to Wall Street and Us.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#A_Welcome_to_Wall_Street_and_Us_2187">77</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER IX.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">I Go Aboard and We Unfurl the Jolly Roger.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#I_Go_Aboard_and_We_Unfurl_the_Jolly_Roger_2453">86</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER X.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">We Dedicate Lynhurst Park.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#We_Dedicate_Lynhurst_Park_2723">96</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER XI.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">The Empress and Sir John Meet Again.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#The_Empress_and_Sir_John_Meet_Again_3154">112</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER XII.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">In Which the Burdens of Wealth Begin to Fall Upon Us.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#In_which_the_Burdens_of_Wealth_Begin_to_Fall_upon_Us_3359">120</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER XIII.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">A Sitting Or Two in the Game with the World and Destiny.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#A_Sitting_or_Two_in_the_Game_with_the_World_and_Destiny_3830">137</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER XIV.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">In Which We Learn Something of Railroads, and Attend Some Remarkable Christenings.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#In_which_we_Learn_Something_of_Railroads_and_Attend_Some_Remarkable_Christenings_4217">152</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER XV.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">Some Affairs of the Heart Considered in Their Relation to Dollars Cents.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#Some_Affairs_of_the_Heart_Considered_in_their_Relation_to_Dollars_Cents_4672">169</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER XVI.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">Some Things Which Happened in our Halcyon Days.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#Some_Things_which_Happened_in_Our_Halcyon_Days_5127">185</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER XVII.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">Relating to the Disposition of the Captives.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#Relating_to_the_Disposition_of_the_Captives_5562">201</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER XVIII.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">The Going Away of Laura and Clifford, and the Departure of Mr. Trescott.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#The_Going_Away_of_Laura_and_Clifford_and_the_Departure_of_Mr_Trescott_5919">214</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER XIX.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">In Which Events Resume Their Usual Course&mdash;At a Somewhat Accelerated Pace.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#In_Which_Events_Resume_their_Usual_Coursemdashat_a_Somewhat_Accelerated_Pace_6394">231</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER XX.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">I Twice Explain the Condition of the Trescott Estate.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#I_Twice_Explain_the_Condition_of_the_Trescott_Estate_6852">248</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER XXI.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">Of Conflicts, Within and Without.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#Of_Conflicts_Within_and_Without_7203">260</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER XXII.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">In Which I Win My Great Victory.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#In_which_I_Win_my_Great_Victory_7476">270</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER XXIII.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">The &#8220;Dutchman&#8217;s Mill&#8221; and What it Ground.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#The_Dutchmans_Mill_and_What_It_Ground_7763">281</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER XXIV.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">The Beginning of the End.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#The_Beginning_of_the_End_8021">291</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER XXV.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">That Last Weird Battle in the West.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#That_Last_Weird_Battle_in_the_West_8463">306</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:40px" valign="bottom" colspan="2" align="center">CHAPTER XXVI.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdleft">The End&mdash;and a Beginning.</td>
+  <td class="tdright"><a href="#The_Endmdashand_a_Beginning_8844">320</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="dashed" />
+
+<p class="c" style="font-size:2em;">Aladdin &amp; Co</p>
+
+<p class="xl c" style='margin-top:2em;'>The Persons of the Story.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">James Elkins</span>, the &#8220;man who made Lattimore,&#8221; known as &#8220;Jim.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Albert Barslow</span>, who tells the tale; the friend and partner of Jim.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Alice Barslow</span>, his wife; at first, his sweetheart.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">William Trescott</span>, known as &#8220;Bill,&#8221; a farmer and capitalist.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Josephine Trescott</span>, his daughter.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Mrs. Trescott</span>, his wife.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Mr. Hinckley</span>, a banker of Lattimore.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Mrs. Hinckley</span>, his wife; devoted to the emancipation of
+woman.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Antonia</span>, their daughter.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Aleck Macdonald</span>, pioneer and capitalist.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">General Lattimore</span>, pioneer, soldier, and godfather of
+Lattimore.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Miss Addison</span>, the general&#8217;s niece.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Captain Marion Tolliver</span>, Confederate veteran and Lattimore
+boomer.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Mrs. Tolliver</span>, his wife.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Will Lattimore</span>, a lawyer.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Mr. Ballard</span>, a banker.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">J. Bedford Cornish</span>, a speculator, who with Elkins, Barslow,
+and Hinckley make up the great Lattimore &#8220;Syndicate.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Clifford Giddings</span>, editor and proprietor of the Lattimore
+Herald.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">De Forest Barr-Smith</span>, an Englishman &#8220;representing
+capital.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Cecil Barr-Smith</span>, his brother.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Avery Pendleton</span>, of New York, a railway magnate; head
+of the &#8220;Pendleton System.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Allen G. Wade</span>, of New York; head of the Allen G. Wade
+Trust Co.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Halliday</span>, a railway magnate; head of the &#8220;Halliday
+System.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Watson</span>, a reporter.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Schwartz</span>, a locomotive engineer on the Lattimore &amp; Great
+Western.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Hegvold</span>, a fireman.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc" style="margin-bottom:1em">Citizens of Lattimore</span>, Politicians, Live-stock Merchants,
+Railway Clerks and Officials, etc.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Scene:</span> Principally in the Western town of Lattimore,
+but partly in New York and Chicago.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Time:</span> Not so very long ago.</p>
+
+<hr class="dashed" />
+
+<p class="c" style="font-size: 1.8em">Aladdin &amp; Co</p>
+
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a name="Which_is_of_Introductory_Character_164" id="Which_is_of_Introductory_Character_164"></a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_1" id="pg_1">1</a></span>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER I.</p>
+<p class="l c">Which is of Introductory Character.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Our National Convention met in Chicago that year, and I was one of the
+delegates. I had looked forward to it with keen expectancy. I was now,
+at five o&#8217;clock of the first day, admitting to myself that it was a
+bore.</p>
+
+<p>The special train, with its crowd of overstimulated enthusiasts, the
+throngs at the stations, the brass bands, bunting, and buncombe all
+jarred upon me. After a while my treason was betrayed to the boys by the
+fact that I was not hoarse. They punished me by making me sing as a solo
+the air of each stanza of &#8220;Marching Through Georgia,&#8221; &#8220;Tenting To-night
+on the Old Camp-ground,&#8221; and other patriotic songs, until my voice was
+assimilated to theirs. But my gorge rose at it all, and now, at five
+o&#8217;clock of the first day, I was seeking a place of retirement where I
+could be alone and think over the marvelous event which had suddenly
+raised me from yesterday&#8217;s parity with the fellows on the train to my
+present state of exaltation.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_2" id="pg_2">2</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I should have preferred a grotto in Vau Vau or some south-looking
+mountain glen; but in the absence of any such retreat in Chicago, I
+turned into the old art-gallery in Michigan Avenue. As I went floating
+in space past its door, my eye caught through the window the gleam of
+the white limbs of statues, and my being responded to the soul
+vibrations they sent out. So I paid my fee, entered, and found the
+tender solitude for which my heart longed. I sat down and luxuriated in
+thoughts of the so recent marvelous experience. Need I explain that I
+was young and the experience was one of the heart?</p>
+
+<p>I was so young that my delegateship was regarded as a matter to excite
+wonder. I saw my picture in the papers next morning as a youth of
+twenty-three who had become his party&#8217;s leader in an important
+agricultural county. Some, in the shameless laudation of a sensational
+press, compared me to the younger Pitt. As a matter of fact, I had some
+talent for organization, and in any gathering of men, I somehow never
+lacked a following. I was young enough to be an honest partisan,
+enthusiastic enough to be useful, strong enough to be respected,
+ignorant enough to believe my party my country&#8217;s safeguard, and I was
+prominent in my county before I was old enough to vote. At twenty-one I
+conducted a convention fight which made a member of Congress. It was
+quite natural, therefore, that I should be delegate to this convention,
+and that I had looked forward to it with keen expectancy. The remarkable
+thing was my falling<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_3" id="pg_3">3</a></span> off from its work now by virtue of that recent
+marvelous experience which as I have admitted was one of the heart. Do
+not smile. At three-and-twenty even delegates have hearts.</p>
+
+<p>My mental and sentimental state is of importance in this history, I
+think, or I should not make so much of it. I feel sure that I should not
+have behaved just as I did had I not been at that moment in the
+iridescent cloudland of newly-reciprocated love. Alice had accepted me
+not an hour before my departure for Chicago. Hence my loathing for such
+things as nominating speeches and the report of the Committee on
+Credentials, and my yearning for the Vau Vau grotto. She had yielded
+herself up to me with such manifold sweetnesses, uttered and unutterable
+(all of which had to be gone over in my mind constantly to make sure of
+their reality), that the contest in Indiana, and the cause of our own
+State&#8217;s Favorite Son, became sickening burdens to me, which rolled away
+as I gazed upon the canvases in the gallery. I lay back upon a seat,
+half closed my eyes, and looked at the pictures. When one comes to
+consider the matter, an art gallery is a wonderfully different thing
+from a national convention!</p>
+
+<p>As I looked on them, the still paintings became instinct with life.
+Yonder shepherdess shielding from the thorns the little white lamb was
+Alice, and back behind the clump of elms was myself, responding to her
+silvery call. The cottage on the mountain-side was ours. That lady
+waving her handkerchief from the promontory was Alice, too; and I was
+the dim figure on the deck of the passing<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_4" id="pg_4">4</a></span> ship. I was the knight and
+she the wood-nymph; I the gladiator in the circus, she the Roman lady
+who agonized for me in the audience; I the troubadour who twanged the
+guitar, she the princess whose fair shoulder shone through the lace at
+the balcony window. They lived and moved before my very eyes. I knew the
+unseen places beyond the painted mountains, and saw the secret things
+the artists only dreamed of. Doves cooed for me from the clumps of
+thorn; the clouds sailed in pearly serenity across the skies, their
+shadows mottling mountain, hill, and plain; and out from behind every
+bole, and through every leafy screen, glimpsed white dryads and fleeing
+fays.</p>
+
+<p>Clearly the convention hall was no place for me. &#8220;Hang the speech of the
+temporary chairman, anyhow!&#8221; thought I; &#8220;and as for the platform, let it
+point with pride, and view with apprehension, to its heart&#8217;s content; it
+is sure to omit all reference to the overshadowing issue of the
+day&mdash;Alice!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>All the world loves a lover, and a true lover loves all the
+world,&mdash;especially that portion of it similarly blessed. So, when I
+heard a girl&#8217;s voice alternating in intimate converse with that of a
+man, my sympathies went out to them, and I turned silently to look. They
+must have come in during my reverie; for I had passed the place where
+they were sitting and had not seen them. There was a piece of grillwork
+between my station and theirs, through which I could see them plainly.
+The gallery had seemed deserted when I went in, and still seemed so,
+save for the two voices.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_5" id="pg_5">5</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Hers was low and calm, but very earnest; and there was in it some
+inflection or intonation which reminded me of the country girls I had
+known on the farm and at school. His was of a peculiarly sonorous and
+vibrant quality, its every tone so clear and distinct that it would have
+been worth a fortune to a public speaker. Such a voice and enunciation
+are never associated with any mind not strong in the qualities of
+resolution and decision.</p>
+
+<p>On looking at her, I saw nothing countrified corresponding to the voice.
+She was dressed in something summery and cool, and wore a sort of
+flowered blouse, the presence of which was explained by the easel before
+which she sat, and the palette through which her thumb protruded. She
+had laid down her brush, and the young man was using her mahlstick in a
+badly-directed effort to smear into a design some splotches of paint on
+the unused portion of her canvas.</p>
+
+<p>He was by some years her senior, but both were young&mdash;she, very young.
+He was swarthy of complexion, and his smoothly-shaven, square-set jaw
+and full red lips were bluish with the subcutaneous blackness of his
+beard. His dress was so distinctly late in style as to seem almost
+foppish; but there was nothing of the exquisite in his erect and
+athletic form, or in his piercing eye.</p>
+
+<p>She was ruddily fair, with that luxuriant auburn-brown hair which goes
+with eyes of amberish-brown and freckles. These latter she had, I
+observed with a renewal of the thought of the country girls and the old
+district school. She was slender of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_6" id="pg_6">6</a></span> waist, full of bust, and, after a
+lissome, sylph-like fashion, altogether charming in form. With all her
+roundness, she was slight and a little undersized.</p>
+
+<p>So much of her as there was, the young fellow seemed ready to absorb,
+regarding her with avid eyes&mdash;a gaze which she seldom met. But whenever
+he gave his attention to the mahlstick, her eyes sought his countenance
+with a look which was almost scrutiny. It was as if some extrinsic force
+drew her glance to his face, until the stronger compulsion of her
+modesty drove it away at the return of his black orbs. My heart
+recognized with a throb the freemasonry into which I had lately been
+initiated, and, all unknown to them, I hailed them as members of the
+order.</p>
+
+<p>Their conversation came to me in shreds and fragments, which I did not
+at all care to hear. I recognized in it those inanities with which youth
+busies the lips, leaving the mind at rest, that the interplay of
+magnetic discharges from heart to heart may go on uninterruptedly. It is
+a beautiful provision of nature, but I did not at that time admire it. I
+pitied them. Alice and I had passed through that stage, and into the
+phase marked by long and eloquent silences.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I was brought up to think,&#8221; I remember to have heard the fair stranger
+say, following out, apparently, some subject under discussion between
+them, &#8220;that the surest way to make a child steal jam is to spy upon him.
+I should feel ashamed.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Quite right,&#8221; said he, &#8220;but in Europe and in the East, and even here in
+Chicago, in some<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_7" id="pg_7">7</a></span> circles, it is looked upon as indispensable, you
+know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In art, at least,&#8221; she went on, &#8220;there is no sex. Whoever can help me
+in my work is a companion that I don&#8217;t need any chaperon to protect me
+from. If I wasn&#8217;t perfectly sure of that, I should give up and go back
+home.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Now, don&#8217;t draw the line so as to shut me out,&#8221; he protested. &#8220;How can
+I help you with your work?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She looked him steadily in the face now, her intent and questioning
+regard shading off into a somewhat arch smile.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t think of any way,&#8221; said she, &#8220;unless it would be by posing for
+me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s another way,&#8221; he answered, &#8220;and the only one I&#8217;d care about.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She suddenly became absorbed in the contemplation of the paints on her
+palette, at which she made little thrusts with a brush; and at last she
+queried, doubtfully, &#8220;How?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve heard or read,&#8221; he answered, &#8220;that no artist ever rises to the
+highest, you know, until after experiencing some great love. I&mdash;can&#8217;t
+you think of any other way besides the posing?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She brought the brush close to her eyes, minutely inspecting its point
+for a moment, then seemed to take in his expression with a swift
+sweeping glance, resumed the examination of the brush, and finally
+looked him in the face again, a little red spot glowing in her cheek,
+and a glint of fire in her eye. I was too dense to understand it, but I<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_8" id="pg_8">8</a></span>
+felt that there was a trace of resentment in her mien.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I don&#8217;t know about that!&#8221; she said. &#8220;There may be some other way. I
+haven&#8217;t met all your friends, and you may be the means of introducing me
+to the very man.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I did not hear his reply, though I confess I tried to catch it. She
+resumed her work of copying one of the paintings. This she did in a
+mechanical sort of way, slowly, and with crabbed touches, but with some
+success. I thought her lacking in anything like control over the medium
+in which she worked; but the results promised rather well. He seemed
+annoyed at her sudden accession of industry, and looked sometimes
+quizzically at her work, often hungrily at her. Once or twice he touched
+her hand as she stepped near him; but she neither reproved him nor
+allowed him to retain it.</p>
+
+<p>I felt that I had taken her measure by this time. She was some Western
+country girl, well supplied with money, blindly groping toward the
+career of an artist. Her accent, her dress, and her occupation told of
+her origin and station in life, and of her ambitions. The blindness I
+guessed,&mdash;partly from the manner of her work, partly from the inherent
+probabilities of the case. If the young man had been eliminated from
+this problem with which my love-sick imagination was busying itself, I
+could have followed her back confidently to some rural neighborhood, and
+to a year or two of painting portraits from photographs, and landscapes
+from &#8220;studies,&#8221; and exhibiting them at the county fair;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_9" id="pg_9">9</a></span> the teaching of
+some pupils, in an unnecessary but conscientiously thrifty effort to get
+back some of the money invested in an &#8220;art education&#8221; in Chicago; and a
+final reversion to type after her marriage with the village lawyer,
+doctor or banker, or the owner of the adjoining farm. I was young; but I
+had studied people, and had already seen such things happen.</p>
+
+<p>But the young man could not be eliminated. He sat there idly, his every
+word and look surcharged with passion. As I wondered how long it would
+be until they were as happy as Alice and I, the thought grew upon me
+that, however familiar might be the type to which she belonged, he was
+unclassified. His accent was Eastern&mdash;of New York, I judged. He looked
+like the young men in the magazine illustrations&mdash;interesting, but
+outside my field of observation. And I could not fail to see that girl
+must find herself similarly at odds with him. &#8220;But,&#8221; thought I, &#8220;love
+levels all!&#8221; And I freshly interrogated the pictures and statues for
+transportation to my own private Elysium, forgetful of my unconscious
+neighbors.</p>
+
+<p>My attention was recalled to them, however, by their arrangements for
+departure, and a concomitant slightly louder tone in their conversation.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s just a spectacular show,&#8221; said he; &#8220;no plot or anything of that
+sort, you know, but good music and dancing; and when we get tired of it
+we can go. We&#8217;ll have a little supper at Auriccio&#8217;s afterward, if you&#8217;ll
+be so kind. It&#8217;s only a step from McVicker&#8217;s.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_10" id="pg_10">10</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Won&#8217;t it be pretty late?&#8221; she queried.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not for Chicago,&#8221; said he, &#8220;and you&#8217;ll find material for a picture at
+Auriccio&#8217;s about midnight. It&#8217;s quite like the Latin Quarter,
+sometimes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I want to see the real Latin Quarter, and no imitation,&#8221; she answered.
+&#8220;Oh, I guess I&#8217;ll go. It&#8217;ll furnish me with material for a letter to
+mamma, however the picture may turn out.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll order supper for the Empress,&#8221; said he, &#8220;and&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And for the illustrious Sir John,&#8221; she added. &#8220;But you mustn&#8217;t call me
+that any more. I&#8217;ve been reading her history, and I don&#8217;t like it. I&#8217;m
+glad he died on St. Helena, now: I used to feel sorry for him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Transfer your pity to the downtrodden Sir John,&#8221; he replied, &#8220;and make
+a real living man happy.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They passed out and left me to my dreams. But visions did not return. My
+idyl was spoiled. Old-fashioned ideas emerged, and took form in the
+plain light of every-day common-sense. I knew the wonderfully gorgeous
+spectacle these two young people were going to see at the play that
+night, with its lights, its music, its splendidly meretricious
+Orientalism. And I knew Auriccio&#8217;s,&mdash;not a disreputable place at all,
+perhaps; but free-and-easy, and distinctly Bohemian. I wished that this
+little girl, so arrogantly and ignorantly disdainful (as Alice would
+have been under the same circumstances) of such European conventions as
+the chaperon, so fresh, so young, so full of allurement, so under the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_11" id="pg_11">11</a></span>
+influence of this smooth, dark, and passionate wooer with the vibrant
+voice, could be otherwise accompanied on this night of pleasure than by
+himself alone.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s none of your business,&#8221; said the voice of that cold-hearted and
+slothful spirit which keeps us in our groove, &#8220;and you couldn&#8217;t do
+anything, anyhow. Besides, he&#8217;s abjectly in love with her: would there
+be any danger if it were you and your Alice?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not at all sure about him or his abjectness,&#8221; replied my uneasy
+conscience. &#8220;He knows better than to do this.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What do you know of either of them?&#8221; answered this same Spirit of
+Routine. &#8220;What signify a few sentences casually overheard? She may be
+something quite different; there are strange things in Chicago.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll wager anything,&#8221; said I hotly, &#8220;that she&#8217;s a good American girl of
+the sort I live among and was brought up with! And she may be in
+danger.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If she&#8217;s that sort of girl,&#8221; said the Voice, &#8220;you may rely upon her to
+take care of herself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s pretty nearly true,&#8221; I admitted.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Besides,&#8221; said the Voice illogically, &#8220;such things happen every night
+in such a city. It&#8217;s a part of the great tragedy. Don&#8217;t be Quixotic!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Here was where the Voice lost its case: for my conscience was stirred
+afresh; and I went back to the convention-hall carrying on a joint
+debate with myself. Once in the hall, however, I was conscripted into a
+war which was raging all through<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_12" id="pg_12">12</a></span> our delegation over the succession in
+our membership in the National Committee. I thought no more of the idyl
+of the art-gallery until the adjournment for the night.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_13" id="pg_13">13</a></span>
+<a name="Still_Introductory_467" id="Still_Introductory_467"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER II.</p>
+<p class="l c">Still Introductory.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The great throng from the hall surged along the streets in an Amazonian
+network of streams, gathering in boiling lakes in the great hotels,
+dribbling off into the boarding-house districts in the suburbs, seeping
+down into the slimy fens of vice. Again I found myself out of touch with
+it all. I gave my companions the slip, and started for my hotel.</p>
+
+<p>All at once it occurred to me that I had not dined, and with the thought
+came the remembrance of my pair of lovers, and their supper together.
+With a return of the feeling that these were the only people in Chicago
+possessing spirits akin to mine, I shaped my course for Auriccio&#8217;s. My
+country dazedness led me astray once or twice, but I found the place,
+retreated into the farthest corner, sat down, and ordered supper.</p>
+
+<p>It was not one of the places where the out-of-town visitors were likely
+to resort, and it was in fact rather quieter than usual. The few who
+were at the tables went out before my meal was served, and for a few
+minutes I was alone. Then the Empress and Sir John entered, followed by
+half a<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_14" id="pg_14">14</a></span> dozen other playgoers. The two on whom my sentimental interest
+was fixed came far down toward my position, attracted by the quietude
+which had lured me, and seated themselves at a table in a sort of
+alcove, cut off from the main room by columns and palms, secluded enough
+for privacy, public enough, perhaps, for propriety. So far as I was
+concerned I could see them quite plainly, looking, as I did, from my
+gloomy corner toward the light of the restaurant; and I was sufficiently
+close to be within easy earshot. I began to have the sensation of
+shadowing them, until I recalled the fact that, so far, it had been a
+case of their following me.</p>
+
+<p>I thought his manner toward her had changed since the afternoon. There
+was now an openness of wooing, an abandonment of reserve in glance and
+attitude, which should have admonished her of an approaching crisis in
+their affairs. Yet she seemed cooler and more self-possessed than
+before. Save for a little flutter in her low laugh, I should have
+pronounced her entirely at ease. She looked very sweet and girlish in
+her high-necked dress, which helped make up a costume that she seemed to
+have selected to subdue and conceal, rather than to display, her charms.
+If such was her plan, it went pitifully wrong: his advances went on from
+approach to approach, like the last man&oelig;uvres of a successful siege.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; I heard her say, as I became conscious that we three were alone
+again; &#8220;not here! Not at all! Stop!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>When I looked at them they were quietly sitting<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_15" id="pg_15">15</a></span> at the table; but her
+face was pale, his flushed. Pretty soon the waiter came and served
+champagne. I felt sure that she had never seen any before.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How funny it looks,&#8221; said she, &#8220;with the bubbles coming up in the
+middle like a little fountain; and how pretty! Why, the stem is hollow,
+isn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He laughed and made some foolish remark about love bubbling up in his
+heart. When he set his glass down, I could see that his hands were
+trembling as with palsy,&mdash;so much so that it was tipped over and broken.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll fill another,&#8221; said he. &#8220;Aren&#8217;t you sorry you broke it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I?&#8221; she queried. &#8220;You&#8217;re not going to lay that to me, are you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re the only one to blame!&#8221; he replied. &#8220;You must hold it till it&#8217;s
+steady. I&#8217;ll hold your glass with the other. Why, you don&#8217;t take any at
+all! Don&#8217;t you like it, dear?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She shrank back, looked toward the door, and then took the hand in both
+of hers, holding it close to her side, and drank the wine like a child
+taking medicine. His arm, his hand still holding the glass, slipped
+about her waist, but she turned swiftly and silently freed herself and
+sat down by the chair in which he had meant that both should sit,
+holding his hands. Then in a moment I saw her sitting on the other side
+of the table, and he was filling the glasses again. The guests had all
+departed. The well-disciplined waiters had effaced themselves.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_16" id="pg_16">16</a></span> Only we
+three were there. I wondered if I ought to do anything.</p>
+
+<p>They sat and talked in low tones. He was drinking a good deal of the
+champagne; she, little; and neither seemed to be eating anything. He sat
+opposite to her, leaning over as if to consume her with his eyes. She
+returned his gaze often now, and often smiled; but her smile was drawn
+and tremulous, and, to my mind, pitifully appealing. I no longer
+wondered if I ought to do anything; for, once, when I partly rose to go
+and speak to them, the impossibility of the thing overcame my half
+resolve, and I sat down. The anti-quixotic spirit won, after all.</p>
+
+<p>At last a waiter, returning with the change for the bill with which I
+had paid my score, was hailed by Sir John, and was paid for their
+supper. I looked to see them as they started for home. The girl rose and
+made a movement toward her wrap. He reached it first and placed it about
+her shoulders. In so doing, he drew her to him, and began speaking
+softly and passionately to her in words I could not hear. Her face was
+turned upward and backward toward him, and all her resistance seemed
+gone. I should have been glad to believe this the safe and triumphant
+surrender to an honest love; but here, after the dances and Stamboul
+spectacles, hidden by the palms, beside the table with its empty bottles
+and its broken glass, how could I believe it such? I turned away, as if
+to avoid the sight of the crushing of some innocent thing which I was
+powerless to aid, and strode toward the door.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_17" id="pg_17">17</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then I heard a little cry, and saw her come flying down the great hall,
+leaving him standing amazedly in the archway of the palm alcove.</p>
+
+<p>She passed me at the door, her face vividly white, went out into the
+street, like a dove from the trap at a shooting tournament, and sprang
+lightly upon a passing street-car. I could act now, and I would see her
+to a place of safety; so I, too, swung on by the rail of the rear car.
+She never once turned her face; but I saw Sir John come to the door of
+the restaurant and look both ways for her, and as he stood perplexed and
+alarmed, our train turned the curve at the next corner, we were swept
+off toward the South Side, and the dark young man passed, as I supposed,
+&#8220;into my dreams forever.&#8221; I made my way forward a few seats and saw her
+sitting there with her head bowed upon the back of the seat in front of
+her. I bitterly wished that he, if he had a heart, might see her there,
+bruised in spirit, her little ignorant white soul, searching itself for
+smutches of the uncleanness it feared. I wished that Alice might be
+there to go to her and comfort her without a word. I paid her fare, and
+the conductor seemed to understand that she was not to be disturbed. A
+drunken man in rough clothes came into the car, walked forward and
+looked at her a moment, and as I was about to go to him and make him sit
+elsewhere, he turned away and came back to the rear, as if he had some
+sort of maudlin realization that the front of the train was sacred
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>At last she looked about, signalled for the car to stop, and alighted. I
+followed, rather suspecting<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_18" id="pg_18">18</a></span> that she did not know her way. She walked
+steadily on, however, to a big, dark house with a vine-covered porch,
+close to the sidewalk. A stout man, coatless, and in a white shirt,
+stood at the gate. He wore a slouch hat, and I knew him, even in that
+dim light, for a farmer. She stopped for a moment, and without a word,
+sprang into his arms.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wal, little gal, ain&#8217;t yeh out purty late?&#8221; I heard him say, as I
+walked past. &#8220;Didn&#8217;t expect yer dad to see yeh, did yeh? Why, yeh ain&#8217;t
+a-cryin&#8217;, be yeh?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;O pa! O pa!&#8221; was all I heard her say; but it was enough. I walked to
+the corner, and sat down on the curbstone, dead tired, but happy. In a
+little while I went back toward the street-car line, and as I passed the
+vine-clad porch, heard the farmer&#8217;s bass voice, and stopped to listen,
+frankly an eavesdropper, and feeling, somehow, that I had earned the
+right to hear.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, o&#8217; course, I&#8217;ll take yeh away, ef yeh don&#8217;t like it here, little
+gal,&#8221; he was saying. &#8220;Yes, we&#8217;ll go right in an&#8217; pack up now, if yeh say
+so. Only it&#8217;s a little suddent, and may hurt the Madame&#8217;s feelin&#8217;s, y&#8217;
+know&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>At the hotel I was forced by the crowded state of the city to share the
+bed of one of my fellow delegates. He was a judge from down the state,
+and awoke as I lay down.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That you, Barslow?&#8221; said he. &#8220;Do you know a fellow by the name of
+Elkins, of Cleveland?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said I, &#8220;why?&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_19" id="pg_19">19</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He was here to see you, or rather to inquire if you were Al Barslow who
+used to live in Pleasant Valley Township,&#8221; the Judge went on. &#8220;He&#8217;s the
+fellow who organized the Ohio flambeau brigade. Seems smart.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Pleasant Valley Township, did he say? Yes, I know him. It&#8217;s Jimmie
+Elkins.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And I sank to sleep and to dreams, in which Jimmie Elkins, the Empress,
+Sir John, Alice, and myself acted in a spectacular drama, like that at
+McVicker&#8217;s. And yet there are those who say there is nothing in dreams!</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_20" id="pg_20">20</a></span>
+<a name="Reminiscentially_Autobiographical_642" id="Reminiscentially_Autobiographical_642"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER III.</p>
+<p class="l c">Reminiscentially Autobiographical.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>This Jimmie Elkins was several years older than I; but that did not
+prevent us, as boys, from being fast friends. At seventeen he had a
+coterie of followers among the smaller fry of ten and twelve, his tastes
+clinging long to the things of boyhood. He and I played together, after
+the darkening of his lip suggested the razor, and when the youths of his
+age were most of them acquiring top buggies, and thinking of the long
+Sunday-night drives with their girls. Jim preferred the boys, and the
+trade of the fisher and huntsman.</p>
+
+<p>Why, in spite of parental opposition, I loved Jimmie, is not hard to
+guess. He had an odd and freakish humor, and talked more of
+Indian-fighting, filibustering in gold-bearing regions, and of moving
+accidents by flood and field, than of crops, live-stock, or bowery
+dances. He liked me just as did the older men who sent me to the
+National Convention,&mdash;in spite of my youth. He was a ne&#8217;er-do-weel, said
+my father, but I snared gophers and hunted and fished with him, and we
+loved each other as brothers seldom do.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_21" id="pg_21">21</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At last, I began teaching school, and working my way to a better
+education than our local standard accepted as either useful or
+necessary, and Jim and I drifted apart. He had always kept up a
+voluminous correspondence with that class of advertisers whose
+black-letter &#8220;Agents Wanted&#8221; is so attractive to the farmer-boy; and he
+was usually agent for some of their wares. Finally, I heard of him as a
+canvasser for a book sold by subscription,&mdash;a &#8220;Veterinarians&#8217; Guide,&#8221; I
+believe it was,&mdash;and report said that he was &#8220;making money.&#8221; Again I
+learned that he had established a publishing business of some kind; and,
+later, that reverses had forced him to discontinue it,&mdash;the old farmer
+who told me said he had &#8220;failed up.&#8221; Then I heard no more of him until
+that night of the convention, when I had the adventure with the Empress
+and Sir John, all unknown to them; and Jim made the ineffectual attempt
+to find me. His family had left the old neighborhood, and so had mine;
+and the chances of our ever meeting seemed very slight. In fact it was
+some years later and after many of the brave dreams of the youthful
+publicist had passed away, that I casually stumbled upon him in the
+smoking-room of a parlor-car, coming out of Chicago.</p>
+
+<p>I did not know him at first. He came forward, and, extending his hand,
+said, &#8220;How are you, Al?&#8221; and paused, holding the hand I gave him,
+evidently expecting to enjoy a period of perplexity on my part. But with
+one good look in his eyes I knew him. I made him sit down by me, and for
+half an hour we were too much engrossed in reminiscences<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_22" id="pg_22">22</a></span> to ask after
+such small matters as business, residence, and general welfare.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where all have you been, Jim, and what have you been doing, since you
+followed off the &#8216;Veterinarians&#8217; Guide,&#8217; and I lost you?&#8221; I inquired at
+last.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve been everywhere, and I&#8217;ve done everything, almost,&#8221; said he. &#8220;Put
+it in the &#8216;negative case,&#8217; and my history&#8217;ll be briefer.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I should regard organizing a flambeau brigade,&#8221; said I, &#8220;as about the
+last thing you would engage in.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah!&#8221; he replied, &#8220;His Whiskers at the hotel told you I called that
+time, did he? Well, I didn&#8217;t think he had the sense. And I doubted the
+memory on your part, and I wasn&#8217;t at all sure you were the real Barslow.
+But about the flambeaux. The fact is, I had some stock in the flambeau
+factory, and I was a rabid partisan of flambeaux. They seemed so
+patriotic, you know, so sort of ennobling, and so convincing, as to the
+merits of the tariff controversy!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was the same old Jim, I thought.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We used to have a scheme,&#8221; I remarked, &#8220;our favorite one, of occupying
+an island in the Pacific,&mdash;or was it somewhere in the vicinity of the
+Spanish Main&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If it was the place where we were to make slaves of all the natives,
+and I was to be king, and you Grand Vizier,&#8221; he answered, as if it were
+a weighty matter, and he on the witness-stand, &#8220;it was in the
+Pacific&mdash;the South Pacific, where the whale-oil<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_23" id="pg_23">23</a></span> comes from. A coral
+atoll, with a crystal lagoon in the middle for our ships, and a fringe
+of palms along the margin&mdash;coco-palms, you remember; and the lagoon was
+green, sometimes, and sometimes blue; and the sharks never came over the
+bar, but the porpoises came in and played for us, and made fireworks in
+the phosphorescent waves....&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>His eyes grew almost tender, as he gazed out of the window, and ceased
+to speak without finishing the sentence,&mdash;which it took me some minutes
+to follow out to the end, in my mind. I was delighted and touched to
+find these foolish things so green in his memory.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The plan involved,&#8221; said I soberly, &#8220;capturing a Spanish galleon filled
+with treasure, finding two lovely ladies in the cabin, and offering them
+their liberty. And we sailed with them for a port; and, as I remember
+it, their tears at parting conquered us, and we married them; and lived
+richer than oil magnates, and grander than Monte Cristos forever after:
+do you remember?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Remember! Well, I should smile!&#8221;&mdash;he had been laughing like a boy, with
+his old frank laugh. &#8220;Them&#8217;s the things we don&#8217;t forget.... Did you ever
+gather any information as to what a galleon really was? I never did.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I had no more idea than I now have of the Rosicrucian Mysteries; and I
+must confess,&#8221; said I, &#8220;that I&#8217;m a little hazy on the galleon question
+yet. As to piracy, now, and robbers and robbery, actual life fills out
+the gaps in the imagination of boyhood, doesn&#8217;t it, Jim?&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_24" id="pg_24">24</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Apt to,&#8221; he assented, &#8220;but specifically? As to which, you know?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I&#8217;ve had my share of experience with them,&#8221; I answered, &#8220;though
+not so much in the line of rob-or, as we planned, but more as rob-ee.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jim looked at me quizzically.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Board of Trade, faro, or ... what?&#8221; he ventured.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;General business,&#8221; I responded, &#8220;and ... politics.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Local, state, or national?&#8221; he went on, craftily ignoring the general
+business.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A little national, some state, but the bulk of it local. I&#8217;ve been
+elected County Treasurer, down where I live, for four successive terms.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Good for you!&#8221; he responded. &#8220;But I don&#8217;t see how that can be made to
+harmonize with your remark about rob-or and rob-ee. It&#8217;s been your own
+fault, if you haven&#8217;t been on the profitable side of the game, with the
+dear people on the other. And I judge from your looks that you eat three
+meals a day, right along, anyhow. Come, now, b&#8217;lay this rob-ee business
+(as Sir Henry Morgan used to say) till you get back to Buncombe County.
+As a former partner in crime, I won&#8217;t squeal; and the next election is
+some ways off, anyhow. No concealment among pals, now, Al, it&#8217;s no fair,
+you know, and it destroys confidence and breeds discord. Many a good,
+honest, piratical enterprise has been busted up by concealment and lack
+of confidence. Always trust your fellow pirates,&mdash;especially in things
+they know all about by extrinsic evidence,&mdash;and keep concealment for the
+great world of the unsophisticated and gullible, and to catch the
+sucker<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_25" id="pg_25">25</a></span> vote with. But among ourselves, my beloved, fidelity to truth,
+and openness of heart is the first rule, right out of Hoyle. With dry
+powder, mutual confidence, and sharp cutlasses, we are invincible; and
+as the poet saith,</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em;">&#8220;&#8216;Far as the tum-te-tum the billows foam<br />
+Survey our empire and behold our home,&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>or words to that effect. And to think of your trying to deceive me, your
+former chieftain, who doesn&#8217;t even vote in your county or state, and
+moreover always forgets election! Rob-ee indeed! rats! Al, I&#8217;m ashamed
+of you, by George, I am!&#8220;</p>
+
+<p>This speech he delivered with a ridiculous imitation of the tricks of
+the elocutionist. It was worthy of the burlesque stage. The conductor,
+passing through, was attracted by it, and notified us that the solitude
+of the smoking-room had been invaded, by a slight burst of applause at
+Jim&#8217;s peroration, followed by the vanishing of the audience.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No need for any further concealment on my part, so far as elections are
+concerned,&#8221; said I, when we had finished our laugh, &#8220;for I go out of
+office January first, next.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, well, that accounts for it, then,&#8221; said he. &#8220;I notice, say, three
+kinds of retirement from office: voluntary (very rare), post-convention,
+and post-election. Which is yours?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Post-convention, I&#8217;m sorry to say. I wish it had been voluntary.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It <i>is</i> the cheapest; but you&#8217;re in great luck not to get licked at the
+polls. Altogether, you&#8217;re in<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_26" id="pg_26">26</a></span> great luck. You&#8217;ve been betting on a game
+in which the percentage is mighty big in favor of the house, and you&#8217;ve
+won three or four consecutive turns out of the box. You&#8217;ve got no kick
+coming: you&#8217;re in big luck. Don&#8217;t you know you are?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I did not feel called upon to commit myself; and we smoked on for some
+time in silence.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It strikes me, Jim,&#8221; said I, at last, &#8220;that you&#8217;ve done all the
+cross-examination, and that it is time to listen to your report. How
+about you and your conduct?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;As for my conduct,&#8221; was the prompt answer, &#8220;it&#8217;s away up in the
+neighborhood of G. I&#8217;ve managed to hold the confounded world up for a
+living, ever since I left Pleasant Valley Township. Some of the time the
+picking has been better than at others; but my periods of starvation
+have been brief. By practicing on the &#8216;Veterinarians&#8217; Guide&#8217; and other
+similar fakes, I learned how to talk to people so as to make them
+believe what I said about things, with the result, usually, of wooing
+the shrinking and cloistered dollar from its lair. When a fellow gets
+this trick down fine, he can always find a market for his services. I
+handled hotel registers, city directories, and like literature,
+including county histories&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sh-h-h!&#8221; said I, &#8220;somebody might hear you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&mdash;and at last, after a conference with my present employers, the error
+of my way presented itself to me, and I felt called to a higher and
+holier profession. I yielded to my good angel, turned my better nature
+loose, and became a missionary.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A what!&#8221; I exclaimed.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_27" id="pg_27">27</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A missionary,&#8221; he responded soberly. &#8220;That is, you understand, not one
+of these theological, India&#8217;s-coral-strand guys; but one who goes about
+the United States of America in a modest and unassuming way, doing good
+so far as in him lies.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I see,&#8221; said I, punning horribly, &#8220;&#8216;in him lies.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Eh?... Yes. Have another cigar. Well, now, you can&#8217;t defend this
+foreign-mission business to me for a minute. The hills, right in this
+vicinity, are even now white to the harvest. Folks here want the light
+just as bad as the foreign heathen; and so I took up my burden, and went
+out to disseminate truth, as the soliciting agent of the Frugality and
+Indemnity Life Association, which presented itself to me as the capacity
+in which I could best combine repentance with its fruits.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I perceive,&#8221; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Perfectly plain, isn&#8217;t it, to the seeing eye?&#8221; he went on. &#8220;You see it
+was like this: Charley Harper and I had been together in the Garden City
+Land Company, years ago, during the boom&mdash;by the way, I didn&#8217;t mention
+that in my report, did I? Well, of course, that company went up just as
+they all did, and neither Charley nor I got to be receiver, as we&#8217;d sort
+of laid out to do, and we separated. I went back to my literature&mdash;hotel
+registers, with an advertising scheme, with headquarters at Cleveland.
+That&#8217;s how I happened to be an Ohio man at that national convention.
+Charley always had a leaning toward insurance, and went down into
+Illinois, and started a mutual-benefit organization, which he kept<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_28" id="pg_28">28</a></span>
+going a few years down on the farm&mdash;Springfield, or Jacksonville, or
+somewhere down there; and when I ketched up with him again, he was just
+changing it to the old-line plan, and bringing it to the metropolis.
+Well, I helped him some to enlist capital, and he offered me the
+position of Superintendent of Agents. I accepted, and after serving
+awhile in the ranks to sort of get onto the ropes, here I am, just
+starting out on a trip which will take me through a number of states.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How does it agree with you?&#8221; I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not well,&#8221; said he, &#8220;but the good I accomplish is a great comfort to
+me. On this trip, now, I expect to do much in the way of stimulating the
+boys up to their great work of spreading the light of the gospel of true
+insurance. Sometimes, in these days of apathy and error, I find my
+burden a heavy one; and notwithstanding the quiet of conscience I gain,
+if it weren&#8217;t for the salary, I&#8217;d quit to-morrow, Al, danged if I
+wouldn&#8217;t. It makes me tired to have even you sort of hint that I&#8217;m
+actuated by some selfish motive, when, in truth and in fact, I live but
+to gather widows and orphans under my wing, so to speak, and give second
+husbands a good start, by means of policies written on the only true
+plan, combining participation in profits with pure mutuality, and&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Never mind!&#8221; said I with a silence-commanding gesture. &#8220;I&#8217;ve heard all
+that before. You&#8217;re onto the ropes thoroughly; but don&#8217;t practice your
+infernal arts on me! I hope the salary is satisfactory?&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_29" id="pg_29">29</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Fairish; but not high, considering what they get for it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You used to be more modest,&#8221; said I. &#8220;I remember that you once nearly
+broke your heart because you couldn&#8217;t summon up courage to ask Creeshy
+Hammond to go to the &#8216;Fourth&#8217; with you; d&#8217;ye remember?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I guess, yes!&#8221; he replied. &#8220;Wasn&#8217;t I a miserable wretch for a few
+days! And I&#8217;ve never been able to ask any woman I cared about, the
+fateful question, yet.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We went into the parlor-car, and talked over old times and new for an
+hour. I told him of my marriage and my home, and I studied him. I saw
+that he still preserved his humorous, mock-serious style of
+conversation, and that his hand-to-hand battle with the world had made
+him good-humoredly cynical. He evinced a knowledge of more things than I
+should have expected; and had somehow acquired an imposing manner, in
+spite of his rather slangy, if expressive, vocabulary. He had the power
+of making statements of mere opinion, which, from some vibration of
+voice or trick of expression, struck the hearer as solid facts, thrice
+buttressed by evidence. He bore no marks of dissipation, unless the
+occasional use of terms traceable to the turf or the gaming-table might
+be considered such; but these expressions, I considered, are so
+constantly before every reader of the newspapers that the language of
+the pulpit, even, is infected by them. Their evidential value being thus
+destroyed, they ought not to be weighed at all, as against firm,
+wholesome<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_30" id="pg_30">30</a></span> flesh, a good complexion, and a clear eye, all of which Mr.
+Elkins possessed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s funny,&#8221; said I, &#8220;how seldom I meet any of the old neighbor-boys.
+Do you see any of them in your travels?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not often,&#8221; he answered, &#8220;but you remember little Ed Smith, who lived
+on the Hayes place for a while, and brought the streaked snake into the
+schoolhouse while Julia Fanning was teaching? Well, he was an architect
+at Garden City, and lives in Chicago now. We sort of chum together: saw
+him yesterday. He left Garden City when the land company went up. I tell
+you, that was a hot town for a while! Railroads, and factories, and
+irrigation schemes, and prices scooting toward the zenith, till you
+couldn&#8217;t rest. If I&#8217;d got into that push soon enough, I shouldn&#8217;t have
+made a thing but money; as it was, I didn&#8217;t lose only what I had. A good
+many of the boys lost a lot more. But I tell you, Al, a boom properly
+boomed is a sure thing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re a constant source of surprise to me, Jim,&#8221; said I. &#8220;I should
+have thought them sure to lose.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re sure to win,&#8221; said he earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>I demurred. &#8220;I don&#8217;t see how that can possibly be,&#8221; said I, &#8220;for of all
+things, booms seem to me the most fickle and incalculable.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They seem so,&#8221; said he, smiling, but still in earnest, &#8220;to your rustic
+and untaught mind, and to most others, because they haven&#8217;t been
+studied. The comet, likewise, doesn&#8217;t seem very stable or dependable;
+but to the eye of the astronomer its orbit is plain, and the time of its
+return engagement<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_31" id="pg_31">31</a></span> pretty certain. It&#8217;s the same with seventeen-year
+locusts&mdash;and booms; their visits are so far apart that the masses forget
+their birthmarks and the W&#8217;s on their backs. But if you&#8217;ll follow their
+appearances from place to place, as I&#8217;ve done, putting up my ante right
+along for the privilege, you&#8217;ll become an accomplished boomist; and from
+the first gentle stirrings of boom-sprouts in the soil, so to speak, you
+can forecast their growth, maturity, and collapse.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I must be permitted to doubt it,&#8221; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s easy, my son,&#8221; he resumed, &#8220;dead easy, and it&#8217;s psychology on the
+hugest scale; and among the results of its study is constant improvement
+of the mind, going on coincidentally with the preparation of the way to
+the ownership of steam-yachts and racing-stables, or any other similar
+trifles you hanker for.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Great brain, Jim! Massive intellect!&#8221; said I, laughing at the fantastic
+absurdity of his assertion. &#8220;Why, such knowledge as you possess is
+better than straight tips on all the races ever to be run. It&#8217;s better
+than our tropical island and Spanish galleons. You get richer, and you
+don&#8217;t have to look out for men-of-war. Do I hold my job as Grand
+Vizier?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You hold any job you&#8217;ll take: I&#8217;ll make out the appointment with the
+position and salary blank, and you can fill it up. And if you get
+dissatisfied with that, the old grand hailing-sign of distress will
+catch the speaker&#8217;s eye, any old time. But, I tell you, Al, in all
+seriousness, I&#8217;m right about this boom business. They&#8217;re all alike, and
+they all have the same<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_32" id="pg_32">32</a></span> history. With the conditions right, one can be
+started anywhere in a growing country. I&#8217;ve had my ear to the ground for
+a while back, and I&#8217;ve heard things. I&#8217;m sure I detect some of the
+premonitory symptoms: money piling up in the financial centers; property
+away down, but strengthening, in the newer regions; and, lately, a
+little tendency to take chances in investments, forgetting the scorching
+of ten or twelve years ago. A new generation of suckers is gettin&#8217; ready
+to bite. Look into this thing, Al, and don&#8217;t be a chump.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The same old Jim,&#8221; said I; &#8220;you were manipulating a corner in
+tobacco-tags while I was learning my letters.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you ever forget anything?&#8221; he inquired. &#8220;I have about forgotten that
+myself. How was that tobacco-tag business, Al?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then with the painstaking circumstantiality of two old schoolmates
+luxuriating in memories, we talked over the tobacco-tag craze which
+swept through our school one winter. Everything in life takes place in
+school, and the &#8220;tobacco-tag craze&#8221; has quite often recurred to me as
+showing boys acting just as men act, and Jimmie Elkins as the born
+stormy petrel of financial seas.</p>
+
+<p>It all came back to our minds, and we reconstructed this story. The
+manufacturers of &#8220;Tomahawk Plug&#8221; had offered a dozen photographs of
+actresses and dancers to any one sending in a certain number of the tin
+hatchets concealed in their tobacco. The makers of &#8220;Broad-axe Navy&#8221;
+offered something equally cheap and alluring for consignments of their<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_33" id="pg_33">33</a></span>
+brass broad-axes. The older boys began collecting photographs, and a
+market for tobacco-tags of certain kinds was established. We little
+fellows, though without knowledge of the mysterious forces which had
+given value to these bits of metal, began to pick up stray tags from
+sidewalk, foot-path, and floor. A marked upward tendency soon manifested
+itself. Boys found their &#8220;Broad-axe&#8221; or &#8220;Door-key&#8221; tags, picked up at
+night, doubled in value by morning. The primary object in collecting
+tags was forgotten in the speculative mania which set in. Who would
+exchange &#8220;Tomahawk&#8221; tags for the counterfeit presentment of d&eacute;collet&eacute;
+dancers, when by holding them he could make cent-per-cent on his
+investment of hazel-nuts and slate-pencils?</p>
+
+<p>The playground became a Board of Trade. We learned nothing but mental
+arithmetic applied to deals in &#8220;Door-keys,&#8221; &#8220;Arrow-heads,&#8221; and other tag
+properties. We went about with pockets full of tags.</p>
+
+<p>Jim, not yet old enough to admire the beauties of the photographs, came
+forward in a week as the Napoleon of tobacco-tag finance. He acquired
+tags in the slumps, and sold them in the bulges. He raided particular
+brands with rumors of the vast supply with which the village boys were
+preparing to flood us. He converted his holdings into marbles and tops.
+Finally, he planned his master-stroke. He dropped mysterious hints
+regarding some tag considered worthless. He asked us in whispers if we
+had any. Others followed his example, and &#8220;Door-key&#8221; tags went above all
+others and were<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_34" id="pg_34">34</a></span> scarce at any price. Then Jimmie Elkins brought out the
+supply which he had &#8220;cornered,&#8221; threw it on the market, and before it
+had time to drop took in a large part of the playground currency. I lost
+to him a good drawing-slate and a figure-4 trap.</p>
+
+<p>Jimmie pocketed his winnings, but the trouble attracted the attention of
+the teacher, and under adverse legislation a period of liquidation set
+in. The distress was great. Many found themselves with property which
+was not convertible into photographs or anything else. To make matters
+worse, the discovery was made that the big boys had left school to begin
+the spring&#8217;s work, and no one wanted the photographs. Bankrupt and
+disillusioned, we returned to the realities of kites, marbles, and
+knives, most of which we had to obtain from Jimmie Elkins.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said he, &#8220;it&#8217;s a good deal the same with booms. But if you
+understand &#8217;em ... eh, Al?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said I, really impressed now, &#8220;I&#8217;ll look into it. And when you
+get ready to sow your boom-seed, let me know. I change cars in a few
+minutes, and you go on. Come down and see me sometimes, can&#8217;t you? We
+haven&#8217;t had our talk half out yet. Doesn&#8217;t your business ever bring you
+down our way?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It hasn&#8217;t yet, but I&#8217;m coming down into that neck of the woods within
+six weeks, and I guess I can fix it so&#8217;s to stop off,&mdash;mingling pleasure
+and business. It&#8217;s the only way the hustling philanthropist of my style
+ever gets any recreation.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do it,&#8221; said I; &#8220;I&#8217;ll have plenty of time at my disposal; for I go out
+of office before that time; and I may want to go into your
+boom-hatchery.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_35" id="pg_35">35</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;On the theory that the great adversary of mankind runs an employment
+agency for ex&#8217;s? There&#8217;s the whistle for your junction. By George, Al, I
+can&#8217;t tell you how glad I am to have ketched up with you again! I&#8217;ve
+wondered about you a million times. Don&#8217;t let&#8217;s lose track of each other
+again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, no, Jim, we won&#8217;t!&#8221; The train was coming to a stop. &#8220;Don&#8217;t allow
+anything to side-track you and prevent that visit.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I should say not,&#8221; he answered, following me out upon the
+platform of the station. &#8220;We&#8217;ll have a regular piratical reunion&mdash;a sort
+of buccaneers&#8217; camp-fire. I&#8217;ve a curiosity to see some of the fellows
+who acted the part of rob-or to your rob-ee. I want to hear their side
+of the story. Good-by, Al. Confound it, I wish you were going on with
+me!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He wrung my hand at parting, reminding me of the old Jim who studied
+from the same geography with me, more than at any time since we met. He
+stayed with me until after his train had started, caught hold of the
+hand-rail as the rear car went by, and passed out of view, waving his
+hand to me.</p>
+
+<p>I sat down on a baggage-truck waiting for my train, thinking of my
+encounter with Jim. All the way home I was busy pondering over a
+thousand things thus suddenly recalled to me. I could see every
+fence-corner and barn, every hill and stream of our old haunts; and
+after I got home I told Alice all about it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He seems quite a remarkable fellow,&#8221; said I, &#8220;and a perfect specimen of
+the pusher and hustler&mdash;a<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_36" id="pg_36">36</a></span> quick-witted man of affairs. If he is ever
+put down, he can&#8217;t be kept down.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think I prefer a more refined type of man,&#8221; said Alice.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In the sixteenth century,&#8221; I went on with that excessive perspicacity
+which our wives have to put up with, &#8220;he&#8217;d have been a Drake or a
+Dampier; in the seventeenth, the commander of a privateer or slaver; in
+this age, I shall not be at all surprised if he turns out a great
+railway or financial magnate. It&#8217;s like a whiff of boyhood to talk with
+him; though he&#8217;s a greatly different sort of man from what I should have
+expected to find him. I think you&#8217;ll like him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She seemed dubious about this. Our wives instinctively disapprove of
+people we used to know prior to that happy meeting which led to
+marriage. This prejudice, for some reason, is stronger against our
+feminine acquaintances than the others. I am not analytical enough to do
+more than point out this feeling, which will, I think, be admitted by
+all husbands to exist.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That sort of man,&#8221; said she, &#8220;lacks the qualities of bravery and
+intrepidity which make up a Drake or a Dampier. They are so a-scheming
+and calculating!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The last time I saw Jim until to-day,&#8221; said I, &#8220;he did something which
+seems to show that he had those more admirable qualities.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then I told her that story of Jim and the mad dog, which is remembered
+in Pleasant Valley to this day. Some say the dog was not mad; but I, who
+saw his terrible, insane look as he came snapping and frothing<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_37" id="pg_37">37</a></span> down the
+road, believe that he was. Jim had left the school for a year or so, and
+I was a &#8220;big boy&#8221; ready to leave it. It was at four one afternoon, and
+as the children filed into the road, there met them the shouts of men
+and cries of &#8220;Run! Run! Mad dog!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The children scattered like a covey of quail; but a pair of little
+five-year-olds, forgotten by the others, walked on hand in hand, looking
+into each other&#8217;s faces, right toward the poor crazed, hunted brute,
+which trotted slowly toward the children, gnashing its frothing jaws at
+sticks and weeds, at everything it met, ready to bury its teeth in the
+first baby to come within reach.</p>
+
+<p>A young man with a canvasser&#8217;s portfolio stood behind a fence over which
+he had jumped to avoid the dog. Suddenly he saw the children, knew their
+danger, and leaped back into the road. It was like a bull-fighter
+vaulting the barriers into the perils of the arena,&mdash;only it was to
+save, not to destroy. The dog had passed him and was nearer the children
+than he was. I wondered what he expected to do as I saw him running
+lightly, swiftly, and yet quietly behind the terrible beast. As he
+neared the animal, he stooped, and my blood froze as I saw him seize the
+dog with both hands by the hinder legs. The head curled sidewise and
+under, and the teeth almost grazed the young man&#8217;s hands with a vicious,
+metallic snap. Then we saw what the contest was. The young man, with a
+powerful circling sweep of his arms, whirled the dog so swiftly about
+his head that the lank frame swung out in a straight line, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_38" id="pg_38">38</a></span> the snap
+could not be repeated. But what of the end? No muscles could long stand
+such a strain, and when they yielded, then what?</p>
+
+<p>Then we saw that as he swung his loathsome foe, the young man was
+gradually approaching the schoolhouse. We saw the horrible snapping head
+whirl nearer and nearer at every turn to the corner of the building.
+Then we saw the young man strike a terrible blow at the stone wall,
+using the dog as a club; and in a moment I saw the stones splashed with
+red, and the young man lying on the ground, where the violence of his
+effort had thrown him, and by him lay the quivering form of what we had
+fled from. And the young man was James Elkins.</p>
+
+<p>Alice breathed hard as I finished, and stood straight with her chin held
+high.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That was fine!&#8221; said she. &#8220;I want to see that man!&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_39" id="pg_39">39</a></span>
+<a name="Jim_Discovers_his_Coral_Island_1164" id="Jim_Discovers_his_Coral_Island_1164"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER IV.</p>
+<p class="l c">Jim Discovers his Coral Island.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>There has long been abroad in the world a belief that events which bear
+some controlling relation to one&#8217;s destiny are announced by premonition,
+some spiritual trepidation, some movement of that curtain which cuts off
+our view of the future. I believe this notion to be false, but feel that
+it is true; and the manner in which that adventure of mine in the old
+art gallery and at Auriccio&#8217;s impressed my mind, and the way in which my
+memory clung to it, seem to justify my feeling rather than my belief.
+Whenever I visited Chicago, I went to the gallery, more in the hope of
+seeing the girl whose only name to me was &#8220;the Empress&#8221; than to gratify
+my cravings for art. I felt a boundless pity for her&mdash;and laughed at
+myself for taking so seriously an incident which, in all likelihood, she
+herself dismissed with a few tears, a few retrospective burnings of
+heart and cheek. But I never saw her. Once I loitered for an hour about
+the boarding-house with the vine-clad porch, while the boarders (mostly
+students, I judged) came and went; but though I<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_40" id="pg_40">40</a></span> saw many young girls,
+the Empress was not among them. And all this time the years were rolling
+on, and I was permitting my once bright political career to blight and
+wither by my own neglect, as a growth not worth caring for.</p>
+
+<p>I became a private citizen in due time, but found no comfort in leisure.
+I was in those doldrums which beset the politician when rivals justle
+him from his little eminence. One who, for years, is annually or
+biennially complimented by the suffrages of even a few thousands of his
+fellow citizens, and is invited into the penetralia of a great political
+party, is apt to regard himself, after a while, as peculiarly deserving
+of the plaudits of the humble and the consideration of the powerful.
+Then comes the inevitable hour when pussy finds himself without a
+corner. The deep disgust for party and politics which then takes
+possession of him demands change of scene and new surroundings. Any
+flagging in partisan enthusiasm is sure to be attributed to
+sore-headedness, and leads to charges of perfidy and thanklessness. Yet,
+for him, the choice lies between abated zeal and hypocrisy, inasmuch as
+no man can normally be as zealous for his party as the fanatic into
+which the candidate or incumbent converts himself.</p>
+
+<p>Underlying my whole frame of mind was the knowledge that, so far as
+making a career was concerned, I had wasted several years of my life,
+and had now to begin anew. Add to this a slight sense of having played
+an unworthy part in life (although here I was unable to particularize),
+and a new sense<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_41" id="pg_41">41</a></span> of aloofness from the people with whom I had been for
+so long on terms of hearty and back-slapping familiarity, and no further
+reason need be sought for a desire which came mightily upon me to go
+away and begin life over again in a new <i>milieu</i>. In spite of the mild
+opposition of my wife, this desire grew to a resolve; and I came to look
+upon myself as a temporary sojourner in my own home.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the state of our affairs, when a letter came from Mr. Elkins
+(in lieu of the promised visit) urging me to remove to the then obscure
+but since celebrated town of Lattimore.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I got to be too rich for Charley Harper&#8217;s blood,&#8221; said the letter,
+among other things. &#8220;I wanted as much in the way of salary as I could
+earn, working for myself, and Charley kicked&mdash;said the directors
+wouldn&#8217;t consent, and that such a salary list would be a black eye for
+the Frugality and Indemnity if it showed up in its statements. So I
+quit. I am loan agent for the company here, which gives me a visible
+means of support, and keeps me from being vagged. But, in confidence, I
+want to tell you that my main graft here is the putting in operation of
+my boom-hatching scheme. Come out, and I&#8217;ll enroll you as a member of
+the band once more; for this is the coral atoll for me. You ought to get
+out of that stagnant pond of yours, and come where the natatory medium
+is fresh, clean, and thickly peopled with suckers, and a new run of &#8217;em
+coming on right soon. In other words, get into the swim.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>After reading this letter and considering it as a whole, I was so much
+impressed by it that Lattimore<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_42" id="pg_42">42</a></span> was added to the list of places I meant
+to visit, on a tour I had planned for myself.</p>
+
+<p>In the West, all roads run to or from Chicago. It is nearer to almost
+any place by the way of Chicago than by any other route: so Alice and I
+went to the city by the lake, as the beginning of our prospecting tour.
+I took her to the art gallery and showed her just where my two lovers
+had stood,&mdash;telling her the story for the first time. Then she wanted to
+eat a supper at Auriccio&#8217;s; and after the play we went there, and I was
+forced to describe the whole scene over again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Didn&#8217;t she see you at all?&#8221; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not at all,&#8221; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are a good boy,&#8221; said my wife, judging me by one act which she
+approved. &#8220;Kiss me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This occurred after we reached our lodgings. I suggested as a change of
+subject that my next day&#8217;s engagements took me to the Stock Yards, and I
+assumed that she would scarcely wish to accompany me.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think I prefer the stores,&#8221; said she, &#8220;and the pictures. Maybe <i>I</i>
+shall have an adventure.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At the big Exchange Building, I found that the acquaintance whom I
+sought was absent from his office, and I roamed up and down the
+corridors in search of him. As usual the gathering here was intensely
+Western. There were bronzed cattlemen from every range from Amarillo to
+the Belle Fourche, sturdy buyers of swine from Iowa and Illinois,
+sombreroed sheepmen from New Mexico, and vikingesque Swedes from North
+Dakota. Men there were wearing<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_43" id="pg_43">43</a></span> thousand-dollar diamonds in red flannel
+shirts, solid gold watch-chains made to imitate bridle-bits, and heavy
+golden bullocks sliding on horse-hair guards. It pleased me, as such a
+crowd always does. The laughter was loud but it was free, and the hunted
+look one sees on State Street and Michigan Avenue was absent.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wish Alice had come,&#8221; said I, noting the flutter of skirts in a group
+of people in the corridor; and then, as I came near, the press divided,
+and I saw something which drew my eyes as to a sight in which lay
+mystery to be unraveled.</p>
+
+<p>Facing me stood a stout farmer in a dark suit of common cut and texture.
+He seemed, somehow, not entirely strange; but the petite figure of the
+girl whose back was turned to me was what fixed my attention.</p>
+
+<p>She wore a smart traveling-gown of some pretty gray fabric, and bore
+herself gracefully and with the air of dominating the group of
+commission men among whom she stood. I noted the incurved spine, the
+deep curves of the waist, and the liberal slope of the hips belonging to
+a shapely little woman in whom slimness was mitigated in adorable ways,
+which in some remote future bade fair to convert it into matronliness.
+Under a broad hat there showed a wealth of red-brown hair, drawn up like
+a sunburst from a slender little neck.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have provided a box at Hooley&#8217;s,&#8221; said the head of a great commission
+firm. &#8220;Mrs. Johnson will be with us. We may count upon you?&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_44" id="pg_44">44</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think so,&#8221; said the girl, &#8220;if papa hasn&#8217;t made any engagements.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The stout farmer blushed as he looked down at his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Engagements, eh? No, sir!&#8221; he replied. &#8220;She runs things after the
+steers is unloaded. Whatever the little gal says goes with me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They turned, and as they came on down the hall, still chatting, I saw
+her face, and knew it. It was the Empress! But even in that glimpse I
+saw the change which years had brought. Now she ruled instead of
+submitting; her voice, still soft and low, had lost its rustic
+inflections; and in spite of the change in the surroundings,&mdash;the leap
+from the art gallery to the Stock Yards,&mdash;there was more of the artist
+now, and less of the farmer&#8217;s lass. They turned into a suite of offices
+and disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, Mr. Barslow,&#8221; said my friend, coming up. &#8220;Glad to see you. I&#8217;ve
+been hunting for you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who is that girl and her father?&#8221; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;One of the Johnson Commission Company&#8217;s Shippers,&#8221; said he, &#8220;Prescott,
+from Lattimore; I wish I could get his shipments.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No!&#8221; said I, &#8220;Not Lattimore!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Prescott of Lattimore,&#8221; he repeated. &#8220;Know anything of him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;N-no,&#8221; said I. &#8220;I have friends in that town.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wish I had,&#8221; was the reply; &#8220;I&#8217;d try to get old Prescott&#8217;s business.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s destiny in this,&#8221; said Alice, when I told her of my encounter
+with the Empress and her<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_45" id="pg_45">45</a></span> father. &#8220;Her living in Lattimore is not an
+accident.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I doubt,&#8221; said I, &#8220;if anybody&#8217;s is.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She looked nice, did she?&#8221; Alice went on, &#8220;and dressed well?&#8221; and
+without waiting for an answer added: &#8220;Let&#8217;s leave Chicago. I&#8217;m anxious
+to get to Lattimore!&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_46" id="pg_46">46</a></span>
+<a name="We_Reach_the_Atoll_1341" id="We_Reach_the_Atoll_1341"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER V.</p>
+<p class="l c">We Reach the Atoll.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>So we journeyed on to Duluth, to St. Paul and Minneapolis, and to the
+cities on the Missouri. It was at one of those recurrent periods when
+the fever of material and industrial change and development breaks out
+over the whole continent. The very earth seemed to send out tingling
+shocks of some occult stimulus; the air was charged with the ozone of
+hope; and subtle suggestions seemed to pass from mind to mind, impelling
+men to dare all, to risk all, to achieve all. In every one of these
+young cities we were astonished at the changes going on under our very
+eyes. Streets were torn up for the building of railways, viaducts, and
+tunnels. Buildings were everywhere in course of demolition, to make room
+for larger edifices. Excavations yawned like craters at street-corners.
+Steel pillars, girders, and trusses towered skyward,&mdash;skeletons to be
+clothed in flesh of brick and stone.</p>
+
+<p>Suburbs were sprouting, almost daily, from the mould of the
+market-gardens in the purlieus. Corporations were contending for the
+possession of the natural highway approaches to each growing city.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_47" id="pg_47">47</a></span>
+Street-railway companies pushed their charters to passage at midnight
+sessions of boards of aldermen, seized streets in the night-time, and
+extended their metallic tentacles out into the fields of dazed farmers.</p>
+
+<p>On the frontiers, counties were organized and populated in a season.
+Every one of them had its two or three villages, which aped in puny
+fashion the achievements of the cities. New pine houses dotted prairies,
+unbroken save for the mile-long score of the delimiting plow. Long
+trains of emigrant-cars moved continually westward. The world seemed
+drunk with hope and enthusiasm. The fulfillment of Jim&#8217;s careless
+prophecy had burst suddenly upon us.</p>
+
+<p>Such things as these were fresh in our memories when we reached
+Lattimore. I had wired Elkins of our coming, and he met us at the
+station with a carriage. It was one sunny September afternoon when he
+drove us through the streets of our future home to the principal hotel.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We have supper at six, dinner at twelve-thirty, breakfast from seven to
+ten,&#8221; said Jim, as we alighted at the hotel. &#8220;That&#8217;s the sort of bucolic
+municipality you&#8217;ve struck here; we&#8217;ll shove all these meals several
+hours down, when we get to doubling our population. You&#8217;ll have an hour
+to get freshened up for supper. Afterwards, if Mrs. Barslow feels equal
+to the exertion, we&#8217;ll take a drive about the town.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Lattimore was a pretty place then. Low, rounded hills topped with green
+surrounded it. The river flowed in a broad, straight reach along its
+southern<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_48" id="pg_48">48</a></span> margin. A clear stream, Brushy Creek, ran in a miniature
+canyon of limestone, through the eastern edge of the town. On each side
+of this brook, in lawns of vivid green, amid natural groves of oak and
+elm, interspersed with cultivated greenery, stood the houses of the
+well-to-do. Trees made early twilight in most of the streets.</p>
+
+<p>People were out in numbers, driving in the cool autumnal evening. As a
+handsome girl, a splendid blonde, drove past us, my wife spoke of the
+excellent quality of the horseflesh we saw. Jim answered that Lattimore
+was a center of equine culture, and its citizens wise in breeders&#8217; lore.
+The appearance of things impressed us favorably. There was an air of
+quiet prosperity about the place, which is unusual in Western towns,
+where quietude and progress are apt to be thought incompatible. Jim
+pointed out the town&#8217;s natural advantages as we drove along.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What do you think of that, now?&#8221; said he, waving his whip toward the
+winding gorge of Brushy Creek.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s simply lovely!&#8221; said Alice, &#8220;a little jewel of a place.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A bit of mountain scenery on the prairie,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;And more than
+that, or less than that, just as you look at it, it&#8217;s the source from
+which inexhaustible supplies of stone will be quarried when we begin to
+build things.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But won&#8217;t that spoil it?&#8221; said Alice.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, yes; and down on that bottom we&#8217;ve found as good clay for
+pottery, sewer-pipes, and paving-brick as exists anywhere. Back there
+where<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_49" id="pg_49">49</a></span> you saw that bluff along the river&mdash;looks as if it&#8217;s sliding down
+into the water&mdash;remember it? Well, there&#8217;s probably the only place in
+the world where there&#8217;s just the juxtaposition of sand and clay and
+chalk to make Portland cement. Supply absolutely unlimited! Why, there
+ought to be a thousand men employed right now in those cement works. Oh,
+I tell you, things&#8217;ll hum here when we get these schemes working!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We laughed at him: his visualization of the cement works was so
+complete.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I suppose you know where all the capital is coming from,&#8221; said I, &#8220;to
+do all these things? For my part, I see no way of getting it except our
+old plan of buccaneering.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Exactly my idea!&#8221; said he. &#8220;Didn&#8217;t I write you that I&#8217;d enroll you as a
+member of the band? Has Al ever told you, Mrs. Barslow, of our old
+times, when we, as individuals, were passing through our
+sixteenth-century stage?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Often,&#8221; Alice replied. &#8220;He looks back upon his pirate days as a time of
+Arcadian simplicity, &#8216;Untouched by sorrow, and unsoiled by sin.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I can easily understand,&#8221; said Jim reflectively, &#8220;how piracy might
+appear in that roseate light after a few years of practical politics.
+Now from the moral heights of a life-insurance man&#8217;s point of view it&#8217;s
+different.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>So we rode on chatting and chaffing, now of the old time, now of the
+new; and all the time I felt more and more impressed by the dissolving
+views which Jim gave us of different parts of his program for making<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_50" id="pg_50">50</a></span>
+Lattimore the metropolis of &#8220;the world&#8217;s granary,&#8221; as he called the
+surrounding country. As we topped a low hill on our way back, he pulled
+up, to give us a general view of the town and suburbs, and of the great
+expanse of farming country beyond. Between us and Lattimore was a mile
+stretch of gently descending road, with grain-fields and farm-houses on
+each side.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;By the way,&#8221; said he, &#8220;do you see that white house and red barn in the
+maple grove off to the right? Well, you remember Bill Trescott?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Neither of us could call such a person to mind.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, it&#8217;s all right, I suppose,&#8221; he went on in a tone implying injury
+forgiven, &#8220;but you mustn&#8217;t let Bill know you&#8217;ve forgotten him. The
+Trescotts used to live over by the Whitney schoolhouse in Greenwood
+Township,&mdash;right on the Pleasant Valley line, you know. He remembers you
+folks, Al. I&#8217;ll drive over that way.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There were beds of petunias and four-o&#8217;clocks to be seen dimly
+glimmering in the dusk, as we drove through the broad gate. Men and
+women were gathered in a group about the base of the windmill, as Jim&#8217;s
+loud &#8220;whoa&#8221; announced our arrival. The women melted away in the
+direction of the house. The men stood at gaze.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hello, Bill!&#8221; shouted Jim. &#8220;Come out here!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, it&#8217;s you, is it, Mr. Elkins,&#8221; said a deep voice. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t know
+yeh.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thought it was the sheriff with a summons, eh? Well, I guess hardly!&#8221;
+said Jim. &#8220;Mr. Trescott, I want you to shake hands with our old friend
+Mr. Barslow.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_51" id="pg_51">51</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A heavy figure detached itself from the group, and, as it approached,
+developed indistinctly the features of a brawny farmer, with a short,
+heavy, dark beard.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wal, I declare, I&#8217;m glad to see yeh!&#8221; said he, as he grasped my hand.
+&#8220;I&#8217;d a&#8217;most forgot yeh, till Mr. Elkins told me you remembered my
+whalin&#8217; them Dutch boys at a scale onct.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I had had no recollection of him; yet form and voice seemed vaguely
+familiar. I assured him that my memory for names and faces was
+excellent. After being duly presented to Mrs. Barslow, he urged us to
+alight and come in. We offered as an excuse the lateness of the hour.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, you hain&#8217;t seen my family yet, Mr. Barslow,&#8221; said he. &#8220;They&#8217;ll be
+disappointed if yeh don&#8217;t come in.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I suggested that we were staying for a few days at the Centropolis; and
+Alice added that we should be glad to see himself and Mrs. Trescott
+there at any time during our stay. Elkins promised that we should all
+drive out again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wal, now, you must,&#8221; said Mr. Trescott. &#8220;We must talk over ol&#8217; times
+and&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Fight over old battles,&#8221; replied Jim. &#8220;All the battles were yours,
+though, eh, Bill?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Huh, huh!&#8221; chuckled Bill; &#8220;fightin&#8217;s no credit to any man; but I &#8217;spose
+I fit my sheer when I was a boy&mdash;when I was a boy, y&#8217; know, Mrs.
+Barslow, and had more sand than sense. Here, Josie, here&#8217;s Mr. Elkins
+and some old friends of mine. Mr. and Mrs. Barslow, my daughter.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_52" id="pg_52">52</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She was a little slim slip of a thing, in white, and emerged from the
+shrubbery at Mr. Trescott&#8217;s call. She bowed to us, and said she was
+sorry that we could not stop. Her voice was sweet, and there was
+something unexpectedly cool and self-possessed in her intonation. It was
+not in the least the speech of the ordinary neat-handed Phyllis or
+Ne&aelig;ra; nor was her attitude at all countrified as she stood with her
+hand on her father&#8217;s arm. The increasing darkness kept us from seeing
+her features.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Josie&#8217;s my right-hand man,&#8221; said her father. &#8220;Half the business of the
+farm stops when Josie goes away.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>My wife expressed her admiration for Lattimore and its environs, and
+especially for so much of the Trescott farm as could be seen in the
+deepening gloaming. The flowers, she said, took her back to her
+childhood&#8217;s home.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let me give you these,&#8221; said the girl, handing Alice a great bunch of
+blossoms which she had been cutting when her father called, and had held
+in her hands as we talked. My wife thanked her, and buried her face in
+them, as we bade the Trescotts good-night and drove home.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That girl,&#8221; said Jim, as we spun along the road in the light of the
+rising moon, &#8220;is a crackerjack. Bill thinks the world of her, and she
+certainly gives him a mother&#8217;s care!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She seems nice,&#8221; said Alice, &#8220;and so refined, apparently.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Been well educated,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;and got a head, besides. You&#8217;ll like
+her; she knows Europe<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_53" id="pg_53">53</a></span> better than some folks know their own front
+yard.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I was surprised at the vividness of my memory of Bill&#8217;s youthful
+combats,&#8221; said I.</p>
+
+<p>Jim&#8217;s laugh rang out heartily through the Brushy Creek gorge.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I supposed you remembered those things, of course,&#8221; said he, &#8220;and
+so I insinuated some impression of the delight with which you dwell upon
+the stories of his prowess. It made him feel good.... I&#8217;m spoiling Bill,
+I guess, with these tales. He&#8217;ll claim to have a private graveyard next.
+As harmless a fellow as you ever saw, and the best cattle-feeder
+hereabouts. Got a good farm out there, Bill has; we may need it for
+stock yards or something, later on.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why not hire a corps of landscape-gardeners, and make a park of it?&#8221; I
+inquired sarcastically. &#8220;We&#8217;ll certainly need breathing-spaces for the
+populace.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Good idea!&#8221; he returned gravely. And as he halted the equipage at the
+hotel, he repeated meditatively: &#8220;A mighty good idea, Al; we must figure
+on that a little.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We were tired to silence when we reached our rooms; so much so that
+nothing seemed to make a defined and sharp impression upon my mind. I
+kept thinking all the time that I must have been mistaken in my first
+thought that I had never known the Trescotts.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Their voices seem familiar to me,&#8221; said I, &#8220;and yet I can&#8217;t associate
+them with the old home at all. It&#8217;s very odd!&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_54" id="pg_54">54</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As Alice stood before the mirror shaking down and brushing her hair, she
+said: &#8220;Do you suppose he thought you in earnest about that absurd park?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; I answered, &#8220;he understood me well enough; but what puzzles me is
+the question, was <i>he</i> in earnest?&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>In the middle of the night I woke with a perfectly clear idea as to the
+identity of the Trescotts! Prescott, Trescott! Josie, Josephine the
+&#8220;Empress&#8221;! And then the voice and figure!</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why are you sitting up in bed?&#8221; inquired Alice.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have made a discovery,&#8221; said I. &#8220;That man at the Stock Yards meant
+Trescott, not Prescott.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t understand,&#8221; said she sleepily.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In a word,&#8221; said I, &#8220;the girl who gave you the flowers is the Empress!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Albert Barslow!&#8221; said Alice. &#8220;Why&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>My wife was silent for a long time.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I knew we&#8217;d meet her,&#8221; she said at last. &#8220;It is fate.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_55" id="pg_55">55</a></span>
+<a name="I_am_Inducted_into_the_Cave_and_Enlist_1606" id="I_am_Inducted_into_the_Cave_and_Enlist_1606"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER VI.</p>
+<p class="l c">I am Inducted into the Cave, and Enlist.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&#8220;Here&#8217;s the cave,&#8221; said Jim, at the door of his office, next morning.
+&#8220;As prospective joint-proprietor and co-malefactor, I bid you welcome.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The smiles with which the employees resumed their work indicated that
+the extraordinary character of this welcome was not lost upon them. The
+office was on the ground-floor of one of the more pretentious buildings
+of Lattimore&#8217;s main street. The post-office was on one side of it, and
+the First National Bank on the other. Over it were the offices of
+lawyers and physicians. It was quite expensively fitted up; and the
+plate-glass front glittered with gold-and-black sign-lettering. The
+chairs and sofas were upholstered in black leather. On the walls hung
+several decorative advertisements of fire-insurance companies, and maps
+of the town, county, and state. Rolls of tracing-paper and blueprints
+lay on the flat-topped tables, reminding one of the office of an
+architect or civil engineer. A thin young man worked at books, standing
+at a high desk; and a plump young woman busily clicked off typewritten
+matter with an up-to-date machine.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_56" id="pg_56">56</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ll find some books and papers on the table in the next room,&#8221; said
+Jim, as I finished my first look about. &#8220;I&#8217;ll ask you to amuse yourself
+with &#8217;em for a little while, until I can dispose of my morning&#8217;s mail;
+after which we&#8217;ll resume our hunt for resources. We haven&#8217;t any morning
+paper yet, and the evening <i>Herald</i> is shipped in by freight and edited
+with a saw. But it&#8217;s the best we&#8217;ve got&mdash;yet.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He read his letters, ran his eyes over his newspapers and a magazine or
+two, and dictated some correspondence, interrupted occasionally by
+callers, some of whom he brought into the room where I was whiling away
+the time, examining maps, and looking over out-of-date copies of the
+local papers. One of these callers was Mr. Hinckley, the cashier of the
+bank, who came to see about some insurance matters. He was spare,
+aquiline, and white-mustached; and very courteously wished Lattimore the
+good fortune of securing so valuable an acquisition as ourselves. It
+would place Lattimore under additional obligations to Mr. Elkins, who
+was proving himself such an effective worker in all public matters.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Elkins,&#8221; said he, &#8220;has to a wonderful degree identified himself
+with the material progress of the city. He is constantly bringing here
+enterprising and energetic business men; and we could better afford to
+lose many an older citizen.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I asked Mr. Hinckley as to the length of his own residence in Lattimore.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I helped to plat the town, sir,&#8221; said he. &#8220;I carried the chain when
+these streets were surveyed,&mdash;a boy just out of Bowdoin College. That
+was in &#8217;55.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_57" id="pg_57">57</a></span> I staged it for four hundred miles to get here. Aleck
+Macdonald and I came together, and we&#8217;ve both staid from that day. The
+Indians were camped at the mouth of Brushy Creek; and except for old
+Pierre Lacroix, a squaw-man, we were for a month the only white men in
+these parts. Then General Lattimore came with a party of surveyors, and
+by the fall there was quite a village here.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jim came in with another gentleman, whom he introduced as Captain
+Tolliver. The Captain shook my hand with profuse politeness.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am delighted to see you, suh,&#8221; said he. &#8220;Any friend of Mr. Elkins I
+shall be proud to know. I heah that Mrs. Barslow is with you. I trust,
+suh, that she is well?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I informed him that my wife was in excellent health, being completely
+recovered from the fatigue of her journey.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah! this aiah, this aiah, Mr. Barslow! It is like wine in its
+invigorating qualities, like wine, suh. Look at Mr. Hinckley, hyah,
+doing the work of two men fo&#8217; a lifetime; and younge&#8217; now than any of
+us. Come, suh, and make yo&#8217; home with us. You nevah can regret it.
+Delighted to have you call at my office, suh. I am proud to have met
+you, and hope to become better acquainted with you. I hope Mrs. Tulliver
+and Mrs. Barslow may soon meet. Good-morning, gentlemen.&#8221; And he hurried
+out, only to reappear as soon as Mr. Hinckley was gone.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;By the way, Mr. Barslow,&#8221; he whispered, &#8220;should you come to Lattimore,
+as I have no doubt you will, I have some of the choicest residence
+property in<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_58" id="pg_58">58</a></span> the city, which I shall be mo&#8217; than glad to show you. Title
+perfect, no commissions to pay, city water, gas, and electric light in
+prospect. Cain&#8217;t yo&#8217; come and look it ovah now, suh?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who is this Captain Tolliver, Jim,&#8221; I asked as we went out of the
+office together, &#8220;and what is he?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In other words, &#8216;Who and what art thou, execrable shape?&#8217; Well, now,
+don&#8217;t ask me. I&#8217;ve known him for years; in fact, he suggested to me the
+possibilities of this burg. In a way, the city is indebted to him for my
+presence here. But don&#8217;t ask me about him&mdash;study him. And don&#8217;t buy lots
+from him. The Captain has his failings, but he has also his strong
+points and his uses; and I&#8217;ll be mistaken if he isn&#8217;t cast for a fairly
+prominent part in the drama we&#8217;re about to put on here. But don&#8217;t spoil
+your enjoyment by having him described to you. Let him dawn on you by
+degrees.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>That day I met most of the prominent men of the town. Jim took me into
+the banks, the shops, and the offices of the leading professional
+gentlemen. He informed them that I was considering the matter of coming
+to live among them; and I found them very friendly, and much interested
+in our proposed change of residence. They all treated Jim with respect,
+and his manner toward them had a dignity which I had not looked for.
+Evidently he was making himself felt in the community.</p>
+
+<p>When we returned to the Centropolis at noon, we found Mrs. Trescott and
+her daughter chatting with my wife. The elder woman was ill-groomed, as
+are all women of her class in comparison with their<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_59" id="pg_59">59</a></span> town sisters, and
+angular. I knew the type so well that I could read the traces of farm
+cares in her face and form. The serving of gangs of harvesters and
+threshers, the ever-recurring problems of butter, eggs, and berries, the
+unflagging fight, without much domestic help, for neatness and order
+about the house, had impressed their stamp upon Mrs. Trescott. But she
+was chatting vivaciously, and assuring Mrs. Barslow that such a thing as
+staying longer in town that morning was impossible.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I can feel in my bones,&#8221; said she, &#8220;that there&#8217;s something wrong at the
+farm.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You always have that feeling,&#8221; said her daughter, &#8220;as soon as you pass
+outside the gate.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And I&#8217;m usually right about it,&#8221; said Mrs. Trescott. &#8220;It isn&#8217;t any use.
+My system has got into that condition in which I&#8217;m in misery if I&#8217;m off
+that farm. Josie drags me away from it sometimes; and I do enjoy meeting
+people! But I like to meet &#8217;em out there the best; and I want to urge
+you to come often, Mrs. Barslow, while you&#8217;re here. And in case you move
+here, I hope you&#8217;ll like us and the farm well enough so that we&#8217;ll see a
+good deal of you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I was presented to Mrs. Trescott, and reintroduced to the young lady,
+with whom Alice seemed already on friendly terms. I was surprised at
+this, for she was not prone to sudden friendships. There was something
+so attractive in the girl, however, that it went far to explain the
+phenomenon. For one thing, there was in her manner that same steadiness
+and calm which I had noticed in her voice in the dusk last night. It
+gave one the impression that<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_60" id="pg_60">60</a></span> she could not be surprised or startled,
+that she had seen or thought out all possible combinations of events,
+and knew of their sequences, or adjusted herself to things by some
+all-embracing rule, by which she attained that repose of hers. The
+surprising thing about it, to my mind, was to find this exterior in Bill
+Trescott&#8217;s daughter. I had seen the same thing once or twice in people
+to whom I thought it had come as the fruit of wide experience in the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>While Miss Trescott was slim, and rather below the medium in height, she
+was not at all thin; and had the great mass of ruddy dark hair and fine
+brown eyes which I remembered so well, and a face which would have been
+pale had it not been for the tan&mdash;the only thing about her which
+suggested those occupations by which she became her father&#8217;s &#8220;right-hand
+man.&#8221; There was intelligence in her face, and a grave smile in her eyes,
+which rarely extended to her handsome mouth. If mature in face, form,
+and manner, she was young in years&mdash;some years younger than Alice. I
+hoped that she might stay to dinner; but she went away with her mother.
+In her absence, I devoted some time to praising her. Jim failed to join
+in my p&aelig;ans further than to give a general assent; but he grew
+unaccountably mirthful, as if something good had happened to him of
+which he had not yet told us.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have invited a few people to my parlors this evening,&#8221; said he, &#8220;and,
+of course, you will be the guests of honor.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>My wife demurred. She had nothing to wear, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_61" id="pg_61">61</a></span> even if she had, I was
+without evening dress. The thing seemed out of the question.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, we can&#8217;t let that stand in the way,&#8221; said he. &#8220;So far as your own
+toilet is concerned, I have nothing to say except that you are known to
+be making a hurried visit, and I have an abiding faith, based on your
+manner of stating your trouble, that it can be remedied. I saw your eye
+take on a far-away look as you planned your costume, even while you were
+declaring that you couldn&#8217;t do it. Didn&#8217;t I, now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You certainly did not,&#8221; said Alice; and then I noticed the absorbed
+look myself. &#8220;But even if I can manage it, how about Albert?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll tell you about Albert. I&#8217;ll bet two to one there won&#8217;t be a suit
+of evening clothes worn. The dress suit may come in here with street
+cars and passenger elevators, but it lacks a good deal of being here
+yet, except in the most sporadic and infrequent way. And this thing is
+to be so absolutely informal that it would make the natives stare. You
+wouldn&#8217;t wear it if you had it, Al.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who will come?&#8221; said Mrs. Barslow.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, a couple of dozen ladies and gentlemen, business men and doctors
+and lawyers and their women-folks. They&#8217;ll stray in from eight to ten
+and find something to eat on the sideboard. They&#8217;ll have the happiness
+of meeting you, and you can see what the people you are thinking of
+living among and doing business with are like. It&#8217;s a necessary part of
+your visit; and you can&#8217;t get out of it now, for I&#8217;ve taken the liberty
+of making all the arrangements.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_62" id="pg_62">62</a></span> And, as a matter of fact, you don&#8217;t
+want to do so, do you, now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Thus appealed to, Alice consented. Nothing was said to me about it, my
+willingness being presumed.</p>
+
+<p>The guests that evening were almost exclusively men whom I had met
+during the day, and members of their families. In the absence of any
+more engaging topic, we discussed Lattimore as our possible future home.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have always felt,&#8221; said Mr. Hinckley, who was one of the guests,
+&#8220;that this is the natural site of a great city. These valleys, centering
+here like the spokes of a wheel, are ready-made railway-routes. In the
+East there is a city of from fifty thousand to three times that, every
+hundred miles or so. Why shouldn&#8217;t it be so here?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Suh,&#8221; said Captain Tolliver, &#8220;the thing is inevitable. Somewhah in this
+region will grow up a metropolis. Shall it be hyah, o&#8217; at Fairchild, o&#8217;
+Angus Falls? If the people of Lattimore sit supinely, suh, and let these
+country villages steal from huh the queenship which God o&#8217;dained fo&#8217; huh
+when He placed huh in this commandin&#8217; site, then, suh, they ah too base
+to be wo&#8217;thy of the suhvices of gentlemen.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve always been taught,&#8221; said Mrs. Trescott, &#8220;that the credit of
+placing her in this site belonged to either Mr. Hinckley or General
+Lattimore.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Really,&#8221; said Miss Addison to me, &#8220;I don&#8217;t see how they can laugh at
+such irreverence!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think,&#8221; said Miss Hinckley in my other ear, &#8220;that Mr. Elkins
+expressed the whole truth in the matter<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_63" id="pg_63">63</a></span> of the rivalry of these three
+towns, when he said that when two ride on a horse, one must ride behind.
+Aren&#8217;t his quotations so&mdash;so&mdash;illuminating?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I looked about at the company. There were Mr. Hinckley, Mrs. Hinckley,
+their daughter, whom I recognized as the splendid blonde whose pacers
+had passed us when we were out driving, Mrs. Trescott and her daughter,
+and Captain and Mrs. Tolliver. Those present were plainly of several
+different sets and cliques. Mrs. Hinckley hoped that my wife would join
+the Equal Rights Club, and labor for the enfranchisement of women. She
+referred, too, to the eloquence and piety of her pastor, the
+Presbyterian minister, while Mrs. Tolliver quoted Emerson, and invited
+Alice to join, as soon as we removed, the Monday Club of the Unitarian
+Church, devoted to the study of his works. Mr. Macdonald, red-whiskered,
+weather-beaten, and gigantic, fidgeted about the punch-bowl a good deal;
+and replying to some chance remark made by Alice, ventured the opinion
+that the grass was gettin&#8217; mighty short on the ranges. Miss Addison, who
+came with her cousins the Lattimores, looked with disapproval upon the
+punch, and disclosed her devotion to the W. C. T. U. and the Ladies&#8217; Aid
+Society of the Methodist Church. The Lattimores were Will Lattimore and
+his wife. I learned that he was the son of the General, and Jim&#8217;s
+lawyer; and that they went rarely into society, being very exclusive.
+This was communicated to me by Mrs. Ballard, who brought Miss Ballard
+with her. She asked in tones of the intensest interest if we played
+whist; while Miss Ballard suggested that<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_64" id="pg_64">64</a></span> about the only way we could
+find to enjoy ourselves in such a little place would be to identify
+ourselves with the dancing-party and card-club set. I began to suspect
+that life in Lattimore would not be without its complexities.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trescott came in for a moment only, for his wife and daughter. Miss
+Trescott was not to be found at first, but was discovered in the
+bay-window with Jim and Miss Hinckley, looking over some engravings. Mr.
+Elkins took her down to her carriage, and I thought him a long time
+gone, for the host. As soon as he returned, however, the conversation
+again turned to the dominant thought of the gathering, municipal
+expansion. And I noted that the points made were Jim&#8217;s. He had already
+imbued the town with his thoughts, and filled the mouths of its citizens
+with his arguments.</p>
+
+<p>After they left, we sat with Jim and talked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, how do you like &#8217;em?&#8221; said he.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why,&#8221; said Alice, &#8220;they&#8217;re very cordial.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Heterogeneous, eh?&#8221; he queried.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said she, &#8220;but very cordial. I am surprised to feel how little I
+dislike them.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As for me, I began to look upon Lattimore with more favor. I began to
+catch Jim&#8217;s enthusiasm and share his confidence. As we smoked together
+in his rooms that evening, he made me the definite proposal that I go
+into partnership with him. We talked about the business, and discussed
+its possibilities.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t ask you to believe all my prophecies,&#8221; said he; &#8220;but isn&#8217;t the
+situation fairly good, just as it is?&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_65" id="pg_65">65</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think well of it,&#8221; I answered, &#8220;and it&#8217;s mighty kind of you to ask me
+to come. I&#8217;ll go as far as to say that if it depends solely on me, we
+shall come. As for these prophecies of yours, I am in candor bound to
+say that I half believe them.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Now you <i>are</i> shouting,&#8221; said he. &#8220;Never better prophecies anywhere.
+But consider the matter aside from them. Then all we clean up in the
+prophecy department will be velvet, absolute velvet!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I can add something to the output of the prophecy department,&#8221; said
+Alice, when I repeated the phrase; &#8220;and that is that there will be some
+affairs of the heart mingled with the real estate and insurance before
+long. I can see them in embryo now.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If it&#8217;s Jim and Miss Trescott you mean, I wish the affair well,&#8221; said
+I. &#8220;I&#8217;m quite charmed with her.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Alice, &#8220;from the standpoint of most men, Miss Hinckley
+isn&#8217;t to be left out of the reckoning in such matters. What a face and
+figure she has! Miss Addison is too prudish and churchified; but I like
+Miss Hinckley.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said I; &#8220;but Miss Trescott seems, somehow, to have been known to
+one, in some tender and touching relation. There&#8217;s that about her which
+appeals to one, like some embodiment of the abstract idea of woman.
+That&#8217;s why one feels as if he had risked his life for her, and protected
+her, and seen her suffer wrong, and all that&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s only because of that affair you told me of,&#8221; said my wife.
+&#8220;Since I&#8217;ve seen her, I&#8217;ve made<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_66" id="pg_66">66</a></span> up my mind that you misconstrued the
+matter utterly. There was really nothing to it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In a week I wrote to Mr. Elkins, accepting his proposal, and promising
+to close up my affairs, remove to Lattimore, and join with him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not feel myself equal to playing the part of either Romulus or
+Remus in founding your new Rome,&#8221; I wrote; &#8220;but I think as a writer of
+fire-insurance policies, and keeping the office work up, I may prove
+myself not entirely a deadhead. My wife asks how the breathing-spaces
+for the populace are coming on?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And the die was cast!</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_67" id="pg_67">67</a></span>
+<a name="We_make_our_Landing_1932" id="We_make_our_Landing_1932"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER VII.</p>
+<p class="l c">We make our Landing.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Had I known how cordially our neighbors would greet our return, or how
+many of them would view our departure with apparently sincere regret, I
+might have been slower in giving Jim my promise. I proceeded, however,
+to carry it out; but it was nearly six months before I could pull myself
+and my little fortune out of the place into which we had grown.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Elkins kept me well informed regarding Lattimore affairs; and the
+<i>Herald</i> followed me home. Jim&#8217;s letters were long typewritten
+communications, dictated at speed, and mailed, sometimes one a day, at
+other times at intervals of weeks.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This is a sure-enough &#8216;winter of our discontent,&#8217;&#8221; one of these letters
+runs, &#8220;but the scope of our operations will widen as the frost comes out
+of the ground. We&#8217;re now confined to the psychical field. Subjectively
+speaking, though, the plot thickens. Captain Tolliver is in the
+secondary stages of real-estate dementia, and spreads the contagion
+daily. There&#8217;s no quarantine regulation to cover the case, and Lattimore
+seems doomed to the acme of prosperity. This is the age of great cities,
+saith the Captain,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_68" id="pg_68">68</a></span> and that Lattimore is not already a town of 150,000
+people is one of the strangest, one of the most inexplicable things in
+the world, in view of the distance we are lag of the country about us,
+so far as development is concerned. And as our beginning has been tardy,
+so will our progress be rapid, even as waters long dammed up rush out to
+devour the plains, etc., etc.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In this we are all agreed. We want a good, steady, natural growth&mdash;and
+no boom.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When a boom recognizes itself as such, it&#8217;s all over, and the stuff
+off. The time for letting go of a great wheel is when it starts down
+hill. But our wheels are all going up&mdash;even if they are all in our
+heads, as yet.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You will remember the railway connection of which I spoke to you? Well,
+that thing has assumed, all of a sudden, a concreteness as welcome as it
+is unexpected. Ballard showed me a telegram yesterday from lower
+Broadway (the heart of Darkest N. Y.) which tends to prove that people
+there are ready to finance the deal. It would have amused you to see the
+horizontality of the coat-tails of the management of the Lattimore &amp;
+Great Western, as they flaxed round getting up a directors&#8217; meeting, so
+as to have a real, live directorate of this great transcontinental line
+for the wolves of Wall Street to do business with! Things like this are
+what you miss by hibernating there, instead of dropping everything and
+applying here for your pro rata share of the gayety of nations and the
+concomitant scads.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_69" id="pg_69">69</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I was elected president of the road, and as soon as we get a little
+track, and an engine, I expect to obtain an exchange of passes with all
+my fellow monopolists in North America. I at once fired back an answer
+to Ballard&#8217;s telegram, which must have produced an impression upon the
+Gould and Vanderbilt interests&mdash;if they got wind of it. If the L. &amp; G.
+W. should pass the paper stage next summer, it will do a whole lot
+towards carrying this burg beyond the hypnotic period of development.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The Angus Falls branch is going to build in next summer, I am
+confident, and that means another division headquarters and, probably,
+machine-shops. I&#8217;m working with some of the trilobites here to form a
+pool, and offer the company grounds for additional yards and a
+roundhouse and shops. Captain Tolliver interviewed General Lattimore
+about it, and got turned down.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;He told me, suh,&#8217; reported the Captain, in a fine white passion, &#8216;that
+if any railway system desiahs to come to Lattimore, it has his
+puhmission! That the Injuns didn&#8217;t give him any bonus when he came; and
+that he had to build his own houses and yahds, by gad, at his own
+expense, and defend &#8217;em, too, and that if any railroad was thinkin&#8217; of
+comin&#8217; hyah, it was doubtless because it was good business fo&#8217; &#8217;em to
+come; and that if they wanted any of his land, were willing to pay him
+his price, there wouldn&#8217;t be any difficulty about theiah getting it. And
+that if there should arise any difference, which he should deeply
+regret, but would try to live through, the powah of eminent domain with
+which railways ah<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_70" id="pg_70">70</a></span> clothed will enable the company to get what land is
+necessary by legal means.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;I could take these observations,&#8217; said the Captain, &#8216;as nothing except
+a gratuitous insult to one who approached him, suh, in a spirit of pure
+benevolence and civic patriotism. It shows the kind of tyrants who
+commanded the oppressors of the South, suh! Only his gray hairs
+protected him, suh, only his gray hairs!&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a little hard to separate the General from the Captain, in this
+report of the committee on railway extensions,&#8221; said my wife.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The only thing that&#8217;s clear about it,&#8221; said I, &#8220;is that Jim is having a
+good deal of fun with the Captain.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This became clearer as the correspondence went on.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Tolliver thinks,&#8221; said he, in another letter, &#8220;that the Angus Falls
+extension can be pulled through. However, I recall that only yesterday
+the Captain, in private, denounced the citizens of Lattimore as beneath
+the contempt of gentlemen of breadth of view. &#8216;I shall dispose of my
+holdin&#8217;s hyah,&#8217; said he, with a stately sweep indicative of their
+extent, &#8216;at any sacrifice, and depaht, cuhsin&#8217; the day I devoted myself
+to the redemption of such cattle.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But, at that particular moment, he had just failed in an attempt to
+sell Bill Trescott a bunch of choice outlying gold bricks, and was
+somewhat heated with wine. This to the haughty Southron was<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_71" id="pg_71">71</a></span> ample
+excuse for confiding to me the round, unvarnished truth about us
+mudsills.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Josie and I often talk of you and your wife. I don&#8217;t know what I&#8217;d do
+out here if it weren&#8217;t for Josie. She refuses to enthuse over our
+&#8216;natural, healthy growth,&#8217; which we look for; but I guess that&#8217;s because
+she doesn&#8217;t care for the things that the rest of us are striving for.
+But she&#8217;s the only person here with whom one can really converse. You&#8217;d
+be astonished to see how pretty she is in her furs, and set like a jewel
+in my new sleigh; but I&#8217;m becoming keenly aware of the fact.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We were afterwards told that the trilobites had shaken off their
+fossilhood, and that the Angus Falls extension, with the engine-house
+and machine-shops, had been &#8220;landed.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This,&#8221; he wrote, &#8220;means enough new families to make a noticeable
+increase in our population. Things will be popping here soon. Come on
+and help shake the popper; hurry up with your moving, or it will all be
+over, including the shouting.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We were not entirely dependent upon Jim&#8217;s letters for Lattimore news.
+Mrs. Barslow kept up a desultory correspondence with Miss Trescott,
+begun upon some pretext and continued upon none at all. In one of these
+letters Josie (for so we soon learned to call her) wrote:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Our little town is changing so that it no longer seems familiar. Not
+that the change is visible. Beyond an unusual number of strangers or
+recent comers, there is nothing new to strike the eye. But the talk
+everywhere is of a new railroad and other<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_72" id="pg_72">72</a></span> improvements. One needs only
+to shut one&#8217;s eyes and listen, to imagine that the town is already a
+real city. Mr. Elkins seems to be the center of this new civic
+self-esteem. The air is full of it, and I admit that I am affected by
+it. I have</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em;">&#8220;&#8216;A feeling, as when eager crowds await,<br />
+Before a palace gate,<br />
+Some wondrous pageant.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are indebted to Captain Tolliver for the quotation, and to Mr.
+Elkins for the idea. The Captain induced me to read the book in which I
+found the lines. He stigmatizes the preference given to the Northern
+poets&mdash;Longfellow, for instance&mdash;over Timrod as &#8216;the crowning infamy of
+American letters.&#8217; He has taken the trouble to lay out a course of study
+for me, the object of which is to place me right in my appreciation of
+the literary men of the South. It includes Pollard&#8217;s &#8216;Lost Cause&#8217; and
+the works of W. G. Simms. I have not fully promised to follow it to the
+end. Timrod, however, is a treat.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>That last quiet winter will always be set apart in my memory, as a time
+like no other. It was a sitting down on a milestone to rest. Back of us
+lay the busy past&mdash;busy with trivial things, it seemed to me, but full
+of varied activity nevertheless. A boy will desire mightily to finish a
+cob-house; and when it is done he will smilingly knock it about the barn
+floor. So I was tearing down and leaving the fabric of relationship
+which I had once prized so highly.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_73" id="pg_73">73</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The life upon which I expected to enter promised well. In fact, to a man
+of medium ability, only, and no training in large affairs, it promised
+exceedingly well. I knew that Jim was strong, and that his old regard
+for me had taken new life and a firm hold upon him. But when, removed
+from his immediate influence, I looked the situation in the face, the
+future loomed so mysteriously bizarre that I shrank from it. All his
+skimble-skamble talk about psychology and hypnotism, and that other
+rambling discourse of pirate caves and buccaneering cruises, made me
+feel sometimes as if I were about to form a partnership with Aladdin, or
+the King of the Golden Mountain. If he had asked me, merely, to come to
+Lattimore and go into the real estate and insurance business with him, I
+am sure I should have had none of this mental vertigo. Yet what more had
+he done?</p>
+
+<p>As to the boom, I had, as yet, not a particle of objective confidence in
+it; but, subconsciously, I felt, as did the town &#8220;doomed to prosperity,&#8221;
+a sense of impending events. In spite of some presentiments and doubts,
+it was, on the whole, with high hopes that we, on an aguish spring day,
+reached Lattimore with our stuff (as the Scriptures term it), and knew
+that, for weal or woe, it was our home.</p>
+
+<p>Jim was again at the station to meet us, and seemed delighted at our
+arrival. I thought I saw some sort of absent-mindedness or absorbedness
+in his manner, so that he seemed hardly like himself. Josie was there
+with him, and while she and Alice were greeting each other, I saw Jim
+scanning the little crowd at the station as if for some other arrival.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_74" id="pg_74">74</a></span>
+At last, his eye told me that whatever it was for which he was looking,
+he had found it; and I followed his glance. It rested on the last person
+to alight from the train&mdash;a tall, sinewy, soldierly-built youngish man,
+who wore an overcoat of black, falling away in front, so as to reveal a
+black frock coat tightly buttoned up and a snowy shirt-front with a
+glittering gem sparkling from the center of it. On his head was a
+shining silk hat&mdash;a thing so rare in that community as to be noticeable,
+and to stamp the wearer as an outsider. His beard was clipped close, and
+at the chin ran out into a pronounced Vandyke point. His mustaches were
+black, heavy, and waxed. His whole external appearance betokened wealth,
+and he exuded mystery. He had not taken two steps from the car before
+the people on the platform were standing on tiptoe to see him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Bus to the Centropolis?&#8221; queried the driver of the omnibus.</p>
+
+<p>The stranger looked at the conveyance, filled as it was with a load of
+traveling men and casuals; and, frowning darkly, turned to the negro who
+accompanied him, saying, &#8220;Haven&#8217;t you any carriage here, Pearson?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, sah,&#8221; responded the servant, pointing to a closed vehicle. &#8220;Right
+hyah, sah.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>My wife stood looking, with a little amused smile, at the picturesque
+group, so out of the ordinary at the time and place. Miss Trescott was
+gazing intently at the stranger, and at the moment when he spoke she
+clutched my wife&#8217;s arm so tightly as to startle her. I heard Alice make
+some inquiry as to<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_75" id="pg_75">75</a></span> the cause of her agitation, and as I looked at her,
+I could see in the one glance her face, gone suddenly white as death,
+and the dark visage of the tall stranger. And it seemed to me as if I
+had seen the same thing before.</p>
+
+<p>Then, the negro pointing the way to the closed carriage, the group
+separated to left and right, the stranger passed through to the
+carriage, and the picture, and with it my odd mental impression,
+dissolved. The negro lifted two or three heavy bags to the coachman,
+gave the transfer man some baggage-checks, and the equipage moved away
+toward the hotel. All this took place in a moment, during which the
+usual transactions on the platform were suspended. The conductor failed
+to give the usual signal for the departure of the train. The engineer
+leaned from the cab and gazed.</p>
+
+<p>Jim&#8217;s eye rested on the stranger and his servant for an instant only;
+but during that time he seemed to take an observation, come to a
+conclusion, and dismiss the whole matter.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Here, John,&#8221; said he to the drayman, &#8220;take these trunks to the
+Centropolis. We&#8217;d like &#8217;em this week, too. None of that old trick of
+yours of dumping &#8217;em in the crick, you know!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;ll be up there in five minutes all right, Mr. Elkins,&#8221; said John,
+grinning at Jim&#8217;s allusion to some accident, the knowledge of which
+appeared to be confined to himself and Mr. Elkins, and to constitute a
+bond of sympathy between them. Jim turned to us with redoubled
+heartiness, all his absent-mindedness gone.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_76" id="pg_76">76</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll drive you to the hotel,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;You&#8217;ll&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Miss Trescott is ill&mdash;&#8221; said Alice.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not at all,&#8221; said Josie; &#8220;it has passed entirely! Only, when you have
+taken Mr. and Mrs. Barslow to the hotel, will you please take me home?
+Our little supper-party&mdash;I don&#8217;t feel quite equal to it, if you will
+excuse me!&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_77" id="pg_77">77</a></span>
+<a name="A_Welcome_to_Wall_Street_and_Us_2187" id="A_Welcome_to_Wall_Street_and_Us_2187"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER VIII.</p>
+<p class="l c">A Welcome to Wall Street and Us.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&#8220;Welcome!&#8221; intoned Captain Tolliver, with his hat in his hand, bowing
+low to Mrs. Barslow. &#8220;Welcome, Madam and suh, in the capacity of
+Lattimoreans! That we shall be the bettah fo&#8217; yo&#8217; residence among us
+the&#8217; can be no doubt. That you will be prospahed beyond yo&#8217; wildest
+dreams I believe equally cehtain. Welcome!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This address was delivered within thirty seconds of the time of our
+arrival at our old rooms in the Centropolis. The Captain saluted us in a
+manner extravagantly polite, mysteriously enthusiastic. The air of
+mystery was deepened when he called again to see Mr. Elkins in the
+evening and was invited in.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did you-all notice that distinguished and opulent-looking gentleman who
+got off the train this evening?&#8221; said he in a stage whisper. &#8220;Mahk my
+words, the coming of such men, <i>his</i> coming, is fraught with the deepest
+significance to us all. All my holdin&#8217;s ah withdrawn from mahket until
+fu&#8217;the&#8217; developments!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Seems to travel in style,&#8221; said Jim; &#8220;all sorts of good clothes,
+colored body-servant, closed carriage ordered by wire&mdash;it does look
+juicy, don&#8217;t it, now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He has the entiah second flo&#8217; front suite. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_78" id="pg_78">78</a></span> niggah has already sent
+out fo&#8217; a bahbah,&#8221; said the Captain. &#8220;Lattimore has at last attracted
+the notice of adequate capital, and will now assume huh true place in
+the bright galaxy of American cities. Mr. Barslow, I shall ask
+puhmission to call upon you in the mo&#8217;nin&#8217; with reference to a project
+which will make the fo&#8217;tunes of a dozen men, and that within the next
+ninety days. Good evenin&#8217;, suh; good evenin&#8217;, Madam. I feel that you
+have come among us at a propitious moment!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The Captain merely hints at the truth which struggles in him for
+utterance,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;I prove this by informing you that I couldn&#8217;t get
+you a house. This shows, too, that the census returns are a calumny upon
+Lattimore. You&#8217;ll have to stay at the Centropolis until something turns
+up or you can build.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, dear!&#8221; said Alice. &#8220;Hotel life isn&#8217;t living at all. I hope it won&#8217;t
+be long.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It will have its advantages for Al,&#8221; said Mr. Elkins. &#8220;This financial
+maelstrom, which will draw everything to Lattimore, will have its core
+right in this hotel&mdash;a mighty good place to be. Things of all kinds have
+been floating about in the air for months; the precipitation is
+beginning now. The psychological moment has arrived&mdash;you have brought it
+with you, Mrs. Barslow. The moon-flower of Lattimore&#8217;s &#8216;gradual, healthy
+growth&#8217; is going to burst, and that right soon.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Has Captain Tolliver infected you?&#8221; inquired Alice. &#8220;He told us the
+same thing, with less of tropes and figures.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_79" id="pg_79">79</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;On any still morning,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;you can hear the wheels go round in
+the Captain&#8217;s head; but his instinct for real-estate conditions is as
+accurate as a pocket-gopher&#8217;s. The Captain, in a hysterical sort of way,
+is right: I consider that a cinch. Good-night, friends, and pleasant
+dreams. I expect to see you at breakfast; but if I shouldn&#8217;t, Al, you&#8217;ll
+come aboard at nine, won&#8217;t you, and help run up the Jolly Roger? I think
+I smell pieces-of-eight in the air! And, by the way, Miss Trescott says
+for me to assure you that her vertigo, which she had for the first time
+in her life, is gone, and she never felt better.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As Mr. Elkins passed from our parlor, he let in a bell-boy with the card
+of Mr. Clifford Giddings, representing the Lattimore Morning <i>Herald</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;See him down in the lobby,&#8221; said Alice.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I want a story,&#8221; said he as we met, &#8220;on the city and its future. The
+<i>Herald</i> readers will be glad of anything from Mr. Barslow, whose coming
+they have so long looked forward to, as intimately connected with the
+city&#8217;s development.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;My dear sir,&#8221; I replied, somewhat astonished at the importance which he
+was pleased to attach to my arrival, &#8220;abstractly, my removal to
+Lattimore is my best testimony on that; concretely, I ought to ask
+information of you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We sat down in a corner of the lobby, our chairs side by side, facing
+opposite ways. He lighted a cigar, and gave me one. In looks he was
+young; in behavior he had the self-possession and poise of maturity. He
+wore a long mackintosh which sparkled with mist. His slouch hat looked
+new and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_80" id="pg_80">80</a></span> was carefully dinted. His dress was almost natty in an
+unconventional way, and his manners accorded with his garb. He acted as
+if for years we had casually met daily. His tone and attitude evinced
+respect, was entirely free from presumption, equally devoid of reserve,
+carried with it no hint of familiarity, but assumed a perfect
+understanding. The barrier which usually keeps strangers apart he
+neither broke down, which must have been offensive, nor overleaped,
+which would have been presumptuous. He covered it with that demeanor of
+his, and together we sat down upon it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I thought the <i>Herald</i> was an evening paper,&#8221; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It was, in the days of yore,&#8221; he replied; &#8220;but Mr. Elkins happened to
+see me in Chicago one day, and advised me to come out and look the old
+thing over with a view to purchasing the plant. You observe the result.
+As fellow immigrants, I hope there will be a bond of sympathy between
+us. You think, of course, that Lattimore is a coming city?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Its geographical situation seems to render its development inevitable,
+doesn&#8217;t it? And,&#8221; he went on, &#8220;the railway conditions seem peculiarly
+promising just now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said I, &#8220;but the natural resources of the city and the
+surrounding country appeal most strongly to me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They are certainly very exceptional, aren&#8217;t they?&#8221; said he, as if the
+matter had never occurred to him before. Then he went on telling me
+things, more<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_81" id="pg_81">81</a></span> than asking questions, about the jobbing trades, the brick
+and tile and associated industries, the cement factory, which he spoke
+of as if actually <i>in esse</i>, the projected elevators, the
+flouring-mills, and finally returned to railway matters.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What is your opinion of the Lattimore &amp; Great Western, Mr. Barslow?&#8221; he
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I cannot say that I have any,&#8221; I answered, &#8220;except that its
+construction would bring great good to Lattimore.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It could scarcely fail,&#8221; said he, &#8220;to bring in two or three systems
+which we now lack, could it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I very sincerely said that I did not know. After a few more questions
+concerning our plans for the future, Mr. Giddings vanished into the
+night, silently, as an autumn leaf parting from its bough. I thought of
+him no more until I unfolded the <i>Herald</i> in the morning as we sat at
+breakfast, and saw that my interview was made a feature of the day&#8217;s
+news.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Albert F. Barslow,&#8221; it read, &#8220;of the firm of Elkins &amp; Barslow, is
+stopping at the Centropolis. He arrived by the 6:15 train last evening,
+and with his family has taken a suite of rooms pending the erection of a
+residence. They have not definitely decided as to the location of their
+new home; but it may confidently be stated that they will build
+something which will be a notable addition to the architectural beauties
+of Lattimore&mdash;already proud of her title, the City of Homes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am very glad to know about this,&#8221; said Alice.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Your man Giddings has nerve, whatever else he may lack,&#8221; said I to the
+smiling Elkins across the table.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_82" id="pg_82">82</a></span> &#8220;Am I obliged to make good all these
+representations? I ask, that I may know the rules of the game, merely.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;One rule is that you mustn&#8217;t deny any accusations of future
+magnificence, for two reasons: they may come true, and they help things
+on. You are supposed to have left your modesty in cold storage
+somewhere. Read on.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Barslow,&#8221; I read, &#8220;has long been a most potent political factor in
+his native state, but is, first of all, a business man. He brings his
+charming young wife&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Really, a most discriminating journalist,&#8221; interjected Alice.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&mdash;and social circles, as well as the business world, will find them a
+most desirable accession to Lattimore&#8217;s population.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why this is absolute, slavish devotion to facts,&#8221; said Jim; &#8220;where does
+the word-painting come in?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Here it is,&#8221; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Barslow is some years under middle age, and looks the intense
+modern business man in every feature. His mind seems to have already
+become saturated with the conception of the enormous possibilities of
+Lattimore. He impresses those who have met him as one of the few men
+capable of pulling his share in double harness with James R. Elkins.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The fellow piles it on a little strong at times, doesn&#8217;t he, Mrs.
+Barslow?&#8221; said Jim.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He brings to our city,&#8221; I read on, &#8220;his vigorous mind, his fortune, and
+a determination never to rest until the city passes the 100,000 mark. To
+a <i>Herald</i> representative, last night, he spoke strongly and eloquently
+of our great natural resources.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_83" id="pg_83">83</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then followed a skillfully handled expansion of our <i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i> talk
+in the lobby.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Barslow,&#8221; the report went on, &#8220;very courteously declined to discuss
+the L. &amp; G. W. situation. It seems evident, however, from remarks
+dropped by him, that he regards the construction of this road as
+inevitable, and as a project which, successfully carried out, cannot
+fail to make Lattimore the point to which all the Western and
+Southwestern systems of railways must converge.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re doing it like a veteran!&#8221; cried Jim. &#8220;Admirable! Just the proper
+infusion of mystery; I couldn&#8217;t have done better myself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Credit it all to Giddings,&#8221; I protested. &#8220;And note that the center of
+the stage is reserved to our mysterious fellow lodger and co-arrival.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I saw that,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;Isn&#8217;t Giddings a peach? Let Mrs. Barslow
+hear it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She ought to be able to hear these headlines,&#8221; said I, &#8220;without any
+reading: &#8216;J. Bedford Cornish arrives! Wall Street&#8217;s Millions On the
+Ground in the Person of One of Her Great Financiers! Bull Movement in
+Real Estate Noted Last Night! Does He Represent the Great Railway
+Interests?&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Real estate and financial circles,&#8221; ran the article under these
+headlines, &#8220;are thrown into something of a fever by the arrival, on the
+6:15 express last evening, of a gentleman of distinguished appearance,
+who took five rooms <i>en suite</i> on the second floor of the Centropolis,
+and registered in a bold hand as J. Bedford Cornish, of New York. Mr.
+Cornish consented to see a <i>Herald</i> representative last night, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_84" id="pg_84">84</a></span> was
+very reticent as to his plans and the objects of his visit. He simply
+says that he represents capital seeking investment. He would not admit
+that he is connected with any of the great railway interests, or that
+his visit has any relation to the building of the Lattimore &amp; Great
+Western. The <i>Herald</i> is able to say, however, that its New York
+correspondent informs it that Mr. Cornish is a member of the firm of
+Lusch, Carskaddan &amp; Mayer, of Wall Street. This firm is well known as
+one of the concerns handling large amounts of European capital, and said
+to be intimately associated with the Rothschilds. Financial journals
+have recently noted the fact that these concerns are becoming
+embarrassed by the plethora of funds seeking investment, and are turning
+their attention to the development of railway systems and cities in the
+United States. Their South American and Australian investments have not
+proven satisfactory, especially the former, owing to the character of
+the people of Latin America. It has been pointed out that no real-estate
+investment can be more than moderately profitable in climates which
+render the people content with a mere living, and that the restless and
+unsatisfied vigor of the Anglo-Saxon alone can make lands and railways
+permanently remunerative. Mr. Cornish admitted these facts when they
+were pointed out to him, and immediately changed the subject.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Cornish is a very handsome and opulent-looking gentleman, and seems
+to live in a style somewhat luxurious for the Occident. He has a colored
+body-servant, who seems to reflect the mystery of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_85" id="pg_85">85</a></span> his master; but if he
+has any other reflections, the <i>Herald</i> is none the wiser for them.
+Admittance to the suite of rooms was obtained by sending in the
+reporter&#8217;s card, which vanished into a sybaritic gloom, borne on a
+golden salver. Mr. Cornish seems to be very exclusive, his meals being
+served in his rooms; and even his barber has instructions to call upon
+him each morning. One wonders why the barber is called in so frequently,
+until one marks the smooth-shaven cheeks above the close-clipped,
+pointed, black, Vandyke beard. He is withal very cordial and courtly in
+his manners.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;James R. Elkins, when seen last evening, refused to talk, except to say
+that, in financial circles, it has been known for some days that
+important developments may be now momently expected, and that some such
+thing as the visit of Mr. Cornish was imminent. Captain Marion Tolliver
+expressed himself freely, and to the effect that this mysterious visit
+is of the utmost importance to Lattimore, and a thing of national if not
+world-wide importance.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Now, that justifies my confidence in Giddings,&#8221; said Mr. Elkins,
+&#8220;fulfilling at the same time the requirements of journalism and
+hypnotism. Come, Al, our bark is on the sea, our boat is on the shore.
+The Spanish galleons are even now hiding in the tall grass, in
+expectation of our cruise. Let us hence to the office!&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_86" id="pg_86">86</a></span>
+<a name="I_Go_Aboard_and_We_Unfurl_the_Jolly_Roger_2453" id="I_Go_Aboard_and_We_Unfurl_the_Jolly_Roger_2453"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER IX.</p>
+<p class="l c">I Go Aboard and We Unfurl the Jolly Roger.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&#8220;We must act, and act at once!&#8221; said the Captain, his voice thrilling
+with intensity. &#8220;This piece of property will be gone befo&#8217; night! All it
+takes is a paltry three thousand dolla&#8217;s, and within ninety days&mdash;no man
+can say what its value will be. We can plat it, and within ten days we
+may have ouah money back. Allow me to draw on you fo&#8217; three thou&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But,&#8221; said I, &#8220;I can make no move in such a matter at this time without
+conference with Mr.&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Very well, suh, very well!&#8221; said the Captain, regarding me with a look
+that showed how much better things he had expected of me. &#8220;Opportunity,
+suh, knocks once&mdash;By the way, excuse me, suh!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And he darted from the office, took the trail of Mr. Macdonald, whom he
+had seen passing, brought him to bay in front of the post-office, and
+dragged him away to some doom, the nature of which I could only surmise.</p>
+
+<p>This took place on the morning of my first day with Elkins &amp; Barslow. I
+was to take up the office work.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_87" id="pg_87">87</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That will be easy for you from the first,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;Your experience
+as rob-ee down there in Posey County makes you a sort of specialist in
+that sort of thing; and pretty soon all other things shall be added unto
+it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Captain&#8217;s onslaught in the first half-hour admonished me that a good
+deal was already added to it. On that very day, too, we had our first
+conference with Mr. Hinckley. We wanted to handle securities, said Mr.
+Elkins, and should have a great many of them, and that was quite in Mr.
+Hinckley&#8217;s line. To carry them ourselves would soon absorb all our
+capital. We must liberate it by floating the commercial paper which we
+took in. Mr. Hinckley&#8217;s bank was known to be strong, his standing was of
+the highest, and a trust company in alliance with him could not fail to
+find a good market for its paper. With an old banker&#8217;s timidity,
+Hinckley seemed to hesitate; yet the prospects seemed so good that I
+felt that this consent was sure to be given. Jim courted him
+assiduously, and the intimacy between him and the Hinckley family became
+noticeable.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Jim,&#8221; said I, one day, &#8220;you have an unerring eye for the pleasant
+things of life. I couldn&#8217;t help thinking of this to-day when I saw you
+for the twentieth time spinning along the street in Miss Hinckley&#8217;s
+carriage, beside its owner. She&#8217;s one of the handsomest girls, in her
+flaxen-haired way, that I know of.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Isn&#8217;t she a study in curves and pink and white?&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;And she
+understands this trust company business as well as her father.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_88" id="pg_88">88</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The trust company&#8217;s stock, he went on to explain, ignoring Antonia,
+seemed to be already oversubscribed. Our firm, Hinckley, and Jim&#8217;s
+Chicago and New York friends, including Harper, all stood ready to take
+blocks of it, and there was no reason for requiring Hinckley to put much
+actual money in for this. He could pay for it out of his profits soon,
+and make a fortune without any outlay. Good credit was the prime
+necessity, and that Mr. Hinckley certainly had. So the celebrated Grain
+Belt Trust Company was begun&mdash;a name about which such mighty interests
+were to cluster, that I know I should have shrunk from the
+responsibility had I known what a gigantic thing we were creating.</p>
+
+<p>As the days wore on, Captain Tolliver&#8217;s dementia spread and raged
+virulently. The dark-visaged Cornish, with his air of mystery, his
+habits so at odds with the society of Lattimore, was in the very focus
+of attention.</p>
+
+<p>For a day or so, the effect which Mr. Giddings&#8217;s report attributed to
+his invasion failed to disclose itself to me. Then the delirium became
+manifest, and swept over the town like a were-wolf delusion through a
+medieval village.</p>
+
+<p>Its immediate occasion seemed to be a group of real-estate conveyances,
+announced in the <i>Herald</i> one morning, surpassing in importance anything
+in the history of the town. Some of the lands transferred were acreage;
+some were waste and vacant tracts along Brushy Creek and the river; one
+piece was a suburban farm; but the mass of it was along Main Street and
+in the business district.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_89" id="pg_89">89</a></span> The grantees were for the most part strange
+names in Lattimore, some individuals, some corporations. All the sales
+were at prices hitherto unknown. It was to be remarked, too, that in
+most cases the property had been purchased not long before, by some of
+the group of newer comers and at the old modest prices. Our firm seemed
+to have profited heavily in these transactions, as had Captain Tolliver
+also. We of the &#8220;new crowd&#8221; had begun our mock-trading to &#8220;establish the
+market.&#8221; Prices were going up, up; and all one had to do was to buy
+to-day and sell to-morrow. Real values, for actual use, seemed to be
+forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>The most memorable moment in this first, acutest stage in our
+development was one bright day, within a week or so of our coming. The
+lawns were taking on their summer emerald, robins were piping in the
+maples, and down in the cottonwoods and lindens on the river front crows
+and jays were jargoning their immemorial and cheery lingo. Surveyors
+were running lines and making plats in the suburbs, peeped at by
+gophers, and greeted by the roundelays of meadow-larks. But on the
+street-corners, in the offices of lawyers and real-estate agents, and in
+the lobbies of the hotels, the trading was lively.</p>
+
+<p>Then for the first time the influx of real buyers from the outside
+became noticeable. The landlord of the Centropolis could scarcely care
+for his guests. They talked of blocks, quarter-blocks, and the choice
+acreage they had bought, and of the profits they had made in this and
+other cities and towns (where this same speculative fever was epidemic),
+until Alice<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_90" id="pg_90">90</a></span> fled to the Trescott farm&mdash;as she said, to avoid the
+mixture of real estate with her meals. The telegraph offices were gorged
+with messages to non-resident property owners, begging for prices on
+good inside lots. Staid, slow-going lot-owners, who had grown old in
+patiently paying taxes on patches of dog-fennel and sand-burrs, dazedly
+vacillated between acceptance and rejection of tempting propositions,
+dreading the missing of the chance so long awaited, fearing misjudgment
+as to the height of the wave, dreading a future of regret at having sold
+too low.</p>
+
+<p>One of these, an old woman, toothless and bent, hobbled to our office
+and asked for Mr. Elkins. He was busy, and so I received her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s about that quarter-block with the Donegal ruin on it,&#8221; said Jim;
+&#8220;the one I showed you yesterday. Offer her five thousand, one-fourth
+down, balance in one, two, and three years, eight per cent.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wanted to ask Mr. Elkins about me home,&#8221; said she. &#8220;I tuk in washin&#8217;
+to buy it, an&#8217; me son, poor Patsy, God rist &#8217;is soul, he helped wid th&#8217;
+bit of money from the Brotherhood, whin he was kilt betune the cars. It
+was sivin hundred an&#8217; fifty dollars, an&#8217; now Thronson offers me four
+thousan&#8217;. I told him I&#8217;d sell, fer it&#8217;s a fortune for a workin&#8217; woman;
+but befure I signed papers, I wanted to ask Mr. Elkins; he&#8217;s such a
+fair-spoken man, an&#8217; knowin&#8217; to me min-folks in Peoria.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you want to sell, Mrs. Collins,&#8221; said I, &#8220;we will take your property
+at five thousand dollars.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_91" id="pg_91">91</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She started, and regarded me, first in amazement, then with distrust,
+shading off into hostility.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thank ye kindly, sir,&#8221; said she; &#8220;I&#8217;ll be goin&#8217; now. I&#8217;ve med up me
+moind, if that bit of land is wort all that money t&#8217; yees, it&#8217;s wort
+more to me. Thank ye kindly!&#8221; and she fled from the presence of the
+tempter.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The town is full of Biddy Collinses,&#8221; commented Jim. &#8220;Well, we can&#8217;t
+land everything, and couldn&#8217;t handle the catch if we did. In fact, for
+present purposes, isn&#8217;t it better to have her refuse?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This incident was the hint upon which our &#8220;Syndicate,&#8221; as it came to be
+called, acted from time to time, in making fabulous offers to every
+Biddy Collins in town. &#8220;Offer twenty thousand,&#8221; Jim would say. &#8220;The more
+you bid the less apt is he to accept; he&#8217;s a Biddy Collins.&#8221; And
+whatever Mr. Elkins advised was done.</p>
+
+<p>There were eight or ten of us in the &#8220;Syndicate,&#8221; dubbed by Jim &#8220;The
+Crew,&#8221; among whom were Tolliver, Macdonald, and Will Lattimore. But the
+inner circle, now drawing closer and closer together, were Elkins, our
+ruling spirit; Hinckley, our great force in the banking world; and
+myself. Soon, I was given to understand, Mr. Cornish was to take his
+place as one of us. He and Jim had long known each other, and Mr. Elkins
+had the utmost confidence in Mr. Cornish&#8217;s usefulness in what he called
+&#8220;the thought-transference department.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Elkins &amp; Barslow kept their offices open night and day, almost, and the
+number of typewriters and bookkeepers grew astoundingly. I became almost
+a<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_92" id="pg_92">92</a></span> stranger to my wife. I got hurried glimpses of Miss Trescott and her
+mother at the hotel, and knew that she and Alice were becoming fast
+friends; but so far the social prominence which the <i>Herald</i> had
+predicted for us had failed to arrive.</p>
+
+<p>This, to be sure, was our own fault. Miss Addison soon gave us up as not
+available for the church and Sunday-school functions to which she
+devoted herself. Her family connections would have made her <i>the</i> social
+leader had it not been for the severity of her views and her assumption
+of the character of the devotee&mdash;in spite of which she protestingly went
+almost everywhere. Antonia Hinckley, however, was frankly fond of a good
+time, and with her dashing and almost hoydenish character easily took
+the leadership from Miss Addison; and Miss Hinckley sought diligently
+for means by which we could be properly launched. As I left the office
+one day, a voice from the curb called my name. It was Miss Hinckley in a
+smart trap, to which was harnessed a beautiful horse, standard bred, one
+could see at a glance. I obeyed the summons, and stepped beside the
+equipage.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I want to scold you,&#8221; said she. &#8220;Society is being defrauded of the good
+things which your coming promised. Have you taken a vow of seclusion, or
+what?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve been spinning about in the maelstrom of business,&#8221; I replied. &#8220;But
+do not be uneasy; some time we shall take up the matter of inflicting
+ourselves, and pursue it as vigorously as we now follow our vocation.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_93" id="pg_93">93</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wouldn&#8217;t you like to get into the trap, and take a spin of another
+sort?&#8221; said she. &#8220;I&#8217;ll deposit you safely with Mrs. Barslow in time for
+tea.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I got in, glad of the drive, and for ten minutes her horse was sent at
+such a pace that conversation was difficult. Then he was slowed down to
+a walk, his head toward home. We chatted of casual things&mdash;the scenery,
+the horse, the splendid color of the sunset. I was becoming interested
+in her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I had almost forgotten that there were such things in Lattimore,&#8221; said
+I, referring to the topics of our talk. &#8220;I have become so saturated with
+lands and lots.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know much about business,&#8221; said she, &#8220;and I think I&#8217;ll improve
+my opportunity by learning something. And, first, aren&#8217;t men sometimes
+losers by the dishonesty of those who act for them&mdash;agents, they are
+called, aren&#8217;t they?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Such, I admitted, was unfortunately the case.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I should be sorry for&mdash;any one I liked&mdash;to be injured in such a way....
+Now you must understand how the things you men are interested in
+permeate the society of us women. Why, mamma has almost forgotten the
+enslavement of our sex, in these new things which have changed our old
+town so much; so you mustn&#8217;t wonder if I have heard something of a
+purely business nature. I heard that Captain Tolliver was about to sell
+Mr. Elkins the land where the old foundry is, over there, for twenty
+thousand dollars. Now, papa says it isn&#8217;t worth it; and I know&mdash;Sadie
+Allen and I were in school together, and she comes over from Fairchild
+several times a<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_94" id="pg_94">94</a></span> year to see me, and I go there, you know; and that land
+is in her father&#8217;s estate&mdash;I know that the executor has told Captain
+Tolliver to sell it for ever so much less than that. And it seemed so
+funny, as the Captain was doing the business for both sides&mdash;isn&#8217;t it
+odd, now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It does seem so,&#8221; said I, &#8220;and it is very kind of you. I&#8217;ll talk with
+Mr. Elkins about it. Please be careful, Miss Hinckley, or you&#8217;ll drop
+the wheel in that washout!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She reined up her horse and began speeding him again. I could see that
+this conversation had embarrassed her somehow. Her color was high, and
+her grip of the reins not so steady as at starting. This attempt to do
+Jim a favor was something she considered as of a good deal of
+consequence. I began to note more and more what a really splendid woman
+she was&mdash;tall, fair, her tailor-made gown rounding to the full, firm
+curves of her figure, her fearless horsemanship hinting at the
+possession of large and positive traits of character.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We women,&#8221; said she, &#8220;might as well abandon all the things commonly
+known as feminine. What good do they do us?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They gratify your sense of the beautiful,&#8221; suggested I.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You know, Mr. Barslow,&#8221; said she, &#8220;that it&#8217;s not our own sense of the
+beautiful, mainly, that we seek to gratify; and if the eyes for which
+they are intended are looking into ledgers and blind to everything
+except dollar-signs, what&#8217;s the use?&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_95" id="pg_95">95</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Go down to the seashore,&#8221; said I, &#8220;where the people congregate who have
+nothing to do.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not I,&#8221; said she; &#8220;I&#8217;ll go into real estate, and become as blind as the
+rest!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jim paid no attention to my chaffing when I spoke of his conquest, as I
+called Antonia. In fact, he seemed annoyed, and for a long time said
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You can see how the Allen estate proposition stands,&#8221; said he, at last.
+&#8220;To let that sell for less than twenty thousand might cost us ten times
+that amount in lowering the prevailing standard of values. The old rule
+that we should buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest is
+suspended. Base is the slave who pays&mdash;less than the necessary and
+proper increase.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_96" id="pg_96">96</a></span>
+<a name="We_Dedicate_Lynhurst_Park_2723" id="We_Dedicate_Lynhurst_Park_2723"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER X.</p>
+<p class="l c">We Dedicate Lynhurst Park.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Hindu adept sometimes suspends before the eyes of his subject a
+bright ball of carnelian or crystal, in the steady contemplation of
+which the sensitive swims off into the realms of subjectivity&mdash;that
+mysterious bourn from whence no traveler brings anything back. J.
+Bedford Cornish was Mr. Elkins&#8217;s glittering ball; his psychic subject
+was the world in general and Lattimore in particular. Scientific
+principles, confirmed by experience, led us to the conclusion that the
+attitude of fixed contemplation carried with it some nervous strain,
+ought to be of limited duration, and hence that Mr. Cornish should
+remove from our midst the glittering mystery of his presence, lest
+familiarity should breed contempt. So in about ten days he went away,
+giving to the <i>Herald</i> a parting interview, in which he expressed
+unbounded delight with Lattimore, and hinted that he might return for a
+longer stay. Editorially, the <i>Herald</i> expressed the hope that this
+characteristically veiled allusion to a longer sojourn might mean that
+Mr. Cornish had some idea of becoming a citizen of Lattimore. This would
+denote, the editorial continued,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_97" id="pg_97">97</a></span> that men like Mr. Cornish, accustomed
+to the mighty world-pulse of New York, could find objects of pursuit
+equally worthy in Lattimore.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Which is mixed metaphor,&#8221; Mr. Giddings admitted in confidence; &#8220;but,&#8221;
+he continued, &#8220;if metaphors, like drinks, happen to be more potent
+mixed, the <i>Herald</i> proposes to mix &#8217;em.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>All these things consumed time, and still our life was one devoted to
+business exclusively. At last Mr. Elkins himself, urged, I feel sure, by
+Antonia Hinckley, gave evidence of weariness.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Al,&#8221; said he one day, &#8220;don&#8217;t you think it&#8217;s about time to go ashore for
+a carouse?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Unless something in the way of a let-up comes soon,&#8221; said I, &#8220;the
+position of lieutenant, or first mate, or whatever my job is piratically
+termed, will become vacant. The pace is pretty rapid. Last night I
+dreamed that the new Hotel Elkins was founded on my chest; and I have
+had troubles enough of the same kind before to show me that my nervous
+system is slowly ravelling out.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have arrangements made, in my mind, for a sort of al fresco function,
+to come off about the time Cornish gets back with our London visitor,&#8221;
+he replied, &#8220;which ought to knit up the ravelled sleeve better than new.
+I&#8217;m going to dedicate Lynhurst Park to the nymphs and deities of
+sport&mdash;which wrinkled care derides.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I hadn&#8217;t heard of Lynhurst Park,&#8221; I was forced to say. &#8220;I&#8217;m curious to
+know, first, who named it, and, second, where it is.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Didn&#8217;t I show you those blueprints?&#8221; he asked.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_98" id="pg_98">98</a></span> &#8220;An oversight I assure
+you. As for the scheme, you suggested it yourself that night we first
+drove out to Trescott&#8217;s. Don&#8217;t you remember saying something about
+&#8216;breathing space for the populace&#8217;? Well, I had the surveys made at
+once; contracted for the land, all but what Bill owns of it, which we&#8217;ll
+have to get later; and had a landscapist out from Chicago to direct us
+as to what we ought to admire in improving the place. As for the name,
+I&#8217;m indebted to kind nature, which planted the valley in basswood, and
+to Josie, who contributed the philological knowledge and the taste.
+That&#8217;s the street-car line,&#8221; said he, unrolling an elaborate plat and
+pointing. &#8220;We may throw it over to the west to develop section seven, if
+we close for it. Otherwise, that line is the very thing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Our street-railway franchise had been granted by the Lattimore city
+council&mdash;they would have granted the public square, had we asked for it
+in the potent name of &#8220;progress&#8221;&mdash;and Cornish was even now making
+arrangements for placing our bonds. The impossible of less than a year
+ago was now included in the next season&#8217;s program, as an inconsiderable
+feature of a great project for a street-railway system, and the
+&#8220;development&#8221; of hundreds of acres of land.</p>
+
+<p>The place so to be named Lynhurst Park was most agreeably reached by a
+walk up Brushy Creek from Lattimore. Such a stroll took one into the
+gorge, where the rocks shelved toward each other, until their crowning
+fringes of cedar almost interlocked, like the eyelashes of drowsiness.
+Down<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_99" id="pg_99">99</a></span> there in the twilight one felt a sense of being defrauded, in
+contemplation of the fact that the stream was troutless: it was such an
+ideal place for trout. The quiet and mellow gloom made the gorge a
+favorite trysting-place, and perhaps the cool-blooded stream-folk had
+fled from the presence of the more fervid dwellers on the banks. In the
+crevices of the rocks were the nests of the village pigeons. The
+combined effects of all these causes was to make this a spot devoted to
+billing and cooing.</p>
+
+<p>Farther up the stream the rock walls grew lower and parted wider,
+islanding a rich bottom of lush grass-plot, alternating with groves of
+walnut, linden, and elm. This was the Lynhurst Park of the blueprints
+and plats. Trescott&#8217;s farm lay on the right bank, and others on either
+side; but the houses were none of them near the stream, and the entire
+walk was wild and woodsy-looking. None but nature-lovers came that way.
+Others drove out by the road past Trescott&#8217;s, seeing more of corn and
+barn, but less of rock, moss, and fern.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cornish was to return on Friday with the Honorable De Forest
+Barr-Smith, who lived in London and &#8220;represented English capital.&#8221; To us
+Westerners the very hyphen of his name spoke eloquently of &pound; s. d.
+Through him we hoped to get the money to build that street railway.
+Cornish had written that Mr. Barr-Smith wanted to look the thing over
+personally; and that, given the element of safety, his people would much
+prefer an investment of a million to one of ten thousand. Cornish
+further hinted that the London gentleman acted<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_100" id="pg_100">100</a></span> like a man who wanted a
+side interest in the construction company; as to which he would sound
+him further by the way.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;ll expect something in the way of birds and bottles,&#8221; observed
+Elkins; &#8220;but they won&#8217;t mix with the general society of this town, where
+the worm of the still is popularly supposed to be the original Edenic
+tempter. And he&#8217;ll want to inspect Lynhurst Park. I want him to see our
+beauty and our chivalry,&mdash;meaning the ladies and Captain Tolliver,&mdash;and
+the rest of our best people. I guess we&#8217;ll have to make it a temperate
+sort of orgy, making up in the spectacular what it lacks in
+spirituousness.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cornish came, gradually moulting his mystery; but still far above
+the Lattimore standard in dress and style of living. In truth, he always
+had a good deal of the swell in his make-up, and can almost be acquitted
+of deceit in the impressions conveyed at his coming. The Honorable De
+Forest Barr-Smith fraternized with Cornish, as he could with no one
+else. No one looking at Mr. Cornish could harbor a doubt as to his
+morning tub; and his evening dress was always correct. With Jim, Mr.
+Barr-Smith went into the discussion of business propositions freely and
+confidentially. I feel sure that had he greatly desired a candid
+statement of the very truth as to local views, or the exact judgment of
+one on the spot, he would have come to me. But between him and Cornish
+there was the stronger sympathy of a common understanding of the occult
+intricacies of clothes, and a view-point as to the surface of things,
+embracing manifold points of agreement. Cornish&#8217;s<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_101" id="pg_101">101</a></span> unerring conformity
+of vogue in the manner and as to the occasion of wearing the tuxedo or
+the claw-hammer coat was clearly restful to Mr. Barr-Smith, in this new
+and strange country, where, if danger was to be avoided, things had to
+be approached with distended nostril and many preliminary snuffings of
+the wind.</p>
+
+<p>There came with these two a younger brother of Mr. Barr-Smith, Cecil&mdash;a
+big young civil engineer, just out of college, and as like his brother
+in accent and dress as could be expected of one of his years; but
+national characteristics are matters of growth, and college boys all
+over the world are a good deal alike. Cecil Barr-Smith, with his red
+mustache, his dark eyes, and his six feet of British brawn, was nearer
+in touch with our younger people that first day than his honorable
+brother ever became. To Antonia, especially, he took kindly, and
+respectfully devoted himself.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;At this distance,&#8221; said Mr. Barr-Smith, as he saw his brother sitting
+on the grass at Miss Hinckley&#8217;s feet, &#8220;I&#8217;d think them brother and
+sister. She resembles sister Gritty remarkably; the same complexion and
+the same style, you know. Quite so!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Lynhurst function was the real introduction of these three gentlemen
+to Lattimore society. I knew nothing of the arrangements, except what I
+could deduce from Jim&#8217;s volume of business with caterers and other
+handicraftsmen; and I looked forward to the f&ecirc;te with much curiosity.
+The weather, that afternoon, made an outing quite the natural thing; for
+it was hot. The ladies in their<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_102" id="pg_102">102</a></span> most summery gowns fluttered like white
+dryads from shade to shade, uttering bird-like pipings of surprise at
+the preparations made for their entertainment.</p>
+
+<p>The ravine had been transformed. At an available point in its bed Jim
+had thrown a dam across the stream, and a beautiful little lake rippled
+in the breeze, bearing on its bosom a bright-colored boat, which in our
+ignorance of things Venetian we mistakenly dubbed a gondola. At the
+upper end of this water the canvas of a large pavilion gleamed whitely
+through the greenery, displaying from its top the British and American
+flags, their color reflected in a particolored streak on the wimpling
+face of the lake. The groves, in the tops of which the woodpeckers,
+warblers, and vireos disturbedly carried on the imperatively necessary
+work of rearing their broods, were gay with festoons of Chinese lanterns
+in readiness for the evening. Hammocks were slung from tree to tree,
+cushions and seats were arranged in cosy nooks; and when my wife and I
+stepped from our carriage, all these appliances for the utilization of
+shade and leisure were in full use. The &#8220;gondola&#8221; was making, trips from
+the cascade (as the dam was already called) to the pavilion, carrying
+loads of young people from whom came to our ears those peals of
+merriment which have everywhere but one meaning, and that a part of the
+world-old mystery of the way of a man with a maid.</p>
+
+<p>Jim was on the ground early, to receive the guests and keep the
+management in hand. Josie Trescott and her mother walked down through
+the Trescott<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_103" id="pg_103">103</a></span> pasture, and joined Alice and me under one of the splendid
+lindens, where, as we lounged in the shade, the sound of the little
+waterfall filled the spaces in our talk. Long before any one else had
+seen them coming through the trees, Mr. Elkins had spied them, and went
+forward to meet them with something more than the hospitable solicitude
+with which he had met the others. In fact, the principal guests of the
+day had alighted from their carriage before Jim, ensconced in a hammock
+with Josie, was made aware of their arrival. I am not quick to see such
+things; but to my eyes, even, the affair had assumed interest as a sort
+of public flirtation. I had not thought that Josie would so easily fall
+into deportment so distinctly encouraging. She was altogether in a
+surprising mood,&mdash;her eyes shining as with some stimulant, her cheeks a
+little flushed, her lips scarlet, her whole appearance suggesting
+suppressed excitement. And when Jim rose to meet his guests, she
+dismissed him with one of those charmingly inviting glances and gestures
+with which such an adorable woman spins the thread by which the banished
+one is drawn back,&mdash;and then she disappeared until the dinner was
+served.</p>
+
+<p>The green crown of the western hill was throwing its shadow across the
+valley, when Mr. Hinckley came with Mr. Cornish and Mr. Barr-Smith in a
+barouche; followed by Antonia, who brought Mr. Cecil in her trap&mdash;and a
+concomitant thrill to the company. Mr. Cornish, in his dress, had struck
+a happy medium between the habiliments of business and those of sylvan
+recreation. Mr. Barr-Smith<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_104" id="pg_104">104</a></span> on the other hand, was garbed cap-a-pie for
+an outing, presenting an appearance with which the racket, the bat, or
+even the alpenstock might have been conjoined in perfect harmony. As for
+the men of Lattimore, any one of them would as soon have been seen in
+the war-dress of a Sioux chief as in this entirely correct costume of
+our British visitor. We walked about in the every-day vestments of the
+shops, banks, and offices, illustrating the difference between a state
+of society in which apparel is regarded as an incident in life, and one
+rising to the height of realizing its true significance as a religion.
+Mr. Barr-Smith bowed not the knee to the Baal of western
+clothes-monotone, but daily sent out his sartorial orisons, keeping his
+windows open toward the Jerusalem of his London tailor, in a manner
+which would have delighted a Teufelsdr&ouml;ckh.</p>
+
+<p>He was a short man, with protruding cheeks, and a nose ending in an
+amorphous flare of purple and scarlet. His mustache, red like that of
+his brother, and constituting the only point of physical resemblance
+between them, grew down over a receding chin, being forced thereto by
+the bulbous overhang of the nose. He had rufous side-whiskers, clipped
+moderately close, and carroty hair mixed with gray. His erect shoulders
+and straight back were a little out of keeping with the rotundity of his
+figure in other respects; but the combination, hinting, as it did, of
+affairs both gastronomic and martial, taken with a manner at once
+dignified, formal, and suave, constituted the most intensely respectable
+appearance I ever saw. To the imagination<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_105" id="pg_105">105</a></span> of Lattimore he represented
+everything of which, Cornish fell short, piling Lombard upon Wall
+Street.</p>
+
+<p>The arrival of these gentlemen was the signal for gathering in the
+pavilion where dinner was served. The tables were arranged in a great L,
+at the apex of which sat Jim and the distinguished guests. On one side
+of him sat Mr. Barr-Smith, who listened absorbedly to the conversation
+of Mrs. Hinckley, filling every pause with a husky &#8220;Quite so!&#8221; On the
+other sat Josie Trescott, who was smiling upon a very tall and spare old
+man who wore a beautiful white mustache and imperial. I had never met
+him, but I knew him for General Lattimore. His fondness for Josie was
+well known; and to him Jim attributed that young lady&#8217;s lack of
+enthusiasm over our schemes for city-building. His presence at this
+gathering was somewhat of a surprise to me.</p>
+
+<p>Antonia and Cecil Barr-Smith, the Tollivers, Mr. Hinckley and Alice,
+myself, Mr. Giddings, and Miss Addison sat across the table from the
+host. Mrs. Trescott, after expressing wonder at the changes wrought in
+the ravine, and confiding to me her disapproval of the useless expense,
+had returned to the farm, impelled by that habitual feeling that
+something was wrong there. Mr. Giddings was exceedingly attentive to
+Miss Addison.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know why you&#8217;re trying to look severe,&#8221; said he to her, as the
+consomm&eacute; was served; &#8220;and it&#8217;s the only thing I can imagine you making a
+failure of, unless it would be looking anything but pretty.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_106" id="pg_106">106</a></span> But you are
+trying it, and I know why. You think they ought to have had some one say
+grace before pulling this thing off.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not trying to look&mdash;anyhow,&#8221; she answered. &#8220;But you are right in
+thinking that I believe such duties should not be transgressed, for fear
+that the world may call us provincial or old-fashioned.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And she shot a glance at Cornish and Barr-Smith as the visible
+representatives of the &#8220;world.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t listen to that age-old clash between fervor and unregeneracy,&#8221;
+said Josie across the narrow table, her remarks made possible by the
+music of the orchestra, &#8220;but tell us about Mr. Barr-Smith and&mdash;the other
+gentlemen.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wanted to ask you about the Britons,&#8221; said I; &#8220;are they good
+specimens of the men you saw in England?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;An art-student, with a consciousness of guilt in slowly eating up the
+year&#8217;s shipment of steers, isn&#8217;t likely to know much more of the
+Barr-Smiths&#8217; London than she can see from the street. But I think them
+fine examples of not very rare types. I should like to try drawing the
+elder brother!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Before he goes away, I predict&mdash;&#8221; I began, when my villainous pun was
+arrested in mid-utterance by the voice of Captain Tolliver, suddenly
+becoming the culminating peak in the table-talk.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The Anglo-Saxon, suh,&#8221; he was saying, &#8220;is found in his greatest purity
+of blood in ouah Southe&#8216;n states. It is thah, suh, that those qualities
+of virility and capacity fo&#8217; rulership which make the race<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_107" id="pg_107">107</a></span> what is ah
+found in theiah highest development&mdash;on this side of the watah, suh, on
+this side!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Quite so! I dare say, quite so!&#8221; responded Mr. Barr-Smith. &#8220;I hope to
+know the people of the South better. In fact, I may say, really, you
+know, an occasion like this gives one the desire to become acquainted
+with the whole American people.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>General Lattimore, whose nostrils flared as he leaned forward listening,
+like an opponent in a debate, to the remarks of Captain Tolliver,
+subsided as he heard the Englishman&#8217;s diplomatic reply.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s the use?&#8221; said he to Josie. &#8220;He may be nearer right than I can
+understand.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We hope,&#8221; said Mr. Elkins, &#8220;that this desire may be focalized locally,
+and grow to anything short of a disease. I assure you, Lattimore will
+congratulate herself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Barr-Smith&#8217;s fingers sought his glass, as if the impulse were on him
+to propose a toast; but the liquid facilities being absent, he relapsed
+into a conversation with Mrs. Hinckley.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d say those things, too, if I were in his place,&#8221; came the words of
+Giddings, overshooting their mark, the ear of Miss Addison; &#8220;but it&#8217;s
+all rot. He&#8217;s disgusted with the whole barbarous outfit of us.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am becoming curious,&#8221; was the <i>sotto voce</i> reply, &#8220;to know upon what
+model you found your conduct, Mr. Giddings.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know what you mean,&#8221; said Mr. Giddings. &#8220;But I have adopted Iago.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, Mr. Giddings! How shocking! Iago&mdash;&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_108" id="pg_108">108</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Now, don&#8217;t be horrified,&#8221; said Giddings, with an air of candor, &#8220;but
+look at it from a practical standpoint. If Othello hadn&#8217;t been such a
+fool, Iago would have made his point all right. He had a right to be
+sore at Othello for promoting Cassio over his head, and his scheme was a
+good one, if Othello hadn&#8217;t gone crazy. Iago is dominated by reason and
+the principle of the survival of the fittest. He is an agreeable
+fellow&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Miss Addison, with a charming mixture of tragedy and archness,
+suppressed this blasphemy by a gesture suggestive of placing her hand
+over the editor&#8217;s mouth.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah, Mrs. Hinckley, you shouldn&#8217;t do us such an injustice!&#8221; It was Mr.
+Cornish, who took the center of the stage now. &#8220;You seem to fail to
+realize the fact that, in any given gathering, the influence of woman is
+dominant; and as the entire life of the nation is the sum total of such
+gatherings, woman is already in control. Now how can you fail to admit
+this?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I missed the rather extended reply of Mrs. Hinckley, in noting the
+evident impression made upon the company by this first utterance of the
+mysterious Cornish. It was not what he said: that was not important. It
+was the dark, bearded face, the jetty eyes, and above all, I think, the
+voice, with its clear, carrying quality, combining penetrativeness with
+a repression of force which gave one the feeling of being addressed in
+confidence. Every man, and especially every woman, in the company,
+looked fixedly upon him, until he ceased to speak&mdash;all<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_109" id="pg_109">109</a></span> except Josie.
+She darted at him one look, a mere momentary scrutiny, and as he
+discoursed of woman and her power, she seemed to lose herself in
+contemplation of her plate. The blush upon her cheek became more rosy,
+and a little smile, with something in it which was not of pleasure,
+played about the corners of her mouth. I was about to offer her the
+traditional bargain-counter price for her thoughts, when my attention
+was commanded by Jim&#8217;s voice, answering some remark of Antonia&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This is the merest curtain-riser, just a sort of kick-off,&#8221; he was
+saying. &#8220;In a year or two this valley will be <i>the</i> pleasure-ground of
+all the countryside, a hundred miles around. This tent will be replaced
+by a restaurant and auditorium. The conventions and public gatherings of
+the state will be held here&mdash;there is no other place for &#8217;em; and our
+railway will bring the folks out from town. There will be baseball
+grounds, and facilities for all sorts of sports; and outings and games
+will center here. I promise you the next regatta of the State Rowing
+Association, and a street-car line landing passengers where we now sit.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hear, hear!&#8221; said Mr. Barr-Smith, and the company clapped hands in
+applause.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hinckley was introduced by Jim as &#8220;one who had seen Lynhurst Park
+when it was Indian hunting-ground&#8221;; and made a speech in which he
+welcomed Mr. Cornish as a new citizen who was already prominent. Dining
+in this valley, he said, reminded him of the time when he and two other
+guests now present had, on almost the identical spot, dined on venison<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_110" id="pg_110">110</a></span>
+dressed and cooked where it fell. Then Lattimore was a trading-post on
+the frontier, surrounded by the tepees of Indians, and uncertain as to
+its lease of life. General Lattimore, who shot the deer, or Mr.
+Macdonald, who helped eat it, could either of them tell more about it.
+Mr. Barr-Smith and our other British guest might judge of the rapidity
+of development in this country, where a man may see in his lifetime
+progress which in the older states and countries could be discerned by
+the student of history only.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cornish very briefly thanked Mr. Hinckley for his words of welcome;
+but begged to be excused from making any extended remarks. Deeds were
+rather more in his line than words.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Title-deeds,&#8221; said Giddings under his breath, &#8220;as the real-estate
+transfers show!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>General Lattimore verified Mr. Hinckley&#8217;s statement concerning the meal
+of venison; and, politely expressing pleasure at being present at a
+function which seemed to be regarded as of so much importance to the
+welfare of the town in which he had always taken the pride of a
+godfather, resumed his seat without adding anything to the oratory of
+the boom.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In fact,&#8221; said Captain Tolliver to me, &#8220;I wahned Mr. Elkins against
+having him hyah. In any mattah of progress he&#8217;s a wet blanket, and has
+proved himself such by these remahks.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Barr-Smith, in response to the allusions to him, assured us that the
+presence of people such as he had had the pleasure of meeting in
+Lattimore was sufficient<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_111" id="pg_111">111</a></span> in itself to account for the forward movement
+in the community, which the visitor could not fail to observe.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In a state of society where people are not averse to changing their
+abodes,&#8221; he said, &#8220;and where the social atom, if I may so express
+myself, is in a state of mobility, the presence of such magnets as our
+toastmaster, and the other gentlemen to whose courteous remarks I am
+responding, must draw &#8217;em to themselves, you may be jolly well assured
+of that! And if the gentlemen should fail, the thing which should resist
+the attractive power of the American ladies must be more fixed in its
+habits than even the conservative English gentleman, who prides himself
+upon his stability, er&mdash;ah&mdash;his taking a position and sticking by it, in
+spite of the&mdash;of anything, you know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As his only contribution to the speechmaking, Mr. Cecil Barr-Smith
+greeted this sentiment with a hearty &#8220;Hear, hear!&#8221; He fell into step
+with Antonia as we left the pavilion. Then he went back as if to look
+for something; and I saw Antonia summon Mr. Elkins to her side so that
+she might congratulate him on the success of this &#8220;carouse.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Everything seemed going well. There was, however, in that gathering, as
+in the day, material for a storm, and I, of all those in attendance,
+ought to have seen it, had my memory been as unerring as I thought it.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_112" id="pg_112">112</a></span>
+<a name="The_Empress_and_Sir_John_Meet_Again_3154" id="The_Empress_and_Sir_John_Meet_Again_3154"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER XI.</p>
+<p class="l c">The Empress and Sir John Meet Again.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The company emerged from the tent into the enchanted outdoors of the
+star-dotted valley. The moon rode high, and flooded the glades with
+silvery effulgency. The heat of the day had bred a summer storm-cloud,
+which, all quivery with lightning, seemed sweeping around from the
+northwest to the north, giving us the delicious experience of enjoying
+calm, in view of storm.</p>
+
+<p>The music of the orchestra soon told that the pavilion had been cleared
+for dancing. I heard Giddings urging upon Miss Addison that it would be
+much better for them to walk in the moonlight than to encourage by their
+presence such a worldly amusement, and one in which he had never been
+able to do anything better than fail, anyhow. Sighing her pain at the
+frivolity of the world, she took his arm and strolled away. I noticed
+that she clung closely to him, frightened, I suppose, at the mysterious
+rustlings in the trees, or something.</p>
+
+<p>They made up the dances in such a way as to leave me out. I rather
+wanted to dance with Antonia; but Mr. Cecil was just leaving her in
+disappointment,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_113" id="pg_113">113</a></span> in the possession of Mr. Elkins, when I went for her. I
+decided that a cigar and solitude were rather to be chosen than anything
+else which presented itself, and accordingly I took possession of one of
+the hammocks, in which I lay and smoked, and watched the towering
+thunder-head, as it stood like a mighty and marvelous mountain in the
+northern sky, its rounded and convoluted summits serenely white in the
+moonlight, its mysterious caves palpitant with incessant lightning. The
+soothing of the cigar; the new-made lake reflecting the gleam of
+hundreds of lanterns; the illuminated pavilion, its whirling company of
+dancers seen under the uprolled walls; the night, with its strange
+contrast of a calm southern sky on the one hand pouring down its flood
+of moonlight, and in the north the great mother-of-pearl dome with its
+core of vibrant fire; the dance-music throbbing through the lindens; and
+all this growing out of the unwonted and curious life of the past few
+months, bore to me again that feeling of being yoked with some
+thaumaturge of wondrous power for the working of enchantments. Again I
+seemed in a partnership with Aladdin; and fairy pavilions, sylvan
+paradises, bevies of dancing girls, and princes bearing gifts of gold
+and jewels, had all obeyed our conjuration. I could have walked down to
+the naphtha pleasure-boat and bidden the engineer put me down at
+Khorassan, or some dreamful port of far Cathay, with no sense of
+incongruity.</p>
+
+<p>Two figures came from the tent and walked toward me. As I looked at
+them, myself in darkness, they in the light, I had again that feeling of
+having seen<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_114" id="pg_114">114</a></span> them in some similar way before. That same old sensation,
+thought I, that the analytic novelist made trite ages ago. Then I saw
+that it was Mr. Cornish and Miss Trescott. I could hear them talking;
+but lay still, because I was loth to have my reveries disturbed. And
+besides, to speak would seem an unwarranted assumption of confidential
+relations on their part. They stopped near me.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Your memory is not so good as mine,&#8221; said he. &#8220;I knew you at once. Knew
+you! Why&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not very good at keeping names and faces in mind,&#8221; she replied,
+&#8220;unless they belong to people I have known very well.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Indeed!&#8221; his voice dropped to the &#8216;cello-like undertone now; &#8220;isn&#8217;t
+that a little unkind? I fancied that <i>we</i> knew each other very well! My
+conceit is not to be pandered to, I perceive.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ye-e-s&mdash;does it seem that way?&#8221; said she, ignoring the last remark.
+&#8220;Well, you know it was only for a few days, and you kept calling
+yourself by some ridiculous alias, and scarcely used your surname at
+all, and I believe they called you Johnny&mdash;and you can&#8217;t think what a
+disguise such a beard is! But I remember you now perfectly. It quite
+brings back those short months, when I was so young&mdash;and was finding
+things out! I can see the vine-covered porch, and Madame Lamoreaux&#8217;s
+boarding-house on the South Side&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And the old art gallery?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, there was one, wasn&#8217;t there?&#8221; said she, &#8220;somewhere along the lake
+front, wasn&#8217;t it?... Such a pleasant meeting, and so odd!&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_115" id="pg_115">115</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I sat up in the hammock, and stared at them as they went on their
+promenade. The old art gallery, the vine-covered porch, the young man
+with the smooth-shaven dark face and the thrilling, vibrant voice, and
+the young, young girl with the ruddy hair, and the little, round form!
+She seemed taller now, and there was more of maturity in the figure; but
+it was the same lissome waist and petite gracefulness which had so fully
+explained to me the avid eyes of her lover on that day when I had fled
+from the report of the Committee on Permanent Organization. It was the
+Empress Josephine, I had known that&mdash;and her Sir John!</p>
+
+<p>Then I thought of her flying from him into the street, and the little
+bowed head on the street-car; and the old pity for her, the old
+bitterness toward him, returned upon me. I wondered how he could speak
+to her in this nonchalant way; what they were saying to each other;
+whether they would ever refer to that night at Auriccio&#8217;s; what Alice
+would think of him if she ever found it out; whether he was a villain,
+or only erred passionately; what was actually said in that palm alcove
+that night so long ago; whether this man, with the eyes and voice so
+fascinating to women, would renew his suit in this new life of ours;
+what Jim would think about it; and, more than all, how Josie herself
+would regard him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She ought never to have spoken to him again!&#8221; I hear some one say.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, Madam, very true. But do you remember any authentic case of a woman
+who failed to forgive<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_116" id="pg_116">116</a></span> the man whose error or offense had for its excuse
+the irresistible attraction of her own charms?</p>
+
+<p>They were coming back now, still talking.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You dropped out of sight, like a partridge into a thicket,&#8221; said he.
+&#8220;Some of them said you had gone back to&mdash;to&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To the farm,&#8221; she prompted.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, yes,&#8221; he conceded; &#8220;and others said you had left Chicago for New
+York; and some, even Paris.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I fail to see the warrant,&#8221; said Josie, as they approached the limit of
+earshot, &#8220;for any of the people at Madame Lamoreux&#8217;s giving themselves
+the trouble to investigate.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So far as that is concerned,&#8221; said he, &#8220;I should think that I&mdash;&#8221; and
+his voice quite lost intelligibility.</p>
+
+<p>My cigar had gone out, and the cessation of the music ought to have
+apprised me of the breaking up of the dance, and still I lay looking at
+the sky and filled with my thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Here he is,&#8221; said Alice, &#8220;asleep in the hammock! For shame, Albert!
+This would not have occurred, once!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am free to admit that,&#8221; said I, &#8220;but why am I now disturbed?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re going on a cruise in the gondola,&#8221; said Antonia, &#8220;and Mr. Elkins
+says you are lieutenant, and we can&#8217;t sail without you. Come, it&#8217;s
+perfectly beautiful out there.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re going to the head of navigation and back,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;and then
+our revels will be ended. &mdash;Hang it!&#8221; to<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_117" id="pg_117">117</a></span> me, &#8220;they left the skull and
+crossbones off all the flags!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Barr-Smith at once engaged the engineer in conversation, and seemed
+worming from him all his knowledge of the construction of the boat. The
+rest of us lounged on cushions and seats. We threaded our way up the new
+pond, winding between clumps of trees, now in broad moonlight, now in
+deepest shade. The shower had swept over to the northeast, just one dark
+flounce of its skirt reaching to the zenith. A cool breeze suddenly
+sprang up from the west, stirred by the suction of the receding storm,
+and a roar came from the trees on the hilltops.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Better run for port,&#8221; said Jim; &#8220;I&#8217;d hate to have Mr. Barr-Smith suffer
+shipwreck where the charts don&#8217;t show any water!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As we ran down the open way, the remark seemed less and less of a joke.
+The gale poured over the hills, and struck the boat like the buffet of a
+great hand. She heeled over alarmingly, bumped upon a submerged stump,
+righted, heeled again, this time shipping a little sea, and then the
+sharp end of a hidden oak-limb thrust up through the bottom, and ripped
+its way out again, leaving us afloat in the deepest part of the lake,
+with a spouting fountain in the middle of the vessel, and the chopping
+waves breaking over the gunwale. All at once, I noticed Cecil
+Barr-Smith, with his coat off, standing near Antonia, who sat as cool as
+if she had been out on some quiet road driving her pacers. The boat sank
+lower in the water, and I had no doubt that she was sinking. Antonia
+rose, and stretched her hands<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_118" id="pg_118">118</a></span> towards Jim. I do not see how he could
+avoid seeing this; but he did, and, as if abandoning her to her fate, he
+leaped to Josie&#8217;s side. Cornish had seized <i>her</i> by the arm, and seemed
+about to devote himself to her safety, when Jim, without a word, lifted
+her in his arms, and leaped lightly upon the forward deck, the highest
+and driest place on the sinking craft. Then, as everything pointed to a
+speedy baptism in the lake for all of us, we saw that the very speed of
+the wind had saved us, and felt the gondola bump broadside upon the dam.
+Jim sprang to the abutment with Josie, and Cecil Barr-Smith half carried
+and half led Antonia to the shore. Alice and I sat calmly on the
+windward rail; and Barr-Smith, laughing with delight, helped us across,
+one at a time, to the masonry.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m glad it turned out no worse,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;I hope you will all excuse
+me if I leave you now. I must see Miss Trescott to a safe and dry place.
+Here&#8217;s the carriage, Josie!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you quite uninjured?&#8221; said Cecil to Antonia, as Mr. Elkins and
+Josie drove away.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, quite so!&#8221; said Antonia, unwittingly adopting Barr-Smith&#8217;s phrase.
+&#8220;But for a moment I was awfully frightened!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It looked a little damp, at one time, for farce-comedy,&#8221; said Cornish.
+&#8220;I wonder how deep it was out there!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Miss Trescott was quite drenched,&#8221; said Mr. Barr-Smith, as we got into
+the carriages. &#8220;Too bad, by Jove!&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_119" id="pg_119">119</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You may write home,&#8221; said Antonia, &#8220;an account of being shipwrecked in
+the top of a tree!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Good, good!&#8221; said Cecil, and we all joined in the laugh, until we were
+suddenly sobered by the fact that Antonia had bowed her head on Alice&#8217;s
+lap, and was sobbing as if her heart was broken.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_120" id="pg_120">120</a></span>
+<a name="In_which_the_Burdens_of_Wealth_Begin_to_Fall_upon_Us_3359" id="In_which_the_Burdens_of_Wealth_Begin_to_Fall_upon_Us_3359"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER XII.</p>
+<p class="l c">In which the Burdens of Wealth Begin to Fall upon Us.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>If the town be considered as a quiescent body pursuing its unluminous
+way in space, Mr. Elkins may stand for the impinging planet which
+shocked it into vibrant life. I suggested this nebular-hypothesis simile
+to Mr. Giddings, one day, as the germ of an editorial.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s rather seductive,&#8221; said he, &#8220;but it won&#8217;t do. Carry your
+interplanetary collision business to its logical end, and what do you
+come to? Gaseousness. And that&#8217;s just what the Angus Falls <i>Times</i>, the
+Fairchild Star, and the other loathsome sheets printed in prairie-dog
+towns around here accuse us of, now. No; much obliged; but as a field
+for comparisons the tried old solar system is good enough for the
+<i>Herald</i>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I couldn&#8217;t help thinking, however, that the thing had some illustrative
+merit. There was Jim&#8217;s first impact, felt locally, and jarring things
+loose. Then came the atomic vivification, the heat and motion, which
+appeared in the developments which we have seen taking form. After the
+visit of the Barr-Smiths, and the immigration of Cornish, the new<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_121" id="pg_121">121</a></span> star
+Lattimore began to blaze in the commercial firmament, the focus of
+innumerable monetary telescopes, pointed from the observatories of
+counting-rooms, banks, and offices, far and wide.</p>
+
+<p>There was a shifting of the investment and speculative equilibrium, and
+things began coming to us spontaneously. The Angus Falls railway
+extension was won only by strenuous endeavor. Captain Tolliver&#8217;s
+interviews with General Lattimore, in which he was so ruthlessly &#8220;turned
+down,&#8221; he always regarded as a sort of creative agony, marking the
+origin of the roundhouse and machine-shops, and our connection with the
+great Halliday railway system of which it made us a part. The street-car
+project went more easily; and, during the autumn, the geological and
+manufacturing experts sent out to report on the cement-works enterprise,
+pronounced favorably, and gangs of men, during the winter, were to be
+seen at work on the foundations of the great buildings by the scarped
+chalk-hill.</p>
+
+<p>The tension of my mind just after the Lynhurst Park affair was such as
+to attune it to no impulses but the financial vibrations which pulsated
+through our atmosphere. True, I sometimes felt the wonder return upon me
+at the finding of the lovers of the art-gallery together once more, in
+Josie and Cornish; and at other times Antonia&#8217;s agitation after our
+escape from shipwreck recurred to me in contrast with her smiling
+self-possession while the boat was drifting and filling; but mostly I
+thought of nothing, dreamed of nothing, but trust companies, additions,
+bonds and mortgages.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_122" id="pg_122">122</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Barr-Smith returned to London soon, giving a parting luncheon in his
+rooms, where wine flowed freely, and toasts of many colors were pushed
+into the atmosphere. There was one to the President and the Queen,
+proposed by the host and drunk in bumpers, and others to Mr. Barr-Smith,
+his brother, and the members of the &#8220;Syndicate.&#8221; The enthusiasm grew
+steadily in intensity as the affair progressed. Finally Mr. Cecil
+solemnly proposed &#8220;The American Woman.&#8221; In offering this toast, he said,
+he was taking long odds, as it was a sport for which he hadn&#8217;t had the
+least training; but he couldn&#8217;t forego the pleasure of paying a tribute
+where tribute was due. The ladies of America needed no encomiums from
+him, and yet he was sure that he should give no offense by saying that
+they were of a type unknown in history. They were up to anything, you
+know, in the way of intellectuality, and he was sure that in a certain
+queenly, blonde way they were&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hear, hear!&#8221; said his brother, and burst into a laugh in which we all
+joined, while Cecil went on talking, in an uproar which drowned his
+words, though one could see that he was trying to explain something, and
+growing very hot in the process.</p>
+
+<p>Pearson announced that their train would soon arrive, and we all went
+down to see them off. Barr-Smith assured us at parting that the
+tram-road transaction might be considered settled. He believed, too,
+that his clients might come into the cement project. We were all the
+more hopeful of this, for the knowledge that he carried somewhere<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_123" id="pg_123">123</a></span> in
+his luggage a bond for a deed to a considerable interest in the cement
+lands. Things were coming on beautifully; and it seemed as if Elkins and
+Cornish, working together, were invincible.</p>
+
+<p>We still lived at the hotel, but our architect, &#8220;little Ed. Smith, who
+lived over on the Hayes place&#8221; when we were boys, and who was once at
+Garden City with Jim, was busy with plans for a mansion which we were to
+build in the new Lynhurst Park Addition the next spring. Mr. Elkins was
+preparing to erect a splendid house in the same neighborhood.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Can I afford it?&#8221; said I, in discussing estimates.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Afford it!&#8221; he replied, turning on me in astonishment. &#8220;My dear boy,
+don&#8217;t you see we are up against a situation that calls on us to bluff to
+the limit, or lay down? In such a case, luxury becomes a duty, and
+lavishness the truest economy. Not to spend is to go broke. Lay your
+Poor Richard on the shelf, and put a weight on him. Stimulate the outgo,
+and the income&#8217;ll take care of itself. A thousand spent is five figures
+to the good. No, while we&#8217;ve as many boom-irons in the fire as we&#8217;re
+heating now, to be modest is to be lost.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps,&#8221; said I, &#8220;you may be right, and no doubt are. We&#8217;ll talk it
+over again some time. And your remark about irons in the fire brings up
+another matter which bothers me. It&#8217;s something unusual when we don&#8217;t
+open up a set of books for some new corporation, during the working day.
+Aren&#8217;t we getting too many?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you remember Mule Jones, who lived down<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_124" id="pg_124">124</a></span> near Hickory Grove?&#8221; said
+he, after a long pause. &#8220;Well, you know, in our old neighborhood, the
+mule was regarded with a mixture of contempt, suspicion, and fear, the
+folks not understanding him very well, and being especially uninformed
+as to his merits. Therefore, Mule Jones, who dealt in mules, bought,
+sold, and broke &#8217;em, was a man of mark, and identified in name with his
+trade, as most people used to be before our time. I was down there one
+Sunday, and asked him how he managed to break the brutes. &#8216;It&#8217;s easy,&#8217;
+said he, &#8216;when you know how. I never hook up less&#8217;n six of &#8217;em at a
+time. Then they sort o&#8217; neutralize one another. Some on &#8217;em&#8217;ll be
+r&#8217;arin&#8217; an&#8217; pitchin&#8217;, an&#8217; some tryin&#8217; to run; but they&#8217;ll be enough of
+&#8217;em down an&#8217; a-draggin&#8217; all the time, to keep the enthusiastic ones kind
+o&#8217; suppressed, and give me the castin&#8217; vote. It&#8217;s the only right way to
+git the bulge on mules.&#8217; Whenever you get to worrying about our various
+companies, think of the Mule Jones system and be calm.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m a little shy of being ruled by one case, even though so exactly in
+point,&#8221; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, it&#8217;s all right,&#8221; he continued, &#8220;and about these houses. Why, we&#8217;d
+have to build them, even if we preferred to live in tents. Put the cost
+in the advertising account of Lynhurst Park Addition, if it worries you.
+Let me ask you, now, as a reasonable man, how can we expect the rest of
+the world to come out here and spring themselves for humble dwellings
+with stationary washtubs, conservatories, and <i>porte coch&egrave;res</i>, if we
+ourselves haven&#8217;t any more<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_125" id="pg_125">125</a></span> confidence in the deal than to put up Jim
+Crow wickiups costing not more than ten or fifteen thousand dollars
+apiece? That addition has got to be the Nob Hill of Lattimore. Nothing
+in the &#8216;poor but honest&#8217; line will do for Lynhurst; and we&#8217;ve got to set
+the pace. When you see my modest bachelor quarters going up, you&#8217;ll
+cease to think of yours in the light of an extravagance. By next fall
+you&#8217;ll be infested with money, anyhow, and that house will be the least
+of your troubles.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Alice and I made up our minds that Jim was right, and went on with our
+plans on a scale which sometimes brought back the Aladdin idea to my
+mind, accustomed as I was to rural simplicity. But Alice,
+notwithstanding that she was the daughter of a country physician of not
+very lucrative practice, rose to the occasion, and spent money with a
+spontaneous largeness of execution which revealed a genius hitherto
+unsuspected by either of us. Jim was thoroughly delighted with it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The Republic,&#8221; he argued, &#8220;cannot be in any real danger when the modest
+middle classes produce characters of such strength in meeting great
+emergencies!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jim was at his best this summer. He revelled in the work of filling the
+morning paper with scare-heads detailing our operations. He enjoyed
+being It, he said. Cornish, after the first few days, during which, in
+spite of inside information as to his history, I felt that he would make
+good the predictions of the <i>Herald</i>, ceased to be, in my mind, anything
+more than I was&mdash;a trusted aide of Jim, the general.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_126" id="pg_126">126</a></span> Both men went
+rather frequently out to the Trescott farm&mdash;Jim with the bluff freedom
+of a brother, Cornish with his rather ceremonious deference. I
+distrusted the dark Sir John where women were concerned, noting how they
+seemed charmed by him; but I could not see that he had made any headway
+in regaining Josie&#8217;s regard, though I had a lurking feeling that he
+meant to do so. I saw at times in his eyes the old look which I
+remembered so well.</p>
+
+<p>Josie, more than ever this season, was earning her father&#8217;s commendation
+as his &#8220;right-hand man.&#8221; She insisted on driving the four horses which
+drew the binder in the harvest. In the haying she operated the
+horse-rake, and helped man the hay-fork in filling the barns. She grew
+as tanned as if she had spent the time at the seashore or on the links;
+and with every month she added to her charm. The scarlet of her lips,
+the ruddy luxuriance of her hair, the arrowy straightness of her
+carriage, the pulsing health which beamed from her eye, and dyed cheek
+and neck, made their appeal to the women, even.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How sweet she is!&#8221; said Alice, as she came to greet us one day when we
+drove to the farm, and waited for her to come to us. &#8220;How sweet she is,
+Albert!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Her father came up, and explained to us that he didn&#8217;t ask any of his
+women folks to do any work except what there was in the house. He was
+able to hire the outdoors work done, but Josie he couldn&#8217;t keep out of
+the fields.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_127" id="pg_127">127</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, pa,&#8221; said she, &#8220;don&#8217;t you see you would spoil my chances of
+marrying a fairy prince? They absolutely never come into the house; and
+my straw hat is the only really becoming thing I&#8217;ve got to wear!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t give a dum if yeh never marry,&#8221; said Bill. &#8220;Hain&#8217;t seen the man
+yit that was good enough fer yeh, from my standpoint.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Bill&#8217;s reputation was pretty well known to me by this time. He had been
+for years a successful breeder and shipper of live-stock, in which
+vocation he had become well-to-do. On his farm he was forceful and
+efficient, treading his fields like an admiral his quarter-deck. About
+town he was given to talking horses and cattle with the groups which
+frequented the stables and blacksmith-shops, and sometimes grew a little
+noisy and boisterous with them. Whenever her father went with a shipment
+of cattle to Chicago or other market, Josie went too, taking a regular
+passenger train in time to be waiting when Bill&#8217;s stock train arrived;
+and after the beeves were disposed of, Bill became her escort to opera
+and art-gallery; on such a visit I had seen her at the Stock Yards. She
+was fond of her father; but this alone did not explain her constant
+attendance upon him. I soon came to understand that his prompt return
+from the city, in good condition, was apt to be dependent upon her
+influence. It was one of those cases of weakness, associated with
+strength, the real mystery of which does not often occur to us because
+they are so common.</p>
+
+<p>He came into our office one day with a tremor<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_128" id="pg_128">128</a></span> in his hand and a hunted
+look in his eye. He took a chair at my invitation, but rose at once,
+went to the door, and looked up and down the street, as if for pursuers.
+I saw Captain Tolliver across the street, and Bill&#8217;s air of excitement
+was explained. I was relieved, for at first I had thought him
+intoxicated.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s the matter, Bill?&#8221; said I, after he had looked at me earnestly,
+almost pantingly, for a few moments. &#8220;You look nervous.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re after me,&#8221; he answered in repressed tones, &#8220;to sell; and I&#8217;ll
+be blasted if I know what to do! Wha&#8217; d&#8217;ye&#8217; &#8217;spose they&#8217;re offerin&#8217; me
+for my land?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The fact is, Bill,&#8221; said I, &#8220;that I know all about it. I&#8217;m interested
+in the deal, somewhat.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then you know they&#8217;ve bid right around a thousand dollars an acre?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said I, &#8220;or at least that they intended to offer that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;An&#8217; you&#8217;re one o&#8217; the company,&#8221; he queried, &#8220;that&#8217;s doin&#8217; it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; I admitted.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wal,&#8221; said he, &#8220;I&#8217;m kinder sorry you&#8217;re in it, becuz I&#8217;ve about
+concluded to sell; an&#8217; it seems to me that any concern that buys at that
+figger is a-goin&#8217; to bust, sure. W&#8217;y, I bought that land fer two dollars
+and a haff an acre. But, see here, now; I &#8217;xpect you know your business,
+an&#8217; see some way of gittin&#8217; out in the deal, &#8217;r you wouldn&#8217;t pay that.
+But if I sell, I&#8217;ve got to have help with my folks.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah,&#8221; said I, scenting the usual obstacle in such<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_129" id="pg_129">129</a></span> cases, &#8220;Mrs. Trescott
+a little unwilling to sign the deeds?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; answered he, &#8220;strange as it may seem, ma&#8217;s kinder stuck on comin&#8217;
+to town to live. How she&#8217;ll feel after she&#8217;s tried it fer a month &#8217;r so,
+with no chickens &#8217;r turkeys &#8217;r milk to look after, I&#8217;m dubious; but jest
+now she seems to be all right.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, what&#8217;s the matter then?&#8221; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wal, it&#8217;s Josie, to tell the truth,&#8221; said he. &#8220;She&#8217;s sort o&#8217; hangin&#8217;
+back. An&#8217; it&#8217;s for her sake that I want to make the deal! I&#8217;ve told her
+an&#8217; told her that there&#8217;s no dum sense in raisin&#8217; corn on
+thousand-dollar land; but it&#8217;s no use, so fur; an&#8217; here&#8217;s the only
+chanst I&#8217;ll ever hev, mebbe, a-slippin&#8217; by. She ortn&#8217;t to live her life
+out on a farm, educated as she is. W&#8217;y, did you ever hear how she&#8217;s been
+educated?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I told him that in a general way I knew, but not in detail.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;W&#8217;l, I want yeh to know all about it, so&#8217;s yeh c&#8217;n see this movin&#8217;
+business as it is,&#8221; said he. &#8220;You know I was allus a rough cuss. Herded
+cattle over there by yer father&#8217;s south place, an&#8217; never went to school.
+Ma, Josie&#8217;s ma, y&#8217; know, kep&#8217; the Greenwood school, an&#8217; crossed the
+prairie there where I was a-herdin&#8217;, an&#8217; I used to look at her mighty
+longin&#8217; as she went by, when the cattle happened to be clost along the
+track, which they right often done. You know how them things go. An&#8217;
+fin&#8217;ly one morning a blue racer chased her, as the little whelps will,
+an&#8217; got his dummed little teeth fastened in her dress, an&#8217; she
+a-hyperin&#8217; around haff crazy, and a-screamin&#8217;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_130" id="pg_130">130</a></span> every jump, so&#8217;s&#8217;t I hed
+to just grab her, an&#8217; hold her till I could get the blasted snake
+off,&mdash;harmless, y&#8217; know, but got hooked teeth, an&#8217; not a lick o&#8217;
+sense,&mdash;an&#8217; he kinder quirled around my arm, an&#8217; I nacherally tore him
+to ribbins a-gittin&#8217; of him off. An&#8217; then she sort o&#8217; dropped off, an&#8217;
+when she come to, I was a-rubbin&#8217; her hands an&#8217; temples. Wa&#8217;n&#8217;t that a
+funny interduction?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s very interesting,&#8221; said I; &#8220;go on.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;W&#8217;l you remember ol&#8217; Doc Maxfield?&#8221; said Bill, well started on a
+reminiscence. &#8220;Wal, he come along, an&#8217; said it was the worst case of
+collapse, whatever that means, that he ever see&mdash;her lips an&#8217; hands an&#8217;
+chin all a-tremblin&#8217;, an&#8217; flighty as a loon. Wal, after that I used to
+take her around some, an&#8217; her folks objected becuz I was ignorant, an&#8217;
+she learnt me some things, an&#8217; bein&#8217; strong an&#8217; a good dancer an&#8217; purty
+good-lookin&#8217; she kind o&#8217; forgot about my failin&#8217;s, an&#8217; we was married.
+Her folks said she&#8217;d throwed herself away; but I could buy an&#8217; sell the
+hull set of &#8217;em now!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This seemed conclusive as to the merits of the case, and I told him as
+much.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;W&#8217;l Josie was born an&#8217; growed up,&#8221; continued Bill, &#8220;an&#8217; it&#8217;s her I
+started to tell about, wa&#8217;n&#8217;t it? She was allus a cute little thing, an&#8217;
+early she got this art business in her head. She&#8217;d read about fellers
+that had got to be great by paintin&#8217; an&#8217; carvin&#8217;, an&#8217; it made her wild
+to do the same thing. Wa&#8217;n&#8217;t there a feller that pulled hair outer the
+cat to paint Injuns with? Yes, I thought they was; I allus thought they
+could paint theirselves good enough;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_131" id="pg_131">131</a></span> but that story an&#8217; some others she
+read an&#8217; read when she was a little gal, an&#8217; she was allus a-paintin&#8217;
+an&#8217; makin&#8217; things with clay. She took a prize at the county fair when
+she was fourteen, with a picter of Washin&#8217;ton crossin&#8217; the
+Delaware&mdash;three dollars, by gum! An&#8217; then we hed to give her lessons;
+an&#8217; they wasn&#8217;t any one thet knew anything around here, she said, an&#8217;
+she went to Chicago. An&#8217; I went in to visit her when she hedn&#8217;t ben
+there more&#8217;n six weeks, on an excursion one convention time, an&#8217; I found
+her all tore up, a good deal as her ma was with the blue racer,&mdash;I don&#8217;t
+think she&#8217;s ever ben the same light-hearted little gal sence,&mdash;an&#8217; from
+there I took her to New York; an&#8217; there she fell in with a nice woman
+that was awful good to her, an&#8217; they went to Europe, an&#8217; it cost a heap.
+An&#8217; you may&#8217;ve noticed thet Josie knows a pile more&#8217;n the other women
+here?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I admitted that this had occurred to me.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;W&#8217;l, she was allus apt to take her head with her,&#8221; said Bill, &#8220;but this
+travelin&#8217; has fixed her like a hoss thet&#8217;s ben druv in Chicago: nothin&#8217;
+feazes her, street-cars, brass bands, circuses, overhead trains&mdash;it&#8217;s
+all the same to her, she&#8217;s seen &#8217;em all. Sometimes I git the notion that
+she&#8217;d enjoy things more if she hadn&#8217;t seen so dum many of &#8217;em an&#8217; so
+much better ones, y&#8217; know! Wal, after she&#8217;d ben over there a long time,
+she wrote she was a-comin&#8217; home; an&#8217; we was tickled to death. Only I was
+surprised by her writin&#8217; that she wanted us to take all them old picters
+of hern, and put &#8217;em out of sight! An&#8217; if you&#8217;ll b&#8217;lieve it, she won&#8217;t
+talk picters nor make any<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_132" id="pg_132">132</a></span> sence she got back&mdash;only, jest after she got
+back, she said she didn&#8217;t see any use o&#8217; her goin&#8217; on dobbin&#8217; good
+canvas up with good paint, an&#8217; makin&#8217; nothin&#8217; but poor picters; an&#8217; she
+cried some.... I thought it was sing&#8217;lar that this art business that she
+thought was the only thing thet&#8217;d ever make her happy was the only thing
+I ever see her cry about.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s the way,&#8221; said I, &#8220;with a great many of our cherished hopes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;W&#8217;l, anyhow, you can see thet it&#8217;s the wrong thing to put as much time
+an&#8217; money into fixin&#8217; a child up f&#8217;r a different kind o&#8217; life as we hev,
+an&#8217; then keep her on a farm out here. An&#8217; thet&#8217;s why I want you to help
+this sale through, an&#8217; bring influence to bear on her. I give up; I&#8217;m
+all in.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>To me Bill seemed entirely in the right. The new era made it absurd for
+the Trescotts to use their land longer as a farm. Lattimore was changing
+daily. The streets were gashed with trenches for gas- and water-mains;
+piled-up materials for curbing, paving, office buildings, new hotels,
+and all sorts of erections made locomotion a peril; but we were happy.</p>
+
+<p>The water company was organized in our office, the gas and
+electric-light company in Cornish&#8217;s; but every spout led into the same
+bin.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hinckley had induced some country dealers who owned a line of local
+grain-houses to remove to Lattimore and put up a huge terminal elevator
+for the handling of their trade. Captain Tolliver had been for a long
+time working upon a project for developing a great water-power, by
+tunneling<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_133" id="pg_133">133</a></span> across a bend in the river, and utilizing the fall. The
+building of the elevator attracted the attention of a company of
+Rochester millers, and almost before we knew it their forces had been
+added to ours, and the tunnel was begun, with the certainty that a
+two-thousand-barrel mill would be ready to grind the wheat from the
+elevator as soon as the flume began carrying water. This tunnel cut
+through an isthmus between the Brushy Creek valley and the river, and
+brought to bear on our turbines the head from a ten-mile loop of shoals
+and riffles. It opened into the gorge near the southern edge of Lynhurst
+Park, and crossed the Trescott farm. So it was that Bill awoke one day
+to the fact that his farm was coveted by divers people, who saw in his
+fields and feed-yards desirable sites for railway tracks, mills,
+factories, and the cottages of a manufacturing suburb. This it was that
+had put the Captain, like a blood-hound, on his trial, to the end that
+he was run to earth in my office, and made his appeal for help in
+managing Josie.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There she comes now,&#8221; said he. &#8220;Labor with her, won&#8217;t yeh?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Bring her with us to the hotel,&#8221; said I, &#8220;to take dinner. If my wife
+and Elkins can&#8217;t fix the thing, no one can.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>So we five dined together, and after dinner discussed the Trescott
+crisis. Bill put the case, with all a veteran dealer&#8217;s logic, in its
+financial aspects.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But we don&#8217;t want to be rich,&#8221; said Josie.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;ve we ben actin&#8217; all these years like we have for, then?&#8221; inquired
+Bill. &#8220;Seem&#8217;s if I&#8217;d<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_134" id="pg_134">134</a></span> been lab&#8217;rin&#8217; under a mistake f&#8217;r some time past.
+When your ma an&#8217; me was a-roughin&#8217; it out there in the old log-house,
+an&#8217; she a-lookin&#8217; out at the Feb&#8217;uary stars through the holes in the
+roof, a-holdin&#8217; you, a little baby in bed, we reckoned we was a-doin&#8217; of
+it to sort o&#8217; better ourselves in a property way. Wouldn&#8217;t you
+&#8217;a&#8217;thought so, Jim?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Mr. Elkins, with an air of judicial perpension, &#8220;if you had
+asked me about it, I should have said that, if you wanted to stay poor,
+you could have held your own better by staying in Pleasant Valley
+Township as a renter. This was no place to come to if you wanted to
+conserve your poverty.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But, pa, we&#8217;re not adapted to town life and towns,&#8221; urged Josie. &#8220;I&#8217;m
+not, and you are not, and as for mamma, she&#8217;ll never be contented. Oh,
+Mr. Elkins, why did you come out here, making us all fortunes which we
+haven&#8217;t earned, and upsetting everything?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Now, don&#8217;t blame me, Josie,&#8221; Jim protested. &#8220;You ought to consider the
+fallacy of the <i>post hoc, propter hoc</i> argument. But to return to the
+point under discussion. If you could stay there, a rural Amaryllis,
+sporting in Arcadian shades, having seen you doing it once or twice, I
+couldn&#8217;t argue against it, it&#8217;s so charmingly becoming.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If that were all the argument&mdash;&#8221; began Josie.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s the most important one&mdash;to my mind,&#8221; said Jim, resuming the
+discussion, &#8220;and you fail on that point; for you can&#8217;t live in that way
+long. If you don&#8217;t sell, the Development Company will condemn grounds
+for railway tracks and switch-yards;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_135" id="pg_135">135</a></span> you&#8217;ll find your fields and
+meadows all shot to pieces; and your house will be surrounded by
+warehouses, elevators, and factories. Your larks and bobolinks will be
+scared off by engines and smokestacks, and your flowers spoiled with
+soot. Don&#8217;t parley with fate, but cash in and put your winnings in some
+safe investment.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Once I thought I couldn&#8217;t stay on the old farm a day longer; but I feel
+otherwise now! What business has this &#8216;progress&#8217; of yours to interfere?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It pushes you out of the nest,&#8221; answered Jim. &#8220;It gives you the chance
+of your lives. You can come out into Lynhurst Park Addition, and build
+your house near the Barslow and Elkins dwellings. We&#8217;ve got about
+everything there&mdash;city water, gas, electric light, sewers, steam heat
+from the traction plant, beautiful view, lots on an established grade&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t, don&#8217;t!&#8221; said Josie. &#8220;It sounds like the advertisements in the
+<i>Herald</i>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I was just leading up to a statement of what we lack,&#8221; continued
+Jim. &#8220;It&#8217;s the artistic atmosphere. We need a dash of the culture of
+Paris and Dresden and the place where they have the dinky little
+windmills which look so nice on cream-pitchers, but wouldn&#8217;t do for one
+of our farmers a minute. Come out and supply our lack. You owe it to the
+great cause of the amelioration of local savagery; and in view of my
+declaration of discipleship, and the effective way in which I have
+always upheld the standard of our barbarism, I claim that you owe it to
+me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve abandoned the brush.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_136" id="pg_136">136</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Take it up again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have made a vow.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Break it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She refused to yield, but was clearly yielding. Alice and I showed
+Trescott, on a plat, the place for his new home. He was quite taken with
+the idea, and said that ma would certainly be tickled with it.</p>
+
+<p>Josie sat apart with Mr. Elkins, in earnest converse, for a long time.
+She looked frequently at her father, Jim constantly at her. Mr. Cornish
+dropped in for a little while, and joined us in presenting the case for
+removal. While he was there the girl seemed constrained, and not quite
+so fully at her ease; and I could detect, I thought, the old tendency to
+scrutinize his face furtively. When he went away, she turned to Jim more
+intimately than before, and almost promised that she would become his
+neighbor in Lynhurst. After the Trescotts&#8217; carriage had come and taken
+them away, Jim told us that it was for her father, and the temptations
+of idleness in the town, that Miss Trescott feared.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This fairy-godmother business,&#8221; said he, &#8220;ain&#8217;t what the prospectus
+might lead one to expect. It has its drawbacks. Bill is going to cash in
+all right, and I think it&#8217;s for the best; but, Al, we&#8217;ve got to take
+care of the old man, and see that he doesn&#8217;t go up in the air.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_137" id="pg_137">137</a></span>
+<a name="A_Sitting_or_Two_in_the_Game_with_the_World_and_Destiny_3830" id="A_Sitting_or_Two_in_the_Game_with_the_World_and_Destiny_3830"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER XIII.</p>
+<p class="l c">A Sitting or Two in the Game with the World and Destiny.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Our game at Lattimore was one of those absorbing ones in which the
+sunlight of next morning sifts through the blinds before the players are
+aware that midnight is past. Day by day, deal by deal, it went on, card
+followed card in fateful fall upon the table, and we who sat in, and
+played the World and Destiny with so pitifully small a pile of chips at
+the outset, saw the World and Destiny losing to us, until our hands
+could scarcely hold, our eyes hardly estimate, the high-piled stacks of
+counters which were ours.</p>
+
+<p>We saw the yellowing groves and brown fields of our first autumn; we
+heard the long-drawn, wavering, mounting, falling, persistent howl of
+the thresher among the settings of hive-shaped stacks; we saw the loads
+of red and yellow corn at the corn-cribs,&mdash;as men at the board of the
+green cloth hear the striking of the hours. And we heeded them as
+little. The cries of southing wild-fowl heralded the snow; winter came
+for an hour or so, and melted into spring; and some of us looked up from
+our hands for a moment, to note the fact that it was the anniversary<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_138" id="pg_138">138</a></span> of
+that aguish day when three of us had first taken our seats at the table:
+and before we knew it, the dust and heat and summer clouds, like that
+which lightened over the fete in the park, admonished us that we were
+far into our second year. And still shuffle, cut, deal, trick, and hand
+followed each other, and with draw and bluff and showdown we played the
+World and Destiny, and playing won, and saw our stacks of chips grow
+higher and higher, as our great and absorbing game went on.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, while we won and won, nobody seemed to lose. Josie spoke that
+night of fortunes which people had not earned; but surely they were
+created somehow; and as the universe, when the divine fiat had formed
+the world, was richer, rather than poorer, so, we felt, must these
+values so magically growing into our fortunes be good, rather than evil,
+and honestly ours, so far as we might be able to secure them to
+ourselves. I said as much to Jim one day, at which he smiled, and
+remarked that if we got to monkeying with the ethics of the trade,
+piracy would soon be a ruined business.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Better, far better keep the lookout sweeping the horizon for sails,&#8221;
+said he, &#8220;and when one appears, serve out the rum and gunpowder to the
+crew, and stand by to lower away the boats for a boarding-party!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I am afraid I have given the impression that our life at this time was
+solely given over to cupidity and sordidness; and that idea I may not be
+able to remove. Yet I must try to do so. We were in the game to win; but
+our winnings, present and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_139" id="pg_139">139</a></span> prospective, were not in wealth only. To
+surmount obstacles; to drive difficulties before us like scattering
+sparrows; to see a town marching before us into cityhood; to feel
+ourselves the forces working through human masses so mightily that, for
+hundreds of miles about us, social and industrial factors were compelled
+to readjust themselves with reference to us; to be masters; to
+create&mdash;all these things went into our beings in thrilling and dizzying
+pulsations of a pleasure which was not ignoble.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, let us take the building of the Lattimore &amp; Great Western
+Railway. Before Mr. Elkins went to Lattimore this line had been surveyed
+by the co&ouml;peration of Mr. Hinckley, Mr. Ballard, the president of the
+opposition bank, and some others. It was felt that there was little real
+competition among the railways centering there, and the L. &amp; G.W. was
+designed as a hint to them of a Lattimore-built connection with the
+Halliday system, then a free-lance in the transportation field, and
+ready to make rates in an independent and competitive way. The Angus
+Falls extension brought this system in, but too late to do the good
+expected; for Mr. Halliday, in his dealings with us, convinced us of the
+truth of the rumors that he had brought the other roads to terms, and
+was a free-lance no longer. Month by month the need of real competition
+in our carrying trade grew upon us. Rates accorded to other cities on
+our commercial fighting line we could not get, in spite of the most
+persistent efforts. In the offices of presidents and general managers,
+in St. Louis, Chicago, St. Paul and Minneapolis, Kansas<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_140" id="pg_140">140</a></span> City, Omaha and
+New York we were received by suave princes of the highways, who each
+blandly assured us that his road looked with especial favor upon our
+town, and that our representations should receive the most solicitous
+attention. But the word of promise was ever broken to the hope.</p>
+
+<p>After one of these embassies the syndicate held a meeting in Cornish&#8217;s
+elegant offices on the ground-floor of the new &#8220;Hotel Elkins&#8221; building.
+We sent Giddings away to prepare an optimistic news-story for
+to-morrow&#8217;s <i>Herald</i>, and an editorial leader based upon it, both of
+which had been formulated among us before going into executive session
+on the state of the nation. Hinckley, who had an admirable power of
+seeing the crux of a situation, was making a rather grave prognosis for
+us.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If we can&#8217;t get rates which will let us into a broader territory, we
+may as well prepare for reverses,&#8221; said he. &#8220;Foreign cement comes almost
+to our doors, in competition with ours. Wheat and live-stock go from
+within twenty miles to points five hundred miles away. Who is furnishing
+the brick and stone for the new Fairchild court-house and the big
+normal-school buildings at Angus Falls? Not our quarries and kilns, but
+others five times as far away. If you want to figure out the reason of
+this, you will find it in nothing else in the world but the freight
+rates.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a confounded outrage,&#8221; said Cornish. &#8220;Can&#8217;t we get help from the
+legislature?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I understand that some action is expected next winter,&#8221; said I;
+&#8220;Senator Conley had in here<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_141" id="pg_141">141</a></span> the other day a bill he has drawn; and it
+seems to me we should send a strong lobby down at the proper time in
+support of it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ye-e-s,&#8221; drawled Jim, &#8220;but I believe in still stronger measures; and
+rather than bother with the legislature, owned as it is by the roads,
+I&#8217;d favor writing cuss-words on the water-tanks, or going up the track a
+piece and makin&#8217; faces at one of their confounded whistling-posts or
+cattle-guards&mdash;or something real drastic like that!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Cornish, galled, as was I, by this irony, flushed crimson, and rose.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The situation,&#8221; said he, &#8220;instead of being a serious one, as I have
+believed, seems merely funny. This conference may as well end. Having
+taken on things here under the impression that this was to be a city; it
+seems that we are to stay a village. It occurs to me that it&#8217;s time to
+stand from under! Good-evening!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wait!&#8221; said Hinckley. &#8220;Don&#8217;t go, Cornish; it isn&#8217;t as bad as that!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke he laid his hand on Cornish&#8217;s arm, and I saw that he was
+pale. He felt more keenly than did I the danger of division and strife
+among us.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, Mr. Hinckley,&#8221; said Jim, as Cornish sat down again, &#8220;it <i>is</i> as
+bad as that! This thing amounts to a crisis. For one, I don&#8217;t propose to
+adopt the &#8216;stand-from-under&#8217; tactics. They make an unnecessary disaster
+as certain as death; but if we all stand under and lift, we can win more
+than we&#8217;ve ever thought. In the legislature they hold<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_142" id="pg_142">142</a></span> the cards and can
+beat us. It&#8217;s no use fooling with that unless we seek martyrs&#8217; deaths in
+the bankruptcy courts. But there is a way to meet these men, and that is
+by bringing to our aid their greatest rival.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you mean&mdash;&#8221; said Hinckley.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I mean Avery Pendleton and the Pendleton system,&#8221; replied Elkins. &#8220;I
+mean that we&#8217;ve got to meet them on their own ground. Pendleton won&#8217;t
+declare war on the Halliday combination by building in here, but there
+is no reason why we can&#8217;t build to him, and that&#8217;s what I propose to do.
+We&#8217;ll take the L. &amp; G. W., swing it over to the east from the Elk Fork
+up, make a junction with Pendleton&#8217;s Pacific Division, and, in one week
+after we get trains running, we&#8217;ll have the freight combine here shot so
+full of holes that it won&#8217;t hold corn-stalks! That&#8217;s what we&#8217;ll do:
+we&#8217;ll do a little rate-making ourselves; and we&#8217;ll make this danger the
+best thing that ever happened to us. Do you see?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Cornish saw, sooner than any one else. As he spoke, Jim had unrolled a
+map, and pointed out the places as he referred to them, like a general,
+as he was, outlining the plan of a battle. He began this speech in that
+quiet, convincing way of his, only a little elevated above the sarcasm
+of a moment before. As he went on, his voice deepened, his eye gleamed,
+and in spite of his colloquialisms, which we could not notice, his words
+began to thrill us like potent oratory. We felt all that ecstasy of
+buoyant and auspicious rebellion which animated Hotspur the night he
+could have plucked bright honor from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_143" id="pg_143">143</a></span> pale-faced moon. At Jim&#8217;s
+final question, Cornish, forgetting his pique, sprang to the map, swept
+his finger along the line Elkins had described, followed the main ribs
+of Pendleton&#8217;s great gridiron, on which the fat of half a dozen states
+lay frying, on to terminals on lakes and rivers; and as he turned his
+black eyes upon us, we knew from the fire in them that he saw.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;By heavens!&#8221; he cried, &#8220;you&#8217;ve hit it, Elkins! And it can be done! From
+to-night, no more paper railroads for us; it must be grading-gangs and
+ties, and steel rails!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>So, also, there was good fighting when Cornish wired from New York for
+Elkins and me to come to his aid in placing our Lattimore &amp; Great
+Western bonds. Of course, we never expected to build this railway with
+our own funds. For two reasons, at least: it is bad form to do eccentric
+things, and we lacked a million or two of having the money. The line
+with buildings and rolling stock would cost, say, twelve thousand
+dollars per mile. Before it could be built we must find some one who
+would agree to take its bonds for at least that sum. As no one would pay
+quite par for bonds of a new and independent road, we must add, say,
+three thousand dollars per mile for discount. Moreover, while the
+building of the line was undertaken from motives of self-preservation,
+there seemed to be no good reason why we should not organize a
+construction company to do the actual work of building, and that at a
+profit. That this profit might be assured, something like three thousand
+dollars per mile more<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_144" id="pg_144">144</a></span> must go in. Of course, whoever placed the bonds
+would be asked to guarantee the interest for two or three years; hence,
+with two thousand more for that and good measure, we made up our
+proposed issue of twenty thousand dollars per mile of first-mortgage
+bonds, to dispose of which &#8220;the former member of the firm of Lusch,
+Carskaddan &amp; Mayer&#8221; was revisiting the glimpses of Wall Street, and
+testing the strength of that mighty influence which the <i>Herald</i> had
+attributed to him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve just <i>got</i> to win,&#8221; said Giddings, who was admitted to the
+secret of Cornish&#8217;s embassy, &#8220;not only because Lattimore and all the
+citizens thereof will be squashed in the event of your slipping up; but,
+what is of much more importance, the <i>Herald</i> will be laid in a lie
+about your Wall Street pull. Remember that when foes surround thee!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>When we joined him, Cornish admitted that he was fairly well
+&#8220;surrounded.&#8221; He had failed to secure the aid of Barr-Smith&#8217;s friends,
+who said that, with the street-car system and the cement works, they had
+quite eggs enough in the Lattimore basket for their present purposes. In
+fact, he had felt out to blind ends nearly all the promising burrows
+supposedly leading to the strong boxes of the investing public, of which
+he had told us. He accounted for this lack of success on the very
+natural theory that the Halliday combination had found out about his
+mission, and was fighting him through its influence with the banks and
+trust companies. So he had done at last what Jim had advised him to do
+at first&mdash;secured an appointment with the mighty Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_145" id="pg_145">145</a></span> Pendleton; and,
+somewhat humbled by unsuccess, had telegraphed for us to come on and
+help in presenting the thing to that magnate.</p>
+
+<p>Whom, being fenced off by all sorts of guards, messengers, clerks, and
+secretaries, we saw after a pilgrimage through a maze of offices. He had
+not the usual features which make up an imposing appearance; but command
+flowed from him, and authority covered him as with a mantle. We knew
+that he possessed and exerted the power to send prosperity in this
+channel, or inject adversity into that, as a gardener directs water
+through his trenches, and this knowledge impressed us. He was rather
+thin; but not so much so as his sharp, high nose, his deep-set eyes, and
+his bony chin at first sight seemed to indicate. Whenever he spoke, his
+nostrils dilated, and his gray eyes said more than his lips uttered. He
+was courteous, with a sort of condensed courtesy&mdash;the shorthand of
+ceremoniousness. He turned full upon us from his desk as we entered,
+rose and met us as his clerk introduced us.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Barslow, I&#8217;m happy to meet you; and you also, Mr. Cornish. Mr.
+Wilson &#8217;phoned about your enterprise just now. Mr. Elkins,&#8221; as he took
+Jim&#8217;s hand, &#8220;I have heard of you also. Be seated, gentlemen. I have
+given you a time appropriation of thirty minutes. I hope you will excuse
+me for mentioning that at the end of that period my time will be no
+longer my own. Kindly explain what it is you desire of me, and why you
+think that I can have any interest in your project.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_146" id="pg_146">146</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And, with a judgment trained in the valuing of men, he turned to Jim as
+our leader.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If our enterprise doesn&#8217;t commend itself to your judgment in twenty
+minutes,&#8221; said Jim, with a little smile, and in much the same tone that
+he would have used in discussing a cigar, &#8220;there&#8217;ll be no need of
+wasting the other ten; for it&#8217;s perfectly plain. I&#8217;ll expedite matters
+by skipping what we desire, for the most part, and telling you why we
+think the Pendleton system ought to desire the same thing. Our plan, in
+a word, is to build a hundred and fifty miles of line, and from it
+deliver two full train-loads of through east-bound freight per day to
+your road, and take from you a like amount of west-bound tonnage, not
+one pound of which can be routed over your lines at present.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pendleton smiled.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A very interesting proposition, Mr. Elkins,&#8221; said he; &#8220;my business is
+railroading, and I am always glad to perfect myself in the knowledge of
+it. Make it plain just how this can be done, and I shall consider my
+half-hour well expended.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then began the fateful conversation out of which grew the building of
+the Lattimore &amp; Great Western Railway. Jim walked to the map which
+covered one wall of the room, and dropped statement after statement into
+the mind of Pendleton like round, compact bullets of fact. It was the
+best piece of expository art imaginable. Every foot of the road was
+described as to gradients, curves, cuts, fills, trestles, bridges, and
+local traffic. Then he began with Lattimore; and we who breathed in
+nothing<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_147" id="pg_147">147</a></span> but knowledge of that city and its resources were given new
+light as to its shipments and possibilities of growth. He showed how the
+products of our factories, the grain from our elevators, the live-stock
+from our yards, and the meats from our packing-houses could be sent
+streaming over the new road and the lines of Pendleton.</p>
+
+<p>Then he turned to our Commercial Club, and showed that the merchants,
+both wholesale and retail, of Lattimore were welded together in its
+membership, in such wise that their merchandise might be routed from the
+great cities over the proposed track. He piled argument on argument. He
+hammered down objection after objection before they could be suggested.
+He met Mr. Pendleton in the domain of railroad construction and
+management, and showed himself familiar with the relative values of
+Pendleton&#8217;s own lines.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Your Pacific Division,&#8221; said he, &#8220;must have disappointed some of the
+expectations with which it was built. Its earnings cannot, in view of
+the distance they fall below those of your other lines, be quite
+satisfactory to you. Give us the traffic agreement we ask; and your next
+report after we have finished our line will show the Pacific Division
+doing more than its share in the great showing of revenue per mile which
+the Pendleton system always makes. I see that my twenty minutes is about
+up. I hope I have made good our promises as to showing cause for coming
+to you with our project.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pendleton, after a moment&#8217;s thought, said: &#8220;Have you made an
+engagement for lunch?&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_148" id="pg_148">148</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We had not. He turned to the telephone, and called for a number.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is this Mr. Wade&#8217;s office?... Yes, if you please.... Is this Mr.
+Wade?... This is Pendleton talking to you.... Yes, Pendleton.... There
+are some gentlemen in my office, Mr. Wade, whom I want you to meet, and
+I should be glad if you could join us at lunch at the club.... Well,
+can&#8217;t you call that off, now?... Say, at one-thirty.... Yes.... Very
+kind of you.... Thanks! Good-by.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Having made his arrangements with Mr. Wade, he hung up the telephone,
+and pushed an electric button. A young man from an outer office
+responded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Tell Mr. Moore,&#8221; said Pendleton to him, &#8220;that he will have to see the
+gentlemen who will call at twelve&mdash;on that lake terminal matter&mdash;he will
+understand. And see that I am not disturbed until after lunch.... And,
+say, Frank! See if Mr. Adams can come in here&mdash;at once, please.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Adams, who turned out to be some sort of a freight expert, came in,
+and the rest of the interview was a bombardment of questions, in which
+we all took turns as targets. When we went to lunch we felt that Mr.
+Pendleton had possessed himself of all we knew about our enterprise, and
+filed the information away in some vast pigeon-hole case with his own
+great stock of knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>We met Mr. Wade over an elaborate lunch. He said, as he shook hands with
+Cornish, that he believed they had met somewhere, to which Cornish bowed
+a frigid assent. Mr. Wade was the head of The Allen G. Wade Trust
+Company, and seemed in<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_149" id="pg_149">149</a></span> a semi-comatose condition, save when cakes,
+wine, or securities were under discussion. He addressed me as &#8220;Mr.
+Corning,&#8221; and called Cornish &#8220;Atkins,&#8221; and once in a while opened his
+mouth to address Jim by name, but halted, with a distressful look, at
+the realization of the fact that he could not remember names enough to
+go around. He made an appointment with me for the party for the next
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you will come to my office before you call on Mr. Wade,&#8221; said Mr.
+Pendleton, &#8220;I will have a memorandum prepared of what we will do with
+you in the way of a traffic agreement: it may be of some use in
+determining the desirability of your bonds. I&#8217;m very glad to have met
+you, gentlemen. When Lattimore gets into my world&mdash;by which I mean our
+system and connections&mdash;I hope to visit the little city which has so
+strong a business community as to be able to send out such a committee
+as yourselves; good-afternoon!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said I, as we went toward our hotel, &#8220;this looks like progress,
+doesn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I sha&#8217;n&#8217;t feel dead sure,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;until the money is in bank,
+subject to the check of the construction company. But doesn&#8217;t it look
+juicy, right now! Why, boys, with that traffic agreement we can get the
+money anywhere&mdash;on the prairie, out at sea&mdash;anywhere under the shining
+sun! They can&#8217;t beat us. What do you say, Cornish? Will, your friend
+Wade jar loose, or shall we have to seek further?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;ll snap at your bonds now,&#8221; said Cornish,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_150" id="pg_150">150</a></span> rather glumly, I thought,
+considering the circumstances; &#8220;but don&#8217;t call him a friend of mine!
+Why, damn him, not a week ago he turned me out of his office, saying
+that he didn&#8217;t want to look into any more Western railway schemes! And
+now he says he believes we&#8217;ve met before!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This seemed to strike Mr. Elkins as the best practical joke he had ever
+heard of; and Cornish suggested that for a man to stop in Homeric
+laughter on Broadway might be pleasant for him, but was embarrassing to
+his companions. By this time Cornish himself was better-natured. Jim
+took charge of our movements, and commanded us to a dinner with him, in
+the nature of a celebration, with a theater-party afterward.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let us,&#8221; said he, &#8220;hear the chimes at midnight, or even after, if we
+get buncoed doing it. Who cares if we wind up in the police court! We&#8217;ve
+done the deed; we&#8217;ve made our bluff good with Halliday and his gang of
+highwaymen; and I feel like taking the limit off, if it lifts the roof!
+Al, hold your hand over my mouth or I shall yell!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Come into my parlor, and yell for me,&#8221; said Cornish, &#8220;and you may do my
+turn in police court, too. Come in, and behave yourself!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I began writing a telegram to my wife, apprising her of our good luck.
+The women in our circle knew our hopes, ambitions, and troubles, as the
+court ladies know the politics of the realm, and there were anxious
+hearts in Lattimore.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m going down to the telegraph-office with this,&#8221; said I; &#8220;can I take
+yours, too?&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_151" id="pg_151">151</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When I handed the messages in, the man who received them insisted on my
+reading them over with him to make sure of correct transmission. There
+was one to Mr. Hinckley, one to Mr. Ballard, and two to Miss Josephine
+Trescott. One ran thus, &#8220;Success seems assured. Rejoice with me. J. B.
+C.&#8221; The other was as follows: &#8220;In game between Railway Giants and
+Country Jakes here to-day, visiting team wins. Score, 9 to 0. Barslow,
+catcher, disabled. Crick in neck looking at high buildings. Have Mrs. B.
+prepare porous plaster for Saturday next. Sell Halliday stock short, and
+buy L. &amp; G. W. And in name all things good and holy don&#8217;t tell Giddings!
+J. R. E.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_152" id="pg_152">152</a></span>
+<a name="In_which_we_Learn_Something_of_Railroads_and_Attend_Some_Remarkable_Christenings_4217" id="In_which_we_Learn_Something_of_Railroads_and_Attend_Some_Remarkable_Christenings_4217"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER XIV.</p>
+<p class="l c">In which we Learn Something of Railroads, and Attend Some Remarkable Christenings.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>And so, in due time, it came to pass that, our Aladdin having rubbed the
+magic ring with which his Genius had endowed him, there came, out of
+some thunderous and smoky realm, peopled with swart kobolds, and lit by
+the white fire of gushing cupolas and dazzling billets, a train of
+carriages, drawn by a tamed volcanic demon, on a wonderful way of steel,
+armed strongly to deliver us from the Castle Perilous in which we were
+besieged by the Giants. The way was marvelously prepared by theodolite
+and level, by tented camps of men driving, with shouts and cracking
+whips, straining teams in circling mazes, about dark pits on grassy
+hillsides, and building long, straight banks of earth across swales; by
+huge machines with iron fists thrusting trunks of trees into the earth;
+by mighty creatures spinning great steel cobwebs over streams.</p>
+
+<p>At last, a short branch of steel shot off from Pendleton&#8217;s Pacific
+Division, grew daily longer and longer, pushed across the level
+earth-banks, the rows of driven tree-trunks, and the spun steel cobwebs,
+through the dark pits, nearer and nearer to<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_153" id="pg_153">153</a></span> Lattimore, and at last
+entered the beleaguered city, amid rejoicings of the populace. Most of
+whom knew but vaguely the facts of either siege or deliverance; but who
+shouted, and tossed their caps, and blew the horns and beat the drums,
+because the <i>Herald</i> in a double-leaded editorial assured them that this
+was <i>the</i> event for which Lattimore had waited to be raised to complete
+parity with her envious rivals. Furthermore, Captain Tolliver,
+magniloquently enthusiastic, took charge of the cheering, artillery, and
+band-music, and made a tumultuous success of it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He told me,&#8221; said Giddings, &#8220;that when the people of the North can be
+brought for a moment into that subjection which is proper for the
+masses, &#8216;they make devilish good troops, suh, devilish good troops!&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And so it also happened that Mr. Elkins found himself the president of a
+real railway, with all the perquisites that go therewith. Among these
+being the power to establish town-sites and give them names. The former
+function was exercised according to the principles usually governing
+town-site companies, and with ends purely financial in view. The latter
+was elevated to the dignity of a ceremony. The rails were scarcely laid,
+when President Elkins invited a choice company to go with him over the
+line and attend the christening of the stations. He convinced the rest
+of us of the wisdom of this, by showing us that it would awaken local
+interest along the line, and prepare the way for the auction sales of
+lots the next week.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_154" id="pg_154">154</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s advertising of the choicest kind,&#8221; said he. &#8220;Giddings will sow it
+far and wide in the press dispatches, and it will attract attention; and
+attention is what we want. We&#8217;ll start early, run to the station
+Pendleton has called Elkins Junction, at the end of the line, lie over
+for a couple of hours, and come home, bestowing names as we come. Help
+me select the party, and we&#8217;ll consider it settled.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As the train was to be a light one, consisting of a buffet-car and a
+parlor-car, the party could not be very large. The officers of the road,
+Mr. Adams, who was general traffic manager, and selected by the
+bondholders, and Mr. Kittrick, the general manager, who was found in
+Kansas City by Jim, went down first as a matter of course. Captain
+Tolliver and his wife, the Trescotts, the Hinckleys, with Mr. Cornish
+and Giddings, were put down by Jim; and to these we added the
+influential new people, the Alexanders, who came with the cement-works,
+of which Mr. Alexander was president, Mr. Densmore, who controlled the
+largest of the elevators, and Mr. Walling, whose mill was the first to
+utilize the waters of our power-tunnel, and who was the visible
+representative of millions made in the flouring trade. Smith, our
+architect, was included, as was Cecil Barr-Smith, sent out by his
+brother to be superintendent of the street-railway, and looking upon the
+thing in the light of an exile, comforted by the beautiful native
+princess Antonia. We left Macdonald out, because he always called the
+young man &#8220;Smith,&#8221; and could not be brought to forget an early
+impression that he and the architect were brothers; besides,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_155" id="pg_155">155</a></span> said Jim,
+Macdonald was afraid of the cars as he was of the hyphen, being most of
+the time on the range with the cattle belonging to himself and Hinckley.
+Which, being interpreted, meant that Mr. Macdonald would not care to go.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ballard was invited on account of his early connection with the L. &amp;
+G. W. project, although he was holding himself more and more aloof from
+the new movements, and held forth often upon the value of conservatism.
+Miss Addison, who was related to the Lattimore family, was commissioned
+to invite the old General, who very unexpectedly consented. His son
+Will, as solicitor for the railway company and one of the directors, was
+to be one of us if he could. These with their wives and some invited
+guests from near-by towns made up the party.</p>
+
+<p>We were well acquainted with each other by this time, so that it was
+quite like a family party or a gathering of old friends. Captain
+Tolliver was austerely polite to General Lattimore, whose refusal to
+concern himself with the question as to whether our city grew to a
+hundred thousand or shrunk to five he accounted for on the ground that a
+man who had led hired ruffians to trample out the liberty of a brave
+people must be morally warped.</p>
+
+<p>The General came, tall and spare as ever, wearing his beautiful white
+moustache and imperial as a Frenchman would wear the cross of the Legion
+of Honor. He was quite unable to sympathize with our lot-selling, our
+plenitude of corporations, or our feverish pushing of &#8220;developments.&#8221;
+But the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_156" id="pg_156">156</a></span> building of the railway attracted him. He looked back at the
+new-made track as we flew along; and his eyes flashed under the bushy
+white brows. He sat near Josie, and held her in conversation much of the
+outward trip; but Jim he failed to appreciate, and treated
+indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He is History incarnate,&#8221; said Mrs. Tolliver, &#8220;and cannot rejoice in
+the passing of so much that is a part of himself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Giddings said that this was probably true; and under the circumstances
+he couldn&#8217;t blame him. He, Giddings, would feel a little sore to see
+things which were a part of <i>himself</i> going out of date. It was a
+natural feeling. Whereupon Mrs. Tolliver addressed her remarks very
+pointedly elsewhere; and Antonia Hinckley privately admonished Giddings
+not to be mean; and Giddings sought the buffet and smoked. Here I joined
+him, and over our cigars he confessed to me that life to him was an
+increasing burden, rapidly becoming intolerable.</p>
+
+<p>We had noticed, I informed him, an occasional note of gloom in his
+editorials. This ought not to be, now that the real danger to our
+interests seemed to be over, and we were going forward so wonderfully.
+To which he replied that with the gauds of worldly success he had no
+concern. The editorials I criticised were joyous and ebulliently
+hilarious compared with those which might be expected in the future. If
+we could find some blithesome ass to pay him for the <i>Herald</i> enough
+money to take him out of our scrambled Bedlam of a town, bring the idiot
+on,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_157" id="pg_157">157</a></span> and he (Giddings) would arrange things so we could have our touting
+done as we liked it!</p>
+
+<p>Now the <i>Herald</i> had become a very valuable property, and of all men
+Giddings had the least reason to speak despitefully of Lattimore; and
+his frame of mind was a mystery to me, until I remembered that there was
+supposed to be something amiss between him and Laura Addison. Craftily
+leading the conversation to the point where confidences were easy, I was
+rewarded by a passionate disclosure on his part, which would have
+amounted to an outburst, had it not been restrained by the presence of
+Cornish, Hinckley, and Trescott at the other end of the compartment.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, pshaw!&#8221; said I, &#8220;you&#8217;ve no cause for despair. On your own showing,
+there&#8217;s every reason for you to hope.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t know the situation, Barslow,&#8221; he insisted, shaking his head
+gloomily, &#8220;and there&#8217;s no use in trying to tell you. She&#8217;s too exalted
+in her ideals ever to accept me. She&#8217;s told me things about the
+qualities she must have in the one who should be nearest to her that
+just simply shut me out; and I haven&#8217;t called since. Oh, I tell you,
+Barslow, sometimes I feel as if I could&mdash;Yes, sir, it&#8217;ll be accepted as
+the best piece of railroad building for years!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I was surprised at the sudden transition, until I saw that our fellow
+passengers were crowding to our end of the car in response to the
+conductor&#8217;s announcement that we were coming into Elkins Junction. I
+made a note of Giddings&#8217;s state of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_158" id="pg_158">158</a></span> mind, as the subject of a conference
+with Jim. The <i>Herald</i> was of too much importance to us for this to be
+neglected. The disciple of Iago must in some way be restored to his
+normal view of things. I could not help smiling at the vast difference
+between his view of Laura and mine. I, wrongly perhaps, thought her
+affectedly pietistic, with ideals likely to be yielding in spirit if the
+letter were preserved.</p>
+
+<p>Elkins Junction was a platform, a depot, an eating-house, and a Y; and
+it was nothing else.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve come up here,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;to show you probably the smallest town
+in the state, and the only one in the world named after me. We wanted to
+show you the whole line, and Mr. Schwartz felt as if he&#8217;d prefer to turn
+his engine around for the return trip. The last two towns we came
+through, and hence the first two going back, are old places. The third
+station is a new town, and Conductor Corcoran will take us back there,
+where we&#8217;ll unveil the name of the station, and permit the people to
+know where they live. While we&#8217;re doing the sponsorial act, lunch will
+be prepared and ready for us to discuss during the next run.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>On the way back there was a stir of suppressed excitement among the
+passengers.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s about this name,&#8221; said Miss Addison to her seat-mate. &#8220;The town is
+on the shore of Mirror Lake, and they say it will be an important one,
+and a summer resort; and no one knows what the name is to be but Mr.
+Elkins.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Really, a very odd affair!&#8221; said Miss Allen, of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_159" id="pg_159">159</a></span> Fairchild, Antonia&#8217;s
+college friend. &#8220;It makes a social function of the naming of a town!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Mr. Elkins, &#8220;and it is one of the really enduring things we
+can do. Long after the memory of every one here is departed, these
+villages will still bear the names we give them to-day. If there&#8217;s any
+truth in the belief that some people have, that names have an influence
+for good or evil, the naming of the towns may be important as building
+the railroad.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I was sitting with Antonia. Miss Allen and Captain Tolliver were with
+us, our faces turned toward one another. General Lattimore, with Josie
+and her father, was on the opposite side of the car. Most of the company
+were sitting or standing near, and the conversation was quite general.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, it&#8217;s like a romance!&#8221; half whispered Antonia to us. &#8220;I envy you men
+who build roads and make towns. Look at Mr. Elkins, Sadie, as he stands
+there! He is master of everything; to me he seems as great as Napoleon!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She neither blushed nor sought to conceal from us her adoration for Jim.
+It was the day of his triumph, and a fitting time to acknowledge his
+kinghood; and her admission that she thought him the greatest, the most
+excellent of men did not surprise me. Yet, because he was older than
+she, and had never put himself in a really loverlike attitude toward
+her, I thought it was simply an exalted girlish regard, and not at all
+what we usually understand by an affair of the heart. Moreover, at that
+time such praise as she gave him would not have<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_160" id="pg_160">160</a></span> been thought
+extravagant in almost any social gathering in Lattimore. Let me confess
+that to me it does not now seem so ... Cecil Barr-Smith walked out and
+stood on the platform.</p>
+
+<p>General Lattimore was apparently thinking of the features of the
+situation which had struck Antonia as romantic.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You young men,&#8221; said he, &#8220;are among the last of the city-builders and
+road-makers. My generation did these things differently. We went out
+with arms in our hands, and hewed out spaces in savagery for homes. You
+don&#8217;t seem to see it; but you are straining every nerve merely to shift
+people from many places to one, and there to exploit them. You wind your
+coils about an inert mass, you set the dynamo of your power of
+organization at work, and the inert mass becomes a great magnet. People
+come flying to it from the four quarters of the earth, and the
+first-comers levy tribute upon them, as the price of standing-room on
+the magnet!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I nevah hea&#8217;d the real merit and strength and safety of ouah
+real-estate propositions bettah stated, suh!&#8221; said Captain Tolliver
+ecstatically.</p>
+
+<p>Jim stood looking at the General with sober regard.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Go on, General,&#8221; said he.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not only that,&#8221; went on the General, &#8220;but people begin forestalling the
+standing-room, so as to make it scarcer. They gamble on the power of the
+magnet, and the length of time it will draw. They buy to-day and sell
+to-morrow; or cast up what they imagine they might sell for, and call<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_161" id="pg_161">161</a></span>
+the increase profit. Then comes the time when the magnet ceases to draw,
+or the forestallers, having, in their greed, grasped more than they can
+keep, offer too much for the failing market, and all at once the thing
+stops, and the dervish-dance ends in coma, in cold forms and still
+hands, in misery and extinction!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause, during which the old soldier sat looking out of the
+widow, no one else finding aught to say. Elkins remained standing, and
+once or twice gave that little movement of the head which precedes
+speech, but said nothing. Cornish smiled sardonically. Josie looked
+anxiously at Jim, apprehensive as to how he would take it. At last it
+was Ballard the conservative who broke silence.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I hope, General,&#8221; said he, &#8220;that our little movement won&#8217;t develop into
+a dervish-dance. Anyhow, you will join in our congratulations upon the
+completion of the railroad. You know you once did some railroad-building
+yourself, down there in Tennessee&mdash;I know, for I was there. And I&#8217;ve
+always taken an interest in track-laying ever since.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So have I,&#8221; said the General; &#8220;that&#8217;s what brought me out to-day.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, tell us about it,&#8221; said Josie, evidently pleased at the change of
+subject; &#8220;tell us about it, please.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, no!&#8221; he protested, &#8220;you may read it better in the histories,
+written by young fellows who know more about it than we who were there.
+You&#8217;ll find, when you read it, that it was something like this: Grant&#8217;s
+host was over around Chattanooga, starving for want of means for
+carrying in provisions. We<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_162" id="pg_162">162</a></span> were marching eastward to join him, when a
+message came telling us to stop at Decatur and rebuild the railroad to
+Nashville. So, without a thought that there was such a thing as an
+impossibility, we stopped&mdash;we seven or eight thousand common Americans,
+volunteer soldiers, picked at random from the legions of heroes who
+saved liberty to the world&mdash;and without an engineering corps, without
+tools or implements, with nothing except what any like number of our
+soldiers had, we stopped and built the road. That is all. The rails had
+been heated, and wound about trees and stumps. The cross-ties were
+burned to heat the rails. The cars had been destroyed by fire, and their
+warped ironwork thrown into ditches. The engines lay in scrap-heaps at
+the bottoms of ravines and rivers. The bridges were gone. Out of the
+chaos to which the structure had been resolved, there was nothing left
+but the road-bed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When I think of what we did, I know that with liberty and intelligence
+men with their naked hands could, in short space, re-create the
+destroyed wealth of the world. We made tools of the scraps of iron and
+steel we found along the line. We felled trees. We impressed little
+sawmills and sawed the logs into timbers for bridges and cars. Out of
+the battle-scarred and march-worn ranks came creative and constructive
+genius in such profusion as to astound us, who thought we knew them so
+well. Those blue-coated fellows, enlisted and serving as food for
+powder, and used to destruction, rejoiced in once more feeling the
+thrill there is in making things.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_163" id="pg_163">163</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Out of the ranks came millers, and ground the grain the foragers
+brought in; came woodmen, and cut the trees; came sawyers, and sawed the
+lumber. We asked for blacksmiths; and they stepped from the ranks, and
+made their own tools and the tools of the machinists. We called for
+machinists; and out of the ranks they stepped, and rebuilt the engines,
+and made the cars ready for the carpenters. When we wanted carpenters,
+out of the same ranks of common soldiers they walked, and made the cars.
+From the ranks came other men, who took the twisted rails, unwound them
+from the stumps and unsnarled them from one another, as women unwind
+yarn, and laid them down fit to carry our trains. And in forty days our
+message went back to Grant that we had &#8216;stopped and built the road,&#8217; and
+that our engines were even then drawing supplies to his hungry army.
+Such was the incomparable army which was commanded by that silent genius
+of war; and to have been one of such an army is to have lived!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The withered old hand trembled, as the great past surged back through
+his mind. We all sat in silence; and I looked at Captain Tolliver,
+doubtful as to how he would take the old Union general&#8217;s speech. What
+the Captain&#8217;s history had been none of us knew, except that he was a
+Southerner. When the general ceased, Tolliver was sitting still, with no
+indication of being conscious of anything special in the conversation,
+except that a red spot burned in each dark cheek. As the necessity for
+speech grew with the lengthening silence, he rose and faced General
+Lattimore.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_164" id="pg_164">164</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Suh,&#8221; said he, &#8220;puhmit a man who was with the victohs of Manasses; who
+chahged with mo&#8217; sand than sense at Franklin; and who cried like a child
+aftah Nashville, and isn&#8217;t ashamed of it, by gad! to offah his hand, and
+to say that he agrees with you, suh, in youah tribute to the soldiers of
+the wah, and honahs you, suh, as a fohmah foe, and a worthy one, and he
+hopes, a future friend!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Somehow, the Captain&#8217;s swelling phrases, his sonorous allusions to
+himself in the third person, had for the moment ceased to be ridiculous.
+The environment fitted the expression. The general grasped his hand and
+shook it. Then Ballard claimed the right, as one of the survivors of
+Franklin, to a share in the reunion, and they at once removed the strain
+which had fallen upon us with the General&#8217;s first speech, by relating
+stories and fraternizing soldierwise, until Conductor Corcoran called in
+at the door, &#8220;Mystery Number One! All out for the christening!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As we gathered on the platform, we saw that the signboard on the
+station-building, for the name of the town, had been put up, but was
+veiled by a banner draped over it. Tents were pitched near, in which
+people lived waiting for the lot-auction, that they might buy sites for
+shops and homes. The waters of the lake shone through the trees a few
+rods away; and in imagination I could see the village of the future,
+sprinkled about over the beautiful shore. The future villagers gathered
+near the platform; and when Jim stepped forward to make the speech of
+the occasion, he had a considerable audience.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_165" id="pg_165">165</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ladies and gentlemen,&#8221; said he, &#8220;our visit is for the purpose of
+showing the interest which the Lattimore &amp; Great Western takes and will
+continue to take in the towns on its line, and to add a name to what, I
+notice, has already become a local habitation. In conferring that name,
+we are aware that the future citizens of the place have claims upon us.
+So one has been selected which, as time passes, will grow more and more
+pleasant to your ears; and one which the person bestowing it regards as
+an honor to the town as high as could be conferred in a name. No station
+on our lines could have greater claims upon our regard than the
+possession of this name. And now, gentlemen&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Elkins removed his hat, and we all followed his example. Some one
+pulled a cord, the banner fell away, and the name was revealed. It was
+&#8220;<span class="smcap">Josephine</span>.&#8221; The women looked at it, and turned their eyes on Josie, who
+blushed rosily, and shrank back behind her father, who burst into a loud
+laugh of unalloyed pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I propose three cheers for the town of Josephine,&#8221; went on Mr. Elkins,
+&#8220;and for the lady for whom it is named!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They were real cheers&mdash;good hearty ones; followed by an address, in the
+name of the town, by a bright young man who pushed forward and with
+surprising volubility thanked President Elkins for his selection of the
+name, and closed with flowery compliments to the blushing Miss Trescott,
+whose identity Jim had disclosed by a bow. He was afterwards a thorn in
+our flesh in his practice as a personal-injury lawyer.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_166" id="pg_166">166</a></span> At the time,
+however, we warmed to him, as under his leadership the dwellers in the
+tents and round about the waters of Mirror Lake all shook hands with Jim
+and Josie.</p>
+
+<p>Cornish stood with a saturnine smile on his face, and glared at some of
+the more pointed hits of the young lawyer. Cecil Barr-Smith beamed
+radiant pleasure, as he saw the evident linking in this public way of
+Jim&#8217;s name and Josie&#8217;s. Antonia stood close to Cecil&#8217;s side, and chatted
+vivaciously to him&mdash;not with him; for her words seemed to have no
+correlation with his.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Quite like the going away of a bridal party!&#8221; said she with exaggerated
+gayety, and with a little spitefulness, I thought. &#8220;Has any one any
+rice?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All aboard!&#8221; said Corcoran; and the joyful and triumphant party, with
+their outward intimacy and their inward warfare of passions and desires,
+rolled on toward &#8220;Mystery Number Two,&#8221; which was duly christened
+&#8220;Cornish,&#8221; and celebrated in champagne furnished by its godfather.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t you ever drink champagne?&#8221; said Cornish, as Josie declined to
+partake.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Never,&#8221; said she.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What, <i>never</i>?&#8221; he went on, Pinaforically.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;My God!&#8221; thought I, &#8220;the assurance of the man!&#8221; And the palm-encircled
+alcove at Auriccio&#8217;s, as it was wont so often to do, came across my
+vision, and shut out everything but the Psyche face in its ruddy halo,
+speeding by me into the street, and the vexed young man in the faultless
+attire slowly following.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_167" id="pg_167">167</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mystery Number Three was &#8220;Antonia,&#8221; a lovely little place in embryo;
+&#8220;Barslow&#8221; came next, followed by &#8220;Giddings&#8221; and &#8220;Tolliver.&#8221; We were
+tired of it when we reached &#8220;Hinckley,&#8221; platted on a farm owned by
+Antonia&#8217;s father, and where we ceased to perform the ceremony of
+unveiling. It was a memorable trip, ending with sunset and home. Captain
+Tolliver assisted General Lattimore to alight from the train, and they
+went arm in arm up to the old General&#8217;s home.</p>
+
+<p>That night, according to his wont, Jim came to smoke with me in the late
+evening. &#8220;Let&#8217;s take a car,&#8221; said he, &#8220;and go up and have a look at the
+houses.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>These were our new mansions up in Lynhurst Park Addition, now in process
+of erection. In the moonlight we could see them dimly, and at a little
+distance they looked like masses of ruins&mdash;the second childhood of
+houses. A stranger could have seen, from the polished columns and the
+piles of carved stone, that they were to be expensive and probably
+beautiful structures.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What do you think of the General in the r&ocirc;le of Cassandra?&#8221; asked Jim,
+as we sat in the skeleton room which was to be his library.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It struck me,&#8221; said I, &#8220;as a particularly artistic bit of croaking!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The Captain says frequently,&#8221; said Jim, his cigar glowing like a
+variable star, &#8220;that opportunity knocks once. The General, I&#8217;m afraid,
+knocks all the time. But if it should turn out that he&#8217;s right about
+the&mdash;the&mdash;dervish-dance ... it would be ... to<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_168" id="pg_168">168</a></span> put it mildly ... a
+horse on us, Al, wouldn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I had no answer to this fanciful speech, and made none. Instead, I told
+him of Giddings&#8217;s love-sickness.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The philosophy of Iago has broken down,&#8221; said he, &#8220;and the boy is sort
+of short-circuited. Antonia can take him in hand, and turn him out full
+of confidence; and with that, I&#8217;ll answer for the lady. That can be
+fixed easy, and ought to be. Let&#8217;s walk back.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What was it he said?&#8221; he asked, as we parted. &#8220;&#8216;Coma, cold forms, still
+hands, and extinction.&#8217; Well, if the dervish-dance does wind up in that
+sort of thing, it&#8217;s only a short-cut to the inevitable. Those are pretty
+houses up there; we&#8217;d have been astounded over them when we used to fish
+together on Beaver Creek;&mdash;but suppose they are?</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em;">&#8220;&#8216;They say the Lion and the Lizard keep<br />
+The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep;<br />
+And Bahram, that great hunter&mdash;the Wild Ass<br />
+Stamps o&#8217;er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep!&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Good-night, Al!&#8220;</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_169" id="pg_169">169</a></span>
+<a name="Some_Affairs_of_the_Heart_Considered_in_their_Relation_to_Dollars_Cents_4672" id="Some_Affairs_of_the_Heart_Considered_in_their_Relation_to_Dollars_Cents_4672"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER XV.</p>
+<p class="l c">Some Affairs of the Heart Considered in their Relation to Dollars Cents.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Antonia was sitting in a hammock. Josie and Alice were not far away
+watching Cecil Barr-Smith, who was wading into the lake to get
+water-lilies for them, contrary to the ordinances of the city of
+Lattimore in such cases made and provided. The six were dawdling away
+our time one fine Sunday in Lynhurst Park. I forgot to say Mr. Elkins
+and myself were discussing affairs of state with Miss Hinckley.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s such a ninny,&#8221; said Antonia.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aren&#8217;t all people when in his forlorn condition?&#8221; asked Jim.</p>
+
+<p>Antonia looked away at the clouds, and did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But if he had a morsel of the cynical philosophy he boasts of,&#8221; said
+she, &#8220;he could see.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know about that,&#8221; said Jim lazily, looking over at the other
+group; &#8220;a woman can conceal her feelings in such a case pretty
+completely.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know about that,&#8221; echoed Antonia. &#8220;I wish I did; it would
+simplify things.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_170" id="pg_170">170</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I believe,&#8221; said I, &#8220;that it&#8217;s a simple enough matter for you to solve
+and manage as it is.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But it&#8217;s so absurd to bother with!&#8221; said she; &#8220;and what&#8217;s the use?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Doesn&#8217;t it seem that way?&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;And yet you know we brought him
+here for a definite purpose; and in his present state he can&#8217;t make
+good. Just read his editorial this morning: it would add gloom to the
+proceedings, read at a funeral. We want things whooped up, and he wants
+to whoop &#8217;em; but long screeds on &#8216;The Sacred Right of Self-destruction&#8217;
+hurt things, and bring the paper into disrepute, and crowd out
+optimistic matter that we desire. And as long as both families want the
+thing brought about, and there is good reason to think that Laura will
+not prove eternally immovable, I take it to be an important enough
+matter, from the standpoint of dollars and cents, for the exercise of
+our diplomacy.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, then,&#8221; said Antonia, &#8220;get the people together on some social
+occasion, and we&#8217;ll try.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve thought,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;of having a house-warming&mdash;as soon as the
+weather gets so that the very name of the function won&#8217;t keep folks
+away. My house is practically done, you know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Just the thing,&#8221; said Antonia. &#8220;There are cosy nooks and deep retreats
+enough to make it a sort of labyrinth for the ensnaring of our victims.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Isn&#8217;t it a queer thing in language,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;that these retreats are
+the places where advances are made!&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_171" id="pg_171">171</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not when you consider,&#8221; said Antonia, &#8220;that retreats follow repulses.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We ought to have the Captain and the General here, if this military
+conversation is to continue,&#8221; said I. &#8220;And here comes Cecil. Stop before
+he comes, or we shall never get through with the explanation of the
+jokes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This remark elicited the laughter which the puns failed to provoke; for
+Cecil was color-blind in all things relating to the American joke. The
+humor of <i>Punch</i> appealed to him, and the wit of Sterne and Dean Swift;
+but the funny column and the paragrapher&#8217;s niche of our newspapers he
+regarded as purely pathological phenomena. I sometimes feel that Cecil
+was right about this. Can the mind which continues to be charmed by
+these paragraphic strainings be really sound?&mdash;but this is not a
+dissertation. Cecil reconciled himself to his position as the local
+exemplification of the traditional Englishman whose trains of ideas run
+on the freight schedule&mdash;and was one of the most popular fellows in
+Lattimore. He gloried in his slavery to Antonia, and seemed to glean
+hope from the most sterile circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>It was easy to hope, in Lattimore, then. It was not many days after our
+talk in the park before I noticed a change for the better in Giddings,
+even. Just before Jim&#8217;s house-warming, he came to me with something like
+optimism in his appearance. I started to cheer him up, and went wrong.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m glad to see by your cheerful looks,&#8221; said I, &#8220;that the philosophy
+of Iago&mdash;&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_172" id="pg_172">172</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Say, now!&#8221; cried he, &#8220;don&#8217;t remind me of that, for Heaven&#8217;s sake!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, certainly not,&#8221; said I, &#8220;if you object.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do object,&#8221; said he most earnestly; &#8220;why, that damned-fool philosophy
+may have ruined my life, you know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of course I know what you mean,&#8221; said I; &#8220;but I&#8217;m convinced, and so are
+all your friends, that if you fail, it&#8217;ll be your own lack of nerve, and
+nothing else, that you&#8217;ll owe the disaster to. You should&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I should have refrained from trampling under foot the dearest ideals of
+the only girl&mdash; However, I can&#8217;t talk of these things to any one,
+Barslow. But I have some hope now. Antonia and Josie have both been very
+kind lately&mdash;and say, Barslow, I see now how little foundation there is
+for that old gag about the women hating each other!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve always felt,&#8221; said I, anxious to draw him out so that I might see
+what the conspirators had been doing, &#8220;that there&#8217;s nothing in <i>that</i>
+idea. But what has changed your view?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Antonia, and Josie, and even your wife,&#8221; said he, &#8220;have been keeping up
+a regular lobby in my behalf with Laura. They think they&#8217;ve got the deal
+plugged up now, so that she&#8217;ll give me a show again, and&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, surely,&#8221; said I; &#8220;in my opinion, there never was any need for you
+to feel downcast.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Barslow,&#8221; he said, with the air of a man who has endured to the limit,
+&#8220;you are a good fellow, but you make me tired when you talk like that.
+Why, four weeks ago I had no more show than a snowball<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_173" id="pg_173">173</a></span> in&mdash;in the
+crater of Vesuvius. But now I&#8217;m encouraged. These girls have been doing
+me good, as I just said, and I&#8217;m convinced that my series of editorials
+on &#8216;The Influence of Christianity on Civilization,&#8217; in which I&#8217;ve given
+the Church the credit of being the whole thing, has helped some.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They ought to do good somewhere,&#8221; said I, &#8220;they certainly haven&#8217;t
+boomed Lattimore any.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Damn Lattimore!&#8221; said he bitterly. &#8220;When a man&#8217;s very life&mdash;But see
+here, Barslow, I know you&#8217;re not in earnest about this. And I&#8217;ll be all
+right in a day or two, or I&#8217;ll be eternally wrong. I&#8217;m going to make one
+final cast of the die. I may go down to bottomless perdition, or I may
+be caught up to the battlements of heaven; but such a mass of doubts and
+miseries as I&#8217;ve been lately, I&#8217;ll no longer be! Pray for me, Barslow,
+pray for me!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This despairing condition of Giddings&#8217;s was a sort of continuing
+sensation with us at that time. We discussed it quite freely in all its
+aspects, humorous and tragic. It was so unexpected a development in the
+young man&#8217;s character, and, with all due respect to the discretion and
+resisting powers of Miss Addison, so entirely gratuitous and factitious.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He has ability as a writer,&#8221; said the Captain; &#8220;but in such a mattah
+anybody but a fool ought to see that the thing to do is to chahge the
+intrenchments. I trust that I may not be misunde&#8217;stood when I say that,
+in my opinion, a good rattling chahge would not be a fo&#8217;lo&#8217;n hope!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It bothers,&#8221; said Jim; &#8220;and if it weren&#8217;t for that,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_174" id="pg_174">174</a></span> I&#8217;d feel
+conscience-stricken at doing anything to rob the idiot of a most
+delicious grief.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The coolness of early autumn was in the air the night of Jim&#8217;s
+house-warming. To describe his dwelling, in these days when fortunes are
+spent on the details of a stairway, and a king&#8217;s ransom for the
+tapestries of a salon, all of which luxuries are spread before the eyes
+of the public in the columns of Sunday papers and magazines, would be to
+court an anticlimax. But this was before the multimillionaire had made
+the need for an augmentative of the word &#8220;luxury&#8221;; and Jim&#8217;s house was
+noteworthy for its beauty: its cunningly wrought iron and wood; and
+columned halls and stairways; and wide-throated fireplaces, each a
+picture in tile, wood, and metalwork; and vistas like little fairylands
+through silken porti&egrave;res; and carven chairs and couches, reminiscent of
+royal palaces; and chambers where lovely color-schemes were worked out
+in rug, and bed, and canopy. There were decorations made by men whose
+names were known in London and Paris. From out-of-the-way places Mr.
+Elkins had brought collections of queer and interesting and pretty
+things which, all his life, he had been accumulating; and in his library
+were broad areas of well-worn book-backs. Somehow, people looked upon
+the Mr. Elkins who was master of all these as a more important man than
+the Elkins who had blown into the town on some chance breeze of
+speculation, and taken rooms at the Centropolis.</p>
+
+<p>It was all light and color, that night. Even the formal flower-beds of
+the grounds and the fountain<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_175" id="pg_175">175</a></span> spouting on the lawn were like scenery in
+the lime-light. Only, back in the shrubbery there were darker nooks in
+summer-houses and arbors for those who loved darkness rather than light,
+because their deeds, to the common mind, were likely to seem foolish. I
+remember thinking that if Mr. Giddings really wanted a chance to take
+the high dive of which he had spoken to me, the opportunity was before
+him.</p>
+
+<p>His Laura was there, her devotee-like expression striving with an
+exceedingly low-cut dress to sound the distinguishing note of her
+personality. Giddings was at the punch-bowl as on their arrival she
+swept past with the General. When he saw the nun-like glance over the
+swelling bosom, the poor stricken cynic blushed, turned pale, and
+wheeled to flee. But Cecil, as if following orders, arrested him and
+began plying him with the punch&mdash;from which Giddings seemed to draw
+courage: for I saw him, soon, gravitate to her whom he loved and so
+mysteriously dreaded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a pe&#8217;fect jewel-case of a house!&#8221; said the Captain, as he moved
+with the trooping company through the mansion.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Indeed, indeed it is,&#8221; said Mrs. Tolliver to Alice; &#8220;the jewel, whoever
+it may be, is to be envied.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I hope,&#8221; said Jim to Josie, &#8220;that you agree with Mrs. Tolliver?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, yes,&#8221; said Josie, &#8220;but you attach far too much importance to my
+judgment. If it is any comfort to you, however, I want to
+praise&mdash;everything&mdash;unreservedly.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I won&#8217;t know, for a while,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;whether<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_176" id="pg_176">176</a></span> it is to be my house
+only, or home in the full sense of the word.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;One doesn&#8217;t know about that, I fancy,&#8221; said Cecil; &#8220;for a long time&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I mean to know soon,&#8221; said Jim.</p>
+
+<p>Josie was looking intently at the carving on one of the chairs, and paid
+no heed, though the remark seemed to be addressed to her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What I mean, you know,&#8221; said Cecil, &#8220;is that, no matter how well the
+house may be built and furnished, it&#8217;s the associations, the history of
+the place, the things that are in the air, that makes &#8217;Ome!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was in the manner of his capitalizing the word as he uttered it,
+and in the unwonted elision of the H, that tribute to his dear island
+which the exiled Briton (even when soothed by the consolation offered by
+street-car systems to superintend, and rose-pink blondes to serve),
+always pays when he speaks of Home.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Associations,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;may be historical or prophetic. In the former
+case, we have to take them on trust; but as to those of the future, we
+are sure of them.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yahs,&#8221; said Cecil, using the locution which he always adopted when
+something subtle was said to him, &#8220;I dare say! I dare say!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, then,&#8221; Jim went on, &#8220;I have this matter of the atmosphere or
+associations under my own control.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Just so,&#8221; said Cecil. &#8220;Clever conceit, Miss Trescott, isn&#8217;t it, now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But Miss Trescott had apparently heard nothing of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_177" id="pg_177">177</a></span> Jim&#8217;s speech, and
+begged pardon; and wouldn&#8217;t they go and show her the bronzes in the
+library?</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This mansion, General,&#8221; said the Captain, &#8220;takes one back, suh, to the
+halcyon days of American history. I refeh, suh, to those times when the
+plantahs of the black prairie belt of Alabama lived like princes, in the
+heart of an enchanted empire!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A very interesting period, Captain,&#8221; said the General. &#8220;It is a pity
+that the industrial basis was one which could not endure!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In the midst of fo&#8217;ests, suh,&#8221; went on the Captain, &#8220;we had ouah
+mansions, not inferio&#8217; to this&mdash;each a little kingdom with its complete
+wo&#8217;ld of amusements, its cote, and its happy populace, goin&#8217; singin&#8217; to
+the wo&#8217;k which supported the estate!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said the General, &#8220;I thought, when we were striking down that
+state of things, that we were doing a great thing for that populace. But
+I now see that I was only helping the black into a new slavery, the
+fruits of which we see here, around us, to-night.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I hahdly get youah meaning, suh&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said the General, looking about at the little audience. (It was
+in the smoking-room, and those present were smokers only.) &#8220;Well, now,
+take my case. I have some pretty valuable grounds down there where I
+live. When I got them, they were worthless. I could build as good a
+mansion as this or any of your ante-bellum Alabama houses for what I can
+get out of that little tract. What is that value? Merely the expression
+in terms of money of the power of excluding the rest of mankind from
+that little piece<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_178" id="pg_178">178</a></span> of ground. I make people give me the fruits of their
+labor, myself doing nothing. That&#8217;s what builds this house and all these
+great houses, and breeds the luxury we are beginning to see around us;
+and the consciousness that this slavery exists, and is increasing, and
+bids fair to grow greatly, is what is making men crazy over these little
+spots of ground out here in the West! It is this slavery&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Suh,&#8221; exclaimed the Captain, rising and grasping the General&#8217;s hand,
+&#8220;you have done me the favo&#8217; of making me wisah! I nevah saw so cleahly
+the divine decree which has fo&#8217;eo&#8217;dained us to this opulence. Nothing so
+satisfactory, suh, as a basis and reason foh investment, has been
+advanced in my hearing since I have been in the real-estate business!
+Let us wo&#8217;k this out a little mo&#8217; in detail, if you please, suh&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let us escape while there is yet time!&#8221; said Cornish; and we fled.</p>
+
+<p>After supper there was a cotillion. The spacious ballroom, with its roof
+so high that the lights up there were as stars, was a sight which could
+scarcely be reconciled with the village community which he had found and
+changed. The palms, and flowers, and lights which decorated the room;
+the orchestra&#8217;s river of dance-music; the men, all in the black livery
+which&mdash;on the surface&mdash;marks the final conquest of civilization over
+barbarism; the beautiful gowns, the sparkling jewels, and the white
+shoulders and arms of the ladies&mdash;all these made me wonder if I had not
+been transported to some Mayfair or Newport, so pictorial, so
+decorative, so charged with art,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_179" id="pg_179">179</a></span> it seemed to be. The young people,
+carrying on their courtships in these unfamiliar halls, their
+disappearances into the more remote and tenebrous outskirts of the
+assembly&mdash;all seemed to me to be taking place on the stage, or in some
+romance.</p>
+
+<p>I told Alice about this as we walked home&mdash;it was only across the
+street&mdash;to our own new house.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t tell any one about this feeling of yours,&#8221; said she. &#8220;It betrays
+your provincialism, my dear. You should feel, for the first time in your
+life, perfectly at home. &#8216;Armor, rusting on his walls, On the blood of
+Clifford calls,&#8217; you know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mine didn&#8217;t hear the call,&#8221; said I; &#8220;I&#8217;m probably the first of my race
+to wear this&mdash;But I enjoyed it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I am too full of something that took place to discuss the
+matter,&#8221; said she, as we sat down at home. &#8220;I am perplexed. You know
+about Mr. Cornish and Josie, don&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She startled me, for I had never told her a word.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Know about them!&#8221; I cried, a little dramatically. &#8220;What do you mean?
+No, I don&#8217;t!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, what&#8217;s the matter, Albert?&#8221; she queried. &#8220;I haven&#8217;t charged them
+with midnight assassination, or anything like that! Only, it seems that
+he has been making love to her, for some time, in his cool and
+self-contained way. I&#8217;ve known it, and she&#8217;s been perfectly conscious,
+that I knew; but never said anything to me of it, and seemed unwilling
+even to approach the subject. But to-night Cecil and I found her out in
+the canopied seat by the fountain, and I knew something was the matter,
+and sent Cecil<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_180" id="pg_180">180</a></span> away. Something told me that Mr. Cornish was concerned
+in it, and I asked her at once where he went.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;He is gone!&#8217; said she. &#8216;I don&#8217;t know where he is, and I don&#8217;t care! I
+wish I might never see him any more!&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You may imagine my surprise. When a young woman uses such language
+about a man, it is a certainty that she isn&#8217;t voicing her true feelings,
+or that it isn&#8217;t a normal love affair. So I wormed out of her that he
+had made her an offer.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Well,&#8217; said I, &#8216;if, as I infer from your conversation, you have
+refused him, there&#8217;s an end of the matter; and you need not worry about
+seeing him any more.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;But,&#8217; said she, &#8216;Alice, I haven&#8217;t refused him!&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That took me aback a little,&#8221; went on Alice, &#8220;for I had other plans for
+her; so I said: &#8216;You haven&#8217;t accepted the fellow, have you?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Oh, no, no!&#8217; said she, in a sort of quivery way, &#8216;but what right have
+you to speak of him in that way?&#8217; And that is all I could get out of
+her. She was so unreasonable and disconnected in her talk, and the
+others came out, and I tell you what, Albert Barslow, that man Cornish
+will do evil yet, among us! I have always thought so!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t see any ground for any such prediction,&#8221; said I, &#8220;in anything
+you have told me. Her inability to make up her mind&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Means that there&#8217;s something wrong,&#8221; said my wife dogmatically. &#8220;It
+means that he has some sinister influence over her, as he has over
+almost everybody,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_181" id="pg_181">181</a></span> with those coal-black eyes of his and his satanic
+ways. And worse than all else, it means that he&#8217;ll finally get her, in
+spite of herself!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Pshaw!&#8221; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Go away, Albert!&#8221; said she, &#8220;or we shall quarrel. Go back and find my
+fan&mdash;I left it on the mantel in the library. The house is lighted yet;
+and I was going to send you back anyhow. Kiss me, and go, please.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I felt that if Alice had had in her memory my vision of the supper at
+Auriccio&#8217;s, she would have been confirmed in her fears; but to me, in
+spite of the memory, they seemed absurd. My only apprehension was that
+she might be right as to the final outcome, to the wreck of Jim&#8217;s hopes.
+I did not take the matter at all seriously, in fact. I think we men must
+usually have such an affair worked out to some conclusion, for weal or
+woe, before we regard it otherwise than lightly. That was the reason
+that Giddings&#8217;s distraught condition was only a matter of laughter to
+all of us. And as something like this passed through my mind, Giddings
+himself collared me as I crossed the street.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Old man!&#8221; said he, &#8220;congratulate me! It&#8217;s all right, Barslow, it&#8217;s all
+right.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Up on the battlements, are you?&#8221; said I. &#8220;Well, I congratulate you,
+Giddings; and don&#8217;t make such an ass of yourself, please, any more. I
+never noticed until this evening what a fine girl Laura is. You&#8217;re
+really a very fortunate fellow indeed!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You never noticed it!&#8221; said he with utter scorn. &#8220;Well, if&mdash;&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_182" id="pg_182">182</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s late,&#8221; said I. &#8220;Come and see me in the morning! Good-night.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I went in at the front door of the house. It stood wide open, as if the
+current of guests passing out had removed its tendency to swing shut. It
+seemed lonely now, inside, with all the decorations of the assembly
+still in place in the empty hall. I passed into the library, and found
+Jim sitting idly in a great leather chair. He seemed not to see me; or
+if he did, he paid no attention. I went to the mantel, picked up Alice&#8217;s
+fan, and turned to Jim.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sit down,&#8221; said he.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Having a sort of &#8216;oft in the stilly night&#8217; experience, Jim, or a case
+of William the Conqueror on the Field of Hastings?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said he. &#8220;Something like that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, your house-warming has been a success, Jim,&#8221; said I, &#8220;though a
+fellow wouldn&#8217;t think so to look at you. And the house is faultless. I
+envy you the house, but the ability to plan and furnish it still more. I
+didn&#8217;t think it was in you, old man! Where did you learn it all?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You may have the house, if you want it, Al,&#8221; said he. &#8220;I don&#8217;t think
+it&#8217;s going to be of any use to me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, Jim,&#8221; said I, seeing that it was something more than a mere mood
+with him, &#8220;what is it? Has anything gone wrong?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nothing that I&#8217;ve any right to complain of,&#8221; said he. &#8220;Of course, no
+man puts as much of his life into such a thing as I have into
+this&mdash;without thinking of more than living in it&mdash;alone. I&#8217;ve<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_183" id="pg_183">183</a></span> never had
+what you can really call a home&mdash;not since I was a little chap, when it
+was home wherever there were trees and mother. I&#8217;ve filled this&mdash;with
+those associations I spoke to Barr-Smith about&mdash;to-night&mdash;a little more
+than I seem to have had any warrant to do. I tried to make sure about
+the jewel for the jewel-case to-night, and it went wrong, Al; and that&#8217;s
+all there is of it. I don&#8217;t think I shall need the house, and if you
+like it you can have it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you mean that Josie has refused you?&#8221; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She didn&#8217;t put it that way,&#8221; said he, &#8220;but it amounts to that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nothing that isn&#8217;t a refusal,&#8221; said I, &#8220;ought to be accepted as such.
+What did she say?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nothing definite,&#8221; he answered wearily, &#8220;only that it couldn&#8217;t be
+&#8216;yes,&#8217; and when I urged her to make it &#8216;yes&#8217; or &#8216;no,&#8217; she refused to say
+either; and asked me to forget that I had ever said anything to her
+about the matter. There have been some things which&mdash;led me to hope&mdash;for
+a different answer; and I&#8217;m a good deal taken down, Al ... I wouldn&#8217;t
+like to talk this way&mdash;with any one else.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There seemed to be no reason for abandonment of hope, I urged upon him,
+and after a cigar or so I left him, evidently impressed with this view
+of the case, but nevertheless bitterly disappointed. It meant delay and
+danger to his hopes; and Jim was not a man to brook delay, or suffer
+danger to go unchallenged. I dared not tell him of Cornish&#8217;s offer, and
+of its fate, so similar to his.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_184" id="pg_184">184</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wonder if it is coquetry on her part,&#8221; thought I, as I went back with
+the fan. &#8220;I wonder if it will cause things to go wrong in our business
+affairs. I wonder if it is possible for her to be sincerely unable to
+make up her mind, or if there is anything in Alice&#8217;s malign-influence
+theory. Anyhow, in the department of Cupid business certainly is picking
+up!&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_185" id="pg_185">185</a></span>
+<a name="Some_Things_which_Happened_in_Our_Halcyon_Days_5127" id="Some_Things_which_Happened_in_Our_Halcyon_Days_5127"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER XVI.</p>
+<p class="l c">Some Things which Happened in Our Halcyon Days.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>If there was any tension among us just after the house-warming, it was
+not noticeable. Mr. Cornish and Mr. Elkins seemed unaware of their
+rivalry. Had either of the two been successful, it might have made
+mischief; but as it was, neither felt that his rejection was more than
+temporary. Neither knew much of the other&#8217;s suit, and both seemed full
+of hope and good spirits.</p>
+
+<p>Altogether, these were our halcyon days. It seemed to crew and captain a
+time for the putting off of armor, and the donning of the garlands of
+complacent respite from struggle. The work we had undertaken seemed
+accomplished&mdash;our village was a city. The great wheel we had set
+whirling went spinning on with power. Long ago we had ceased to treat
+the matter jocularly; and to regard our operations as applied psychology
+only, or as a piratical reunion, no longer occurred to us. There is such
+a thing, I believe, as self-hypnotism; but if we knew it, we made no
+application of our knowledge to our own condition. This great,
+scattered, ebullient town, grown from the drowsy Lattimore of a<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_186" id="pg_186">186</a></span> few
+years ago, must surely be, even now, what we had willed it to be: and
+therefore, could we not pause and take our ease?</p>
+
+<p>There was the General, of course. He, Jim said, &#8220;&#8216;knocked&#8217; so constantly
+as to be sort of ex-officio President of the Boiler-makers&#8217; Union,&#8221; and
+talked of the inevitable collapse. But who ever heard of a city built by
+people of his way of thinking? And there was Josie Trescott, with her
+agreement on broad lines with the General, and her deprecation of the
+giving of fortunes to people who had not earned them; but Josie was only
+a woman, who, to be sure, knew more of most matters than the rest of us,
+but could not have any very valuable knowledge of the prospects for
+commercial prosperity.</p>
+
+<p>That we were in the midst of an era of the most wonderful commercial
+prosperity none denied. How could they? The streets, so lately bordered
+with low stores, hotels, and banks, were now craggy with tall office
+buildings and great hostelries, through which the darting elevators shot
+hurrying passengers. Those trees which made early twilight in the
+streets that night when Alice, Jim, and I first rode out to the Trescott
+farm were now mostly cut down to make room for &#8220;improvements.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Brushy Creek gorge was no longer dark and cool, with its double sky-line
+of trees drowsing toward one another, like eyelashes, from the friendly
+cliffs. The cooing of the pigeons was gone forever. The muddied water
+from the great flume raced down through the ravine, turning many wheels,
+but nowhere gathering in any form or place which seemed good<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_187" id="pg_187">187</a></span> for trout.
+On either side stood shanties, and ramshackle buildings where such
+things as stonecutting and blacksmithing were done. Along the waterside
+ran the tracks of our Terminal and Belt Line System, on which trains of
+flat-cars always stood, engaged in the work of carrying away the cliffs,
+in which they were aided and abetted by giant derricks and the fiends of
+dynamite and nitro-glycerin. Limekilns burned all the time, turning the
+companionable gray ledges into something offensive and corrosive. One
+must now board a street-car, and ride away beyond Lynhurst Park before
+one could find the good and pure little Brushy Creek of yore.</p>
+
+<p>The dwellers in the houses which stood in their lawns of vivid green had
+gone away into the new &#8220;additions,&#8221; to be in the fashion, and to escape
+from the smoke and clang of engine and factory. Their old houses were
+torn away, or converted, by new and incongruous extensions, into cheap
+boarding-houses. Only the Lattimore house kept faith with the past, and
+stood as of old, in its five acres of trees and grass, untouched of the
+fever for platting and subdivision, its very skirts drawn up from the
+asphalt by austere retaining-walls. And here went on the preparation for
+the time when Laura and Clifford were to stand up and declare their
+purposes and intentions with reference to each other. The first wedding
+this was to be, in all our close-knit circle.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am glad,&#8221; said I, &#8220;that they are all so sensible as not to permit
+rivalries to breed discord among us. It might be disastrous.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_188" id="pg_188">188</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There is time,&#8221; said Alice, &#8220;for that to develop yet.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Not that everything happened as we wished. Indeed, some things gave us
+much anxiety. Bill Trescott, for instance, began at last to show signs
+of that going up in the air which Jim had said we must keep him from.
+Even Captain Tolliver complained that Bill&#8217;s habits were getting bad:
+and he was the last person in the world to censure excess in the vices
+which he deemed gentlemanly. His own idea of morning, for instance, was
+that period of the day when the bad taste in the mouth so natural to a
+gentleman is removed by a stiff toddy, drunk just before prayers. He
+would, no doubt, have conceded to the inventor of the alphabet a higher
+place among men than that of the discoverer of the mint julep, had the
+matter been presented to him in concrete form; but would have qualified
+the admission by adding, with a seriousness incompatible with the
+average conception of a joke: &#8220;But the question is sutt&#8217;nly one not
+entiahly free from doubt, suh; not entiahly free from doubt!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>However, the Captain had his standards, and prescribed for himself
+limits of time, place, and degree, to which he faithfully conformed. But
+he had been for a long time doing business under a sort of partnership
+arrangement with Bill, and their affairs had become very much
+interwoven. So he came to us, one day, in something like a panic, on
+finding that Bill had become a frequenter of one of the local
+bucket-shops, and had been making maudlin boasts of the profitable deals
+he had made.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_189" id="pg_189">189</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This means, gentlemen,&#8221; said the Captain, &#8220;that influences entiahly
+fo&#8217;eign to ouah investments hyah ah likely to bring a crash, which will
+not only wipe out Mr. Trescott, but, owin&#8217; to ouah association in the
+additions we have platted, cyah&#8217;y me down also! You can see that with
+sev&#8217;al hundred thousand dolla&#8217;s of deferred payments on what we have
+sold, most of which have been rediscounted in the East by the G. B. T.,
+Mr. Trescott&#8217;s condition becomes something of serious conce&#8217;n fo&#8217;
+you-all, as well as fo&#8217; me. Nothing else, I assuah you, gentlemen, could
+fo&#8217;ce me to call attention to a mattah so puahly pussonal as a diffe&#8217;nce
+between gentlemen in theiah standahds of inebriety! Nothing else,
+believe me!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>By the G. B. T. the Captain meant the Grain Belt Trust Company, and
+anything which affected its solvency or welfare was, as he said, a
+matter of serious concern for all of us. In fact, at that very moment
+there were in Lattimore two officers of New England banks with whom we
+had placed a rather heavy line of G. B. T. securities, and who had made
+the trip for the purpose of looking us up. Suppose that they found out
+that the notes and mortgages of William S. Trescott &amp; Co. really had
+back of them only some very desirable suburban additions, and the
+personal responsibility of a retired farmer, who was daily handing his
+money to board-of-trade gamblers, with whom he was getting an education
+in the great strides we are making in the matter of mixed drinks? This
+thought occurred to all of us at once.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_190" id="pg_190">190</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Cornish, stating the point of agreement after the Captain&#8217;s
+trouble had been fully discussed, &#8220;unfortunately &#8216;the right to be a
+cussed fool is safe from all devices human,&#8217; and there doesn&#8217;t seem to
+be any remedy.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It all came, thought I, as Jim and I sat silent after Cornish and the
+Captain went out, from the fact that Bill&#8217;s present condition in life
+gave those tendencies to which he had always been prone to yield, a
+chance for unrestricted growth. He ought to have staid with his steers.
+Cattle and corn were the only things in which he could take an interest
+sufficiently keen to keep him from drink. These habits of his were
+enacting the old story of the lop-eared rabbits in
+Australia&mdash;overrunning the country. Bill had been as sober a citizen as
+one could desire, as long as his house-building occupied his time; and
+he and Josie had worked together as companionably as they used to do in
+the hay and wheat. But now he was drifting away from her. Her father
+should have staid on the farm.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you know,&#8221; said I, &#8220;that Giddings is making about as great a fool of
+himself as Bill?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;but that&#8217;s because he&#8217;s in a terrible state of mind
+about his marriage. If we can keep him from delirium tremens until after
+the wedding, he&#8217;ll be all right. Some Italian brain-sharp has written up
+cases like his, and he&#8217;ll be all right. But with Bill it&#8217;s different....
+Do you remember our old Shep?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; I returned wonderingly, almost impatiently. &#8220;What about him?&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_191" id="pg_191">191</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; he mused, &#8220;I&#8217;ve been picking up knowledge of men for a while
+along back; and I&#8217;ve come to prize more highly the personal history of
+dogs; and Shep was worth a biography for its own sake, to say nothing of
+the value of a typical case. He was a woolly collie, who would
+cheerfully have given up his life for the cows and sheep. Anything in
+his line, that a dog could grasp, Shep knew, and he was busier than a
+cranberry-merchant the year around, and the happiest thing on the farm.
+Then our folks moved to Mayville, and took him along. He wasn&#8217;t fitted
+for town life at all. He&#8217;d lie on the front piazza, and search the
+street for cows and sheep, and when one came along he&#8217;d stick his sharp
+nose through the fence, and whine as if some one was whipping him. In
+less than six weeks he bit a baby; in two months he was the most
+depraved dog in Mayville, and in three ... he died.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I had no answer for the apologue&mdash;not even for the self-condemnatory
+tone in which he told it. Presently he rose to go, and said that he
+would not be back.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t forget our date at the club this evening,&#8221; said he, as he passed
+out. &#8220;Your style of diplomacy always seems to win with these down-East
+bankers. Your experience as rob-ee gives you the right handshake and the
+subscribed-and-sworn-to look that does their business for &#8217;em every
+time. Good-by until then.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Our club was the terminal bud of our growth, and was housed in a
+building of which we were enormously proud. It was managed by a steward
+imported<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_192" id="pg_192">192</a></span> from New York, whose salary was made large to harmonize with
+his manners&mdash;that being the only way in which the majority of our
+members felt equal to living up to them. So far as money could make a
+club, ours was of high rank. There were meat-cooks and pastry-cooks in
+incredible numbers, under the command of a French chef, who ruled the
+house committee with a rod of iron. We were all members as a matter of
+public duty. I have often wondered what the servants, brought from
+Eastern cities, thought of it all. To see Bill Trescott and Aleck
+Macdonald going in through the great door, noiselessly swung open for
+them by an attendant in livery, was a sight to be remembered. The chief
+ornament of the club was Cornish, who lived there.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I want to see Mr. Cornish,&#8221; said I to the servant who took my overcoat,
+that evening.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Right this way, sir,&#8221; said he. &#8220;Mr. Giddings is with him. He gave
+orders for you to be shown up.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Cornish sat at a little round table on which there were some bottles and
+glasses. The tipple was evidently ale, and Mr. Giddings was standing
+opposite, lifting a glass in one hand and pointing at it with the other,
+in evident imitation of the attitude in which the late Mr. Gough loved
+to have himself pictured; but the sentiments of the two speakers were
+quite different.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Turn out more ale; turn up the light!&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Giddings glanced at the electric light-fixtures, and then looked about
+as if for a servant to turn them up.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_193" id="pg_193">193</a></span></p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em;">&#8220;&#8216;I will not go to bed to-night!<br />
+For, of all foes that man should dread,<br />
+The first and worst one is a bed!<br />
+Friends I have had, both old and young;<br />
+Ale have we drunk, and songs we&#8217;ve sung.<br />
+Enough you know when this is said,<br />
+That, one and all, they died in bed!&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Here Giddings&#8217;s voice broke with grief, and he stopped to drink the rest
+of the glassful, and went on:</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em;">&#8220;&#8216;In bed they died, and I&#8217;ll not go<br />
+Where all my friends have perished so!<br />
+Go, ye who fain would buried be;<br />
+But not to-night a bed for me!&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you often have these Horatian fits?&#8221; I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Base groveler!&#8221; said he, &#8220;if you can&#8217;t rise to the level of the
+occasion, don&#8217;t butt in.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em;">&#8220;&#8216;For me to-night no bed prepare,<br />
+But set me out my oaken chair,<br />
+And bid me other guests beside<br />
+The ghosts that shall around me glide!&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You will, of course,&#8221; said Cornish, &#8220;permit us to withdraw for the
+purpose of having our conference with our Eastern friends? If I take
+your meaning, you&#8217;ll not be alone.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not by a jugful, I&#8217;ll not be alone!&#8221; said Giddings, tossing off another
+glass:</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em;">&#8220;&#8216;In curling smoke-wreaths I shall see<br />
+A fair and gentle company.<br />
+Though silent all, fair revelers they,<br />
+Who leave you not till break of day!<br />
+Go, ye who would not daylight see;<br />
+But not to-night a bed for me!<br />
+For I&#8217;ve been born, and I&#8217;ve been wed,<br />
+And all man&#8217;s troubles come of bed!&#8217;&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_194" id="pg_194">194</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Here Giddings sank down in his chair and began weeping.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The divinest attribute of poetry,&#8221; said he, &#8220;is that of bringing tears.
+Let me weep awhile, fellows, and then I&#8217;ll give you the last stanza.
+Last stanza&#8217;s the best&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And in the midst of his critique he went to sleep, thereby breaking his
+rule adopted in &#8220;<i>Dum Vivemus Vigilemus</i>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is he this way often?&#8221; said I to Cornish, as we went down to meet Jim
+and the bankers.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Pretty often,&#8221; said Cornish. &#8220;I don&#8217;t know how I&#8217;d amuse my evenings if
+it weren&#8217;t for Giddings. He&#8217;s too far gone to-night, though, to be
+entertaining. Gets worse, I think, as the wedding-day approaches. Trying
+to drown his apprehensions, I suspect. Funny fellow, Giddings. But he&#8217;s
+all right from noon to nine <span class="smcap">P.M.</span>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think we&#8217;ll have to organize a dipsomaniacs&#8217; hospital for our crowd,&#8221;
+said I, &#8220;if things keep going on as they are tending now! I didn&#8217;t think
+Giddings was so many kinds of an ass!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>My complainings were cut short by our entrance into the presence of Mr.
+Elkins and the New England bankers. I asked to be excused from partaking
+of the refreshments which were served. I had seen and heard enough to
+spoil my appetite. I was agreeably surprised to find that their
+independent investigations of conditions in Lattimore had convinced them
+of the safety of their investments. Really, they said, were it not for
+the pleasure of meeting us here at our home, they should feel that the
+time and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_195" id="pg_195">195</a></span> expense of looking us up were wasted. But, handling, as they
+did, the moneys of estates and numerous savings accounts, their
+customers were of a class in whom timidity and nervousness reach their
+maximum, and they were obliged to keep themselves in position to give
+assurances as to the safety of their investments from their personal
+investigations.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hinckley, who was with us, assured them that his life as a banker
+enabled him fully to realize the necessity of their carefulness, which
+we, for our own parts, were pleased to know existed. We were only too
+glad to exhibit our books to them, make a complete showing as to our
+condition generally, and even take them to see each individual piece of
+property covered by our paper. Mr. Hinckley went with them to their
+hotel, having proposed enough work in the way of investigation to keep
+them with us for several months. They were to leave on the evening of
+the next day.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But,&#8221; said Jim, as we put on our overcoats to go home, &#8220;it shows our
+good will, you see.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the steward, with an anxious look, asked Mr. Elkins for a
+word in private.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ask Mr. Barslow if he will kindly step over here,&#8221; I heard Jim say; and
+I joined them at once.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I was just saying, sir, to Mr. Elkins,&#8221; said the steward, &#8220;that
+ordinarily I&#8217;d not think of mentioning such a thing as a gentleman&#8217;s
+being indisposed but should see that he was cared for here. But Mr.
+Trescott being in such a state, I felt it was a case for his friends or
+the hospital. He&#8217;s been&mdash;a&mdash;seeing<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_196" id="pg_196">196</a></span> things this afternoon; and while
+he&#8217;s better now in that regard, his&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have a closed carriage brought at once,&#8221; said Mr. Elkins. &#8220;Al, you&#8217;d
+better go up to the house, and let them know we&#8217;re coming. I&#8217;ll take him
+home!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I shrank from the meeting with Mrs. Trescott and Josie, more, I think,
+than if it had been Bill&#8217;s death which I was to announce. As I
+approached the house, I got from it, somehow, the impression that it was
+a place of night-long watchfulness; and I was not surprised by the fact
+that before I had time to ring or knock at the door Mrs. Trescott
+herself opened it, with an expression on her face which spoke of long
+vigils, and of fear passing on to certainty. She peered past me for an
+expected Something on the street. Her leisure and its new habits had
+assimilated her in dress and make-up to the women of the wealthier sort
+in the city; but there was an immensity of trouble in the agonized eye
+and the pitiful droop of her mouth, which I should have rejoiced to see
+exchanged again for the ill-groomed exterior and the old fret of the
+farm. Her first question ignored all reference to the things leading to
+my being there, &#8220;in the dead vast and middle of the night,&#8221; but went
+past me to the core of her trouble, as her eye had gone on from me to
+the street, in the search for the thing she dreaded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where is he, Mr. Barslow?&#8221; said she, in a hushing whisper; &#8220;where is
+he?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He is a little sick,&#8221; said I, &#8220;and Mr. Elkins is bringing him home. I
+came on to tell you.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_197" id="pg_197">197</a></span> &#8220;Then he is not&mdash;&#8221; she went on, still in that
+hushed voice, and searching me with her gaze.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, I assure you!&#8221; I answered. &#8220;He is in no immediate danger, even.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Josie came quietly forward from the dusk of the room beyond, where I saw
+she had been listening, reminding me, in spite of the incongruity of the
+idea, of that time when she emerged from the obscurity of her garden,
+and stood at the foot of the windmill tower, leaning on her father&#8217;s
+arm, her hands filled with petunias, the night we first visited the
+Trescott farm. And then my mind ran back to that other night when she
+had thrown herself into his arms and begged him to take her away; and he
+had said, &#8220;W&#8217;y, yes, little gal, of course I&#8217;ll take yeh away, if yeh
+don&#8217;t like it here!&#8221; I think that I, perhaps, was more nearly able than
+any one else in the world beside herself to gauge her grief at this long
+death in which she was losing him, and he himself.</p>
+
+<p>She took my hand, pressed it silently, and began caressing her mother
+and whispering to her things which I could not hear. Mrs. Trescott sat
+upon a sort of divan, shaking with terrible, soundless sobs, and
+clasping and unclasping her hands, but making no other gesture. I stood
+helpless at the hidden abyss of woe so suddenly uncovered before me and
+until this very moment screened by the conventions which keep our souls
+apart like prisoners in the cells in some great prison. These two women
+had been bearing this for a long time, and we, their nearest friends,
+had stood aloof from them. As I<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_198" id="pg_198">198</a></span> stood thinking of this, the
+carriage-wheels ground upon the pavement in the <i>porte coch&egrave;re</i>; and a
+moment later Jim came in, his face graver than I had ever seen it. He
+sat down by Mrs. Trescott, and gently took one of her hands.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Dr. Aylesbury has given him a morphia injection,&#8221; said he, &#8220;and he is
+sound asleep. The doctor thinks it best for us to carry him right to his
+room. There is a man here from the hospital, who will stay and nurse
+him; and the doctor came, too.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Trescott started up, saying that she must arrange his room. Soon
+the four of us had placed him in bed, where he lay, puffy and purple,
+with a sort of pasty pallor overspreading his face. His limbs
+occasionally jerked spasmodically; but otherwise he was still under the
+spell of the opiate. His wife, now that there was something definite to
+do, was self-possessed and efficient, taking the physician&#8217;s
+instructions with ready apprehension. The fact that Bill had now assumed
+the character of a patient rather than that of a portent seemed to make
+the trouble, somehow, more normal and endurable. The wife and daughter
+insisted upon assuming the care of him, but assented to the nurse&#8217;s
+remaining as a help in emergencies. It was nearing dawn when I took my
+leave. As I approached the door, I saw Jim and Josie in the hall, and
+heard him making some last tenders of aid and comfort before his
+departure. He put out his hand, and she clasped it in both of hers.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I want to thank you,&#8221; said she, &#8220;for what you have done.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_199" id="pg_199">199</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have done nothing,&#8221; he replied. &#8220;It is what I wish to do that I want
+you to think of. I do not know whether I shall ever be able to forgive
+myself&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, no!&#8221; said she. &#8220;You must not talk&mdash;you must not allow yourself to
+feel in that way. It is unjust&mdash;to yourself and to&mdash;me&mdash;for you to feel
+so!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I advanced to them, but she still stood looking into his face and
+holding his hand clasped in hers. There was something of appeal, of an
+effort to express more than the words said, in her look and attitude. He
+answered her regard by a gaze so pathetically wistful that she averted
+her face, pressed his hand, and turned to me.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Good-night to you both, and thank you both, a thousand times!&#8221; said
+she.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>&#8220;I wonder if old Shep&#8217;s relations and friends,&#8221; said Jim, as we stood
+under the arc light in front of my house, &#8220;ever came to forgive the
+people who took him away from his flocks and herds.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;After what I&#8217;ve seen in the last few minutes,&#8221; said I, &#8220;I haven&#8217;t the
+least doubt of it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Al,&#8221; said he, &#8220;these be troublous times, but if I believed all that
+what you say implies, I&#8217;d go home happy, if not jolly. And I almost
+believe you&#8217;re right.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said I, assuming for once the r&ocirc;le of the mentor, &#8220;I think that
+you are foolish to worry about it. We have enough actual, well-defined,
+surveyed and platted grief on our hands, without any mooning about
+hunting for the speculative<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_200" id="pg_200">200</a></span> variety. Go home, sleep, and bring down a
+clear brain for to-morrow&#8217;s business.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To-day&#8217;s,&#8221; said he gaily. &#8220;Tear off yesterday&#8217;s leaf from the calendar,
+Al. For, look! the morn, dressed as usual, &#8216;walks o&#8217;er the dew of yon
+high eastern hill.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_201" id="pg_201">201</a></span>
+<a name="Relating_to_the_Disposition_of_the_Captives_5562" id="Relating_to_the_Disposition_of_the_Captives_5562"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER XVII.</p>
+<p class="l c">Relating to the Disposition of the Captives.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was not later than the next day but one, that I met Giddings, alert,
+ingratiating, and natty as ever.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When am I to have the third stanza?&#8221; I inquired, &#8220;the one that&#8217;s &#8216;the
+best of all.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This question he seemed to take as a rebuke; for he reddened, while he
+tried to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Barslow,&#8221; said he, &#8220;there isn&#8217;t any use in our discussing this thing.
+You couldn&#8217;t understand it. A man like you, who can calculate to a hair
+just how far he is going and just where to turn back, and&mdash;Oh, damn!
+There&#8217;s no use!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I sympathize with Giddings, at this present moment, in his despair of
+making people understand; for I doubt, sometimes, whether it is possible
+for me to make the reader understand the conditions with us in Lattimore
+at the time when poor Trescott lay there in his fine house, fighting for
+life, and for many things more important, and while the wedding
+preparations were going forward at the General&#8217;s house.</p>
+
+<p>To the steady-going, stationary, passionless community these conditions
+approach the incomprehensible.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_202" id="pg_202">202</a></span> No one seemed to doubt the city&#8217;s future
+now. Sometimes the abnormal basis upon which our great new industries
+had been established struck the stranger with distrust, if he happened
+to have the insight to notice it; but the concerns <i>were there</i> most
+undeniably, and had shifted population in their coming, and were turning
+out products for the markets of the world.</p>
+
+<p>That they had been evolved magically, and set in operation, not by any
+slow process of meeting a felt want, but for this sole purpose of
+shifting population, might be, and undoubtedly was, unusual; but given
+the natural facilities for carrying the business on, and how did this
+forced genesis adversely affect their prospects?</p>
+
+<p>I, for one, could see no reason for apprehension. Yet when the story of
+Trescott&#8217;s maudlin plunging came to our ears, and the effect of his
+possible failure received consideration, or I thought of the business
+explosion which would follow any open breach between Jim and Cornish
+(though this seemed too remote for serious consideration), I began to
+ponder on the enormously complex system of credits we had built up.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the regular line of bonds and mortgages growing out of debts due
+us on our real-estate sales, and against which we had issued the
+debentures and the guaranteed rediscounts of the Grain Belt Trust
+Company, the factories, stock yards, terminals, street-car system, and
+most of our other properties were pretty heavily bonded. Some of them
+were temporarily unproductive, and funds had from time<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_203" id="pg_203">203</a></span> to time to be
+provided, from sources other than their own earnings, for the payment of
+their interest-charges. On the whole, however, we had been able to carry
+the entire line forward from position to position with such success that
+the people were kept in a fever, and accessions to our population kept
+pouring in which, of their own force, added fuel to the fire of
+expectancy.</p>
+
+<p>This one thing began to make me uneasy&mdash;there was no place to stop. A
+failure among us would quench this expectancy, and values would no
+longer increase. And everything was organized on the basis of the
+continued crescendo. That was the reason why every uplift in prices had
+been followed by a new and strenuous effort on our part to hoist them
+still higher. For that reason, we, who had become richer than we had
+ever hoped to be, kept toiling on to rear to greater and greater heights
+an edifice which the eternal forces of nature itself clutched, to drag
+down.</p>
+
+<p>I was the first to suggest this feature in conference. The Trescott
+scare had made me more thoughtful. True, outwardly things were more than
+ever booming. The very signs on the streets spoke of the boom. It was
+&#8220;Lumber, Coal, and Real Estate&#8221;; &#8220;Burbank&#8217;s Livery, Feed, and Sale
+Stable. Office of Burbank Realty Co.&#8221;; or &#8220;Thronson &amp; Larson, Grocers.
+Choice Lots in Thronson&#8217;s Addition.&#8221; Even Giddings had platted the
+&#8220;<i>Herald</i> Addition,&#8221; and was offering a choice quarter-block as a prize
+to the person who could guess nearest to the average monthly increase in
+values in the addition, as shown<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_204" id="pg_204">204</a></span> by the record of sales. Real estate
+appeared as a part of the business of hardware stores and milliners&#8217;
+shops, so that one was constantly reminded of the heterogeneous
+announcements on the signboard of Mr. Wegg. But while all this went on,
+and transactions &#8220;in dirt&#8221; were larger than ever, one could see
+indications that there was in them a larger and larger element of
+credit, and less and less cash. So one day, at a syndicate conference, I
+sought to ease my mind by asking where this thing was to stop, and when
+we could hope for a time when the town would not have to be held up by
+main strength.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, that&#8217;s a very remarkable question!&#8221; said Mr. Hinckley. &#8220;We surely
+haven&#8217;t reached the point where we can think of stopping. Why, with the
+history before us of the cities of America which, without half our
+natural advantages, have grown to so many times the size of this, I&#8217;m
+surprised that such a thing should be thought of! Just think of what
+Chicago was in &#8217;54 when I came through. A village without a harbor,
+built along the ditches of a frog-pond! And see it now; see it now!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was a little quiver in Mr. Hinckley&#8217;s voice, a little infirmity of
+his chin, which told of advancing years. His ideas were becoming more
+fixed. It was plain that the notion of Lattimore&#8217;s continued and
+uninterrupted progress was one to which he would cling with the mild and
+unreasoning stubbornness of gentlemanly senility. But Cornish welcomed
+the discussion with something like eagerness.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m glad the matter has come up,&#8221; said he. &#8220;We&#8217;ve had a few good years
+here; but, in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_205" id="pg_205">205</a></span> nature of things, won&#8217;t the time come when things
+will be&mdash;slower? We&#8217;ve got our first plans pretty well worked out. The
+mills, factories, and live-stock industries are supporting population,
+and making tonnage which the railroad is carrying. But what next? We
+can&#8217;t expect to build any more railroads soon. No line of less than five
+hundred miles will do any good, strategically speaking, and sending out
+stubs just to annex territory for our shippers is too slow and expensive
+business for this crowd. Things are booming along now; but the Eastern
+banks are getting finicky about paper, and&mdash;I think things are going to
+be&mdash;slower&mdash;and that we ought to act accordingly.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence, broken only by a dry laugh from Hinckley, and
+the remark that Barslow and Cornish must be getting dyspeptic from high
+living.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Elkins at last, ignoring Hinckley and facing Cornish, &#8220;get
+down to brass nails! What policy would you adopt?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, our present policy is all right,&#8221; answered he of the Van Dyke
+beard&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, yes!&#8221; interjected Hinckley. &#8220;My view exactly. A wonderfully
+successful policy!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&mdash;and,&#8221; Cornish continued, &#8220;I would only suggest that we cease
+spreading out&mdash;not cease talking it, but only just sort of stop doing
+it&mdash;and begin to realize more rapidly on our holdings. Not so as to
+break the market, you understand; but so as to keep the demand fairly
+well satisfied.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Elkins was slow in replying, and when the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_206" id="pg_206">206</a></span> reply came it was of the
+sort which does not answer.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A most important, not to say momentous question,&#8221; said he. &#8220;Let&#8217;s
+figure the thing over and take it up again soon. We&#8217;ll not begin to
+disagree at this late day. Mr. Hinckley has warned us that he has an
+engagement in thirty minutes. It seems to me we ought to dispose of the
+matter of the appropriation for the interest on those Belt Lines bonds.
+Wade&#8217;s mash on &#8216;Atkins, Corning &amp; Co.&#8217; won&#8217;t last long in the face of a
+default.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hinckley staid his thirty minutes and withdrew. Mr. Cornish went to
+the telephone and ordered his dog-cart.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Immediately,&#8221; he instructed, &#8220;over here at the Grain Belt Trust
+Building.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Make it in half an hour, can&#8217;t you, Cornish?&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;There are some
+more things we ought to go over.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Say!&#8221; shouted Cornish into the transmitter. &#8220;Make that in half an hour
+instead of at once.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He hung up the telephone, and turned to Elkins inquiringly. Jim was
+walking up and down on the rug, his hands clasped behind him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Since we&#8217;ve spread out into that string of banks,&#8221; said he, still
+keeping up his walk, &#8220;and made Mr. Hinckley the president of each of
+&#8217;em, he&#8217;s reverting to his old banker&#8217;s timidity. Which consists, in all
+cases, in an aversion to any change in conditions. To suggest any
+change, even from an old, dangerous policy to a new safe one, startles a
+&#8216;conservative&#8217; banker. If we had gone on a little longer with our<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_207" id="pg_207">207</a></span> talk
+about shutting off steam and taking the nigger off the safety-valve,
+you&#8217;d have seen him scared into a numbness. But, now that the question
+has been brought up, let&#8217;s talk it over. What&#8217;s your notion about it,
+anyhow, Al?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m seeking light,&#8221; said I. &#8220;The people are rushing in, and the town&#8217;s
+doing splendidly. But prices, there&#8217;s no denying it, are beginning to
+sort of strangle things. They prevent doing, any more, what we did at
+first. Kreuger Brothers&#8217; failure yesterday was small; but it&#8217;s a clear
+case of a retailer&#8217;s being eaten up with fixed charges&mdash;or so Macdonald
+told me this morning; and I know that frontage on Main Street is
+demanding fully as much as the traffic will bear. And then our fright
+over Trescott&#8217;s gambling gave me some bad dreams over our securities. It
+has bothered me to see how to adjust our affairs to a stationary
+condition of things; that&#8217;s all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of course,&#8221; said Cornish, &#8220;we must keep boosting. Fortunately society
+here is now thoroughly organized on the principle of whooping it up for
+Lattimore. I could get up a successful lynching-party any time to attend
+to the case of any miscreant who should suggest that property is too
+high, or rents unreasonable, or anything but a steady up-grade before
+us. But I think we ought to stop buying&mdash;except among ourselves, and
+keep the transfers from falling off&mdash;and begin salting down.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you can suggest any way to do that, and still take care of our
+paper,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;I shall be with you.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_208" id="pg_208">208</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve never anticipated,&#8221; said Cornish, &#8220;that such a mass of business
+could be carried through without some losses. Investors can&#8217;t expect
+it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The first loss in the East through our paper,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;means a
+taking up of the Grain Belt securities everywhere, and no market for
+more. And you know what that spells.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It mustn&#8217;t be allowed to happen&mdash;yet awhile,&#8221; answered Cornish. &#8220;As I
+just now said, we must keep on boosting.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You know where the Grain Belt debentures and other obligations are
+mostly held, of course?&#8221; asked Mr. Elkins.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When a bond or mortgage is sold,&#8221; was the answer, &#8220;my interest in it
+ceases. I conclusively presume that the purchaser himself personally
+looked to the security, or accepted the guaranty of the negotiating
+trust company. <i>Caveat emptor</i> is my rule.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Elkins looked out of the window, as if he had forgotten us.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We should push the sale of the Lattimore &amp; Great Western,&#8221; said he,
+&#8220;and the Belt Line System.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I concur,&#8221; said Cornish. &#8220;Our interest in those properties is a
+two-million-dollar cash item.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It wouldn&#8217;t be two million cents,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;if our friends on Wall
+Street could hear this talk. They&#8217;d wait to buy at receiver&#8217;s sale after
+some Black Friday. Of course, that&#8217;s what Pendleton and Wade have been
+counting on from the first.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You ought to see Halliday and Pendleton at once,&#8221; said I.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_209" id="pg_209">209</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I think so, too,&#8221; he rejoined. &#8220;Pendleton&#8217;ll pay us more than our
+price, rather than see the Halliday system get the properties. They&#8217;re
+deep ones; but we ought to be able to play them off against each other,
+so long as we can keep strong at home. I&#8217;ll begin the flirtation at
+once.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Cornish, assuming that Jim had fully concurred in his views, bade us a
+pleasant good-day, and went out.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;My boy,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;cheer up. If gloom takes hold of you like this
+while we&#8217;re still running before a favoring wind, it&#8217;ll bother you to
+keep feeling worse and worse, as you ought, as we approach the real
+thing. Cheer up!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I&#8217;m all right!&#8221; said I. &#8220;I was just trying to make out Cornish&#8217;s
+position.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s make out our own,&#8221; he replied, &#8220;that&#8217;s the first thing. Bear in
+mind that this is a buccaneering proposition, and you&#8217;re first mate:
+remember? Well, Al, we&#8217;ve had the merriest cruise in the books. If any
+crew ever had doubloons to throw to the birds, we&#8217;ve had &#8217;em. But, you
+know, we always draw the line somewhere, and I&#8217;m about to ask you to
+join me in drawing the line, and see just what moral level piracy has
+risen or sunk to.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He still walked back and forth, and, as he spoke of drawing the line, he
+drew an imaginary one with his fingers on the green baize of the
+flat-topped desk.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You remember what those fellows, Dorr and Wickersham, said the other
+night, about having invested the funds of estates, and savings accounts<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_210" id="pg_210">210</a></span>
+in our obligations?&#8221; he went on. &#8220;But I never told you what Wickersham
+said privately to me. The infernal fool has more of our paper than his
+bank&#8217;s whole capital stock, with the surplus added, amounts to! And he
+calls himself a &#8216;conservative New England banker&#8217;! It wouldn&#8217;t be so bad
+if the states back East weren&#8217;t infested with the same sort of
+idiots&mdash;I&#8217;ve had Hinckley make me a report on it since that night. It
+means that women and children and sweaty breadwinners have furnished the
+money for all these things we&#8217;re so proud of having built, including the
+Mt. Desert cottages and the Wyoming hunting-lodge. It means that we&#8217;ve
+got to be able to read our book of the Black Art backwards as well as
+forwards, or the Powers we&#8217;ve conjured up will tear piecemeal both them
+and us. God! it makes me crawl to think of what would happen!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He sat down on the flat-topped desk, and I saw the beaded pallor of a
+fixed and digested anxiety on his brow. He went on, in a lighter way:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;These poor people, scattered from the Missouri to the Atlantic, are our
+prisoners, Al. I think Cornish is ready to make them walk the plank.
+But, Al, you know, in our bloodiest days, down on the Spanish Main, we
+used to spare the women and children! What do you say now, Al?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The way in which he repeated the old nickname had an irresistible appeal
+in it; but I hope no appeal was needed. I said, and said truly, that I
+should never consent to any policy which was not mindful of the
+interests of which he spoke; and that I knew<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_211" id="pg_211">211</a></span> Hinckley would be with us.
+So, if Cornish took any other view, there would be three to one against
+him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I knew you&#8217;d be with me,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;It would have been a
+sure-enough case of <i>et tu, Brute</i>, if you hadn&#8217;t been. But don&#8217;t let
+yourself think for a minute that we can&#8217;t fight this thing to a finish
+and come off more than conquerors. We&#8217;ll look back at this talk some
+time, and laugh at our fears. The troublous times that come every so
+often are nearer than they were five years ago, but they&#8217;re some ways
+off yet, and forewarned is insured.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But the hard times always catch people unawares,&#8221; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They do,&#8221; he admitted, &#8220;but they never tried to stalk a covey of boom
+specialists before.... You remember all that rot I used to talk about
+the mind-force method, and psychological booms? We&#8217;ve been false to that
+theory, by coming to believe so implicitly in our own preaching. Why,
+Al, this work we&#8217;ve begun here has got to go on! It must go on! There
+mustn&#8217;t be any collapse or failure. When the hard times come, we must be
+prepared to go right on through, cutting a little narrower swath, but
+cutting all the same. Stand by the guns with me, and, in spite of all,
+we&#8217;ll win, and save Lattimore&mdash;and spare the captives, too!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was the fire of unconquerable resolution in his eye, and a
+resonance in his voice that thrilled me. After all he had done, after
+the victories we had won under his leadership, the admiration and love I
+felt for him rose to the idolatry of a soldier for<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_212" id="pg_212">212</a></span> his general, as I
+saw him stiffening his limbs, knotting his muscles, and, with teeth set
+and nostrils dilated, rising to the load which seemed falling on him
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll make the turn with these railroad properties,&#8221; he went on. &#8220;We
+must make Pendleton and Halliday bid each other up to our figure. And
+there&#8217;ll be no &#8216;salting down&#8217; done, either&mdash;yet awhile. I hope things
+won&#8217;t shrink too much in the washing; but the real-estate hot air of the
+past few years must cause some trouble when the payments deferred begin
+to make the heart sick. The Trust Company will be called on to make good
+some of its guaranties&mdash;and must do it. The banks must be kept strong;
+and with two millions to sweeten the pot we shall be with &#8217;em to the
+finish. Why, they can&#8217;t beat us! And don&#8217;t forget that right now is the
+most prosperous time Lattimore ever saw; and put on a look that will
+corroborate the statement when you go out of here!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Bravo, bravo!&#8221; said a voice from near the door. &#8220;I don&#8217;t understand any
+of it, but the speech sounded awfully telling! Where&#8217;s papa?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was Antonia, who had come in unobserved. She wore a felt hat with one
+little feather on it, driving-gloves, and a dark cloth dress. She stood,
+rosy with driving, her blonde curls clustering in airy confusion about
+her forehead, a tailor-gowned Brunhilde.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, hello, Antonia!&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;He went away some time ago. Wasn&#8217;t
+that a corking good speech? Ah! You never know the value of an old<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_213" id="pg_213">213</a></span>
+friend until you use him as audience at the dress rehearsal of a speech!
+Pacers or trotters?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Pacers,&#8221; said she, &#8220;Storm and The Friar.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you&#8217;ll let me drive,&#8221; he stipulated, &#8220;I&#8217;d like to go home with you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nobody but myself,&#8221; said she, &#8220;ever drives this team. You&#8217;d spoil The
+Friar&#8217;s temper with that unyielding wrist of yours; but if you are good,
+you may hold the ends of the lines, and say &#8216;Dap!&#8217; occasionally.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And down to the street we went together, our cares dismissed. Jim handed
+Antonia into the trap, and they spun away toward Lynhurst, apparently
+the happiest people in Lattimore.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_214" id="pg_214">214</a></span>
+<a name="The_Going_Away_of_Laura_and_Clifford_and_the_Departure_of_Mr_Trescott_5919" id="The_Going_Away_of_Laura_and_Clifford_and_the_Departure_of_Mr_Trescott_5919"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER XVIII.</p>
+<p class="l c">The Going Away of Laura and Clifford, and the Departure of Mr. Trescott.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thet little quirly thing there,&#8221; said Mr. Trescott, spreading a map out
+on my library table and pointing with his trembling and knobby
+forefinger, &#8220;is Wolf Nose Crick. It runs into the Cheyenne, down about
+there, an&#8217; &#8217;s got worlds o&#8217; water fer any sized herds, an&#8217; carries yeh
+back from the river fer twenty-five miles. There&#8217;s a big spring at the
+head of it, where the ranch buildin&#8217;s is; an&#8217; there&#8217;s a clump o&#8217; timber
+there&mdash;box elders an&#8217; cottonwoods, y&#8217; know. Now see the advantage I&#8217;ll
+have. Other herds&#8217;ll hev to traipse back an&#8217; forth from grass to water
+an&#8217; from water to grass, a-runnin&#8217; theirselves poor; an&#8217; all the time
+I&#8217;ll hev livin&#8217; water right in the middle o&#8217; my range.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>His wife and daughter had carefully nursed him through the fever, as Dr.
+Aylesbury called it, and for two weeks Mr. Trescott was seen by no one
+else. Then from our windows Alice and I could see him about his grounds,
+at work amongst his shrubbery, or busying himself with his horses and
+carriages. Josie had transformed herself into a woman of business, and
+every day she went to her father&#8217;s<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_215" id="pg_215">215</a></span> office, opened his mail, and held
+business consultations. Whenever it was necessary for papers to be
+executed, Josie went with the lawyer and notary to the Trescott home for
+the signing.</p>
+
+<p>The Trescott and Tolliver business brought her into daily contact with
+the Captain. He used to open the doors between their offices, and have
+the mail sorted for Josie when she came in. There was something of
+homage in the manner in which he received her into the office, and laid
+matters of business before her. It was something larger and more
+expansive than can be denoted by the word courtesy or politeness.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Captain,&#8221; she would say, with the half-amused smile with which she
+always rewarded him, &#8220;here is this notice from the Grain Belt Trust
+Company about the interest on twenty-five thousand dollars of bonds
+which they have advanced to us. Will you please explain it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sutt&#8217;nly, Madam, sutt&#8217;nly,&#8221; replied he, using a form of address which
+he adopted the first time she appeared as Bill&#8217;s representative in the
+business, and which he never cheapened by use elsewhere. &#8220;Those bonds ah
+debentures, which&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But what <i>are</i> debentures, Captain?&#8221; she inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Pahdon me, my deah lady,&#8221; said he, &#8220;fo&#8217; not explaining that at fuhst!
+Those ah the debentures of the Trescott Development Company, fawmed to
+build up Trescott&#8217;s Addition. We sold those lands on credit, except fo&#8217;
+a cash payment of one foath the purchase-price. This brought to us, as
+you can see,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_216" id="pg_216">216</a></span> Madam, a lahge amount of notes, secured by fuhst mortgages
+on the Trescott&#8217;s Addition properties. These notes and mortgages we
+deposited with the Grain Belt Trust Company, and issued against them the
+bonds of the Trescott Development Company&mdash;debentures&mdash;and the G. B. T.
+people floated these bonds in the East and elsewhah. This interest
+mattah was an ovahsight; I should have looked out fo&#8217; it, and not put
+the G. B. T. to the trouble of advancing it; but as we have this mawnin&#8217;
+on deposit with them several thousand dollahs from the sale of the
+Tolliver&#8217;s Subdivision papah, the thing becomes a mattah of no
+impo&#8217;tance whatevah!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But,&#8221; went on Josie, &#8220;how shall we be able to pay the next installment
+of interest, and the principal, when it falls due?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Amply provided foh, my deah Madam,&#8221; said the Captain, waving his arm;
+&#8220;the defe&#8217;ed payments and the interest on them will create an ample
+sinking fund!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But if they don&#8217;t?&#8221; she inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That such a contingency can possibly arise, Madam,&#8221; said the Captain in
+his most impressive orotund, and with his hand thrust into the bosom of
+his Prince Albert coat, &#8220;is something which my loyalty to Lattimore, my
+faith in my fellow citizens, my confidence in Mr. Elkins and Mr.
+Barslow, and my regahd fo&#8217; my own honah, pledged as it is to those to
+whom I have sold these properties on the representations I have made as
+to the prospects of the city, will not puhmit me to admit!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This seemed to him entirely conclusive, and cut<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_217" id="pg_217">217</a></span> off the investigation.
+Conversation like this, in which Josie questioned the Captain and seemed
+ever convinced by his answers, gave her high rank in the Captain&#8217;s
+estimation.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Like most ladies,&#8221; said he, &#8220;Miss Trescott is a little inclined to
+ovah-conservatism; but unlike most people of both sexes, she is quite
+able to grasp the lahgest views when explained to huh, and huh mental
+processes ah unerring. I have nevah failed to make the most complicated
+situation cleah to huh&mdash;nevah!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And all this time Mr. Trescott was safeguarded at home, looking after
+his horses, carriages, and grounds, and at last permitted to come over
+to our house and pass the evening with me occasionally. It was on one of
+these visits that he spread out the map on the table and explained to me
+the advantages of his ranch on Wolf Nose Creek. The very thought of the
+open range and the roaming herds seemed to strengthen him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You talk,&#8221; said I, &#8220;as if it were all settled. Are you really going out
+there?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wal,&#8221; said he, after some hesitation, &#8220;it kind o&#8217; makes me feel good to
+lay plans f&#8217;r goin&#8217;. I&#8217;ve made the deal with Aleck Macdonald f&#8217;r the
+water front&mdash;it&#8217;s a good spec if I never go near it&mdash;an&#8217; I guess I&#8217;ll
+send a bunch o&#8217; steers out to please Josie an&#8217; her ma. They&#8217;re
+purtendin&#8217; to be stuck on goin&#8217;, an&#8217; I&#8217;ve made the bargain to pacify
+&#8217;em; but, say, do you know what kind of a place it is out on one o&#8217; them
+ranches?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In a general way, yes,&#8221; said I.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_218" id="pg_218">218</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;W&#8217;l, a general way wun&#8217;t do,&#8221; said he. &#8220;You&#8217;ve got to git right down to
+p&#8217;ticklers t&#8217; know about it, so&#8217;s to know. It&#8217;s seventy-five miles from
+a post-office an&#8217; twenty-five to the nearest house. How would you like
+to hev a girl o&#8217; yourn thet you&#8217;d sent t&#8217; Chicago an&#8217; New York and the
+ol&#8217; country, an&#8217; spent all colors o&#8217; money on so&#8217;s t&#8217; give her all the
+chanst in the world, go out to a place like that to spend her life?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; said I, for I was in doubt; &#8220;it might be all right.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You wouldn&#8217;t say that if it was up to you to decide the thing,&#8221; said
+he. &#8220;W&#8217;y it would mean that this girl o&#8217; mine, that&#8217;s fit for to
+be&mdash;wal, you know Josie&mdash;would hev to leave this home we&#8217;ve built&mdash;that
+she&#8217;s built&mdash;here, an&#8217; go out where there hain&#8217;t nobody to be seen from
+week&#8217;s end to week&#8217;s end but cowboys, an&#8217; once in a while one o&#8217; the
+greasy women o&#8217; the dugouts. Do you know what happens to the nicest
+girls when they don&#8217;t see the right sort o&#8217; men&mdash;at all, y&#8217; know?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I nodded. I knew what he meant. Then I shook my head in denial of the
+danger.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t b&#8217;lieve it nuther,&#8221; said he; &#8220;but is it any cinch, now? An&#8217;
+anyhow, she&#8217;ll be where she wun&#8217;t ever hear a bit o&#8217; music, &#8217;r see a
+picter, &#8217;r see a friend. She&#8217;ll swelter in the burnin&#8217; sun an&#8217; parch in
+the hot winds in the summer, an&#8217; in the winter she&#8217;ll be shet in by
+blizzards an&#8217; cold weather. She&#8217;ll see nothin&#8217; but kioats, prairie-dogs,
+sage-brush, an&#8217; cactus. An&#8217; what fer! Jest for nothin&#8217; but me! To git me
+away from things she&#8217;s afraid&#8217;ve got more of a pull<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_219" id="pg_219">219</a></span> with me than what
+she&#8217;s got. An&#8217; I say, by the livin&#8217; Lord, I&#8217;ll go under before I&#8217;ll give
+up, an&#8217; say I&#8217;ve got as fur down as that!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It is something rending and tearing to a man like Bill, totally
+unaccustomed to the expression of sentiment, to give utterance to such
+depths of feeling. Weak and trembling as he was, the sight of his
+agitation was painful. I hastened to say to him that I hoped there was
+no necessity for such a step as the one he so strongly deprecated.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I d&#8217; know,&#8221; said he dubiously. &#8220;I thought one while that I&#8217;d never want
+to go near town, &#8217;r touch the stuff agin. But I&#8217;ll tell yeh something
+that happened yisterday!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He drew up his chair and looked behind him like a child preparing to
+relate some fearsome tale of goblin or fiend, and went on:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Josie had the team hitched up to go out ridin&#8217;, an&#8217; I druv around the
+block to git to the front step. An&#8217; somethin&#8217; seemed to pull the nigh
+line when I got to the cawner! It wa&#8217;n&#8217;t that I wanted to go&mdash;and don&#8217;t
+you say anything about this thing, Mr. Barslow; but somethin&#8217; seemed to
+pull the nigh line an&#8217; turn me toward Main Street; an&#8217; fust thing I
+knew, I was a-drivin&#8217; hell-bent for O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s place! Somethin&#8217; was
+a-whisperin&#8217; to me, &#8216;Go down an&#8217; see the boys, an&#8217; show &#8217;em that yeh can
+drink &#8217;r let it alone, jest as yeh see fit!&#8217; And the thought come over
+me o&#8217; Josie a-standin&#8217; there at the gate waitin&#8217; f&#8217;r me, an&#8217; I set my
+teeth, an&#8217; jerked the hosses&#8217; heads around, an&#8217; like to upset the buggy
+a-turnin&#8217;. &#8216;You look pale, pa,&#8217; says Josie. &#8216;Maybe we&#8217;d better not go.&#8217;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_220" id="pg_220">220</a></span>
+&#8216;No,&#8217; says I, &#8216;I&#8217;m all right.&#8217; But what ... gits me ... is thinkin&#8217;
+that, if I&#8217;ll be hauled around like that when I&#8217;m two miles away, how
+long would I last ... if onst I was to git right down in the midst of
+it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I could not endure the subject any longer; it was so unutterably fearful
+to see him making this despairing struggle against the foe so strongly
+lodged within his citadel. I talked to him of old times and places known
+to us both, and incidentally called to his mind instances of the
+recovery of men afflicted as he was. Soon Josie came after him, and Jim
+dropped in, as he was quite in the habit of doing, making one of those
+casual and informal little companies which constituted a most
+distinctive feature of life in our compact little Belgravia.</p>
+
+<p>Josie insisted that life in the cow country was what she had been
+longing for. She had never shot any one, and had never painted a cowboy,
+an Indian, or a coyote&mdash;things she had always longed to do.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You must take me out there, pa,&#8221; said she. &#8220;It&#8217;s the only way to
+utilize the capital we&#8217;ve foolishly tied up in the department of the
+fine arts!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I reckon we&#8217;ll hev to do it, then, little gal,&#8221; said Bill.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;My mind,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;is divided between your place up on the headwaters
+of Bitter Creek and Paris. Paris seems to promise pretty well, when this
+fitful fever of business is over and we&#8217;ve cleaned up the mill run.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Art, he went on, seemed to be a career for which he was really fitted.
+In the foreground, as a cowboy,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_221" id="pg_221">221</a></span> or in the middle distance, in his
+proper person as a tenderfoot, it seemed as if there was a vocation for
+him. Josie made no reply to this, and Jim went away downcast.</p>
+
+<p>The Addison-Giddings wedding drew on out of the future, and seemed to
+loom portentously like doom for the devoted Clifford. It may have
+suggested itself to the reader that Mr. Giddings was an abnormally timid
+lover. The eternal feminine at this time seemed personified in Laura,
+and worked upon him like an obsession. I have never seen a case quite
+like his. The manner in which the marriage was regarded, and the extent
+to which it was discussed, may have had something to do with this.</p>
+
+<p>The boom period anywhere is essentially an era in which public events
+dominate those of a private character, and publicity and promotion, hand
+in hand, occupy the center of the stage. Giddings, as editor and
+proprietor of the <i>Herald</i>, was one of the actors on whom the lime-light
+was pretty constantly focussed. Miss Addison, belonging to the Lattimore
+family, and prominent in good works, was more widely known than he among
+Lattimoreans of the old days, sometimes referred to by Mr. Elkins as the
+trilobites, who constituted a sort of ancient and exclusive caste among
+us, priding themselves on having become rich by the only dignified and
+purely automatic mode, that of sitting heroically still, and allowing
+their lands to rise in value. These regarded Laura as one of themselves,
+and her marriage as a sacrament of no ordinary character.</p>
+
+<p>Giddings, on the other hand, as the type of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_222" id="pg_222">222</a></span> new crowd who had done
+such wonders, and as the embodiment of its spirit, was dimly sensed by
+all classes as a sort of hero of obscure origin, who by strong blows had
+hewed his way to the possession of a princess of the blood. So the
+interest was really absorbing. Even the <i>Herald&#8217;s</i> rival, the <i>Evening
+Times</i>, dropped for a time the normal acrimony of its references to the
+<i>Herald</i>, and sent a reporter to make a laudatory write-up of the
+wedding.</p>
+
+<p>On the night before the event, deep in the evening, Giddings and a
+bibulous friend insisted on having refreshments served to them in the
+parlor of the clubhouse. This was a violation of rules. Moreover, they
+had involuntarily assumed sitting postures on the carpet, rendering
+waiting upon them a breach of decorum as well. At least this was the
+view of Pearson, who was now attached to the club.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You must excuse me, gentlemen,&#8221; he said, &#8220;but Ah&#8217;m bound to obey
+rules.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Bring us,&#8221; said Giddings, &#8220;two cocktails.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Can&#8217;t do it, sah,&#8221; said Pearson, &#8220;not hyah, sah!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Bring us paper to write resignations on!&#8221; said Giddings. &#8220;We won&#8217;t
+belong to a club where we are bullied by niggers.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Pearson brought the paper.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;s no rule, suh,&#8221; said he, &#8220;again&#8217; suhvin&#8217; resignation papah
+anywhah in the house. But let me say, Mistah Giddings, that Ah wouldn&#8217;t
+be hasty: it&#8217;s a heap hahder to get inter this club now than what it was
+when you-all come in!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This suggestion of Pearson&#8217;s was in every one&#8217;s<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_223" id="pg_223">223</a></span> mouth as the most
+amusing story of the time. Even Giddings laughed about it. But all his
+laughter was hollow.</p>
+
+<p>Some bets were offered that one of two things would happen on the
+wedding-day: either Giddings (who had formerly been of abstemious
+habits) would overdo the attempt to nerve himself up to the occasion and
+go into a vinous collapse, or he would stay sober and take to his heels.
+Thus, in fear and trembling, did the inexplicable disciple of Iago
+approach his happiness; but, like most soldiers, when the battle was
+actually on, he went to the fighting-line dazed into bravery.</p>
+
+<p>It was quite a spectacular affair. The church was a floral grotto, and
+there were, in great abundance, the adjuncts of ribbon barriers, special
+electric illuminations, special music, full ritual, ushers, bridesmaids,
+and millinery. Antonia was chief bridesmaid, and Cornish best man. The
+severe conformity to vogue, and preservation of good form, were
+generally attributed to his management. It was a great success.</p>
+
+<p>There was an elaborate supper, of which Giddings partook in a manner
+which tended to prove that his sense of taste was still in his
+possession, whatever may have been the case with his other senses. Josie
+was there, and Jim was her shadow. She was a little pale, but not at all
+sad; her figure, which had within the past year or so acquired something
+of the wealth commonly conceded to matronliness, had waned to the
+slenderness of the day I first saw her in the art-gallery, but now, as
+then, she<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_224" id="pg_224">224</a></span> was slim, not thin. To two, at least, she was a vision of
+delight, as one might well see by the look of adoration which Jim poured
+into her eyes from time to time, and the hungry gaze with which Cornish
+took in the ruddy halo of her hair, the pale and intellectual face
+beneath it, and the sensuous curves of the compact little form. For my
+own part, my vote was for Antonia, for the belle of the gathering; but
+she sailed through the evening, &#8220;like some full-breasted swan,&#8221;
+accepting no homage except the slavish devotion of Cecil, whose constant
+offering of his neck to her tread gave him recognition as entitled to
+the reward of those who are permitted only to stand and wait.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Elkins had furnished a special train over the L. &amp; G. W. to make the
+run with the bridal party to Elkins Junction, connecting there with the
+east-bound limited on the Pendleton line, thence direct to Elysium.</p>
+
+<p>Laura, rosy as a bride should be, and actually attractive to me for the
+first time in her life, sat in her traveling-dress trying to look
+matter-of-fact, and discussing time-tables with her bridegroom, who
+seemed to find less and less of dream and more of the actual in the
+situation,&mdash;calm returning with the cutaway. Cecil and the coterie of
+gilded youth who followed him did their share to bring Giddings back to
+earth by a series of practical jokes, hackneyed, but ever fresh. The
+largest trunk, after it reached the platform, blossomed out in a sign
+reading: &#8220;The Property of the Bride and Groom. You can Identify the
+Owners by that<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_225" id="pg_225">225</a></span> Absorbed Expression!&#8221; Divers revelatory incidents were
+arranged to eventuate on the limited train. Precipitation of rice was
+produced, in modes known to sleight-of-hand only. So much of this
+occurred that Captain Tolliver showed, by a stately refusal to see the
+joke, his disapproval of it&mdash;a feeling which he expressed in an aside to
+me.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hoss-play of this so&#8217;t, suh,&#8221; said he, &#8220;ought not to be tolerated among
+civilized people, and I believe is not! In the state of society in which
+I was reahed such niggah-shines would mean pistols at ten paces, within
+fo&#8217;ty-eight houahs, with the lady&#8217;s neahest male relative! And propahly
+so, too, suh; quite propahly!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Shall we go to the train, Albert?&#8221; said Alice, as the party made ready
+to go.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said I, &#8220;unless you particularly wish it; we shall go home.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Barslow,&#8221; said one of the maids, &#8220;you are wanted at the telephone.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is this you, Al?&#8221; said Jim&#8217;s voice over the wire. &#8220;I&#8217;m up here at
+Josie&#8217;s, and I am afraid there&#8217;s trouble with her father. When we got
+here we found him gone. Hadn&#8217;t you better go out and look around for
+him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have you any idea where I&#8217;m likely to find him?&#8221; I asked. I saw at once
+the significance of Bill&#8217;s absence. He had taken advantage of the fact
+of his wife and daughter&#8217;s going to the wedding, and had yielded to the
+thing which drew him away from them.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Try the Club, and then O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s,&#8221; answered<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_226" id="pg_226">226</a></span> Jim. &#8220;If you don&#8217;t find
+him in one place or the other, call me up over the &#8217;phone. Call me up
+anyhow; I&#8217;ll wait here.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Times</i> man heard my end of the conversation, saw me hastily give
+Alice word as to the errand which kept me from going home with her,
+observed my preparations for leaving the company, and, scenting news,
+fell in with me as I was walking toward the Club.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Any story in this, Mr. Barslow?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, is that you, Watson?&#8221; I answered. &#8220;I was going on an errand which
+concerns myself. I was going alone.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you&#8217;re looking for any one,&#8221; he said, trotting along beside me, &#8220;I
+can find him a good deal quicker than you can, probably. And if there&#8217;s
+news in it, I&#8217;ll get it anyhow; and I&#8217;ll naturally know it more from
+your standpoint, and look at it more as you do, if we go together. Don&#8217;t
+you think so?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;See here, Watson,&#8221; said I, &#8220;you may help if you wish. But if you print
+a word without my consent, I can and will scoop the <i>Times</i> every day,
+from this on, with every item of business news coming through our
+office. Do you understand, and do you promise?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, certainly,&#8221; said he. &#8220;You&#8217;ve got the thing in your own hands. What
+is it, anyhow?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I told him, and found that Trescott&#8217;s dipsomania was as well known to
+him as myself.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s been throwing money to the fowls for a year or two,&#8221; he remarked.
+&#8220;It&#8217;s better than two<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_227" id="pg_227">227</a></span> to one you don&#8217;t find him at the Club: the
+atmosphere won&#8217;t be congenial for him there.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At the Club we found Watson&#8217;s forecast verified. At O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s our
+knocking on the door aroused a sleepy bartender, who told us that no one
+was there, but refused to let us in. Watson called him aside, and they
+talked together for a few minutes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All right,&#8221; said the reporter, turning away from him, &#8220;much obliged,
+Hank; I believe you&#8217;ve struck it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Watson was leader now, and I followed him toward Front Street, near the
+river. He said that Hank, the barkeeper, had told him that Trescott had
+been in his saloon about nine o&#8217;clock, drinking heavily; and from the
+company he was in, it was to be suspected that he would be steered into
+a joint down on the river front. We passed through an alley, and down a
+back basement stairway, came to a door, on which Watson confidently
+knocked, and which was opened by a negro who let us in as soon as he saw
+the reporter. The air was sickening with an odor which I then perceived
+for the first time, and which Watson called the dope smell. There was an
+indefinable horror about the place, which so repelled me that nothing
+but my obligation could have held me there. The lights were dim, and at
+first I could see nothing more than that the sides of the room were
+divided into compartments by dull-colored draperies, in a manner
+suggesting the sections of a sleeping-car. There were sounds of dreadful
+breathings and inarticulate voices, and over all that sickening smell. I
+saw, flung aimlessly<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_228" id="pg_228">228</a></span> from the crepuscular and curtained recesses, here
+the hairy brawn of a man&#8217;s arm, there a woman&#8217;s leg in scarlet silk
+stocking, the foot half withdrawn from a red slipper with a high French
+heel. The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows had opened for me, and I stood as if
+gazing, with eyes freshly unsealed to its horrors, into some dim
+inferno, sibilant with hisses, and enwrapped in indeterminate
+dragon-folds&mdash;and I in quest of a lost soul.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He wouldn&#8217;t go with his pal, boss,&#8221; I heard the negro say. &#8220;Ah tried to
+send him home, but he said he had some medicine to take, an&#8217; he &#8216;nsisted
+on stayin&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As he ceased to speak, I knew that Watson had been interrogating him,
+and that he was referring to the man we sought.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Show me where he is,&#8221; I commanded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, boss! Right hyah, sah!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In an inner room, on a bed, not a pallet like those in the first
+chamber, was Trescott, his head lying peacefully on a pillow, his hands
+clasped across his chest. Somehow, I was not surprised to see no
+evidence of life, no rise and fall of the breast, no sound of breathing.
+But Watson started forward in amazement, laid his hand for a moment on
+the pallid forehead, lifted for an instant and then dropped the inert
+hand, turned and looked fixedly in my face, and whispered, &#8220;My God! He&#8217;s
+dead!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As if at some great distance, I heard the negro saying, &#8220;He done said he
+hed ter tek some medicine, boss. Ah hopes you-all won&#8217;t make no trouble
+foh me, boss&mdash;!&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_229" id="pg_229">229</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Send for a doctor!&#8221; said I. &#8220;Telephone Mr. Elkins, at Trescott&#8217;s home!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Watson darted out, and for an eternity, as it seemed to me, I stood
+there alone. There was a scurrying of the vermin in the place to snatch
+up a few valuables and flee, as if they had been the crawling things
+under some soon-to-be-lifted stone, to whom light was a calamity. I was
+left with the Stillness before me, and the dreadful breathings and
+inarticulate voices outside. Then came the clang and rattle of ambulance
+and patrol, and in came a policeman or two, a physician, a <i>Herald</i> man
+and Watson, who was bitterly complaining of Bill for having had the bad
+taste to die on the morning paper&#8217;s time.</p>
+
+<p>And soon came Jim, in a carriage, whirled along the street like a racing
+chariot&mdash;with whom I rode home, silent, save for answering his
+questions. Now the wife, gazing out of her door, saw in the street the
+Something for which she had peered past me the other night.</p>
+
+<p>The men carried it in at the door, and laid it on the divan. Josie, her
+arms and shoulders still bare in the dress she had worn to the wedding,
+broke away from Cornish, who was bending over her and saying things to
+comfort her, and swept down the hall to the divan where Bill lay, white
+and still, and clothed with the mystic majesty of death. The shimmering
+silk and lace of her gown lay all along the rug and over the divan, like
+drapery thrown there to conceal what lay before us. She threw her arms
+across the still breast, and her head went down on his.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_230" id="pg_230">230</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, pa! Oh, pa!&#8221; she moaned, &#8220;you never did any one any harm!... You
+were always good and kind!... And always loving and forgiving.... And
+why should they come to you, poor pa ... and take you from the things
+you loved ... and ... murder you ... like this!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jim fell back, as if staggering from a blow. Cornish came forward, and
+offered to raise up the stricken girl, whose eyes shone in her grief
+like the eyes of insanity. Alice stepped before Cornish, raised Josie
+up, and supported her from the room.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Again it was morning, when we&mdash;Alice, Jim, and I&mdash;sat face to face in
+our home. An untasted breakfast was spread before us. Jim&#8217;s eyes were on
+the cloth, and nothing served to rouse him. I knew that the blow from
+which he had staggered still benumbed his faculties.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Come,&#8221; said I, &#8220;we shall need your best thought down at the Grain Belt
+Building in a couple of hours. This brings things to a crisis. We shall
+have a terrible dilemma to face, it&#8217;s likely. Eat and be ready to face
+it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;God!&#8221; said he, &#8220;it&#8217;s the old tale over again, Al: throw the dead and
+wounded overboard to clear the decks, and on with the fight!&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_231" id="pg_231">231</a></span>
+<a name="In_Which_Events_Resume_their_Usual_Coursemdashat_a_Somewhat_Accelerated_Pace_6394" id="In_Which_Events_Resume_their_Usual_Coursemdashat_a_Somewhat_Accelerated_Pace_6394"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER XIX.</p>
+<p class="l c">In Which Events Resume their Usual Course&mdash;at a Somewhat Accelerated Pace.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The death of Mr. Trescott was treated with that consideration which the
+affairs of the locally prominent always receive in towns where local
+papers are in close financial touch with the circle affected. Nothing
+was said of suicide, or of the place where the body was found; and in
+fact I doubt if the family ever knew the real facts; but the property
+matters were looked upon as a legitimate subject for comment.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yesterday,&#8221; said, in due time, the <i>Herald</i>, &#8220;the Trescott estate
+passed into the hands of Will Lattimore, as administrator. He was
+appointed upon the petition of Martha D. Trescott, the widow. His bond,
+in the sum of $500,000, was signed by James R. Elkins, Albert F.
+Barslow, J. Bedford Cornish, and Marion Tolliver, as sureties, and is
+said to be the largest in amount ever filed in our local Probate Court.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Lattimore is non-committal as to the value of the estate. The bond
+is not to be taken as altogether indicative of this value, as additional
+bonds<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_232" id="pg_232">232</a></span> may be called for at any time, and the individual responsibility
+of the administrator is very large. He will at once enter upon the work
+of settling up the estate, receiving and filing claims, and preparing
+his report. He estimates the time necessary to a full understanding of
+the extent and condition of his trust at weeks and even months.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The petition states that the deceased died intestate, leaving surviving
+him the petitioner and an only child, a daughter, Josephine. As Miss
+Trescott has attained her majority, she will at once come into the
+possession of the greater part of this estate, becoming thereby the
+richest heiress in this part of the West. This fact of itself would
+render her an interesting person, an interest to which her charming
+personality adds zest. She is a very beautiful girl, petite in figure,
+with splendid brown hair and eyes. She is possessed of a strong
+individuality, has had the advantages of the best American and
+Continental schools, and is said to be an artist of much ability. Mrs.
+Trescott comes of the Dana family, prominent in central Illinois from
+the earliest settlement of the state.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;President Elkins, of the L. &amp; G. W., who, perhaps, knows more than any
+other person as to the situation and value of the various Trescott
+properties, could not be seen last night. He went to Chicago on
+Wednesday, and yesterday wired his partner, Mr. Barslow, that business
+had called him on to New York, where he would remain for some time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In another column of the same issue was a<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_233" id="pg_233">233</a></span> double-leaded news-story,
+based on certain rumors that Jim&#8217;s trip to New York was taken for the
+purpose of financing extensions of the L. &amp; G. W. which would develop it
+into a system of more than a thousand miles of line.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Their past successes have shown,&#8221; said the <i>Herald</i> in editorial
+comment on this, &#8220;that Mr. Elkins and his associates are resourceful
+enough to bring such an undertaking, gigantic as it is, quite within
+their abilities. The world has not seen the best that is in the power of
+this most remarkable group of men to accomplish. Lattimore, already a
+young giantess in stature and strength, has not begun to grow, in
+comparison with what is in the future for her, if she is to be made the
+center of such a vast railway system as is outlined in the news item
+referred to.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>From which one gathers that the young men left by Mr. Giddings in charge
+of his paper were entirely competent to carry forward his policy.</p>
+
+<p>Jim had gone to Chicago to see Halliday, hoping to rouse in him an
+interest in the Belt Line and L. &amp; G. W. properties; but on arriving
+there had telegraphed to me that he must go to New York. This message
+was followed by a letter of explanation and instructions.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Halliday spends a good deal of his time in New York now,&#8221; the letter
+read, &#8220;and is there at present. His understudy here advised me to go on
+East. I should rather see him there than here, on account of the greater
+likelihood that Pendleton may detect us: so I&#8217;m going. I shall stay as
+long as I can do any good by it. Lattimore won&#8217;t get the condition of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_234" id="pg_234">234</a></span>
+the estate worked out for a month, and until we know about that, there
+won&#8217;t anything come up of the first magnitude, and even if there should,
+you can handle it. I don&#8217;t really expect to come back with the two
+million dollars for the L. &amp; G. W., but I do hope to have it in sight!</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In all your prayers let me be remembered; &#8216;if it don&#8217;t do no good, it
+won&#8217;t do no harm,&#8217; and I&#8217;ll need all the help I can get. I&#8217;m going where
+the lobster &agrave; la Newburg and the Welsh rabbit hunt in couples in the
+interest of the Sure-Thing game; where the bird-and-bottle combine is
+the stalking-horse for the Frame-up; and where the Flim-flam (I use the
+word on the authority of Beaumont, Fletcher &amp; Giddings) has its natural
+habitat. I go to foster the entente cordiale between our friends
+Pendleton and Halliday into what I may term a mutual cross-lift, of
+which we shall be the beneficiaries&mdash;in trust, however, for the use and
+behoof of the captives below decks.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Giddings and Laura are here. I had them out to a box party last night.
+They are most insufferably happy. Clifford is not sane yet, but is
+rallying. He is rallying considerably; for he spoke of plans for pushing
+the <i>Herald</i> Addition harder than ever when he gets home. And you know
+such a thing as business has never entered his mind for six
+months&mdash;unless it was business to write that &#8216;Apostrophe to the Heart,&#8217;
+which he called a poem, and which, I don&#8217;t mind admitting now, I hired
+his foreman to pi after the copy was lost.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Keep everything as near ship-shape as you can.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_235" id="pg_235">235</a></span> Watch the papers, or
+they may do us more harm in a single fool story than can be remedied by
+wise counter-mendacity in a year. Especially watch the <i>Times</i>, although
+there&#8217;s mighty little choice between them. You and Alice ought to spend
+as much time at the Trescotts&#8217; as you can spare. You&#8217;ll hear from me
+almost daily. Wire anything of importance fully. Keep the L. &amp; G. W.
+extension story before the people; it may make some impression even in
+the East, but it&#8217;s sure to do good in the local fake market. Don&#8217;t miss
+a chance to jolly our Eastern banks. I should declare a dividend&mdash;say
+4%&mdash;on Cement stock. At Atlas Power Company meeting ask Cornish to move
+passing earnings to surplus in lieu of dividend, on the theory of
+building new factories&mdash;anyhow, consult with the fellows about it: that
+money will be handy to have in the treasury before the year is out,
+unless I am mistaken. Sorry I can&#8217;t be at these meetings. Will be back
+for those of Rapid Transit and Belt Line Companies.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right">&#8220;Yours,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
+&#8221;<span class="smcap">Jim</span>.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;P. S.&mdash;Coming in, I saw a group of children dancing on a bridge, close
+to a schoolhouse, down near the Mississippi. I guess no one but myself
+knew what they were doing; but I recognized our old &#8216;Weevilly Wheat&#8217;
+dance. I could imagine the ancient Scotch air, which the noise of the
+train kept me from hearing, and the old words you and I used to sing,
+dancing on the Elk Creek bridge:<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_236" id="pg_236">236</a></span></p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em;">&#8220;&#8216;We want no more of your weevilly wheat,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">We want no more your barley;</span><br />
+But we want some of your good old wheat,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To make a cake for Charley!&#8217;</span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You remember it all! How we used to swing the little girls around, and
+when we remembered it afterwards, how we would float off into realms of
+blissful companionship with freckled, short-skirted, bare-legged angels!
+Things were simpler then, Al, weren&#8217;t they? And to emphasize that fact,
+my mind ran along the trail of the &#8216;Weevilly Wheat&#8217; into the domain of
+tickers, margins, puts and calls, and all the cussedness of the Board of
+Trade, and came bump against poor Bill&#8217;s bucket-shop deals, and settled
+down to the chronic wonder as to just how badly crippled he was when he
+died. If Will gets it figured out soon, at all accurately, wire me.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;J.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The wedding tour came to an end, and the bride and groom returned long
+before Mr. Elkins did. Giddings dropped into my office the day after
+their return, and, quite in his old way, began to discuss affairs in
+general.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m going to close out the <i>Herald</i> Addition,&#8221; said he. &#8220;Real estate
+and newspaper work don&#8217;t mix, and I shall unload the real estate. What
+do you say to an auction?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How can you be sure of anything like an adequate scale of prices?&#8221; said
+I; &#8220;and won&#8217;t you demoralize things?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;ll strengthen prices,&#8221; he replied, &#8220;the way<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_237" id="pg_237">237</a></span> I&#8217;ll manage it. This is
+the age of the sensational&mdash;the yellow&mdash;and you people haven&#8217;t been
+yellow enough in your methods of selling dirt. If you say sensationalism
+is immoral, I won&#8217;t dispute it, but just simply ask how the fact happens
+to be material?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I saw that he was going out of his way to say this, and avoided
+discussion by asking him to particularize as to his methods.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We shall pursue a progressively startling course of advertising, to the
+end that the interest shall just miss acute mania. I&#8217;ll have the best
+auctioneer in the world. On the day of the auction we&#8217;ll have a series
+of doings which will leave the people absolutely no way out of buying.
+We&#8217;ll have a scale of upset prices which will prevent loss. Why, I&#8217;ll
+make such a killing as never was known outside of the Fifteen Decisive
+Battles. I sha&#8217;n&#8217;t seem to do all this personally. I shall turn the work
+over to Tolliver; but I&#8217;ll be the power behind the movement. The
+gestures and stage business will be those of Esau, but the word-painting
+will be that of Jacob.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said I, &#8220;I see nothing wrong about your plan; and it may be
+practicable.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There being nothing wrong about it is no objection from my standpoint,&#8221;
+said he. &#8220;In fact, I think I prefer to have it morally right rather than
+otherwise, other things being equal, you know. As for its
+practicability, you watch the Captain, and you&#8217;ll see!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This talk with Giddings convinced me that he was entirely himself again;
+and also that the boom was going on apace. It had now long reached the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_238" id="pg_238">238</a></span>
+stage where the efforts of our syndicate were reinforced by those of
+hundreds of men, who, following the lines of their own interests, were
+powerfully and effectively striving to accomplish the same ends. I
+pointed this out in a letter to Mr. Elkins in New York.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am glad to note,&#8221; said he in reply, &#8220;that affairs are going on so
+cheerfully at home. Don&#8217;t imagine, however, that because a horde of
+volunteers (most of them nine-spots) have taken hold, our old guard is
+of any less importance. Do you remember what a Prince Rupert&#8217;s drop is?
+I absolutely know you don&#8217;t, and to save you the trouble of looking it
+up, I&#8217;ll explain that it is a glass pollywog which holds together all
+right until you snap off the tip of its tail. Then a job lot of
+molecular stresses are thrown out of balance, and the thing develops the
+surprising faculty of flying into innumerable fragments, with a very
+pleasing explosion. Whether the name is a tribute of Prince Rupert&#8217;s
+propensity to fly off the handle, or whether he discovered the drop, or
+first noted its peculiarities, I leave for the historian of the
+Cromwellian epoch to decide. The point I make is this. Our syndicate is
+the tail of the Lattimore Rupert&#8217;s drop; and the Grain Belt Trust Co. is
+the very slenderest and thinnest tip of the pollywog&#8217;s propeller. Hence
+the writer&#8217;s tendency to count the strokes of the clock these nights.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Dating from the night of Trescott&#8217;s death, and therefore covering the
+period of Jim&#8217;s absence, I could not fail to notice the renewed ardor
+with<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_239" id="pg_239">239</a></span> which Cornish devoted himself to the Trescott family. Alice and I,
+on our frequent visits, found him at their home so much that I was
+forced to the conclusion that he must have had some encouragement.
+During this period of their mourning his treatment of both mother and
+daughter was at once so solicitously friendly, and so delicate, that no
+one in their place could have failed to feel a sense of obligation. He
+sent flowers to Mrs. Trescott, and found interesting things in books and
+magazines for Josie. Having known him as a somewhat cold and formal man,
+Mrs. Trescott was greatly pleased with this new view of his character.
+He diverted her mind, and relieved the monotony of her grief. Cornish
+was a diplomat (otherwise Jim would have had no use for him in the first
+place), and he skilfully chose this sad and tender moment to bring about
+a closer intimacy than had existed between him and the afflicted family.
+It was clearly no affair of mine. Nevertheless, after several
+experiences in finding Cornish talking with Josie by the Trescott grate,
+I considered Jim&#8217;s interests menaced.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Alice, when I mentioned this feeling, &#8220;Mr. Cornish is
+certainly a desirable match, and it can scarcely be expected that Josie
+will remain permanently unattached.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was a little resentment in her voice, for which I could see no
+reason, and therefore protested that, under all circumstances, it was
+scarcely fair to blame me for the lady&#8217;s unappropriated state.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Under other conditions,&#8221; said I, &#8220;I assure you<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_240" id="pg_240">240</a></span> that I should not
+permit such an anomaly to exist&mdash;if I could help it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The incident was then declared closed.</p>
+
+<p>During this absence of Jim&#8217;s, which, I think, was the real cause of
+Alice&#8217;s displeasure, the <i>Herald</i> Addition sale went forward, with all
+the &#8220;yellow&#8221; features which the minds of Giddings and Tolliver could
+invent. It began with flaring advertisements in both papers. Then, on a
+certain day, the sale was declared open, and every bill-board and fence
+bore posters puffing it. A great screen was built on a vacant lot on
+Main Street, and across the street was placed, every night, the biggest
+magic lantern procurable, from which pictures of all sorts were
+projected on the screen, interlarded with which were statements of the
+<i>Herald</i> Addition sales for the day, and quotations showing the advance
+in prices since yesterday. And at all times the coming auction was cried
+abroad, until the interest grew to something wonderful. Every farmer and
+country merchant within a hundred miles of the city was talking of it.
+Tolliver was in his highest feather. On the day of the auction he
+secured excursion rates on all of the railroads, and made it a holiday.
+Porter&#8217;s great military band, then touring the country, was secured for
+the afternoon and evening. Thousands of people came in on the excursions
+and it seemed like a carnival. Out at the piece of land platted as the
+<i>Herald</i> Addition, whither people were conveyed in street-cars and
+carriages during the long afternoon the great band played about the
+stands erected for the auctioneer, who went from stand to stand,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_241" id="pg_241">241</a></span> crying
+off the lots, the precise location of the particular parcel at any
+moment under the hammer being indicated by the display of a flag, held
+high by two strong fellows, who lowered the banner and walked to another
+site in obedience to signals wigwagged by the enthusiastic Captain. The
+throng bid excitedly, and the clerks who made out the papers worked
+desperately to keep up with the demands for deeds. It was clear that the
+sale was a success. As the sun sank, handbills were scattered informing
+the crowd that in the evening Tolliver &amp; Company, as a slight evidence
+of their appreciation of the splendid business of the day, would throw
+open to their friends the new Cornish Opera House, where Porter&#8217;s
+celebrated band would give its regular high-class concert. Tolliver &amp;
+Company, the bill went on, took pleasure in further informing the public
+that, in view of the great success of the day&#8217;s sale, and the very small
+amount to which their holdings in the <i>Herald</i> Addition were reduced,
+the remainder of this choice piece of property would be sold from the
+stage to the highest bidder, absolutely without any reservation or
+restriction as to the price!</p>
+
+<p>I had received a telegram from Jim saying that he would return on a
+train arriving that evening, and asking that Cornish, Hinckley, and
+Lattimore be at the office to meet him. I was on the street early in the
+evening, looking with wonder at the crowds making merry after the dizzy
+day of speculative delirium. At the opera house, filled to overflowing
+with men admitted on tickets, the great band was discoursing its music,
+in alternation with the insinuating<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_242" id="pg_242">242</a></span> oratory of the auctioneer, under
+whose skilful management the odds and ends of the <i>Herald</i> Addition were
+changing owners at a rate which was simply bewildering.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t you see,&#8221; said Giddings delightedly, &#8220;that this is the only way
+to sell town lots?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jim came into the office, fresh and buoyant after his long trip, his
+laugh as hearty and mirth-provoking as ever. After shaking hands with
+all, he threw himself into his own chair.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Boys,&#8221; said he, &#8220;I feel like a mouse just returning from a visit to a
+cat convention. But what&#8217;s this crowd for? It&#8217;s nearly as bad as
+Broadway.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We explained what Giddings and Tolliver had been doing.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But,&#8221; said he, &#8220;do you mean to tell me that he&#8217;s sold that Addition to
+this crowd of reubs?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He most certainly has,&#8221; said Cornish.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, fellows,&#8221; replied Jim, &#8220;put away the accounts of this as
+curiosities! You&#8217;ll have some difficulty in making posterity believe
+that there was ever a time or place where town lots were sold with magic
+lanterns and a brass band! And don&#8217;t advertise it too much with Dorr,
+Wickersham and those fellows. They think us a little crazy now. But a
+brass band! That comes pretty near being the limit.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Gentlemen,&#8221; said Mr. Lattimore, &#8220;I shall have to leave you soon; and
+will you kindly make use of me as soon as you conveniently can, and let
+me go?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have you got the condition of the Trescott estate figured out?&#8221; said
+Mr. Elkins.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_243" id="pg_243">243</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said the lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>We all leaned forward in absorbed interest; for this was news.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have you told these gentlemen?&#8221; Jim went on.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have told no one.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Please give us your conclusions.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Gentlemen,&#8221; said Mr. Lattimore, &#8220;I am sorry to report that the Trescott
+estate is absolutely insolvent! It lacks a hundred thousand dollars of
+being worth anything!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence for some moments.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;My God!&#8221; said Hinckley, &#8220;and our trust company is on all that paper of
+Trescott&#8217;s scattered over the East!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s become of the money he got on all his sales?&#8221; asked Jim.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;From the looks of the check-stubs, and other indications,&#8221; said Mr.
+Lattimore, &#8220;I should say the most of it went into Board of Trade deals.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Cornish was swearing in a repressed way, and above his black beard his
+face was pale. Elkins sat drumming idly on the desk with his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Gentlemen,&#8221; said he, &#8220;I take it to be conceded that unless the Trescott
+paper is cared for, things will go to pieces here. That&#8217;s the same as
+saying that it must be taken up at all hazards.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not exactly,&#8221; said Cornish, &#8220;at <i>all</i> hazards.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;it amounts to that. Has any one any suggestions as to
+the course to be followed?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cornish asked whether it would not be best to take time, allow the
+probate proceedings to drag along, and see what would turn up.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_244" id="pg_244">244</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But the Trust Company&#8217;s guaranties,&#8221; said Mr. Hinckley, with a banker&#8217;s
+scent for the complications of commercial paper, &#8220;must be made good on
+presentation, or it may as well close its doors.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The thing won&#8217;t &#8216;drag along&#8217; successfully,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;Have you a
+schedule of the assets?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Mr. Lattimore. &#8220;The life-insurance money and the home are
+exempt from liability for debts, and I&#8217;ve left them out; but the other
+properties you&#8217;ll find listed here.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And he threw down on the desk a folded document in a legal wrapper.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The family,&#8221; said Jim gravely, &#8220;must be told of the condition of
+things. It is a hard thing to do, but it must be done. Then conveyances
+must be obtained of all the property, subject to debts; and we must take
+the property and pay the debts. That also will be a hard thing to do&mdash;in
+several ways; but it must be done. It must be done&mdash;do you all agree?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let me first ask,&#8221; said Mr. Cornish, turning to Mr. Hinckley, &#8220;how long
+would it be before there would have to be trouble on this paper?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It couldn&#8217;t possibly be postponed more than sixty days,&#8221; was the
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is there any prospect,&#8221; Cornish went on, addressing Mr. Elkins, &#8220;of
+closing out the railway properties within sixty days?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A prospect, yes,&#8221; said Jim.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Anything like a certainty?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, not in sixty days.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then,&#8221; said Cornish reluctantly, &#8220;there seems<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_245" id="pg_245">245</a></span> to be no way out of it,
+and I agree. But I feel as if I were being held up, and I assent on this
+ground only: that Halliday and Pendleton will never deal on equal terms
+with a set of financial cripples, and that any trouble here will seal
+the fate of the railway transaction. But, lest this be taken as a
+precedent, I wish it to be understood that I&#8217;m not jeopardizing my
+fortune, or any part of it, out of any sentimental consideration for
+these supposed claims of any one who holds Lattimore paper, in the East
+or elsewhere!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jim sat drumming on the desk.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;As we are all agreed on what to do,&#8221; said he drawlingly, &#8220;we can skip
+the question why we do it. Prepare the necessary papers, Mr. Lattimore.
+And perhaps you are the proper person to apprise the family as to the
+true condition of things. We&#8217;ll have to get together to-morrow and begin
+to dig for the funds. I think we can do no more to-night.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We walked down the street and dropped into the opera house in time to
+hear the grand finale of the last piece by the band. As the great
+outburst of music died away, Captain Tolliver radiantly stepped to the
+footlights, dividing the applause with the musicians.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ladies and gentlemen,&#8221; said he, &#8220;puhmit me to say, in bidding you-all
+good-night, that I congratulate the republic on the possession of a
+citizenship so awake to theiah true interests as you have shown
+you&#8217;selves to-day! I congratulate the puhchasers of propahty in the
+<i>Herald</i> Addition upon the bahgains they have secuahed. Only five
+minutes&#8217;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_246" id="pg_246">246</a></span> walk from the cyahs, and well within the three-mile limit, the
+time must soon come when these lots will be covahed with the mansions of
+ouah richah citizens. Even since the sales of this afternoon, I am
+infawmed that many of the pieces have been resold at an advance, netting
+the puhchasers a nice profit without putting up a cent. Upon all this I
+congratulate you. Lattimore, ladies and gentlemen, has nevah been cuhsed
+by a boom, and I pray God she nevah may! This rathah brisk growth of
+ouahs, based as it is on crying needs of ouah trade territory, is really
+unaccountably slow, all things considered. But I may say right hyah that
+things ah known to be in sto&#8217; foh us which will soon give ouah city an
+impetus which will cyahy us fo&#8217;ward by leaps and bounds&mdash;by leaps and
+bounds, ladies and gentlemen&mdash;to that highah and still mo&#8217; commandin&#8217;
+place in the galaxy of American cities which is ouahs by right! And now
+as you-all take youah leave, I propose that we rise and give three
+cheers fo&#8217; Lattimore and prosperity.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The cheers were given thunderously, and the crowd bustled out, filling
+the street.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, wouldn&#8217;t that jar you!&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;This is a case of &#8216;Gaze first
+upon this picture, then on that&#8217; sure enough, isn&#8217;t it, Al?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Captain Tolliver joined us, so full of excitement of the evening that he
+forgot to give Mr. Elkins the greeting his return otherwise would have
+evoked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Gentlemen,&#8221; said he, &#8220;it was glorious! Nevah until this moment have I
+felt true fawgiveness in<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_247" id="pg_247">247</a></span> my breast faw the crime of Appomattox! But
+to-night we ah truly a reunited people!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Glad to know it,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;mighty glad, Captain. The news&#8217;ll send
+stocks up a-whooping, if it gets to New York!&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_248" id="pg_248">248</a></span>
+<a name="I_Twice_Explain_the_Condition_of_the_Trescott_Estate_6852" id="I_Twice_Explain_the_Condition_of_the_Trescott_Estate_6852"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER XX.</p>
+<p class="l c">I Twice Explain the Condition of the Trescott Estate.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Nothing had remained unchanged in Lattimore, and our old offices in the
+First National Bank edifice had long since been vacated by us. The very
+building had been demolished, and another and many-storied structure
+stood in its place. Now we were in the big Grain Belt Trust Company&#8217;s
+building, the ground-floor of which was shared between the Trust Company
+and the general offices of the Lattimore and Great Western. In one
+corner, and next to the private room of President Elkins, was the office
+of Barslow &amp; Elkins, where I commanded. Into which entered Mrs. Trescott
+and her daughter one day, soon after Mr. Lattimore had been given his
+instructions concerning the offer of our syndicate to pay the debts of
+their estate and take over its properties.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Josie and I have called,&#8221; said the widow, &#8220;to talk with you about the
+estate matters. Mr. Lattimore came to see us last night and&mdash;told us.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She seemed a little agitated, but in nowise so much cast down as might
+be expected of one who, considering herself rich, learns that she is
+poor. She had in her manner that mixture of dignity and constraint<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_249" id="pg_249">249</a></span>
+which marks the bearing of people whose relations with their friends
+have been affected by some great grief. A calamity not only changes our
+own feelings, but it makes us uncertain as to what our friends expect of
+us.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What we wish explained,&#8221; said Josie, &#8220;is just how it comes that our
+property must be deeded away.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I can see,&#8221; said I, &#8220;that that is a matter which demands investigation
+on your part. Your request is a natural and a proper one.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is not that,&#8221; said she, evidently objecting to the word
+investigation; &#8220;we are not so very much surprised, and we have no doubt
+as to the necessity of doing it. But we want to know as much as possible
+about it before we act.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Quite right,&#8221; said I. &#8220;Mr. Elkins is in the next office; let us call
+him in. He sees and can explain these things as clearly as any one.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jim came in response to a summons by one of his clerks. He shook hands
+gravely with my visitors.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We are told,&#8221; said Mrs. Trescott, &#8220;that our debts are a good deal more
+than we can pay&mdash;that we really have nothing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not quite that,&#8221; said Jim; &#8220;the law gives to the widow the home and the
+life insurance. That is a good deal more than nothing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;As to whether we can keep that,&#8221; said Josie, &#8220;we are not discussing
+now; but there are some other things we should like cleared up.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t understand Mr. Cornish&#8217;s offer to take the property and pay
+the debts,&#8221; said Mrs. Trescott.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_250" id="pg_250">250</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Jim&#8217;s glance sought mine in a momentary and questioning astonishment;
+then he calmly returned the widow&#8217;s look. Josie&#8217;s eyes were turned
+toward the carpet, and a slight blush tinged her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;yes; Mr. Cornish&#8217;s offer. How did you learn of it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I got my understanding of it from Mr. Lattimore,&#8221; said Mrs. Trescott,
+&#8220;and told Josie about it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Before we consent to carry out this plan,&#8221; said Josie, &#8220;we ... I want
+to know all about the motives and considerations back of it. I want to
+know whether it is based on purely business considerations, or on some
+fancied obligation ... or ... or ... on merely friendly sentiments.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;As to motives,&#8221; said Mr. Elkins, &#8220;if the purely business requirements
+of the situation fully account for the proposition, we may waive the
+discussion of motives, can&#8217;t we, Josie?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I imagine,&#8221; said Mrs. Trescott, finding that Jim&#8217;s question remained
+unanswered, &#8220;that none of us will claim to be able to judge Mr.
+Cornish&#8217;s motives.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Certainly not,&#8221; acquiesced Mr. Elkins. &#8220;None of us.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This is not what we came to ask about,&#8221; said Josie. &#8220;Please tell us
+whether our house and the insurance money would be mamma&#8217;s if this plan
+were not adopted&mdash;if the courts went on and settled the estate in the
+usual way?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said I, &#8220;the law gives her that, and justly. For the creditors
+knew all about the law when they<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_251" id="pg_251">251</a></span> took those bonds. So you need have no
+qualms of conscience on that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;As none of it belongs to me,&#8221; said Josie, &#8220;I shall leave all that to
+mamma. I avoid the necessity of settling it by ceasing to be &#8216;the
+richest heiress in this part of the West&#8217;&mdash;one of the uses of adversity.
+But to proceed. Mamma says that there is a corporation, or something,
+forming to pay our debts and take our property, and that it will take a
+hundred thousand dollars more to pay the debts than the estate is worth.
+I must understand why this corporation should do this. I can see that it
+will save pa&#8217;s good name in the business world, and save us from public
+bankruptcy; but ought we to be saved these things at such a cost? And
+can we permit&mdash;a corporation&mdash;or any one, to do this for us?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Elkins nodded to me to speak.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;My dear,&#8221; said I, &#8220;it&#8217;s another illustration of the truth that no man
+liveth unto himself alone&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She shrank, as if she feared some fresh hurt was about to be touched,
+and I saw that it was the second part of the text the anticipation of
+which gave her pain. Quotation is sometimes ill for a green wound.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The fact is,&#8221; I went on, &#8220;that things in Lattimore are not in condition
+to bear a shock&mdash;general money conditions, I mean, you know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know,&#8221; she said, nodding assent; &#8220;I can see that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Your father did a very large business for a time,&#8221; I continued; &#8220;and
+when he sold lands he took some<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_252" id="pg_252">252</a></span> cash in payment, and for the balance
+notes of the various purchasers, secured by mortgages on the properties.
+Many of these persons are mere adventurers, who bought on speculation,
+and when their first notes came due failed to pay. Now if you had these
+notes, you could hold them, or foreclose the mortgages, and, beyond
+being disappointed in getting the money, no harm would be done.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I understand,&#8221; said Josie. &#8220;I knew something of this before.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But if we haven&#8217;t the notes,&#8221; inquired her mother, &#8220;where are they?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; I went on, &#8220;you know how we have all handled these matters here.
+Mr. Trescott did as we all did: he negotiated them. The Grain Belt Trust
+Company placed them for him, and his are the only securities it has
+handled except those of our syndicate. He took them to the Trust Company
+and signed them on the back, and thus promised to pay them if the first
+signer failed. Then the trust company attached its guaranty to them, and
+they were resold all over the East, wherever people had money to put out
+at interest.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I see,&#8221; said Josie; &#8220;we have already had the money on these notes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said I, &#8220;and now we find that a great many of these notes, which
+are being sent on for payment, will not be paid. Your father&#8217;s estate is
+not able to pay them, and our trust company must either take them up or
+fail. If it fails, everyone will think that values in Lattimore are
+unstable and fictitious, and so many people will try to sell out that we
+shall<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_253" id="pg_253">253</a></span> have a smashing of values, and possibly a panic. Prices will
+drop, so that none of our mortgages will be good for their face.
+Thousands of people will be broken, the city will be ruined, and there
+will be hard and distressful times, both here and where our paper is
+held. But if we can keep things as they are until we can do some large
+things we have in view, we are not afraid of anything serious happening.
+So we form this new corporation, and have it advance the funds on the
+notes, so as not to weaken the trust company&mdash;and because we can&#8217;t
+afford to do it otherwise&mdash;and we know you would not permit it anyhow;
+and we ask you to give to the new corporation all the property which the
+creditors could reach, which will be held, and sold as opportunity
+offers, so as to make the loss as small as possible. But we must keep
+off this panic to save ourselves.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I must think about this,&#8221; said Josie. &#8220;I don&#8217;t see any way out of it;
+but to have one&#8217;s affairs so wrapped up in such a great tangle that one
+loses control of them seems wrong, somehow. And so far as I am
+concerned, I think I should prefer to turn everything over to the
+creditors&mdash;house and all&mdash;than to have even so good friends as yourself
+take on such a load for us. It seems as if we were saying to you, &#8216;Pay
+our debts or we&#8217;ll ruin you!&#8217; I must think about it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You understand it now?&#8221; said Jim.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, in a way.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let me come over this evening,&#8221; said he, &#8220;and I think I can remove this
+feeling from your mind. And by the way, the new corporation is not going
+to<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_254" id="pg_254">254</a></span> have the ranch out on the Cheyenne Range. The syndicate says it
+isn&#8217;t worth anything. And I&#8217;m going to take it. I still believe in the
+headwaters of Bitter Creek as an art country.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thank you,&#8221; said she vaguely.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow, the explanation of the estate affairs seemed to hurt her. Her
+color was still high, but her eyes were suffused, her voice grew choked
+at times, and she showed the distress of her recent trials, in something
+like a loss of self-control. Her pretty head and slender figure, the
+flexile white hands clasped together in nervous strain to discuss these
+so vital matters, and, more than all, the departure from her habitual
+cool and self-possessed manner, was touching, and appealed powerfully to
+Jim. He walked up to her, as she stood ready to leave, and laid his hand
+lightly on her arm.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The way Barslow puts these property matters,&#8221; said he, &#8220;you are called
+upon to think that all arrangements have been made upon a cold cash
+basis; and, actually, that&#8217;s the fact. But you mustn&#8217;t either of you
+think that in dealing with you we have forgotten that you are dear to
+us&mdash;friends. We should have had to act in the same way if you had been
+enemies, perhaps, but if there had been any way in which our&mdash;regard
+could have shown itself, that way would have been followed.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Mrs. Trescott, &#8220;we understand that. Mr. Lattimore said
+almost the same thing, and we know that in what he did Mr. Cornish&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We must go now, mamma,&#8221; said Josie. &#8220;Thank you both very much. It won&#8217;t
+do any harm for me<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_255" id="pg_255">255</a></span> to take a day or so for considering this in all its
+phases; but I know now what I shall do. The thought of the distress that
+might come to people here and elsewhere as a result of these mistakes
+here is a new one, and a little big for me, at first.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jim sat by the desk, after they went away, folding insurance blotters
+and savagely tearing them in pieces.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wish to God,&#8221; said he, &#8220;that I could throw my hand into the deck and
+quit!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s the matter?&#8221; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh&mdash;nothing,&#8221; he returned. &#8220;Only, look at the situation. She comes in,
+filled with the idea that it was Cornish who proposed this plan, and
+that he did it for her sake. I couldn&#8217;t very well say, like a boy,
+&#8216;&#8217;Twasn&#8217;t Cornish; &#8217;twas me!&#8217;, could I? And in showing her the purely
+mercenary character of the deal, I&#8217;m put in the position of backcapping
+Cornish, and she goes away with that impression! Oh, Al, what&#8217;s the good
+of being able to convince and control every one else, if you are always
+further off than Kamschatka with the only one for whose feelings you
+really care?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think it struck her in that way at all,&#8221; said I. &#8220;She could see
+how it was, and did, whatever her mother may think. But what possessed
+Lattimore to tell Mrs. Trescott that Cornish story?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Lattimore never said anything like that!&#8221; he returned disgustedly.
+&#8220;He told her that it was proposed by a friend, or one of the syndicate,
+or something like that; and they are so saturated with the Cornish idea
+up there lately, that they filled up<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_256" id="pg_256">256</a></span> the blank out of their own minds.
+Another mighty encouraging symptom, isn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Not more than a day or two after this, and after the news of the
+&#8220;purchase&#8221; of the Trescott estate was being whispered about, my
+telephone rang, just before my time for leaving the office, and, on
+answering, I found that Antonia was at the other end of the wire.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is this Mr. Barslow?&#8221; said she. &#8220;How do you do? Alice is with us this
+afternoon, and she and mamma have given me authority to bring you home
+to dinner with us. Do you surrender?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Always,&#8221; said I, &#8220;at such a summons.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then I&#8217;ll come for you in ten minutes, if you&#8217;ll wait for me. It&#8217;s ever
+so good of you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>From her way of finishing the conversation, I knew she was coming to the
+office. So I waited in pleasurable anticipation of her coming, thinking
+of the perversity of the scheme of things which turned the eyes of both
+Jim and Cornish to Josie, while this girl coming to fetch me yearned so
+strongly toward one of them that her sorrow&mdash;borne lightly and
+cheerfully as it was&mdash;was an open secret. When she came she made her way
+past the clerks in the first room and into my private den. Not until the
+door closed behind her, and we were alone, did I see that she was not in
+her usual spirits. Then I saw that unmistakable quiver in her lips, so
+like a smile, so far from mirth, which my acquaintance with the girl, so
+sensitive and free from secretiveness, had made me familiar with.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I want to know about some things,&#8221; said she, &#8220;that papa hints about in
+a blind sort of a way,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_257" id="pg_257">257</a></span> but doesn&#8217;t tell clearly. Is it true that Josie
+and her mother are poor?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That is something which ought not to be known yet,&#8221; said I, &#8220;but it is
+true.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh,&#8221; said she tearfully, &#8220;I am so sorry, so sorry!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Antonia,&#8221; said I, as she hastily brushed her eyes, &#8220;these tears do your
+kind heart credit!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, don&#8217;t, don&#8217;t talk to me like that!&#8221; she exclaimed passionately. &#8220;My
+kind heart! Why, sometimes I hate her; and I would be glad if she was
+out of the world! Don&#8217;t look like that at me! And don&#8217;t pretend to be
+surprised, or say you don&#8217;t understand me. I think every one understands
+me, and has for a long time. I think everybody on the street says, after
+I pass, &#8216;Poor Antonia!&#8217; I <i>must</i> talk to somebody! And I&#8217;d rather talk
+to you because, even though you are a man and can&#8217;t possibly know how I
+feel, you understand <i>him</i> better than any one else I know&mdash;and <i>you</i>
+love him too!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I started to say something, but the situation did not lend itself to
+words. Neither could I pat her on the shoulders, or press her hand, as I
+might have done with a man. Pale and beautiful, her jaunty hat a little
+awry, her blonde ringlets in some disorder, she sat unapproachable in
+her grief.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You look at me,&#8221; said she, with a little gasping laugh, &#8220;as if I were a
+drowning girl, and you chained to the bank. If you haven&#8217;t pitied me in
+the past, Albert, don&#8217;t pity me now; for the mere saying openly to some
+human being that I love him seems almost to make me happy!&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_258" id="pg_258">258</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I lamely murmured some inanity, of which she took not the slightest
+notice.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is it true,&#8221; she asked, &#8220;that Mr. Elkins is to pay their debts, and
+that they are to be&mdash;married?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said I, glad, for some reason which is not very clear, to find
+something to deny. &#8220;Nothing of the sort, I assure you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And again, this time something wearily, for it was the second time over
+it in so short a time, I explained the disposition of the Trescott
+estate.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But he urged it?&#8221; she said. &#8220;He insisted upon it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She arose, buttoned her jacket about her, and stood quietly as if to
+test her mastery of herself, once or twice moving as if to speak, but
+stopping short, with a long, quivering sigh. I longed to take her in my
+arms and comfort her; for, in a way, she attracted me strongly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Barslow,&#8221; said she at last, &#8220;I have no apology to make to you; for
+you are my friend. And I have no feeling toward Mr. Elkins of which, in
+my secret heart, and so long as he knows nothing of it, I am not proud.
+To know him ... and love him may be death ... but it is honor!... I am
+sorry Josie is poor, because it is a hard thing for her; but more
+because I know he will be drawn to her in a stronger way by her poverty.
+Shake hands with me, Albert, and be jolly, I&#8217;m jollier, away down deep,
+than I&#8217;ve been for a long, long time; and I thank you for that!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We shook hands warmly, like comrades, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_259" id="pg_259">259</a></span> passed down to her carriage
+together. At dinner she was vivacious as ever; but I was downcast. So
+much so that Mrs. Hinckley devoted herself to me, cheering me with a
+dissertation on &#8220;Sex in Mind.&#8221; I asked myself if the atmosphere in which
+she had been reared had not in some degree contributed to the attitude
+of Antonia toward the expression to me of her regard for Jim.</p>
+
+<p>So the Trescott estate matter was arranged. In a few days the boom was
+strengthened by newspaper stories of the purchase, by heavy financial
+interests, of the entire list of assets in the hands of the
+administrator.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This immense deal,&#8221; said the <i>Herald</i>, &#8220;is new proof of the
+desirability of Lattimore property. The Acme Investment Company, which
+will handle the properties, has bought for investment, and will hold for
+increased prices. It may be taken as certain that in no other city in
+the country could so large and varied a list of holdings be so quickly
+and advantageously realized upon.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This was cheering&mdash;to the masses. But to us it was like praise for the
+high color of a fever patient. Even while the rehabilitated Giddings
+thus lifted his voice in p&aelig;ans of rejoicing, the lurid signals of danger
+appeared in our sky.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_260" id="pg_260">260</a></span>
+<a name="Of_Conflicts_Within_and_Without_7203" id="Of_Conflicts_Within_and_Without_7203"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER XXI.</p>
+<p class="l c">Of Conflicts, Within and Without.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>I have often wished that some sort of a business weather-chart might be
+periodically got out, showing conditions all over the world. It seems to
+me that with such a map one could forecast financial storms and squalls
+with an accuracy quite up to the weather-bureau standard.</p>
+
+<p>Had we at Lattimore been provided with such a chart, and been reminded
+of the wisdom of referring to it occasionally, we might have saved
+ourselves some surprises. We should have known of certain areas of
+speculative high pressure in Australasia, Argentina, and South Africa,
+which existed even prior to my meeting with Jim that day in the Pullman
+smoking-room coming out of Chicago. These we should have seen changing
+month by month, until at the time when we were most gloriously carrying
+things before us in Lattimore, each of these spots on the other side of
+the little old world showed financial disturbances&mdash;pronounced &#8220;lows.&#8221;
+We should have seen symptoms of storm on the European bourses; and we
+should have thought of the natural progress of the moving areas, and
+derived much benefit from such consideration. We should certainly have
+paid<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_261" id="pg_261">261</a></span> some attention to it, if we could have seen the black isobars
+drawn about London, when the great banking house of Fleischmann Brothers
+went down in the wreck of their South African and Argentine investments.
+But having no such chart, and being much engrossed in the game against
+the World and Destiny, we glanced for a moment at the dispatches, seeing
+nothing in them of interest to us, congratulated ourselves that we were
+not as other investors and speculators, and played on.</p>
+
+<p>Once in a while we found some over-cautious banker or broker who had
+inexplicable fears for the future.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Here is an idiot,&#8221; said Cornish, while we were placing the paper to
+float the Trescott deal, &#8220;who is calling his loans; and why, do you
+think?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Can&#8217;t guess,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;unless he needs the money. How does <i>he</i>
+account for it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Read his letter,&#8221; said Cornish. &#8220;Says the Fleischmann failure in London
+is making his directors cautious. I&#8217;m calling his attention to the now
+prevailing sun-spots, as bearing on Lattimore property.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Elkins read the letter carefully, turned it over, and read it again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t,&#8221; said he; &#8220;he may be one of those asses who fail to see the
+business value of the <i>reductio ad absurdum</i>.... Fellows, we must push
+this L. &amp; G. W. business with Pendleton. Some of us ought to be down
+there now.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That is wise counsel,&#8221; I agreed, &#8220;and you&#8217;re the man.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_262" id="pg_262">262</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said he positively, &#8220;I&#8217;m not the man. Cornish, can&#8217;t you go,
+starting, say, to-morrow?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No indeed,&#8221; said Cornish with equal positiveness; &#8220;since my turn-down
+by Wade on that bond deal, I&#8217;m out of touch with the lower Broadway and
+Wall Street element. It seems clear to me that you are the only one to
+carry this negotiation forward.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t go, absolutely,&#8221; insisted Jim. &#8220;Al, it seems to be up to you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I knew that Jim ought to do this work, and could not understand the
+reasons for both himself and Cornish declining the mission. Privately, I
+told him that it was nonsense to send me; but he found reasons in plenty
+for the course he had determined upon. He had better control of the hot
+air, he said, but as a matter of fact I was more in Pendleton&#8217;s class
+than he was, I was more careful in my statements, and I saw further into
+men&#8217;s minds.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And if, as you say,&#8221; said he, &#8220;Pendleton thinks me the whole works
+here, it will show a self-possession and freedom from anxiety on our
+part to accredit a subordinate (as you call yourself) as envoy to the
+court of St. Scads. Again, affairs here are likely to need me at any
+time; and if we go wrong here, it&#8217;s all off. I don&#8217;t dare leave. Anyhow,
+down deep in your subconsciousness, you know that in diplomacy you
+really have us all beaten to a pulp: and this is a matter as purely
+diplomatic as draw-poker. You&#8217;ll do all right.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>My wife was skeptical as to the necessity of my going.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why doesn&#8217;t Mr. Cornish go, then?&#8221; she inquired,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_263" id="pg_263">263</a></span> after I had explained
+to her the position of Mr. Elkins. &#8220;He is a native of Wall Street, I
+believe.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; I repeated, &#8220;they both say positively that they can&#8217;t go.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Your natural specialty may be diplomacy,&#8221; said she pityingly, &#8220;but if
+you take the reasons they give as the real ones, I must be permitted to
+doubt it. It&#8217;s perfectly obvious that if Josie were transferred to New
+York, the demands of business would take them both there at once.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This remark struck me as very subtle, and as having a good deal in it.
+Josie had never permitted the rivalry between Jim and Cornish to become
+publicly apparent; but in spite of the mourning which kept the
+Trescott&#8217;s in semi-retirement, it was daily growing more keen. Elkins
+was plainly anxious at the progress Cornish had seemed to make during
+his last long absence, and still doubtful of his relations with Josie
+after that utterance over her father&#8217;s body. But he was not one to give
+up, and so, whenever she came over for an evening with Alice, Jim was
+sure to drop in casually and see us. I believe Alice telephoned him. On
+the other hand, Cornish was calling at the Trescott house with
+increasing frequency. Mrs. Trescott was decidedly favorable to him,
+Alice a pronounced partisan of Elkins; and Josie vibrated between the
+two oppositely charged atmospheres, calmly non-committal, and apparently
+pleased with both. But the affair was affecting our relations. There was
+a new feeling, still unexpressed, of strain and stress, in spite of the
+familiarity and comradeship of long and intimate<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_264" id="pg_264">264</a></span> intercourse. Moreover,
+I felt that Mr. Hinckley was not on the same terms with Jim as formerly,
+and I wondered if he was possessed of Antonia&#8217;s secret.</p>
+
+<p>It was with a prevision of something out of the ordinary, therefore,
+that I received through Alice a request from Josie for a private
+interview with me. She would come to us at any time when I would
+telephone that I was at home and would see her. Of course I at once
+decided I would go to her. Which, that evening, my last in Lattimore
+before starting for the East, I did.</p>
+
+<p>There was a side door to my house, and a corresponding one in the
+Trescott home across the street. We were all quite in the habit, in our
+constant visiting between the households, of making a short cut by
+crossing the road from one of these doors to the other. This I did that
+evening, rapped at the door, and imagining I heard a voice bid me come
+in, opened it, and stepping into the library, found no one. The door
+between the library and the front hall stood open, and through it I
+heard the voice of Miss Trescott and the clear, carrying tones of Mr.
+Cornish, in low but earnest conversation.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; I heard him say, &#8220;perhaps. And if I am, haven&#8217;t I abundant
+reason?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have told you often,&#8221; said she pleadingly, &#8220;that I would give you a
+definite answer whenever you definitely demand it&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And that it would in that case be &#8216;No,&#8217;&#8221; he added, completing the
+sentence. &#8220;Oh, Josie, my darling, haven&#8217;t you punished me enough for my
+bad conduct<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_265" id="pg_265">265</a></span> toward you in that old time? I was a young fool, and you a
+strange country girl; but as soon as you left us, I began to feel your
+sweetness. And I was seeking for you everywhere I went until I found you
+that night up there by the lake. Does that seem like slighting you? Why,
+I hope you don&#8217;t deem me capable of being satisfied in this hole
+Lattimore, under any circumstances, if it hadn&#8217;t been for the hope and
+comfort your being here has given me!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I thought we were to say no more about that old time,&#8221; said she; &#8220;I
+thought the doings of Johnny Cornish were not to be remembered by or of
+Bedford.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The name I&#8217;ve asked you to call me by!&#8221; said he passionately. &#8220;Does
+that mean&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It means nothing,&#8221; said she. &#8220;Oh, please, please!&mdash;Good-night!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I retired to the porch, and rapped again. She came to the door blushing
+redly, and so fluttered by their leave-taking that I thanked God that
+Jim was not in my place. There would have been division in our ranks at
+once; for it seemed to me that her conduct to Cornish was too
+complaisant by far.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I came over,&#8221; said I, &#8220;because Alice said you wanted to see me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I think there must have been in my tone something of the reproach in my
+thoughts; for she timidly said she was sorry to have given me so much
+trouble.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, don&#8217;t, Josie!&#8221; said I. &#8220;You know I&#8217;d not miss the chance of doing
+you a favor for anything.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_266" id="pg_266">266</a></span> Tell me what it is, my dear girl, and don&#8217;t
+speak of trouble.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you forbid reference to trouble,&#8221; said she, smiling, &#8220;it will stop
+this conference. For my troubles are what I want to talk to you about.
+May I go on?&mdash;You see, our financial condition is awfully queer. Mamma
+has some money, but not much. And we have this big house. It&#8217;s absurd
+for us to live in it, and I want to ask you first, can you sell it for
+us?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was doubtful, I told her. A year or so ago, I went on, it would have
+been easy; but somehow the market for fine houses was dull now. We would
+try, though, and hoped to succeed. We talked at length, and I took
+copious memoranda for my clerks.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There is another thing,&#8221; said she when we had finished the subject of
+the house, &#8220;upon which I want light, something upon which depends my
+staying here or going away. You know General Lattimore and I are
+friends, and that I place great trust in his conclusions. He says that
+the most terrible hard times here would result from anything happening
+to your syndicate. You have said almost the same thing once or twice,
+and the other day you said something about great operations which you
+have in view which will, somehow, do away with any danger of that kind.
+Is it true that you would all be&mdash;ruined by a&mdash;breaking up&mdash;or anything
+of that sort?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Just now,&#8221; I confessed, &#8220;such a thing would be dangerous; but I hope we
+shall soon be past all that.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_267" id="pg_267">267</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I told her, as well as I could, about our hopes, and of my mission to
+New York.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You must suspect,&#8221; said she, &#8220;that my presence here is danger to your
+harmony; and through you, to all these people whose names even we have
+never heard. Shall I go away? I can go almost anywhere with mamma, and
+we can get along nicely. Now that pa is gone, my work here is over, and
+I want to get into the world.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I thought of the parallelism between her discontent and the speech Mr.
+Cornish had made, referring so contemptuously to Lattimore. I began to
+see the many things in common between them, and I grew anxious for Jim.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of all things,&#8221; said she, &#8220;I want to avoid the r&ocirc;le of Helen setting a
+city in flames. It would be so absurd&mdash;and so terrible; and rather than
+do such a hackneyed and harmful thing, I want to go away.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you really mean that?&#8221; I asked, &#8220;Haven&#8217;t you a desire to make your
+choice, and stay?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You mustn&#8217;t ask that question, Albert,&#8221; said she. &#8220;The answer is a
+secret&mdash;from every one. But I will say&mdash;that if you succeed in this
+mission, so as to put people here quite out of danger&mdash;I may not go
+away&mdash;not for some time!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She was blushing again, just as she blushed when she admitted me. I
+thought once more of the fluttering cry, &#8220;Oh, please&mdash;please!&#8221; and the
+pause before she added the good-night, and my jealousy for Jim rose
+again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said I, rising, &#8220;all I can say is that I hope all will be safe
+when I return, and that you will find<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_268" id="pg_268">268</a></span> it quite possible to&mdash;remain. My
+advice is: do nothing looking toward leaving until I return.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t be cross with me, Mr. Barslow,&#8221; said she, &#8220;for really, really&mdash;I
+am in great perplexity.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am not cross,&#8221; said I, &#8220;but don&#8217;t you see how hard it is for me to
+advise? Things conflict so, and all among your friends!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They do conflict,&#8221; she assented, &#8220;they do conflict, every way, and all
+the time&mdash;and do, do give me a little credit for keeping the conflict
+from getting beyond control for so long; for there are conflicts within,
+as well as without! Don&#8217;t blame Helen altogether, or me, whatever
+happens!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She hung on my arm, as she took me to the door, and seemed deeply
+troubled. I left her, and walked several times around the block,
+ruminating upon the extraordinary way in which these dissolving views of
+passion were displaying themselves to me. Not that the mere matter of
+outburst of confidences surprised me; for people all my life have bored
+me with their secret woes. I think it is because I early formed a habit
+of looking sympathetic. But these concerned me so nearly that their
+gradual focussing to some sort of climax filled me with anxious
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>The next day I spent in the sleeping-car, running into Chicago. As the
+clickety-<i>clack</i>, clickety-<i>clack</i>, clickety-<i>clack</i> of the wheels
+vibrated through my couch, I pondered on the ridiculous position of that
+cautious Eastern bank as to the Fleischmann Brothers&#8217; failure; then on
+the Lattimore &amp; Great Western and Belt Line sale; and finally worked
+around through the Straits of Sunda, in a suspicious<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_269" id="pg_269">269</a></span> lateen-rigged
+craft manned by Malays and Portuguese. Finally, I was horrified at
+discovering Cornish, in a slashed doublet, carrying Josie away in one of
+the boats, having scuttled the vessel and left Jim bound to the mast.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Chicago in fifteen minutes, suh,&#8221; said the porter, at this critical
+point. &#8220;Just in time to dress, suh.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And as I awoke, my approach toward New York brought to me a sickening
+consciousness of the struggle which awaited me there, and the fatal
+results of failure.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_270" id="pg_270">270</a></span>
+<a name="In_which_I_Win_my_Great_Victory_7476" id="In_which_I_Win_my_Great_Victory_7476"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER XXII.</p>
+<p class="l c">In which I Win my Great Victory.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>My plan was our old one&mdash;to see both Pendleton and Halliday, and, if
+possible, to allow both to know of the fact that we had two strings to
+our bow, playing the one off against the other. Whether or not there was
+any likelihood of this course doing any good was dependent on the
+existence of the strained personal relations, as well as the business
+rivalry, generally supposed to prevail between the two Titans of the
+highways. As conditions have since become, plans like mine are quite
+sure to come to naught; but in those days the community of interests in
+the railway world had not reached its present perfection of
+organization. Men like Pendleton and Halliday were preparing the way for
+it, but the personal equation was then a powerful factor in the problem,
+and these builders of their own systems still carried on their private
+wars with their own forces. In such a war our properties were important.</p>
+
+<p>The Lattimore &amp; Great Western with the Belt Line terminals would make
+the Pendleton system dominant in Lattimore. In the possession of
+Halliday it would render him the arbiter of the city&#8217;s<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_271" id="pg_271">271</a></span> fortunes, and
+would cut off from his rival&#8217;s lines the rich business from this feeder.
+Both men were playing with the patience of Muscovite diplomacy the old
+and tried game of permitting the little road to run until it got into
+difficulties, and then swooping down upon it; but either, we thought,
+and especially Pendleton, would pay full value for the properties rather
+than see them fall into his opponent&#8217;s net.</p>
+
+<p>I wired Pendleton&#8217;s office from home that I was coming. At Chicago I
+received from his private secretary a telegram reading: &#8220;Mr. Pendleton
+will see you at any time after the 9th inst. <span class="smcap">Smith</span>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We had been having some correspondence with Mr. Halliday&#8217;s office on
+matters of disputed switching and trackage dues. The controversy had
+gone up from subordinate to subordinate to the fountain of power itself.
+A contract had been sent on for examination, embodying a <i>modus vivendi</i>
+governing future relations. I had wired notice of my coming to him also,
+and his answer, which lay alongside Pendleton&#8217;s in the same box, was
+evidently based on the supposition that it was this contract which was
+bringing me East, and was worded so as to relieve me of the journey if
+possible.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Will be in New York on evening of 11th,&#8221; it read, &#8220;not before. With
+slight modifications, contract submitted as to L. &amp; G. W. and Belt Line
+matter will be executed.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">Halliday</span>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I spent no time in Chicago, but pushed on, in the respectable isolation
+of a through sleeper on a limited train. Once in a while I went forward
+into the day coach, to give myself the experience of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_272" id="pg_272">272</a></span> complete
+change in the social atmosphere. On arrival, I began killing time by
+running down every scrap of our business in New York. My gorge rose at
+all forms of amusement; but I had a sensation of doing something while
+on the cars, and went to Boston, and down to Philadelphia, all the time
+feeling the pulse of business. There was a lack of that confident
+hopefulness which greeted us on our former visits. I heard the
+Fleischmann failure spoken of rather frequently. One or two financial
+establishments on this side of the water were looked at askance because
+of their supposed connections with the Fleischmanns. Mr. Wade, in hushed
+tones, advised me to prepare for some little stringency after the
+holidays.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nothing serious, you know, Mr. Borlish,&#8221; said he, still paying his
+mnemonic tribute to the other names of our syndicate; &#8220;nothing to be
+spoken of as hard times; and as for panic, the financial world is too
+well organized for <i>that</i> ever to happen again! But a little tightening
+of things, Mr. Cornings, to sort of clear the decks for action on lines
+of conservatism for the year&#8217;s business.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I talked with Mr. Smith, Mr. Pendleton&#8217;s private secretary, and with Mr.
+Carson, who spoke for Mr. Halliday. In fact I went over the L. &amp; G. W.
+proposition pretty fully with each of them, and each office had a
+well-digested and succinct statement of the matter for the examination
+of the magnates when they came back. Once while Mr. Carson and I were on
+our way to take luncheon together, we met Mr. Smith, and I was glad to
+note<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_273" id="pg_273">273</a></span> the glance of marked interest which he bestowed upon us. The
+meeting was a piece of unexpected good fortune.</p>
+
+<p>On the 10th I had my audience with Mr. Pendleton. He had the typewritten
+statement of the proposition before him, and was ready to discuss it
+with his usual incisiveness.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am willing to say to you, Mr. Barslow,&#8221; said he, &#8220;that we are willing
+to take over your line when the propitious time comes. We don&#8217;t think
+that now is such a time. Why not run along as we are?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Because we are not satisfied with the railroad business as a side line,
+Mr. Pendleton,&#8221; said I. &#8220;We must have more mileage or none at all, and
+if we begin extensions, we shall be drawn into railroading as an
+exclusive vocation. We prefer to close out that department, and to put
+in all our energies to the development of our city.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When must you know about this?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I came East to close it up, if possible,&#8221; I answered. &#8220;You are familiar
+with the situation, and we thought must be ready to decide.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Two and a quarter millions,&#8221; he objected, &#8220;is out of the question. I
+can&#8217;t expect my directors to view half the price with any favor. How can
+I?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Show them our earnings,&#8221; I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said he, &#8220;that will do very well to talk to people who can be
+made to forget the fact that you&#8217;ve been building a city there from a
+country village, and your line has been pulling in everything to build
+it with. The next five years will be different. Again, while I feel sure
+the business men of your<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_274" id="pg_274">274</a></span> town will still throw things our way, as they
+have your way&mdash;tonnage I mean&mdash;there might be a tendency to divide it up
+more than when your own people were working for the trade. And the next
+five years will be different anyhow.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you remember,&#8221; said I, &#8220;how skeptical you were as to the past five?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I acknowledge it,&#8221; said he, laughing. &#8220;The fact is I didn&#8217;t give you
+credit for being as big men as you are. But even a big man, or a big
+town, can reach only as high as it can. But we can&#8217;t settle that
+question. I shouldn&#8217;t expect a Lattimore boomer ever to adopt my view of
+it. I shall give this matter some attention to-day, and while I feel
+sure we are too far apart ever to come together, come in in the morning,
+and we will look at it again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I hope we may come together,&#8221; said I, rising; &#8220;we built the line to
+bring you into Lattimore, and we want to keep you there. It has made our
+town, and we prize the connection highly.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah, yes,&#8221; he answered, countering. &#8220;Well, we are spread out a good deal
+now, you know; and some of our directors look with suspicion upon your
+sudden growth, and would not feel sorry to withdraw. I don&#8217;t agree with
+&#8217;em, you know, but I must defer to others sometimes. Good-morning.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I passed the evening with Carson at the theatre, and supped with him
+afterward. He gave me every opportunity to indulge in champagne, and
+evinced a desire to know all about business conditions in Lattimore, and
+the affairs of the L. &amp; G. W. I suspected that the former fact had some
+connection<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_275" id="pg_275">275</a></span> with the latter. I went to my hotel, however, in my usual
+state of ebriety, while Mr. Carson had attained a degree of friendliness
+toward me bordering on affection, as a direct result of setting the pace
+in the consumption of wine. I listened patiently to his complaints of
+Halliday&#8217;s ungratefulness toward him in not giving him the General
+Managership of one of the associated roads; but when he began to confide
+to me the various pathological conditions of his family, including Mrs.
+Carson, I drew the line, and broke up the party. I retired, feeling a
+little resentful toward Carson. His device seemed rather cheap to try on
+a full-grown man. Yet his entertainment had been undeniably good.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning I was admitted to the presence of the great man with less
+than half an hour&#8217;s delay. He turned to me, and plunged at once into the
+midst of the subject. Evidently some old misunderstanding of the
+question came up in his mind by association of ideas, as a rejected
+paper will be drawn with its related files from a pigeon-hole.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That terminal charge,&#8221; said he, &#8220;has not counted for much against the
+success of your road, yet; but the contract provides for increasing
+rentals, and it is already too much. The trackage and depots aren&#8217;t
+worth it. It will be a millstone about your necks!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said I, &#8220;you can understand the reason for making the rentals
+high. We had to show revenue for the Belt Line system in order to float
+the bonds, but the rentals become of no consequence when once you own
+both properties&mdash;and that&#8217;s our proposal to you.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_276" id="pg_276">276</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, yes!&#8221; said he, and at once changed the subject.</p>
+
+<p>This was the only instance, in all my observation of him, in which he
+forgot anything, or failed correctly to see the very core of the
+situation. I felt somehow elated at being for a moment his superior in
+any respect.</p>
+
+<p>We began discussing rates and tonnage, and he sent for his freight
+expert again. I took from my pocket some letters and telegrams and made
+computations on the backs of them. Some of these figures he wanted to
+keep for further reference.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Please let me have those figures until this afternoon,&#8221; said he. &#8220;I
+must ask you to excuse me now. At two I&#8217;ll give the matter another
+half-hour. Come back, Mr. Barslow, prepared to name a reasonable sum,
+and I will accept or reject, and finish the matter.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I left the envelopes on his desk and went out. At the hotel I sat down
+to think out my program and began arranging things for my departure. Was
+it the 11th or the 12th that Mr. Halliday was to return? I would look at
+his message. I turned over all my telegrams, but it was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Then I thought. That was the telegram I had left with Pendleton! Would
+he suspect that I had left it as a trick, and resent the act? No, this
+was scarcely likely, for he himself had asked for it. Suddenly the
+construction of which it was susceptible flashed into my mind. &#8220;With
+slight modifications contract submitted as to L. &amp; G. W. and Belt Line
+matter will be executed. <span class="smcap">Halliday.</span>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I was feverish until two o&#8217;clock; for I could not<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_277" id="pg_277">277</a></span> guess the effect of
+this telegram, should it be read by Pendleton. I found him impassive and
+keen-eyed, and I waited longer than usual for that aquiline swoop of
+his, as he turned in his revolving chair. I felt sure then that he had
+not read the message. I think differently now.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, Mr. Barslow,&#8221; said he smilingly, &#8220;how far down in the millions
+are we to-day?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Pendleton,&#8221; I replied, steady as to tone, but with a quiver in my
+legs, &#8220;I can say nothing less than an even two millions.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s too much,&#8221; said he cheerfully, and my heart sank, &#8220;but I like
+Lattimore, and you men who live there, and I want to stay in the town.
+I&#8217;ll have the legal department prepare a contract covering the whole
+matter of transfers and future relations, and providing for the price
+you mention. You can submit it to your people, and in a short time I
+shall be in Chicago, and, if convenient to you, we can meet there and
+close the transaction. As a matter of form, I shall submit it to our
+directors; but you may consider it settled, I think.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;One of our number,&#8221; said I, as calmly as if a two-million-dollar
+transaction were common at Lattimore, &#8220;can meet you in Chicago at any
+time. When will this contract be drawn?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Call to-morrow morning&mdash;say at ten. Show them in,&#8221; this last to his
+clerk, &#8220;Good-morning, Mr. Barslow.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>One doesn&#8217;t get as hilarious over a victory won alone as when he goes
+over the ramparts touching elbows with his charging fellows. The hurrah
+is a<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_278" id="pg_278">278</a></span> collective interjection. So I went in a sober frame of mind and
+telegraphed Jim and Alice of my success, cautioning my wife to say
+nothing about it. Then I wandered about New York, contrasting my way of
+rejoicing with the demonstration when we three had financed the
+Lattimore &amp; Great Western bonds. I went to a vaudeville show and
+afterward walked miles and miles through the mysteries of the night in
+that wilderness. I was unutterably alone. The strain of my solitary
+mission in the great city was telling upon me.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Telegram for you, Mr. Barslow,&#8221; said the night clerk, as I applied for
+my key.</p>
+
+<p>It was a long message from Jim, and in cipher. I slowly deciphered it,
+my initial anxiety growing, as I progressed, to an agony.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Come home at once,&#8221; it read. &#8220;Cornish deserting. Must take care of the
+hound&#8217;s interest somehow. Threatens litigation. A hold-up, but he has
+the drop. Am in doubt whether to shoot him now or later. Stop at
+Chicago, and bring Harper. Bring him, understand? Unless Pendleton deal
+is made, this means worse things than we ever dreamed of; but don&#8217;t
+wait. Leave Pendleton for later, and come home. If I follow my
+inclinations, you will find me in jail for murder. <span class="smcap">Elkins</span>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>All night I sat, turning this over in my mind. Was it ruin, or would my
+success here carry us through? Without a moment&#8217;s sleep I ate my
+breakfast, braced myself with coffee, engaged a berth for the return
+journey, and promptly presented myself at Pendleton&#8217;s office at ten.
+Wearily we went over<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_279" id="pg_279">279</a></span> the precious contract, and I took my copy and
+left.</p>
+
+<p>All that day I rode in a sort of trance, in which I could see before my
+eyes the forms of the hosts of those whom Jim had called &#8220;the captives
+below decks,&#8221; whose fortunes were dependent upon whether we striving,
+foolish, scheming, passionate men went to the wall. A hundred times I
+read in Jim&#8217;s telegram the acuteness of our crisis; and a sense of our
+danger swept dauntingly over my spirit. A hundred times I wished that I
+might awake and find that the whole thing&mdash;Aladdin and his ring, the
+palaces, gnomes, genies, and all&mdash;could pass away like a tale that is
+told, and leave me back in the rusty little town where it found me.</p>
+
+<p>I slept heavily that night, and was very much much more myself when I
+went to see Harper in Chicago. He had received a message from Jim, and
+was ready to go. He also had one for me, sent in his care, and just
+arrived.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You have saved the fight,&#8221; said the message; &#8220;your success came just as
+they were counting nine on us. With what you have done we can beat the
+game yet. Bring Harper, and come on.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Harper, cool and collected, big and blonde, with a hail-fellow-well-met
+manner which spoke eloquently of the West, was a great comfort to me. He
+made light of the trouble.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Cornish is no fool,&#8221; said he, &#8220;and he isn&#8217;t going to saw off the limb
+he stands on.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I tried to take this view of it; but I knew, as he did not, the real
+source of the enmity between Elkins<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_280" id="pg_280">280</a></span> and Cornish, and my fears returned.
+Business differences might be smoothed over; but with two such men, the
+quarrel of rivals in love meant nothing but the end of things between
+them.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_281" id="pg_281">281</a></span>
+<a name="The_Dutchmans_Mill_and_What_It_Ground_7763" id="The_Dutchmans_Mill_and_What_It_Ground_7763"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER XXIII.</p>
+<p class="l c">The &#8220;Dutchman&#8217;s Mill&#8221; and What It Ground.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>We sat in conclave about the table. I saw by the lined faces of Elkins
+and Hinckley that I had come back to a closely-beleaguered camp, where
+heavy watching had robbed the couch of sleep, and care pressed down the
+spirit. I had returned successful, but not to receive a triumph: rather,
+Harper and myself constituted a relief force, thrown in by stratagem,
+too weak to raise the siege, but bearing glad tidings of strong succor
+on the way.</p>
+
+<p>It was our first full meeting without Cornish; and Harper sat in his
+place. He was unruffled and buoyant in manner, in spite of the stock in
+the Grain Belt Trust Company which he held, and the loans placed with
+his insurance company by Mr. Hinckley.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I believe,&#8221; said he, &#8220;that we are here to consider a communication from
+Mr. Cornish. It seems that we ought to hear the letter.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll read it in a minute,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;but first let me say that this
+grows out of a talk between Mr. Cornish and myself. Hinckley and Barslow
+know that there have been differences between us here for some time.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_282" id="pg_282">282</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Quite natural,&#8221; said Harper; &#8220;according to all the experience-tables,
+you ought to have had a fight somewhere in the crowd long before this.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Cornish,&#8221; went on Mr. Elkins, &#8220;has favored the policy of converting
+our holdings into cash, and letting the obligations we have floated
+stand solely on the assets by which they are secured. The rest of us
+have foreseen such rapid liquidation, as a certain result of such a
+policy, that not only would our town receive a blow from which it could
+never recover, but the investment world would suffer in the collapse.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I should say so,&#8221; said Harper; &#8220;we&#8217;ll have to look closely to the
+suicide clause in our policies held in New England, if that takes
+place!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Jim, continuing, &#8220;last Tuesday the matter came to an issue
+between us, and some plain talk was indulged in; perhaps the language
+was a little strong on my part, and Mr. Cornish considered himself
+aggrieved, and said, among other things, that he, for one, would not
+submit to extinguishment, and he would show me that I could not go on in
+opposition to his wishes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What did you say to that?&#8221; asked Hinckley.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I informed him,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;that I was from Missouri, or words to that
+effect; and that my own impression was, the majority of the stock in our
+concerns would control. My present view is that he&#8217;s showing me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A ghost of a smile went round at this, and Jim began reading Cornish&#8217;s
+letter.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Events of the recent past convince me,&#8221; the secessionist had written,
+&#8220;that no good can come<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_283" id="pg_283">283</a></span> from the further continuance of our syndicate. I
+therefore propose to sell all my interest in our various properties to
+the other members, and to retire. Should you care to consider such a
+thing, I am prepared to make you an alternative offer, to buy your
+interests. As the purchase of three shares by one is a heavier load than
+the taking over of one share by three, I should expect to buy at a lower
+proportional price than I should be willing to sell for. As the
+management of our enterprises seems to have abandoned the tried
+principles of business, for some considerations the precise nature of
+which I am not acute enough to discern, and as a sale to me would balk
+the very benevolent purposes recently avowed by you, I assume that I
+shall not be called upon to make an offer.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There is at least one person among those to whom this is addressed who
+knows that in beginning our operations in Lattimore it was understood
+that we should so manage affairs as to promote and take advantage of a
+bulge in values, and then pull out with a profit. Just what may be his
+policy when this reaches him I cannot, after my experience with his
+ability as a lightning change artist, venture to predict; but my last
+information leads me to believe that he is championing the utopian plan
+of running the business, not only past the bulge, but into the slump. I,
+for one, will not permit my fortune to be jeopardized by so palpable a
+piece of perfidy.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I may be allowed to add that I am prepared to take such measures as may
+seem to my legal advisers best to protect my interests. I am assured
+that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_284" id="pg_284">284</a></span> funds of one corporation will not be permitted by the courts
+to be donated to the bolstering up of another, over the protest of a
+minority stockholder. You may confidently assume that this advice will
+be tested to the utmost before the acts now threatened are permitted to
+be actually done.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I attach hereto a schedule of our holdings, with the amount of my
+interest in each, and the price I will take. I trust that I may have an
+answer to this at your earliest convenience. I beg to add that any great
+delay in answering will be taken by me as a refusal on your part to do
+anything, and I shall act accordingly.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:right">&#8220;Very respectfully,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
+&#8220;<span class="smcap">J. Bedford Cornish.</span>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Huh!&#8221; ejaculated Harper, &#8220;would he do it, d&#8217;ye think?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s a very resolute man,&#8221; said Hinckley.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He calculates,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;that if he begins operations, he can have
+receiverships and things of that kind in his interest, and in that way
+swipe the salvage. On the other hand, he must know that his loss would
+be proportioned to ours, and would be great. He&#8217;s sore, and that counts
+for something. I figure that the chances are seven out of ten that he&#8217;ll
+do it&mdash;and that&#8217;s too strong a game for us to go up against.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What would be the worst that could happen if he began proceedings?&#8221;
+said I.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The worst,&#8221; answered Jim laconically. &#8220;I don&#8217;t say, you know,&#8221; he went
+on after a pause, &#8220;that<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_285" id="pg_285">285</a></span> Cornish hasn&#8217;t some reason for his position.
+From a cur&#8217;s standpoint he&#8217;s entirely right. We didn&#8217;t anticipate the
+big way in which things have worked out here, nor how deep our roots
+would strike; and we did intend to cash in when the wave came. And a cur
+can&#8217;t understand our position in the light of these developments. He
+can&#8217;t see that in view of the number of people sucked down with her when
+a great ship like ours sinks, nobody but a murderer would needlessly see
+her wrecked. What he proposes is to scuttle her. Sell to him! I&#8217;d as
+soon sell Vassar College to Brigham Young!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This tragic humorousness had the double effect of showing us the
+dilemma, and taking the edge off the horror of it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If it were my case,&#8221; said Harper, &#8220;I&#8217;d call him. I don&#8217;t believe he&#8217;ll
+smash things; but you fellows know each other best, and I&#8217;m here to give
+what aid and comfort I can, and not to direct. I accept your judgment as
+to the danger. Now let&#8217;s do business. I&#8217;ve got to get back to Chicago by
+the next train, and I want to go feeling that my stock in the Grain Belt
+Trust Company is an asset and not a liability. Let&#8217;s do business.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;As for going back on the next train,&#8221; said Mr. Elkins, &#8220;you&#8217;ve got
+another guess coming: this one was wrong. As for doing business, the
+first thing in my opinion is to examine the items of this bill of
+larceny, and see about scaling them down.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We might be able,&#8221; said I, &#8220;to turn over properties instead of cash,
+for some of it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Elkins appointed Harper and Hinckley to do the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_286" id="pg_286">286</a></span> negotiating with
+Cornish. It was clear, he said, that neither he nor I was the proper
+person to act. They soon went out on their mission and left me with Jim.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you see what a snowfall we&#8217;ve had?&#8221; he asked. &#8220;It fell deeper and
+deeper, until I thought it would never stop. No such sleighing for
+years. And funny as it may seem, it was that that brought on this
+crisis. Josie and I went sleighing, and the hound was furious. Next time
+we met he started this business going.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I was studying the schedule, and said nothing. After a while he began
+talking again, in a slow manner, as if the words came lagging behind a
+labored train of thought.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Remember the mill the Dutchman had?... Ground salt, and nothing but
+salt ... Ours won&#8217;t grind anything but mortgages ... Well, the hair of
+the dog must cure the bite ... Fight fire with fire ... <i>Similia
+similibus curantur</i> ... We can&#8217;t trade horses, nor methods, in the
+middle of the ford.... The mill has got to go on grinding mortgages
+until we&#8217;re carried over; and Hinckley and the Grain Belt Trust must
+float &#8217;em. Of course the infernal mill ground salt until it sent the
+whole shooting-match to the bottom of the sea; but you mustn&#8217;t be misled
+by analogies. The Dutchman hadn&#8217;t any good old Al to lose telegrams in
+an absent-minded way where they would do the most good, and sell
+railroads to old man Pendleton ... As for us, it&#8217;s the time-worn case of
+electing between the old sheep and the lamb. We&#8217;ll take the adult
+mutton, and go the whole hog ... And if we lose,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_287" id="pg_287">287</a></span> the tail&#8217;ll have to go
+with the hide.... But we won&#8217;t lose, Al, we won&#8217;t lose. There isn&#8217;t
+treason enough in all the storehouses of hell to balk or defeat us. It&#8217;s
+a question of courage and resolution and confidence, and imparting all
+those feelings to every one else. There isn&#8217;t malice enough, even if it
+were a whole pack, instead of one lone hyena, to put out the fires in
+those furnaces over there, or stop the wheels in that flume, or make our
+streets grow grass. The things we&#8217;ve built are going to stay built, and
+the word of Lattimore will stand!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;My hand on that!&#8221; said I.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>There was little in the way of higgling: for Cornish proudly refused
+much to discuss matters; and when we found what we must pay to prevent
+the explosion, it sickened us. Jim strongly urged upon Harper the taking
+of Cornish&#8217;s shares.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said Harper, &#8220;the Frugality and Indemnity is too good a thing to
+drop; and I can&#8217;t carry both. But if you can show me how, within a short
+time, you can pay it back, I&#8217;ll find you the cash you lack.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We could not wait for the two millions from Pendleton; and the interim
+must be bridged over by any desperate means. We took, for the moment
+only, the funds advanced through Harper; and Cornish took his price.</p>
+
+<p>The day after Harper went away we were busy all day long, drawing notes
+and mortgages. Every unincumbered piece of our property, the orts,
+dregs, and offcast of our operations, were made the subjects of
+transfers to the rag-tag and bobtail of Lattimore<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_288" id="pg_288">288</a></span> society. A lot worth
+little or nothing was conveyed to Tom, Dick, or Harry for a great
+nominal price, and a mortgage for from two-thirds to three-fourths of
+the sum given back by this straw-man purchaser. Our mill was grinding
+mortgages.</p>
+
+<p>I do not expect that any one will say that this course was justified or
+justifiable; but, if anything can excuse it, the terrible difficulty of
+our position ought to be considered in mitigation, if not excuse.
+Pressed upon from without, and wounded by blows dealt in the dark from
+within; with dreadful failure threatening, and with brilliant success,
+and the averting of wide-spread calamity as the reward of only a little
+delay, we used the only expedient at hand, and fought the battle
+through. We were caught in the mighty swirl of a modern business
+maelstrom, and, with unreasoning reflexes, clutched at man or log
+indifferently, as we felt the waters rising over us; and broadcast all
+over the East were sown the slips of paper ground out by our mill,
+through the spout of the Grain Belt Trust Company; and wherever they
+fell they were seized upon by the banks, which had through years of
+experience learned to look upon our notes and bonds as good.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Past the bulge,&#8221; quoted Jim, &#8220;and into the slump! We&#8217;ll see what the
+whelp says when he finds that, in spite of all his attempts to scuttle,
+there isn&#8217;t going to be any slump!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>By which observation it will appear that, as our operations began to
+bring in returns in almost their old abundance, our courage rose. At the
+very last, some bank failures in New York, and a bad day on<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_289" id="pg_289">289</a></span> &#8217;Change in
+Chicago, cut off the stream, and we had to ask Harper to carry over a
+part of the Frugality and Indemnity loan until we could settle with
+Pendleton; but this was a small matter running into only five figures.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was because we saw only a part of the situation that our
+courage rose. We saw things at Lattimore with vivid clearness. But we
+failed to see that like centers of stress were sprinkled all over the
+map, from ocean to ocean; that in the mountains of the South were the
+Lattimores of iron, steel, coal, and the winter-resort boom; and in the
+central valleys were other Lattimores like ours; that among the peaks
+and canyons further west were the Lattimores of mines; that along the
+Pacific were the Lattimores of harbors and deep-water terminals; that
+every one of these Lattimores had in the East and in Europe its
+clientage of Barr-Smiths, Wickershams, and Dorrs, feeding the flames of
+the fever with other people&#8217;s money; and that in every village and
+factory, town and city, where wealth had piled up, seeking investment,
+were the &#8220;captives below decks,&#8221; who, in the complex machinery of this
+end-of-the-century life, were made or marred by the same influences
+which made or marred us.</p>
+
+<p>The low area had swept across the seas, and now rested on us. The clouds
+were charged with the thunder and lightning of disaster. Almost any
+accidental disturbance might precipitate a crash. Had we known all this,
+as we now know it, the consciousness of the tragical race we were
+running to reach the harbor of a consummated sale to Pendleton might<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_290" id="pg_290">290</a></span>
+have paralyzed our efforts. Sometimes one may cross in the dark, on
+narrow footing, a chasm the abyss of which, if seen, would dizzily draw
+one down to destruction.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_291" id="pg_291">291</a></span>
+<a name="The_Beginning_of_the_End_8021" id="The_Beginning_of_the_End_8021"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER XXIV.</p>
+<p class="l c">The Beginning of the End.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Court parties and court factions are always known to the populace, even
+down to the groom and scullions. So the defection of Cornish soon became
+a matter of gossip at bars, in stables, and especially about the desks
+of real-estate offices. Had it been a matter of armed internecine
+strife, the Elkins faction would have mustered an overwhelming majority;
+for Jim&#8217;s bluff democratic ways, and his apparent identity of fibre with
+the mass of the people, would have made him a popular idol, had he been
+a thousand times a railroad president.</p>
+
+<p>While these rumors of a feud were floating about, Captain Tolliver went
+to Jim&#8217;s office several times, dressed with great care, and sat in
+silence, and in stiff and formal dignity, for a matter of five minutes
+or so, and then retired, with the suggestion that if there was any way
+in which he could serve Mr. Elkins he should be happy.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you know,&#8221; said Jim to me, &#8220;that I&#8217;m afraid Hamlet&#8217;s &#8217;bugs and
+goblins&#8217; are troubling Tolliver; in other words, that he&#8217;s getting
+bughouse?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said I; &#8220;while I haven&#8217;t the slightest idea<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_292" id="pg_292">292</a></span> what ails him, you&#8217;ll
+find that it&#8217;s something quite natural for him when you get a full view
+of his case.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Finally, Jim, in thanking him for his proffered assistance, inquired
+diplomatically after the thing which weighed upon the Captain&#8217;s mind.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I may be mistaken, suh,&#8221; said he, drawing himself up, and thrusting one
+hand into the tightly-buttoned breast of his black Prince Albert,
+&#8220;entiahly mistaken in the premises; but I have the impression that
+diffe&#8217;ences of a pussonal nature ah in existence between youahself and a
+gentleman whose name in this connection I prefuh to leave unmentioned.
+Such being the case, I assume that occasion may and naturally will arise
+foh the use of a friend, suh, who unde&#8217;stands the code&mdash;the code,
+suh&mdash;and is not without experience in affaiahs of honah. I recognize the
+fact that in cehtain exigencies nothing, by Gad, but pistols, ovah a
+measu&#8217;ed distance, meets the case. In such an event, suh, I shall be mo&#8217;
+than happy to suhve you; mo&#8217; than happy, by the Lord!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Captain,&#8221; said Jim feelingly, &#8220;you&#8217;re a good fellow and a true friend,
+and I promise you I shall have no other second.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In that promise,&#8221; replied the Captain gravely, &#8220;you confeh an honah,
+suh!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>After this it was thought wise to permit the papers to print the story
+of Cornish&#8217;s retirement; otherwise the Captain might have fomented an
+insurrection.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The reasons for this step on the part of Mr. Cornish are purely
+personal,&#8221; said the <i>Herald</i>. &#8220;While retaining his feeling of interest
+in Lattimore, his<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_293" id="pg_293">293</a></span> desire to engage in certain broader fields of
+promotion and development in the tropics had made it seem to him
+necessary to lay down the work here which up to this time he has so well
+done. He will still remain a citizen of our city. On the other hand,
+while we shall not lose Mr. Cornish, we shall gain the active and
+powerful influence of Mr. Charles Harper, the president of the Frugality
+and Indemnity Life Insurance Company. It is thus that Lattimore rises
+constantly to higher prosperity, and wields greater and greater power.
+The remarkable activity lately noted in the local real-estate market,
+especially in the sales of unconsidered trifles of land at high prices,
+is to be attributed to the strengthening of conditions by these steps in
+the ascent of the ladder of progress.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Cornish, however, was not without his partisans. Cecil Barr-Smith almost
+quarreled with Antonia because she struck Cornish off her books, Cecil
+insisting that he was an entirely decent chap. In this position Cecil
+was in accord with the clubmen of the younger sort, who had much in
+common with Cornish, and little with the overworked and busy railway
+president. Even Giddings, to me, seemed to remain unduly intimate with
+Cornish; but this did not affect the utterances of his paper, which
+still maintained what he called the policy of boost.</p>
+
+<p>The behavior of Josie, however, was enigmatical. Cornish&#8217;s attentions to
+her redoubled, while Jim seemed dropped out of the race&mdash;and therefore
+my wife&#8217;s relations with Miss Trescott were subjected to a severe
+strain. Naturally, being a matron, and of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_294" id="pg_294">294</a></span> age of thirty-odd years,
+she put on some airs with her younger friend, still in the chrysalis of
+maidenhood. Sometimes, in a sweet sort of a way, she almost domineered
+over her. On this Elkins-Cornish matter, however, Josie held her at
+arms&#8217; length, and refused to make her position plain; and Alice nursed
+that simulated resentment which one dear friend sometimes feels toward
+another, because of a real or imagined breach of the obligations of
+reciprocity.</p>
+
+<p>One night, as we sat about the grate in the Trescott library, some
+veiled insinuations on Alice&#8217;s part caused a turning of the worm.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If there is anything you want to say, Alice,&#8221; said Josie, &#8220;there seems
+to be no good reason why you shouldn&#8217;t speak out. I have asked your
+advice&mdash;yours and Albert&#8217;s&mdash;frequently, having really no one else to
+trust; and therefore I am willing to hear your reproof, if you have it
+for me. What is it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Josie,&#8221; said I, seeking cover. &#8220;You are too sensitive. There isn&#8217;t
+anything, is there, Alice?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Here I scowled violently, and shook my head at my wife; but all to no
+effect.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, there is,&#8221; said Alice. &#8220;We have a dear friend, the best in the
+world, and he has an enemy. The whole town is divided in allegiance
+between them, about nine on one side to one on the other&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Which proves nothing,&#8221; said Josie.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And now,&#8221; Alice went on, &#8220;you, who have had every opportunity of
+seeing, and ought to know, that one of them is, in every look, and
+thought, and act, a <i>man</i>, while the other is&mdash;&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_295" id="pg_295">295</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A friend of mine and of my mother&#8217;s,&#8221; said Josie; &#8220;please omit the
+character-sketch. And remember that I refuse even to consider these
+business differences. Each claims to be right; and I shall judge them by
+other things.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Business differences, indeed!&#8221; scoffed Alice, albeit a little impressed
+by the girl&#8217;s dignity. &#8220;As if you did not know what these differences
+came from! But it isn&#8217;t because you remain neutral that we com&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<i>You</i> complain, Alice,&#8221; said I; &#8220;I am distinctly out of this.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That I complain, then,&#8221; amended Alice reproachfully. &#8220;It is because you
+dismiss the <i>man</i> and keep the&mdash;other! You may say I have no right to be
+heard in this, but I&#8217;m going to complain Josie Trescott, just the same!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This seemed to approach actual conflict, and I was frightened. Had it
+been two men, I should have thought nothing of it, but with women such
+differences cut deeper than with us. Josie stepped to her writing-desk
+and took from it a letter.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We may as well clear this matter up,&#8221; said she, &#8220;for it has stood
+between us for a long time. I think that Mr. Elkins will not feel that
+any confidences are violated by my showing you this&mdash;you who have been
+my dearest friends&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She stopped for no reason, unless it was agitation.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are,&#8221; said I, &#8220;I hope, not &#8216;have been.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said she, &#8220;read the letter, and then tell me who has been
+&#8216;dismissed.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I shrank from reading it; but Alice was determined<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_296" id="pg_296">296</a></span> to know all. It was
+dated the day before I left New York.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Dear Josie,&#8221; it read, &#8220;I have told you so many times that I love you
+that it is an old story to you; yet I must say it once more. Until that
+night when we brought your father home, I was never able to understand
+why you would never say definitely yes or no to me; but I felt that you
+could not be expected to understand my feeling that the best years of
+our lives were wasting&mdash;you are so much younger than I&mdash;and so I hoped
+on. Sometimes I feared that somebody else stood in the way, and do fear
+it now, but that alone would have been a much simpler thing, and of that
+I could not complain. But on that fearful night you said something which
+hurt me more than anything else could, because it was an accusation of
+which I could not clear myself in the court of my own conscience&mdash;except
+so far as to say that I never dreamed of doing your father anything but
+good. Surely, surely you must feel this!</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Since that time, however, you have been so kind to me that I have
+become sure that you see that terrible tragedy as I do, and acquit me of
+all blame, except that of blindly setting in motion the machinery which
+did the awful deed. This is enough for you to forgive, God knows; but I
+have thought lately that you had forgiven it. You have been very kind
+and good to me, and your presence and influence have made me look at
+things in a different way from that of years ago, and I am now doing
+things which ought to be credited to you, so far as they are<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_297" id="pg_297">297</a></span> good. As
+for the bad, I must bear the blame myself!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Thus far Alice had read aloud.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t, don&#8217;t,&#8221; said Josie, hiding her face. &#8220;Don&#8217;t read it aloud,
+please!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But now I am writing, not to explain anything which has taken place,
+but to set me right as to the future. You gave me reason to think, when
+we met, that I might have my answer. Things which I cannot explain have
+occurred, which may turn out very evilly for me, and for any one
+connected with me. Therefore, until this state of things passes, I shall
+not see you. I write this, not that I think you will care much, but that
+you may not believe that I have changed in my feelings toward you. If my
+time ever comes, and I believe it will, and that before very long, you
+will find me harder to dispose of without an answer than I have been in
+the past. I shall claim you in spite of every foe that may rise up to
+keep you from me. You may change, but I shall not.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em;">&#8220;&#8216;Love is not love<br />
+Which alters when it alteration finds.&#8217;<br /><br />
+And mine will not alter. J. R. E.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;My dear,&#8221; said Alice very humbly, &#8220;I beg your pardon. I have misjudged
+you. Will you forgive me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Josie came to take her letter, and, in lieu of other answer, stood with
+her arm about Alice&#8217;s waist.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And now,&#8221; said Alice, &#8220;have you no other confidences for us?&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_298" id="pg_298">298</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No!&#8221; she cried, &#8220;no! there is nothing more! Nothing, absolutely
+nothing, believe me! But, now, confidence for confidence, Albert, what
+is this great danger? Is it anything for which any one here&mdash;for which I
+am to blame? Does it threaten any one else? Can&#8217;t something be done
+about it? Tell me, tell me!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think,&#8221; said I, &#8220;that the letter was written before my telegram from
+New York came, and after&mdash;some great difficulties came upon us. I don&#8217;t
+believe he would have written it five hours later; and I don&#8217;t believe
+he would have written it to any one in anything but the depression
+of&mdash;the feeling he has for you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If that is true,&#8221; said she, &#8220;why does he still avoid me? Why does he
+still avoid me? You have not told me all; or there is something you do
+not know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As we went home, Alice kept referring to Jim&#8217;s letter, and was as much
+troubled by it as was Josie.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How do you explain it?&#8221; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I explain it,&#8221; said I, &#8220;by ranging it with the well-known phenomenon of
+the love-sick youth of all lands and in every time, who revels in the
+thought of incurring danger or death, and heralding the fact to his
+loved one. Even Jim is not exempt from the feelings of the boy who
+rejoices in delicious tears at the thought of being found cold and dead
+on the doorstep of the cruel maiden of his dreams. And that letter, with
+a slight substratum of fact, is the result. Don&#8217;t bother about it for a
+moment.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_299" id="pg_299">299</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This answer may not have been completely frank, or quite expressive of
+my views; but I was tired of the subject. It was hardly a time to play
+with mammets or to tilt with lips, and it seemed that the matter might
+wait. There was a good deal of the pettishness of nervousness among us
+at that time, and I had my full share of it. Insomnia was prevalent, and
+gray hairs increased and multiplied. The time was drawing near for our
+meeting with Pendleton in Chicago. We had advices that he was coming in
+from the West, on his return from a long journey of inspection, and
+would pass over his Pacific Division. We asked him to run down to
+Lattimore over our road, but Smith answered that the running schedule
+could not be altered.</p>
+
+<p>There seemed to be no reason for doubting that the proposed contract
+would be ratified; for the last desperate rally on our part appeared to
+have put a crash out of the question, for some time at least. To him
+that hath shall be given; and so long as we were supposed to possess
+power, we felt that we were safe. Yet the blow dealt by Cornish had
+maimed us, no matter how well we hid our hurt; and we were all too
+keenly conscious of the law of the hunt, by which it is the wounded
+buffalo which is singled out and dragged down by the wolves.</p>
+
+<p>On Wednesday Jim and I were to start for Chicago, where Mr. Pendleton
+would be found awaiting us. On Sunday the weather, which had been cold
+and snowy for weeks, changed; and it blew from the southeast, raw and
+chill, but thawy. All day<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_300" id="pg_300">300</a></span> Monday the warmth increased; and the farmers
+coming into town reported great ponds of water dammed up in the swales
+and hollows against the enormous snow-drifts. Another warm day, and
+these waters would break through, and the streams would go free in
+freshets. Tuesday dawned without a trace of frost, and still the strong
+warm wind blew; but now it was from the east, and as I left the carriage
+to enter my office I was wet by a scattering fall of rain. In a few
+moments, as I dictated my morning&#8217;s letters, my stenographer called
+attention to the beating on the window of a strong and persistent
+downpour.</p>
+
+<p>Elkins, too much engrossed in his thoughts to be able to confine himself
+to the details of his business, came into my office, where, sometimes
+sitting and sometimes walking uneasily about, he seemed to get some sort
+of comfort from my presence. He watched the rain, as one seeing visions.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;By morning,&#8221; said he, &#8220;there ought to be ducks in Alderson&#8217;s pond.
+Can&#8217;t we do our chores early and get into the blind before daylight, and
+lay for &#8217;em?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I heard Canada geese honking overhead last night,&#8221; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What time last night?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Two o&#8217;clock.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, that lets us out on the Alderson&#8217;s pond project,&#8221; said he; &#8220;the
+boys who hunted there weren&#8217;t out walking at two. In those days they
+slept. It can&#8217;t be that we&#8217;re the fellows.... Why, there&#8217;s Antonia,
+coming in through the rain!&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_301" id="pg_301">301</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wonder,&#8221; said I, &#8220;if la grippe isn&#8217;t taking a bad turn with her
+father.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She came in, shedding the rain from her mackintosh like a water-fowl,
+radiant with health and the air of outdoors.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Gentlemen,&#8221; said she gaily, &#8220;who but myself would come out in anything
+but a diving-suit to-day!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s almost an even thing,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;between a calamity, which brings
+you, and good fortune, which keeps you away. I hope it&#8217;s only your
+ordinary defiance of the elements.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The fact is,&#8221; said she, &#8220;that it&#8217;s a very funny errand. But don&#8217;t laugh
+at me if it&#8217;s absurd, please. It&#8217;s about Mr. Cornish.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes!&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;what of him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You know papa has been kept in by la grippe for a day or so,&#8221; she went
+on, &#8220;and we haven&#8217;t been allowing people to see him very much; but Mr.
+Cornish has been in two or three times, and every time when he went away
+papa was nervous and feverish. To-day, after he left, papa asked&mdash;&#8221; here
+she looked at Mr. Elkins, as he stood gravely regarding her, and went on
+with redder cheeks&mdash;&#8220;asked me some questions, which led to a long talk
+between us, in which I found out that he has almost persuaded papa
+to&mdash;to change his business connections completely.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes!&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;Change, how?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, that I didn&#8217;t quite understand,&#8221; said Antonia, &#8220;except that there
+was logwood and mahogany and Mexico in it, and&mdash;and that he had made
+papa feel very differently toward you. After<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_302" id="pg_302">302</a></span> what has taken place
+recently I knew that was wrong&mdash;you know papa is not as firm in his
+ideas as he used to be; and I felt that he&mdash;and you, were in danger,
+somehow. At first I was afraid of being laughed at&mdash;why, I&#8217;d rather
+you&#8217;d laugh at me than to look like <i>that</i>!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re a good girl, Antonia,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;and have done the right thing,
+and a great favor to us. Thank you very much; and please excuse me a
+moment while I send a telegram. Please wait until I come back.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, I&#8217;m going, Albert,&#8221; said she, when he was gone to his own office.
+&#8220;But first you ought to know that man told papa something&mdash;about me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How do you know about this?&#8221; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Papa asked me&mdash;if I had&mdash;any complaints to make&mdash;of Mr. Elkins&#8217;s
+treatment of me! What do you suppose he dared to tell him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What did you tell your father?&#8221; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What could I tell him but &#8216;No&#8217;?&#8221; she exclaimed. &#8220;And I just had a
+heart-to-heart talk with papa about Mr. Cornish and the way he has
+acted; and if his fever hadn&#8217;t begun to run up so, I&#8217;d have got the
+rubber, or Peruvian-bark idea, or whatever it was, entirely out of his
+mind. Poor papa! It breaks my heart to see him changing so! And so I
+gave him a sleeping-capsule, and came down through this splendid rain;
+and now I&#8217;m going! But, mind, this last is a secret.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And so she went away.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where&#8217;s Antonia?&#8221; asked Jim, returning.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Gone,&#8221; said I.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_303" id="pg_303">303</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wanted to talk further about this matter.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t like it, Jim. It means that the cruel war is not over.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wait until we pass Wednesday,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;and we&#8217;ll wring his neck.
+What a poisonous devil, to try and wean from us, to his ruin, an old man
+in his dotage!&mdash;I wish Antonia had stayed. I went out to set the boys
+wiring for news of washouts between here and Chicago. We mustn&#8217;t miss
+that trip, if we have to start to-night. This rain will make trouble
+with the track.&mdash;No, I don&#8217;t like it, either. Wasn&#8217;t it thoughtful of
+Antonia to come down! We can line Hinckley up all right, now we know it;
+but if it had gone on&mdash;we can&#8217;t stand a third solar-plexus blow....&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The sky darkened, until we had to turn on the lights, and the rain fell
+more and more heavily. Once or twice there were jarring rolls of distant
+thunder. To me there was something boding and ominous in the weather.
+The day wore on interminably in the quiet of a business office under
+such a sky. Elkins sent in a telegram which he had received that no
+trouble with water was looked for along our way to Chicago, which was by
+the Halliday line. As the dark day was lowering down to its darker
+close, I went into President Elkins&#8217;s office to take him home with me.
+As I entered through my private door, I saw Giddings coming in through
+the outer entrance.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Say,&#8221; said he, &#8220;I wanted to see you two together. I know you have some
+business with Pendleton, and you&#8217;ve promised the boys a story for
+Thursday or<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_304" id="pg_304">304</a></span> Friday. Now, you&#8217;ve been a little sore on me because I
+haven&#8217;t absolutely cut Cornish.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not at all,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;You must have a poor opinion of our
+intelligence.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, you had no cause to feel that way,&#8221; he went on, &#8220;because, as a
+newspaperman, I&#8217;m supposed to have few friends and no enemies. Besides,
+you can&#8217;t tell what a man might sink to, deprived all at once of the
+friendship of three such men as you fellows!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Quite right,&#8221; said I; &#8220;but get to the point.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m getting to it,&#8221; said he. &#8220;I violate no confidence when I say that
+Cornish has got it in for your crowd in great shape. The point is
+involved in that. I don&#8217;t know what your little game is with old
+Pendleton, but whatever it is, Cornish thinks he can queer it, and at
+the same time reap some advantages from the old man, if he can have a
+few minutes&#8217; talk with Pen before you do. And he&#8217;s going to do it, if he
+can. Now, I figure, with my usual correctness of ratiocination, that
+your scheme is going to be better for the town, and therefore for the
+<i>Herald</i>, than his, and hence this disclosure, which I freely admit has
+some of the ear-marks of bad form. Not that I blame Cornish, or am
+saying anything against him, you know. His course is ideally Iagoan: he
+stands in with Pendleton, benefits himself, and gets even with you all
+at one fell&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Stop this chatter!&#8221; cried Jim, flying at him and seizing him by the
+collar. &#8220;Tell me how you know this, and how much you know!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;My God!&#8221; said Giddings, his lightness all departed,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_305" id="pg_305">305</a></span> &#8220;is it as vital as
+that? He told me himself. Said it was something he wouldn&#8217;t put on paper
+and must tell Pendleton by word of mouth, and he&#8217;s on the train that
+just pulled out for Chicago.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;ll beat us there by twelve hours,&#8221; said I, &#8220;and he can do all he
+threatens! Jim, we&#8217;re gone!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Elkins leaped to the telephone and rang it furiously. There was the ring
+of command sounding through the clamor of desperate and dubious conflict
+in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Give me the L. &amp; G. W. dispatcher&#8217;s office, quick!&#8221; said he. &#8220;I can&#8217;t
+remember the number ... it&#8217;s 420, four, two, naught. Is this Agnew? This
+is Elkins talking. Listen! Without a moment&#8217;s delay, I want you to find
+out when President Pendleton&#8217;s special, east-bound on his Pacific
+Division, passes Elkins Junction. I&#8217;m at my office, and will wait for
+the information here.... Don&#8217;t let me wait long, please, understand?
+And, say! Call Solan to the &#8217;phone.... Is this Solan? Mr. Solan, get out
+the best engine you&#8217;ve got in the yards, couple to it a caboose, and put
+on a crew to make a run to Elkins Junction, as quick as God&#8217;ll let you!
+Do you understand? Give me Schwartz and his fireman.... Yes, and
+Corcoran, too. Andy, this is a case of life and death&mdash;of life and
+death, do you understand? See that the line&#8217;s clear, and no stops. I&#8217;ve
+got to connect east at Elkins Junction with a special on that line....
+<i>Got to</i>, d&#8217;ye see? Have the special wait at the State Street crossing
+until we come aboard!&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_306" id="pg_306">306</a></span>
+<a name="That_Last_Weird_Battle_in_the_West_8463" id="That_Last_Weird_Battle_in_the_West_8463"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER XXV.</p>
+<p class="l c">That Last Weird Battle in the West.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>There was still some remnant of daylight left when we stepped from a
+closed carriage at the State Street crossing and walked to the train
+prepared for us. The rain had all but ceased, and what there was came
+out of some northern quarter of the heavens mingled with stinging
+pellets of sleet, driven by a fierce gale. The turn of the storm had
+come, and I was wise enough in weather-lore to see that its rearguard
+was sweeping down upon us in all the bitterness of a winter&#8217;s tempest.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the tracks I could see the murky water of Brushy Creek racing
+toward the river under the State Street bridge.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I believe,&#8221; said I, &#8220;that the surface-water from above is showing the
+flow from the flume.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Jim absently, &#8220;it must be about ready to break up. I hope we
+can get out of the valley before dark.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The engine stood ready, the superabundant power popping off in a
+deafening hiss. The fireman threw open the furnace-door and stoked the
+fire as we approached. Engineer Schwartz, the same who had pulled us
+over the road that first trip, was standing<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_307" id="pg_307">307</a></span> by his engine, talking with
+our old conductor, Corcoran.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Here&#8217;s a message for you, Mr. Elkins,&#8221; said Corcoran, handing Jim a
+yellow paper, &#8220;from Agnew.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We read it by Corcoran&#8217;s lantern, for it was getting dusky for the
+reading of telegraph operator&#8217;s script.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Water out over bottoms from Hinckley to the Hills,&#8221; so went the
+message. &#8220;Flood coming down valley. Snow and drifting wind reported from
+Elkins Junction and Josephine. Look out for washouts, and culverts and
+bridges damaged by running ice and water. Pendleton special fully up to
+running schedule, at Willow Springs.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who&#8217;ve you got up there, Schwartz? Oh, is that you, Ole?&#8221; said Mr.
+Elkins. &#8220;Good! Boys, to-night our work has got to be done in time, or we
+might as well go to bed. It&#8217;s a case of four aces or a four-flush, and
+no intermediate stations. Mr. Pendleton&#8217;s special will pass the Junction
+right around nine&mdash;not ten minutes either way. Get us there before that.
+If you can do it safely, all right; but get us there. And remember that
+the regular rule in railroading is reversed to-night, and we are ready
+to take any chance rather than miss&mdash;<i>any</i> chances, mind!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re ready and waiting, Mr. Elkins,&#8221; said Schwartz, &#8220;but you&#8217;ll have
+to get on, you know. Looks like there was time enough if we keep the
+wheels turning, but this snow and flood business may cut some figure.
+<i>Any</i> chances, I believe you said, sir. All right! Ready when you are,
+Jack.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All aboard!&#8221; sang out Corcoran, and with a<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_308" id="pg_308">308</a></span> commonplace ding-dong of
+the bell, and an every-day hiss of steam, which seemed, somehow, out of
+keeping with the fearful and unprecedented exigency now upon us, we
+moved out through the yards, jolting over the frogs, out upon the main
+line; and soon began to feel a cheering acceleration in the recurrent
+sounds and shocks of our flight, as Schwartz began rolling back the
+miles under his flying wheels.</p>
+
+<p>We sat in silence on the oil-cloth cushions of the seats which ran along
+the sides of the caboose. Corcoran, the only person who shared the car
+with us, seemed to have some psychical consciousness of the peril which
+weighed down upon us, and moved quietly about the car, or sat in the
+cupola, as mute as we.</p>
+
+<p>There was no need for speech between my friend and me. Our minds,
+strenuously awake, found a common conclusion in the very nature of the
+case. Both doubtless had considered and rejected the idea of
+telegraphing Pendleton to wait for us at the Junction. No king upon his
+throne was more absolute than Avery Pendleton, and to ask him to waste a
+single quarter-hour of his time might give great offense to him whom we
+desired to find serene and complaisant. Again, any apparent anxiety for
+haste, any symptom of an attempt to rush his line of defenses, would
+surely defeat its object. No, we must quietly and casually board his
+train, and secure the signing of the contract before we reached Chicago,
+if possible.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You brought that paper, Al?&#8221; said Jim, as if my thoughts had been
+audible to him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_309" id="pg_309">309</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said I, &#8220;it&#8217;s here.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think we&#8217;d better be on our way to St. Louis,&#8221; said he. &#8220;He can
+hardly refuse to oblige us by going through the form of signing, so as
+to let us turn south at the river.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Very well,&#8221; said I, &#8220;St. Louis&mdash;yes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Out past the old Trescott farm, now covered with factories, cottages,
+and railway tracks, leaving Lynhurst Park off to our left, curving with
+the turnings of Brushy Creek Valley, through which our engineers had
+found such easy grades, dropping the straggling suburbs of the city
+behind us, we flew along the rails in the waning twilight of this
+grewsome day. On the windward windows and the roof rattled fierce
+flights of sleet and showers of cinders from the engine. Occasionally we
+felt the car sway in the howling gusts of wind, as we passed some
+opening in the hills and neared the more level prairie. Stories of cars
+blown from the rails flitted through my mind; and in contemplating such
+an accident my thoughts busied themselves with the details of plans for
+getting free from the wrecked car, and pushing on with the engine, the
+derailing of which somehow never occurred to me.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re slowing down!&#8221; cried Jim, after a half-hour&#8217;s run. &#8220;I wonder
+what&#8217;s the matter!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;For God&#8217;s sake, look ahead!&#8221; yelled Corcoran, leaping down from the
+cupola and springing to the door. We followed him to the platform, and
+each of us ran down on the step and, swinging out by the hand-rail,
+peered ahead into the dusk, the sleet stinging our cheeks like shot.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_310" id="pg_310">310</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We were running along the right bank of the stream, at a point where the
+valley narrowed down to perhaps sixty rods of bottom. At the first dim
+look before us we could see nothing unusual, except that the background
+of the scene looked somehow as if lifted by a mirage. Then I noticed
+that up the valley, instead of the ghostly suggestions of trees and
+hills which bounded the vista in other directions, there was an
+appearance like that seen on looking out to sea.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The flood!&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;He&#8217;s not going to stop, is he Corcoran?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At this moment came at once the explanation of Schwartz&#8217;s hesitation and
+the answer to Jim&#8217;s question. We saw, reaching clear across the narrow
+bottom, a great wave of water, coming down the valley like a liquid
+wall, stretching across the track and seeming to forbid our further
+progress, while it advanced deliberately upon us, as if to drown engine
+and crew. Driven on by the terrific gale, it boiled at its base, and
+curled forward at its foamy and wind-whipped crest, as if the upper
+waters were impatient of the slow speed of those below. Beyond the wave,
+the valley, from bluff to bluff, was a sea, rolling white-capped waves.
+Logs, planks, and the other flotsam of a freshet moved on in the van of
+the flood.</p>
+
+<p>It looked like the end of our run. What engineer would dare to dash on
+at such speed over a submerged track&mdash;possibly floated from its bed,
+possibly barricaded by driftwood? Was not the wave high enough to put
+out the fires and kill the engine? As we met the roaring eagre we felt
+the engine leap, as Schwartz&#8217;s<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_311" id="pg_311">311</a></span> hesitation left him and he opened the
+throttle. Like knight tilting against knight, wave and engine met. There
+was a hissing as of the plunging of a great red-hot bar into a vat. A
+roaring sheet of water, thrown into the air by our momentum, washed cab
+and tender and car, as a billow pours over a laboring ship; and we stood
+on the steps, drenched to the skin, the water swirling about our ankles
+as we rushed forward. Then we heard the scream of triumph from the
+whistle, with which Schwartz cheered us as the dripping train ran on
+through shallower and shallower water, and turning, after a mile or so,
+began climbing, dry-shod, the grade which led from the flooded valley
+and out upon the uplands.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Come in, Mr. Elkins,&#8221; said Corcoran. &#8220;You&#8217;ll both freeze out there, wet
+as you are.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Not until I heard this did I realize that we were still standing on the
+steps, our clothes congealing about us, peering through the now dense
+gloom ahead, as if for the apparition of some other grisly foe to daunt
+or drive us back.</p>
+
+<p>We went in, and sat down by the roaring fire, in spite of which a chill
+pervaded the car. We were now running over the divide between the valley
+we had just left and that of Elk Fork. Up here on the highlands the wind
+more than ever roared and clutched at the corners of the car, and
+sometimes, as with the palm of a great hand, pressed us over, as if a
+giant were striving to overturn us. We could hear the engine struggling
+with the savage norther, like a runner breathing hard, as he nears
+exhaustion.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_312" id="pg_312">312</a></span> Presently I noticed fine particles of snow, driven into the
+car at the crevices, falling on my hands and face, and striking the hot
+stove with little hissing explosions of steam.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re running into a blizzard up here,&#8221; said Corcoran. &#8220;It&#8217;s a terror
+outside.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A terror; yes,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;What sort of time are we making?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Just about holding our own,&#8221; said Corcoran. &#8220;Not much to spare. Got to
+stop at Barslow for water. But there won&#8217;t be any bad track from there
+on. This snow won&#8217;t cut any figure for three hours yet, and mebbe not at
+all, there&#8217;s so little of it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Kittrick has been asking for an appropriation to rebuild the Elk Fork
+trestle,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;Will it stand this flood?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Corcoran, &#8220;if the water ain&#8217;t too high, and the ice don&#8217;t
+run too swift in the Fork, it&#8217;ll be all right. But if there&#8217;s any such
+mixture of downpour and thaw as there was along the Creek back there, we
+may have to jump across a gap. It&#8217;ll probably be all right.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I remembered the Elk Fork, and the trestle just on the hither side of
+the Junction. I remembered the valley, green with trees, and populous
+with herds, winding down to the lake, and the pretty little town of
+Josephine. I remembered that gala day when we christened it. I groaned
+in spirit, as I thought of finding the trestle gone, after our
+hundred-and-fifty-mile dash through storm and flood. Yet I believed it
+would be gone. The blows showered upon us had beaten down my courage. I
+felt no<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_313" id="pg_313">313</a></span> shrinking from either struggle or danger; but this was merely
+the impulse which impels the soldier to fight on in despair, and sell
+his life dearly. I believed that ruin fronted us all; that our great
+system of enterprises was going down; that, East and West, where we had
+been so much courted and admired, we should become a by-word and a
+hissing. The elements were struggling against us. That vengeful flood
+had snatched at us, and barely missed; the ruthless hurricane was
+holding us back; and somehow fate would yet find means to lay us low. I
+had all day kept thinking of the lines:</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em;">&#8220;Nor ever yet had Arthur fought a fight<br />
+Like this last dim, weird battle of the west.<br />
+A death-white mist slept over land and sea:<br />
+Whereof the chill, to him who breathed it, drew<br />
+Down to his blood, till all his heat was cold<br />
+With formless fear: and even on Arthur fell<br />
+Confusion, since he saw not whom he fought.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And this, thought I, was the end of the undertaking upon which we had
+entered so lightly, with frolic jests of piracy and Spanish galleons and
+pieces-of-eight, and with all that mock-seriousness with which we
+discussed hypnotic suggestion and psychic force! The bitterness grew
+sickening, as Corcoran, hearing the long whistle of the engine, said
+that we were coming into Barslow. The tragic foolery of giving that name
+to any place!</p>
+
+<p>Out upon the platform here, in the blinding whirl of snow. The night
+operator came out and talked to us of the news of the line, while the
+engine ran on<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_314" id="pg_314">314</a></span> to the tank for water. There was another telegram from
+Agnew, saying that the Pendleton special was on time, and that Mr.
+Kittrick was following us with another train &#8220;in case of need.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The operator was full of wild stories of the Brushy Creek flood, caused
+by the thaw and the cloudburst. We cut him short in this narration, and
+asked him of the conditions along the Elk Fork.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s up and boomin&#8217;,&#8221; said he. &#8220;The trestle was most all under water
+an hour ago, and they say the ice was runnin&#8217; in blocks. You may find
+the track left without any underpinnin&#8217;. Look out for yourselves.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Al,&#8221; said Jim slowly, &#8220;can you fire an engine?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I guess so,&#8221; said I, seeing his meaning dimly. &#8220;Why?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Al,&#8221; said he, as if stating the conclusion of a complicated
+calculation, &#8220;we must run this train in alone!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I saw his intent fully, and knew why he walked so resolutely up to the
+engine, now backed down to take us on again. Schwartz leaned out of his
+cab, a man of snow and ice. Ole stood with his shovel in his hand white
+and icy like his brother worker. Both had been drenched, as we had; but
+they had had no red-hot stove by which to sit; and buffeted by the
+blizzard and powdered by the snow, they had endured the benumbing cold
+of the hurricane-swept cab.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Get down here, boys,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;I want to talk with you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Ole leaped lightly down, followed by Schwartz,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_315" id="pg_315">315</a></span> who hobbled laboriously,
+stiffened with cold. Youth and violent labor had kept the fireman warm.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Schwartz,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;there is a chance that we&#8217;ll find the trestle
+weakened and dangerous. We&#8217;ll stop and examine it if we have time, but
+if it is as close a thing as I think it will be, we propose to make a
+run for it and take chances. Barslow and I are the ones, and the only
+ones, who ought to do this, because we must make this connection. We can
+run the engine. You and Ole and Corcoran stay here. Mr. Kittrick will be
+along with another train in a few hours. Uncouple the caboose and we&#8217;ll
+run on.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Schwartz blew his nose with great deliberation.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ole,&#8221; said he, &#8220;what d&#8217;ye think of the old man&#8217;s scheme?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ay tank,&#8221; said Ole, &#8220;dat bane hellufa notion!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Come,&#8221; said Mr. Elkins, &#8220;we&#8217;re losing time! Uncouple at once!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We started to mount the engine; but Schwartz and Ole were before us,
+barring the way.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wait,&#8221; said Schwartz. &#8220;Jest look at it, now. It&#8217;s quite a run yet; and
+the chances are you&#8217;d have the cylinder-heads knocked out before you&#8217;d
+got half way; and then where&#8217;d you be with your connections?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you mean to say,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;that there&#8217;s any likelihood of the
+engine&#8217;s dying on us between here and the Junction?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a cinch!&#8221; said Schwartz.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;For God&#8217;s sake, then, let&#8217;s get on!&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;I believe you&#8217;re lying
+to me, Schwartz. But do this:<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_316" id="pg_316">316</a></span> As you come to the trestle, stop. From
+the approach we can see down the other track for ten miles. If
+Pendleton&#8217;s train is far enough off so as to give us time, we&#8217;ll see how
+the bridge is before we cross. If we&#8217;re pressed for time too much for
+this, promise me that you&#8217;ll stop and let us run the engine across
+alone.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll think about it,&#8221; said Schwartz; &#8220;and if I conclude to, I will.
+It&#8217;s got to clear up, if we can see even the headlight on the other road
+very far. Ready, Jack?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We wrung their hard and icy hands, leaped upon the train, and were away
+again, spinning down the grade toward the Elk Fork, and comforted by our
+speed. Jim and I climbed into the cupola and watched the track ahead,
+and the two homely heroes in the cab, as the light from the furnace
+blazed out upon them from time to time. Now we could see Schwartz
+stoking, to warm himself; now we could see him looking at his watch and
+peering anxiously out before him.</p>
+
+<p>It was wearing on toward nine, and still our goal was miles away.
+Overhead the sky was clearing, and we could see the stars; but down on
+the ground the light, new snow still glided whitely along before the
+lessening wind. Once or twice we saw, or thought we saw, far ahead,
+lights, like those of a little prairie town. Was it the Junction? Yes,
+said Corcoran, when we called him to look; and now we saw that we were
+rising on the long approach to the trestle.</p>
+
+<p>Would Schwartz stop, or would he run desperately<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_317" id="pg_317">317</a></span> across, as he had
+dashed through the flood? That was with him. His hand was on the lever,
+and we were helpless; but, if there was time, it would be mere
+foolhardiness to go upon the trestle at any but the slowest speed, and
+without giving all but one an opportunity to walk across. One, surely,
+was enough to go down with the engine, if it, indeed, went down.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t stay up there,&#8221; shouted Corcoran, &#8220;go out on the steps so you can
+jump for it if you have to!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Out upon the platform we went in the biting wind, which still came
+fiercely on, sweeping over the waste of waters which covered the fields
+like a great lake. There was no sign of slowing down: right on, as if
+the road were rock-ballasted, and thrice secure, the engine drove toward
+the trestle.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s there, anyhow, I b&#8217;lieve,&#8221; said Corcoran, swinging out and
+looking ahead; &#8220;but I wouldn&#8217;t bet on how solid she is!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Can&#8217;t you stop him?&#8221; said Jim.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Stop nothing!&#8221; said Corcoran. &#8220;Look over there!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We looked, and saw a light gleaming mistily, but distinct and
+unmistakable, across the water on the other track. It was the Pendleton
+special! Not much further from the station than were we, the train of
+moving palaces to which we were fighting our way was gliding to the
+point beyond which it must not pass without us. There was now no more
+thought of stopping; rather our desires yearned forward over the course,
+agonizing for greater speed. I did not see that we were actually upon
+the trestle until for some rods we had been running with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_318" id="pg_318">318</a></span> inky water
+only a few feet below us; but when I saw it my hopes leaped up, as I
+calculated the proportion of the peril which was passed. A moment more,
+and the solid approach would be under our spinning wheels.</p>
+
+<p>But the moment more was not to be given us! For, even as this joy rose
+in my breast, I felt a shock; I heard a confused sound of men&#8217;s cries,
+and the shattering of timbers; the caboose whirled over cornerwise,
+throwing up into the air the step on which I stood; the sounds of the
+train went out in sudden silence as engine and car plunged off into the
+stream; and I felt the cold water close over me as I fell into the
+rushing flood. I arose and struck out for the shore; then I thought of
+Jim. A few feet above me in the stream I saw something like a hand or
+foot flung up out of the water, and sucked down again. I turned as well
+as I could toward the spot, and collided with some object under the
+surface. I caught at it, felt the skirt of a garment in my hand, and
+knew it for a man. Then, I remember helping myself with a plank from
+some washed-out bridge, and soon felt the ground under my feet, all the
+time clinging to my man. I tried to lift him out, but could not; and I
+locked my hands under his arm-pits and, slowly stepping backwards, I
+half carried, half dragged him, seeking a place where I could lay him
+down. I saw the dark line of the railroad grade, and made wearily toward
+it. I walked blindly into the water of the ditch beside the track, and
+had scarcely strength to pull myself and my burden out upon the bank.
+Then I stopped and peered into his face,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_319" id="pg_319">319</a></span> and saw uncertainly that it
+was Jim&mdash;with a dark spot in the edge of the hair on his forehead, from
+which black streaks kept stealing down as I wiped them off; and with one
+arm which twisted unnaturally, and with a grating sound as I moved it;
+and from whom there came no other sound or movement whatever.</p>
+
+<p>And over across the stream gleamed the lights of the Pendleton special
+as it sped away toward Chicago.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_320" id="pg_320">320</a></span>
+<a name="The_Endmdashand_a_Beginning_8844" id="The_Endmdashand_a_Beginning_8844"></a>
+<p class="xl c">CHAPTER XXVI.</p>
+<p class="l c">The End&mdash;and a Beginning.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>As to our desperate run from Lattimore to the place where it came to an
+end in a junk-heap which had been once an engine, a car reduced to
+matchwood, a broken trestle, and a chaos of crushed hopes, and of the
+return to our homes thereafter, no further details need be set forth.
+The papers in Lattimore were filled with the story for a day or two, and
+I believe there were columns about it in the Associated Press reports. I
+doubt not that Mr. Pendleton and Mr. Cornish each read it in the morning
+papers, and that the latter explained it to the former in Chicago. From
+these reports the future biographer may glean, if he happens to come
+into being and to care about it, certain interesting facts about the
+people of this history. He will learn that Mr. Barslow, having (with
+truly Horatian swimming powers) rescued President Elkins from a watery
+grave, waited with his unconscious derelict in great danger from
+freezing, until they were both rescued a second time by a crew of
+hand-car men who were near the trestle on special work connected with
+the flood and its ravages. That President Elkins was terribly injured,
+having sustained a broken arm and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_321" id="pg_321">321</a></span> a dangerous wound in the forehead.
+Moreover, he was threatened with pneumonia from his exposure. Should
+this disease really fasten itself upon him, his condition would be very
+critical indeed. That Mr. Barslow, the hero of the occasion, was
+uninjured. And I am ashamed to say that such student of history will
+find in an inconspicuous part of the same news-story, as if by reason of
+its lack of importance, the statement that O. Hegvold, fireman, and J.
+J. Corcoran, conductor of the wrecked train, escaped with slight
+injuries. And that Julius Schwartz, the engineer, living at 2714 May
+Street, and the oldest engineer on the L. &amp; G. W., being benumbed by the
+cold, sank like a stone and was drowned. Poor Schwartz! Magnificent
+Schwartz! No captain ever went down, refusing to leave the bridge of his
+sinking ship, with more heroism than he; who, clad in greasy overalls,
+and sapped of his strength by the icy hurricane, finding his homely duty
+inextricably entangled with death, calmly took them both, and went his
+way.</p>
+
+<p>This mine for the historian will also disclose to him the fact that the
+rescued crew and passengers were brought home by a relief-train in
+charge of General Manager Kittrick, and that Mr. Elkins was taken
+directly to the home of Mr. Barslow, where he at once became subject to
+the jurisdiction of physicians and nurses and &#8220;could not be seen.&#8221; But
+as to the reasons for the insane dash in the dark the historian will
+look in vain. I am disposed now to think that our motives were entirely
+creditable; but for them we got no credit.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_322" id="pg_322">322</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Much less than a nine days&#8217; wonder, however, was this tragedy of the Elk
+Fork trestle, for other sensations came tumbling in an army upon its
+very heels. Times of war, great public calamities, and panic are the
+harvest seasons of the newspapers; and these were great days for the
+newspapers in Lattimore. Not that they learned or printed all the news.
+I received a telegram, for instance, the day after the accident, which
+merely entered up judgment on the verdict of the day before. It was a
+message from Mr. Pendleton in Chicago.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In matter of Lattimore &amp; Great Western,&#8221; this telegram read, &#8220;directors
+refuse to ratify contract. This sent to save you trip to Chicago.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No news in that,&#8221; said I to Mr. Hinckley; &#8220;I wonder that he bothered to
+send it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But, in the era of slug heads which set in about three days after, and
+while Jim was still helpless up at my house, it would have received
+recognition as news&mdash;although they did very well without it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Great Failure!&#8221; said the <i>Times</i>. &#8220;Grain Belt Trust Company Goes to the
+Wall! Business Circles Convulsed! Receiver Appointed at Suit of Charles
+Harper of Chicago! Followed by Assignment of Hinckley &amp; Macdonald,
+Bankers! Western Portland Cement Company Assigns! Atlas Power Company
+Follows Suit! Reason, Money Tied up in Banks and Trust Company. Where
+will it Stop? A Veritable Black Friday!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Thus the headlines. In the news report itself the <i>Times</i> remarked upon
+the intimate connection of Mr. Elkins and myself with all the failed
+concerns.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_323" id="pg_323">323</a></span> The firm of Elkins &amp; Barslow, being primarily a real-estate
+and insurance agency, would not assign. As to the condition of the
+business of James R. Elkins &amp; Company, whose operations in bonds and
+debentures had been enormous, nothing could be learned on account of the
+critical illness of Mr. Elkins.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is not thought,&#8221; said the <i>Herald</i>, &#8220;that the failures will carry
+down any other concerns. The run on the First National Bank was one of
+those panicky symptoms which are dangerous because so unreasoning. It is
+to be hoped that it will not be renewed in the morning. The banks are
+not involved in the operations of the Grain Belt Trust Company, the
+failure of which, it must be admitted, is sure to cause serious
+disturbances, both locally and elsewhere, wherever its wide-spread
+operations have extended.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The physical system adjusts itself to any permanent lesion in the body,
+and finally ceases even to send out its complaining messages of pain. So
+we in Lattimore, who a few weeks ago had been ready to sacrifice
+anything for the keeping of our good name; who by stealth justly
+foreclosed mortgages justly due, lest the world should wonder at their
+nonpayment; who so greatly had rejoiced in our own strength; who had
+felt that, surely, we who had wrought such wonders could not now
+fail:&mdash;even we numbly came to regard receiverships and assignments as
+quite the thing to be expected. The fact that, all over the country,
+panic, ruin, and business stagnation were spreading like a pestilence,
+from just<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_324" id="pg_324">324</a></span> such centers of contagion as Lattimore, made it easier for
+us. Surely, we felt, nobody could justly blame us for being in the path
+of a tempest which, like a tropic cyclone, ravaged a continent.</p>
+
+<p>This may have been weak self-justification; but, even yet, when I think
+of the way we began, and how the wave of &#8220;prosperity&#8221; rose and rose, by
+acts in themselves, so far as we could see, in every way praiseworthy;
+how with us, and with people engaged in like operations everywhere, the
+most powerful passions of society came to aid our projects; how the
+winds from the unknown, the seismic throbbings of the earth, and the
+very stars in their courses fought for us; and when, at last, these
+mightinesses turned upon us the cold and evil eye of their displeasure,
+how the heaped-up sea came pouring over here, trickling through there,
+and seeping under yonder, until our great dike toppled over in baleful
+tumult, &#8220;and all the world was in the sea&#8221;; how business, east, west,
+north, and south, went paralyzed with fear and distrust, and old
+concerns went out like strings of soap-bubbles, and shocks of pain and
+disease went round the world, and everywhere there was that hellish and
+portentous thing known to the modern world only, and called a
+&#8220;commercial panic&#8221;: when I broadly consider these things, I am not vain
+enough seriously to blame myself.</p>
+
+<p>These thoughts are more than ever in my mind to-day, as I look back over
+the decade of years which have elapsed since our Waterloo at the Elk
+Fork trestle. I look out from the same library in which I once felt a
+sense of guilt at the expense of building<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_325" id="pg_325">325</a></span> it, and see the solid and
+prosperous town, almost as populous as we once saw it in our dreams. I
+am regarded locally as one of the creators of the city; but I know that
+this praise is as unmerited as was that blame of a dozen years ago. We
+rode on the crest of a wave, and we weltered in the trough of the sea;
+but we only seemed to create or control. I hold in my hand a letter from
+Jim, received yesterday, and eloquent of the changes which have taken
+place.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am sorry,&#8221; says he, &#8220;to be unable to come to your business men&#8217;s
+banquet. The building of a great auditorium in Lattimore is proof that
+we weren&#8217;t so insane, after all. I suppose that the ebb and flow of the
+tide of progress, which yearly gains upon the shore, is inevitable, as
+things are hooked up; but, after the ebb, it&#8217;s comforting to see your
+old predictions as to gain coming true, even if you do find yourself in
+the discard. It would be worth the trip only to see Captain Tolliver,
+and to hear him eliminate the <i>r</i>&#8217;s from his mother tongue. Give the
+dear old secesh my dearest love!</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I can&#8217;t come, Al. I must be in Washington at that time on business
+of the greatest (presumptive) importance to the cattle interests of the
+buffalo-grass country. I could change my own dates; but my wife has
+arranged a tryst for a day certain with some specialists in her line in
+New York. She&#8217;s quite the queen of the cattle range&mdash;in New York: and,
+to be dead truthful, she comes pretty near it out here. It is rumored
+that even the sheepmen speak well of her.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_326" id="pg_326">326</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;These Eastern trips are great things for her and the children. I&#8217;m
+riding the range so constantly, and get so much fun out of it, that I
+feel sort of undressed and embarrassed out of the saddle. In Washington
+I&#8217;m pointed out as a typical cowboy, the descendant of a Spanish vaquero
+and a trapper&#8217;s daughter. This helps me to represent my constituents in
+the sessions of the Third House, and to get Congressional attention to
+the ax I want ground. I am looked upon as in line for the presidency of
+the Amalgamated Association of American Ax-grinders.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If we can make it, we&#8217;ll look in on you on our way back; but we don&#8217;t
+promise. With cattle scattered over two counties of buttes and canyons,
+we feel in a hurry when we get started home, after an absence sure to
+have been longer than we intended. Then, you know how I feel;&mdash;I wish
+the old town well, but I don&#8217;t enjoy <i>every</i> incident of my visits
+there.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We expect to see the Cecil Barr-Smiths in New York. Cecil is the whole
+thing now with their companies&mdash;a sort of professional president in
+charge of the American properties; and Mrs. Cecil is as well known in
+some mighty good circles in London as she used to be in Lynhurst Park.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am glad to know that things are going toward the good with you.
+Personally, I never expect to be a seven-figure man again, and don&#8217;t
+care to be. I prefer to look after my few thousands of steers, laying on
+four hundred pounds each per year, far from the madding crowd. You know
+Riley&#8217;s man who said that the little town of Tailholt was good enough
+for him? Well, that expresses my view of the &#8216;J-Up-and-Down&#8217; Ranch<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_327" id="pg_327">327</a></span> as a
+hermitage. It&#8217;ll do quite well. But these Eastern interests of Mrs. Jim
+are just now menacing to life in any hermitage. She has specifically
+stated on two or three occasions lately that this is no place to bring
+up a family. Think of a rough-rider like me in the wilds of New York! I
+can see plenty of ways of amusing myself down there, but not such
+peaceful ways as putting on my six-shooters and going out after timber
+wolves or mountain lions, or our local representative of the clan of the
+Hon. Maverick Brander. The future lowers dark with the multitudinous
+mouths of avenues of prosperity!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This letter was a disappointment to Mr. Giddings. His special edition of
+the <i>Herald</i> commemorative of the opening of our Auditorium must now be
+deprived of its James R. Elkins feature, so far as his being the guest
+of honor goes. But there will be Jim&#8217;s photograph on the first page, and
+a half-tone reproduction of a picture of the wreck at the Elk Fork
+trestle.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is a matter of the deepest regret,&#8221; said the <i>Herald</i> this morning,
+&#8220;that Mr. Elkins cannot be with us on this auspicious occasion. He was
+the head of that most remarkable group of men who laid the foundations
+of Lattimore&#8217;s greatness. Only one of them, Mr. Barslow, still lives in
+Lattimore, where he has devoted his life, since the crash of many years
+ago, to the reorganization of the failed concerns, and especially the
+Grain Belt Trust Company, and to the salving of their properties in the
+interests of the creditors. His present prominence grows out of the
+signal skill and ability with which he has done<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_328" id="pg_328">328</a></span> this work; and he must
+prove a great factor in the city&#8217;s future development, as he has been in
+its past. Mr. Hinckley, the third member of the syndicate, now far
+advanced in years, is living happily with his daughter and her husband.
+The fourth, Mr. Cornish, resides in Paris, where he is well known as a
+daring and successful financial operator. He, of all the syndicate,
+retired from the Lattimore enterprises rich.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There have been years when the names of these men were not held in the
+respect and esteem they deserve. The town was going backward. People who
+had been rich were, many of them, in absolute distress for the
+necessaries of life. And these men, in a vague sort of way, were blamed
+for it. Now, however, we can begin to see the wisdom of their plans and
+the vastness of the scope of their combinations. Nothing but the element
+of time was wanting, abundantly to vindicate their judgment and
+sagacity. The industries they founded succeeded as soon as they were
+divorced from the real-estate speculation which unavoidably entered into
+their management at the outset. It is regrettable that their founders
+could not share in their success.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nothing but the element of time,&#8221; said I to Captain Tolliver, who sat
+by me in the car as I read this editorial, &#8220;prevents the hot-air balloon
+from carrying its load over the Rockies.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nothing but luck,&#8221; said the Captain, &#8220;evah could have beaten us. It was
+the Fleischmann failure, and it was nothing else. As to the great
+qualities of Mr. Elkins, suh, the editorial puts it<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_329" id="pg_329">329</a></span> too mild by fah. He
+was a Titan, suh, a Titan, and we shall not look upon his like again.
+This town at this moment is vegetating fo&#8217; the want of some fo&#8217;ceful
+Elkins to put life into it. The trilobites, as he so well dubbed them,
+ah in control again. What&#8217;s this Auditorium we&#8217;ve built? A good thing
+fo&#8217; the city, cehtainly, a ve&#8217;y good thing: but see the difficulty, the
+humiliatin&#8217; difficulty we had, in gettin&#8217; togethah the paltry and
+trivial hundred and fifty thousand dolla&#8217;s! Why in that elder day, in
+such a cause, we&#8217;d have called a meetin&#8217; in that old office of Elkins &amp;
+Barslow&#8217;s, and made it up out of ouah own funds in fifteen minutes. It&#8217;s
+the so&#8217;t of cattle we&#8217;ve got hyah as citizens that&#8217;s handicappin&#8217; us;
+but in spite of this, suh, ouah unsuhpassed strategical position is
+winnin&#8217; fo&#8217; us. We ah just now on the eve of great developments,
+Barslow, great developments! All my holdin&#8217;s ah withdrawn from mahket
+until fu&#8217;theh notice. Foh, as we ah so much behind the surroundin&#8217;
+country in growth, we must soon take a great leap fo&#8217;wahd. We ah past
+the boom stage, I thank God, and what we ah now goin&#8217; to get is a rathah
+brisk but entiahly healthy growth. A good, healthy growth, Barslow, and
+no boom!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The disposition to moralize comes on with advancing middle age, and I
+could not help philosophizing on this perennial optimism of the
+Captain&#8217;s. He had used these very words when, so long ago, we had begun
+our &#8220;cruise.&#8221; The financial cycle was complete. The world had passed
+from hope to intoxication, from intoxication to panic, from panic to the
+depths, from this depression, ascending the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_330" id="pg_330">330</a></span> long slope of gradual
+recovery, to the uplands of hope once more. Now, as twenty years ago,
+this feeling covered the whole world, was most pronounced in the newer
+and more progressive lands, and was voiced by Captain Tolliver, the
+grizzled swashbuckler of the land market. In it I recognized the ripple
+on the sands heralding the approach of another wave of speculation,
+which must roll shoreward in splendor and might, and, like its
+predecessors, must spend itself in thunderous ruin.</p>
+
+<p>I often think of what General Lattimore was accustomed to say about
+these matters, and how Josie echoed his words as to the evil of fortunes
+coming to those who never earned them. Some time, I hope, we shall grow
+wise enough to&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I humbly beg your pardon, Madam, and thank you. That charming gesture of
+impatience was the one thing needful to admonish me that lectures are
+dull, and that the time has come to write <i>finis</i>. The rest of the
+story? Cornish&mdash;Jim&mdash;Josie&mdash;Antonia? Oh, this proneness of the business
+man to talk shop! Left to myself, I should have allowed their history to
+remain to the end of time, unresolved as to entanglements, and them
+unhealed as to bruises, bodily and sentimental. And, yet, those were the
+things which most filled our minds in the dark days after we missed
+connection with the Pendleton special.</p>
+
+<p>In the first spasm of the crisis I was more concerned for Jim&#8217;s safety
+than with the long-feared monetary cataclysm. <i>That</i> was upon us in such
+power as to make us helpless; but Jim, wounded and prostrated as he was,
+his very life in danger,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_331" id="pg_331">331</a></span> was a concrete subject of anxiety and a
+comfortingly promising object of care.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If we can keep this from assuming the character of true pneumonia,&#8221;
+said Dr. Aylesbury, &#8220;there&#8217;s no reason why he shouldn&#8217;t recover.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He had been unconscious and then delirious from the time when he and I
+had been picked up there by the railroad-dump, until we were well on our
+way home on Kittrick&#8217;s relief-train. At last he looked about him, and
+his eyes rested on Corcoran.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hello, Jack!&#8221; said he weakly; and as his glance took in Ole, he smiled
+and said: &#8220;A hellufa notion, you tank, do you? Ole, where&#8217;s Schwartz?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Ole twisted and squirmed, but found no words.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We couldn&#8217;t find Schwartz,&#8221; said Kittrick. &#8220;He was so cold, he went
+right down with the cab.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I see,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;It was bitter cold!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He said no more. I wondered at this, and almost blamed him, even in his
+stricken state, for not feeling the peculiar poignancy of our regret for
+the loss of Schwartz. And then, his face being turned away, I peeped
+over to see if he slept, and saw where his tears had dropped silently on
+the piled-up cushions of his couch.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Mrs. Trescott came several times a day to inquire as to Mr. Elkins&#8217;s
+welfare; but Josie not at all. Antonia&#8217;s carriage stopped often at the
+door; and somebody stood always at the telephone, answering the stream
+of questions. But when, on that third evening, it became known that the
+last &#8220;battle in the west&#8221; had gone against us, that all our great<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_332" id="pg_332">332</a></span> Round
+Table was dissolved, and that Jim&#8217;s was a sinking and not a rising sun,
+public interest suddenly fell off. And the poor fellow whose word but
+yesterday might have stood against the world, now lay there fighting for
+very life, and few so poor to do him reverence. I had been so proud of
+his splendid and dominant strength that this, I think, was the thing
+that brought the bitterness of failure most keenly home to me. I could
+not feel satisfied with Josie. There were good reasons why she might
+have refused to choose between Jim and the man who had ruined him, while
+there was danger of her choice itself becoming the occasion of war
+between them. But that was over now, and Cornish was victorious.
+Gradually the fear grew upon me that we had rated Josie&#8217;s womanhood
+higher than she herself held it, and that Cornish was to win her also.
+He had that magnetism which so attracted her as a girl, but that I had
+believed incapable of holding her as a woman. And now he had wealth, and
+Jim was poor, and the whole world stood with its back to us, and Josie
+held aloof. I was afraid he would speak of it, every time he tried to
+talk.</p>
+
+<p>That night when the evening papers came out with all their plenitude of
+bad news (for we had pleased Watson by dying on the evening papers&#8217;
+time), it was a dark moment for us. Jim lay silent and unmoving, as if
+all his ebullient energy had gone forever. The physician omitted the
+dressing of his wound, because, he said, he feared the patient was not
+strong enough to bear it: and this, as well as the strange semi-stupor
+of the sufferer, frightened<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_333" id="pg_333">333</a></span> me. Jim had said little, and most of his
+words had been of the trivial things of the sick-room. Only once did he
+refer to the great affairs in which we had been for so long engrossed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What day is this?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Friday,&#8221; said I, &#8220;the twenty-first.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;By this time,&#8221; said he feebly, &#8220;we must be pretty well shot to rags.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Never mind about that,&#8221; said I, holding his hands in mine. &#8220;Never mind,
+Jim!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Some of those gophers,&#8221; said he, after a while, &#8220;used to learn to ...
+rub their noses ... in the dirt ... and always stick their heads
+up&mdash;outside the snare!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said I, &#8220;I remember. Go to sleep, old man!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I thought him delirious, and he knew and resented it; being evidently
+convinced that he had just made a wise remark. It touched me to hear
+him, even in his extremity, return to those boyhood days when we trapped
+and hunted and fished together. He saw my pitying look.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m all right,&#8221; said he; but he said no more.</p>
+
+<p>The nurse came in, and told me that Mrs. Barslow wished to see me in the
+library. I went down, and found Josie and Alice together.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I got a letter from&mdash;from Mr. Cornish,&#8221; said she, &#8220;telling me that he
+was returning from Chicago to-night, and was coming to see me. I ran
+over, because&mdash;and told mamma to say that I couldn&#8217;t see him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;See him by all means,&#8221; said I with some bitterness.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_334" id="pg_334">334</a></span> &#8220;You should make
+it a point to see him. Mr. Cornish is a success. He alone of us all has
+shown real greatness.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And it dawned upon me, as I said it, what Jim had meant by his reference
+to the gopher which learns to stick its head up &#8220;outside the snare.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I want to ask you,&#8221; said Josie, &#8220;is it all true&mdash;what was in the paper
+to-night about all of you, Mr. Hinckley and yourself, and&mdash;all of you
+having failed?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is only a part of the truth,&#8221; I replied. &#8220;We are ruined absolutely.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She said nothing by way of condolence, and uttered no expressions of
+regret or sympathy. She was apparently in a state of suppressed
+excitement, and started at sounds and movements.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is Mr. Elkins very ill?&#8221; said she at length.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So ill,&#8221; said Alice, &#8220;that unless he rallies soon, we shall look for
+the worst.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>No more at this than at the other ill news did Josie express any regret
+or concern. She sat with her fingers clasped together, gazing before her
+at the fire in the grate, as if making some deep and abstruse
+calculation. But when the door-bell rang, she started and listened
+attentively, as the servant went to the door, and then returned to us.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A gentleman, Mr. Cornish, to see Miss Trescott,&#8221; said the maid. &#8220;And he
+says he must see her for a moment.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Alice,&#8221; said Josie, under her breath, &#8220;you go, please! Say to him that
+I cannot see him&mdash;now! Oh, why did he follow me here?&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_335" id="pg_335">335</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Josie,&#8221; said Alice dramatically, &#8220;you don&#8217;t mean to say that you are
+afraid of this man! Are you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, no!&#8221; said the girl doubtfully and distressfully; &#8220;but it&#8217;s so hard
+to say &#8216;No&#8217; to him! If you only knew all, Alice, you wouldn&#8217;t blame
+me&mdash;and you&#8217;d go!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you&#8217;re so far gone&mdash;under his influence,&#8221; said Alice, &#8220;that you
+can&#8217;t trust yourself to say &#8216;No,&#8217; Josephine Trescott, go, in Heaven&#8217;s
+name, and say &#8216;Yes,&#8217; and be the wife of a millionaire&mdash;and a traitor and
+scoundrel!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As Alice said this she came perilously near the histrionic standard of
+the tragic stage. Josie rose, looked at her in surprise, in which there
+seemed to be some defiance, and walked steadily out to the parlor. I was
+glad to be out of the affair, and went back to Jim. I stood regarding my
+broken and forsaken friend, in watching whose uneasy sleep I forgot the
+crisis downstairs, when I was startled and angered by the slamming of
+the front door, and heard a carriage rattle furiously away down the
+street.</p>
+
+<p>Soon I heard the rustle of skirts, and looked up, thinking to see my
+wife. But it was Josie. She came in, as if she were the regularly
+ordained nurse, and stepped to the bedside of the sleeping patient. The
+broken arm in its swathings lay partly uncovered; and across his wounded
+brow was stretched a broad bandage, below which his face showed pale and
+weary-looking, in the half-stupor of his deathlike slumber: for he had
+become strangely quiet. His<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_336" id="pg_336">336</a></span> uninjured arm lay inertly on the
+counterpane beside him.</p>
+
+<p>She took his hand, and, seating herself on the bed, began softly
+stroking and patting the hand, gazing all the time in his face. He
+stirred, and, turning his eyes toward her, awoke.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t move, my darling,&#8221; said she quietly, and as if she had been for a
+long, long time quite in the habit of so speaking to him; &#8220;don&#8217;t move,
+or you&#8217;ll hurt your arm.&#8221; Then she bent down her head, lower and lower,
+until her cheek touched his.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve come to sit with you, Jim, dear,&#8221; said she, softly&mdash;&#8220;if you want
+me&mdash;if I can do you any good.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I want you, always,&#8221; said he.</p>
+
+<p>She stooped again, and this time laid her lips lingeringly on his; and
+his arm stole about the slim waist.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you&#8217;ll just get well,&#8221; she whispered, &#8220;you may have me&mdash;always!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He passed his fingers over her hair, and kissed her again and again.
+Then he looked at her long and earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where&#8217;s Al?&#8221; said he; &#8220;I want Al!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I came forward promptly. I thought that this violation of the doctor&#8217;s
+regulation requiring rest and quiet had gone quite far enough.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Al,&#8221; said he, still holding her hand, &#8220;do you remember out there by the
+windmill tower that night, and the petunias and four-o&#8217;clocks?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, Jim, I remember,&#8221; said I. &#8220;But you mustn&#8217;t talk any more now.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, I won&#8217;t,&#8221; said he, and went right on; &#8220;but<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg_337" id="pg_337">337</a></span> even before that, and
+ever since, I haven&#8217;t wanted anything we&#8217;ve been trying so hard to get,
+half as much as I&#8217;ve wanted Josie; and now&mdash;we lost the fight, didn&#8217;t
+we? Things have been slipping away from us, haven&#8217;t they? Gone, aren&#8217;t
+they?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Go to sleep now, Jim,&#8221; said I. &#8220;Plenty of time for those things when
+you wake up.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said he; &#8220;but before I do, I want you to tell me one thing,
+honest injun, hope to die, you know!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said I; &#8220;what is it, Jim?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve been seeing a lot of funny things in the dark corners about here;
+but this seems more real than any of them,&#8221; he went on; &#8220;and I want you
+to tell me&mdash;<i>is this really Josie</i>?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Really,&#8221; I assured him, &#8220;really, it is.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Jim, Jim!&#8221; she cried, &#8220;have you learned to doubt my reality, just
+because I&#8217;m kind! Why, I&#8217;m going to be good to you now, dearest, always,
+always! And kinder than you ever dreamed, Jim. And I&#8217;m going to show you
+that everything has not slipped away from you, my poor, poor boy; and
+that, whatever may come, I shall be with you always. Only get well; only
+get well!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Josie,&#8221; said he, smiling wanly, &#8220;you couldn&#8217;t kill me&mdash;now&mdash;not with an
+ax!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:3em; text-align:center;">THE END</p>
+
+<hr class="dashed" />
+
+<h2>FAMOUS COPYRIGHT BOOKS<br />IN POPULAR PRICED EDITIONS</h2>
+
+<p>Re-issues of the great literary successes of the time. Library size.
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+beauty&mdash;and handsomely bound in cloth. Price, 75 cents a volume,
+postpaid.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE CIRCULAR STAIRCASE, By Mary Roberts Reinhart</b></p>
+
+<p>With illustrations by Lester Ralph.</p>
+
+<p>In an extended notice the <i>New York Sun</i> says: &#8220;To readers who care for
+a really good detective story &#8216;The Circular Staircase&#8217; can be
+recommended without reservation.&#8221; The <i>Philadelphia Record</i> declares that
+&#8220;The Circular Staircase&#8221; deserves the laurels for thrills, for weirdness
+and things unexplained and inexplicable.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE RED YEAR, By Louis Tracy</b></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Tracy gives by far the most realistic and impressive pictures of
+the horrors and heroisms of the Indian Mutiny that has been available in
+any book of the kind * * * There has not been in modern times in the
+history of any land scenes so fearful, so picturesque, so dramatic, and
+Mr. Tracy draws them as with the pencil of a Verestschagin of the pen of
+a Sienkiewics.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>ARMS AND THE WOMAN, By Harold MacGrath</b></p>
+
+<p>With inlay cover in colors by Harrison Fisher.</p>
+
+<p>The story is a blending of the romance and adventure of the middle ages
+with nineteenth century men and women; and they are creations of flesh
+and blood, and not mere pictures of past centuries. The story is about
+Jack Winthrop, a newspaper man. Mr. MacGrath&#8217;s finest bit of character
+drawing is seen in Hillars, the broken down newspaper man, and Jack&#8217;s
+chum.</p>
+
+<p><b>LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL, By Geo. Cary Eggleston</b></p>
+
+<p>With illustrations by Hermann Heyer.</p>
+
+<p>In this &#8220;plantation romance&#8221; Mr. Eggleston has resumed the manner and
+method that made his &#8220;Dorothy South&#8221; one of the most famous books of its
+time.</p>
+
+<p>There are three tender love stories embodied in it, and two unusually
+interesting heroines, utterly unlike each other, but each possessed of a
+peculiar fascination which wins and holds the reader&#8217;s sympathy. A
+pleasing vein of gentle humor runs through the work, but the &#8220;sum of it
+all&#8221; is an intensely sympathetic love story.</p>
+
+<p><b>HEARTS AND THE CROSS, By Harold Morton Cramer</b></p>
+
+<p>With illustrations by Harold Matthews Brett.</p>
+
+<p>The hero is an unconventional preacher who follows the line of the Man
+of Galilee, associating with the lowly, and working for them in the ways
+that may best serve them. He is not recognized at his real value except
+by the one woman who saw clearly. Their love story is one of the
+refreshing things in recent fiction.</p>
+
+<p class="c"><b>GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK</b></p>
+
+<hr class="dashed" />
+
+<h2>FAMOUS COPYRIGHT BOOKS<br />IN POPULAR PRICED EDITIONS</h2>
+
+<p>Re-issues of the great literary successes of the time. Library size.
+Printed on excellent paper&mdash;most of them with illustrations of marked
+beauty&mdash;and handsomely bound in cloth. Price, 75 cents a volume,
+postpaid.</p>
+
+<p><b>NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA</b>,</p>
+
+<p><b>By Kate Douglas Wiggin</b> With illustrations by F. C. Yohn</p>
+
+<p>Additional episodes in the girlhood of the delightful little heroine at
+Riverboro which were not included in the story of &#8220;Rebecca of Sunnybrook
+Farm,&#8221; and they are as characteristic and delightful as any part of that
+famous story. Rebecca is as distinct a creation in the second volume as
+in the first.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE SILVER BUTTERFLY, By Mrs. Wilson Woodrow</b></p>
+
+<p>With illustrations in colors by Howard Chandler Christy.</p>
+
+<p>A story of love and mystery, full of color, charm, and vivacity, dealing
+with a South American mine, rich beyond dreams, and of a New York
+maiden, beyond dreams beautiful&mdash;both known as the Silver Butterfly.
+Well named is <i>The Silver Butterfly!</i> There could not be a better symbol
+of the darting swiftness, the eager love plot, the elusive mystery and
+the flashing wit.</p>
+
+<p><b>BEATRIX OF CLARE, By John Reed Scott</b></p>
+
+<p>With illustrations by Clarence F. Underwood.</p>
+
+<p>A spirited and irresistibly attractive historical romance of the
+fifteenth century, boldly conceived and skilfully carried out. In the
+hero and heroine Mr. Scott has created a pair whose mingled emotions and
+alternating hopes and fears will find a welcome in many lovers of the
+present hour. Beatrix is a fascinating daughter of Eve.</p>
+
+<p><b>A LITTLE BROTHER OF THE RICH</b>,</p>
+
+<p><b>By Joseph Medill Patterson</b></p>
+
+<p>Frontispiece by Hazel Martyn Trudeau, and illustrations by Walter Dean
+Goldbeck.</p>
+
+<p>Tells the story of the idle rich, and is a vivid and truthful picture of
+society and stage life written by one who is himself a conspicuous
+member of the Western millionaire class. Full of grim satire, caustic
+wit and flashing epigrams. &#8220;Is sensational to a degree in its theme,
+daring in its treatment, lashing society as it was never scourged
+before.&#8221;&mdash;<i>New York Sun</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="c"><b>GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK</b></p>
+
+<hr class="dashed" />
+
+<h2>FAMOUS COPYRIGHT BOOKS<br />IN POPULAR PRICED EDITIONS</h2>
+
+<p>Re-issues of the great literary successes of the time. Library size.
+Printed on excellent paper&mdash;most of them with illustrations of marked
+beauty&mdash;and handsomely bound in cloth. Price, 75 cents a volume,
+postpaid.</p>
+
+<p>THE FAIR GOD; OR, THE LAST OF THE TZINS. By Lew Wallace. With
+illustrations by Eric Pape.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The story tells of the love of a native princess for Alvarado, and it
+is worked out with all of Wallace&#8217;s skill * * * it gives a fine picture
+of the heroism of the Spanish conquerors and of the culture and nobility
+of the Aztecs.&#8221;&mdash;<i>New York Commercial Advertiser</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<i>Ben Hur</i> sold enormously, but <i>The Fair God</i> was the best of the
+General&#8217;s stories&mdash;a powerful and romantic treatment of the defeat of
+Montezuma by Cortes.&#8221;&mdash;<i>Athen&aelig;um</i>.</p>
+
+<p>THE CAPTAIN OF THE KANSAS. By Louis Tracy.</p>
+
+<p>A story of love and the salt sea&mdash;of a helpless ship whirled into the
+hands of cannibal Fuegians&mdash;of desperate fighting and tender romance,
+enhanced by the art of a master of story telling who describes with his
+wonted felicity and power of holding the reader&#8217;s attention * * * filled
+with the swing of adventure.</p>
+
+<p>A MIDNIGHT GUEST. A Detective Story. By Fred M. White. With a
+frontispiece.</p>
+
+<p>The scene of the story centers in London and Italy. The book is
+skilfully written and makes one of the most baffling, mystifying,
+exciting detective stories ever written&mdash;cleverly keeping the suspense
+and mystery intact until the surprising discoveries which precede the
+end.</p>
+
+<p>THE HONOUR OF SAVELLI. A Romance. By S. Levett Yeats. With cover and
+wrapper in four colors.</p>
+
+<p>Those who enjoyed Stanley Weyman&#8217;s <i>A Gentleman of France</i> will be
+engrossed and captivated by this delightful romance of Italian history.
+It is replete with exciting episodes, hair-breath escapes, magnificent
+sword-play, and deals with the agitating times in Italian history when
+Alexander II was Pope and the famous and infamous Borgias were tottering
+to their fall.</p>
+
+<p>SISTER CARRIE. By Theodore Drieser. With a frontispiece, and wrapper in
+color.</p>
+
+<p>In all fiction there is probably no more graphic and poignant study of
+the way in which man loses his grip on life, lets his pride, his
+courage, his self-respect slip from him, and, finally, even ceases to
+struggle in the mire that has engulfed him. * * * There is more tonic
+value in <i>Sister Carrie</i> than in a whole shelfful of sermons.</p>
+
+<p class="c"><b>GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK</b></p>
+
+<hr class="dashed" />
+
+<h2>FAMOUS COPYRIGHT BOOKS<br />IN POPULAR PRICED EDITIONS</h2>
+
+<p>Re-issues of the great literary successes of the time. Library size.
+Printed on excellent paper&mdash;most of them with illustrations of marked
+beauty&mdash;and handsomely bound in cloth. Price, 75 cents a volume,
+postpaid.</p>
+
+<p>LAVENDER AND OLD LACE. By Myrtle Reed.</p>
+
+<p>A charming story of a quaint corner of New England where bygone romance
+finds a modern parallel. One of the prettiest, sweetest, and quaintest
+of old-fashioned love stories * * * A rare book, exquisite in spirit and
+conception, full of delicate fancy, of tenderness, of delightful humor
+and spontaneity. A dainty volume, especially suitable for a gift.</p>
+
+<p>DOCTOR LUKE OF THE LABRADOR. By Norman Duncan. With a frontispiece and
+inlay cover.</p>
+
+<p>How the doctor came to the bleak Labrador coast and there in saving life
+made expiation. In dignity, simplicity, humor, in sympathetic etching of
+a sturdy fisher people, and above all in the echoes of the sea, <i>Doctor
+Luke</i> is worthy of great praise. Character, humor, poignant pathos, and
+the sad grotesque conjunctions of old and new civilizations are
+expressed through the medium of a style that has distinction and strikes
+a note of rare personality.</p>
+
+<p>THE DAY&#8217;S WORK. By Rudyard Kipling. Illustrated.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>London Morning Post</i> says: &#8220;It would be hard to find better reading
+* * * the book is so varied, so full of color and life from end to end,
+that few who read the first two or three stories will lay it down till
+they have read the last&mdash;and the last is a veritable gem gem * * *
+contains some of the best of his highly vivid work * * * Kipling is a
+born story-teller and a man of humor into the bargain.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>ELEANOR LEE. By Margaret E. Sangster. With a frontispiece.</p>
+
+<p>A story of married life, and attractive picture of wedded bliss * * * an
+entertaining story of a man&#8217;s redemption through a woman&#8217;s love * * * no
+one who knows anything of marriage or parenthood can read this story
+with eyes that are always dry * * * goes straight to the heart of every
+one who knows the meaning of &#8220;love&#8221; and &#8220;home.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>THE COLONEL OF THE RED HUZZARS. By John Reed Scott. Illustrated by
+Clarence F. Underwood.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Full of absorbing charm, sustained interest, and a wealth of thrilling
+and romantic situations. So naively fresh in its handling, so plausible
+through its naturalness, that it comes like a mountain breeze across the
+far-spreading desert of similar romances.&#8221;&mdash;<i>Gazette-Times, Pittsburg</i>.
+&#8220;A slap-dashing day romance.&#8221;&mdash;<i>New York Sun</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="c"><b>GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK</b></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Aladdin & Co., by Herbert Quick
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Aladdin & Co., by Herbert Quick
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Aladdin & Co.
+       A Romance of Yankee Magic
+
+Author: Herbert Quick
+
+Release Date: December 5, 2007 [EBook #23745]
+[Last update: December 17, 2012]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALADDIN & CO. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+ALADDIN & CO.
+
+A ROMANCE OF YANKEE MAGIC
+
+BY
+HERBERT QUICK
+
+Author of
+"Virginia of the Air Lanes," "Double Trouble," etc.
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP
+Publishers--New York
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Copyright 1904
+Henry Holt and Company
+
+Copyright 1907
+The Bobbs-Merrill Company
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Contents.
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+CHAPTER I.
+Which is of an Introductory Character                                  1
+
+CHAPTER II.
+Still Introductory                                                    13
+
+CHAPTER III.
+Reminiscentially Autobiographical                                     20
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+Jim Discovers his Coral Island                                        39
+
+CHAPTER V.
+We Reach the Atoll                                                    46
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+I am Inducted into the Cave, and Enlist                               55
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+We Make our Landing                                                   67
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+A Welcome to Wall Street and Us                                       77
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+I Go Abroad and We Unfurl the Jolly Roger                             86
+
+CHAPTER X.
+We Dedicate Lynhurst Park                                             96
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+The Empress and Sir John Meet Again                                  112
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+In which the Burdens of Wealth Begin to Fall upon Us                 120
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+A Sitting or Two in the Game with the World and Destiny              137
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+In which we Learn Something of Railroads, and Attend
+Some Remarkable Christenings                                         152
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+Some Affairs of the Heart Considered in their Relation
+to Dollars and Cents                                                 169
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+Some Things which Happened in our Halcyon Days                       185
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+Relating to the Disposition of the Captives                          201
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+The Going Away of Laura and Clifford, and the
+Departure of Mr. Trescott                                            214
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+In which Events Resume their Usual Course--at a
+Somewhat Accelerated Pace                                            231
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+I Twice Explain the Condition of the Trescott Estate                 248
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+Of Conflicts, Within and Without                                     260
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+In which I Win my Great Victory                                      270
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+The "Dutchman's Mill" and What it Ground                             281
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+The Beginning of the End                                             291
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+That Last Weird Battle in the West                                   306
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+The End--and a Beginning                                             320
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+ALADDIN & CO
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+THE PERSONS OF THE STORY.
+
+James Elkins, the "man who made Lattimore," known as "Jim."
+
+Albert Barslow, who tells the tale; the friend and partner of Jim.
+
+Alice Barslow, his wife; at first, his sweetheart.
+
+William Trescott, known as "Bill," a farmer and capitalist.
+
+Josephine Trescott, his daughter.
+
+Mrs. Trescott, his wife.
+
+Mr. Hinckley, a banker of Lattimore.
+
+Mrs. Hinckley, his wife; devoted to the emancipation of woman.
+
+Antonia, their daughter.
+
+Aleck Macdonald, pioneer and capitalist.
+
+General Lattimore, pioneer, soldier, and godfather of Lattimore.
+
+Miss Addison, the general's niece.
+
+Captain Marion Tolliver, Confederate veteran and Lattimore boomer.
+
+Mrs. Tolliver, his wife.
+
+Will Lattimore, a lawyer.
+
+Mr. Ballard, a banker.
+
+J. Bedford Cornish, a speculator, who with Elkins, Barslow,
+and Hinckley make up the great Lattimore "Syndicate."
+
+Clifford Giddings, editor and proprietor of the Lattimore Herald.
+
+De Forest Barr-Smith, an Englishman "representing capital."
+
+Cecil Barr-Smith, his brother.
+
+Avery Pendleton, of New York, a railway magnate; head
+of the "Pendleton System."
+
+Allen G. Wade, of New York; head of the Allen G. Wade Trust Co.
+
+Halliday, a railway magnate; head of the "Halliday System."
+
+Watson, a reporter.
+
+Schwartz, a locomotive engineer on the Lattimore & Great Western.
+
+Hegvold, a fireman.
+
+Citizens of Lattimore, Politicians, Live-stock Merchants,
+Railway Clerks and Officials, etc.
+
+Scene: Principally in the Western town of Lattimore,
+but partly in New York and Chicago.
+
+Time: Not so very long ago.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+ALADDIN & CO
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Which is of Introductory Character.
+
+
+Our National Convention met in Chicago that year, and I was one of the
+delegates. I had looked forward to it with keen expectancy. I was now,
+at five o'clock of the first day, admitting to myself that it was a
+bore.
+
+The special train, with its crowd of overstimulated enthusiasts, the
+throngs at the stations, the brass bands, bunting, and buncombe all
+jarred upon me. After a while my treason was betrayed to the boys by the
+fact that I was not hoarse. They punished me by making me sing as a solo
+the air of each stanza of "Marching Through Georgia," "Tenting To-night
+on the Old Camp-ground," and other patriotic songs, until my voice was
+assimilated to theirs. But my gorge rose at it all, and now, at five
+o'clock of the first day, I was seeking a place of retirement where I
+could be alone and think over the marvelous event which had suddenly
+raised me from yesterday's parity with the fellows on the train to my
+present state of exaltation.
+
+I should have preferred a grotto in Vau Vau or some south-looking
+mountain glen; but in the absence of any such retreat in Chicago, I
+turned into the old art-gallery in Michigan Avenue. As I went floating
+in space past its door, my eye caught through the window the gleam of
+the white limbs of statues, and my being responded to the soul
+vibrations they sent out. So I paid my fee, entered, and found the
+tender solitude for which my heart longed. I sat down and luxuriated in
+thoughts of the so recent marvelous experience. Need I explain that I
+was young and the experience was one of the heart?
+
+I was so young that my delegateship was regarded as a matter to excite
+wonder. I saw my picture in the papers next morning as a youth of
+twenty-three who had become his party's leader in an important
+agricultural county. Some, in the shameless laudation of a sensational
+press, compared me to the younger Pitt. As a matter of fact, I had some
+talent for organization, and in any gathering of men, I somehow never
+lacked a following. I was young enough to be an honest partisan,
+enthusiastic enough to be useful, strong enough to be respected,
+ignorant enough to believe my party my country's safeguard, and I was
+prominent in my county before I was old enough to vote. At twenty-one I
+conducted a convention fight which made a member of Congress. It was
+quite natural, therefore, that I should be delegate to this convention,
+and that I had looked forward to it with keen expectancy. The remarkable
+thing was my falling off from its work now by virtue of that recent
+marvelous experience which as I have admitted was one of the heart. Do
+not smile. At three-and-twenty even delegates have hearts.
+
+My mental and sentimental state is of importance in this history, I
+think, or I should not make so much of it. I feel sure that I should not
+have behaved just as I did had I not been at that moment in the
+iridescent cloudland of newly-reciprocated love. Alice had accepted me
+not an hour before my departure for Chicago. Hence my loathing for such
+things as nominating speeches and the report of the Committee on
+Credentials, and my yearning for the Vau Vau grotto. She had yielded
+herself up to me with such manifold sweetnesses, uttered and unutterable
+(all of which had to be gone over in my mind constantly to make sure of
+their reality), that the contest in Indiana, and the cause of our own
+State's Favorite Son, became sickening burdens to me, which rolled away
+as I gazed upon the canvases in the gallery. I lay back upon a seat,
+half closed my eyes, and looked at the pictures. When one comes to
+consider the matter, an art gallery is a wonderfully different thing
+from a national convention!
+
+As I looked on them, the still paintings became instinct with life.
+Yonder shepherdess shielding from the thorns the little white lamb was
+Alice, and back behind the clump of elms was myself, responding to her
+silvery call. The cottage on the mountain-side was ours. That lady
+waving her handkerchief from the promontory was Alice, too; and I was
+the dim figure on the deck of the passing ship. I was the knight and
+she the wood-nymph; I the gladiator in the circus, she the Roman lady
+who agonized for me in the audience; I the troubadour who twanged the
+guitar, she the princess whose fair shoulder shone through the lace at
+the balcony window. They lived and moved before my very eyes. I knew the
+unseen places beyond the painted mountains, and saw the secret things
+the artists only dreamed of. Doves cooed for me from the clumps of
+thorn; the clouds sailed in pearly serenity across the skies, their
+shadows mottling mountain, hill, and plain; and out from behind every
+bole, and through every leafy screen, glimpsed white dryads and fleeing
+fays.
+
+Clearly the convention hall was no place for me. "Hang the speech of the
+temporary chairman, anyhow!" thought I; "and as for the platform, let it
+point with pride, and view with apprehension, to its heart's content; it
+is sure to omit all reference to the overshadowing issue of the
+day--Alice!"
+
+All the world loves a lover, and a true lover loves all the
+world,--especially that portion of it similarly blessed. So, when I
+heard a girl's voice alternating in intimate converse with that of a
+man, my sympathies went out to them, and I turned silently to look. They
+must have come in during my reverie; for I had passed the place where
+they were sitting and had not seen them. There was a piece of grillwork
+between my station and theirs, through which I could see them plainly.
+The gallery had seemed deserted when I went in, and still seemed so,
+save for the two voices.
+
+Hers was low and calm, but very earnest; and there was in it some
+inflection or intonation which reminded me of the country girls I had
+known on the farm and at school. His was of a peculiarly sonorous and
+vibrant quality, its every tone so clear and distinct that it would have
+been worth a fortune to a public speaker. Such a voice and enunciation
+are never associated with any mind not strong in the qualities of
+resolution and decision.
+
+On looking at her, I saw nothing countrified corresponding to the voice.
+She was dressed in something summery and cool, and wore a sort of
+flowered blouse, the presence of which was explained by the easel before
+which she sat, and the palette through which her thumb protruded. She
+had laid down her brush, and the young man was using her mahlstick in a
+badly-directed effort to smear into a design some splotches of paint on
+the unused portion of her canvas.
+
+He was by some years her senior, but both were young--she, very young.
+He was swarthy of complexion, and his smoothly-shaven, square-set jaw
+and full red lips were bluish with the subcutaneous blackness of his
+beard. His dress was so distinctly late in style as to seem almost
+foppish; but there was nothing of the exquisite in his erect and
+athletic form, or in his piercing eye.
+
+She was ruddily fair, with that luxuriant auburn-brown hair which goes
+with eyes of amberish-brown and freckles. These latter she had, I
+observed with a renewal of the thought of the country girls and the old
+district school. She was slender of waist, full of bust, and, after a
+lissome, sylph-like fashion, altogether charming in form. With all her
+roundness, she was slight and a little undersized.
+
+So much of her as there was, the young fellow seemed ready to absorb,
+regarding her with avid eyes--a gaze which she seldom met. But whenever
+he gave his attention to the mahlstick, her eyes sought his countenance
+with a look which was almost scrutiny. It was as if some extrinsic force
+drew her glance to his face, until the stronger compulsion of her
+modesty drove it away at the return of his black orbs. My heart
+recognized with a throb the freemasonry into which I had lately been
+initiated, and, all unknown to them, I hailed them as members of the
+order.
+
+Their conversation came to me in shreds and fragments, which I did not
+at all care to hear. I recognized in it those inanities with which youth
+busies the lips, leaving the mind at rest, that the interplay of
+magnetic discharges from heart to heart may go on uninterruptedly. It is
+a beautiful provision of nature, but I did not at that time admire it. I
+pitied them. Alice and I had passed through that stage, and into the
+phase marked by long and eloquent silences.
+
+"I was brought up to think," I remember to have heard the fair stranger
+say, following out, apparently, some subject under discussion between
+them, "that the surest way to make a child steal jam is to spy upon him.
+I should feel ashamed."
+
+"Quite right," said he, "but in Europe and in the East, and even here in
+Chicago, in some circles, it is looked upon as indispensable, you
+know."
+
+"In art, at least," she went on, "there is no sex. Whoever can help me
+in my work is a companion that I don't need any chaperon to protect me
+from. If I wasn't perfectly sure of that, I should give up and go back
+home."
+
+"Now, don't draw the line so as to shut me out," he protested. "How can
+I help you with your work?"
+
+She looked him steadily in the face now, her intent and questioning
+regard shading off into a somewhat arch smile.
+
+"I can't think of any way," said she, "unless it would be by posing for
+me."
+
+"There's another way," he answered, "and the only one I'd care about."
+
+She suddenly became absorbed in the contemplation of the paints on her
+palette, at which she made little thrusts with a brush; and at last she
+queried, doubtfully, "How?"
+
+"I've heard or read," he answered, "that no artist ever rises to the
+highest, you know, until after experiencing some great love. I--can't
+you think of any other way besides the posing?"
+
+She brought the brush close to her eyes, minutely inspecting its point
+for a moment, then seemed to take in his expression with a swift
+sweeping glance, resumed the examination of the brush, and finally
+looked him in the face again, a little red spot glowing in her cheek,
+and a glint of fire in her eye. I was too dense to understand it, but I
+felt that there was a trace of resentment in her mien.
+
+"Oh, I don't know about that!" she said. "There may be some other way. I
+haven't met all your friends, and you may be the means of introducing me
+to the very man."
+
+I did not hear his reply, though I confess I tried to catch it. She
+resumed her work of copying one of the paintings. This she did in a
+mechanical sort of way, slowly, and with crabbed touches, but with some
+success. I thought her lacking in anything like control over the medium
+in which she worked; but the results promised rather well. He seemed
+annoyed at her sudden accession of industry, and looked sometimes
+quizzically at her work, often hungrily at her. Once or twice he touched
+her hand as she stepped near him; but she neither reproved him nor
+allowed him to retain it.
+
+I felt that I had taken her measure by this time. She was some Western
+country girl, well supplied with money, blindly groping toward the
+career of an artist. Her accent, her dress, and her occupation told of
+her origin and station in life, and of her ambitions. The blindness I
+guessed,--partly from the manner of her work, partly from the inherent
+probabilities of the case. If the young man had been eliminated from
+this problem with which my love-sick imagination was busying itself, I
+could have followed her back confidently to some rural neighborhood, and
+to a year or two of painting portraits from photographs, and landscapes
+from "studies," and exhibiting them at the county fair; the teaching of
+some pupils, in an unnecessary but conscientiously thrifty effort to get
+back some of the money invested in an "art education" in Chicago; and a
+final reversion to type after her marriage with the village lawyer,
+doctor or banker, or the owner of the adjoining farm. I was young; but I
+had studied people, and had already seen such things happen.
+
+But the young man could not be eliminated. He sat there idly, his every
+word and look surcharged with passion. As I wondered how long it would
+be until they were as happy as Alice and I, the thought grew upon me
+that, however familiar might be the type to which she belonged, he was
+unclassified. His accent was Eastern--of New York, I judged. He looked
+like the young men in the magazine illustrations--interesting, but
+outside my field of observation. And I could not fail to see that girl
+must find herself similarly at odds with him. "But," thought I, "love
+levels all!" And I freshly interrogated the pictures and statues for
+transportation to my own private Elysium, forgetful of my unconscious
+neighbors.
+
+My attention was recalled to them, however, by their arrangements for
+departure, and a concomitant slightly louder tone in their conversation.
+
+"It's just a spectacular show," said he; "no plot or anything of that
+sort, you know, but good music and dancing; and when we get tired of it
+we can go. We'll have a little supper at Auriccio's afterward, if you'll
+be so kind. It's only a step from McVicker's."
+
+"Won't it be pretty late?" she queried.
+
+"Not for Chicago," said he, "and you'll find material for a picture at
+Auriccio's about midnight. It's quite like the Latin Quarter,
+sometimes."
+
+"I want to see the real Latin Quarter, and no imitation," she answered.
+"Oh, I guess I'll go. It'll furnish me with material for a letter to
+mamma, however the picture may turn out."
+
+"I'll order supper for the Empress," said he, "and--"
+
+"And for the illustrious Sir John," she added. "But you mustn't call me
+that any more. I've been reading her history, and I don't like it. I'm
+glad he died on St. Helena, now: I used to feel sorry for him."
+
+"Transfer your pity to the downtrodden Sir John," he replied, "and make
+a real living man happy."
+
+They passed out and left me to my dreams. But visions did not return. My
+idyl was spoiled. Old-fashioned ideas emerged, and took form in the
+plain light of every-day common-sense. I knew the wonderfully gorgeous
+spectacle these two young people were going to see at the play that
+night, with its lights, its music, its splendidly meretricious
+Orientalism. And I knew Auriccio's,--not a disreputable place at all,
+perhaps; but free-and-easy, and distinctly Bohemian. I wished that this
+little girl, so arrogantly and ignorantly disdainful (as Alice would
+have been under the same circumstances) of such European conventions as
+the chaperon, so fresh, so young, so full of allurement, so under the
+influence of this smooth, dark, and passionate wooer with the vibrant
+voice, could be otherwise accompanied on this night of pleasure than by
+himself alone.
+
+"It's none of your business," said the voice of that cold-hearted and
+slothful spirit which keeps us in our groove, "and you couldn't do
+anything, anyhow. Besides, he's abjectly in love with her: would there
+be any danger if it were you and your Alice?"
+
+"I'm not at all sure about him or his abjectness," replied my uneasy
+conscience. "He knows better than to do this."
+
+"What do you know of either of them?" answered this same Spirit of
+Routine. "What signify a few sentences casually overheard? She may be
+something quite different; there are strange things in Chicago."
+
+"I'll wager anything," said I hotly, "that she's a good American girl of
+the sort I live among and was brought up with! And she may be in
+danger."
+
+"If she's that sort of girl," said the Voice, "you may rely upon her to
+take care of herself."
+
+"That's pretty nearly true," I admitted.
+
+"Besides," said the Voice illogically, "such things happen every night
+in such a city. It's a part of the great tragedy. Don't be Quixotic!"
+
+Here was where the Voice lost its case: for my conscience was stirred
+afresh; and I went back to the convention-hall carrying on a joint
+debate with myself. Once in the hall, however, I was conscripted into a
+war which was raging all through our delegation over the succession in
+our membership in the National Committee. I thought no more of the idyl
+of the art-gallery until the adjournment for the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Still Introductory.
+
+
+The great throng from the hall surged along the streets in an Amazonian
+network of streams, gathering in boiling lakes in the great hotels,
+dribbling off into the boarding-house districts in the suburbs, seeping
+down into the slimy fens of vice. Again I found myself out of touch with
+it all. I gave my companions the slip, and started for my hotel.
+
+All at once it occurred to me that I had not dined, and with the thought
+came the remembrance of my pair of lovers, and their supper together.
+With a return of the feeling that these were the only people in Chicago
+possessing spirits akin to mine, I shaped my course for Auriccio's. My
+country dazedness led me astray once or twice, but I found the place,
+retreated into the farthest corner, sat down, and ordered supper.
+
+It was not one of the places where the out-of-town visitors were likely
+to resort, and it was in fact rather quieter than usual. The few who
+were at the tables went out before my meal was served, and for a few
+minutes I was alone. Then the Empress and Sir John entered, followed by
+half a dozen other playgoers. The two on whom my sentimental interest
+was fixed came far down toward my position, attracted by the quietude
+which had lured me, and seated themselves at a table in a sort of
+alcove, cut off from the main room by columns and palms, secluded enough
+for privacy, public enough, perhaps, for propriety. So far as I was
+concerned I could see them quite plainly, looking, as I did, from my
+gloomy corner toward the light of the restaurant; and I was sufficiently
+close to be within easy earshot. I began to have the sensation of
+shadowing them, until I recalled the fact that, so far, it had been a
+case of their following me.
+
+I thought his manner toward her had changed since the afternoon. There
+was now an openness of wooing, an abandonment of reserve in glance and
+attitude, which should have admonished her of an approaching crisis in
+their affairs. Yet she seemed cooler and more self-possessed than
+before. Save for a little flutter in her low laugh, I should have
+pronounced her entirely at ease. She looked very sweet and girlish in
+her high-necked dress, which helped make up a costume that she seemed to
+have selected to subdue and conceal, rather than to display, her charms.
+If such was her plan, it went pitifully wrong: his advances went on from
+approach to approach, like the last manoeuvres of a successful siege.
+
+"No," I heard her say, as I became conscious that we three were alone
+again; "not here! Not at all! Stop!"
+
+When I looked at them they were quietly sitting at the table; but her
+face was pale, his flushed. Pretty soon the waiter came and served
+champagne. I felt sure that she had never seen any before.
+
+"How funny it looks," said she, "with the bubbles coming up in the
+middle like a little fountain; and how pretty! Why, the stem is hollow,
+isn't it?"
+
+He laughed and made some foolish remark about love bubbling up in his
+heart. When he set his glass down, I could see that his hands were
+trembling as with palsy,--so much so that it was tipped over and broken.
+
+"I'll fill another," said he. "Aren't you sorry you broke it?"
+
+"I?" she queried. "You're not going to lay that to me, are you?"
+
+"You're the only one to blame!" he replied. "You must hold it till it's
+steady. I'll hold your glass with the other. Why, you don't take any at
+all! Don't you like it, dear?"
+
+She shrank back, looked toward the door, and then took the hand in both
+of hers, holding it close to her side, and drank the wine like a child
+taking medicine. His arm, his hand still holding the glass, slipped
+about her waist, but she turned swiftly and silently freed herself and
+sat down by the chair in which he had meant that both should sit,
+holding his hands. Then in a moment I saw her sitting on the other side
+of the table, and he was filling the glasses again. The guests had all
+departed. The well-disciplined waiters had effaced themselves. Only we
+three were there. I wondered if I ought to do anything.
+
+They sat and talked in low tones. He was drinking a good deal of the
+champagne; she, little; and neither seemed to be eating anything. He sat
+opposite to her, leaning over as if to consume her with his eyes. She
+returned his gaze often now, and often smiled; but her smile was drawn
+and tremulous, and, to my mind, pitifully appealing. I no longer
+wondered if I ought to do anything; for, once, when I partly rose to go
+and speak to them, the impossibility of the thing overcame my half
+resolve, and I sat down. The anti-quixotic spirit won, after all.
+
+At last a waiter, returning with the change for the bill with which I
+had paid my score, was hailed by Sir John, and was paid for their
+supper. I looked to see them as they started for home. The girl rose and
+made a movement toward her wrap. He reached it first and placed it about
+her shoulders. In so doing, he drew her to him, and began speaking
+softly and passionately to her in words I could not hear. Her face was
+turned upward and backward toward him, and all her resistance seemed
+gone. I should have been glad to believe this the safe and triumphant
+surrender to an honest love; but here, after the dances and Stamboul
+spectacles, hidden by the palms, beside the table with its empty bottles
+and its broken glass, how could I believe it such? I turned away, as if
+to avoid the sight of the crushing of some innocent thing which I was
+powerless to aid, and strode toward the door.
+
+Then I heard a little cry, and saw her come flying down the great hall,
+leaving him standing amazedly in the archway of the palm alcove.
+
+She passed me at the door, her face vividly white, went out into the
+street, like a dove from the trap at a shooting tournament, and sprang
+lightly upon a passing street-car. I could act now, and I would see her
+to a place of safety; so I, too, swung on by the rail of the rear car.
+She never once turned her face; but I saw Sir John come to the door of
+the restaurant and look both ways for her, and as he stood perplexed and
+alarmed, our train turned the curve at the next corner, we were swept
+off toward the South Side, and the dark young man passed, as I supposed,
+"into my dreams forever." I made my way forward a few seats and saw her
+sitting there with her head bowed upon the back of the seat in front of
+her. I bitterly wished that he, if he had a heart, might see her there,
+bruised in spirit, her little ignorant white soul, searching itself for
+smutches of the uncleanness it feared. I wished that Alice might be
+there to go to her and comfort her without a word. I paid her fare, and
+the conductor seemed to understand that she was not to be disturbed. A
+drunken man in rough clothes came into the car, walked forward and
+looked at her a moment, and as I was about to go to him and make him sit
+elsewhere, he turned away and came back to the rear, as if he had some
+sort of maudlin realization that the front of the train was sacred
+ground.
+
+At last she looked about, signalled for the car to stop, and alighted. I
+followed, rather suspecting that she did not know her way. She walked
+steadily on, however, to a big, dark house with a vine-covered porch,
+close to the sidewalk. A stout man, coatless, and in a white shirt,
+stood at the gate. He wore a slouch hat, and I knew him, even in that
+dim light, for a farmer. She stopped for a moment, and without a word,
+sprang into his arms.
+
+"Wal, little gal, ain't yeh out purty late?" I heard him say, as I
+walked past. "Didn't expect yer dad to see yeh, did yeh? Why, yeh ain't
+a-cryin', be yeh?"
+
+"O pa! O pa!" was all I heard her say; but it was enough. I walked to
+the corner, and sat down on the curbstone, dead tired, but happy. In a
+little while I went back toward the street-car line, and as I passed the
+vine-clad porch, heard the farmer's bass voice, and stopped to listen,
+frankly an eavesdropper, and feeling, somehow, that I had earned the
+right to hear.
+
+"Why, o' course, I'll take yeh away, ef yeh don't like it here, little
+gal," he was saying. "Yes, we'll go right in an' pack up now, if yeh say
+so. Only it's a little suddent, and may hurt the Madame's feelin's, y'
+know--"
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the hotel I was forced by the crowded state of the city to share the
+bed of one of my fellow delegates. He was a judge from down the state,
+and awoke as I lay down.
+
+"That you, Barslow?" said he. "Do you know a fellow by the name of
+Elkins, of Cleveland?"
+
+"No," said I, "why?"
+
+"He was here to see you, or rather to inquire if you were Al Barslow who
+used to live in Pleasant Valley Township," the Judge went on. "He's the
+fellow who organized the Ohio flambeau brigade. Seems smart."
+
+"Pleasant Valley Township, did he say? Yes, I know him. It's Jimmie
+Elkins."
+
+And I sank to sleep and to dreams, in which Jimmie Elkins, the Empress,
+Sir John, Alice, and myself acted in a spectacular drama, like that at
+McVicker's. And yet there are those who say there is nothing in dreams!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Reminiscentially Autobiographical.
+
+
+This Jimmie Elkins was several years older than I; but that did not
+prevent us, as boys, from being fast friends. At seventeen he had a
+coterie of followers among the smaller fry of ten and twelve, his tastes
+clinging long to the things of boyhood. He and I played together, after
+the darkening of his lip suggested the razor, and when the youths of his
+age were most of them acquiring top buggies, and thinking of the long
+Sunday-night drives with their girls. Jim preferred the boys, and the
+trade of the fisher and huntsman.
+
+Why, in spite of parental opposition, I loved Jimmie, is not hard to
+guess. He had an odd and freakish humor, and talked more of
+Indian-fighting, filibustering in gold-bearing regions, and of moving
+accidents by flood and field, than of crops, live-stock, or bowery
+dances. He liked me just as did the older men who sent me to the
+National Convention,--in spite of my youth. He was a ne'er-do-weel, said
+my father, but I snared gophers and hunted and fished with him, and we
+loved each other as brothers seldom do.
+
+At last, I began teaching school, and working my way to a better
+education than our local standard accepted as either useful or
+necessary, and Jim and I drifted apart. He had always kept up a
+voluminous correspondence with that class of advertisers whose
+black-letter "Agents Wanted" is so attractive to the farmer-boy; and he
+was usually agent for some of their wares. Finally, I heard of him as a
+canvasser for a book sold by subscription,--a "Veterinarians' Guide," I
+believe it was,--and report said that he was "making money." Again I
+learned that he had established a publishing business of some kind; and,
+later, that reverses had forced him to discontinue it,--the old farmer
+who told me said he had "failed up." Then I heard no more of him until
+that night of the convention, when I had the adventure with the Empress
+and Sir John, all unknown to them; and Jim made the ineffectual attempt
+to find me. His family had left the old neighborhood, and so had mine;
+and the chances of our ever meeting seemed very slight. In fact it was
+some years later and after many of the brave dreams of the youthful
+publicist had passed away, that I casually stumbled upon him in the
+smoking-room of a parlor-car, coming out of Chicago.
+
+I did not know him at first. He came forward, and, extending his hand,
+said, "How are you, Al?" and paused, holding the hand I gave him,
+evidently expecting to enjoy a period of perplexity on my part. But with
+one good look in his eyes I knew him. I made him sit down by me, and for
+half an hour we were too much engrossed in reminiscences to ask after
+such small matters as business, residence, and general welfare.
+
+"Where all have you been, Jim, and what have you been doing, since you
+followed off the 'Veterinarians' Guide,' and I lost you?" I inquired at
+last.
+
+"I've been everywhere, and I've done everything, almost," said he. "Put
+it in the 'negative case,' and my history'll be briefer."
+
+"I should regard organizing a flambeau brigade," said I, "as about the
+last thing you would engage in."
+
+"Ah!" he replied, "His Whiskers at the hotel told you I called that
+time, did he? Well, I didn't think he had the sense. And I doubted the
+memory on your part, and I wasn't at all sure you were the real Barslow.
+But about the flambeaux. The fact is, I had some stock in the flambeau
+factory, and I was a rabid partisan of flambeaux. They seemed so
+patriotic, you know, so sort of ennobling, and so convincing, as to the
+merits of the tariff controversy!"
+
+It was the same old Jim, I thought.
+
+"We used to have a scheme," I remarked, "our favorite one, of occupying
+an island in the Pacific,--or was it somewhere in the vicinity of the
+Spanish Main--"
+
+"If it was the place where we were to make slaves of all the natives,
+and I was to be king, and you Grand Vizier," he answered, as if it were
+a weighty matter, and he on the witness-stand, "it was in the
+Pacific--the South Pacific, where the whale-oil comes from. A coral
+atoll, with a crystal lagoon in the middle for our ships, and a fringe
+of palms along the margin--coco-palms, you remember; and the lagoon was
+green, sometimes, and sometimes blue; and the sharks never came over the
+bar, but the porpoises came in and played for us, and made fireworks in
+the phosphorescent waves...."
+
+His eyes grew almost tender, as he gazed out of the window, and ceased
+to speak without finishing the sentence,--which it took me some minutes
+to follow out to the end, in my mind. I was delighted and touched to
+find these foolish things so green in his memory.
+
+"The plan involved," said I soberly, "capturing a Spanish galleon filled
+with treasure, finding two lovely ladies in the cabin, and offering them
+their liberty. And we sailed with them for a port; and, as I remember
+it, their tears at parting conquered us, and we married them; and lived
+richer than oil magnates, and grander than Monte Cristos forever after:
+do you remember?"
+
+"Remember! Well, I should smile!"--he had been laughing like a boy, with
+his old frank laugh. "Them's the things we don't forget.... Did you ever
+gather any information as to what a galleon really was? I never did."
+
+"I had no more idea than I now have of the Rosicrucian Mysteries; and I
+must confess," said I, "that I'm a little hazy on the galleon question
+yet. As to piracy, now, and robbers and robbery, actual life fills out
+the gaps in the imagination of boyhood, doesn't it, Jim?"
+
+"Apt to," he assented, "but specifically? As to which, you know?"
+
+"Well, I've had my share of experience with them," I answered, "though
+not so much in the line of rob-or, as we planned, but more as rob-ee."
+
+Jim looked at me quizzically.
+
+"Board of Trade, faro, or ... what?" he ventured.
+
+"General business," I responded, "and ... politics."
+
+"Local, state, or national?" he went on, craftily ignoring the general
+business.
+
+"A little national, some state, but the bulk of it local. I've been
+elected County Treasurer, down where I live, for four successive terms."
+
+"Good for you!" he responded. "But I don't see how that can be made to
+harmonize with your remark about rob-or and rob-ee. It's been your own
+fault, if you haven't been on the profitable side of the game, with the
+dear people on the other. And I judge from your looks that you eat three
+meals a day, right along, anyhow. Come, now, b'lay this rob-ee business
+(as Sir Henry Morgan used to say) till you get back to Buncombe County.
+As a former partner in crime, I won't squeal; and the next election is
+some ways off, anyhow. No concealment among pals, now, Al, it's no fair,
+you know, and it destroys confidence and breeds discord. Many a good,
+honest, piratical enterprise has been busted up by concealment and lack
+of confidence. Always trust your fellow pirates,--especially in things
+they know all about by extrinsic evidence,--and keep concealment for the
+great world of the unsophisticated and gullible, and to catch the
+sucker vote with. But among ourselves, my beloved, fidelity to truth,
+and openness of heart is the first rule, right out of Hoyle. With dry
+powder, mutual confidence, and sharp cutlasses, we are invincible; and
+as the poet saith,
+
+    "'Far as the tum-te-tum the billows foam
+    Survey our empire and behold our home,'
+
+or words to that effect. And to think of your trying to deceive me, your
+former chieftain, who doesn't even vote in your county or state, and
+moreover always forgets election! Rob-ee indeed! rats! Al, I'm ashamed
+of you, by George, I am!"
+
+This speech he delivered with a ridiculous imitation of the tricks of
+the elocutionist. It was worthy of the burlesque stage. The conductor,
+passing through, was attracted by it, and notified us that the solitude
+of the smoking-room had been invaded, by a slight burst of applause at
+Jim's peroration, followed by the vanishing of the audience.
+
+"No need for any further concealment on my part, so far as elections are
+concerned," said I, when we had finished our laugh, "for I go out of
+office January first, next."
+
+"Oh, well, that accounts for it, then," said he. "I notice, say, three
+kinds of retirement from office: voluntary (very rare), post-convention,
+and post-election. Which is yours?"
+
+"Post-convention, I'm sorry to say. I wish it had been voluntary."
+
+"It _is_ the cheapest; but you're in great luck not to get licked at the
+polls. Altogether, you're in great luck. You've been betting on a game
+in which the percentage is mighty big in favor of the house, and you've
+won three or four consecutive turns out of the box. You've got no kick
+coming: you're in big luck. Don't you know you are?"
+
+I did not feel called upon to commit myself; and we smoked on for some
+time in silence.
+
+"It strikes me, Jim," said I, at last, "that you've done all the
+cross-examination, and that it is time to listen to your report. How
+about you and your conduct?"
+
+"As for my conduct," was the prompt answer, "it's away up in the
+neighborhood of G. I've managed to hold the confounded world up for a
+living, ever since I left Pleasant Valley Township. Some of the time the
+picking has been better than at others; but my periods of starvation
+have been brief. By practicing on the 'Veterinarians' Guide' and other
+similar fakes, I learned how to talk to people so as to make them
+believe what I said about things, with the result, usually, of wooing
+the shrinking and cloistered dollar from its lair. When a fellow gets
+this trick down fine, he can always find a market for his services. I
+handled hotel registers, city directories, and like literature,
+including county histories--"
+
+"Sh-h-h!" said I, "somebody might hear you."
+
+"--and at last, after a conference with my present employers, the error
+of my way presented itself to me, and I felt called to a higher and
+holier profession. I yielded to my good angel, turned my better nature
+loose, and became a missionary."
+
+"A what!" I exclaimed.
+
+"A missionary," he responded soberly. "That is, you understand, not one
+of these theological, India's-coral-strand guys; but one who goes about
+the United States of America in a modest and unassuming way, doing good
+so far as in him lies."
+
+"I see," said I, punning horribly, "'in him lies.'"
+
+"Eh?... Yes. Have another cigar. Well, now, you can't defend this
+foreign-mission business to me for a minute. The hills, right in this
+vicinity, are even now white to the harvest. Folks here want the light
+just as bad as the foreign heathen; and so I took up my burden, and went
+out to disseminate truth, as the soliciting agent of the Frugality and
+Indemnity Life Association, which presented itself to me as the capacity
+in which I could best combine repentance with its fruits."
+
+"I perceive," said I.
+
+"Perfectly plain, isn't it, to the seeing eye?" he went on. "You see it
+was like this: Charley Harper and I had been together in the Garden City
+Land Company, years ago, during the boom--by the way, I didn't mention
+that in my report, did I? Well, of course, that company went up just as
+they all did, and neither Charley nor I got to be receiver, as we'd sort
+of laid out to do, and we separated. I went back to my literature--hotel
+registers, with an advertising scheme, with headquarters at Cleveland.
+That's how I happened to be an Ohio man at that national convention.
+Charley always had a leaning toward insurance, and went down into
+Illinois, and started a mutual-benefit organization, which he kept
+going a few years down on the farm--Springfield, or Jacksonville, or
+somewhere down there; and when I ketched up with him again, he was just
+changing it to the old-line plan, and bringing it to the metropolis.
+Well, I helped him some to enlist capital, and he offered me the
+position of Superintendent of Agents. I accepted, and after serving
+awhile in the ranks to sort of get onto the ropes, here I am, just
+starting out on a trip which will take me through a number of states."
+
+"How does it agree with you?" I inquired.
+
+"Not well," said he, "but the good I accomplish is a great comfort to
+me. On this trip, now, I expect to do much in the way of stimulating the
+boys up to their great work of spreading the light of the gospel of true
+insurance. Sometimes, in these days of apathy and error, I find my
+burden a heavy one; and notwithstanding the quiet of conscience I gain,
+if it weren't for the salary, I'd quit to-morrow, Al, danged if I
+wouldn't. It makes me tired to have even you sort of hint that I'm
+actuated by some selfish motive, when, in truth and in fact, I live but
+to gather widows and orphans under my wing, so to speak, and give second
+husbands a good start, by means of policies written on the only true
+plan, combining participation in profits with pure mutuality, and--"
+
+"Never mind!" said I with a silence-commanding gesture. "I've heard all
+that before. You're onto the ropes thoroughly; but don't practice your
+infernal arts on me! I hope the salary is satisfactory?"
+
+"Fairish; but not high, considering what they get for it."
+
+"You used to be more modest," said I. "I remember that you once nearly
+broke your heart because you couldn't summon up courage to ask Creeshy
+Hammond to go to the 'Fourth' with you; d'ye remember?"
+
+"Well, I guess, yes!" he replied. "Wasn't I a miserable wretch for a few
+days! And I've never been able to ask any woman I cared about, the
+fateful question, yet."
+
+We went into the parlor-car, and talked over old times and new for an
+hour. I told him of my marriage and my home, and I studied him. I saw
+that he still preserved his humorous, mock-serious style of
+conversation, and that his hand-to-hand battle with the world had made
+him good-humoredly cynical. He evinced a knowledge of more things than I
+should have expected; and had somehow acquired an imposing manner, in
+spite of his rather slangy, if expressive, vocabulary. He had the power
+of making statements of mere opinion, which, from some vibration of
+voice or trick of expression, struck the hearer as solid facts, thrice
+buttressed by evidence. He bore no marks of dissipation, unless the
+occasional use of terms traceable to the turf or the gaming-table might
+be considered such; but these expressions, I considered, are so
+constantly before every reader of the newspapers that the language of
+the pulpit, even, is infected by them. Their evidential value being thus
+destroyed, they ought not to be weighed at all, as against firm,
+wholesome flesh, a good complexion, and a clear eye, all of which Mr.
+Elkins possessed.
+
+"It's funny," said I, "how seldom I meet any of the old neighbor-boys.
+Do you see any of them in your travels?"
+
+"Not often," he answered, "but you remember little Ed Smith, who lived
+on the Hayes place for a while, and brought the streaked snake into the
+schoolhouse while Julia Fanning was teaching? Well, he was an architect
+at Garden City, and lives in Chicago now. We sort of chum together: saw
+him yesterday. He left Garden City when the land company went up. I tell
+you, that was a hot town for a while! Railroads, and factories, and
+irrigation schemes, and prices scooting toward the zenith, till you
+couldn't rest. If I'd got into that push soon enough, I shouldn't have
+made a thing but money; as it was, I didn't lose only what I had. A good
+many of the boys lost a lot more. But I tell you, Al, a boom properly
+boomed is a sure thing."
+
+"You're a constant source of surprise to me, Jim," said I. "I should
+have thought them sure to lose."
+
+"They're sure to win," said he earnestly.
+
+I demurred. "I don't see how that can possibly be," said I, "for of all
+things, booms seem to me the most fickle and incalculable."
+
+"They seem so," said he, smiling, but still in earnest, "to your rustic
+and untaught mind, and to most others, because they haven't been
+studied. The comet, likewise, doesn't seem very stable or dependable;
+but to the eye of the astronomer its orbit is plain, and the time of its
+return engagement pretty certain. It's the same with seventeen-year
+locusts--and booms; their visits are so far apart that the masses forget
+their birthmarks and the W's on their backs. But if you'll follow their
+appearances from place to place, as I've done, putting up my ante right
+along for the privilege, you'll become an accomplished boomist; and from
+the first gentle stirrings of boom-sprouts in the soil, so to speak, you
+can forecast their growth, maturity, and collapse."
+
+"I must be permitted to doubt it," said I.
+
+"It's easy, my son," he resumed, "dead easy, and it's psychology on the
+hugest scale; and among the results of its study is constant improvement
+of the mind, going on coincidentally with the preparation of the way to
+the ownership of steam-yachts and racing-stables, or any other similar
+trifles you hanker for."
+
+"Great brain, Jim! Massive intellect!" said I, laughing at the fantastic
+absurdity of his assertion. "Why, such knowledge as you possess is
+better than straight tips on all the races ever to be run. It's better
+than our tropical island and Spanish galleons. You get richer, and you
+don't have to look out for men-of-war. Do I hold my job as Grand
+Vizier?"
+
+"You hold any job you'll take: I'll make out the appointment with the
+position and salary blank, and you can fill it up. And if you get
+dissatisfied with that, the old grand hailing-sign of distress will
+catch the speaker's eye, any old time. But, I tell you, Al, in all
+seriousness, I'm right about this boom business. They're all alike, and
+they all have the same history. With the conditions right, one can be
+started anywhere in a growing country. I've had my ear to the ground for
+a while back, and I've heard things. I'm sure I detect some of the
+premonitory symptoms: money piling up in the financial centers; property
+away down, but strengthening, in the newer regions; and, lately, a
+little tendency to take chances in investments, forgetting the scorching
+of ten or twelve years ago. A new generation of suckers is gettin' ready
+to bite. Look into this thing, Al, and don't be a chump."
+
+"The same old Jim," said I; "you were manipulating a corner in
+tobacco-tags while I was learning my letters."
+
+"Do you ever forget anything?" he inquired. "I have about forgotten that
+myself. How was that tobacco-tag business, Al?"
+
+Then with the painstaking circumstantiality of two old schoolmates
+luxuriating in memories, we talked over the tobacco-tag craze which
+swept through our school one winter. Everything in life takes place in
+school, and the "tobacco-tag craze" has quite often recurred to me as
+showing boys acting just as men act, and Jimmie Elkins as the born
+stormy petrel of financial seas.
+
+It all came back to our minds, and we reconstructed this story. The
+manufacturers of "Tomahawk Plug" had offered a dozen photographs of
+actresses and dancers to any one sending in a certain number of the tin
+hatchets concealed in their tobacco. The makers of "Broad-axe Navy"
+offered something equally cheap and alluring for consignments of their
+brass broad-axes. The older boys began collecting photographs, and a
+market for tobacco-tags of certain kinds was established. We little
+fellows, though without knowledge of the mysterious forces which had
+given value to these bits of metal, began to pick up stray tags from
+sidewalk, foot-path, and floor. A marked upward tendency soon manifested
+itself. Boys found their "Broad-axe" or "Door-key" tags, picked up at
+night, doubled in value by morning. The primary object in collecting
+tags was forgotten in the speculative mania which set in. Who would
+exchange "Tomahawk" tags for the counterfeit presentment of decollete
+dancers, when by holding them he could make cent-per-cent on his
+investment of hazel-nuts and slate-pencils?
+
+The playground became a Board of Trade. We learned nothing but mental
+arithmetic applied to deals in "Door-keys," "Arrow-heads," and other tag
+properties. We went about with pockets full of tags.
+
+Jim, not yet old enough to admire the beauties of the photographs, came
+forward in a week as the Napoleon of tobacco-tag finance. He acquired
+tags in the slumps, and sold them in the bulges. He raided particular
+brands with rumors of the vast supply with which the village boys were
+preparing to flood us. He converted his holdings into marbles and tops.
+Finally, he planned his master-stroke. He dropped mysterious hints
+regarding some tag considered worthless. He asked us in whispers if we
+had any. Others followed his example, and "Door-key" tags went above all
+others and were scarce at any price. Then Jimmie Elkins brought out the
+supply which he had "cornered," threw it on the market, and before it
+had time to drop took in a large part of the playground currency. I lost
+to him a good drawing-slate and a figure-4 trap.
+
+Jimmie pocketed his winnings, but the trouble attracted the attention of
+the teacher, and under adverse legislation a period of liquidation set
+in. The distress was great. Many found themselves with property which
+was not convertible into photographs or anything else. To make matters
+worse, the discovery was made that the big boys had left school to begin
+the spring's work, and no one wanted the photographs. Bankrupt and
+disillusioned, we returned to the realities of kites, marbles, and
+knives, most of which we had to obtain from Jimmie Elkins.
+
+"Yes," said he, "it's a good deal the same with booms. But if you
+understand 'em ... eh, Al?"
+
+"Well," said I, really impressed now, "I'll look into it. And when you
+get ready to sow your boom-seed, let me know. I change cars in a few
+minutes, and you go on. Come down and see me sometimes, can't you? We
+haven't had our talk half out yet. Doesn't your business ever bring you
+down our way?"
+
+"It hasn't yet, but I'm coming down into that neck of the woods within
+six weeks, and I guess I can fix it so's to stop off,--mingling pleasure
+and business. It's the only way the hustling philanthropist of my style
+ever gets any recreation."
+
+"Do it," said I; "I'll have plenty of time at my disposal; for I go out
+of office before that time; and I may want to go into your
+boom-hatchery."
+
+"On the theory that the great adversary of mankind runs an employment
+agency for ex's? There's the whistle for your junction. By George, Al, I
+can't tell you how glad I am to have ketched up with you again! I've
+wondered about you a million times. Don't let's lose track of each other
+again."
+
+"No, no, Jim, we won't!" The train was coming to a stop. "Don't allow
+anything to side-track you and prevent that visit."
+
+"Well, I should say not," he answered, following me out upon the
+platform of the station. "We'll have a regular piratical reunion--a sort
+of buccaneers' camp-fire. I've a curiosity to see some of the fellows
+who acted the part of rob-or to your rob-ee. I want to hear their side
+of the story. Good-by, Al. Confound it, I wish you were going on with
+me!"
+
+He wrung my hand at parting, reminding me of the old Jim who studied
+from the same geography with me, more than at any time since we met. He
+stayed with me until after his train had started, caught hold of the
+hand-rail as the rear car went by, and passed out of view, waving his
+hand to me.
+
+I sat down on a baggage-truck waiting for my train, thinking of my
+encounter with Jim. All the way home I was busy pondering over a
+thousand things thus suddenly recalled to me. I could see every
+fence-corner and barn, every hill and stream of our old haunts; and
+after I got home I told Alice all about it.
+
+"He seems quite a remarkable fellow," said I, "and a perfect specimen of
+the pusher and hustler--a quick-witted man of affairs. If he is ever
+put down, he can't be kept down."
+
+"I think I prefer a more refined type of man," said Alice.
+
+"In the sixteenth century," I went on with that excessive perspicacity
+which our wives have to put up with, "he'd have been a Drake or a
+Dampier; in the seventeenth, the commander of a privateer or slaver; in
+this age, I shall not be at all surprised if he turns out a great
+railway or financial magnate. It's like a whiff of boyhood to talk with
+him; though he's a greatly different sort of man from what I should have
+expected to find him. I think you'll like him."
+
+She seemed dubious about this. Our wives instinctively disapprove of
+people we used to know prior to that happy meeting which led to
+marriage. This prejudice, for some reason, is stronger against our
+feminine acquaintances than the others. I am not analytical enough to do
+more than point out this feeling, which will, I think, be admitted by
+all husbands to exist.
+
+"That sort of man," said she, "lacks the qualities of bravery and
+intrepidity which make up a Drake or a Dampier. They are so a-scheming
+and calculating!"
+
+"The last time I saw Jim until to-day," said I, "he did something which
+seems to show that he had those more admirable qualities."
+
+Then I told her that story of Jim and the mad dog, which is remembered
+in Pleasant Valley to this day. Some say the dog was not mad; but I, who
+saw his terrible, insane look as he came snapping and frothing down the
+road, believe that he was. Jim had left the school for a year or so, and
+I was a "big boy" ready to leave it. It was at four one afternoon, and
+as the children filed into the road, there met them the shouts of men
+and cries of "Run! Run! Mad dog!"
+
+The children scattered like a covey of quail; but a pair of little
+five-year-olds, forgotten by the others, walked on hand in hand, looking
+into each other's faces, right toward the poor crazed, hunted brute,
+which trotted slowly toward the children, gnashing its frothing jaws at
+sticks and weeds, at everything it met, ready to bury its teeth in the
+first baby to come within reach.
+
+A young man with a canvasser's portfolio stood behind a fence over which
+he had jumped to avoid the dog. Suddenly he saw the children, knew their
+danger, and leaped back into the road. It was like a bull-fighter
+vaulting the barriers into the perils of the arena,--only it was to
+save, not to destroy. The dog had passed him and was nearer the children
+than he was. I wondered what he expected to do as I saw him running
+lightly, swiftly, and yet quietly behind the terrible beast. As he
+neared the animal, he stooped, and my blood froze as I saw him seize the
+dog with both hands by the hinder legs. The head curled sidewise and
+under, and the teeth almost grazed the young man's hands with a vicious,
+metallic snap. Then we saw what the contest was. The young man, with a
+powerful circling sweep of his arms, whirled the dog so swiftly about
+his head that the lank frame swung out in a straight line, and the snap
+could not be repeated. But what of the end? No muscles could long stand
+such a strain, and when they yielded, then what?
+
+Then we saw that as he swung his loathsome foe, the young man was
+gradually approaching the schoolhouse. We saw the horrible snapping head
+whirl nearer and nearer at every turn to the corner of the building.
+Then we saw the young man strike a terrible blow at the stone wall,
+using the dog as a club; and in a moment I saw the stones splashed with
+red, and the young man lying on the ground, where the violence of his
+effort had thrown him, and by him lay the quivering form of what we had
+fled from. And the young man was James Elkins.
+
+Alice breathed hard as I finished, and stood straight with her chin held
+high.
+
+"That was fine!" said she. "I want to see that man!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Jim discovers his Coral Island.
+
+
+There has long been abroad in the world a belief that events which bear
+some controlling relation to one's destiny are announced by premonition,
+some spiritual trepidation, some movement of that curtain which cuts off
+our view of the future. I believe this notion to be false, but feel that
+it is true; and the manner in which that adventure of mine in the old
+art gallery and at Auriccio's impressed my mind, and the way in which my
+memory clung to it, seem to justify my feeling rather than my belief.
+Whenever I visited Chicago, I went to the gallery, more in the hope of
+seeing the girl whose only name to me was "the Empress" than to gratify
+my cravings for art. I felt a boundless pity for her--and laughed at
+myself for taking so seriously an incident which, in all likelihood, she
+herself dismissed with a few tears, a few retrospective burnings of
+heart and cheek. But I never saw her. Once I loitered for an hour about
+the boarding-house with the vine-clad porch, while the boarders (mostly
+students, I judged) came and went; but though I saw many young girls,
+the Empress was not among them. And all this time the years were rolling
+on, and I was permitting my once bright political career to blight and
+wither by my own neglect, as a growth not worth caring for.
+
+I became a private citizen in due time, but found no comfort in leisure.
+I was in those doldrums which beset the politician when rivals justle
+him from his little eminence. One who, for years, is annually or
+biennially complimented by the suffrages of even a few thousands of his
+fellow citizens, and is invited into the penetralia of a great political
+party, is apt to regard himself, after a while, as peculiarly deserving
+of the plaudits of the humble and the consideration of the powerful.
+Then comes the inevitable hour when pussy finds himself without a
+corner. The deep disgust for party and politics which then takes
+possession of him demands change of scene and new surroundings. Any
+flagging in partisan enthusiasm is sure to be attributed to
+sore-headedness, and leads to charges of perfidy and thanklessness. Yet,
+for him, the choice lies between abated zeal and hypocrisy, inasmuch as
+no man can normally be as zealous for his party as the fanatic into
+which the candidate or incumbent converts himself.
+
+Underlying my whole frame of mind was the knowledge that, so far as
+making a career was concerned, I had wasted several years of my life,
+and had now to begin anew. Add to this a slight sense of having played
+an unworthy part in life (although here I was unable to particularize),
+and a new sense of aloofness from the people with whom I had been for
+so long on terms of hearty and back-slapping familiarity, and no further
+reason need be sought for a desire which came mightily upon me to go
+away and begin life over again in a new _milieu_. In spite of the mild
+opposition of my wife, this desire grew to a resolve; and I came to look
+upon myself as a temporary sojourner in my own home.
+
+Such was the state of our affairs, when a letter came from Mr. Elkins
+(in lieu of the promised visit) urging me to remove to the then obscure
+but since celebrated town of Lattimore.
+
+"I got to be too rich for Charley Harper's blood," said the letter,
+among other things. "I wanted as much in the way of salary as I could
+earn, working for myself, and Charley kicked--said the directors
+wouldn't consent, and that such a salary list would be a black eye for
+the Frugality and Indemnity if it showed up in its statements. So I
+quit. I am loan agent for the company here, which gives me a visible
+means of support, and keeps me from being vagged. But, in confidence, I
+want to tell you that my main graft here is the putting in operation of
+my boom-hatching scheme. Come out, and I'll enroll you as a member of
+the band once more; for this is the coral atoll for me. You ought to get
+out of that stagnant pond of yours, and come where the natatory medium
+is fresh, clean, and thickly peopled with suckers, and a new run of 'em
+coming on right soon. In other words, get into the swim."
+
+After reading this letter and considering it as a whole, I was so much
+impressed by it that Lattimore was added to the list of places I meant
+to visit, on a tour I had planned for myself.
+
+In the West, all roads run to or from Chicago. It is nearer to almost
+any place by the way of Chicago than by any other route: so Alice and I
+went to the city by the lake, as the beginning of our prospecting tour.
+I took her to the art gallery and showed her just where my two lovers
+had stood,--telling her the story for the first time. Then she wanted to
+eat a supper at Auriccio's; and after the play we went there, and I was
+forced to describe the whole scene over again.
+
+"Didn't she see you at all?" she asked.
+
+"Not at all," said I.
+
+"You are a good boy," said my wife, judging me by one act which she
+approved. "Kiss me."
+
+This occurred after we reached our lodgings. I suggested as a change of
+subject that my next day's engagements took me to the Stock Yards, and I
+assumed that she would scarcely wish to accompany me.
+
+"I think I prefer the stores," said she, "and the pictures. Maybe _I_
+shall have an adventure."
+
+At the big Exchange Building, I found that the acquaintance whom I
+sought was absent from his office, and I roamed up and down the
+corridors in search of him. As usual the gathering here was intensely
+Western. There were bronzed cattlemen from every range from Amarillo to
+the Belle Fourche, sturdy buyers of swine from Iowa and Illinois,
+sombreroed sheepmen from New Mexico, and vikingesque Swedes from North
+Dakota. Men there were wearing thousand-dollar diamonds in red flannel
+shirts, solid gold watch-chains made to imitate bridle-bits, and heavy
+golden bullocks sliding on horse-hair guards. It pleased me, as such a
+crowd always does. The laughter was loud but it was free, and the hunted
+look one sees on State Street and Michigan Avenue was absent.
+
+"I wish Alice had come," said I, noting the flutter of skirts in a group
+of people in the corridor; and then, as I came near, the press divided,
+and I saw something which drew my eyes as to a sight in which lay
+mystery to be unraveled.
+
+Facing me stood a stout farmer in a dark suit of common cut and texture.
+He seemed, somehow, not entirely strange; but the petite figure of the
+girl whose back was turned to me was what fixed my attention.
+
+She wore a smart traveling-gown of some pretty gray fabric, and bore
+herself gracefully and with the air of dominating the group of
+commission men among whom she stood. I noted the incurved spine, the
+deep curves of the waist, and the liberal slope of the hips belonging to
+a shapely little woman in whom slimness was mitigated in adorable ways,
+which in some remote future bade fair to convert it into matronliness.
+Under a broad hat there showed a wealth of red-brown hair, drawn up like
+a sunburst from a slender little neck.
+
+"I have provided a box at Hooley's," said the head of a great commission
+firm. "Mrs. Johnson will be with us. We may count upon you?"
+
+"I think so," said the girl, "if papa hasn't made any engagements."
+
+The stout farmer blushed as he looked down at his daughter.
+
+"Engagements, eh? No, sir!" he replied. "She runs things after the
+steers is unloaded. Whatever the little gal says goes with me."
+
+They turned, and as they came on down the hall, still chatting, I saw
+her face, and knew it. It was the Empress! But even in that glimpse I
+saw the change which years had brought. Now she ruled instead of
+submitting; her voice, still soft and low, had lost its rustic
+inflections; and in spite of the change in the surroundings,--the leap
+from the art gallery to the Stock Yards,--there was more of the artist
+now, and less of the farmer's lass. They turned into a suite of offices
+and disappeared.
+
+"Well, Mr. Barslow," said my friend, coming up. "Glad to see you. I've
+been hunting for you."
+
+"Who is that girl and her father?" I asked.
+
+"One of the Johnson Commission Company's Shippers," said he, "Prescott,
+from Lattimore; I wish I could get his shipments."
+
+"No!" said I, "Not Lattimore!"
+
+"Prescott of Lattimore," he repeated. "Know anything of him?"
+
+"N-no," said I. "I have friends in that town."
+
+"I wish I had," was the reply; "I'd try to get old Prescott's business."
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There's destiny in this," said Alice, when I told her of my encounter
+with the Empress and her father. "Her living in Lattimore is not an
+accident."
+
+"I doubt," said I, "if anybody's is."
+
+"She looked nice, did she?" Alice went on, "and dressed well?" and
+without waiting for an answer added: "Let's leave Chicago. I'm anxious
+to get to Lattimore!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+We Reach the Atoll.
+
+
+So we journeyed on to Duluth, to St. Paul and Minneapolis, and to the
+cities on the Missouri. It was at one of those recurrent periods when
+the fever of material and industrial change and development breaks out
+over the whole continent. The very earth seemed to send out tingling
+shocks of some occult stimulus; the air was charged with the ozone of
+hope; and subtle suggestions seemed to pass from mind to mind, impelling
+men to dare all, to risk all, to achieve all. In every one of these
+young cities we were astonished at the changes going on under our very
+eyes. Streets were torn up for the building of railways, viaducts, and
+tunnels. Buildings were everywhere in course of demolition, to make room
+for larger edifices. Excavations yawned like craters at street-corners.
+Steel pillars, girders, and trusses towered skyward,--skeletons to be
+clothed in flesh of brick and stone.
+
+Suburbs were sprouting, almost daily, from the mould of the
+market-gardens in the purlieus. Corporations were contending for the
+possession of the natural highway approaches to each growing city.
+Street-railway companies pushed their charters to passage at midnight
+sessions of boards of aldermen, seized streets in the night-time, and
+extended their metallic tentacles out into the fields of dazed farmers.
+
+On the frontiers, counties were organized and populated in a season.
+Every one of them had its two or three villages, which aped in puny
+fashion the achievements of the cities. New pine houses dotted prairies,
+unbroken save for the mile-long score of the delimiting plow. Long
+trains of emigrant-cars moved continually westward. The world seemed
+drunk with hope and enthusiasm. The fulfillment of Jim's careless
+prophecy had burst suddenly upon us.
+
+Such things as these were fresh in our memories when we reached
+Lattimore. I had wired Elkins of our coming, and he met us at the
+station with a carriage. It was one sunny September afternoon when he
+drove us through the streets of our future home to the principal hotel.
+
+"We have supper at six, dinner at twelve-thirty, breakfast from seven to
+ten," said Jim, as we alighted at the hotel. "That's the sort of bucolic
+municipality you've struck here; we'll shove all these meals several
+hours down, when we get to doubling our population. You'll have an hour
+to get freshened up for supper. Afterwards, if Mrs. Barslow feels equal
+to the exertion, we'll take a drive about the town."
+
+Lattimore was a pretty place then. Low, rounded hills topped with green
+surrounded it. The river flowed in a broad, straight reach along its
+southern margin. A clear stream, Brushy Creek, ran in a miniature
+canyon of limestone, through the eastern edge of the town. On each side
+of this brook, in lawns of vivid green, amid natural groves of oak and
+elm, interspersed with cultivated greenery, stood the houses of the
+well-to-do. Trees made early twilight in most of the streets.
+
+People were out in numbers, driving in the cool autumnal evening. As a
+handsome girl, a splendid blonde, drove past us, my wife spoke of the
+excellent quality of the horseflesh we saw. Jim answered that Lattimore
+was a center of equine culture, and its citizens wise in breeders' lore.
+The appearance of things impressed us favorably. There was an air of
+quiet prosperity about the place, which is unusual in Western towns,
+where quietude and progress are apt to be thought incompatible. Jim
+pointed out the town's natural advantages as we drove along.
+
+"What do you think of that, now?" said he, waving his whip toward the
+winding gorge of Brushy Creek.
+
+"It's simply lovely!" said Alice, "a little jewel of a place."
+
+"A bit of mountain scenery on the prairie," said Jim. "And more than
+that, or less than that, just as you look at it, it's the source from
+which inexhaustible supplies of stone will be quarried when we begin to
+build things."
+
+"But won't that spoil it?" said Alice.
+
+"Well, yes; and down on that bottom we've found as good clay for
+pottery, sewer-pipes, and paving-brick as exists anywhere. Back there
+where you saw that bluff along the river--looks as if it's sliding down
+into the water--remember it? Well, there's probably the only place in
+the world where there's just the juxtaposition of sand and clay and
+chalk to make Portland cement. Supply absolutely unlimited! Why, there
+ought to be a thousand men employed right now in those cement works. Oh,
+I tell you, things'll hum here when we get these schemes working!"
+
+We laughed at him: his visualization of the cement works was so
+complete.
+
+"I suppose you know where all the capital is coming from," said I, "to
+do all these things? For my part, I see no way of getting it except our
+old plan of buccaneering."
+
+"Exactly my idea!" said he. "Didn't I write you that I'd enroll you as a
+member of the band? Has Al ever told you, Mrs. Barslow, of our old
+times, when we, as individuals, were passing through our
+sixteenth-century stage?"
+
+"Often," Alice replied. "He looks back upon his pirate days as a time of
+Arcadian simplicity, 'Untouched by sorrow, and unsoiled by sin.'"
+
+"I can easily understand," said Jim reflectively, "how piracy might
+appear in that roseate light after a few years of practical politics.
+Now from the moral heights of a life-insurance man's point of view it's
+different."
+
+So we rode on chatting and chaffing, now of the old time, now of the
+new; and all the time I felt more and more impressed by the dissolving
+views which Jim gave us of different parts of his program for making
+Lattimore the metropolis of "the world's granary," as he called the
+surrounding country. As we topped a low hill on our way back, he pulled
+up, to give us a general view of the town and suburbs, and of the great
+expanse of farming country beyond. Between us and Lattimore was a mile
+stretch of gently descending road, with grain-fields and farm-houses on
+each side.
+
+"By the way," said he, "do you see that white house and red barn in the
+maple grove off to the right? Well, you remember Bill Trescott?"
+
+Neither of us could call such a person to mind.
+
+"Well, it's all right, I suppose," he went on in a tone implying injury
+forgiven, "but you mustn't let Bill know you've forgotten him. The
+Trescotts used to live over by the Whitney schoolhouse in Greenwood
+Township,--right on the Pleasant Valley line, you know. He remembers you
+folks, Al. I'll drive over that way."
+
+There were beds of petunias and four-o'clocks to be seen dimly
+glimmering in the dusk, as we drove through the broad gate. Men and
+women were gathered in a group about the base of the windmill, as Jim's
+loud "whoa" announced our arrival. The women melted away in the
+direction of the house. The men stood at gaze.
+
+"Hello, Bill!" shouted Jim. "Come out here!"
+
+"Oh, it's you, is it, Mr. Elkins," said a deep voice. "I didn't know
+yeh."
+
+"Thought it was the sheriff with a summons, eh? Well, I guess hardly!"
+said Jim. "Mr. Trescott, I want you to shake hands with our old friend
+Mr. Barslow."
+
+A heavy figure detached itself from the group, and, as it approached,
+developed indistinctly the features of a brawny farmer, with a short,
+heavy, dark beard.
+
+"Wal, I declare, I'm glad to see yeh!" said he, as he grasped my hand.
+"I'd a'most forgot yeh, till Mr. Elkins told me you remembered my
+whalin' them Dutch boys at a scale onct."
+
+I had had no recollection of him; yet form and voice seemed vaguely
+familiar. I assured him that my memory for names and faces was
+excellent. After being duly presented to Mrs. Barslow, he urged us to
+alight and come in. We offered as an excuse the lateness of the hour.
+
+"Why, you hain't seen my family yet, Mr. Barslow," said he. "They'll be
+disappointed if yeh don't come in."
+
+I suggested that we were staying for a few days at the Centropolis; and
+Alice added that we should be glad to see himself and Mrs. Trescott
+there at any time during our stay. Elkins promised that we should all
+drive out again.
+
+"Wal, now, you must," said Mr. Trescott. "We must talk over ol' times
+and--"
+
+"Fight over old battles," replied Jim. "All the battles were yours,
+though, eh, Bill?"
+
+"Huh, huh!" chuckled Bill; "fightin's no credit to any man; but I 'spose
+I fit my sheer when I was a boy--when I was a boy, y' know, Mrs.
+Barslow, and had more sand than sense. Here, Josie, here's Mr. Elkins
+and some old friends of mine. Mr. and Mrs. Barslow, my daughter."
+
+She was a little slim slip of a thing, in white, and emerged from the
+shrubbery at Mr. Trescott's call. She bowed to us, and said she was
+sorry that we could not stop. Her voice was sweet, and there was
+something unexpectedly cool and self-possessed in her intonation. It was
+not in the least the speech of the ordinary neat-handed Phyllis or
+Neaera; nor was her attitude at all countrified as she stood with her
+hand on her father's arm. The increasing darkness kept us from seeing
+her features.
+
+"Josie's my right-hand man," said her father. "Half the business of the
+farm stops when Josie goes away."
+
+My wife expressed her admiration for Lattimore and its environs, and
+especially for so much of the Trescott farm as could be seen in the
+deepening gloaming. The flowers, she said, took her back to her
+childhood's home.
+
+"Let me give you these," said the girl, handing Alice a great bunch of
+blossoms which she had been cutting when her father called, and had held
+in her hands as we talked. My wife thanked her, and buried her face in
+them, as we bade the Trescotts good-night and drove home.
+
+"That girl," said Jim, as we spun along the road in the light of the
+rising moon, "is a crackerjack. Bill thinks the world of her, and she
+certainly gives him a mother's care!"
+
+"She seems nice," said Alice, "and so refined, apparently."
+
+"Been well educated," said Jim, "and got a head, besides. You'll like
+her; she knows Europe better than some folks know their own front
+yard."
+
+"I was surprised at the vividness of my memory of Bill's youthful
+combats," said I.
+
+Jim's laugh rang out heartily through the Brushy Creek gorge.
+
+"Well, I supposed you remembered those things, of course," said he, "and
+so I insinuated some impression of the delight with which you dwell upon
+the stories of his prowess. It made him feel good.... I'm spoiling Bill,
+I guess, with these tales. He'll claim to have a private graveyard next.
+As harmless a fellow as you ever saw, and the best cattle-feeder
+hereabouts. Got a good farm out there, Bill has; we may need it for
+stock yards or something, later on."
+
+"Why not hire a corps of landscape-gardeners, and make a park of it?" I
+inquired sarcastically. "We'll certainly need breathing-spaces for the
+populace."
+
+"Good idea!" he returned gravely. And as he halted the equipage at the
+hotel, he repeated meditatively: "A mighty good idea, Al; we must figure
+on that a little."
+
+We were tired to silence when we reached our rooms; so much so that
+nothing seemed to make a defined and sharp impression upon my mind. I
+kept thinking all the time that I must have been mistaken in my first
+thought that I had never known the Trescotts.
+
+"Their voices seem familiar to me," said I, "and yet I can't associate
+them with the old home at all. It's very odd!"
+
+As Alice stood before the mirror shaking down and brushing her hair, she
+said: "Do you suppose he thought you in earnest about that absurd park?"
+
+"No," I answered, "he understood me well enough; but what puzzles me is
+the question, was _he_ in earnest?"
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the middle of the night I woke with a perfectly clear idea as to the
+identity of the Trescotts! Prescott, Trescott! Josie, Josephine the
+"Empress"! And then the voice and figure!
+
+"Why are you sitting up in bed?" inquired Alice.
+
+"I have made a discovery," said I. "That man at the Stock Yards meant
+Trescott, not Prescott."
+
+"I don't understand," said she sleepily.
+
+"In a word," said I, "the girl who gave you the flowers is the Empress!"
+
+"Albert Barslow!" said Alice. "Why--"
+
+My wife was silent for a long time.
+
+"I knew we'd meet her," she said at last. "It is fate."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+I am Inducted into the Cave, and Enlist.
+
+
+"Here's the cave," said Jim, at the door of his office, next morning.
+"As prospective joint-proprietor and co-malefactor, I bid you welcome."
+
+The smiles with which the employees resumed their work indicated that
+the extraordinary character of this welcome was not lost upon them. The
+office was on the ground-floor of one of the more pretentious buildings
+of Lattimore's main street. The post-office was on one side of it, and
+the First National Bank on the other. Over it were the offices of
+lawyers and physicians. It was quite expensively fitted up; and the
+plate-glass front glittered with gold-and-black sign-lettering. The
+chairs and sofas were upholstered in black leather. On the walls hung
+several decorative advertisements of fire-insurance companies, and maps
+of the town, county, and state. Rolls of tracing-paper and blueprints
+lay on the flat-topped tables, reminding one of the office of an
+architect or civil engineer. A thin young man worked at books, standing
+at a high desk; and a plump young woman busily clicked off typewritten
+matter with an up-to-date machine.
+
+"You'll find some books and papers on the table in the next room," said
+Jim, as I finished my first look about. "I'll ask you to amuse yourself
+with 'em for a little while, until I can dispose of my morning's mail;
+after which we'll resume our hunt for resources. We haven't any morning
+paper yet, and the evening _Herald_ is shipped in by freight and edited
+with a saw. But it's the best we've got--yet."
+
+He read his letters, ran his eyes over his newspapers and a magazine or
+two, and dictated some correspondence, interrupted occasionally by
+callers, some of whom he brought into the room where I was whiling away
+the time, examining maps, and looking over out-of-date copies of the
+local papers. One of these callers was Mr. Hinckley, the cashier of the
+bank, who came to see about some insurance matters. He was spare,
+aquiline, and white-mustached; and very courteously wished Lattimore the
+good fortune of securing so valuable an acquisition as ourselves. It
+would place Lattimore under additional obligations to Mr. Elkins, who
+was proving himself such an effective worker in all public matters.
+
+"Mr. Elkins," said he, "has to a wonderful degree identified himself
+with the material progress of the city. He is constantly bringing here
+enterprising and energetic business men; and we could better afford to
+lose many an older citizen."
+
+I asked Mr. Hinckley as to the length of his own residence in Lattimore.
+
+"I helped to plat the town, sir," said he. "I carried the chain when
+these streets were surveyed,--a boy just out of Bowdoin College. That
+was in '55. I staged it for four hundred miles to get here. Aleck
+Macdonald and I came together, and we've both staid from that day. The
+Indians were camped at the mouth of Brushy Creek; and except for old
+Pierre Lacroix, a squaw-man, we were for a month the only white men in
+these parts. Then General Lattimore came with a party of surveyors, and
+by the fall there was quite a village here."
+
+Jim came in with another gentleman, whom he introduced as Captain
+Tolliver. The Captain shook my hand with profuse politeness.
+
+"I am delighted to see you, suh," said he. "Any friend of Mr. Elkins I
+shall be proud to know. I heah that Mrs. Barslow is with you. I trust,
+suh, that she is well?"
+
+I informed him that my wife was in excellent health, being completely
+recovered from the fatigue of her journey.
+
+"Ah! this aiah, this aiah, Mr. Barslow! It is like wine in its
+invigorating qualities, like wine, suh. Look at Mr. Hinckley, hyah,
+doing the work of two men fo' a lifetime; and younge' now than any of
+us. Come, suh, and make yo' home with us. You nevah can regret it.
+Delighted to have you call at my office, suh. I am proud to have met
+you, and hope to become better acquainted with you. I hope Mrs. Tulliver
+and Mrs. Barslow may soon meet. Good-morning, gentlemen." And he hurried
+out, only to reappear as soon as Mr. Hinckley was gone.
+
+"By the way, Mr. Barslow," he whispered, "should you come to Lattimore,
+as I have no doubt you will, I have some of the choicest residence
+property in the city, which I shall be mo' than glad to show you. Title
+perfect, no commissions to pay, city water, gas, and electric light in
+prospect. Cain't yo' come and look it ovah now, suh?"
+
+"Who is this Captain Tolliver, Jim," I asked as we went out of the
+office together, "and what is he?"
+
+"In other words, 'Who and what art thou, execrable shape?' Well, now,
+don't ask me. I've known him for years; in fact, he suggested to me the
+possibilities of this burg. In a way, the city is indebted to him for my
+presence here. But don't ask me about him--study him. And don't buy lots
+from him. The Captain has his failings, but he has also his strong
+points and his uses; and I'll be mistaken if he isn't cast for a fairly
+prominent part in the drama we're about to put on here. But don't spoil
+your enjoyment by having him described to you. Let him dawn on you by
+degrees."
+
+That day I met most of the prominent men of the town. Jim took me into
+the banks, the shops, and the offices of the leading professional
+gentlemen. He informed them that I was considering the matter of coming
+to live among them; and I found them very friendly, and much interested
+in our proposed change of residence. They all treated Jim with respect,
+and his manner toward them had a dignity which I had not looked for.
+Evidently he was making himself felt in the community.
+
+When we returned to the Centropolis at noon, we found Mrs. Trescott and
+her daughter chatting with my wife. The elder woman was ill-groomed, as
+are all women of her class in comparison with their town sisters, and
+angular. I knew the type so well that I could read the traces of farm
+cares in her face and form. The serving of gangs of harvesters and
+threshers, the ever-recurring problems of butter, eggs, and berries, the
+unflagging fight, without much domestic help, for neatness and order
+about the house, had impressed their stamp upon Mrs. Trescott. But she
+was chatting vivaciously, and assuring Mrs. Barslow that such a thing as
+staying longer in town that morning was impossible.
+
+"I can feel in my bones," said she, "that there's something wrong at the
+farm."
+
+"You always have that feeling," said her daughter, "as soon as you pass
+outside the gate."
+
+"And I'm usually right about it," said Mrs. Trescott. "It isn't any use.
+My system has got into that condition in which I'm in misery if I'm off
+that farm. Josie drags me away from it sometimes; and I do enjoy meeting
+people! But I like to meet 'em out there the best; and I want to urge
+you to come often, Mrs. Barslow, while you're here. And in case you move
+here, I hope you'll like us and the farm well enough so that we'll see a
+good deal of you."
+
+I was presented to Mrs. Trescott, and reintroduced to the young lady,
+with whom Alice seemed already on friendly terms. I was surprised at
+this, for she was not prone to sudden friendships. There was something
+so attractive in the girl, however, that it went far to explain the
+phenomenon. For one thing, there was in her manner that same steadiness
+and calm which I had noticed in her voice in the dusk last night. It
+gave one the impression that she could not be surprised or startled,
+that she had seen or thought out all possible combinations of events,
+and knew of their sequences, or adjusted herself to things by some
+all-embracing rule, by which she attained that repose of hers. The
+surprising thing about it, to my mind, was to find this exterior in Bill
+Trescott's daughter. I had seen the same thing once or twice in people
+to whom I thought it had come as the fruit of wide experience in the
+world.
+
+While Miss Trescott was slim, and rather below the medium in height, she
+was not at all thin; and had the great mass of ruddy dark hair and fine
+brown eyes which I remembered so well, and a face which would have been
+pale had it not been for the tan--the only thing about her which
+suggested those occupations by which she became her father's "right-hand
+man." There was intelligence in her face, and a grave smile in her eyes,
+which rarely extended to her handsome mouth. If mature in face, form,
+and manner, she was young in years--some years younger than Alice. I
+hoped that she might stay to dinner; but she went away with her mother.
+In her absence, I devoted some time to praising her. Jim failed to join
+in my paeans further than to give a general assent; but he grew
+unaccountably mirthful, as if something good had happened to him of
+which he had not yet told us.
+
+"I have invited a few people to my parlors this evening," said he, "and,
+of course, you will be the guests of honor."
+
+My wife demurred. She had nothing to wear, and even if she had, I was
+without evening dress. The thing seemed out of the question.
+
+"Oh, we can't let that stand in the way," said he. "So far as your own
+toilet is concerned, I have nothing to say except that you are known to
+be making a hurried visit, and I have an abiding faith, based on your
+manner of stating your trouble, that it can be remedied. I saw your eye
+take on a far-away look as you planned your costume, even while you were
+declaring that you couldn't do it. Didn't I, now?"
+
+"You certainly did not," said Alice; and then I noticed the absorbed
+look myself. "But even if I can manage it, how about Albert?"
+
+"I'll tell you about Albert. I'll bet two to one there won't be a suit
+of evening clothes worn. The dress suit may come in here with street
+cars and passenger elevators, but it lacks a good deal of being here
+yet, except in the most sporadic and infrequent way. And this thing is
+to be so absolutely informal that it would make the natives stare. You
+wouldn't wear it if you had it, Al."
+
+"Who will come?" said Mrs. Barslow.
+
+"Oh, a couple of dozen ladies and gentlemen, business men and doctors
+and lawyers and their women-folks. They'll stray in from eight to ten
+and find something to eat on the sideboard. They'll have the happiness
+of meeting you, and you can see what the people you are thinking of
+living among and doing business with are like. It's a necessary part of
+your visit; and you can't get out of it now, for I've taken the liberty
+of making all the arrangements. And, as a matter of fact, you don't
+want to do so, do you, now?"
+
+Thus appealed to, Alice consented. Nothing was said to me about it, my
+willingness being presumed.
+
+The guests that evening were almost exclusively men whom I had met
+during the day, and members of their families. In the absence of any
+more engaging topic, we discussed Lattimore as our possible future home.
+
+"I have always felt," said Mr. Hinckley, who was one of the guests,
+"that this is the natural site of a great city. These valleys, centering
+here like the spokes of a wheel, are ready-made railway-routes. In the
+East there is a city of from fifty thousand to three times that, every
+hundred miles or so. Why shouldn't it be so here?"
+
+"Suh," said Captain Tolliver, "the thing is inevitable. Somewhah in this
+region will grow up a metropolis. Shall it be hyah, o' at Fairchild, o'
+Angus Falls? If the people of Lattimore sit supinely, suh, and let these
+country villages steal from huh the queenship which God o'dained fo' huh
+when He placed huh in this commandin' site, then, suh, they ah too base
+to be wo'thy of the suhvices of gentlemen."
+
+"I've always been taught," said Mrs. Trescott, "that the credit of
+placing her in this site belonged to either Mr. Hinckley or General
+Lattimore."
+
+"Really," said Miss Addison to me, "I don't see how they can laugh at
+such irreverence!"
+
+"I think," said Miss Hinckley in my other ear, "that Mr. Elkins
+expressed the whole truth in the matter of the rivalry of these three
+towns, when he said that when two ride on a horse, one must ride behind.
+Aren't his quotations so--so--illuminating?"
+
+I looked about at the company. There were Mr. Hinckley, Mrs. Hinckley,
+their daughter, whom I recognized as the splendid blonde whose pacers
+had passed us when we were out driving, Mrs. Trescott and her daughter,
+and Captain and Mrs. Tolliver. Those present were plainly of several
+different sets and cliques. Mrs. Hinckley hoped that my wife would join
+the Equal Rights Club, and labor for the enfranchisement of women. She
+referred, too, to the eloquence and piety of her pastor, the
+Presbyterian minister, while Mrs. Tolliver quoted Emerson, and invited
+Alice to join, as soon as we removed, the Monday Club of the Unitarian
+Church, devoted to the study of his works. Mr. Macdonald, red-whiskered,
+weather-beaten, and gigantic, fidgeted about the punch-bowl a good deal;
+and replying to some chance remark made by Alice, ventured the opinion
+that the grass was gettin' mighty short on the ranges. Miss Addison, who
+came with her cousins the Lattimores, looked with disapproval upon the
+punch, and disclosed her devotion to the W. C. T. U. and the Ladies' Aid
+Society of the Methodist Church. The Lattimores were Will Lattimore and
+his wife. I learned that he was the son of the General, and Jim's
+lawyer; and that they went rarely into society, being very exclusive.
+This was communicated to me by Mrs. Ballard, who brought Miss Ballard
+with her. She asked in tones of the intensest interest if we played
+whist; while Miss Ballard suggested that about the only way we could
+find to enjoy ourselves in such a little place would be to identify
+ourselves with the dancing-party and card-club set. I began to suspect
+that life in Lattimore would not be without its complexities.
+
+Mr. Trescott came in for a moment only, for his wife and daughter. Miss
+Trescott was not to be found at first, but was discovered in the
+bay-window with Jim and Miss Hinckley, looking over some engravings. Mr.
+Elkins took her down to her carriage, and I thought him a long time
+gone, for the host. As soon as he returned, however, the conversation
+again turned to the dominant thought of the gathering, municipal
+expansion. And I noted that the points made were Jim's. He had already
+imbued the town with his thoughts, and filled the mouths of its citizens
+with his arguments.
+
+After they left, we sat with Jim and talked.
+
+"Well, how do you like 'em?" said he.
+
+"Why," said Alice, "they're very cordial."
+
+"Heterogeneous, eh?" he queried.
+
+"Yes," said she, "but very cordial. I am surprised to feel how little I
+dislike them."
+
+As for me, I began to look upon Lattimore with more favor. I began to
+catch Jim's enthusiasm and share his confidence. As we smoked together
+in his rooms that evening, he made me the definite proposal that I go
+into partnership with him. We talked about the business, and discussed
+its possibilities.
+
+"I don't ask you to believe all my prophecies," said he; "but isn't the
+situation fairly good, just as it is?"
+
+"I think well of it," I answered, "and it's mighty kind of you to ask me
+to come. I'll go as far as to say that if it depends solely on me, we
+shall come. As for these prophecies of yours, I am in candor bound to
+say that I half believe them."
+
+"Now you _are_ shouting," said he. "Never better prophecies anywhere.
+But consider the matter aside from them. Then all we clean up in the
+prophecy department will be velvet, absolute velvet!"
+
+"I can add something to the output of the prophecy department," said
+Alice, when I repeated the phrase; "and that is that there will be some
+affairs of the heart mingled with the real estate and insurance before
+long. I can see them in embryo now."
+
+"If it's Jim and Miss Trescott you mean, I wish the affair well," said
+I. "I'm quite charmed with her."
+
+"Well," said Alice, "from the standpoint of most men, Miss Hinckley
+isn't to be left out of the reckoning in such matters. What a face and
+figure she has! Miss Addison is too prudish and churchified; but I like
+Miss Hinckley."
+
+"Yes," said I; "but Miss Trescott seems, somehow, to have been known to
+one, in some tender and touching relation. There's that about her which
+appeals to one, like some embodiment of the abstract idea of woman.
+That's why one feels as if he had risked his life for her, and protected
+her, and seen her suffer wrong, and all that--"
+
+"That's only because of that affair you told me of," said my wife.
+"Since I've seen her, I've made up my mind that you misconstrued the
+matter utterly. There was really nothing to it."
+
+In a week I wrote to Mr. Elkins, accepting his proposal, and promising
+to close up my affairs, remove to Lattimore, and join with him.
+
+"I do not feel myself equal to playing the part of either Romulus or
+Remus in founding your new Rome," I wrote; "but I think as a writer of
+fire-insurance policies, and keeping the office work up, I may prove
+myself not entirely a deadhead. My wife asks how the breathing-spaces
+for the populace are coming on?"
+
+And the die was cast!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+We make our Landing.
+
+
+Had I known how cordially our neighbors would greet our return, or how
+many of them would view our departure with apparently sincere regret, I
+might have been slower in giving Jim my promise. I proceeded, however,
+to carry it out; but it was nearly six months before I could pull myself
+and my little fortune out of the place into which we had grown.
+
+Mr. Elkins kept me well informed regarding Lattimore affairs; and the
+_Herald_ followed me home. Jim's letters were long typewritten
+communications, dictated at speed, and mailed, sometimes one a day, at
+other times at intervals of weeks.
+
+"This is a sure-enough 'winter of our discontent,'" one of these letters
+runs, "but the scope of our operations will widen as the frost comes out
+of the ground. We're now confined to the psychical field. Subjectively
+speaking, though, the plot thickens. Captain Tolliver is in the
+secondary stages of real-estate dementia, and spreads the contagion
+daily. There's no quarantine regulation to cover the case, and Lattimore
+seems doomed to the acme of prosperity. This is the age of great cities,
+saith the Captain, and that Lattimore is not already a town of 150,000
+people is one of the strangest, one of the most inexplicable things in
+the world, in view of the distance we are lag of the country about us,
+so far as development is concerned. And as our beginning has been tardy,
+so will our progress be rapid, even as waters long dammed up rush out to
+devour the plains, etc., etc.
+
+"In this we are all agreed. We want a good, steady, natural growth--and
+no boom.
+
+"When a boom recognizes itself as such, it's all over, and the stuff
+off. The time for letting go of a great wheel is when it starts down
+hill. But our wheels are all going up--even if they are all in our
+heads, as yet.
+
+"You will remember the railway connection of which I spoke to you? Well,
+that thing has assumed, all of a sudden, a concreteness as welcome as it
+is unexpected. Ballard showed me a telegram yesterday from lower
+Broadway (the heart of Darkest N. Y.) which tends to prove that people
+there are ready to finance the deal. It would have amused you to see the
+horizontality of the coat-tails of the management of the Lattimore &
+Great Western, as they flaxed round getting up a directors' meeting, so
+as to have a real, live directorate of this great transcontinental line
+for the wolves of Wall Street to do business with! Things like this are
+what you miss by hibernating there, instead of dropping everything and
+applying here for your pro rata share of the gayety of nations and the
+concomitant scads.
+
+"I was elected president of the road, and as soon as we get a little
+track, and an engine, I expect to obtain an exchange of passes with all
+my fellow monopolists in North America. I at once fired back an answer
+to Ballard's telegram, which must have produced an impression upon the
+Gould and Vanderbilt interests--if they got wind of it. If the L. & G.
+W. should pass the paper stage next summer, it will do a whole lot
+towards carrying this burg beyond the hypnotic period of development.
+
+"The Angus Falls branch is going to build in next summer, I am
+confident, and that means another division headquarters and, probably,
+machine-shops. I'm working with some of the trilobites here to form a
+pool, and offer the company grounds for additional yards and a
+roundhouse and shops. Captain Tolliver interviewed General Lattimore
+about it, and got turned down.
+
+"'He told me, suh,' reported the Captain, in a fine white passion, 'that
+if any railway system desiahs to come to Lattimore, it has his
+puhmission! That the Injuns didn't give him any bonus when he came; and
+that he had to build his own houses and yahds, by gad, at his own
+expense, and defend 'em, too, and that if any railroad was thinkin' of
+comin' hyah, it was doubtless because it was good business fo' 'em to
+come; and that if they wanted any of his land, were willing to pay him
+his price, there wouldn't be any difficulty about theiah getting it. And
+that if there should arise any difference, which he should deeply
+regret, but would try to live through, the powah of eminent domain with
+which railways ah clothed will enable the company to get what land is
+necessary by legal means.
+
+"'I could take these observations,' said the Captain, 'as nothing except
+a gratuitous insult to one who approached him, suh, in a spirit of pure
+benevolence and civic patriotism. It shows the kind of tyrants who
+commanded the oppressors of the South, suh! Only his gray hairs
+protected him, suh, only his gray hairs!'"
+
+"It's a little hard to separate the General from the Captain, in this
+report of the committee on railway extensions," said my wife.
+
+"The only thing that's clear about it," said I, "is that Jim is having a
+good deal of fun with the Captain."
+
+This became clearer as the correspondence went on.
+
+"Tolliver thinks," said he, in another letter, "that the Angus Falls
+extension can be pulled through. However, I recall that only yesterday
+the Captain, in private, denounced the citizens of Lattimore as beneath
+the contempt of gentlemen of breadth of view. 'I shall dispose of my
+holdin's hyah,' said he, with a stately sweep indicative of their
+extent, 'at any sacrifice, and depaht, cuhsin' the day I devoted myself
+to the redemption of such cattle.'
+
+"But, at that particular moment, he had just failed in an attempt to
+sell Bill Trescott a bunch of choice outlying gold bricks, and was
+somewhat heated with wine. This to the haughty Southron was ample
+excuse for confiding to me the round, unvarnished truth about us
+mudsills.
+
+"Josie and I often talk of you and your wife. I don't know what I'd do
+out here if it weren't for Josie. She refuses to enthuse over our
+'natural, healthy growth,' which we look for; but I guess that's because
+she doesn't care for the things that the rest of us are striving for.
+But she's the only person here with whom one can really converse. You'd
+be astonished to see how pretty she is in her furs, and set like a jewel
+in my new sleigh; but I'm becoming keenly aware of the fact."
+
+We were afterwards told that the trilobites had shaken off their
+fossilhood, and that the Angus Falls extension, with the engine-house
+and machine-shops, had been "landed."
+
+"This," he wrote, "means enough new families to make a noticeable
+increase in our population. Things will be popping here soon. Come on
+and help shake the popper; hurry up with your moving, or it will all be
+over, including the shouting."
+
+We were not entirely dependent upon Jim's letters for Lattimore news.
+Mrs. Barslow kept up a desultory correspondence with Miss Trescott,
+begun upon some pretext and continued upon none at all. In one of these
+letters Josie (for so we soon learned to call her) wrote:
+
+"Our little town is changing so that it no longer seems familiar. Not
+that the change is visible. Beyond an unusual number of strangers or
+recent comers, there is nothing new to strike the eye. But the talk
+everywhere is of a new railroad and other improvements. One needs only
+to shut one's eyes and listen, to imagine that the town is already a
+real city. Mr. Elkins seems to be the center of this new civic
+self-esteem. The air is full of it, and I admit that I am affected by
+it. I have
+
+    "'A feeling, as when eager crowds await,
+    Before a palace gate,
+    Some wondrous pageant.'
+
+"You are indebted to Captain Tolliver for the quotation, and to Mr.
+Elkins for the idea. The Captain induced me to read the book in which I
+found the lines. He stigmatizes the preference given to the Northern
+poets--Longfellow, for instance--over Timrod as 'the crowning infamy of
+American letters.' He has taken the trouble to lay out a course of study
+for me, the object of which is to place me right in my appreciation of
+the literary men of the South. It includes Pollard's 'Lost Cause' and
+the works of W. G. Simms. I have not fully promised to follow it to the
+end. Timrod, however, is a treat."
+
+That last quiet winter will always be set apart in my memory, as a time
+like no other. It was a sitting down on a milestone to rest. Back of us
+lay the busy past--busy with trivial things, it seemed to me, but full
+of varied activity nevertheless. A boy will desire mightily to finish a
+cob-house; and when it is done he will smilingly knock it about the barn
+floor. So I was tearing down and leaving the fabric of relationship
+which I had once prized so highly.
+
+The life upon which I expected to enter promised well. In fact, to a man
+of medium ability, only, and no training in large affairs, it promised
+exceedingly well. I knew that Jim was strong, and that his old regard
+for me had taken new life and a firm hold upon him. But when, removed
+from his immediate influence, I looked the situation in the face, the
+future loomed so mysteriously bizarre that I shrank from it. All his
+skimble-skamble talk about psychology and hypnotism, and that other
+rambling discourse of pirate caves and buccaneering cruises, made me
+feel sometimes as if I were about to form a partnership with Aladdin, or
+the King of the Golden Mountain. If he had asked me, merely, to come to
+Lattimore and go into the real estate and insurance business with him, I
+am sure I should have had none of this mental vertigo. Yet what more had
+he done?
+
+As to the boom, I had, as yet, not a particle of objective confidence in
+it; but, subconsciously, I felt, as did the town "doomed to prosperity,"
+a sense of impending events. In spite of some presentiments and doubts,
+it was, on the whole, with high hopes that we, on an aguish spring day,
+reached Lattimore with our stuff (as the Scriptures term it), and knew
+that, for weal or woe, it was our home.
+
+Jim was again at the station to meet us, and seemed delighted at our
+arrival. I thought I saw some sort of absent-mindedness or absorbedness
+in his manner, so that he seemed hardly like himself. Josie was there
+with him, and while she and Alice were greeting each other, I saw Jim
+scanning the little crowd at the station as if for some other arrival.
+At last, his eye told me that whatever it was for which he was looking,
+he had found it; and I followed his glance. It rested on the last person
+to alight from the train--a tall, sinewy, soldierly-built youngish man,
+who wore an overcoat of black, falling away in front, so as to reveal a
+black frock coat tightly buttoned up and a snowy shirt-front with a
+glittering gem sparkling from the center of it. On his head was a
+shining silk hat--a thing so rare in that community as to be noticeable,
+and to stamp the wearer as an outsider. His beard was clipped close, and
+at the chin ran out into a pronounced Vandyke point. His mustaches were
+black, heavy, and waxed. His whole external appearance betokened wealth,
+and he exuded mystery. He had not taken two steps from the car before
+the people on the platform were standing on tiptoe to see him.
+
+"Bus to the Centropolis?" queried the driver of the omnibus.
+
+The stranger looked at the conveyance, filled as it was with a load of
+traveling men and casuals; and, frowning darkly, turned to the negro who
+accompanied him, saying, "Haven't you any carriage here, Pearson?"
+
+"Yes, sah," responded the servant, pointing to a closed vehicle. "Right
+hyah, sah."
+
+My wife stood looking, with a little amused smile, at the picturesque
+group, so out of the ordinary at the time and place. Miss Trescott was
+gazing intently at the stranger, and at the moment when he spoke she
+clutched my wife's arm so tightly as to startle her. I heard Alice make
+some inquiry as to the cause of her agitation, and as I looked at her,
+I could see in the one glance her face, gone suddenly white as death,
+and the dark visage of the tall stranger. And it seemed to me as if I
+had seen the same thing before.
+
+Then, the negro pointing the way to the closed carriage, the group
+separated to left and right, the stranger passed through to the
+carriage, and the picture, and with it my odd mental impression,
+dissolved. The negro lifted two or three heavy bags to the coachman,
+gave the transfer man some baggage-checks, and the equipage moved away
+toward the hotel. All this took place in a moment, during which the
+usual transactions on the platform were suspended. The conductor failed
+to give the usual signal for the departure of the train. The engineer
+leaned from the cab and gazed.
+
+Jim's eye rested on the stranger and his servant for an instant only;
+but during that time he seemed to take an observation, come to a
+conclusion, and dismiss the whole matter.
+
+"Here, John," said he to the drayman, "take these trunks to the
+Centropolis. We'd like 'em this week, too. None of that old trick of
+yours of dumping 'em in the crick, you know!"
+
+"They'll be up there in five minutes all right, Mr. Elkins," said John,
+grinning at Jim's allusion to some accident, the knowledge of which
+appeared to be confined to himself and Mr. Elkins, and to constitute a
+bond of sympathy between them. Jim turned to us with redoubled
+heartiness, all his absent-mindedness gone.
+
+"I'll drive you to the hotel," said Jim. "You'll--"
+
+"Miss Trescott is ill--" said Alice.
+
+"Not at all," said Josie; "it has passed entirely! Only, when you have
+taken Mr. and Mrs. Barslow to the hotel, will you please take me home?
+Our little supper-party--I don't feel quite equal to it, if you will
+excuse me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A Welcome to Wall Street and Us.
+
+
+"Welcome!" intoned Captain Tolliver, with his hat in his hand, bowing
+low to Mrs. Barslow. "Welcome, Madam and suh, in the capacity of
+Lattimoreans! That we shall be the bettah fo' yo' residence among us
+the' can be no doubt. That you will be prospahed beyond yo' wildest
+dreams I believe equally cehtain. Welcome!"
+
+This address was delivered within thirty seconds of the time of our
+arrival at our old rooms in the Centropolis. The Captain saluted us in a
+manner extravagantly polite, mysteriously enthusiastic. The air of
+mystery was deepened when he called again to see Mr. Elkins in the
+evening and was invited in.
+
+"Did you-all notice that distinguished and opulent-looking gentleman who
+got off the train this evening?" said he in a stage whisper. "Mahk my
+words, the coming of such men, _his_ coming, is fraught with the deepest
+significance to us all. All my holdin's ah withdrawn from mahket until
+fu'the' developments!"
+
+"Seems to travel in style," said Jim; "all sorts of good clothes,
+colored body-servant, closed carriage ordered by wire--it does look
+juicy, don't it, now?"
+
+"He has the entiah second flo' front suite. The niggah has already sent
+out fo' a bahbah," said the Captain. "Lattimore has at last attracted
+the notice of adequate capital, and will now assume huh true place in
+the bright galaxy of American cities. Mr. Barslow, I shall ask
+puhmission to call upon you in the mo'nin' with reference to a project
+which will make the fo'tunes of a dozen men, and that within the next
+ninety days. Good evenin', suh; good evenin', Madam. I feel that you
+have come among us at a propitious moment!"
+
+"The Captain merely hints at the truth which struggles in him for
+utterance," said Jim. "I prove this by informing you that I couldn't get
+you a house. This shows, too, that the census returns are a calumny upon
+Lattimore. You'll have to stay at the Centropolis until something turns
+up or you can build."
+
+"Oh, dear!" said Alice. "Hotel life isn't living at all. I hope it won't
+be long."
+
+"It will have its advantages for Al," said Mr. Elkins. "This financial
+maelstrom, which will draw everything to Lattimore, will have its core
+right in this hotel--a mighty good place to be. Things of all kinds have
+been floating about in the air for months; the precipitation is
+beginning now. The psychological moment has arrived--you have brought it
+with you, Mrs. Barslow. The moon-flower of Lattimore's 'gradual, healthy
+growth' is going to burst, and that right soon."
+
+"Has Captain Tolliver infected you?" inquired Alice. "He told us the
+same thing, with less of tropes and figures."
+
+"On any still morning," said Jim, "you can hear the wheels go round in
+the Captain's head; but his instinct for real-estate conditions is as
+accurate as a pocket-gopher's. The Captain, in a hysterical sort of way,
+is right: I consider that a cinch. Good-night, friends, and pleasant
+dreams. I expect to see you at breakfast; but if I shouldn't, Al, you'll
+come aboard at nine, won't you, and help run up the Jolly Roger? I think
+I smell pieces-of-eight in the air! And, by the way, Miss Trescott says
+for me to assure you that her vertigo, which she had for the first time
+in her life, is gone, and she never felt better."
+
+As Mr. Elkins passed from our parlor, he let in a bell-boy with the card
+of Mr. Clifford Giddings, representing the Lattimore Morning _Herald_.
+
+"See him down in the lobby," said Alice.
+
+"I want a story," said he as we met, "on the city and its future. The
+_Herald_ readers will be glad of anything from Mr. Barslow, whose coming
+they have so long looked forward to, as intimately connected with the
+city's development."
+
+"My dear sir," I replied, somewhat astonished at the importance which he
+was pleased to attach to my arrival, "abstractly, my removal to
+Lattimore is my best testimony on that; concretely, I ought to ask
+information of you."
+
+We sat down in a corner of the lobby, our chairs side by side, facing
+opposite ways. He lighted a cigar, and gave me one. In looks he was
+young; in behavior he had the self-possession and poise of maturity. He
+wore a long mackintosh which sparkled with mist. His slouch hat looked
+new and was carefully dinted. His dress was almost natty in an
+unconventional way, and his manners accorded with his garb. He acted as
+if for years we had casually met daily. His tone and attitude evinced
+respect, was entirely free from presumption, equally devoid of reserve,
+carried with it no hint of familiarity, but assumed a perfect
+understanding. The barrier which usually keeps strangers apart he
+neither broke down, which must have been offensive, nor overleaped,
+which would have been presumptuous. He covered it with that demeanor of
+his, and together we sat down upon it.
+
+"I thought the _Herald_ was an evening paper," said I.
+
+"It was, in the days of yore," he replied; "but Mr. Elkins happened to
+see me in Chicago one day, and advised me to come out and look the old
+thing over with a view to purchasing the plant. You observe the result.
+As fellow immigrants, I hope there will be a bond of sympathy between
+us. You think, of course, that Lattimore is a coming city?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Its geographical situation seems to render its development inevitable,
+doesn't it? And," he went on, "the railway conditions seem peculiarly
+promising just now?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "but the natural resources of the city and the
+surrounding country appeal most strongly to me."
+
+"They are certainly very exceptional, aren't they?" said he, as if the
+matter had never occurred to him before. Then he went on telling me
+things, more than asking questions, about the jobbing trades, the brick
+and tile and associated industries, the cement factory, which he spoke
+of as if actually _in esse_, the projected elevators, the
+flouring-mills, and finally returned to railway matters.
+
+"What is your opinion of the Lattimore & Great Western, Mr. Barslow?" he
+asked.
+
+"I cannot say that I have any," I answered, "except that its
+construction would bring great good to Lattimore."
+
+"It could scarcely fail," said he, "to bring in two or three systems
+which we now lack, could it?"
+
+I very sincerely said that I did not know. After a few more questions
+concerning our plans for the future, Mr. Giddings vanished into the
+night, silently, as an autumn leaf parting from its bough. I thought of
+him no more until I unfolded the _Herald_ in the morning as we sat at
+breakfast, and saw that my interview was made a feature of the day's
+news.
+
+"Mr. Albert F. Barslow," it read, "of the firm of Elkins & Barslow, is
+stopping at the Centropolis. He arrived by the 6:15 train last evening,
+and with his family has taken a suite of rooms pending the erection of a
+residence. They have not definitely decided as to the location of their
+new home; but it may confidently be stated that they will build
+something which will be a notable addition to the architectural beauties
+of Lattimore--already proud of her title, the City of Homes."
+
+"I am very glad to know about this," said Alice.
+
+"Your man Giddings has nerve, whatever else he may lack," said I to the
+smiling Elkins across the table. "Am I obliged to make good all these
+representations? I ask, that I may know the rules of the game, merely."
+
+"One rule is that you mustn't deny any accusations of future
+magnificence, for two reasons: they may come true, and they help things
+on. You are supposed to have left your modesty in cold storage
+somewhere. Read on."
+
+"Mr. Barslow," I read, "has long been a most potent political factor in
+his native state, but is, first of all, a business man. He brings his
+charming young wife--"
+
+"Really, a most discriminating journalist," interjected Alice.
+
+"--and social circles, as well as the business world, will find them a
+most desirable accession to Lattimore's population."
+
+"Why this is absolute, slavish devotion to facts," said Jim; "where does
+the word-painting come in?"
+
+"Here it is," said I.
+
+"Mr. Barslow is some years under middle age, and looks the intense
+modern business man in every feature. His mind seems to have already
+become saturated with the conception of the enormous possibilities of
+Lattimore. He impresses those who have met him as one of the few men
+capable of pulling his share in double harness with James R. Elkins."
+
+"The fellow piles it on a little strong at times, doesn't he, Mrs.
+Barslow?" said Jim.
+
+"He brings to our city," I read on, "his vigorous mind, his fortune, and
+a determination never to rest until the city passes the 100,000 mark. To
+a _Herald_ representative, last night, he spoke strongly and eloquently
+of our great natural resources."
+
+Then followed a skillfully handled expansion of our _tete-a-tete_ talk
+in the lobby.
+
+"Mr. Barslow," the report went on, "very courteously declined to discuss
+the L. & G. W. situation. It seems evident, however, from remarks
+dropped by him, that he regards the construction of this road as
+inevitable, and as a project which, successfully carried out, cannot
+fail to make Lattimore the point to which all the Western and
+Southwestern systems of railways must converge."
+
+"You're doing it like a veteran!" cried Jim. "Admirable! Just the proper
+infusion of mystery; I couldn't have done better myself."
+
+"Credit it all to Giddings," I protested. "And note that the center of
+the stage is reserved to our mysterious fellow lodger and co-arrival."
+
+"Yes, I saw that," said Jim. "Isn't Giddings a peach? Let Mrs. Barslow
+hear it."
+
+"She ought to be able to hear these headlines," said I, "without any
+reading: 'J. Bedford Cornish arrives! Wall Street's Millions On the
+Ground in the Person of One of Her Great Financiers! Bull Movement in
+Real Estate Noted Last Night! Does He Represent the Great Railway
+Interests?'"
+
+"Real estate and financial circles," ran the article under these
+headlines, "are thrown into something of a fever by the arrival, on the
+6:15 express last evening, of a gentleman of distinguished appearance,
+who took five rooms _en suite_ on the second floor of the Centropolis,
+and registered in a bold hand as J. Bedford Cornish, of New York. Mr.
+Cornish consented to see a _Herald_ representative last night, but was
+very reticent as to his plans and the objects of his visit. He simply
+says that he represents capital seeking investment. He would not admit
+that he is connected with any of the great railway interests, or that
+his visit has any relation to the building of the Lattimore & Great
+Western. The _Herald_ is able to say, however, that its New York
+correspondent informs it that Mr. Cornish is a member of the firm of
+Lusch, Carskaddan & Mayer, of Wall Street. This firm is well known as
+one of the concerns handling large amounts of European capital, and said
+to be intimately associated with the Rothschilds. Financial journals
+have recently noted the fact that these concerns are becoming
+embarrassed by the plethora of funds seeking investment, and are turning
+their attention to the development of railway systems and cities in the
+United States. Their South American and Australian investments have not
+proven satisfactory, especially the former, owing to the character of
+the people of Latin America. It has been pointed out that no real-estate
+investment can be more than moderately profitable in climates which
+render the people content with a mere living, and that the restless and
+unsatisfied vigor of the Anglo-Saxon alone can make lands and railways
+permanently remunerative. Mr. Cornish admitted these facts when they
+were pointed out to him, and immediately changed the subject.
+
+"Mr. Cornish is a very handsome and opulent-looking gentleman, and seems
+to live in a style somewhat luxurious for the Occident. He has a colored
+body-servant, who seems to reflect the mystery of his master; but if he
+has any other reflections, the _Herald_ is none the wiser for them.
+Admittance to the suite of rooms was obtained by sending in the
+reporter's card, which vanished into a sybaritic gloom, borne on a
+golden salver. Mr. Cornish seems to be very exclusive, his meals being
+served in his rooms; and even his barber has instructions to call upon
+him each morning. One wonders why the barber is called in so frequently,
+until one marks the smooth-shaven cheeks above the close-clipped,
+pointed, black, Vandyke beard. He is withal very cordial and courtly in
+his manners.
+
+"James R. Elkins, when seen last evening, refused to talk, except to say
+that, in financial circles, it has been known for some days that
+important developments may be now momently expected, and that some such
+thing as the visit of Mr. Cornish was imminent. Captain Marion Tolliver
+expressed himself freely, and to the effect that this mysterious visit
+is of the utmost importance to Lattimore, and a thing of national if not
+world-wide importance."
+
+"Now, that justifies my confidence in Giddings," said Mr. Elkins,
+"fulfilling at the same time the requirements of journalism and
+hypnotism. Come, Al, our bark is on the sea, our boat is on the shore.
+The Spanish galleons are even now hiding in the tall grass, in
+expectation of our cruise. Let us hence to the office!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+I Go Aboard and We Unfurl the Jolly Roger.
+
+
+"We must act, and act at once!" said the Captain, his voice thrilling
+with intensity. "This piece of property will be gone befo' night! All it
+takes is a paltry three thousand dolla's, and within ninety days--no man
+can say what its value will be. We can plat it, and within ten days we
+may have ouah money back. Allow me to draw on you fo' three thou--"
+
+"But," said I, "I can make no move in such a matter at this time without
+conference with Mr.--"
+
+"Very well, suh, very well!" said the Captain, regarding me with a look
+that showed how much better things he had expected of me. "Opportunity,
+suh, knocks once--By the way, excuse me, suh!"
+
+And he darted from the office, took the trail of Mr. Macdonald, whom he
+had seen passing, brought him to bay in front of the post-office, and
+dragged him away to some doom, the nature of which I could only surmise.
+
+This took place on the morning of my first day with Elkins & Barslow. I
+was to take up the office work.
+
+"That will be easy for you from the first," said Jim. "Your experience
+as rob-ee down there in Posey County makes you a sort of specialist in
+that sort of thing; and pretty soon all other things shall be added unto
+it."
+
+The Captain's onslaught in the first half-hour admonished me that a good
+deal was already added to it. On that very day, too, we had our first
+conference with Mr. Hinckley. We wanted to handle securities, said Mr.
+Elkins, and should have a great many of them, and that was quite in Mr.
+Hinckley's line. To carry them ourselves would soon absorb all our
+capital. We must liberate it by floating the commercial paper which we
+took in. Mr. Hinckley's bank was known to be strong, his standing was of
+the highest, and a trust company in alliance with him could not fail to
+find a good market for its paper. With an old banker's timidity,
+Hinckley seemed to hesitate; yet the prospects seemed so good that I
+felt that this consent was sure to be given. Jim courted him
+assiduously, and the intimacy between him and the Hinckley family became
+noticeable.
+
+"Jim," said I, one day, "you have an unerring eye for the pleasant
+things of life. I couldn't help thinking of this to-day when I saw you
+for the twentieth time spinning along the street in Miss Hinckley's
+carriage, beside its owner. She's one of the handsomest girls, in her
+flaxen-haired way, that I know of."
+
+"Isn't she a study in curves and pink and white?" said Jim. "And she
+understands this trust company business as well as her father."
+
+The trust company's stock, he went on to explain, ignoring Antonia,
+seemed to be already oversubscribed. Our firm, Hinckley, and Jim's
+Chicago and New York friends, including Harper, all stood ready to take
+blocks of it, and there was no reason for requiring Hinckley to put much
+actual money in for this. He could pay for it out of his profits soon,
+and make a fortune without any outlay. Good credit was the prime
+necessity, and that Mr. Hinckley certainly had. So the celebrated Grain
+Belt Trust Company was begun--a name about which such mighty interests
+were to cluster, that I know I should have shrunk from the
+responsibility had I known what a gigantic thing we were creating.
+
+As the days wore on, Captain Tolliver's dementia spread and raged
+virulently. The dark-visaged Cornish, with his air of mystery, his
+habits so at odds with the society of Lattimore, was in the very focus
+of attention.
+
+For a day or so, the effect which Mr. Giddings's report attributed to
+his invasion failed to disclose itself to me. Then the delirium became
+manifest, and swept over the town like a were-wolf delusion through a
+medieval village.
+
+Its immediate occasion seemed to be a group of real-estate conveyances,
+announced in the _Herald_ one morning, surpassing in importance anything
+in the history of the town. Some of the lands transferred were acreage;
+some were waste and vacant tracts along Brushy Creek and the river; one
+piece was a suburban farm; but the mass of it was along Main Street and
+in the business district. The grantees were for the most part strange
+names in Lattimore, some individuals, some corporations. All the sales
+were at prices hitherto unknown. It was to be remarked, too, that in
+most cases the property had been purchased not long before, by some of
+the group of newer comers and at the old modest prices. Our firm seemed
+to have profited heavily in these transactions, as had Captain Tolliver
+also. We of the "new crowd" had begun our mock-trading to "establish the
+market." Prices were going up, up; and all one had to do was to buy
+to-day and sell to-morrow. Real values, for actual use, seemed to be
+forgotten.
+
+The most memorable moment in this first, acutest stage in our
+development was one bright day, within a week or so of our coming. The
+lawns were taking on their summer emerald, robins were piping in the
+maples, and down in the cottonwoods and lindens on the river front crows
+and jays were jargoning their immemorial and cheery lingo. Surveyors
+were running lines and making plats in the suburbs, peeped at by
+gophers, and greeted by the roundelays of meadow-larks. But on the
+street-corners, in the offices of lawyers and real-estate agents, and in
+the lobbies of the hotels, the trading was lively.
+
+Then for the first time the influx of real buyers from the outside
+became noticeable. The landlord of the Centropolis could scarcely care
+for his guests. They talked of blocks, quarter-blocks, and the choice
+acreage they had bought, and of the profits they had made in this and
+other cities and towns (where this same speculative fever was epidemic),
+until Alice fled to the Trescott farm--as she said, to avoid the
+mixture of real estate with her meals. The telegraph offices were gorged
+with messages to non-resident property owners, begging for prices on
+good inside lots. Staid, slow-going lot-owners, who had grown old in
+patiently paying taxes on patches of dog-fennel and sand-burrs, dazedly
+vacillated between acceptance and rejection of tempting propositions,
+dreading the missing of the chance so long awaited, fearing misjudgment
+as to the height of the wave, dreading a future of regret at having sold
+too low.
+
+One of these, an old woman, toothless and bent, hobbled to our office
+and asked for Mr. Elkins. He was busy, and so I received her.
+
+"It's about that quarter-block with the Donegal ruin on it," said Jim;
+"the one I showed you yesterday. Offer her five thousand, one-fourth
+down, balance in one, two, and three years, eight per cent."
+
+"I wanted to ask Mr. Elkins about me home," said she. "I tuk in washin'
+to buy it, an' me son, poor Patsy, God rist 'is soul, he helped wid th'
+bit of money from the Brotherhood, whin he was kilt betune the cars. It
+was sivin hundred an' fifty dollars, an' now Thronson offers me four
+thousan'. I told him I'd sell, fer it's a fortune for a workin' woman;
+but befure I signed papers, I wanted to ask Mr. Elkins; he's such a
+fair-spoken man, an' knowin' to me min-folks in Peoria."
+
+"If you want to sell, Mrs. Collins," said I, "we will take your property
+at five thousand dollars."
+
+She started, and regarded me, first in amazement, then with distrust,
+shading off into hostility.
+
+"Thank ye kindly, sir," said she; "I'll be goin' now. I've med up me
+moind, if that bit of land is wort all that money t' yees, it's wort
+more to me. Thank ye kindly!" and she fled from the presence of the
+tempter.
+
+"The town is full of Biddy Collinses," commented Jim. "Well, we can't
+land everything, and couldn't handle the catch if we did. In fact, for
+present purposes, isn't it better to have her refuse?"
+
+This incident was the hint upon which our "Syndicate," as it came to be
+called, acted from time to time, in making fabulous offers to every
+Biddy Collins in town. "Offer twenty thousand," Jim would say. "The more
+you bid the less apt is he to accept; he's a Biddy Collins." And
+whatever Mr. Elkins advised was done.
+
+There were eight or ten of us in the "Syndicate," dubbed by Jim "The
+Crew," among whom were Tolliver, Macdonald, and Will Lattimore. But the
+inner circle, now drawing closer and closer together, were Elkins, our
+ruling spirit; Hinckley, our great force in the banking world; and
+myself. Soon, I was given to understand, Mr. Cornish was to take his
+place as one of us. He and Jim had long known each other, and Mr. Elkins
+had the utmost confidence in Mr. Cornish's usefulness in what he called
+"the thought-transference department."
+
+Elkins & Barslow kept their offices open night and day, almost, and the
+number of typewriters and bookkeepers grew astoundingly. I became almost
+a stranger to my wife. I got hurried glimpses of Miss Trescott and her
+mother at the hotel, and knew that she and Alice were becoming fast
+friends; but so far the social prominence which the _Herald_ had
+predicted for us had failed to arrive.
+
+This, to be sure, was our own fault. Miss Addison soon gave us up as not
+available for the church and Sunday-school functions to which she
+devoted herself. Her family connections would have made her _the_ social
+leader had it not been for the severity of her views and her assumption
+of the character of the devotee--in spite of which she protestingly went
+almost everywhere. Antonia Hinckley, however, was frankly fond of a good
+time, and with her dashing and almost hoydenish character easily took
+the leadership from Miss Addison; and Miss Hinckley sought diligently
+for means by which we could be properly launched. As I left the office
+one day, a voice from the curb called my name. It was Miss Hinckley in a
+smart trap, to which was harnessed a beautiful horse, standard bred, one
+could see at a glance. I obeyed the summons, and stepped beside the
+equipage.
+
+"I want to scold you," said she. "Society is being defrauded of the good
+things which your coming promised. Have you taken a vow of seclusion, or
+what?"
+
+"I've been spinning about in the maelstrom of business," I replied. "But
+do not be uneasy; some time we shall take up the matter of inflicting
+ourselves, and pursue it as vigorously as we now follow our vocation."
+
+"Wouldn't you like to get into the trap, and take a spin of another
+sort?" said she. "I'll deposit you safely with Mrs. Barslow in time for
+tea."
+
+I got in, glad of the drive, and for ten minutes her horse was sent at
+such a pace that conversation was difficult. Then he was slowed down to
+a walk, his head toward home. We chatted of casual things--the scenery,
+the horse, the splendid color of the sunset. I was becoming interested
+in her.
+
+"I had almost forgotten that there were such things in Lattimore," said
+I, referring to the topics of our talk. "I have become so saturated with
+lands and lots."
+
+"I don't know much about business," said she, "and I think I'll improve
+my opportunity by learning something. And, first, aren't men sometimes
+losers by the dishonesty of those who act for them--agents, they are
+called, aren't they?"
+
+Such, I admitted, was unfortunately the case.
+
+"I should be sorry for--any one I liked--to be injured in such a way....
+Now you must understand how the things you men are interested in
+permeate the society of us women. Why, mamma has almost forgotten the
+enslavement of our sex, in these new things which have changed our old
+town so much; so you mustn't wonder if I have heard something of a
+purely business nature. I heard that Captain Tolliver was about to sell
+Mr. Elkins the land where the old foundry is, over there, for twenty
+thousand dollars. Now, papa says it isn't worth it; and I know--Sadie
+Allen and I were in school together, and she comes over from Fairchild
+several times a year to see me, and I go there, you know; and that land
+is in her father's estate--I know that the executor has told Captain
+Tolliver to sell it for ever so much less than that. And it seemed so
+funny, as the Captain was doing the business for both sides--isn't it
+odd, now?"
+
+"It does seem so," said I, "and it is very kind of you. I'll talk with
+Mr. Elkins about it. Please be careful, Miss Hinckley, or you'll drop
+the wheel in that washout!"
+
+She reined up her horse and began speeding him again. I could see that
+this conversation had embarrassed her somehow. Her color was high, and
+her grip of the reins not so steady as at starting. This attempt to do
+Jim a favor was something she considered as of a good deal of
+consequence. I began to note more and more what a really splendid woman
+she was--tall, fair, her tailor-made gown rounding to the full, firm
+curves of her figure, her fearless horsemanship hinting at the
+possession of large and positive traits of character.
+
+"We women," said she, "might as well abandon all the things commonly
+known as feminine. What good do they do us?"
+
+"They gratify your sense of the beautiful," suggested I.
+
+"You know, Mr. Barslow," said she, "that it's not our own sense of the
+beautiful, mainly, that we seek to gratify; and if the eyes for which
+they are intended are looking into ledgers and blind to everything
+except dollar-signs, what's the use?"
+
+"Go down to the seashore," said I, "where the people congregate who have
+nothing to do."
+
+"Not I," said she; "I'll go into real estate, and become as blind as the
+rest!"
+
+Jim paid no attention to my chaffing when I spoke of his conquest, as I
+called Antonia. In fact, he seemed annoyed, and for a long time said
+nothing.
+
+"You can see how the Allen estate proposition stands," said he, at last.
+"To let that sell for less than twenty thousand might cost us ten times
+that amount in lowering the prevailing standard of values. The old rule
+that we should buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest is
+suspended. Base is the slave who pays--less than the necessary and
+proper increase."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+We Dedicate Lynhurst Park.
+
+
+The Hindu adept sometimes suspends before the eyes of his subject a
+bright ball of carnelian or crystal, in the steady contemplation of
+which the sensitive swims off into the realms of subjectivity--that
+mysterious bourn from whence no traveler brings anything back. J.
+Bedford Cornish was Mr. Elkins's glittering ball; his psychic subject
+was the world in general and Lattimore in particular. Scientific
+principles, confirmed by experience, led us to the conclusion that the
+attitude of fixed contemplation carried with it some nervous strain,
+ought to be of limited duration, and hence that Mr. Cornish should
+remove from our midst the glittering mystery of his presence, lest
+familiarity should breed contempt. So in about ten days he went away,
+giving to the _Herald_ a parting interview, in which he expressed
+unbounded delight with Lattimore, and hinted that he might return for a
+longer stay. Editorially, the _Herald_ expressed the hope that this
+characteristically veiled allusion to a longer sojourn might mean that
+Mr. Cornish had some idea of becoming a citizen of Lattimore. This would
+denote, the editorial continued, that men like Mr. Cornish, accustomed
+to the mighty world-pulse of New York, could find objects of pursuit
+equally worthy in Lattimore.
+
+"Which is mixed metaphor," Mr. Giddings admitted in confidence; "but,"
+he continued, "if metaphors, like drinks, happen to be more potent
+mixed, the _Herald_ proposes to mix 'em."
+
+All these things consumed time, and still our life was one devoted to
+business exclusively. At last Mr. Elkins himself, urged, I feel sure, by
+Antonia Hinckley, gave evidence of weariness.
+
+"Al," said he one day, "don't you think it's about time to go ashore for
+a carouse?"
+
+"Unless something in the way of a let-up comes soon," said I, "the
+position of lieutenant, or first mate, or whatever my job is piratically
+termed, will become vacant. The pace is pretty rapid. Last night I
+dreamed that the new Hotel Elkins was founded on my chest; and I have
+had troubles enough of the same kind before to show me that my nervous
+system is slowly ravelling out."
+
+"I have arrangements made, in my mind, for a sort of al fresco function,
+to come off about the time Cornish gets back with our London visitor,"
+he replied, "which ought to knit up the ravelled sleeve better than new.
+I'm going to dedicate Lynhurst Park to the nymphs and deities of
+sport--which wrinkled care derides."
+
+"I hadn't heard of Lynhurst Park," I was forced to say. "I'm curious to
+know, first, who named it, and, second, where it is."
+
+"Didn't I show you those blueprints?" he asked. "An oversight I assure
+you. As for the scheme, you suggested it yourself that night we first
+drove out to Trescott's. Don't you remember saying something about
+'breathing space for the populace'? Well, I had the surveys made at
+once; contracted for the land, all but what Bill owns of it, which we'll
+have to get later; and had a landscapist out from Chicago to direct us
+as to what we ought to admire in improving the place. As for the name,
+I'm indebted to kind nature, which planted the valley in basswood, and
+to Josie, who contributed the philological knowledge and the taste.
+That's the street-car line," said he, unrolling an elaborate plat and
+pointing. "We may throw it over to the west to develop section seven, if
+we close for it. Otherwise, that line is the very thing."
+
+Our street-railway franchise had been granted by the Lattimore city
+council--they would have granted the public square, had we asked for it
+in the potent name of "progress"--and Cornish was even now making
+arrangements for placing our bonds. The impossible of less than a year
+ago was now included in the next season's program, as an inconsiderable
+feature of a great project for a street-railway system, and the
+"development" of hundreds of acres of land.
+
+The place so to be named Lynhurst Park was most agreeably reached by a
+walk up Brushy Creek from Lattimore. Such a stroll took one into the
+gorge, where the rocks shelved toward each other, until their crowning
+fringes of cedar almost interlocked, like the eyelashes of drowsiness.
+Down there in the twilight one felt a sense of being defrauded, in
+contemplation of the fact that the stream was troutless: it was such an
+ideal place for trout. The quiet and mellow gloom made the gorge a
+favorite trysting-place, and perhaps the cool-blooded stream-folk had
+fled from the presence of the more fervid dwellers on the banks. In the
+crevices of the rocks were the nests of the village pigeons. The
+combined effects of all these causes was to make this a spot devoted to
+billing and cooing.
+
+Farther up the stream the rock walls grew lower and parted wider,
+islanding a rich bottom of lush grass-plot, alternating with groves of
+walnut, linden, and elm. This was the Lynhurst Park of the blueprints
+and plats. Trescott's farm lay on the right bank, and others on either
+side; but the houses were none of them near the stream, and the entire
+walk was wild and woodsy-looking. None but nature-lovers came that way.
+Others drove out by the road past Trescott's, seeing more of corn and
+barn, but less of rock, moss, and fern.
+
+Mr. Cornish was to return on Friday with the Honorable De Forest
+Barr-Smith, who lived in London and "represented English capital." To us
+Westerners the very hyphen of his name spoke eloquently of L s. d.
+Through him we hoped to get the money to build that street railway.
+Cornish had written that Mr. Barr-Smith wanted to look the thing over
+personally; and that, given the element of safety, his people would much
+prefer an investment of a million to one of ten thousand. Cornish
+further hinted that the London gentleman acted like a man who wanted a
+side interest in the construction company; as to which he would sound
+him further by the way.
+
+"He'll expect something in the way of birds and bottles," observed
+Elkins; "but they won't mix with the general society of this town, where
+the worm of the still is popularly supposed to be the original Edenic
+tempter. And he'll want to inspect Lynhurst Park. I want him to see our
+beauty and our chivalry,--meaning the ladies and Captain Tolliver,--and
+the rest of our best people. I guess we'll have to make it a temperate
+sort of orgy, making up in the spectacular what it lacks in
+spirituousness."
+
+Mr. Cornish came, gradually moulting his mystery; but still far above
+the Lattimore standard in dress and style of living. In truth, he always
+had a good deal of the swell in his make-up, and can almost be acquitted
+of deceit in the impressions conveyed at his coming. The Honorable De
+Forest Barr-Smith fraternized with Cornish, as he could with no one
+else. No one looking at Mr. Cornish could harbor a doubt as to his
+morning tub; and his evening dress was always correct. With Jim, Mr.
+Barr-Smith went into the discussion of business propositions freely and
+confidentially. I feel sure that had he greatly desired a candid
+statement of the very truth as to local views, or the exact judgment of
+one on the spot, he would have come to me. But between him and Cornish
+there was the stronger sympathy of a common understanding of the occult
+intricacies of clothes, and a view-point as to the surface of things,
+embracing manifold points of agreement. Cornish's unerring conformity
+of vogue in the manner and as to the occasion of wearing the tuxedo or
+the claw-hammer coat was clearly restful to Mr. Barr-Smith, in this new
+and strange country, where, if danger was to be avoided, things had to
+be approached with distended nostril and many preliminary snuffings of
+the wind.
+
+There came with these two a younger brother of Mr. Barr-Smith, Cecil--a
+big young civil engineer, just out of college, and as like his brother
+in accent and dress as could be expected of one of his years; but
+national characteristics are matters of growth, and college boys all
+over the world are a good deal alike. Cecil Barr-Smith, with his red
+mustache, his dark eyes, and his six feet of British brawn, was nearer
+in touch with our younger people that first day than his honorable
+brother ever became. To Antonia, especially, he took kindly, and
+respectfully devoted himself.
+
+"At this distance," said Mr. Barr-Smith, as he saw his brother sitting
+on the grass at Miss Hinckley's feet, "I'd think them brother and
+sister. She resembles sister Gritty remarkably; the same complexion and
+the same style, you know. Quite so!"
+
+The Lynhurst function was the real introduction of these three gentlemen
+to Lattimore society. I knew nothing of the arrangements, except what I
+could deduce from Jim's volume of business with caterers and other
+handicraftsmen; and I looked forward to the fete with much curiosity.
+The weather, that afternoon, made an outing quite the natural thing; for
+it was hot. The ladies in their most summery gowns fluttered like white
+dryads from shade to shade, uttering bird-like pipings of surprise at
+the preparations made for their entertainment.
+
+The ravine had been transformed. At an available point in its bed Jim
+had thrown a dam across the stream, and a beautiful little lake rippled
+in the breeze, bearing on its bosom a bright-colored boat, which in our
+ignorance of things Venetian we mistakenly dubbed a gondola. At the
+upper end of this water the canvas of a large pavilion gleamed whitely
+through the greenery, displaying from its top the British and American
+flags, their color reflected in a particolored streak on the wimpling
+face of the lake. The groves, in the tops of which the woodpeckers,
+warblers, and vireos disturbedly carried on the imperatively necessary
+work of rearing their broods, were gay with festoons of Chinese lanterns
+in readiness for the evening. Hammocks were slung from tree to tree,
+cushions and seats were arranged in cosy nooks; and when my wife and I
+stepped from our carriage, all these appliances for the utilization of
+shade and leisure were in full use. The "gondola" was making, trips from
+the cascade (as the dam was already called) to the pavilion, carrying
+loads of young people from whom came to our ears those peals of
+merriment which have everywhere but one meaning, and that a part of the
+world-old mystery of the way of a man with a maid.
+
+Jim was on the ground early, to receive the guests and keep the
+management in hand. Josie Trescott and her mother walked down through
+the Trescott pasture, and joined Alice and me under one of the splendid
+lindens, where, as we lounged in the shade, the sound of the little
+waterfall filled the spaces in our talk. Long before any one else had
+seen them coming through the trees, Mr. Elkins had spied them, and went
+forward to meet them with something more than the hospitable solicitude
+with which he had met the others. In fact, the principal guests of the
+day had alighted from their carriage before Jim, ensconced in a hammock
+with Josie, was made aware of their arrival. I am not quick to see such
+things; but to my eyes, even, the affair had assumed interest as a sort
+of public flirtation. I had not thought that Josie would so easily fall
+into deportment so distinctly encouraging. She was altogether in a
+surprising mood,--her eyes shining as with some stimulant, her cheeks a
+little flushed, her lips scarlet, her whole appearance suggesting
+suppressed excitement. And when Jim rose to meet his guests, she
+dismissed him with one of those charmingly inviting glances and gestures
+with which such an adorable woman spins the thread by which the banished
+one is drawn back,--and then she disappeared until the dinner was
+served.
+
+The green crown of the western hill was throwing its shadow across the
+valley, when Mr. Hinckley came with Mr. Cornish and Mr. Barr-Smith in a
+barouche; followed by Antonia, who brought Mr. Cecil in her trap--and a
+concomitant thrill to the company. Mr. Cornish, in his dress, had struck
+a happy medium between the habiliments of business and those of sylvan
+recreation. Mr. Barr-Smith on the other hand, was garbed cap-a-pie for
+an outing, presenting an appearance with which the racket, the bat, or
+even the alpenstock might have been conjoined in perfect harmony. As for
+the men of Lattimore, any one of them would as soon have been seen in
+the war-dress of a Sioux chief as in this entirely correct costume of
+our British visitor. We walked about in the every-day vestments of the
+shops, banks, and offices, illustrating the difference between a state
+of society in which apparel is regarded as an incident in life, and one
+rising to the height of realizing its true significance as a religion.
+Mr. Barr-Smith bowed not the knee to the Baal of western
+clothes-monotone, but daily sent out his sartorial orisons, keeping his
+windows open toward the Jerusalem of his London tailor, in a manner
+which would have delighted a Teufelsdroeckh.
+
+He was a short man, with protruding cheeks, and a nose ending in an
+amorphous flare of purple and scarlet. His mustache, red like that of
+his brother, and constituting the only point of physical resemblance
+between them, grew down over a receding chin, being forced thereto by
+the bulbous overhang of the nose. He had rufous side-whiskers, clipped
+moderately close, and carroty hair mixed with gray. His erect shoulders
+and straight back were a little out of keeping with the rotundity of his
+figure in other respects; but the combination, hinting, as it did, of
+affairs both gastronomic and martial, taken with a manner at once
+dignified, formal, and suave, constituted the most intensely respectable
+appearance I ever saw. To the imagination of Lattimore he represented
+everything of which, Cornish fell short, piling Lombard upon Wall
+Street.
+
+The arrival of these gentlemen was the signal for gathering in the
+pavilion where dinner was served. The tables were arranged in a great L,
+at the apex of which sat Jim and the distinguished guests. On one side
+of him sat Mr. Barr-Smith, who listened absorbedly to the conversation
+of Mrs. Hinckley, filling every pause with a husky "Quite so!" On the
+other sat Josie Trescott, who was smiling upon a very tall and spare old
+man who wore a beautiful white mustache and imperial. I had never met
+him, but I knew him for General Lattimore. His fondness for Josie was
+well known; and to him Jim attributed that young lady's lack of
+enthusiasm over our schemes for city-building. His presence at this
+gathering was somewhat of a surprise to me.
+
+Antonia and Cecil Barr-Smith, the Tollivers, Mr. Hinckley and Alice,
+myself, Mr. Giddings, and Miss Addison sat across the table from the
+host. Mrs. Trescott, after expressing wonder at the changes wrought in
+the ravine, and confiding to me her disapproval of the useless expense,
+had returned to the farm, impelled by that habitual feeling that
+something was wrong there. Mr. Giddings was exceedingly attentive to
+Miss Addison.
+
+"I know why you're trying to look severe," said he to her, as the
+consomme was served; "and it's the only thing I can imagine you making a
+failure of, unless it would be looking anything but pretty. But you are
+trying it, and I know why. You think they ought to have had some one say
+grace before pulling this thing off."
+
+"I'm not trying to look--anyhow," she answered. "But you are right in
+thinking that I believe such duties should not be transgressed, for fear
+that the world may call us provincial or old-fashioned."
+
+And she shot a glance at Cornish and Barr-Smith as the visible
+representatives of the "world."
+
+"Don't listen to that age-old clash between fervor and unregeneracy,"
+said Josie across the narrow table, her remarks made possible by the
+music of the orchestra, "but tell us about Mr. Barr-Smith and--the other
+gentlemen."
+
+"I wanted to ask you about the Britons," said I; "are they good
+specimens of the men you saw in England?"
+
+"An art-student, with a consciousness of guilt in slowly eating up the
+year's shipment of steers, isn't likely to know much more of the
+Barr-Smiths' London than she can see from the street. But I think them
+fine examples of not very rare types. I should like to try drawing the
+elder brother!"
+
+"Before he goes away, I predict--" I began, when my villainous pun was
+arrested in mid-utterance by the voice of Captain Tolliver, suddenly
+becoming the culminating peak in the table-talk.
+
+"The Anglo-Saxon, suh," he was saying, "is found in his greatest purity
+of blood in ouah Southe'n states. It is thah, suh, that those qualities
+of virility and capacity fo' rulership which make the race what is ah
+found in theiah highest development--on this side of the watah, suh, on
+this side!"
+
+"Quite so! I dare say, quite so!" responded Mr. Barr-Smith. "I hope to
+know the people of the South better. In fact, I may say, really, you
+know, an occasion like this gives one the desire to become acquainted
+with the whole American people."
+
+General Lattimore, whose nostrils flared as he leaned forward listening,
+like an opponent in a debate, to the remarks of Captain Tolliver,
+subsided as he heard the Englishman's diplomatic reply.
+
+"What's the use?" said he to Josie. "He may be nearer right than I can
+understand."
+
+"We hope," said Mr. Elkins, "that this desire may be focalized locally,
+and grow to anything short of a disease. I assure you, Lattimore will
+congratulate herself."
+
+Mr. Barr-Smith's fingers sought his glass, as if the impulse were on him
+to propose a toast; but the liquid facilities being absent, he relapsed
+into a conversation with Mrs. Hinckley.
+
+"I'd say those things, too, if I were in his place," came the words of
+Giddings, overshooting their mark, the ear of Miss Addison; "but it's
+all rot. He's disgusted with the whole barbarous outfit of us."
+
+"I am becoming curious," was the _sotto voce_ reply, "to know upon what
+model you found your conduct, Mr. Giddings."
+
+"I know what you mean," said Mr. Giddings. "But I have adopted Iago."
+
+"Why, Mr. Giddings! How shocking! Iago--"
+
+"Now, don't be horrified," said Giddings, with an air of candor, "but
+look at it from a practical standpoint. If Othello hadn't been such a
+fool, Iago would have made his point all right. He had a right to be
+sore at Othello for promoting Cassio over his head, and his scheme was a
+good one, if Othello hadn't gone crazy. Iago is dominated by reason and
+the principle of the survival of the fittest. He is an agreeable
+fellow--"
+
+Miss Addison, with a charming mixture of tragedy and archness,
+suppressed this blasphemy by a gesture suggestive of placing her hand
+over the editor's mouth.
+
+"Ah, Mrs. Hinckley, you shouldn't do us such an injustice!" It was Mr.
+Cornish, who took the center of the stage now. "You seem to fail to
+realize the fact that, in any given gathering, the influence of woman is
+dominant; and as the entire life of the nation is the sum total of such
+gatherings, woman is already in control. Now how can you fail to admit
+this?"
+
+I missed the rather extended reply of Mrs. Hinckley, in noting the
+evident impression made upon the company by this first utterance of the
+mysterious Cornish. It was not what he said: that was not important. It
+was the dark, bearded face, the jetty eyes, and above all, I think, the
+voice, with its clear, carrying quality, combining penetrativeness with
+a repression of force which gave one the feeling of being addressed in
+confidence. Every man, and especially every woman, in the company,
+looked fixedly upon him, until he ceased to speak--all except Josie.
+She darted at him one look, a mere momentary scrutiny, and as he
+discoursed of woman and her power, she seemed to lose herself in
+contemplation of her plate. The blush upon her cheek became more rosy,
+and a little smile, with something in it which was not of pleasure,
+played about the corners of her mouth. I was about to offer her the
+traditional bargain-counter price for her thoughts, when my attention
+was commanded by Jim's voice, answering some remark of Antonia's.
+
+"This is the merest curtain-riser, just a sort of kick-off," he was
+saying. "In a year or two this valley will be _the_ pleasure-ground of
+all the countryside, a hundred miles around. This tent will be replaced
+by a restaurant and auditorium. The conventions and public gatherings of
+the state will be held here--there is no other place for 'em; and our
+railway will bring the folks out from town. There will be baseball
+grounds, and facilities for all sorts of sports; and outings and games
+will center here. I promise you the next regatta of the State Rowing
+Association, and a street-car line landing passengers where we now sit."
+
+"Hear, hear!" said Mr. Barr-Smith, and the company clapped hands in
+applause.
+
+Mr. Hinckley was introduced by Jim as "one who had seen Lynhurst Park
+when it was Indian hunting-ground"; and made a speech in which he
+welcomed Mr. Cornish as a new citizen who was already prominent. Dining
+in this valley, he said, reminded him of the time when he and two other
+guests now present had, on almost the identical spot, dined on venison
+dressed and cooked where it fell. Then Lattimore was a trading-post on
+the frontier, surrounded by the tepees of Indians, and uncertain as to
+its lease of life. General Lattimore, who shot the deer, or Mr.
+Macdonald, who helped eat it, could either of them tell more about it.
+Mr. Barr-Smith and our other British guest might judge of the rapidity
+of development in this country, where a man may see in his lifetime
+progress which in the older states and countries could be discerned by
+the student of history only.
+
+Mr. Cornish very briefly thanked Mr. Hinckley for his words of welcome;
+but begged to be excused from making any extended remarks. Deeds were
+rather more in his line than words.
+
+"Title-deeds," said Giddings under his breath, "as the real-estate
+transfers show!"
+
+General Lattimore verified Mr. Hinckley's statement concerning the meal
+of venison; and, politely expressing pleasure at being present at a
+function which seemed to be regarded as of so much importance to the
+welfare of the town in which he had always taken the pride of a
+godfather, resumed his seat without adding anything to the oratory of
+the boom.
+
+"In fact," said Captain Tolliver to me, "I wahned Mr. Elkins against
+having him hyah. In any mattah of progress he's a wet blanket, and has
+proved himself such by these remahks."
+
+Mr. Barr-Smith, in response to the allusions to him, assured us that the
+presence of people such as he had had the pleasure of meeting in
+Lattimore was sufficient in itself to account for the forward movement
+in the community, which the visitor could not fail to observe.
+
+"In a state of society where people are not averse to changing their
+abodes," he said, "and where the social atom, if I may so express
+myself, is in a state of mobility, the presence of such magnets as our
+toastmaster, and the other gentlemen to whose courteous remarks I am
+responding, must draw 'em to themselves, you may be jolly well assured
+of that! And if the gentlemen should fail, the thing which should resist
+the attractive power of the American ladies must be more fixed in its
+habits than even the conservative English gentleman, who prides himself
+upon his stability, er--ah--his taking a position and sticking by it, in
+spite of the--of anything, you know."
+
+As his only contribution to the speechmaking, Mr. Cecil Barr-Smith
+greeted this sentiment with a hearty "Hear, hear!" He fell into step
+with Antonia as we left the pavilion. Then he went back as if to look
+for something; and I saw Antonia summon Mr. Elkins to her side so that
+she might congratulate him on the success of this "carouse."
+
+Everything seemed going well. There was, however, in that gathering, as
+in the day, material for a storm, and I, of all those in attendance,
+ought to have seen it, had my memory been as unerring as I thought it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+The Empress and Sir John Meet Again.
+
+
+The company emerged from the tent into the enchanted outdoors of the
+star-dotted valley. The moon rode high, and flooded the glades with
+silvery effulgency. The heat of the day had bred a summer storm-cloud,
+which, all quivery with lightning, seemed sweeping around from the
+northwest to the north, giving us the delicious experience of enjoying
+calm, in view of storm.
+
+The music of the orchestra soon told that the pavilion had been cleared
+for dancing. I heard Giddings urging upon Miss Addison that it would be
+much better for them to walk in the moonlight than to encourage by their
+presence such a worldly amusement, and one in which he had never been
+able to do anything better than fail, anyhow. Sighing her pain at the
+frivolity of the world, she took his arm and strolled away. I noticed
+that she clung closely to him, frightened, I suppose, at the mysterious
+rustlings in the trees, or something.
+
+They made up the dances in such a way as to leave me out. I rather
+wanted to dance with Antonia; but Mr. Cecil was just leaving her in
+disappointment, in the possession of Mr. Elkins, when I went for her. I
+decided that a cigar and solitude were rather to be chosen than anything
+else which presented itself, and accordingly I took possession of one of
+the hammocks, in which I lay and smoked, and watched the towering
+thunder-head, as it stood like a mighty and marvelous mountain in the
+northern sky, its rounded and convoluted summits serenely white in the
+moonlight, its mysterious caves palpitant with incessant lightning. The
+soothing of the cigar; the new-made lake reflecting the gleam of
+hundreds of lanterns; the illuminated pavilion, its whirling company of
+dancers seen under the uprolled walls; the night, with its strange
+contrast of a calm southern sky on the one hand pouring down its flood
+of moonlight, and in the north the great mother-of-pearl dome with its
+core of vibrant fire; the dance-music throbbing through the lindens; and
+all this growing out of the unwonted and curious life of the past few
+months, bore to me again that feeling of being yoked with some
+thaumaturge of wondrous power for the working of enchantments. Again I
+seemed in a partnership with Aladdin; and fairy pavilions, sylvan
+paradises, bevies of dancing girls, and princes bearing gifts of gold
+and jewels, had all obeyed our conjuration. I could have walked down to
+the naphtha pleasure-boat and bidden the engineer put me down at
+Khorassan, or some dreamful port of far Cathay, with no sense of
+incongruity.
+
+Two figures came from the tent and walked toward me. As I looked at
+them, myself in darkness, they in the light, I had again that feeling of
+having seen them in some similar way before. That same old sensation,
+thought I, that the analytic novelist made trite ages ago. Then I saw
+that it was Mr. Cornish and Miss Trescott. I could hear them talking;
+but lay still, because I was loth to have my reveries disturbed. And
+besides, to speak would seem an unwarranted assumption of confidential
+relations on their part. They stopped near me.
+
+"Your memory is not so good as mine," said he. "I knew you at once. Knew
+you! Why--"
+
+"I'm not very good at keeping names and faces in mind," she replied,
+"unless they belong to people I have known very well."
+
+"Indeed!" his voice dropped to the 'cello-like undertone now; "isn't
+that a little unkind? I fancied that _we_ knew each other very well! My
+conceit is not to be pandered to, I perceive."
+
+"Ye-e-s--does it seem that way?" said she, ignoring the last remark.
+"Well, you know it was only for a few days, and you kept calling
+yourself by some ridiculous alias, and scarcely used your surname at
+all, and I believe they called you Johnny--and you can't think what a
+disguise such a beard is! But I remember you now perfectly. It quite
+brings back those short months, when I was so young--and was finding
+things out! I can see the vine-covered porch, and Madame Lamoreaux's
+boarding-house on the South Side--"
+
+"And the old art gallery?"
+
+"Why, there was one, wasn't there?" said she, "somewhere along the lake
+front, wasn't it?... Such a pleasant meeting, and so odd!"
+
+I sat up in the hammock, and stared at them as they went on their
+promenade. The old art gallery, the vine-covered porch, the young man
+with the smooth-shaven dark face and the thrilling, vibrant voice, and
+the young, young girl with the ruddy hair, and the little, round form!
+She seemed taller now, and there was more of maturity in the figure; but
+it was the same lissome waist and petite gracefulness which had so fully
+explained to me the avid eyes of her lover on that day when I had fled
+from the report of the Committee on Permanent Organization. It was the
+Empress Josephine, I had known that--and her Sir John!
+
+Then I thought of her flying from him into the street, and the little
+bowed head on the street-car; and the old pity for her, the old
+bitterness toward him, returned upon me. I wondered how he could speak
+to her in this nonchalant way; what they were saying to each other;
+whether they would ever refer to that night at Auriccio's; what Alice
+would think of him if she ever found it out; whether he was a villain,
+or only erred passionately; what was actually said in that palm alcove
+that night so long ago; whether this man, with the eyes and voice so
+fascinating to women, would renew his suit in this new life of ours;
+what Jim would think about it; and, more than all, how Josie herself
+would regard him.
+
+"She ought never to have spoken to him again!" I hear some one say.
+
+Ah, Madam, very true. But do you remember any authentic case of a woman
+who failed to forgive the man whose error or offense had for its excuse
+the irresistible attraction of her own charms?
+
+They were coming back now, still talking.
+
+"You dropped out of sight, like a partridge into a thicket," said he.
+"Some of them said you had gone back to--to--"
+
+"To the farm," she prompted.
+
+"Well, yes," he conceded; "and others said you had left Chicago for New
+York; and some, even Paris."
+
+"I fail to see the warrant," said Josie, as they approached the limit of
+earshot, "for any of the people at Madame Lamoreux's giving themselves
+the trouble to investigate."
+
+"So far as that is concerned," said he, "I should think that I--" and
+his voice quite lost intelligibility.
+
+My cigar had gone out, and the cessation of the music ought to have
+apprised me of the breaking up of the dance, and still I lay looking at
+the sky and filled with my thoughts.
+
+"Here he is," said Alice, "asleep in the hammock! For shame, Albert!
+This would not have occurred, once!"
+
+"I am free to admit that," said I, "but why am I now disturbed?"
+
+"We're going on a cruise in the gondola," said Antonia, "and Mr. Elkins
+says you are lieutenant, and we can't sail without you. Come, it's
+perfectly beautiful out there."
+
+"We're going to the head of navigation and back," said Jim, "and then
+our revels will be ended. --Hang it!" to me, "they left the skull and
+crossbones off all the flags!"
+
+Mr. Barr-Smith at once engaged the engineer in conversation, and seemed
+worming from him all his knowledge of the construction of the boat. The
+rest of us lounged on cushions and seats. We threaded our way up the new
+pond, winding between clumps of trees, now in broad moonlight, now in
+deepest shade. The shower had swept over to the northeast, just one dark
+flounce of its skirt reaching to the zenith. A cool breeze suddenly
+sprang up from the west, stirred by the suction of the receding storm,
+and a roar came from the trees on the hilltops.
+
+"Better run for port," said Jim; "I'd hate to have Mr. Barr-Smith suffer
+shipwreck where the charts don't show any water!"
+
+As we ran down the open way, the remark seemed less and less of a joke.
+The gale poured over the hills, and struck the boat like the buffet of a
+great hand. She heeled over alarmingly, bumped upon a submerged stump,
+righted, heeled again, this time shipping a little sea, and then the
+sharp end of a hidden oak-limb thrust up through the bottom, and ripped
+its way out again, leaving us afloat in the deepest part of the lake,
+with a spouting fountain in the middle of the vessel, and the chopping
+waves breaking over the gunwale. All at once, I noticed Cecil
+Barr-Smith, with his coat off, standing near Antonia, who sat as cool as
+if she had been out on some quiet road driving her pacers. The boat sank
+lower in the water, and I had no doubt that she was sinking. Antonia
+rose, and stretched her hands towards Jim. I do not see how he could
+avoid seeing this; but he did, and, as if abandoning her to her fate, he
+leaped to Josie's side. Cornish had seized _her_ by the arm, and seemed
+about to devote himself to her safety, when Jim, without a word, lifted
+her in his arms, and leaped lightly upon the forward deck, the highest
+and driest place on the sinking craft. Then, as everything pointed to a
+speedy baptism in the lake for all of us, we saw that the very speed of
+the wind had saved us, and felt the gondola bump broadside upon the dam.
+Jim sprang to the abutment with Josie, and Cecil Barr-Smith half carried
+and half led Antonia to the shore. Alice and I sat calmly on the
+windward rail; and Barr-Smith, laughing with delight, helped us across,
+one at a time, to the masonry.
+
+"I'm glad it turned out no worse," said Jim. "I hope you will all excuse
+me if I leave you now. I must see Miss Trescott to a safe and dry place.
+Here's the carriage, Josie!"
+
+"Are you quite uninjured?" said Cecil to Antonia, as Mr. Elkins and
+Josie drove away.
+
+"Oh, quite so!" said Antonia, unwittingly adopting Barr-Smith's phrase.
+"But for a moment I was awfully frightened!"
+
+"It looked a little damp, at one time, for farce-comedy," said Cornish.
+"I wonder how deep it was out there!"
+
+"Miss Trescott was quite drenched," said Mr. Barr-Smith, as we got into
+the carriages. "Too bad, by Jove!"
+
+"You may write home," said Antonia, "an account of being shipwrecked in
+the top of a tree!"
+
+"Good, good!" said Cecil, and we all joined in the laugh, until we were
+suddenly sobered by the fact that Antonia had bowed her head on Alice's
+lap, and was sobbing as if her heart was broken.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+In which the Burdens of wealth begin to fall upon Us.
+
+
+If the town be considered as a quiescent body pursuing its unluminous
+way in space, Mr. Elkins may stand for the impinging planet which
+shocked it into vibrant life. I suggested this nebular-hypothesis simile
+to Mr. Giddings, one day, as the germ of an editorial.
+
+"It's rather seductive," said he, "but it won't do. Carry your
+interplanetary collision business to its logical end, and what do you
+come to? Gaseousness. And that's just what the Angus Falls _Times_, the
+Fairchild Star, and the other loathsome sheets printed in prairie-dog
+towns around here accuse us of, now. No; much obliged; but as a field
+for comparisons the tried old solar system is good enough for the
+_Herald_."
+
+I couldn't help thinking, however, that the thing had some illustrative
+merit. There was Jim's first impact, felt locally, and jarring things
+loose. Then came the atomic vivification, the heat and motion, which
+appeared in the developments which we have seen taking form. After the
+visit of the Barr-Smiths, and the immigration of Cornish, the new star
+Lattimore began to blaze in the commercial firmament, the focus of
+innumerable monetary telescopes, pointed from the observatories of
+counting-rooms, banks, and offices, far and wide.
+
+There was a shifting of the investment and speculative equilibrium, and
+things began coming to us spontaneously. The Angus Falls railway
+extension was won only by strenuous endeavor. Captain Tolliver's
+interviews with General Lattimore, in which he was so ruthlessly "turned
+down," he always regarded as a sort of creative agony, marking the
+origin of the roundhouse and machine-shops, and our connection with the
+great Halliday railway system of which it made us a part. The street-car
+project went more easily; and, during the autumn, the geological and
+manufacturing experts sent out to report on the cement-works enterprise,
+pronounced favorably, and gangs of men, during the winter, were to be
+seen at work on the foundations of the great buildings by the scarped
+chalk-hill.
+
+The tension of my mind just after the Lynhurst Park affair was such as
+to attune it to no impulses but the financial vibrations which pulsated
+through our atmosphere. True, I sometimes felt the wonder return upon me
+at the finding of the lovers of the art-gallery together once more, in
+Josie and Cornish; and at other times Antonia's agitation after our
+escape from shipwreck recurred to me in contrast with her smiling
+self-possession while the boat was drifting and filling; but mostly I
+thought of nothing, dreamed of nothing, but trust companies, additions,
+bonds and mortgages.
+
+Mr. Barr-Smith returned to London soon, giving a parting luncheon in his
+rooms, where wine flowed freely, and toasts of many colors were pushed
+into the atmosphere. There was one to the President and the Queen,
+proposed by the host and drunk in bumpers, and others to Mr. Barr-Smith,
+his brother, and the members of the "Syndicate." The enthusiasm grew
+steadily in intensity as the affair progressed. Finally Mr. Cecil
+solemnly proposed "The American Woman." In offering this toast, he said,
+he was taking long odds, as it was a sport for which he hadn't had the
+least training; but he couldn't forego the pleasure of paying a tribute
+where tribute was due. The ladies of America needed no encomiums from
+him, and yet he was sure that he should give no offense by saying that
+they were of a type unknown in history. They were up to anything, you
+know, in the way of intellectuality, and he was sure that in a certain
+queenly, blonde way they were--
+
+"Hear, hear!" said his brother, and burst into a laugh in which we all
+joined, while Cecil went on talking, in an uproar which drowned his
+words, though one could see that he was trying to explain something, and
+growing very hot in the process.
+
+Pearson announced that their train would soon arrive, and we all went
+down to see them off. Barr-Smith assured us at parting that the
+tram-road transaction might be considered settled. He believed, too,
+that his clients might come into the cement project. We were all the
+more hopeful of this, for the knowledge that he carried somewhere in
+his luggage a bond for a deed to a considerable interest in the cement
+lands. Things were coming on beautifully; and it seemed as if Elkins and
+Cornish, working together, were invincible.
+
+We still lived at the hotel, but our architect, "little Ed. Smith, who
+lived over on the Hayes place" when we were boys, and who was once at
+Garden City with Jim, was busy with plans for a mansion which we were to
+build in the new Lynhurst Park Addition the next spring. Mr. Elkins was
+preparing to erect a splendid house in the same neighborhood.
+
+"Can I afford it?" said I, in discussing estimates.
+
+"Afford it!" he replied, turning on me in astonishment. "My dear boy,
+don't you see we are up against a situation that calls on us to bluff to
+the limit, or lay down? In such a case, luxury becomes a duty, and
+lavishness the truest economy. Not to spend is to go broke. Lay your
+Poor Richard on the shelf, and put a weight on him. Stimulate the outgo,
+and the income'll take care of itself. A thousand spent is five figures
+to the good. No, while we've as many boom-irons in the fire as we're
+heating now, to be modest is to be lost."
+
+"Perhaps," said I, "you may be right, and no doubt are. We'll talk it
+over again some time. And your remark about irons in the fire brings up
+another matter which bothers me. It's something unusual when we don't
+open up a set of books for some new corporation, during the working day.
+Aren't we getting too many?"
+
+"Do you remember Mule Jones, who lived down near Hickory Grove?" said
+he, after a long pause. "Well, you know, in our old neighborhood, the
+mule was regarded with a mixture of contempt, suspicion, and fear, the
+folks not understanding him very well, and being especially uninformed
+as to his merits. Therefore, Mule Jones, who dealt in mules, bought,
+sold, and broke 'em, was a man of mark, and identified in name with his
+trade, as most people used to be before our time. I was down there one
+Sunday, and asked him how he managed to break the brutes. 'It's easy,'
+said he, 'when you know how. I never hook up less'n six of 'em at a
+time. Then they sort o' neutralize one another. Some on 'em'll be
+r'arin' an' pitchin', an' some tryin' to run; but they'll be enough of
+'em down an' a-draggin' all the time, to keep the enthusiastic ones kind
+o' suppressed, and give me the castin' vote. It's the only right way to
+git the bulge on mules.' Whenever you get to worrying about our various
+companies, think of the Mule Jones system and be calm."
+
+"I'm a little shy of being ruled by one case, even though so exactly in
+point," said I.
+
+"Well, it's all right," he continued, "and about these houses. Why, we'd
+have to build them, even if we preferred to live in tents. Put the cost
+in the advertising account of Lynhurst Park Addition, if it worries you.
+Let me ask you, now, as a reasonable man, how can we expect the rest of
+the world to come out here and spring themselves for humble dwellings
+with stationary washtubs, conservatories, and _porte cocheres_, if we
+ourselves haven't any more confidence in the deal than to put up Jim
+Crow wickiups costing not more than ten or fifteen thousand dollars
+apiece? That addition has got to be the Nob Hill of Lattimore. Nothing
+in the 'poor but honest' line will do for Lynhurst; and we've got to set
+the pace. When you see my modest bachelor quarters going up, you'll
+cease to think of yours in the light of an extravagance. By next fall
+you'll be infested with money, anyhow, and that house will be the least
+of your troubles."
+
+Alice and I made up our minds that Jim was right, and went on with our
+plans on a scale which sometimes brought back the Aladdin idea to my
+mind, accustomed as I was to rural simplicity. But Alice,
+notwithstanding that she was the daughter of a country physician of not
+very lucrative practice, rose to the occasion, and spent money with a
+spontaneous largeness of execution which revealed a genius hitherto
+unsuspected by either of us. Jim was thoroughly delighted with it.
+
+"The Republic," he argued, "cannot be in any real danger when the modest
+middle classes produce characters of such strength in meeting great
+emergencies!"
+
+Jim was at his best this summer. He revelled in the work of filling the
+morning paper with scare-heads detailing our operations. He enjoyed
+being It, he said. Cornish, after the first few days, during which, in
+spite of inside information as to his history, I felt that he would make
+good the predictions of the _Herald_, ceased to be, in my mind, anything
+more than I was--a trusted aide of Jim, the general. Both men went
+rather frequently out to the Trescott farm--Jim with the bluff freedom
+of a brother, Cornish with his rather ceremonious deference. I
+distrusted the dark Sir John where women were concerned, noting how they
+seemed charmed by him; but I could not see that he had made any headway
+in regaining Josie's regard, though I had a lurking feeling that he
+meant to do so. I saw at times in his eyes the old look which I
+remembered so well.
+
+Josie, more than ever this season, was earning her father's commendation
+as his "right-hand man." She insisted on driving the four horses which
+drew the binder in the harvest. In the haying she operated the
+horse-rake, and helped man the hay-fork in filling the barns. She grew
+as tanned as if she had spent the time at the seashore or on the links;
+and with every month she added to her charm. The scarlet of her lips,
+the ruddy luxuriance of her hair, the arrowy straightness of her
+carriage, the pulsing health which beamed from her eye, and dyed cheek
+and neck, made their appeal to the women, even.
+
+"How sweet she is!" said Alice, as she came to greet us one day when we
+drove to the farm, and waited for her to come to us. "How sweet she is,
+Albert!"
+
+Her father came up, and explained to us that he didn't ask any of his
+women folks to do any work except what there was in the house. He was
+able to hire the outdoors work done, but Josie he couldn't keep out of
+the fields.
+
+"Why, pa," said she, "don't you see you would spoil my chances of
+marrying a fairy prince? They absolutely never come into the house; and
+my straw hat is the only really becoming thing I've got to wear!"
+
+"Don't give a dum if yeh never marry," said Bill. "Hain't seen the man
+yit that was good enough fer yeh, from my standpoint."
+
+Bill's reputation was pretty well known to me by this time. He had been
+for years a successful breeder and shipper of live-stock, in which
+vocation he had become well-to-do. On his farm he was forceful and
+efficient, treading his fields like an admiral his quarter-deck. About
+town he was given to talking horses and cattle with the groups which
+frequented the stables and blacksmith-shops, and sometimes grew a little
+noisy and boisterous with them. Whenever her father went with a shipment
+of cattle to Chicago or other market, Josie went too, taking a regular
+passenger train in time to be waiting when Bill's stock train arrived;
+and after the beeves were disposed of, Bill became her escort to opera
+and art-gallery; on such a visit I had seen her at the Stock Yards. She
+was fond of her father; but this alone did not explain her constant
+attendance upon him. I soon came to understand that his prompt return
+from the city, in good condition, was apt to be dependent upon her
+influence. It was one of those cases of weakness, associated with
+strength, the real mystery of which does not often occur to us because
+they are so common.
+
+He came into our office one day with a tremor in his hand and a hunted
+look in his eye. He took a chair at my invitation, but rose at once,
+went to the door, and looked up and down the street, as if for pursuers.
+I saw Captain Tolliver across the street, and Bill's air of excitement
+was explained. I was relieved, for at first I had thought him
+intoxicated.
+
+"What's the matter, Bill?" said I, after he had looked at me earnestly,
+almost pantingly, for a few moments. "You look nervous."
+
+"They're after me," he answered in repressed tones, "to sell; and I'll
+be blasted if I know what to do! Wha' d'ye' 'spose they're offerin' me
+for my land?"
+
+"The fact is, Bill," said I, "that I know all about it. I'm interested
+in the deal, somewhat."
+
+"Then you know they've bid right around a thousand dollars an acre?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "or at least that they intended to offer that."
+
+"An' you're one o' the company," he queried, "that's doin' it?"
+
+"Yes," I admitted.
+
+"Wal," said he, "I'm kinder sorry you're in it, becuz I've about
+concluded to sell; an' it seems to me that any concern that buys at that
+figger is a-goin' to bust, sure. W'y, I bought that land fer two dollars
+and a haff an acre. But, see here, now; I 'xpect you know your business,
+an' see some way of gittin' out in the deal, 'r you wouldn't pay that.
+But if I sell, I've got to have help with my folks."
+
+"Ah," said I, scenting the usual obstacle in such cases, "Mrs. Trescott
+a little unwilling to sign the deeds?"
+
+"No," answered he, "strange as it may seem, ma's kinder stuck on comin'
+to town to live. How she'll feel after she's tried it fer a month 'r so,
+with no chickens 'r turkeys 'r milk to look after, I'm dubious; but jest
+now she seems to be all right."
+
+"Well, what's the matter then?" said I.
+
+"Wal, it's Josie, to tell the truth," said he. "She's sort o' hangin'
+back. An' it's for her sake that I want to make the deal! I've told her
+an' told her that there's no dum sense in raisin' corn on
+thousand-dollar land; but it's no use, so fur; an' here's the only
+chanst I'll ever hev, mebbe, a-slippin' by. She ortn't to live her life
+out on a farm, educated as she is. W'y, did you ever hear how she's been
+educated?"
+
+I told him that in a general way I knew, but not in detail.
+
+"W'l, I want yeh to know all about it, so's yeh c'n see this movin'
+business as it is," said he. "You know I was allus a rough cuss. Herded
+cattle over there by yer father's south place, an' never went to school.
+Ma, Josie's ma, y' know, kep' the Greenwood school, an' crossed the
+prairie there where I was a-herdin', an' I used to look at her mighty
+longin' as she went by, when the cattle happened to be clost along the
+track, which they right often done. You know how them things go. An'
+fin'ly one morning a blue racer chased her, as the little whelps will,
+an' got his dummed little teeth fastened in her dress, an' she
+a-hyperin' around haff crazy, and a-screamin' every jump, so's't I hed
+to just grab her, an' hold her till I could get the blasted snake
+off,--harmless, y' know, but got hooked teeth, an' not a lick o'
+sense,--an' he kinder quirled around my arm, an' I nacherally tore him
+to ribbins a-gittin' of him off. An' then she sort o' dropped off, an'
+when she come to, I was a-rubbin' her hands an' temples. Wa'n't that a
+funny interduction?"
+
+"It's very interesting," said I; "go on."
+
+"W'l you remember ol' Doc Maxfield?" said Bill, well started on a
+reminiscence. "Wal, he come along, an' said it was the worst case of
+collapse, whatever that means, that he ever see--her lips an' hands an'
+chin all a-tremblin', an' flighty as a loon. Wal, after that I used to
+take her around some, an' her folks objected becuz I was ignorant, an'
+she learnt me some things, an' bein' strong an' a good dancer an' purty
+good-lookin' she kind o' forgot about my failin's, an' we was married.
+Her folks said she'd throwed herself away; but I could buy an' sell the
+hull set of 'em now!"
+
+This seemed conclusive as to the merits of the case, and I told him as
+much.
+
+"W'l Josie was born an' growed up," continued Bill, "an' it's her I
+started to tell about, wa'n't it? She was allus a cute little thing, an'
+early she got this art business in her head. She'd read about fellers
+that had got to be great by paintin' an' carvin', an' it made her wild
+to do the same thing. Wa'n't there a feller that pulled hair outer the
+cat to paint Injuns with? Yes, I thought they was; I allus thought they
+could paint theirselves good enough; but that story an' some others she
+read an' read when she was a little gal, an' she was allus a-paintin'
+an' makin' things with clay. She took a prize at the county fair when
+she was fourteen, with a picter of Washin'ton crossin' the
+Delaware--three dollars, by gum! An' then we hed to give her lessons;
+an' they wasn't any one thet knew anything around here, she said, an'
+she went to Chicago. An' I went in to visit her when she hedn't ben
+there more'n six weeks, on an excursion one convention time, an' I found
+her all tore up, a good deal as her ma was with the blue racer,--I don't
+think she's ever ben the same light-hearted little gal sence,--an' from
+there I took her to New York; an' there she fell in with a nice woman
+that was awful good to her, an' they went to Europe, an' it cost a heap.
+An' you may've noticed thet Josie knows a pile more'n the other women
+here?"
+
+I admitted that this had occurred to me.
+
+"W'l, she was allus apt to take her head with her," said Bill, "but this
+travelin' has fixed her like a hoss thet's ben druv in Chicago: nothin'
+feazes her, street-cars, brass bands, circuses, overhead trains--it's
+all the same to her, she's seen 'em all. Sometimes I git the notion that
+she'd enjoy things more if she hadn't seen so dum many of 'em an' so
+much better ones, y' know! Wal, after she'd ben over there a long time,
+she wrote she was a-comin' home; an' we was tickled to death. Only I was
+surprised by her writin' that she wanted us to take all them old picters
+of hern, and put 'em out of sight! An' if you'll b'lieve it, she won't
+talk picters nor make any sence she got back--only, jest after she got
+back, she said she didn't see any use o' her goin' on dobbin' good
+canvas up with good paint, an' makin' nothin' but poor picters; an' she
+cried some.... I thought it was sing'lar that this art business that she
+thought was the only thing thet'd ever make her happy was the only thing
+I ever see her cry about."
+
+"It's the way," said I, "with a great many of our cherished hopes."
+
+"W'l, anyhow, you can see thet it's the wrong thing to put as much time
+an' money into fixin' a child up f'r a different kind o' life as we hev,
+an' then keep her on a farm out here. An' thet's why I want you to help
+this sale through, an' bring influence to bear on her. I give up; I'm
+all in."
+
+To me Bill seemed entirely in the right. The new era made it absurd for
+the Trescotts to use their land longer as a farm. Lattimore was changing
+daily. The streets were gashed with trenches for gas- and water-mains;
+piled-up materials for curbing, paving, office buildings, new hotels,
+and all sorts of erections made locomotion a peril; but we were happy.
+
+The water company was organized in our office, the gas and
+electric-light company in Cornish's; but every spout led into the same
+bin.
+
+Mr. Hinckley had induced some country dealers who owned a line of local
+grain-houses to remove to Lattimore and put up a huge terminal elevator
+for the handling of their trade. Captain Tolliver had been for a long
+time working upon a project for developing a great water-power, by
+tunneling across a bend in the river, and utilizing the fall. The
+building of the elevator attracted the attention of a company of
+Rochester millers, and almost before we knew it their forces had been
+added to ours, and the tunnel was begun, with the certainty that a
+two-thousand-barrel mill would be ready to grind the wheat from the
+elevator as soon as the flume began carrying water. This tunnel cut
+through an isthmus between the Brushy Creek valley and the river, and
+brought to bear on our turbines the head from a ten-mile loop of shoals
+and riffles. It opened into the gorge near the southern edge of Lynhurst
+Park, and crossed the Trescott farm. So it was that Bill awoke one day
+to the fact that his farm was coveted by divers people, who saw in his
+fields and feed-yards desirable sites for railway tracks, mills,
+factories, and the cottages of a manufacturing suburb. This it was that
+had put the Captain, like a blood-hound, on his trial, to the end that
+he was run to earth in my office, and made his appeal for help in
+managing Josie.
+
+"There she comes now," said he. "Labor with her, won't yeh?"
+
+"Bring her with us to the hotel," said I, "to take dinner. If my wife
+and Elkins can't fix the thing, no one can."
+
+So we five dined together, and after dinner discussed the Trescott
+crisis. Bill put the case, with all a veteran dealer's logic, in its
+financial aspects.
+
+"But we don't want to be rich," said Josie.
+
+"What've we ben actin' all these years like we have for, then?" inquired
+Bill. "Seem's if I'd been lab'rin' under a mistake f'r some time past.
+When your ma an' me was a-roughin' it out there in the old log-house,
+an' she a-lookin' out at the Feb'uary stars through the holes in the
+roof, a-holdin' you, a little baby in bed, we reckoned we was a-doin' of
+it to sort o' better ourselves in a property way. Wouldn't you
+'a'thought so, Jim?"
+
+"Well," said Mr. Elkins, with an air of judicial perpension, "if you had
+asked me about it, I should have said that, if you wanted to stay poor,
+you could have held your own better by staying in Pleasant Valley
+Township as a renter. This was no place to come to if you wanted to
+conserve your poverty."
+
+"But, pa, we're not adapted to town life and towns," urged Josie. "I'm
+not, and you are not, and as for mamma, she'll never be contented. Oh,
+Mr. Elkins, why did you come out here, making us all fortunes which we
+haven't earned, and upsetting everything?"
+
+"Now, don't blame me, Josie," Jim protested. "You ought to consider the
+fallacy of the _post hoc, propter hoc_ argument. But to return to the
+point under discussion. If you could stay there, a rural Amaryllis,
+sporting in Arcadian shades, having seen you doing it once or twice, I
+couldn't argue against it, it's so charmingly becoming."
+
+"If that were all the argument--" began Josie.
+
+"It's the most important one--to my mind," said Jim, resuming the
+discussion, "and you fail on that point; for you can't live in that way
+long. If you don't sell, the Development Company will condemn grounds
+for railway tracks and switch-yards; you'll find your fields and
+meadows all shot to pieces; and your house will be surrounded by
+warehouses, elevators, and factories. Your larks and bobolinks will be
+scared off by engines and smokestacks, and your flowers spoiled with
+soot. Don't parley with fate, but cash in and put your winnings in some
+safe investment."
+
+"Once I thought I couldn't stay on the old farm a day longer; but I feel
+otherwise now! What business has this 'progress' of yours to interfere?"
+
+"It pushes you out of the nest," answered Jim. "It gives you the chance
+of your lives. You can come out into Lynhurst Park Addition, and build
+your house near the Barslow and Elkins dwellings. We've got about
+everything there--city water, gas, electric light, sewers, steam heat
+from the traction plant, beautiful view, lots on an established grade--"
+
+"Don't, don't!" said Josie. "It sounds like the advertisements in the
+_Herald_."
+
+"Well, I was just leading up to a statement of what we lack," continued
+Jim. "It's the artistic atmosphere. We need a dash of the culture of
+Paris and Dresden and the place where they have the dinky little
+windmills which look so nice on cream-pitchers, but wouldn't do for one
+of our farmers a minute. Come out and supply our lack. You owe it to the
+great cause of the amelioration of local savagery; and in view of my
+declaration of discipleship, and the effective way in which I have
+always upheld the standard of our barbarism, I claim that you owe it to
+me."
+
+"I've abandoned the brush."
+
+"Take it up again."
+
+"I have made a vow."
+
+"Break it!"
+
+She refused to yield, but was clearly yielding. Alice and I showed
+Trescott, on a plat, the place for his new home. He was quite taken with
+the idea, and said that ma would certainly be tickled with it.
+
+Josie sat apart with Mr. Elkins, in earnest converse, for a long time.
+She looked frequently at her father, Jim constantly at her. Mr. Cornish
+dropped in for a little while, and joined us in presenting the case for
+removal. While he was there the girl seemed constrained, and not quite
+so fully at her ease; and I could detect, I thought, the old tendency to
+scrutinize his face furtively. When he went away, she turned to Jim more
+intimately than before, and almost promised that she would become his
+neighbor in Lynhurst. After the Trescotts' carriage had come and taken
+them away, Jim told us that it was for her father, and the temptations
+of idleness in the town, that Miss Trescott feared.
+
+"This fairy-godmother business," said he, "ain't what the prospectus
+might lead one to expect. It has its drawbacks. Bill is going to cash in
+all right, and I think it's for the best; but, Al, we've got to take
+care of the old man, and see that he doesn't go up in the air."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+A Sitting or Two in the Game with the World and Destiny.
+
+
+Our game at Lattimore was one of those absorbing ones in which the
+sunlight of next morning sifts through the blinds before the players are
+aware that midnight is past. Day by day, deal by deal, it went on, card
+followed card in fateful fall upon the table, and we who sat in, and
+played the World and Destiny with so pitifully small a pile of chips at
+the outset, saw the World and Destiny losing to us, until our hands
+could scarcely hold, our eyes hardly estimate, the high-piled stacks of
+counters which were ours.
+
+We saw the yellowing groves and brown fields of our first autumn; we
+heard the long-drawn, wavering, mounting, falling, persistent howl of
+the thresher among the settings of hive-shaped stacks; we saw the loads
+of red and yellow corn at the corn-cribs,--as men at the board of the
+green cloth hear the striking of the hours. And we heeded them as
+little. The cries of southing wild-fowl heralded the snow; winter came
+for an hour or so, and melted into spring; and some of us looked up from
+our hands for a moment, to note the fact that it was the anniversary of
+that aguish day when three of us had first taken our seats at the table:
+and before we knew it, the dust and heat and summer clouds, like that
+which lightened over the fete in the park, admonished us that we were
+far into our second year. And still shuffle, cut, deal, trick, and hand
+followed each other, and with draw and bluff and showdown we played the
+World and Destiny, and playing won, and saw our stacks of chips grow
+higher and higher, as our great and absorbing game went on.
+
+Moreover, while we won and won, nobody seemed to lose. Josie spoke that
+night of fortunes which people had not earned; but surely they were
+created somehow; and as the universe, when the divine fiat had formed
+the world, was richer, rather than poorer, so, we felt, must these
+values so magically growing into our fortunes be good, rather than evil,
+and honestly ours, so far as we might be able to secure them to
+ourselves. I said as much to Jim one day, at which he smiled, and
+remarked that if we got to monkeying with the ethics of the trade,
+piracy would soon be a ruined business.
+
+"Better, far better keep the lookout sweeping the horizon for sails,"
+said he, "and when one appears, serve out the rum and gunpowder to the
+crew, and stand by to lower away the boats for a boarding-party!"
+
+I am afraid I have given the impression that our life at this time was
+solely given over to cupidity and sordidness; and that idea I may not be
+able to remove. Yet I must try to do so. We were in the game to win; but
+our winnings, present and prospective, were not in wealth only. To
+surmount obstacles; to drive difficulties before us like scattering
+sparrows; to see a town marching before us into cityhood; to feel
+ourselves the forces working through human masses so mightily that, for
+hundreds of miles about us, social and industrial factors were compelled
+to readjust themselves with reference to us; to be masters; to
+create--all these things went into our beings in thrilling and dizzying
+pulsations of a pleasure which was not ignoble.
+
+For instance, let us take the building of the Lattimore & Great Western
+Railway. Before Mr. Elkins went to Lattimore this line had been surveyed
+by the cooeperation of Mr. Hinckley, Mr. Ballard, the president of the
+opposition bank, and some others. It was felt that there was little real
+competition among the railways centering there, and the L. & G.W. was
+designed as a hint to them of a Lattimore-built connection with the
+Halliday system, then a free-lance in the transportation field, and
+ready to make rates in an independent and competitive way. The Angus
+Falls extension brought this system in, but too late to do the good
+expected; for Mr. Halliday, in his dealings with us, convinced us of the
+truth of the rumors that he had brought the other roads to terms, and
+was a free-lance no longer. Month by month the need of real competition
+in our carrying trade grew upon us. Rates accorded to other cities on
+our commercial fighting line we could not get, in spite of the most
+persistent efforts. In the offices of presidents and general managers,
+in St. Louis, Chicago, St. Paul and Minneapolis, Kansas City, Omaha and
+New York we were received by suave princes of the highways, who each
+blandly assured us that his road looked with especial favor upon our
+town, and that our representations should receive the most solicitous
+attention. But the word of promise was ever broken to the hope.
+
+After one of these embassies the syndicate held a meeting in Cornish's
+elegant offices on the ground-floor of the new "Hotel Elkins" building.
+We sent Giddings away to prepare an optimistic news-story for
+to-morrow's _Herald_, and an editorial leader based upon it, both of
+which had been formulated among us before going into executive session
+on the state of the nation. Hinckley, who had an admirable power of
+seeing the crux of a situation, was making a rather grave prognosis for
+us.
+
+"If we can't get rates which will let us into a broader territory, we
+may as well prepare for reverses," said he. "Foreign cement comes almost
+to our doors, in competition with ours. Wheat and live-stock go from
+within twenty miles to points five hundred miles away. Who is furnishing
+the brick and stone for the new Fairchild court-house and the big
+normal-school buildings at Angus Falls? Not our quarries and kilns, but
+others five times as far away. If you want to figure out the reason of
+this, you will find it in nothing else in the world but the freight
+rates."
+
+"It's a confounded outrage," said Cornish. "Can't we get help from the
+legislature?"
+
+"I understand that some action is expected next winter," said I;
+"Senator Conley had in here the other day a bill he has drawn; and it
+seems to me we should send a strong lobby down at the proper time in
+support of it."
+
+"Ye-e-s," drawled Jim, "but I believe in still stronger measures; and
+rather than bother with the legislature, owned as it is by the roads,
+I'd favor writing cuss-words on the water-tanks, or going up the track a
+piece and makin' faces at one of their confounded whistling-posts or
+cattle-guards--or something real drastic like that!"
+
+Cornish, galled, as was I, by this irony, flushed crimson, and rose.
+
+"The situation," said he, "instead of being a serious one, as I have
+believed, seems merely funny. This conference may as well end. Having
+taken on things here under the impression that this was to be a city; it
+seems that we are to stay a village. It occurs to me that it's time to
+stand from under! Good-evening!"
+
+"Wait!" said Hinckley. "Don't go, Cornish; it isn't as bad as that!"
+
+As he spoke he laid his hand on Cornish's arm, and I saw that he was
+pale. He felt more keenly than did I the danger of division and strife
+among us.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Hinckley," said Jim, as Cornish sat down again, "it _is_ as
+bad as that! This thing amounts to a crisis. For one, I don't propose to
+adopt the 'stand-from-under' tactics. They make an unnecessary disaster
+as certain as death; but if we all stand under and lift, we can win more
+than we've ever thought. In the legislature they hold the cards and can
+beat us. It's no use fooling with that unless we seek martyrs' deaths in
+the bankruptcy courts. But there is a way to meet these men, and that is
+by bringing to our aid their greatest rival."
+
+"Do you mean--" said Hinckley.
+
+"I mean Avery Pendleton and the Pendleton system," replied Elkins. "I
+mean that we've got to meet them on their own ground. Pendleton won't
+declare war on the Halliday combination by building in here, but there
+is no reason why we can't build to him, and that's what I propose to do.
+We'll take the L. & G. W., swing it over to the east from the Elk Fork
+up, make a junction with Pendleton's Pacific Division, and, in one week
+after we get trains running, we'll have the freight combine here shot so
+full of holes that it won't hold corn-stalks! That's what we'll do:
+we'll do a little rate-making ourselves; and we'll make this danger the
+best thing that ever happened to us. Do you see?"
+
+Cornish saw, sooner than any one else. As he spoke, Jim had unrolled a
+map, and pointed out the places as he referred to them, like a general,
+as he was, outlining the plan of a battle. He began this speech in that
+quiet, convincing way of his, only a little elevated above the sarcasm
+of a moment before. As he went on, his voice deepened, his eye gleamed,
+and in spite of his colloquialisms, which we could not notice, his words
+began to thrill us like potent oratory. We felt all that ecstasy of
+buoyant and auspicious rebellion which animated Hotspur the night he
+could have plucked bright honor from the pale-faced moon. At Jim's
+final question, Cornish, forgetting his pique, sprang to the map, swept
+his finger along the line Elkins had described, followed the main ribs
+of Pendleton's great gridiron, on which the fat of half a dozen states
+lay frying, on to terminals on lakes and rivers; and as he turned his
+black eyes upon us, we knew from the fire in them that he saw.
+
+"By heavens!" he cried, "you've hit it, Elkins! And it can be done! From
+to-night, no more paper railroads for us; it must be grading-gangs and
+ties, and steel rails!"
+
+So, also, there was good fighting when Cornish wired from New York for
+Elkins and me to come to his aid in placing our Lattimore & Great
+Western bonds. Of course, we never expected to build this railway with
+our own funds. For two reasons, at least: it is bad form to do eccentric
+things, and we lacked a million or two of having the money. The line
+with buildings and rolling stock would cost, say, twelve thousand
+dollars per mile. Before it could be built we must find some one who
+would agree to take its bonds for at least that sum. As no one would pay
+quite par for bonds of a new and independent road, we must add, say,
+three thousand dollars per mile for discount. Moreover, while the
+building of the line was undertaken from motives of self-preservation,
+there seemed to be no good reason why we should not organize a
+construction company to do the actual work of building, and that at a
+profit. That this profit might be assured, something like three thousand
+dollars per mile more must go in. Of course, whoever placed the bonds
+would be asked to guarantee the interest for two or three years; hence,
+with two thousand more for that and good measure, we made up our
+proposed issue of twenty thousand dollars per mile of first-mortgage
+bonds, to dispose of which "the former member of the firm of Lusch,
+Carskaddan & Mayer" was revisiting the glimpses of Wall Street, and
+testing the strength of that mighty influence which the _Herald_ had
+attributed to him.
+
+"You've just _got_ to win," said Giddings, who was admitted to the
+secret of Cornish's embassy, "not only because Lattimore and all the
+citizens thereof will be squashed in the event of your slipping up; but,
+what is of much more importance, the _Herald_ will be laid in a lie
+about your Wall Street pull. Remember that when foes surround thee!"
+
+When we joined him, Cornish admitted that he was fairly well
+"surrounded." He had failed to secure the aid of Barr-Smith's friends,
+who said that, with the street-car system and the cement works, they had
+quite eggs enough in the Lattimore basket for their present purposes. In
+fact, he had felt out to blind ends nearly all the promising burrows
+supposedly leading to the strong boxes of the investing public, of which
+he had told us. He accounted for this lack of success on the very
+natural theory that the Halliday combination had found out about his
+mission, and was fighting him through its influence with the banks and
+trust companies. So he had done at last what Jim had advised him to do
+at first--secured an appointment with the mighty Mr. Pendleton; and,
+somewhat humbled by unsuccess, had telegraphed for us to come on and
+help in presenting the thing to that magnate.
+
+Whom, being fenced off by all sorts of guards, messengers, clerks, and
+secretaries, we saw after a pilgrimage through a maze of offices. He had
+not the usual features which make up an imposing appearance; but command
+flowed from him, and authority covered him as with a mantle. We knew
+that he possessed and exerted the power to send prosperity in this
+channel, or inject adversity into that, as a gardener directs water
+through his trenches, and this knowledge impressed us. He was rather
+thin; but not so much so as his sharp, high nose, his deep-set eyes, and
+his bony chin at first sight seemed to indicate. Whenever he spoke, his
+nostrils dilated, and his gray eyes said more than his lips uttered. He
+was courteous, with a sort of condensed courtesy--the shorthand of
+ceremoniousness. He turned full upon us from his desk as we entered,
+rose and met us as his clerk introduced us.
+
+"Mr. Barslow, I'm happy to meet you; and you also, Mr. Cornish. Mr.
+Wilson 'phoned about your enterprise just now. Mr. Elkins," as he took
+Jim's hand, "I have heard of you also. Be seated, gentlemen. I have
+given you a time appropriation of thirty minutes. I hope you will excuse
+me for mentioning that at the end of that period my time will be no
+longer my own. Kindly explain what it is you desire of me, and why you
+think that I can have any interest in your project."
+
+And, with a judgment trained in the valuing of men, he turned to Jim as
+our leader.
+
+"If our enterprise doesn't commend itself to your judgment in twenty
+minutes," said Jim, with a little smile, and in much the same tone that
+he would have used in discussing a cigar, "there'll be no need of
+wasting the other ten; for it's perfectly plain. I'll expedite matters
+by skipping what we desire, for the most part, and telling you why we
+think the Pendleton system ought to desire the same thing. Our plan, in
+a word, is to build a hundred and fifty miles of line, and from it
+deliver two full train-loads of through east-bound freight per day to
+your road, and take from you a like amount of west-bound tonnage, not
+one pound of which can be routed over your lines at present."
+
+Mr. Pendleton smiled.
+
+"A very interesting proposition, Mr. Elkins," said he; "my business is
+railroading, and I am always glad to perfect myself in the knowledge of
+it. Make it plain just how this can be done, and I shall consider my
+half-hour well expended."
+
+Then began the fateful conversation out of which grew the building of
+the Lattimore & Great Western Railway. Jim walked to the map which
+covered one wall of the room, and dropped statement after statement into
+the mind of Pendleton like round, compact bullets of fact. It was the
+best piece of expository art imaginable. Every foot of the road was
+described as to gradients, curves, cuts, fills, trestles, bridges, and
+local traffic. Then he began with Lattimore; and we who breathed in
+nothing but knowledge of that city and its resources were given new
+light as to its shipments and possibilities of growth. He showed how the
+products of our factories, the grain from our elevators, the live-stock
+from our yards, and the meats from our packing-houses could be sent
+streaming over the new road and the lines of Pendleton.
+
+Then he turned to our Commercial Club, and showed that the merchants,
+both wholesale and retail, of Lattimore were welded together in its
+membership, in such wise that their merchandise might be routed from the
+great cities over the proposed track. He piled argument on argument. He
+hammered down objection after objection before they could be suggested.
+He met Mr. Pendleton in the domain of railroad construction and
+management, and showed himself familiar with the relative values of
+Pendleton's own lines.
+
+"Your Pacific Division," said he, "must have disappointed some of the
+expectations with which it was built. Its earnings cannot, in view of
+the distance they fall below those of your other lines, be quite
+satisfactory to you. Give us the traffic agreement we ask; and your next
+report after we have finished our line will show the Pacific Division
+doing more than its share in the great showing of revenue per mile which
+the Pendleton system always makes. I see that my twenty minutes is about
+up. I hope I have made good our promises as to showing cause for coming
+to you with our project."
+
+Mr. Pendleton, after a moment's thought, said: "Have you made an
+engagement for lunch?"
+
+We had not. He turned to the telephone, and called for a number.
+
+"Is this Mr. Wade's office?... Yes, if you please.... Is this Mr.
+Wade?... This is Pendleton talking to you.... Yes, Pendleton.... There
+are some gentlemen in my office, Mr. Wade, whom I want you to meet, and
+I should be glad if you could join us at lunch at the club.... Well,
+can't you call that off, now?... Say, at one-thirty.... Yes.... Very
+kind of you.... Thanks! Good-by."
+
+Having made his arrangements with Mr. Wade, he hung up the telephone,
+and pushed an electric button. A young man from an outer office
+responded.
+
+"Tell Mr. Moore," said Pendleton to him, "that he will have to see the
+gentlemen who will call at twelve--on that lake terminal matter--he will
+understand. And see that I am not disturbed until after lunch.... And,
+say, Frank! See if Mr. Adams can come in here--at once, please."
+
+Mr. Adams, who turned out to be some sort of a freight expert, came in,
+and the rest of the interview was a bombardment of questions, in which
+we all took turns as targets. When we went to lunch we felt that Mr.
+Pendleton had possessed himself of all we knew about our enterprise, and
+filed the information away in some vast pigeon-hole case with his own
+great stock of knowledge.
+
+We met Mr. Wade over an elaborate lunch. He said, as he shook hands with
+Cornish, that he believed they had met somewhere, to which Cornish bowed
+a frigid assent. Mr. Wade was the head of The Allen G. Wade Trust
+Company, and seemed in a semi-comatose condition, save when cakes,
+wine, or securities were under discussion. He addressed me as "Mr.
+Corning," and called Cornish "Atkins," and once in a while opened his
+mouth to address Jim by name, but halted, with a distressful look, at
+the realization of the fact that he could not remember names enough to
+go around. He made an appointment with me for the party for the next
+morning.
+
+"If you will come to my office before you call on Mr. Wade," said Mr.
+Pendleton, "I will have a memorandum prepared of what we will do with
+you in the way of a traffic agreement: it may be of some use in
+determining the desirability of your bonds. I'm very glad to have met
+you, gentlemen. When Lattimore gets into my world--by which I mean our
+system and connections--I hope to visit the little city which has so
+strong a business community as to be able to send out such a committee
+as yourselves; good-afternoon!"
+
+"Well," said I, as we went toward our hotel, "this looks like progress,
+doesn't it?"
+
+"I sha'n't feel dead sure," said Jim, "until the money is in bank,
+subject to the check of the construction company. But doesn't it look
+juicy, right now! Why, boys, with that traffic agreement we can get the
+money anywhere--on the prairie, out at sea--anywhere under the shining
+sun! They can't beat us. What do you say, Cornish? Will, your friend
+Wade jar loose, or shall we have to seek further?"
+
+"He'll snap at your bonds now," said Cornish, rather glumly, I thought,
+considering the circumstances; "but don't call him a friend of mine!
+Why, damn him, not a week ago he turned me out of his office, saying
+that he didn't want to look into any more Western railway schemes! And
+now he says he believes we've met before!"
+
+This seemed to strike Mr. Elkins as the best practical joke he had ever
+heard of; and Cornish suggested that for a man to stop in Homeric
+laughter on Broadway might be pleasant for him, but was embarrassing to
+his companions. By this time Cornish himself was better-natured. Jim
+took charge of our movements, and commanded us to a dinner with him, in
+the nature of a celebration, with a theater-party afterward.
+
+"Let us," said he, "hear the chimes at midnight, or even after, if we
+get buncoed doing it. Who cares if we wind up in the police court! We've
+done the deed; we've made our bluff good with Halliday and his gang of
+highwaymen; and I feel like taking the limit off, if it lifts the roof!
+Al, hold your hand over my mouth or I shall yell!"
+
+"Come into my parlor, and yell for me," said Cornish, "and you may do my
+turn in police court, too. Come in, and behave yourself!"
+
+I began writing a telegram to my wife, apprising her of our good luck.
+The women in our circle knew our hopes, ambitions, and troubles, as the
+court ladies know the politics of the realm, and there were anxious
+hearts in Lattimore.
+
+"I'm going down to the telegraph-office with this," said I; "can I take
+yours, too?"
+
+When I handed the messages in, the man who received them insisted on my
+reading them over with him to make sure of correct transmission. There
+was one to Mr. Hinckley, one to Mr. Ballard, and two to Miss Josephine
+Trescott. One ran thus, "Success seems assured. Rejoice with me. J. B.
+C." The other was as follows: "In game between Railway Giants and
+Country Jakes here to-day, visiting team wins. Score, 9 to 0. Barslow,
+catcher, disabled. Crick in neck looking at high buildings. Have Mrs. B.
+prepare porous plaster for Saturday next. Sell Halliday stock short, and
+buy L. & G. W. And in name all things good and holy don't tell Giddings!
+J. R. E."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+In which we Learn Something of Railroads, and Attend Some Remarkable
+Christenings.
+
+
+And so, in due time, it came to pass that, our Aladdin having rubbed the
+magic ring with which his Genius had endowed him, there came, out of
+some thunderous and smoky realm, peopled with swart kobolds, and lit by
+the white fire of gushing cupolas and dazzling billets, a train of
+carriages, drawn by a tamed volcanic demon, on a wonderful way of steel,
+armed strongly to deliver us from the Castle Perilous in which we were
+besieged by the Giants. The way was marvelously prepared by theodolite
+and level, by tented camps of men driving, with shouts and cracking
+whips, straining teams in circling mazes, about dark pits on grassy
+hillsides, and building long, straight banks of earth across swales; by
+huge machines with iron fists thrusting trunks of trees into the earth;
+by mighty creatures spinning great steel cobwebs over streams.
+
+At last, a short branch of steel shot off from Pendleton's Pacific
+Division, grew daily longer and longer, pushed across the level
+earth-banks, the rows of driven tree-trunks, and the spun steel cobwebs,
+through the dark pits, nearer and nearer to Lattimore, and at last
+entered the beleaguered city, amid rejoicings of the populace. Most of
+whom knew but vaguely the facts of either siege or deliverance; but who
+shouted, and tossed their caps, and blew the horns and beat the drums,
+because the _Herald_ in a double-leaded editorial assured them that this
+was _the_ event for which Lattimore had waited to be raised to complete
+parity with her envious rivals. Furthermore, Captain Tolliver,
+magniloquently enthusiastic, took charge of the cheering, artillery, and
+band-music, and made a tumultuous success of it.
+
+"He told me," said Giddings, "that when the people of the North can be
+brought for a moment into that subjection which is proper for the
+masses, 'they make devilish good troops, suh, devilish good troops!'"
+
+And so it also happened that Mr. Elkins found himself the president of a
+real railway, with all the perquisites that go therewith. Among these
+being the power to establish town-sites and give them names. The former
+function was exercised according to the principles usually governing
+town-site companies, and with ends purely financial in view. The latter
+was elevated to the dignity of a ceremony. The rails were scarcely laid,
+when President Elkins invited a choice company to go with him over the
+line and attend the christening of the stations. He convinced the rest
+of us of the wisdom of this, by showing us that it would awaken local
+interest along the line, and prepare the way for the auction sales of
+lots the next week.
+
+"It's advertising of the choicest kind," said he. "Giddings will sow it
+far and wide in the press dispatches, and it will attract attention; and
+attention is what we want. We'll start early, run to the station
+Pendleton has called Elkins Junction, at the end of the line, lie over
+for a couple of hours, and come home, bestowing names as we come. Help
+me select the party, and we'll consider it settled."
+
+As the train was to be a light one, consisting of a buffet-car and a
+parlor-car, the party could not be very large. The officers of the road,
+Mr. Adams, who was general traffic manager, and selected by the
+bondholders, and Mr. Kittrick, the general manager, who was found in
+Kansas City by Jim, went down first as a matter of course. Captain
+Tolliver and his wife, the Trescotts, the Hinckleys, with Mr. Cornish
+and Giddings, were put down by Jim; and to these we added the
+influential new people, the Alexanders, who came with the cement-works,
+of which Mr. Alexander was president, Mr. Densmore, who controlled the
+largest of the elevators, and Mr. Walling, whose mill was the first to
+utilize the waters of our power-tunnel, and who was the visible
+representative of millions made in the flouring trade. Smith, our
+architect, was included, as was Cecil Barr-Smith, sent out by his
+brother to be superintendent of the street-railway, and looking upon the
+thing in the light of an exile, comforted by the beautiful native
+princess Antonia. We left Macdonald out, because he always called the
+young man "Smith," and could not be brought to forget an early
+impression that he and the architect were brothers; besides, said Jim,
+Macdonald was afraid of the cars as he was of the hyphen, being most of
+the time on the range with the cattle belonging to himself and Hinckley.
+Which, being interpreted, meant that Mr. Macdonald would not care to go.
+
+Mr. Ballard was invited on account of his early connection with the L. &
+G. W. project, although he was holding himself more and more aloof from
+the new movements, and held forth often upon the value of conservatism.
+Miss Addison, who was related to the Lattimore family, was commissioned
+to invite the old General, who very unexpectedly consented. His son
+Will, as solicitor for the railway company and one of the directors, was
+to be one of us if he could. These with their wives and some invited
+guests from near-by towns made up the party.
+
+We were well acquainted with each other by this time, so that it was
+quite like a family party or a gathering of old friends. Captain
+Tolliver was austerely polite to General Lattimore, whose refusal to
+concern himself with the question as to whether our city grew to a
+hundred thousand or shrunk to five he accounted for on the ground that a
+man who had led hired ruffians to trample out the liberty of a brave
+people must be morally warped.
+
+The General came, tall and spare as ever, wearing his beautiful white
+moustache and imperial as a Frenchman would wear the cross of the Legion
+of Honor. He was quite unable to sympathize with our lot-selling, our
+plenitude of corporations, or our feverish pushing of "developments."
+But the building of the railway attracted him. He looked back at the
+new-made track as we flew along; and his eyes flashed under the bushy
+white brows. He sat near Josie, and held her in conversation much of the
+outward trip; but Jim he failed to appreciate, and treated
+indifferently.
+
+"He is History incarnate," said Mrs. Tolliver, "and cannot rejoice in
+the passing of so much that is a part of himself."
+
+Giddings said that this was probably true; and under the circumstances
+he couldn't blame him. He, Giddings, would feel a little sore to see
+things which were a part of _himself_ going out of date. It was a
+natural feeling. Whereupon Mrs. Tolliver addressed her remarks very
+pointedly elsewhere; and Antonia Hinckley privately admonished Giddings
+not to be mean; and Giddings sought the buffet and smoked. Here I joined
+him, and over our cigars he confessed to me that life to him was an
+increasing burden, rapidly becoming intolerable.
+
+We had noticed, I informed him, an occasional note of gloom in his
+editorials. This ought not to be, now that the real danger to our
+interests seemed to be over, and we were going forward so wonderfully.
+To which he replied that with the gauds of worldly success he had no
+concern. The editorials I criticised were joyous and ebulliently
+hilarious compared with those which might be expected in the future. If
+we could find some blithesome ass to pay him for the _Herald_ enough
+money to take him out of our scrambled Bedlam of a town, bring the idiot
+on, and he (Giddings) would arrange things so we could have our touting
+done as we liked it!
+
+Now the _Herald_ had become a very valuable property, and of all men
+Giddings had the least reason to speak despitefully of Lattimore; and
+his frame of mind was a mystery to me, until I remembered that there was
+supposed to be something amiss between him and Laura Addison. Craftily
+leading the conversation to the point where confidences were easy, I was
+rewarded by a passionate disclosure on his part, which would have
+amounted to an outburst, had it not been restrained by the presence of
+Cornish, Hinckley, and Trescott at the other end of the compartment.
+
+"Oh, pshaw!" said I, "you've no cause for despair. On your own showing,
+there's every reason for you to hope."
+
+"You don't know the situation, Barslow," he insisted, shaking his head
+gloomily, "and there's no use in trying to tell you. She's too exalted
+in her ideals ever to accept me. She's told me things about the
+qualities she must have in the one who should be nearest to her that
+just simply shut me out; and I haven't called since. Oh, I tell you,
+Barslow, sometimes I feel as if I could--Yes, sir, it'll be accepted as
+the best piece of railroad building for years!"
+
+I was surprised at the sudden transition, until I saw that our fellow
+passengers were crowding to our end of the car in response to the
+conductor's announcement that we were coming into Elkins Junction. I
+made a note of Giddings's state of mind, as the subject of a conference
+with Jim. The _Herald_ was of too much importance to us for this to be
+neglected. The disciple of Iago must in some way be restored to his
+normal view of things. I could not help smiling at the vast difference
+between his view of Laura and mine. I, wrongly perhaps, thought her
+affectedly pietistic, with ideals likely to be yielding in spirit if the
+letter were preserved.
+
+Elkins Junction was a platform, a depot, an eating-house, and a Y; and
+it was nothing else.
+
+"We've come up here," said Jim, "to show you probably the smallest town
+in the state, and the only one in the world named after me. We wanted to
+show you the whole line, and Mr. Schwartz felt as if he'd prefer to turn
+his engine around for the return trip. The last two towns we came
+through, and hence the first two going back, are old places. The third
+station is a new town, and Conductor Corcoran will take us back there,
+where we'll unveil the name of the station, and permit the people to
+know where they live. While we're doing the sponsorial act, lunch will
+be prepared and ready for us to discuss during the next run."
+
+On the way back there was a stir of suppressed excitement among the
+passengers.
+
+"It's about this name," said Miss Addison to her seat-mate. "The town is
+on the shore of Mirror Lake, and they say it will be an important one,
+and a summer resort; and no one knows what the name is to be but Mr.
+Elkins."
+
+"Really, a very odd affair!" said Miss Allen, of Fairchild, Antonia's
+college friend. "It makes a social function of the naming of a town!"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Elkins, "and it is one of the really enduring things we
+can do. Long after the memory of every one here is departed, these
+villages will still bear the names we give them to-day. If there's any
+truth in the belief that some people have, that names have an influence
+for good or evil, the naming of the towns may be important as building
+the railroad."
+
+I was sitting with Antonia. Miss Allen and Captain Tolliver were with
+us, our faces turned toward one another. General Lattimore, with Josie
+and her father, was on the opposite side of the car. Most of the company
+were sitting or standing near, and the conversation was quite general.
+
+"Oh, it's like a romance!" half whispered Antonia to us. "I envy you men
+who build roads and make towns. Look at Mr. Elkins, Sadie, as he stands
+there! He is master of everything; to me he seems as great as Napoleon!"
+
+She neither blushed nor sought to conceal from us her adoration for Jim.
+It was the day of his triumph, and a fitting time to acknowledge his
+kinghood; and her admission that she thought him the greatest, the most
+excellent of men did not surprise me. Yet, because he was older than
+she, and had never put himself in a really loverlike attitude toward
+her, I thought it was simply an exalted girlish regard, and not at all
+what we usually understand by an affair of the heart. Moreover, at that
+time such praise as she gave him would not have been thought
+extravagant in almost any social gathering in Lattimore. Let me confess
+that to me it does not now seem so ... Cecil Barr-Smith walked out and
+stood on the platform.
+
+General Lattimore was apparently thinking of the features of the
+situation which had struck Antonia as romantic.
+
+"You young men," said he, "are among the last of the city-builders and
+road-makers. My generation did these things differently. We went out
+with arms in our hands, and hewed out spaces in savagery for homes. You
+don't seem to see it; but you are straining every nerve merely to shift
+people from many places to one, and there to exploit them. You wind your
+coils about an inert mass, you set the dynamo of your power of
+organization at work, and the inert mass becomes a great magnet. People
+come flying to it from the four quarters of the earth, and the
+first-comers levy tribute upon them, as the price of standing-room on
+the magnet!"
+
+"I nevah hea'd the real merit and strength and safety of ouah
+real-estate propositions bettah stated, suh!" said Captain Tolliver
+ecstatically.
+
+Jim stood looking at the General with sober regard.
+
+"Go on, General," said he.
+
+"Not only that," went on the General, "but people begin forestalling the
+standing-room, so as to make it scarcer. They gamble on the power of the
+magnet, and the length of time it will draw. They buy to-day and sell
+to-morrow; or cast up what they imagine they might sell for, and call
+the increase profit. Then comes the time when the magnet ceases to draw,
+or the forestallers, having, in their greed, grasped more than they can
+keep, offer too much for the failing market, and all at once the thing
+stops, and the dervish-dance ends in coma, in cold forms and still
+hands, in misery and extinction!"
+
+There was a pause, during which the old soldier sat looking out of the
+widow, no one else finding aught to say. Elkins remained standing, and
+once or twice gave that little movement of the head which precedes
+speech, but said nothing. Cornish smiled sardonically. Josie looked
+anxiously at Jim, apprehensive as to how he would take it. At last it
+was Ballard the conservative who broke silence.
+
+"I hope, General," said he, "that our little movement won't develop into
+a dervish-dance. Anyhow, you will join in our congratulations upon the
+completion of the railroad. You know you once did some railroad-building
+yourself, down there in Tennessee--I know, for I was there. And I've
+always taken an interest in track-laying ever since."
+
+"So have I," said the General; "that's what brought me out to-day."
+
+"Oh, tell us about it," said Josie, evidently pleased at the change of
+subject; "tell us about it, please."
+
+"No, no!" he protested, "you may read it better in the histories,
+written by young fellows who know more about it than we who were there.
+You'll find, when you read it, that it was something like this: Grant's
+host was over around Chattanooga, starving for want of means for
+carrying in provisions. We were marching eastward to join him, when a
+message came telling us to stop at Decatur and rebuild the railroad to
+Nashville. So, without a thought that there was such a thing as an
+impossibility, we stopped--we seven or eight thousand common Americans,
+volunteer soldiers, picked at random from the legions of heroes who
+saved liberty to the world--and without an engineering corps, without
+tools or implements, with nothing except what any like number of our
+soldiers had, we stopped and built the road. That is all. The rails had
+been heated, and wound about trees and stumps. The cross-ties were
+burned to heat the rails. The cars had been destroyed by fire, and their
+warped ironwork thrown into ditches. The engines lay in scrap-heaps at
+the bottoms of ravines and rivers. The bridges were gone. Out of the
+chaos to which the structure had been resolved, there was nothing left
+but the road-bed.
+
+"When I think of what we did, I know that with liberty and intelligence
+men with their naked hands could, in short space, re-create the
+destroyed wealth of the world. We made tools of the scraps of iron and
+steel we found along the line. We felled trees. We impressed little
+sawmills and sawed the logs into timbers for bridges and cars. Out of
+the battle-scarred and march-worn ranks came creative and constructive
+genius in such profusion as to astound us, who thought we knew them so
+well. Those blue-coated fellows, enlisted and serving as food for
+powder, and used to destruction, rejoiced in once more feeling the
+thrill there is in making things."
+
+"Out of the ranks came millers, and ground the grain the foragers
+brought in; came woodmen, and cut the trees; came sawyers, and sawed the
+lumber. We asked for blacksmiths; and they stepped from the ranks, and
+made their own tools and the tools of the machinists. We called for
+machinists; and out of the ranks they stepped, and rebuilt the engines,
+and made the cars ready for the carpenters. When we wanted carpenters,
+out of the same ranks of common soldiers they walked, and made the cars.
+From the ranks came other men, who took the twisted rails, unwound them
+from the stumps and unsnarled them from one another, as women unwind
+yarn, and laid them down fit to carry our trains. And in forty days our
+message went back to Grant that we had 'stopped and built the road,' and
+that our engines were even then drawing supplies to his hungry army.
+Such was the incomparable army which was commanded by that silent genius
+of war; and to have been one of such an army is to have lived!"
+
+The withered old hand trembled, as the great past surged back through
+his mind. We all sat in silence; and I looked at Captain Tolliver,
+doubtful as to how he would take the old Union general's speech. What
+the Captain's history had been none of us knew, except that he was a
+Southerner. When the general ceased, Tolliver was sitting still, with no
+indication of being conscious of anything special in the conversation,
+except that a red spot burned in each dark cheek. As the necessity for
+speech grew with the lengthening silence, he rose and faced General
+Lattimore.
+
+"Suh," said he, "puhmit a man who was with the victohs of Manasses; who
+chahged with mo' sand than sense at Franklin; and who cried like a child
+aftah Nashville, and isn't ashamed of it, by gad! to offah his hand, and
+to say that he agrees with you, suh, in youah tribute to the soldiers of
+the wah, and honahs you, suh, as a fohmah foe, and a worthy one, and he
+hopes, a future friend!"
+
+Somehow, the Captain's swelling phrases, his sonorous allusions to
+himself in the third person, had for the moment ceased to be ridiculous.
+The environment fitted the expression. The general grasped his hand and
+shook it. Then Ballard claimed the right, as one of the survivors of
+Franklin, to a share in the reunion, and they at once removed the strain
+which had fallen upon us with the General's first speech, by relating
+stories and fraternizing soldierwise, until Conductor Corcoran called in
+at the door, "Mystery Number One! All out for the christening!"
+
+As we gathered on the platform, we saw that the signboard on the
+station-building, for the name of the town, had been put up, but was
+veiled by a banner draped over it. Tents were pitched near, in which
+people lived waiting for the lot-auction, that they might buy sites for
+shops and homes. The waters of the lake shone through the trees a few
+rods away; and in imagination I could see the village of the future,
+sprinkled about over the beautiful shore. The future villagers gathered
+near the platform; and when Jim stepped forward to make the speech of
+the occasion, he had a considerable audience.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," said he, "our visit is for the purpose of
+showing the interest which the Lattimore & Great Western takes and will
+continue to take in the towns on its line, and to add a name to what, I
+notice, has already become a local habitation. In conferring that name,
+we are aware that the future citizens of the place have claims upon us.
+So one has been selected which, as time passes, will grow more and more
+pleasant to your ears; and one which the person bestowing it regards as
+an honor to the town as high as could be conferred in a name. No station
+on our lines could have greater claims upon our regard than the
+possession of this name. And now, gentlemen--"
+
+Mr. Elkins removed his hat, and we all followed his example. Some one
+pulled a cord, the banner fell away, and the name was revealed. It was
+"JOSEPHINE." The women looked at it, and turned their eyes on Josie, who
+blushed rosily, and shrank back behind her father, who burst into a loud
+laugh of unalloyed pleasure.
+
+"I propose three cheers for the town of Josephine," went on Mr. Elkins,
+"and for the lady for whom it is named!"
+
+They were real cheers--good hearty ones; followed by an address, in the
+name of the town, by a bright young man who pushed forward and with
+surprising volubility thanked President Elkins for his selection of the
+name, and closed with flowery compliments to the blushing Miss Trescott,
+whose identity Jim had disclosed by a bow. He was afterwards a thorn in
+our flesh in his practice as a personal-injury lawyer. At the time,
+however, we warmed to him, as under his leadership the dwellers in the
+tents and round about the waters of Mirror Lake all shook hands with Jim
+and Josie.
+
+Cornish stood with a saturnine smile on his face, and glared at some of
+the more pointed hits of the young lawyer. Cecil Barr-Smith beamed
+radiant pleasure, as he saw the evident linking in this public way of
+Jim's name and Josie's. Antonia stood close to Cecil's side, and chatted
+vivaciously to him--not with him; for her words seemed to have no
+correlation with his.
+
+"Quite like the going away of a bridal party!" said she with exaggerated
+gayety, and with a little spitefulness, I thought. "Has any one any
+rice?"
+
+"All aboard!" said Corcoran; and the joyful and triumphant party, with
+their outward intimacy and their inward warfare of passions and desires,
+rolled on toward "Mystery Number Two," which was duly christened
+"Cornish," and celebrated in champagne furnished by its godfather.
+
+"Don't you ever drink champagne?" said Cornish, as Josie declined to
+partake.
+
+"Never," said she.
+
+"What, _never_?" he went on, Pinaforically.
+
+"My God!" thought I, "the assurance of the man!" And the palm-encircled
+alcove at Auriccio's, as it was wont so often to do, came across my
+vision, and shut out everything but the Psyche face in its ruddy halo,
+speeding by me into the street, and the vexed young man in the faultless
+attire slowly following.
+
+Mystery Number Three was "Antonia," a lovely little place in embryo;
+"Barslow" came next, followed by "Giddings" and "Tolliver." We were
+tired of it when we reached "Hinckley," platted on a farm owned by
+Antonia's father, and where we ceased to perform the ceremony of
+unveiling. It was a memorable trip, ending with sunset and home. Captain
+Tolliver assisted General Lattimore to alight from the train, and they
+went arm in arm up to the old General's home.
+
+That night, according to his wont, Jim came to smoke with me in the late
+evening. "Let's take a car," said he, "and go up and have a look at the
+houses."
+
+These were our new mansions up in Lynhurst Park Addition, now in process
+of erection. In the moonlight we could see them dimly, and at a little
+distance they looked like masses of ruins--the second childhood of
+houses. A stranger could have seen, from the polished columns and the
+piles of carved stone, that they were to be expensive and probably
+beautiful structures.
+
+"What do you think of the General in the role of Cassandra?" asked Jim,
+as we sat in the skeleton room which was to be his library.
+
+"It struck me," said I, "as a particularly artistic bit of croaking!"
+
+"The Captain says frequently," said Jim, his cigar glowing like a
+variable star, "that opportunity knocks once. The General, I'm afraid,
+knocks all the time. But if it should turn out that he's right about
+the--the--dervish-dance ... it would be ... to put it mildly ... a
+horse on us, Al, wouldn't it?"
+
+I had no answer to this fanciful speech, and made none. Instead, I told
+him of Giddings's love-sickness.
+
+"The philosophy of Iago has broken down," said he, "and the boy is sort
+of short-circuited. Antonia can take him in hand, and turn him out full
+of confidence; and with that, I'll answer for the lady. That can be
+fixed easy, and ought to be. Let's walk back."
+
+"What was it he said?" he asked, as we parted. "'Coma, cold forms, still
+hands, and extinction.' Well, if the dervish-dance does wind up in that
+sort of thing, it's only a short-cut to the inevitable. Those are pretty
+houses up there; we'd have been astounded over them when we used to fish
+together on Beaver Creek;--but suppose they are?
+
+    "'They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
+    The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep;
+    And Bahram, that great hunter--the Wild Ass
+    Stamps o'er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep!'
+
+Good-night, Al!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Some Affairs of the Heart Considered in their Relation to Dollars and
+Cents.
+
+
+Antonia was sitting in a hammock. Josie and Alice were not far away
+watching Cecil Barr-Smith, who was wading into the lake to get
+water-lilies for them, contrary to the ordinances of the city of
+Lattimore in such cases made and provided. The six were dawdling away
+our time one fine Sunday in Lynhurst Park. I forgot to say Mr. Elkins
+and myself were discussing affairs of state with Miss Hinckley.
+
+"He's such a ninny," said Antonia.
+
+"Aren't all people when in his forlorn condition?" asked Jim.
+
+Antonia looked away at the clouds, and did not reply.
+
+"But if he had a morsel of the cynical philosophy he boasts of," said
+she, "he could see."
+
+"I don't know about that," said Jim lazily, looking over at the other
+group; "a woman can conceal her feelings in such a case pretty
+completely."
+
+"I don't know about that," echoed Antonia. "I wish I did; it would
+simplify things."
+
+"I believe," said I, "that it's a simple enough matter for you to solve
+and manage as it is."
+
+"But it's so absurd to bother with!" said she; "and what's the use?"
+
+"Doesn't it seem that way?" said Jim. "And yet you know we brought him
+here for a definite purpose; and in his present state he can't make
+good. Just read his editorial this morning: it would add gloom to the
+proceedings, read at a funeral. We want things whooped up, and he wants
+to whoop 'em; but long screeds on 'The Sacred Right of Self-destruction'
+hurt things, and bring the paper into disrepute, and crowd out
+optimistic matter that we desire. And as long as both families want the
+thing brought about, and there is good reason to think that Laura will
+not prove eternally immovable, I take it to be an important enough
+matter, from the standpoint of dollars and cents, for the exercise of
+our diplomacy."
+
+"Well, then," said Antonia, "get the people together on some social
+occasion, and we'll try."
+
+"I've thought," said Jim, "of having a house-warming--as soon as the
+weather gets so that the very name of the function won't keep folks
+away. My house is practically done, you know."
+
+"Just the thing," said Antonia. "There are cosy nooks and deep retreats
+enough to make it a sort of labyrinth for the ensnaring of our victims."
+
+"Isn't it a queer thing in language," said Jim, "that these retreats are
+the places where advances are made!"
+
+"Not when you consider," said Antonia, "that retreats follow repulses."
+
+"We ought to have the Captain and the General here, if this military
+conversation is to continue," said I. "And here comes Cecil. Stop before
+he comes, or we shall never get through with the explanation of the
+jokes."
+
+This remark elicited the laughter which the puns failed to provoke; for
+Cecil was color-blind in all things relating to the American joke. The
+humor of _Punch_ appealed to him, and the wit of Sterne and Dean Swift;
+but the funny column and the paragrapher's niche of our newspapers he
+regarded as purely pathological phenomena. I sometimes feel that Cecil
+was right about this. Can the mind which continues to be charmed by
+these paragraphic strainings be really sound?--but this is not a
+dissertation. Cecil reconciled himself to his position as the local
+exemplification of the traditional Englishman whose trains of ideas run
+on the freight schedule--and was one of the most popular fellows in
+Lattimore. He gloried in his slavery to Antonia, and seemed to glean
+hope from the most sterile circumstances.
+
+It was easy to hope, in Lattimore, then. It was not many days after our
+talk in the park before I noticed a change for the better in Giddings,
+even. Just before Jim's house-warming, he came to me with something like
+optimism in his appearance. I started to cheer him up, and went wrong.
+
+"I'm glad to see by your cheerful looks," said I, "that the philosophy
+of Iago--"
+
+"Say, now!" cried he, "don't remind me of that, for Heaven's sake!"
+
+"Why, certainly not," said I, "if you object."
+
+"I do object," said he most earnestly; "why, that damned-fool philosophy
+may have ruined my life, you know."
+
+"Of course I know what you mean," said I; "but I'm convinced, and so are
+all your friends, that if you fail, it'll be your own lack of nerve, and
+nothing else, that you'll owe the disaster to. You should--"
+
+"I should have refrained from trampling under foot the dearest ideals of
+the only girl-- However, I can't talk of these things to any one,
+Barslow. But I have some hope now. Antonia and Josie have both been very
+kind lately--and say, Barslow, I see now how little foundation there is
+for that old gag about the women hating each other!"
+
+"I've always felt," said I, anxious to draw him out so that I might see
+what the conspirators had been doing, "that there's nothing in _that_
+idea. But what has changed your view?"
+
+"Antonia, and Josie, and even your wife," said he, "have been keeping up
+a regular lobby in my behalf with Laura. They think they've got the deal
+plugged up now, so that she'll give me a show again, and--"
+
+"Why, surely," said I; "in my opinion, there never was any need for you
+to feel downcast."
+
+"Barslow," he said, with the air of a man who has endured to the limit,
+"you are a good fellow, but you make me tired when you talk like that.
+Why, four weeks ago I had no more show than a snowball in--in the
+crater of Vesuvius. But now I'm encouraged. These girls have been doing
+me good, as I just said, and I'm convinced that my series of editorials
+on 'The Influence of Christianity on Civilization,' in which I've given
+the Church the credit of being the whole thing, has helped some."
+
+"They ought to do good somewhere," said I, "they certainly haven't
+boomed Lattimore any."
+
+"Damn Lattimore!" said he bitterly. "When a man's very life--But see
+here, Barslow, I know you're not in earnest about this. And I'll be all
+right in a day or two, or I'll be eternally wrong. I'm going to make one
+final cast of the die. I may go down to bottomless perdition, or I may
+be caught up to the battlements of heaven; but such a mass of doubts and
+miseries as I've been lately, I'll no longer be! Pray for me, Barslow,
+pray for me!"
+
+This despairing condition of Giddings's was a sort of continuing
+sensation with us at that time. We discussed it quite freely in all its
+aspects, humorous and tragic. It was so unexpected a development in the
+young man's character, and, with all due respect to the discretion and
+resisting powers of Miss Addison, so entirely gratuitous and factitious.
+
+"He has ability as a writer," said the Captain; "but in such a mattah
+anybody but a fool ought to see that the thing to do is to chahge the
+intrenchments. I trust that I may not be misunde'stood when I say that,
+in my opinion, a good rattling chahge would not be a fo'lo'n hope!"
+
+"It bothers," said Jim; "and if it weren't for that, I'd feel
+conscience-stricken at doing anything to rob the idiot of a most
+delicious grief."
+
+The coolness of early autumn was in the air the night of Jim's
+house-warming. To describe his dwelling, in these days when fortunes are
+spent on the details of a stairway, and a king's ransom for the
+tapestries of a salon, all of which luxuries are spread before the eyes
+of the public in the columns of Sunday papers and magazines, would be to
+court an anticlimax. But this was before the multimillionaire had made
+the need for an augmentative of the word "luxury"; and Jim's house was
+noteworthy for its beauty: its cunningly wrought iron and wood; and
+columned halls and stairways; and wide-throated fireplaces, each a
+picture in tile, wood, and metalwork; and vistas like little fairylands
+through silken portieres; and carven chairs and couches, reminiscent of
+royal palaces; and chambers where lovely color-schemes were worked out
+in rug, and bed, and canopy. There were decorations made by men whose
+names were known in London and Paris. From out-of-the-way places Mr.
+Elkins had brought collections of queer and interesting and pretty
+things which, all his life, he had been accumulating; and in his library
+were broad areas of well-worn book-backs. Somehow, people looked upon
+the Mr. Elkins who was master of all these as a more important man than
+the Elkins who had blown into the town on some chance breeze of
+speculation, and taken rooms at the Centropolis.
+
+It was all light and color, that night. Even the formal flower-beds of
+the grounds and the fountain spouting on the lawn were like scenery in
+the lime-light. Only, back in the shrubbery there were darker nooks in
+summer-houses and arbors for those who loved darkness rather than light,
+because their deeds, to the common mind, were likely to seem foolish. I
+remember thinking that if Mr. Giddings really wanted a chance to take
+the high dive of which he had spoken to me, the opportunity was before
+him.
+
+His Laura was there, her devotee-like expression striving with an
+exceedingly low-cut dress to sound the distinguishing note of her
+personality. Giddings was at the punch-bowl as on their arrival she
+swept past with the General. When he saw the nun-like glance over the
+swelling bosom, the poor stricken cynic blushed, turned pale, and
+wheeled to flee. But Cecil, as if following orders, arrested him and
+began plying him with the punch--from which Giddings seemed to draw
+courage: for I saw him, soon, gravitate to her whom he loved and so
+mysteriously dreaded.
+
+"It's a pe'fect jewel-case of a house!" said the Captain, as he moved
+with the trooping company through the mansion.
+
+"Indeed, indeed it is," said Mrs. Tolliver to Alice; "the jewel, whoever
+it may be, is to be envied."
+
+"I hope," said Jim to Josie, "that you agree with Mrs. Tolliver?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Josie, "but you attach far too much importance to my
+judgment. If it is any comfort to you, however, I want to
+praise--everything--unreservedly."
+
+"I won't know, for a while," said Jim, "whether it is to be my house
+only, or home in the full sense of the word."
+
+"One doesn't know about that, I fancy," said Cecil; "for a long time--"
+
+"I mean to know soon," said Jim.
+
+Josie was looking intently at the carving on one of the chairs, and paid
+no heed, though the remark seemed to be addressed to her.
+
+"What I mean, you know," said Cecil, "is that, no matter how well the
+house may be built and furnished, it's the associations, the history of
+the place, the things that are in the air, that makes 'Ome!"
+
+There was in the manner of his capitalizing the word as he uttered it,
+and in the unwonted elision of the H, that tribute to his dear island
+which the exiled Briton (even when soothed by the consolation offered by
+street-car systems to superintend, and rose-pink blondes to serve),
+always pays when he speaks of Home.
+
+"Associations," said Jim, "may be historical or prophetic. In the former
+case, we have to take them on trust; but as to those of the future, we
+are sure of them."
+
+"Yahs," said Cecil, using the locution which he always adopted when
+something subtle was said to him, "I dare say! I dare say!"
+
+"Well, then," Jim went on, "I have this matter of the atmosphere or
+associations under my own control."
+
+"Just so," said Cecil. "Clever conceit, Miss Trescott, isn't it, now?"
+
+But Miss Trescott had apparently heard nothing of Jim's speech, and
+begged pardon; and wouldn't they go and show her the bronzes in the
+library?
+
+"This mansion, General," said the Captain, "takes one back, suh, to the
+halcyon days of American history. I refeh, suh, to those times when the
+plantahs of the black prairie belt of Alabama lived like princes, in the
+heart of an enchanted empire!"
+
+"A very interesting period, Captain," said the General. "It is a pity
+that the industrial basis was one which could not endure!"
+
+"In the midst of fo'ests, suh," went on the Captain, "we had ouah
+mansions, not inferio' to this--each a little kingdom with its complete
+wo'ld of amusements, its cote, and its happy populace, goin' singin' to
+the wo'k which supported the estate!"
+
+"Yes," said the General, "I thought, when we were striking down that
+state of things, that we were doing a great thing for that populace. But
+I now see that I was only helping the black into a new slavery, the
+fruits of which we see here, around us, to-night."
+
+"I hahdly get youah meaning, suh--"
+
+"Well," said the General, looking about at the little audience. (It was
+in the smoking-room, and those present were smokers only.) "Well, now,
+take my case. I have some pretty valuable grounds down there where I
+live. When I got them, they were worthless. I could build as good a
+mansion as this or any of your ante-bellum Alabama houses for what I can
+get out of that little tract. What is that value? Merely the expression
+in terms of money of the power of excluding the rest of mankind from
+that little piece of ground. I make people give me the fruits of their
+labor, myself doing nothing. That's what builds this house and all these
+great houses, and breeds the luxury we are beginning to see around us;
+and the consciousness that this slavery exists, and is increasing, and
+bids fair to grow greatly, is what is making men crazy over these little
+spots of ground out here in the West! It is this slavery--"
+
+"Suh," exclaimed the Captain, rising and grasping the General's hand,
+"you have done me the favo' of making me wisah! I nevah saw so cleahly
+the divine decree which has fo'eo'dained us to this opulence. Nothing so
+satisfactory, suh, as a basis and reason foh investment, has been
+advanced in my hearing since I have been in the real-estate business!
+Let us wo'k this out a little mo' in detail, if you please, suh--"
+
+"Let us escape while there is yet time!" said Cornish; and we fled.
+
+After supper there was a cotillion. The spacious ballroom, with its roof
+so high that the lights up there were as stars, was a sight which could
+scarcely be reconciled with the village community which he had found and
+changed. The palms, and flowers, and lights which decorated the room;
+the orchestra's river of dance-music; the men, all in the black livery
+which--on the surface--marks the final conquest of civilization over
+barbarism; the beautiful gowns, the sparkling jewels, and the white
+shoulders and arms of the ladies--all these made me wonder if I had not
+been transported to some Mayfair or Newport, so pictorial, so
+decorative, so charged with art, it seemed to be. The young people,
+carrying on their courtships in these unfamiliar halls, their
+disappearances into the more remote and tenebrous outskirts of the
+assembly--all seemed to me to be taking place on the stage, or in some
+romance.
+
+I told Alice about this as we walked home--it was only across the
+street--to our own new house.
+
+"Don't tell any one about this feeling of yours," said she. "It betrays
+your provincialism, my dear. You should feel, for the first time in your
+life, perfectly at home. 'Armor, rusting on his walls, On the blood of
+Clifford calls,' you know."
+
+"Mine didn't hear the call," said I; "I'm probably the first of my race
+to wear this--But I enjoyed it."
+
+"Well, I am too full of something that took place to discuss the
+matter," said she, as we sat down at home. "I am perplexed. You know
+about Mr. Cornish and Josie, don't you?"
+
+She startled me, for I had never told her a word.
+
+"Know about them!" I cried, a little dramatically. "What do you mean?
+No, I don't!"
+
+"Why, what's the matter, Albert?" she queried. "I haven't charged them
+with midnight assassination, or anything like that! Only, it seems that
+he has been making love to her, for some time, in his cool and
+self-contained way. I've known it, and she's been perfectly conscious,
+that I knew; but never said anything to me of it, and seemed unwilling
+even to approach the subject. But to-night Cecil and I found her out in
+the canopied seat by the fountain, and I knew something was the matter,
+and sent Cecil away. Something told me that Mr. Cornish was concerned
+in it, and I asked her at once where he went.
+
+"'He is gone!' said she. 'I don't know where he is, and I don't care! I
+wish I might never see him any more!'
+
+"You may imagine my surprise. When a young woman uses such language
+about a man, it is a certainty that she isn't voicing her true feelings,
+or that it isn't a normal love affair. So I wormed out of her that he
+had made her an offer."
+
+"'Well,' said I, 'if, as I infer from your conversation, you have
+refused him, there's an end of the matter; and you need not worry about
+seeing him any more.'
+
+"'But,' said she, 'Alice, I haven't refused him!'
+
+"That took me aback a little," went on Alice, "for I had other plans for
+her; so I said: 'You haven't accepted the fellow, have you?'
+
+"'Oh, no, no!' said she, in a sort of quivery way, 'but what right have
+you to speak of him in that way?' And that is all I could get out of
+her. She was so unreasonable and disconnected in her talk, and the
+others came out, and I tell you what, Albert Barslow, that man Cornish
+will do evil yet, among us! I have always thought so!"
+
+"I don't see any ground for any such prediction," said I, "in anything
+you have told me. Her inability to make up her mind--"
+
+"Means that there's something wrong," said my wife dogmatically. "It
+means that he has some sinister influence over her, as he has over
+almost everybody, with those coal-black eyes of his and his satanic
+ways. And worse than all else, it means that he'll finally get her, in
+spite of herself!"
+
+"Pshaw!" said I.
+
+"Go away, Albert!" said she, "or we shall quarrel. Go back and find my
+fan--I left it on the mantel in the library. The house is lighted yet;
+and I was going to send you back anyhow. Kiss me, and go, please."
+
+I felt that if Alice had had in her memory my vision of the supper at
+Auriccio's, she would have been confirmed in her fears; but to me, in
+spite of the memory, they seemed absurd. My only apprehension was that
+she might be right as to the final outcome, to the wreck of Jim's hopes.
+I did not take the matter at all seriously, in fact. I think we men must
+usually have such an affair worked out to some conclusion, for weal or
+woe, before we regard it otherwise than lightly. That was the reason
+that Giddings's distraught condition was only a matter of laughter to
+all of us. And as something like this passed through my mind, Giddings
+himself collared me as I crossed the street.
+
+"Old man!" said he, "congratulate me! It's all right, Barslow, it's all
+right."
+
+"Up on the battlements, are you?" said I. "Well, I congratulate you,
+Giddings; and don't make such an ass of yourself, please, any more. I
+never noticed until this evening what a fine girl Laura is. You're
+really a very fortunate fellow indeed!"
+
+"You never noticed it!" said he with utter scorn. "Well, if--"
+
+"It's late," said I. "Come and see me in the morning! Good-night."
+
+I went in at the front door of the house. It stood wide open, as if the
+current of guests passing out had removed its tendency to swing shut. It
+seemed lonely now, inside, with all the decorations of the assembly
+still in place in the empty hall. I passed into the library, and found
+Jim sitting idly in a great leather chair. He seemed not to see me; or
+if he did, he paid no attention. I went to the mantel, picked up Alice's
+fan, and turned to Jim.
+
+"Sit down," said he.
+
+"Having a sort of 'oft in the stilly night' experience, Jim, or a case
+of William the Conqueror on the Field of Hastings?"
+
+"Yes," said he. "Something like that."
+
+"Well, your house-warming has been a success, Jim," said I, "though a
+fellow wouldn't think so to look at you. And the house is faultless. I
+envy you the house, but the ability to plan and furnish it still more. I
+didn't think it was in you, old man! Where did you learn it all?"
+
+"You may have the house, if you want it, Al," said he. "I don't think
+it's going to be of any use to me."
+
+"Why, Jim," said I, seeing that it was something more than a mere mood
+with him, "what is it? Has anything gone wrong?"
+
+"Nothing that I've any right to complain of," said he. "Of course, no
+man puts as much of his life into such a thing as I have into
+this--without thinking of more than living in it--alone. I've never had
+what you can really call a home--not since I was a little chap, when it
+was home wherever there were trees and mother. I've filled this--with
+those associations I spoke to Barr-Smith about--to-night--a little more
+than I seem to have had any warrant to do. I tried to make sure about
+the jewel for the jewel-case to-night, and it went wrong, Al; and that's
+all there is of it. I don't think I shall need the house, and if you
+like it you can have it."
+
+"Do you mean that Josie has refused you?" said I.
+
+"She didn't put it that way," said he, "but it amounts to that."
+
+"Nothing that isn't a refusal," said I, "ought to be accepted as such.
+What did she say?"
+
+"Nothing definite," he answered wearily, "only that it couldn't be
+'yes,' and when I urged her to make it 'yes' or 'no,' she refused to say
+either; and asked me to forget that I had ever said anything to her
+about the matter. There have been some things which--led me to hope--for
+a different answer; and I'm a good deal taken down, Al ... I wouldn't
+like to talk this way--with any one else."
+
+There seemed to be no reason for abandonment of hope, I urged upon him,
+and after a cigar or so I left him, evidently impressed with this view
+of the case, but nevertheless bitterly disappointed. It meant delay and
+danger to his hopes; and Jim was not a man to brook delay, or suffer
+danger to go unchallenged. I dared not tell him of Cornish's offer, and
+of its fate, so similar to his.
+
+"I wonder if it is coquetry on her part," thought I, as I went back with
+the fan. "I wonder if it will cause things to go wrong in our business
+affairs. I wonder if it is possible for her to be sincerely unable to
+make up her mind, or if there is anything in Alice's malign-influence
+theory. Anyhow, in the department of Cupid business certainly is picking
+up!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+Some Things which Happened in Our Halcyon Days.
+
+
+If there was any tension among us just after the house-warming, it was
+not noticeable. Mr. Cornish and Mr. Elkins seemed unaware of their
+rivalry. Had either of the two been successful, it might have made
+mischief; but as it was, neither felt that his rejection was more than
+temporary. Neither knew much of the other's suit, and both seemed full
+of hope and good spirits.
+
+Altogether, these were our halcyon days. It seemed to crew and captain a
+time for the putting off of armor, and the donning of the garlands of
+complacent respite from struggle. The work we had undertaken seemed
+accomplished--our village was a city. The great wheel we had set
+whirling went spinning on with power. Long ago we had ceased to treat
+the matter jocularly; and to regard our operations as applied psychology
+only, or as a piratical reunion, no longer occurred to us. There is such
+a thing, I believe, as self-hypnotism; but if we knew it, we made no
+application of our knowledge to our own condition. This great,
+scattered, ebullient town, grown from the drowsy Lattimore of a few
+years ago, must surely be, even now, what we had willed it to be: and
+therefore, could we not pause and take our ease?
+
+There was the General, of course. He, Jim said, "'knocked' so constantly
+as to be sort of ex-officio President of the Boiler-makers' Union," and
+talked of the inevitable collapse. But who ever heard of a city built by
+people of his way of thinking? And there was Josie Trescott, with her
+agreement on broad lines with the General, and her deprecation of the
+giving of fortunes to people who had not earned them; but Josie was only
+a woman, who, to be sure, knew more of most matters than the rest of us,
+but could not have any very valuable knowledge of the prospects for
+commercial prosperity.
+
+That we were in the midst of an era of the most wonderful commercial
+prosperity none denied. How could they? The streets, so lately bordered
+with low stores, hotels, and banks, were now craggy with tall office
+buildings and great hostelries, through which the darting elevators shot
+hurrying passengers. Those trees which made early twilight in the
+streets that night when Alice, Jim, and I first rode out to the Trescott
+farm were now mostly cut down to make room for "improvements."
+
+Brushy Creek gorge was no longer dark and cool, with its double sky-line
+of trees drowsing toward one another, like eyelashes, from the friendly
+cliffs. The cooing of the pigeons was gone forever. The muddied water
+from the great flume raced down through the ravine, turning many wheels,
+but nowhere gathering in any form or place which seemed good for trout.
+On either side stood shanties, and ramshackle buildings where such
+things as stonecutting and blacksmithing were done. Along the waterside
+ran the tracks of our Terminal and Belt Line System, on which trains of
+flat-cars always stood, engaged in the work of carrying away the cliffs,
+in which they were aided and abetted by giant derricks and the fiends of
+dynamite and nitro-glycerin. Limekilns burned all the time, turning the
+companionable gray ledges into something offensive and corrosive. One
+must now board a street-car, and ride away beyond Lynhurst Park before
+one could find the good and pure little Brushy Creek of yore.
+
+The dwellers in the houses which stood in their lawns of vivid green had
+gone away into the new "additions," to be in the fashion, and to escape
+from the smoke and clang of engine and factory. Their old houses were
+torn away, or converted, by new and incongruous extensions, into cheap
+boarding-houses. Only the Lattimore house kept faith with the past, and
+stood as of old, in its five acres of trees and grass, untouched of the
+fever for platting and subdivision, its very skirts drawn up from the
+asphalt by austere retaining-walls. And here went on the preparation for
+the time when Laura and Clifford were to stand up and declare their
+purposes and intentions with reference to each other. The first wedding
+this was to be, in all our close-knit circle.
+
+"I am glad," said I, "that they are all so sensible as not to permit
+rivalries to breed discord among us. It might be disastrous."
+
+"There is time," said Alice, "for that to develop yet."
+
+Not that everything happened as we wished. Indeed, some things gave us
+much anxiety. Bill Trescott, for instance, began at last to show signs
+of that going up in the air which Jim had said we must keep him from.
+Even Captain Tolliver complained that Bill's habits were getting bad:
+and he was the last person in the world to censure excess in the vices
+which he deemed gentlemanly. His own idea of morning, for instance, was
+that period of the day when the bad taste in the mouth so natural to a
+gentleman is removed by a stiff toddy, drunk just before prayers. He
+would, no doubt, have conceded to the inventor of the alphabet a higher
+place among men than that of the discoverer of the mint julep, had the
+matter been presented to him in concrete form; but would have qualified
+the admission by adding, with a seriousness incompatible with the
+average conception of a joke: "But the question is sutt'nly one not
+entiahly free from doubt, suh; not entiahly free from doubt!"
+
+However, the Captain had his standards, and prescribed for himself
+limits of time, place, and degree, to which he faithfully conformed. But
+he had been for a long time doing business under a sort of partnership
+arrangement with Bill, and their affairs had become very much
+interwoven. So he came to us, one day, in something like a panic, on
+finding that Bill had become a frequenter of one of the local
+bucket-shops, and had been making maudlin boasts of the profitable deals
+he had made.
+
+"This means, gentlemen," said the Captain, "that influences entiahly
+fo'eign to ouah investments hyah ah likely to bring a crash, which will
+not only wipe out Mr. Trescott, but, owin' to ouah association in the
+additions we have platted, cyah'y me down also! You can see that with
+sev'al hundred thousand dolla's of deferred payments on what we have
+sold, most of which have been rediscounted in the East by the G. B. T.,
+Mr. Trescott's condition becomes something of serious conce'n fo'
+you-all, as well as fo' me. Nothing else, I assuah you, gentlemen, could
+fo'ce me to call attention to a mattah so puahly pussonal as a diffe'nce
+between gentlemen in theiah standahds of inebriety! Nothing else,
+believe me!"
+
+By the G. B. T. the Captain meant the Grain Belt Trust Company, and
+anything which affected its solvency or welfare was, as he said, a
+matter of serious concern for all of us. In fact, at that very moment
+there were in Lattimore two officers of New England banks with whom we
+had placed a rather heavy line of G. B. T. securities, and who had made
+the trip for the purpose of looking us up. Suppose that they found out
+that the notes and mortgages of William S. Trescott & Co. really had
+back of them only some very desirable suburban additions, and the
+personal responsibility of a retired farmer, who was daily handing his
+money to board-of-trade gamblers, with whom he was getting an education
+in the great strides we are making in the matter of mixed drinks? This
+thought occurred to all of us at once.
+
+"Well," said Cornish, stating the point of agreement after the Captain's
+trouble had been fully discussed, "unfortunately 'the right to be a
+cussed fool is safe from all devices human,' and there doesn't seem to
+be any remedy."
+
+It all came, thought I, as Jim and I sat silent after Cornish and the
+Captain went out, from the fact that Bill's present condition in life
+gave those tendencies to which he had always been prone to yield, a
+chance for unrestricted growth. He ought to have staid with his steers.
+Cattle and corn were the only things in which he could take an interest
+sufficiently keen to keep him from drink. These habits of his were
+enacting the old story of the lop-eared rabbits in
+Australia--overrunning the country. Bill had been as sober a citizen as
+one could desire, as long as his house-building occupied his time; and
+he and Josie had worked together as companionably as they used to do in
+the hay and wheat. But now he was drifting away from her. Her father
+should have staid on the farm.
+
+"Do you know," said I, "that Giddings is making about as great a fool of
+himself as Bill?"
+
+"Yes," said Jim, "but that's because he's in a terrible state of mind
+about his marriage. If we can keep him from delirium tremens until after
+the wedding, he'll be all right. Some Italian brain-sharp has written up
+cases like his, and he'll be all right. But with Bill it's different....
+Do you remember our old Shep?"
+
+"No," I returned wonderingly, almost impatiently. "What about him?"
+
+"Well," he mused, "I've been picking up knowledge of men for a while
+along back; and I've come to prize more highly the personal history of
+dogs; and Shep was worth a biography for its own sake, to say nothing of
+the value of a typical case. He was a woolly collie, who would
+cheerfully have given up his life for the cows and sheep. Anything in
+his line, that a dog could grasp, Shep knew, and he was busier than a
+cranberry-merchant the year around, and the happiest thing on the farm.
+Then our folks moved to Mayville, and took him along. He wasn't fitted
+for town life at all. He'd lie on the front piazza, and search the
+street for cows and sheep, and when one came along he'd stick his sharp
+nose through the fence, and whine as if some one was whipping him. In
+less than six weeks he bit a baby; in two months he was the most
+depraved dog in Mayville, and in three ... he died."
+
+I had no answer for the apologue--not even for the self-condemnatory
+tone in which he told it. Presently he rose to go, and said that he
+would not be back.
+
+"Don't forget our date at the club this evening," said he, as he passed
+out. "Your style of diplomacy always seems to win with these down-East
+bankers. Your experience as rob-ee gives you the right handshake and the
+subscribed-and-sworn-to look that does their business for 'em every
+time. Good-by until then."
+
+Our club was the terminal bud of our growth, and was housed in a
+building of which we were enormously proud. It was managed by a steward
+imported from New York, whose salary was made large to harmonize with
+his manners--that being the only way in which the majority of our
+members felt equal to living up to them. So far as money could make a
+club, ours was of high rank. There were meat-cooks and pastry-cooks in
+incredible numbers, under the command of a French chef, who ruled the
+house committee with a rod of iron. We were all members as a matter of
+public duty. I have often wondered what the servants, brought from
+Eastern cities, thought of it all. To see Bill Trescott and Aleck
+Macdonald going in through the great door, noiselessly swung open for
+them by an attendant in livery, was a sight to be remembered. The chief
+ornament of the club was Cornish, who lived there.
+
+"I want to see Mr. Cornish," said I to the servant who took my overcoat,
+that evening.
+
+"Right this way, sir," said he. "Mr. Giddings is with him. He gave
+orders for you to be shown up."
+
+Cornish sat at a little round table on which there were some bottles and
+glasses. The tipple was evidently ale, and Mr. Giddings was standing
+opposite, lifting a glass in one hand and pointing at it with the other,
+in evident imitation of the attitude in which the late Mr. Gough loved
+to have himself pictured; but the sentiments of the two speakers were
+quite different.
+
+    "'Turn out more ale; turn up the light!'"
+
+Giddings glanced at the electric light-fixtures, and then looked about
+as if for a servant to turn them up.
+
+    "'I will not go to bed to-night!
+    For, of all foes that man should dread,
+    The first and worst one is a bed!
+    Friends I have had, both old and young;
+    Ale have we drunk, and songs we've sung.
+    Enough you know when this is said,
+    That, one and all, they died in bed!'"
+
+Here Giddings's voice broke with grief, and he stopped to drink the rest
+of the glassful, and went on:
+
+    "'In bed they died, and I'll not go
+    Where all my friends have perished so!
+    Go, ye who fain would buried be;
+    But not to-night a bed for me!'"
+
+"Do you often have these Horatian fits?" I inquired.
+
+"Base groveler!" said he, "if you can't rise to the level of the
+occasion, don't butt in."
+
+    "'For me to-night no bed prepare,
+    But set me out my oaken chair,
+    And bid me other guests beside
+    The ghosts that shall around me glide!'"
+
+"You will, of course," said Cornish, "permit us to withdraw for the
+purpose of having our conference with our Eastern friends? If I take
+your meaning, you'll not be alone."
+
+"Not by a jugful, I'll not be alone!" said Giddings, tossing off another
+glass:
+
+    "'In curling smoke-wreaths I shall see
+    A fair and gentle company.
+    Though silent all, fair revelers they,
+    Who leave you not till break of day!
+    Go, ye who would not daylight see;
+    But not to-night a bed for me!
+    For I've been born, and I've been wed,
+    And all man's troubles come of bed!'"
+
+Here Giddings sank down in his chair and began weeping.
+
+"The divinest attribute of poetry," said he, "is that of bringing tears.
+Let me weep awhile, fellows, and then I'll give you the last stanza.
+Last stanza's the best--"
+
+And in the midst of his critique he went to sleep, thereby breaking his
+rule adopted in "_Dum Vivemus Vigilemus_."
+
+"Is he this way often?" said I to Cornish, as we went down to meet Jim
+and the bankers.
+
+"Pretty often," said Cornish. "I don't know how I'd amuse my evenings if
+it weren't for Giddings. He's too far gone to-night, though, to be
+entertaining. Gets worse, I think, as the wedding-day approaches. Trying
+to drown his apprehensions, I suspect. Funny fellow, Giddings. But he's
+all right from noon to nine P.M."
+
+"I think we'll have to organize a dipsomaniacs' hospital for our crowd,"
+said I, "if things keep going on as they are tending now! I didn't think
+Giddings was so many kinds of an ass!"
+
+My complainings were cut short by our entrance into the presence of Mr.
+Elkins and the New England bankers. I asked to be excused from partaking
+of the refreshments which were served. I had seen and heard enough to
+spoil my appetite. I was agreeably surprised to find that their
+independent investigations of conditions in Lattimore had convinced them
+of the safety of their investments. Really, they said, were it not for
+the pleasure of meeting us here at our home, they should feel that the
+time and expense of looking us up were wasted. But, handling, as they
+did, the moneys of estates and numerous savings accounts, their
+customers were of a class in whom timidity and nervousness reach their
+maximum, and they were obliged to keep themselves in position to give
+assurances as to the safety of their investments from their personal
+investigations.
+
+Mr. Hinckley, who was with us, assured them that his life as a banker
+enabled him fully to realize the necessity of their carefulness, which
+we, for our own parts, were pleased to know existed. We were only too
+glad to exhibit our books to them, make a complete showing as to our
+condition generally, and even take them to see each individual piece of
+property covered by our paper. Mr. Hinckley went with them to their
+hotel, having proposed enough work in the way of investigation to keep
+them with us for several months. They were to leave on the evening of
+the next day.
+
+"But," said Jim, as we put on our overcoats to go home, "it shows our
+good will, you see."
+
+At that moment the steward, with an anxious look, asked Mr. Elkins for a
+word in private.
+
+"Ask Mr. Barslow if he will kindly step over here," I heard Jim say; and
+I joined them at once.
+
+"I was just saying, sir, to Mr. Elkins," said the steward, "that
+ordinarily I'd not think of mentioning such a thing as a gentleman's
+being indisposed but should see that he was cared for here. But Mr.
+Trescott being in such a state, I felt it was a case for his friends or
+the hospital. He's been--a--seeing things this afternoon; and while
+he's better now in that regard, his--"
+
+"Have a closed carriage brought at once," said Mr. Elkins. "Al, you'd
+better go up to the house, and let them know we're coming. I'll take him
+home!"
+
+I shrank from the meeting with Mrs. Trescott and Josie, more, I think,
+than if it had been Bill's death which I was to announce. As I
+approached the house, I got from it, somehow, the impression that it was
+a place of night-long watchfulness; and I was not surprised by the fact
+that before I had time to ring or knock at the door Mrs. Trescott
+herself opened it, with an expression on her face which spoke of long
+vigils, and of fear passing on to certainty. She peered past me for an
+expected Something on the street. Her leisure and its new habits had
+assimilated her in dress and make-up to the women of the wealthier sort
+in the city; but there was an immensity of trouble in the agonized eye
+and the pitiful droop of her mouth, which I should have rejoiced to see
+exchanged again for the ill-groomed exterior and the old fret of the
+farm. Her first question ignored all reference to the things leading to
+my being there, "in the dead vast and middle of the night," but went
+past me to the core of her trouble, as her eye had gone on from me to
+the street, in the search for the thing she dreaded.
+
+"Where is he, Mr. Barslow?" said she, in a hushing whisper; "where is
+he?"
+
+"He is a little sick," said I, "and Mr. Elkins is bringing him home. I
+came on to tell you." "Then he is not--" she went on, still in that
+hushed voice, and searching me with her gaze.
+
+"No, I assure you!" I answered. "He is in no immediate danger, even."
+
+Josie came quietly forward from the dusk of the room beyond, where I saw
+she had been listening, reminding me, in spite of the incongruity of the
+idea, of that time when she emerged from the obscurity of her garden,
+and stood at the foot of the windmill tower, leaning on her father's
+arm, her hands filled with petunias, the night we first visited the
+Trescott farm. And then my mind ran back to that other night when she
+had thrown herself into his arms and begged him to take her away; and he
+had said, "W'y, yes, little gal, of course I'll take yeh away, if yeh
+don't like it here!" I think that I, perhaps, was more nearly able than
+any one else in the world beside herself to gauge her grief at this long
+death in which she was losing him, and he himself.
+
+She took my hand, pressed it silently, and began caressing her mother
+and whispering to her things which I could not hear. Mrs. Trescott sat
+upon a sort of divan, shaking with terrible, soundless sobs, and
+clasping and unclasping her hands, but making no other gesture. I stood
+helpless at the hidden abyss of woe so suddenly uncovered before me and
+until this very moment screened by the conventions which keep our souls
+apart like prisoners in the cells in some great prison. These two women
+had been bearing this for a long time, and we, their nearest friends,
+had stood aloof from them. As I stood thinking of this, the
+carriage-wheels ground upon the pavement in the _porte cochere_; and a
+moment later Jim came in, his face graver than I had ever seen it. He
+sat down by Mrs. Trescott, and gently took one of her hands.
+
+"Dr. Aylesbury has given him a morphia injection," said he, "and he is
+sound asleep. The doctor thinks it best for us to carry him right to his
+room. There is a man here from the hospital, who will stay and nurse
+him; and the doctor came, too."
+
+Mrs. Trescott started up, saying that she must arrange his room. Soon
+the four of us had placed him in bed, where he lay, puffy and purple,
+with a sort of pasty pallor overspreading his face. His limbs
+occasionally jerked spasmodically; but otherwise he was still under the
+spell of the opiate. His wife, now that there was something definite to
+do, was self-possessed and efficient, taking the physician's
+instructions with ready apprehension. The fact that Bill had now assumed
+the character of a patient rather than that of a portent seemed to make
+the trouble, somehow, more normal and endurable. The wife and daughter
+insisted upon assuming the care of him, but assented to the nurse's
+remaining as a help in emergencies. It was nearing dawn when I took my
+leave. As I approached the door, I saw Jim and Josie in the hall, and
+heard him making some last tenders of aid and comfort before his
+departure. He put out his hand, and she clasped it in both of hers.
+
+"I want to thank you," said she, "for what you have done."
+
+"I have done nothing," he replied. "It is what I wish to do that I want
+you to think of. I do not know whether I shall ever be able to forgive
+myself--"
+
+"No, no!" said she. "You must not talk--you must not allow yourself to
+feel in that way. It is unjust--to yourself and to--me--for you to feel
+so!"
+
+I advanced to them, but she still stood looking into his face and
+holding his hand clasped in hers. There was something of appeal, of an
+effort to express more than the words said, in her look and attitude. He
+answered her regard by a gaze so pathetically wistful that she averted
+her face, pressed his hand, and turned to me.
+
+"Good-night to you both, and thank you both, a thousand times!" said
+she.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I wonder if old Shep's relations and friends," said Jim, as we stood
+under the arc light in front of my house, "ever came to forgive the
+people who took him away from his flocks and herds."
+
+"After what I've seen in the last few minutes," said I, "I haven't the
+least doubt of it."
+
+"Al," said he, "these be troublous times, but if I believed all that
+what you say implies, I'd go home happy, if not jolly. And I almost
+believe you're right."
+
+"Well," said I, assuming for once the role of the mentor, "I think that
+you are foolish to worry about it. We have enough actual, well-defined,
+surveyed and platted grief on our hands, without any mooning about
+hunting for the speculative variety. Go home, sleep, and bring down a
+clear brain for to-morrow's business."
+
+"To-day's," said he gaily. "Tear off yesterday's leaf from the calendar,
+Al. For, look! the morn, dressed as usual, 'walks o'er the dew of yon
+high eastern hill.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+Relating to the Disposition of the Captives.
+
+
+It was not later than the next day but one, that I met Giddings, alert,
+ingratiating, and natty as ever.
+
+"When am I to have the third stanza?" I inquired, "the one that's 'the
+best of all.'"
+
+This question he seemed to take as a rebuke; for he reddened, while he
+tried to laugh.
+
+"Barslow," said he, "there isn't any use in our discussing this thing.
+You couldn't understand it. A man like you, who can calculate to a hair
+just how far he is going and just where to turn back, and--Oh, damn!
+There's no use!"
+
+I sympathize with Giddings, at this present moment, in his despair of
+making people understand; for I doubt, sometimes, whether it is possible
+for me to make the reader understand the conditions with us in Lattimore
+at the time when poor Trescott lay there in his fine house, fighting for
+life, and for many things more important, and while the wedding
+preparations were going forward at the General's house.
+
+To the steady-going, stationary, passionless community these conditions
+approach the incomprehensible. No one seemed to doubt the city's future
+now. Sometimes the abnormal basis upon which our great new industries
+had been established struck the stranger with distrust, if he happened
+to have the insight to notice it; but the concerns _were there_ most
+undeniably, and had shifted population in their coming, and were turning
+out products for the markets of the world.
+
+That they had been evolved magically, and set in operation, not by any
+slow process of meeting a felt want, but for this sole purpose of
+shifting population, might be, and undoubtedly was, unusual; but given
+the natural facilities for carrying the business on, and how did this
+forced genesis adversely affect their prospects?
+
+I, for one, could see no reason for apprehension. Yet when the story of
+Trescott's maudlin plunging came to our ears, and the effect of his
+possible failure received consideration, or I thought of the business
+explosion which would follow any open breach between Jim and Cornish
+(though this seemed too remote for serious consideration), I began to
+ponder on the enormously complex system of credits we had built up.
+
+Besides the regular line of bonds and mortgages growing out of debts due
+us on our real-estate sales, and against which we had issued the
+debentures and the guaranteed rediscounts of the Grain Belt Trust
+Company, the factories, stock yards, terminals, street-car system, and
+most of our other properties were pretty heavily bonded. Some of them
+were temporarily unproductive, and funds had from time to time to be
+provided, from sources other than their own earnings, for the payment of
+their interest-charges. On the whole, however, we had been able to carry
+the entire line forward from position to position with such success that
+the people were kept in a fever, and accessions to our population kept
+pouring in which, of their own force, added fuel to the fire of
+expectancy.
+
+This one thing began to make me uneasy--there was no place to stop. A
+failure among us would quench this expectancy, and values would no
+longer increase. And everything was organized on the basis of the
+continued crescendo. That was the reason why every uplift in prices had
+been followed by a new and strenuous effort on our part to hoist them
+still higher. For that reason, we, who had become richer than we had
+ever hoped to be, kept toiling on to rear to greater and greater heights
+an edifice which the eternal forces of nature itself clutched, to drag
+down.
+
+I was the first to suggest this feature in conference. The Trescott
+scare had made me more thoughtful. True, outwardly things were more than
+ever booming. The very signs on the streets spoke of the boom. It was
+"Lumber, Coal, and Real Estate"; "Burbank's Livery, Feed, and Sale
+Stable. Office of Burbank Realty Co."; or "Thronson & Larson, Grocers.
+Choice Lots in Thronson's Addition." Even Giddings had platted the
+"_Herald_ Addition," and was offering a choice quarter-block as a prize
+to the person who could guess nearest to the average monthly increase in
+values in the addition, as shown by the record of sales. Real estate
+appeared as a part of the business of hardware stores and milliners'
+shops, so that one was constantly reminded of the heterogeneous
+announcements on the signboard of Mr. Wegg. But while all this went on,
+and transactions "in dirt" were larger than ever, one could see
+indications that there was in them a larger and larger element of
+credit, and less and less cash. So one day, at a syndicate conference, I
+sought to ease my mind by asking where this thing was to stop, and when
+we could hope for a time when the town would not have to be held up by
+main strength.
+
+"Why, that's a very remarkable question!" said Mr. Hinckley. "We surely
+haven't reached the point where we can think of stopping. Why, with the
+history before us of the cities of America which, without half our
+natural advantages, have grown to so many times the size of this, I'm
+surprised that such a thing should be thought of! Just think of what
+Chicago was in '54 when I came through. A village without a harbor,
+built along the ditches of a frog-pond! And see it now; see it now!"
+
+There was a little quiver in Mr. Hinckley's voice, a little infirmity of
+his chin, which told of advancing years. His ideas were becoming more
+fixed. It was plain that the notion of Lattimore's continued and
+uninterrupted progress was one to which he would cling with the mild and
+unreasoning stubbornness of gentlemanly senility. But Cornish welcomed
+the discussion with something like eagerness.
+
+"I'm glad the matter has come up," said he. "We've had a few good years
+here; but, in the nature of things, won't the time come when things
+will be--slower? We've got our first plans pretty well worked out. The
+mills, factories, and live-stock industries are supporting population,
+and making tonnage which the railroad is carrying. But what next? We
+can't expect to build any more railroads soon. No line of less than five
+hundred miles will do any good, strategically speaking, and sending out
+stubs just to annex territory for our shippers is too slow and expensive
+business for this crowd. Things are booming along now; but the Eastern
+banks are getting finicky about paper, and--I think things are going to
+be--slower--and that we ought to act accordingly."
+
+There was a long silence, broken only by a dry laugh from Hinckley, and
+the remark that Barslow and Cornish must be getting dyspeptic from high
+living.
+
+"Well," said Elkins at last, ignoring Hinckley and facing Cornish, "get
+down to brass nails! What policy would you adopt?"
+
+"Oh, our present policy is all right," answered he of the Van Dyke
+beard--
+
+"Yes, yes!" interjected Hinckley. "My view exactly. A wonderfully
+successful policy!"
+
+"--and," Cornish continued, "I would only suggest that we cease
+spreading out--not cease talking it, but only just sort of stop doing
+it--and begin to realize more rapidly on our holdings. Not so as to
+break the market, you understand; but so as to keep the demand fairly
+well satisfied."
+
+Mr. Elkins was slow in replying, and when the reply came it was of the
+sort which does not answer.
+
+"A most important, not to say momentous question," said he. "Let's
+figure the thing over and take it up again soon. We'll not begin to
+disagree at this late day. Mr. Hinckley has warned us that he has an
+engagement in thirty minutes. It seems to me we ought to dispose of the
+matter of the appropriation for the interest on those Belt Lines bonds.
+Wade's mash on 'Atkins, Corning & Co.' won't last long in the face of a
+default."
+
+Mr. Hinckley staid his thirty minutes and withdrew. Mr. Cornish went to
+the telephone and ordered his dog-cart.
+
+"Immediately," he instructed, "over here at the Grain Belt Trust
+Building."
+
+"Make it in half an hour, can't you, Cornish?" said Jim. "There are some
+more things we ought to go over."
+
+"Say!" shouted Cornish into the transmitter. "Make that in half an hour
+instead of at once."
+
+He hung up the telephone, and turned to Elkins inquiringly. Jim was
+walking up and down on the rug, his hands clasped behind him.
+
+"Since we've spread out into that string of banks," said he, still
+keeping up his walk, "and made Mr. Hinckley the president of each of
+'em, he's reverting to his old banker's timidity. Which consists, in all
+cases, in an aversion to any change in conditions. To suggest any
+change, even from an old, dangerous policy to a new safe one, startles a
+'conservative' banker. If we had gone on a little longer with our talk
+about shutting off steam and taking the nigger off the safety-valve,
+you'd have seen him scared into a numbness. But, now that the question
+has been brought up, let's talk it over. What's your notion about it,
+anyhow, Al?"
+
+"I'm seeking light," said I. "The people are rushing in, and the town's
+doing splendidly. But prices, there's no denying it, are beginning to
+sort of strangle things. They prevent doing, any more, what we did at
+first. Kreuger Brothers' failure yesterday was small; but it's a clear
+case of a retailer's being eaten up with fixed charges--or so Macdonald
+told me this morning; and I know that frontage on Main Street is
+demanding fully as much as the traffic will bear. And then our fright
+over Trescott's gambling gave me some bad dreams over our securities. It
+has bothered me to see how to adjust our affairs to a stationary
+condition of things; that's all."
+
+"Of course," said Cornish, "we must keep boosting. Fortunately society
+here is now thoroughly organized on the principle of whooping it up for
+Lattimore. I could get up a successful lynching-party any time to attend
+to the case of any miscreant who should suggest that property is too
+high, or rents unreasonable, or anything but a steady up-grade before
+us. But I think we ought to stop buying--except among ourselves, and
+keep the transfers from falling off--and begin salting down."
+
+"If you can suggest any way to do that, and still take care of our
+paper," said Jim, "I shall be with you."
+
+"I've never anticipated," said Cornish, "that such a mass of business
+could be carried through without some losses. Investors can't expect
+it."
+
+"The first loss in the East through our paper," said Jim, "means a
+taking up of the Grain Belt securities everywhere, and no market for
+more. And you know what that spells."
+
+"It mustn't be allowed to happen--yet awhile," answered Cornish. "As I
+just now said, we must keep on boosting."
+
+"You know where the Grain Belt debentures and other obligations are
+mostly held, of course?" asked Mr. Elkins.
+
+"When a bond or mortgage is sold," was the answer, "my interest in it
+ceases. I conclusively presume that the purchaser himself personally
+looked to the security, or accepted the guaranty of the negotiating
+trust company. _Caveat emptor_ is my rule."
+
+Mr. Elkins looked out of the window, as if he had forgotten us.
+
+"We should push the sale of the Lattimore & Great Western," said he,
+"and the Belt Line System."
+
+"I concur," said Cornish. "Our interest in those properties is a
+two-million-dollar cash item."
+
+"It wouldn't be two million cents," said Jim, "if our friends on Wall
+Street could hear this talk. They'd wait to buy at receiver's sale after
+some Black Friday. Of course, that's what Pendleton and Wade have been
+counting on from the first."
+
+"You ought to see Halliday and Pendleton at once," said I.
+
+"Yes, I think so, too," he rejoined. "Pendleton'll pay us more than our
+price, rather than see the Halliday system get the properties. They're
+deep ones; but we ought to be able to play them off against each other,
+so long as we can keep strong at home. I'll begin the flirtation at
+once."
+
+Cornish, assuming that Jim had fully concurred in his views, bade us a
+pleasant good-day, and went out.
+
+"My boy," said Jim, "cheer up. If gloom takes hold of you like this
+while we're still running before a favoring wind, it'll bother you to
+keep feeling worse and worse, as you ought, as we approach the real
+thing. Cheer up!"
+
+"Oh, I'm all right!" said I. "I was just trying to make out Cornish's
+position."
+
+"Let's make out our own," he replied, "that's the first thing. Bear in
+mind that this is a buccaneering proposition, and you're first mate:
+remember? Well, Al, we've had the merriest cruise in the books. If any
+crew ever had doubloons to throw to the birds, we've had 'em. But, you
+know, we always draw the line somewhere, and I'm about to ask you to
+join me in drawing the line, and see just what moral level piracy has
+risen or sunk to."
+
+He still walked back and forth, and, as he spoke of drawing the line, he
+drew an imaginary one with his fingers on the green baize of the
+flat-topped desk.
+
+"You remember what those fellows, Dorr and Wickersham, said the other
+night, about having invested the funds of estates, and savings accounts
+in our obligations?" he went on. "But I never told you what Wickersham
+said privately to me. The infernal fool has more of our paper than his
+bank's whole capital stock, with the surplus added, amounts to! And he
+calls himself a 'conservative New England banker'! It wouldn't be so bad
+if the states back East weren't infested with the same sort of
+idiots--I've had Hinckley make me a report on it since that night. It
+means that women and children and sweaty breadwinners have furnished the
+money for all these things we're so proud of having built, including the
+Mt. Desert cottages and the Wyoming hunting-lodge. It means that we've
+got to be able to read our book of the Black Art backwards as well as
+forwards, or the Powers we've conjured up will tear piecemeal both them
+and us. God! it makes me crawl to think of what would happen!"
+
+He sat down on the flat-topped desk, and I saw the beaded pallor of a
+fixed and digested anxiety on his brow. He went on, in a lighter way:
+
+"These poor people, scattered from the Missouri to the Atlantic, are our
+prisoners, Al. I think Cornish is ready to make them walk the plank.
+But, Al, you know, in our bloodiest days, down on the Spanish Main, we
+used to spare the women and children! What do you say now, Al?"
+
+The way in which he repeated the old nickname had an irresistible appeal
+in it; but I hope no appeal was needed. I said, and said truly, that I
+should never consent to any policy which was not mindful of the
+interests of which he spoke; and that I knew Hinckley would be with us.
+So, if Cornish took any other view, there would be three to one against
+him.
+
+"I knew you'd be with me," he continued. "It would have been a
+sure-enough case of _et tu, Brute_, if you hadn't been. But don't let
+yourself think for a minute that we can't fight this thing to a finish
+and come off more than conquerors. We'll look back at this talk some
+time, and laugh at our fears. The troublous times that come every so
+often are nearer than they were five years ago, but they're some ways
+off yet, and forewarned is insured."
+
+"But the hard times always catch people unawares," said I.
+
+"They do," he admitted, "but they never tried to stalk a covey of boom
+specialists before.... You remember all that rot I used to talk about
+the mind-force method, and psychological booms? We've been false to that
+theory, by coming to believe so implicitly in our own preaching. Why,
+Al, this work we've begun here has got to go on! It must go on! There
+mustn't be any collapse or failure. When the hard times come, we must be
+prepared to go right on through, cutting a little narrower swath, but
+cutting all the same. Stand by the guns with me, and, in spite of all,
+we'll win, and save Lattimore--and spare the captives, too!"
+
+There was the fire of unconquerable resolution in his eye, and a
+resonance in his voice that thrilled me. After all he had done, after
+the victories we had won under his leadership, the admiration and love I
+felt for him rose to the idolatry of a soldier for his general, as I
+saw him stiffening his limbs, knotting his muscles, and, with teeth set
+and nostrils dilated, rising to the load which seemed falling on him
+alone.
+
+"I'll make the turn with these railroad properties," he went on. "We
+must make Pendleton and Halliday bid each other up to our figure. And
+there'll be no 'salting down' done, either--yet awhile. I hope things
+won't shrink too much in the washing; but the real-estate hot air of the
+past few years must cause some trouble when the payments deferred begin
+to make the heart sick. The Trust Company will be called on to make good
+some of its guaranties--and must do it. The banks must be kept strong;
+and with two millions to sweeten the pot we shall be with 'em to the
+finish. Why, they can't beat us! And don't forget that right now is the
+most prosperous time Lattimore ever saw; and put on a look that will
+corroborate the statement when you go out of here!"
+
+"Bravo, bravo!" said a voice from near the door. "I don't understand any
+of it, but the speech sounded awfully telling! Where's papa?"
+
+It was Antonia, who had come in unobserved. She wore a felt hat with one
+little feather on it, driving-gloves, and a dark cloth dress. She stood,
+rosy with driving, her blonde curls clustering in airy confusion about
+her forehead, a tailor-gowned Brunhilde.
+
+"Why, hello, Antonia!" said Jim. "He went away some time ago. Wasn't
+that a corking good speech? Ah! You never know the value of an old
+friend until you use him as audience at the dress rehearsal of a speech!
+Pacers or trotters?"
+
+"Pacers," said she, "Storm and The Friar."
+
+"If you'll let me drive," he stipulated, "I'd like to go home with you."
+
+"Nobody but myself," said she, "ever drives this team. You'd spoil The
+Friar's temper with that unyielding wrist of yours; but if you are good,
+you may hold the ends of the lines, and say 'Dap!' occasionally."
+
+And down to the street we went together, our cares dismissed. Jim handed
+Antonia into the trap, and they spun away toward Lynhurst, apparently
+the happiest people in Lattimore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+The Going Away of Laura and Clifford, and the Departure of Mr. Trescott.
+
+
+"Thet little quirly thing there," said Mr. Trescott, spreading a map out
+on my library table and pointing with his trembling and knobby
+forefinger, "is Wolf Nose Crick. It runs into the Cheyenne, down about
+there, an' 's got worlds o' water fer any sized herds, an' carries yeh
+back from the river fer twenty-five miles. There's a big spring at the
+head of it, where the ranch buildin's is; an' there's a clump o' timber
+there--box elders an' cottonwoods, y' know. Now see the advantage I'll
+have. Other herds'll hev to traipse back an' forth from grass to water
+an' from water to grass, a-runnin' theirselves poor; an' all the time
+I'll hev livin' water right in the middle o' my range."
+
+His wife and daughter had carefully nursed him through the fever, as Dr.
+Aylesbury called it, and for two weeks Mr. Trescott was seen by no one
+else. Then from our windows Alice and I could see him about his grounds,
+at work amongst his shrubbery, or busying himself with his horses and
+carriages. Josie had transformed herself into a woman of business, and
+every day she went to her father's office, opened his mail, and held
+business consultations. Whenever it was necessary for papers to be
+executed, Josie went with the lawyer and notary to the Trescott home for
+the signing.
+
+The Trescott and Tolliver business brought her into daily contact with
+the Captain. He used to open the doors between their offices, and have
+the mail sorted for Josie when she came in. There was something of
+homage in the manner in which he received her into the office, and laid
+matters of business before her. It was something larger and more
+expansive than can be denoted by the word courtesy or politeness.
+
+"Captain," she would say, with the half-amused smile with which she
+always rewarded him, "here is this notice from the Grain Belt Trust
+Company about the interest on twenty-five thousand dollars of bonds
+which they have advanced to us. Will you please explain it?"
+
+"Sutt'nly, Madam, sutt'nly," replied he, using a form of address which
+he adopted the first time she appeared as Bill's representative in the
+business, and which he never cheapened by use elsewhere. "Those bonds ah
+debentures, which--"
+
+"But what _are_ debentures, Captain?" she inquired.
+
+"Pahdon me, my deah lady," said he, "fo' not explaining that at fuhst!
+Those ah the debentures of the Trescott Development Company, fawmed to
+build up Trescott's Addition. We sold those lands on credit, except fo'
+a cash payment of one foath the purchase-price. This brought to us, as
+you can see, Madam, a lahge amount of notes, secured by fuhst mortgages
+on the Trescott's Addition properties. These notes and mortgages we
+deposited with the Grain Belt Trust Company, and issued against them the
+bonds of the Trescott Development Company--debentures--and the G. B. T.
+people floated these bonds in the East and elsewhah. This interest
+mattah was an ovahsight; I should have looked out fo' it, and not put
+the G. B. T. to the trouble of advancing it; but as we have this mawnin'
+on deposit with them several thousand dollahs from the sale of the
+Tolliver's Subdivision papah, the thing becomes a mattah of no
+impo'tance whatevah!"
+
+"But," went on Josie, "how shall we be able to pay the next installment
+of interest, and the principal, when it falls due?"
+
+"Amply provided foh, my deah Madam," said the Captain, waving his arm;
+"the defe'ed payments and the interest on them will create an ample
+sinking fund!"
+
+"But if they don't?" she inquired.
+
+"That such a contingency can possibly arise, Madam," said the Captain in
+his most impressive orotund, and with his hand thrust into the bosom of
+his Prince Albert coat, "is something which my loyalty to Lattimore, my
+faith in my fellow citizens, my confidence in Mr. Elkins and Mr.
+Barslow, and my regahd fo' my own honah, pledged as it is to those to
+whom I have sold these properties on the representations I have made as
+to the prospects of the city, will not puhmit me to admit!"
+
+This seemed to him entirely conclusive, and cut off the investigation.
+Conversation like this, in which Josie questioned the Captain and seemed
+ever convinced by his answers, gave her high rank in the Captain's
+estimation.
+
+"Like most ladies," said he, "Miss Trescott is a little inclined to
+ovah-conservatism; but unlike most people of both sexes, she is quite
+able to grasp the lahgest views when explained to huh, and huh mental
+processes ah unerring. I have nevah failed to make the most complicated
+situation cleah to huh--nevah!"
+
+And all this time Mr. Trescott was safeguarded at home, looking after
+his horses, carriages, and grounds, and at last permitted to come over
+to our house and pass the evening with me occasionally. It was on one of
+these visits that he spread out the map on the table and explained to me
+the advantages of his ranch on Wolf Nose Creek. The very thought of the
+open range and the roaming herds seemed to strengthen him.
+
+"You talk," said I, "as if it were all settled. Are you really going out
+there?"
+
+"Wal," said he, after some hesitation, "it kind o' makes me feel good to
+lay plans f'r goin'. I've made the deal with Aleck Macdonald f'r the
+water front--it's a good spec if I never go near it--an' I guess I'll
+send a bunch o' steers out to please Josie an' her ma. They're
+purtendin' to be stuck on goin', an' I've made the bargain to pacify
+'em; but, say, do you know what kind of a place it is out on one o' them
+ranches?"
+
+"In a general way, yes," said I.
+
+"W'l, a general way wun't do," said he. "You've got to git right down to
+p'ticklers t' know about it, so's to know. It's seventy-five miles from
+a post-office an' twenty-five to the nearest house. How would you like
+to hev a girl o' yourn thet you'd sent t' Chicago an' New York and the
+ol' country, an' spent all colors o' money on so's t' give her all the
+chanst in the world, go out to a place like that to spend her life?"
+
+"I don't know," said I, for I was in doubt; "it might be all right."
+
+"You wouldn't say that if it was up to you to decide the thing," said
+he. "W'y it would mean that this girl o' mine, that's fit for to
+be--wal, you know Josie--would hev to leave this home we've built--that
+she's built--here, an' go out where there hain't nobody to be seen from
+week's end to week's end but cowboys, an' once in a while one o' the
+greasy women o' the dugouts. Do you know what happens to the nicest
+girls when they don't see the right sort o' men--at all, y' know?"
+
+I nodded. I knew what he meant. Then I shook my head in denial of the
+danger.
+
+"I don't b'lieve it nuther," said he; "but is it any cinch, now? An'
+anyhow, she'll be where she wun't ever hear a bit o' music, 'r see a
+picter, 'r see a friend. She'll swelter in the burnin' sun an' parch in
+the hot winds in the summer, an' in the winter she'll be shet in by
+blizzards an' cold weather. She'll see nothin' but kioats, prairie-dogs,
+sage-brush, an' cactus. An' what fer! Jest for nothin' but me! To git me
+away from things she's afraid've got more of a pull with me than what
+she's got. An' I say, by the livin' Lord, I'll go under before I'll give
+up, an' say I've got as fur down as that!"
+
+It is something rending and tearing to a man like Bill, totally
+unaccustomed to the expression of sentiment, to give utterance to such
+depths of feeling. Weak and trembling as he was, the sight of his
+agitation was painful. I hastened to say to him that I hoped there was
+no necessity for such a step as the one he so strongly deprecated.
+
+"I d' know," said he dubiously. "I thought one while that I'd never want
+to go near town, 'r touch the stuff agin. But I'll tell yeh something
+that happened yisterday!"
+
+He drew up his chair and looked behind him like a child preparing to
+relate some fearsome tale of goblin or fiend, and went on:
+
+"Josie had the team hitched up to go out ridin', an' I druv around the
+block to git to the front step. An' somethin' seemed to pull the nigh
+line when I got to the cawner! It wa'n't that I wanted to go--and don't
+you say anything about this thing, Mr. Barslow; but somethin' seemed to
+pull the nigh line an' turn me toward Main Street; an' fust thing I
+knew, I was a-drivin' hell-bent for O'Brien's place! Somethin' was
+a-whisperin' to me, 'Go down an' see the boys, an' show 'em that yeh can
+drink 'r let it alone, jest as yeh see fit!' And the thought come over
+me o' Josie a-standin' there at the gate waitin' f'r me, an' I set my
+teeth, an' jerked the hosses' heads around, an' like to upset the buggy
+a-turnin'. 'You look pale, pa,' says Josie. 'Maybe we'd better not go.'
+'No,' says I, 'I'm all right.' But what ... gits me ... is thinkin'
+that, if I'll be hauled around like that when I'm two miles away, how
+long would I last ... if onst I was to git right down in the midst of
+it!"
+
+I could not endure the subject any longer; it was so unutterably fearful
+to see him making this despairing struggle against the foe so strongly
+lodged within his citadel. I talked to him of old times and places known
+to us both, and incidentally called to his mind instances of the
+recovery of men afflicted as he was. Soon Josie came after him, and Jim
+dropped in, as he was quite in the habit of doing, making one of those
+casual and informal little companies which constituted a most
+distinctive feature of life in our compact little Belgravia.
+
+Josie insisted that life in the cow country was what she had been
+longing for. She had never shot any one, and had never painted a cowboy,
+an Indian, or a coyote--things she had always longed to do.
+
+"You must take me out there, pa," said she. "It's the only way to
+utilize the capital we've foolishly tied up in the department of the
+fine arts!"
+
+"I reckon we'll hev to do it, then, little gal," said Bill.
+
+"My mind," said Jim, "is divided between your place up on the headwaters
+of Bitter Creek and Paris. Paris seems to promise pretty well, when this
+fitful fever of business is over and we've cleaned up the mill run."
+
+Art, he went on, seemed to be a career for which he was really fitted.
+In the foreground, as a cowboy, or in the middle distance, in his
+proper person as a tenderfoot, it seemed as if there was a vocation for
+him. Josie made no reply to this, and Jim went away downcast.
+
+The Addison-Giddings wedding drew on out of the future, and seemed to
+loom portentously like doom for the devoted Clifford. It may have
+suggested itself to the reader that Mr. Giddings was an abnormally timid
+lover. The eternal feminine at this time seemed personified in Laura,
+and worked upon him like an obsession. I have never seen a case quite
+like his. The manner in which the marriage was regarded, and the extent
+to which it was discussed, may have had something to do with this.
+
+The boom period anywhere is essentially an era in which public events
+dominate those of a private character, and publicity and promotion, hand
+in hand, occupy the center of the stage. Giddings, as editor and
+proprietor of the _Herald_, was one of the actors on whom the lime-light
+was pretty constantly focussed. Miss Addison, belonging to the Lattimore
+family, and prominent in good works, was more widely known than he among
+Lattimoreans of the old days, sometimes referred to by Mr. Elkins as the
+trilobites, who constituted a sort of ancient and exclusive caste among
+us, priding themselves on having become rich by the only dignified and
+purely automatic mode, that of sitting heroically still, and allowing
+their lands to rise in value. These regarded Laura as one of themselves,
+and her marriage as a sacrament of no ordinary character.
+
+Giddings, on the other hand, as the type of the new crowd who had done
+such wonders, and as the embodiment of its spirit, was dimly sensed by
+all classes as a sort of hero of obscure origin, who by strong blows had
+hewed his way to the possession of a princess of the blood. So the
+interest was really absorbing. Even the _Herald's_ rival, the _Evening
+Times_, dropped for a time the normal acrimony of its references to the
+_Herald_, and sent a reporter to make a laudatory write-up of the
+wedding.
+
+On the night before the event, deep in the evening, Giddings and a
+bibulous friend insisted on having refreshments served to them in the
+parlor of the clubhouse. This was a violation of rules. Moreover, they
+had involuntarily assumed sitting postures on the carpet, rendering
+waiting upon them a breach of decorum as well. At least this was the
+view of Pearson, who was now attached to the club.
+
+"You must excuse me, gentlemen," he said, "but Ah'm bound to obey
+rules."
+
+"Bring us," said Giddings, "two cocktails."
+
+"Can't do it, sah," said Pearson, "not hyah, sah!"
+
+"Bring us paper to write resignations on!" said Giddings. "We won't
+belong to a club where we are bullied by niggers."
+
+Pearson brought the paper.
+
+"They's no rule, suh," said he, "again' suhvin' resignation papah
+anywhah in the house. But let me say, Mistah Giddings, that Ah wouldn't
+be hasty: it's a heap hahder to get inter this club now than what it was
+when you-all come in!"
+
+This suggestion of Pearson's was in every one's mouth as the most
+amusing story of the time. Even Giddings laughed about it. But all his
+laughter was hollow.
+
+Some bets were offered that one of two things would happen on the
+wedding-day: either Giddings (who had formerly been of abstemious
+habits) would overdo the attempt to nerve himself up to the occasion and
+go into a vinous collapse, or he would stay sober and take to his heels.
+Thus, in fear and trembling, did the inexplicable disciple of Iago
+approach his happiness; but, like most soldiers, when the battle was
+actually on, he went to the fighting-line dazed into bravery.
+
+It was quite a spectacular affair. The church was a floral grotto, and
+there were, in great abundance, the adjuncts of ribbon barriers, special
+electric illuminations, special music, full ritual, ushers, bridesmaids,
+and millinery. Antonia was chief bridesmaid, and Cornish best man. The
+severe conformity to vogue, and preservation of good form, were
+generally attributed to his management. It was a great success.
+
+There was an elaborate supper, of which Giddings partook in a manner
+which tended to prove that his sense of taste was still in his
+possession, whatever may have been the case with his other senses. Josie
+was there, and Jim was her shadow. She was a little pale, but not at all
+sad; her figure, which had within the past year or so acquired something
+of the wealth commonly conceded to matronliness, had waned to the
+slenderness of the day I first saw her in the art-gallery, but now, as
+then, she was slim, not thin. To two, at least, she was a vision of
+delight, as one might well see by the look of adoration which Jim poured
+into her eyes from time to time, and the hungry gaze with which Cornish
+took in the ruddy halo of her hair, the pale and intellectual face
+beneath it, and the sensuous curves of the compact little form. For my
+own part, my vote was for Antonia, for the belle of the gathering; but
+she sailed through the evening, "like some full-breasted swan,"
+accepting no homage except the slavish devotion of Cecil, whose constant
+offering of his neck to her tread gave him recognition as entitled to
+the reward of those who are permitted only to stand and wait.
+
+Mr. Elkins had furnished a special train over the L. & G. W. to make the
+run with the bridal party to Elkins Junction, connecting there with the
+east-bound limited on the Pendleton line, thence direct to Elysium.
+
+Laura, rosy as a bride should be, and actually attractive to me for the
+first time in her life, sat in her traveling-dress trying to look
+matter-of-fact, and discussing time-tables with her bridegroom, who
+seemed to find less and less of dream and more of the actual in the
+situation,--calm returning with the cutaway. Cecil and the coterie of
+gilded youth who followed him did their share to bring Giddings back to
+earth by a series of practical jokes, hackneyed, but ever fresh. The
+largest trunk, after it reached the platform, blossomed out in a sign
+reading: "The Property of the Bride and Groom. You can Identify the
+Owners by that Absorbed Expression!" Divers revelatory incidents were
+arranged to eventuate on the limited train. Precipitation of rice was
+produced, in modes known to sleight-of-hand only. So much of this
+occurred that Captain Tolliver showed, by a stately refusal to see the
+joke, his disapproval of it--a feeling which he expressed in an aside to
+me.
+
+"Hoss-play of this so't, suh," said he, "ought not to be tolerated among
+civilized people, and I believe is not! In the state of society in which
+I was reahed such niggah-shines would mean pistols at ten paces, within
+fo'ty-eight houahs, with the lady's neahest male relative! And propahly
+so, too, suh; quite propahly!"
+
+"Shall we go to the train, Albert?" said Alice, as the party made ready
+to go.
+
+"No," said I, "unless you particularly wish it; we shall go home."
+
+"Mr. Barslow," said one of the maids, "you are wanted at the telephone."
+
+"Is this you, Al?" said Jim's voice over the wire. "I'm up here at
+Josie's, and I am afraid there's trouble with her father. When we got
+here we found him gone. Hadn't you better go out and look around for
+him?"
+
+"Have you any idea where I'm likely to find him?" I asked. I saw at once
+the significance of Bill's absence. He had taken advantage of the fact
+of his wife and daughter's going to the wedding, and had yielded to the
+thing which drew him away from them.
+
+"Try the Club, and then O'Brien's," answered Jim. "If you don't find
+him in one place or the other, call me up over the 'phone. Call me up
+anyhow; I'll wait here."
+
+The _Times_ man heard my end of the conversation, saw me hastily give
+Alice word as to the errand which kept me from going home with her,
+observed my preparations for leaving the company, and, scenting news,
+fell in with me as I was walking toward the Club.
+
+"Any story in this, Mr. Barslow?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, is that you, Watson?" I answered. "I was going on an errand which
+concerns myself. I was going alone."
+
+"If you're looking for any one," he said, trotting along beside me, "I
+can find him a good deal quicker than you can, probably. And if there's
+news in it, I'll get it anyhow; and I'll naturally know it more from
+your standpoint, and look at it more as you do, if we go together. Don't
+you think so?"
+
+"See here, Watson," said I, "you may help if you wish. But if you print
+a word without my consent, I can and will scoop the _Times_ every day,
+from this on, with every item of business news coming through our
+office. Do you understand, and do you promise?"
+
+"Why, certainly," said he. "You've got the thing in your own hands. What
+is it, anyhow?"
+
+I told him, and found that Trescott's dipsomania was as well known to
+him as myself.
+
+"He's been throwing money to the fowls for a year or two," he remarked.
+"It's better than two to one you don't find him at the Club: the
+atmosphere won't be congenial for him there."
+
+At the Club we found Watson's forecast verified. At O'Brien's our
+knocking on the door aroused a sleepy bartender, who told us that no one
+was there, but refused to let us in. Watson called him aside, and they
+talked together for a few minutes.
+
+"All right," said the reporter, turning away from him, "much obliged,
+Hank; I believe you've struck it."
+
+Watson was leader now, and I followed him toward Front Street, near the
+river. He said that Hank, the barkeeper, had told him that Trescott had
+been in his saloon about nine o'clock, drinking heavily; and from the
+company he was in, it was to be suspected that he would be steered into
+a joint down on the river front. We passed through an alley, and down a
+back basement stairway, came to a door, on which Watson confidently
+knocked, and which was opened by a negro who let us in as soon as he saw
+the reporter. The air was sickening with an odor which I then perceived
+for the first time, and which Watson called the dope smell. There was an
+indefinable horror about the place, which so repelled me that nothing
+but my obligation could have held me there. The lights were dim, and at
+first I could see nothing more than that the sides of the room were
+divided into compartments by dull-colored draperies, in a manner
+suggesting the sections of a sleeping-car. There were sounds of dreadful
+breathings and inarticulate voices, and over all that sickening smell. I
+saw, flung aimlessly from the crepuscular and curtained recesses, here
+the hairy brawn of a man's arm, there a woman's leg in scarlet silk
+stocking, the foot half withdrawn from a red slipper with a high French
+heel. The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows had opened for me, and I stood as if
+gazing, with eyes freshly unsealed to its horrors, into some dim
+inferno, sibilant with hisses, and enwrapped in indeterminate
+dragon-folds--and I in quest of a lost soul.
+
+"He wouldn't go with his pal, boss," I heard the negro say. "Ah tried to
+send him home, but he said he had some medicine to take, an' he 'nsisted
+on stayin'."
+
+As he ceased to speak, I knew that Watson had been interrogating him,
+and that he was referring to the man we sought.
+
+"Show me where he is," I commanded.
+
+"Yes, boss! Right hyah, sah!"
+
+In an inner room, on a bed, not a pallet like those in the first
+chamber, was Trescott, his head lying peacefully on a pillow, his hands
+clasped across his chest. Somehow, I was not surprised to see no
+evidence of life, no rise and fall of the breast, no sound of breathing.
+But Watson started forward in amazement, laid his hand for a moment on
+the pallid forehead, lifted for an instant and then dropped the inert
+hand, turned and looked fixedly in my face, and whispered, "My God! He's
+dead!"
+
+As if at some great distance, I heard the negro saying, "He done said he
+hed ter tek some medicine, boss. Ah hopes you-all won't make no trouble
+foh me, boss--!"
+
+"Send for a doctor!" said I. "Telephone Mr. Elkins, at Trescott's home!"
+
+Watson darted out, and for an eternity, as it seemed to me, I stood
+there alone. There was a scurrying of the vermin in the place to snatch
+up a few valuables and flee, as if they had been the crawling things
+under some soon-to-be-lifted stone, to whom light was a calamity. I was
+left with the Stillness before me, and the dreadful breathings and
+inarticulate voices outside. Then came the clang and rattle of ambulance
+and patrol, and in came a policeman or two, a physician, a _Herald_ man
+and Watson, who was bitterly complaining of Bill for having had the bad
+taste to die on the morning paper's time.
+
+And soon came Jim, in a carriage, whirled along the street like a racing
+chariot--with whom I rode home, silent, save for answering his
+questions. Now the wife, gazing out of her door, saw in the street the
+Something for which she had peered past me the other night.
+
+The men carried it in at the door, and laid it on the divan. Josie, her
+arms and shoulders still bare in the dress she had worn to the wedding,
+broke away from Cornish, who was bending over her and saying things to
+comfort her, and swept down the hall to the divan where Bill lay, white
+and still, and clothed with the mystic majesty of death. The shimmering
+silk and lace of her gown lay all along the rug and over the divan, like
+drapery thrown there to conceal what lay before us. She threw her arms
+across the still breast, and her head went down on his.
+
+"Oh, pa! Oh, pa!" she moaned, "you never did any one any harm!... You
+were always good and kind!... And always loving and forgiving.... And
+why should they come to you, poor pa ... and take you from the things
+you loved ... and ... murder you ... like this!"
+
+Jim fell back, as if staggering from a blow. Cornish came forward, and
+offered to raise up the stricken girl, whose eyes shone in her grief
+like the eyes of insanity. Alice stepped before Cornish, raised Josie
+up, and supported her from the room.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+Again it was morning, when we--Alice, Jim, and I--sat face to face in
+our home. An untasted breakfast was spread before us. Jim's eyes were on
+the cloth, and nothing served to rouse him. I knew that the blow from
+which he had staggered still benumbed his faculties.
+
+"Come," said I, "we shall need your best thought down at the Grain Belt
+Building in a couple of hours. This brings things to a crisis. We shall
+have a terrible dilemma to face, it's likely. Eat and be ready to face
+it!"
+
+"God!" said he, "it's the old tale over again, Al: throw the dead and
+wounded overboard to clear the decks, and on with the fight!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+In Which Events Resume their Usual Course--at a Somewhat Accelerated
+Pace.
+
+
+The death of Mr. Trescott was treated with that consideration which the
+affairs of the locally prominent always receive in towns where local
+papers are in close financial touch with the circle affected. Nothing
+was said of suicide, or of the place where the body was found; and in
+fact I doubt if the family ever knew the real facts; but the property
+matters were looked upon as a legitimate subject for comment.
+
+"Yesterday," said, in due time, the _Herald_, "the Trescott estate
+passed into the hands of Will Lattimore, as administrator. He was
+appointed upon the petition of Martha D. Trescott, the widow. His bond,
+in the sum of $500,000, was signed by James R. Elkins, Albert F.
+Barslow, J. Bedford Cornish, and Marion Tolliver, as sureties, and is
+said to be the largest in amount ever filed in our local Probate Court.
+
+"Mr. Lattimore is non-committal as to the value of the estate. The bond
+is not to be taken as altogether indicative of this value, as additional
+bonds may be called for at any time, and the individual responsibility
+of the administrator is very large. He will at once enter upon the work
+of settling up the estate, receiving and filing claims, and preparing
+his report. He estimates the time necessary to a full understanding of
+the extent and condition of his trust at weeks and even months.
+
+"The petition states that the deceased died intestate, leaving surviving
+him the petitioner and an only child, a daughter, Josephine. As Miss
+Trescott has attained her majority, she will at once come into the
+possession of the greater part of this estate, becoming thereby the
+richest heiress in this part of the West. This fact of itself would
+render her an interesting person, an interest to which her charming
+personality adds zest. She is a very beautiful girl, petite in figure,
+with splendid brown hair and eyes. She is possessed of a strong
+individuality, has had the advantages of the best American and
+Continental schools, and is said to be an artist of much ability. Mrs.
+Trescott comes of the Dana family, prominent in central Illinois from
+the earliest settlement of the state.
+
+"President Elkins, of the L. & G. W., who, perhaps, knows more than any
+other person as to the situation and value of the various Trescott
+properties, could not be seen last night. He went to Chicago on
+Wednesday, and yesterday wired his partner, Mr. Barslow, that business
+had called him on to New York, where he would remain for some time."
+
+In another column of the same issue was a double-leaded news-story,
+based on certain rumors that Jim's trip to New York was taken for the
+purpose of financing extensions of the L. & G. W. which would develop it
+into a system of more than a thousand miles of line.
+
+"Their past successes have shown," said the _Herald_ in editorial
+comment on this, "that Mr. Elkins and his associates are resourceful
+enough to bring such an undertaking, gigantic as it is, quite within
+their abilities. The world has not seen the best that is in the power of
+this most remarkable group of men to accomplish. Lattimore, already a
+young giantess in stature and strength, has not begun to grow, in
+comparison with what is in the future for her, if she is to be made the
+center of such a vast railway system as is outlined in the news item
+referred to."
+
+From which one gathers that the young men left by Mr. Giddings in charge
+of his paper were entirely competent to carry forward his policy.
+
+Jim had gone to Chicago to see Halliday, hoping to rouse in him an
+interest in the Belt Line and L. & G. W. properties; but on arriving
+there had telegraphed to me that he must go to New York. This message
+was followed by a letter of explanation and instructions.
+
+"Halliday spends a good deal of his time in New York now," the letter
+read, "and is there at present. His understudy here advised me to go on
+East. I should rather see him there than here, on account of the greater
+likelihood that Pendleton may detect us: so I'm going. I shall stay as
+long as I can do any good by it. Lattimore won't get the condition of
+the estate worked out for a month, and until we know about that, there
+won't anything come up of the first magnitude, and even if there should,
+you can handle it. I don't really expect to come back with the two
+million dollars for the L. & G. W., but I do hope to have it in sight!
+
+"In all your prayers let me be remembered; 'if it don't do no good, it
+won't do no harm,' and I'll need all the help I can get. I'm going where
+the lobster a la Newburg and the Welsh rabbit hunt in couples in the
+interest of the Sure-Thing game; where the bird-and-bottle combine is
+the stalking-horse for the Frame-up; and where the Flim-flam (I use the
+word on the authority of Beaumont, Fletcher & Giddings) has its natural
+habitat. I go to foster the entente cordiale between our friends
+Pendleton and Halliday into what I may term a mutual cross-lift, of
+which we shall be the beneficiaries--in trust, however, for the use and
+behoof of the captives below decks.
+
+"Giddings and Laura are here. I had them out to a box party last night.
+They are most insufferably happy. Clifford is not sane yet, but is
+rallying. He is rallying considerably; for he spoke of plans for pushing
+the _Herald_ Addition harder than ever when he gets home. And you know
+such a thing as business has never entered his mind for six
+months--unless it was business to write that 'Apostrophe to the Heart,'
+which he called a poem, and which, I don't mind admitting now, I hired
+his foreman to pi after the copy was lost.
+
+"Keep everything as near ship-shape as you can. Watch the papers, or
+they may do us more harm in a single fool story than can be remedied by
+wise counter-mendacity in a year. Especially watch the _Times_, although
+there's mighty little choice between them. You and Alice ought to spend
+as much time at the Trescotts' as you can spare. You'll hear from me
+almost daily. Wire anything of importance fully. Keep the L. & G. W.
+extension story before the people; it may make some impression even in
+the East, but it's sure to do good in the local fake market. Don't miss
+a chance to jolly our Eastern banks. I should declare a dividend--say
+4%--on Cement stock. At Atlas Power Company meeting ask Cornish to move
+passing earnings to surplus in lieu of dividend, on the theory of
+building new factories--anyhow, consult with the fellows about it: that
+money will be handy to have in the treasury before the year is out,
+unless I am mistaken. Sorry I can't be at these meetings. Will be back
+for those of Rapid Transit and Belt Line Companies.
+
+                                                        "Yours,
+                                                            "Jim.
+
+"P. S.--Coming in, I saw a group of children dancing on a bridge, close
+to a schoolhouse, down near the Mississippi. I guess no one but myself
+knew what they were doing; but I recognized our old 'Weevilly Wheat'
+dance. I could imagine the ancient Scotch air, which the noise of the
+train kept me from hearing, and the old words you and I used to sing,
+dancing on the Elk Creek bridge:
+
+    "'We want no more of your weevilly wheat,
+      We want no more your barley;
+    But we want some of your good old wheat,
+      To make a cake for Charley!'
+
+"You remember it all! How we used to swing the little girls around, and
+when we remembered it afterwards, how we would float off into realms of
+blissful companionship with freckled, short-skirted, bare-legged angels!
+Things were simpler then, Al, weren't they? And to emphasize that fact,
+my mind ran along the trail of the 'Weevilly Wheat' into the domain of
+tickers, margins, puts and calls, and all the cussedness of the Board of
+Trade, and came bump against poor Bill's bucket-shop deals, and settled
+down to the chronic wonder as to just how badly crippled he was when he
+died. If Will gets it figured out soon, at all accurately, wire me.
+
+                                                                 "J."
+
+The wedding tour came to an end, and the bride and groom returned long
+before Mr. Elkins did. Giddings dropped into my office the day after
+their return, and, quite in his old way, began to discuss affairs in
+general.
+
+"I'm going to close out the _Herald_ Addition," said he. "Real estate
+and newspaper work don't mix, and I shall unload the real estate. What
+do you say to an auction?"
+
+"How can you be sure of anything like an adequate scale of prices?" said
+I; "and won't you demoralize things?"
+
+"It'll strengthen prices," he replied, "the way I'll manage it. This is
+the age of the sensational--the yellow--and you people haven't been
+yellow enough in your methods of selling dirt. If you say sensationalism
+is immoral, I won't dispute it, but just simply ask how the fact happens
+to be material?"
+
+I saw that he was going out of his way to say this, and avoided
+discussion by asking him to particularize as to his methods.
+
+"We shall pursue a progressively startling course of advertising, to the
+end that the interest shall just miss acute mania. I'll have the best
+auctioneer in the world. On the day of the auction we'll have a series
+of doings which will leave the people absolutely no way out of buying.
+We'll have a scale of upset prices which will prevent loss. Why, I'll
+make such a killing as never was known outside of the Fifteen Decisive
+Battles. I sha'n't seem to do all this personally. I shall turn the work
+over to Tolliver; but I'll be the power behind the movement. The
+gestures and stage business will be those of Esau, but the word-painting
+will be that of Jacob."
+
+"Well," said I, "I see nothing wrong about your plan; and it may be
+practicable."
+
+"There being nothing wrong about it is no objection from my standpoint,"
+said he. "In fact, I think I prefer to have it morally right rather than
+otherwise, other things being equal, you know. As for its
+practicability, you watch the Captain, and you'll see!"
+
+This talk with Giddings convinced me that he was entirely himself again;
+and also that the boom was going on apace. It had now long reached the
+stage where the efforts of our syndicate were reinforced by those of
+hundreds of men, who, following the lines of their own interests, were
+powerfully and effectively striving to accomplish the same ends. I
+pointed this out in a letter to Mr. Elkins in New York.
+
+"I am glad to note," said he in reply, "that affairs are going on so
+cheerfully at home. Don't imagine, however, that because a horde of
+volunteers (most of them nine-spots) have taken hold, our old guard is
+of any less importance. Do you remember what a Prince Rupert's drop is?
+I absolutely know you don't, and to save you the trouble of looking it
+up, I'll explain that it is a glass pollywog which holds together all
+right until you snap off the tip of its tail. Then a job lot of
+molecular stresses are thrown out of balance, and the thing develops the
+surprising faculty of flying into innumerable fragments, with a very
+pleasing explosion. Whether the name is a tribute of Prince Rupert's
+propensity to fly off the handle, or whether he discovered the drop, or
+first noted its peculiarities, I leave for the historian of the
+Cromwellian epoch to decide. The point I make is this. Our syndicate is
+the tail of the Lattimore Rupert's drop; and the Grain Belt Trust Co. is
+the very slenderest and thinnest tip of the pollywog's propeller. Hence
+the writer's tendency to count the strokes of the clock these nights."
+
+Dating from the night of Trescott's death, and therefore covering the
+period of Jim's absence, I could not fail to notice the renewed ardor
+with which Cornish devoted himself to the Trescott family. Alice and I,
+on our frequent visits, found him at their home so much that I was
+forced to the conclusion that he must have had some encouragement.
+During this period of their mourning his treatment of both mother and
+daughter was at once so solicitously friendly, and so delicate, that no
+one in their place could have failed to feel a sense of obligation. He
+sent flowers to Mrs. Trescott, and found interesting things in books and
+magazines for Josie. Having known him as a somewhat cold and formal man,
+Mrs. Trescott was greatly pleased with this new view of his character.
+He diverted her mind, and relieved the monotony of her grief. Cornish
+was a diplomat (otherwise Jim would have had no use for him in the first
+place), and he skilfully chose this sad and tender moment to bring about
+a closer intimacy than had existed between him and the afflicted family.
+It was clearly no affair of mine. Nevertheless, after several
+experiences in finding Cornish talking with Josie by the Trescott grate,
+I considered Jim's interests menaced.
+
+"Well," said Alice, when I mentioned this feeling, "Mr. Cornish is
+certainly a desirable match, and it can scarcely be expected that Josie
+will remain permanently unattached."
+
+There was a little resentment in her voice, for which I could see no
+reason, and therefore protested that, under all circumstances, it was
+scarcely fair to blame me for the lady's unappropriated state.
+
+"Under other conditions," said I, "I assure you that I should not
+permit such an anomaly to exist--if I could help it."
+
+The incident was then declared closed.
+
+During this absence of Jim's, which, I think, was the real cause of
+Alice's displeasure, the _Herald_ Addition sale went forward, with all
+the "yellow" features which the minds of Giddings and Tolliver could
+invent. It began with flaring advertisements in both papers. Then, on a
+certain day, the sale was declared open, and every bill-board and fence
+bore posters puffing it. A great screen was built on a vacant lot on
+Main Street, and across the street was placed, every night, the biggest
+magic lantern procurable, from which pictures of all sorts were
+projected on the screen, interlarded with which were statements of the
+_Herald_ Addition sales for the day, and quotations showing the advance
+in prices since yesterday. And at all times the coming auction was cried
+abroad, until the interest grew to something wonderful. Every farmer and
+country merchant within a hundred miles of the city was talking of it.
+Tolliver was in his highest feather. On the day of the auction he
+secured excursion rates on all of the railroads, and made it a holiday.
+Porter's great military band, then touring the country, was secured for
+the afternoon and evening. Thousands of people came in on the excursions
+and it seemed like a carnival. Out at the piece of land platted as the
+_Herald_ Addition, whither people were conveyed in street-cars and
+carriages during the long afternoon the great band played about the
+stands erected for the auctioneer, who went from stand to stand, crying
+off the lots, the precise location of the particular parcel at any
+moment under the hammer being indicated by the display of a flag, held
+high by two strong fellows, who lowered the banner and walked to another
+site in obedience to signals wigwagged by the enthusiastic Captain. The
+throng bid excitedly, and the clerks who made out the papers worked
+desperately to keep up with the demands for deeds. It was clear that the
+sale was a success. As the sun sank, handbills were scattered informing
+the crowd that in the evening Tolliver & Company, as a slight evidence
+of their appreciation of the splendid business of the day, would throw
+open to their friends the new Cornish Opera House, where Porter's
+celebrated band would give its regular high-class concert. Tolliver &
+Company, the bill went on, took pleasure in further informing the public
+that, in view of the great success of the day's sale, and the very small
+amount to which their holdings in the _Herald_ Addition were reduced,
+the remainder of this choice piece of property would be sold from the
+stage to the highest bidder, absolutely without any reservation or
+restriction as to the price!
+
+I had received a telegram from Jim saying that he would return on a
+train arriving that evening, and asking that Cornish, Hinckley, and
+Lattimore be at the office to meet him. I was on the street early in the
+evening, looking with wonder at the crowds making merry after the dizzy
+day of speculative delirium. At the opera house, filled to overflowing
+with men admitted on tickets, the great band was discoursing its music,
+in alternation with the insinuating oratory of the auctioneer, under
+whose skilful management the odds and ends of the _Herald_ Addition were
+changing owners at a rate which was simply bewildering.
+
+"Don't you see," said Giddings delightedly, "that this is the only way
+to sell town lots?"
+
+Jim came into the office, fresh and buoyant after his long trip, his
+laugh as hearty and mirth-provoking as ever. After shaking hands with
+all, he threw himself into his own chair.
+
+"Boys," said he, "I feel like a mouse just returning from a visit to a
+cat convention. But what's this crowd for? It's nearly as bad as
+Broadway."
+
+We explained what Giddings and Tolliver had been doing.
+
+"But," said he, "do you mean to tell me that he's sold that Addition to
+this crowd of reubs?"
+
+"He most certainly has," said Cornish.
+
+"Well, fellows," replied Jim, "put away the accounts of this as
+curiosities! You'll have some difficulty in making posterity believe
+that there was ever a time or place where town lots were sold with magic
+lanterns and a brass band! And don't advertise it too much with Dorr,
+Wickersham and those fellows. They think us a little crazy now. But a
+brass band! That comes pretty near being the limit."
+
+"Gentlemen," said Mr. Lattimore, "I shall have to leave you soon; and
+will you kindly make use of me as soon as you conveniently can, and let
+me go?"
+
+"Have you got the condition of the Trescott estate figured out?" said
+Mr. Elkins.
+
+"Yes," said the lawyer.
+
+We all leaned forward in absorbed interest; for this was news.
+
+"Have you told these gentlemen?" Jim went on.
+
+"I have told no one."
+
+"Please give us your conclusions."
+
+"Gentlemen," said Mr. Lattimore, "I am sorry to report that the Trescott
+estate is absolutely insolvent! It lacks a hundred thousand dollars of
+being worth anything!"
+
+There was a silence for some moments.
+
+"My God!" said Hinckley, "and our trust company is on all that paper of
+Trescott's scattered over the East!"
+
+"What's become of the money he got on all his sales?" asked Jim.
+
+"From the looks of the check-stubs, and other indications," said Mr.
+Lattimore, "I should say the most of it went into Board of Trade deals."
+
+Cornish was swearing in a repressed way, and above his black beard his
+face was pale. Elkins sat drumming idly on the desk with his fingers.
+
+"Gentlemen," said he, "I take it to be conceded that unless the Trescott
+paper is cared for, things will go to pieces here. That's the same as
+saying that it must be taken up at all hazards."
+
+"Not exactly," said Cornish, "at _all_ hazards."
+
+"Well," said Jim, "it amounts to that. Has any one any suggestions as to
+the course to be followed?"
+
+Mr. Cornish asked whether it would not be best to take time, allow the
+probate proceedings to drag along, and see what would turn up.
+
+"But the Trust Company's guaranties," said Mr. Hinckley, with a banker's
+scent for the complications of commercial paper, "must be made good on
+presentation, or it may as well close its doors."
+
+"The thing won't 'drag along' successfully," said Jim. "Have you a
+schedule of the assets?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Lattimore. "The life-insurance money and the home are
+exempt from liability for debts, and I've left them out; but the other
+properties you'll find listed here."
+
+And he threw down on the desk a folded document in a legal wrapper.
+
+"The family," said Jim gravely, "must be told of the condition of
+things. It is a hard thing to do, but it must be done. Then conveyances
+must be obtained of all the property, subject to debts; and we must take
+the property and pay the debts. That also will be a hard thing to do--in
+several ways; but it must be done. It must be done--do you all agree?"
+
+"Let me first ask," said Mr. Cornish, turning to Mr. Hinckley, "how long
+would it be before there would have to be trouble on this paper?"
+
+"It couldn't possibly be postponed more than sixty days," was the
+answer.
+
+"Is there any prospect," Cornish went on, addressing Mr. Elkins, "of
+closing out the railway properties within sixty days?"
+
+"A prospect, yes," said Jim.
+
+"Anything like a certainty?"
+
+"No, not in sixty days."
+
+"Then," said Cornish reluctantly, "there seems to be no way out of it,
+and I agree. But I feel as if I were being held up, and I assent on this
+ground only: that Halliday and Pendleton will never deal on equal terms
+with a set of financial cripples, and that any trouble here will seal
+the fate of the railway transaction. But, lest this be taken as a
+precedent, I wish it to be understood that I'm not jeopardizing my
+fortune, or any part of it, out of any sentimental consideration for
+these supposed claims of any one who holds Lattimore paper, in the East
+or elsewhere!"
+
+Jim sat drumming on the desk.
+
+"As we are all agreed on what to do," said he drawlingly, "we can skip
+the question why we do it. Prepare the necessary papers, Mr. Lattimore.
+And perhaps you are the proper person to apprise the family as to the
+true condition of things. We'll have to get together to-morrow and begin
+to dig for the funds. I think we can do no more to-night."
+
+We walked down the street and dropped into the opera house in time to
+hear the grand finale of the last piece by the band. As the great
+outburst of music died away, Captain Tolliver radiantly stepped to the
+footlights, dividing the applause with the musicians.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," said he, "puhmit me to say, in bidding you-all
+good-night, that I congratulate the republic on the possession of a
+citizenship so awake to theiah true interests as you have shown
+you'selves to-day! I congratulate the puhchasers of propahty in the
+_Herald_ Addition upon the bahgains they have secuahed. Only five
+minutes' walk from the cyahs, and well within the three-mile limit, the
+time must soon come when these lots will be covahed with the mansions of
+ouah richah citizens. Even since the sales of this afternoon, I am
+infawmed that many of the pieces have been resold at an advance, netting
+the puhchasers a nice profit without putting up a cent. Upon all this I
+congratulate you. Lattimore, ladies and gentlemen, has nevah been cuhsed
+by a boom, and I pray God she nevah may! This rathah brisk growth of
+ouahs, based as it is on crying needs of ouah trade territory, is really
+unaccountably slow, all things considered. But I may say right hyah that
+things ah known to be in sto' foh us which will soon give ouah city an
+impetus which will cyahy us fo'ward by leaps and bounds--by leaps and
+bounds, ladies and gentlemen--to that highah and still mo' commandin'
+place in the galaxy of American cities which is ouahs by right! And now
+as you-all take youah leave, I propose that we rise and give three
+cheers fo' Lattimore and prosperity."
+
+The cheers were given thunderously, and the crowd bustled out, filling
+the street.
+
+"Well, wouldn't that jar you!" said Jim. "This is a case of 'Gaze first
+upon this picture, then on that' sure enough, isn't it, Al?"
+
+Captain Tolliver joined us, so full of excitement of the evening that he
+forgot to give Mr. Elkins the greeting his return otherwise would have
+evoked.
+
+"Gentlemen," said he, "it was glorious! Nevah until this moment have I
+felt true fawgiveness in my breast faw the crime of Appomattox! But
+to-night we ah truly a reunited people!"
+
+"Glad to know it," said Jim, "mighty glad, Captain. The news'll send
+stocks up a-whooping, if it gets to New York!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+I Twice Explain the Condition of the Trescott Estate.
+
+
+Nothing had remained unchanged in Lattimore, and our old offices in the
+First National Bank edifice had long since been vacated by us. The very
+building had been demolished, and another and many-storied structure
+stood in its place. Now we were in the big Grain Belt Trust Company's
+building, the ground-floor of which was shared between the Trust Company
+and the general offices of the Lattimore and Great Western. In one
+corner, and next to the private room of President Elkins, was the office
+of Barslow & Elkins, where I commanded. Into which entered Mrs. Trescott
+and her daughter one day, soon after Mr. Lattimore had been given his
+instructions concerning the offer of our syndicate to pay the debts of
+their estate and take over its properties.
+
+"Josie and I have called," said the widow, "to talk with you about the
+estate matters. Mr. Lattimore came to see us last night and--told us."
+
+She seemed a little agitated, but in nowise so much cast down as might
+be expected of one who, considering herself rich, learns that she is
+poor. She had in her manner that mixture of dignity and constraint
+which marks the bearing of people whose relations with their friends
+have been affected by some great grief. A calamity not only changes our
+own feelings, but it makes us uncertain as to what our friends expect of
+us.
+
+"What we wish explained," said Josie, "is just how it comes that our
+property must be deeded away."
+
+"I can see," said I, "that that is a matter which demands investigation
+on your part. Your request is a natural and a proper one."
+
+"It is not that," said she, evidently objecting to the word
+investigation; "we are not so very much surprised, and we have no doubt
+as to the necessity of doing it. But we want to know as much as possible
+about it before we act."
+
+"Quite right," said I. "Mr. Elkins is in the next office; let us call
+him in. He sees and can explain these things as clearly as any one."
+
+Jim came in response to a summons by one of his clerks. He shook hands
+gravely with my visitors.
+
+"We are told," said Mrs. Trescott, "that our debts are a good deal more
+than we can pay--that we really have nothing."
+
+"Not quite that," said Jim; "the law gives to the widow the home and the
+life insurance. That is a good deal more than nothing."
+
+"As to whether we can keep that," said Josie, "we are not discussing
+now; but there are some other things we should like cleared up."
+
+"We don't understand Mr. Cornish's offer to take the property and pay
+the debts," said Mrs. Trescott.
+
+Jim's glance sought mine in a momentary and questioning astonishment;
+then he calmly returned the widow's look. Josie's eyes were turned
+toward the carpet, and a slight blush tinged her cheeks.
+
+"Ah," said Jim, "yes; Mr. Cornish's offer. How did you learn of it?"
+
+"I got my understanding of it from Mr. Lattimore," said Mrs. Trescott,
+"and told Josie about it."
+
+"Before we consent to carry out this plan," said Josie, "we ... I want
+to know all about the motives and considerations back of it. I want to
+know whether it is based on purely business considerations, or on some
+fancied obligation ... or ... or ... on merely friendly sentiments."
+
+"As to motives," said Mr. Elkins, "if the purely business requirements
+of the situation fully account for the proposition, we may waive the
+discussion of motives, can't we, Josie?"
+
+"I imagine," said Mrs. Trescott, finding that Jim's question remained
+unanswered, "that none of us will claim to be able to judge Mr.
+Cornish's motives."
+
+"Certainly not," acquiesced Mr. Elkins. "None of us."
+
+"This is not what we came to ask about," said Josie. "Please tell us
+whether our house and the insurance money would be mamma's if this plan
+were not adopted--if the courts went on and settled the estate in the
+usual way?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "the law gives her that, and justly. For the creditors
+knew all about the law when they took those bonds. So you need have no
+qualms of conscience on that."
+
+"As none of it belongs to me," said Josie, "I shall leave all that to
+mamma. I avoid the necessity of settling it by ceasing to be 'the
+richest heiress in this part of the West'--one of the uses of adversity.
+But to proceed. Mamma says that there is a corporation, or something,
+forming to pay our debts and take our property, and that it will take a
+hundred thousand dollars more to pay the debts than the estate is worth.
+I must understand why this corporation should do this. I can see that it
+will save pa's good name in the business world, and save us from public
+bankruptcy; but ought we to be saved these things at such a cost? And
+can we permit--a corporation--or any one, to do this for us?"
+
+Mr. Elkins nodded to me to speak.
+
+"My dear," said I, "it's another illustration of the truth that no man
+liveth unto himself alone--"
+
+She shrank, as if she feared some fresh hurt was about to be touched,
+and I saw that it was the second part of the text the anticipation of
+which gave her pain. Quotation is sometimes ill for a green wound.
+
+"The fact is," I went on, "that things in Lattimore are not in condition
+to bear a shock--general money conditions, I mean, you know."
+
+"I know," she said, nodding assent; "I can see that."
+
+"Your father did a very large business for a time," I continued; "and
+when he sold lands he took some cash in payment, and for the balance
+notes of the various purchasers, secured by mortgages on the properties.
+Many of these persons are mere adventurers, who bought on speculation,
+and when their first notes came due failed to pay. Now if you had these
+notes, you could hold them, or foreclose the mortgages, and, beyond
+being disappointed in getting the money, no harm would be done."
+
+"I understand," said Josie. "I knew something of this before."
+
+"But if we haven't the notes," inquired her mother, "where are they?"
+
+"Well," I went on, "you know how we have all handled these matters here.
+Mr. Trescott did as we all did: he negotiated them. The Grain Belt Trust
+Company placed them for him, and his are the only securities it has
+handled except those of our syndicate. He took them to the Trust Company
+and signed them on the back, and thus promised to pay them if the first
+signer failed. Then the trust company attached its guaranty to them, and
+they were resold all over the East, wherever people had money to put out
+at interest."
+
+"I see," said Josie; "we have already had the money on these notes."
+
+"Yes," said I, "and now we find that a great many of these notes, which
+are being sent on for payment, will not be paid. Your father's estate is
+not able to pay them, and our trust company must either take them up or
+fail. If it fails, everyone will think that values in Lattimore are
+unstable and fictitious, and so many people will try to sell out that we
+shall have a smashing of values, and possibly a panic. Prices will
+drop, so that none of our mortgages will be good for their face.
+Thousands of people will be broken, the city will be ruined, and there
+will be hard and distressful times, both here and where our paper is
+held. But if we can keep things as they are until we can do some large
+things we have in view, we are not afraid of anything serious happening.
+So we form this new corporation, and have it advance the funds on the
+notes, so as not to weaken the trust company--and because we can't
+afford to do it otherwise--and we know you would not permit it anyhow;
+and we ask you to give to the new corporation all the property which the
+creditors could reach, which will be held, and sold as opportunity
+offers, so as to make the loss as small as possible. But we must keep
+off this panic to save ourselves."
+
+"I must think about this," said Josie. "I don't see any way out of it;
+but to have one's affairs so wrapped up in such a great tangle that one
+loses control of them seems wrong, somehow. And so far as I am
+concerned, I think I should prefer to turn everything over to the
+creditors--house and all--than to have even so good friends as yourself
+take on such a load for us. It seems as if we were saying to you, 'Pay
+our debts or we'll ruin you!' I must think about it."
+
+"You understand it now?" said Jim.
+
+"Yes, in a way."
+
+"Let me come over this evening," said he, "and I think I can remove this
+feeling from your mind. And by the way, the new corporation is not going
+to have the ranch out on the Cheyenne Range. The syndicate says it
+isn't worth anything. And I'm going to take it. I still believe in the
+headwaters of Bitter Creek as an art country."
+
+"Thank you," said she vaguely.
+
+Somehow, the explanation of the estate affairs seemed to hurt her. Her
+color was still high, but her eyes were suffused, her voice grew choked
+at times, and she showed the distress of her recent trials, in something
+like a loss of self-control. Her pretty head and slender figure, the
+flexile white hands clasped together in nervous strain to discuss these
+so vital matters, and, more than all, the departure from her habitual
+cool and self-possessed manner, was touching, and appealed powerfully to
+Jim. He walked up to her, as she stood ready to leave, and laid his hand
+lightly on her arm.
+
+"The way Barslow puts these property matters," said he, "you are called
+upon to think that all arrangements have been made upon a cold cash
+basis; and, actually, that's the fact. But you mustn't either of you
+think that in dealing with you we have forgotten that you are dear to
+us--friends. We should have had to act in the same way if you had been
+enemies, perhaps, but if there had been any way in which our--regard
+could have shown itself, that way would have been followed."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Trescott, "we understand that. Mr. Lattimore said
+almost the same thing, and we know that in what he did Mr. Cornish--"
+
+"We must go now, mamma," said Josie. "Thank you both very much. It won't
+do any harm for me to take a day or so for considering this in all its
+phases; but I know now what I shall do. The thought of the distress that
+might come to people here and elsewhere as a result of these mistakes
+here is a new one, and a little big for me, at first."
+
+Jim sat by the desk, after they went away, folding insurance blotters
+and savagely tearing them in pieces.
+
+"I wish to God," said he, "that I could throw my hand into the deck and
+quit!"
+
+"What's the matter?" said I.
+
+"Oh--nothing," he returned. "Only, look at the situation. She comes in,
+filled with the idea that it was Cornish who proposed this plan, and
+that he did it for her sake. I couldn't very well say, like a boy,
+''Twasn't Cornish; 'twas me!', could I? And in showing her the purely
+mercenary character of the deal, I'm put in the position of backcapping
+Cornish, and she goes away with that impression! Oh, Al, what's the good
+of being able to convince and control every one else, if you are always
+further off than Kamschatka with the only one for whose feelings you
+really care?"
+
+"I don't think it struck her in that way at all," said I. "She could see
+how it was, and did, whatever her mother may think. But what possessed
+Lattimore to tell Mrs. Trescott that Cornish story?"
+
+"Oh, Lattimore never said anything like that!" he returned disgustedly.
+"He told her that it was proposed by a friend, or one of the syndicate,
+or something like that; and they are so saturated with the Cornish idea
+up there lately, that they filled up the blank out of their own minds.
+Another mighty encouraging symptom, isn't it?"
+
+Not more than a day or two after this, and after the news of the
+"purchase" of the Trescott estate was being whispered about, my
+telephone rang, just before my time for leaving the office, and, on
+answering, I found that Antonia was at the other end of the wire.
+
+"Is this Mr. Barslow?" said she. "How do you do? Alice is with us this
+afternoon, and she and mamma have given me authority to bring you home
+to dinner with us. Do you surrender?"
+
+"Always," said I, "at such a summons."
+
+"Then I'll come for you in ten minutes, if you'll wait for me. It's ever
+so good of you."
+
+From her way of finishing the conversation, I knew she was coming to the
+office. So I waited in pleasurable anticipation of her coming, thinking
+of the perversity of the scheme of things which turned the eyes of both
+Jim and Cornish to Josie, while this girl coming to fetch me yearned so
+strongly toward one of them that her sorrow--borne lightly and
+cheerfully as it was--was an open secret. When she came she made her way
+past the clerks in the first room and into my private den. Not until the
+door closed behind her, and we were alone, did I see that she was not in
+her usual spirits. Then I saw that unmistakable quiver in her lips, so
+like a smile, so far from mirth, which my acquaintance with the girl, so
+sensitive and free from secretiveness, had made me familiar with.
+
+"I want to know about some things," said she, "that papa hints about in
+a blind sort of a way, but doesn't tell clearly. Is it true that Josie
+and her mother are poor?"
+
+"That is something which ought not to be known yet," said I, "but it is
+true."
+
+"Oh," said she tearfully, "I am so sorry, so sorry!"
+
+"Antonia," said I, as she hastily brushed her eyes, "these tears do your
+kind heart credit!"
+
+"Oh, don't, don't talk to me like that!" she exclaimed passionately. "My
+kind heart! Why, sometimes I hate her; and I would be glad if she was
+out of the world! Don't look like that at me! And don't pretend to be
+surprised, or say you don't understand me. I think every one understands
+me, and has for a long time. I think everybody on the street says, after
+I pass, 'Poor Antonia!' I _must_ talk to somebody! And I'd rather talk
+to you because, even though you are a man and can't possibly know how I
+feel, you understand _him_ better than any one else I know--and _you_
+love him too!"
+
+I started to say something, but the situation did not lend itself to
+words. Neither could I pat her on the shoulders, or press her hand, as I
+might have done with a man. Pale and beautiful, her jaunty hat a little
+awry, her blonde ringlets in some disorder, she sat unapproachable in
+her grief.
+
+"You look at me," said she, with a little gasping laugh, "as if I were a
+drowning girl, and you chained to the bank. If you haven't pitied me in
+the past, Albert, don't pity me now; for the mere saying openly to some
+human being that I love him seems almost to make me happy!"
+
+I lamely murmured some inanity, of which she took not the slightest
+notice.
+
+"Is it true," she asked, "that Mr. Elkins is to pay their debts, and
+that they are to be--married?"
+
+"No," said I, glad, for some reason which is not very clear, to find
+something to deny. "Nothing of the sort, I assure you."
+
+And again, this time something wearily, for it was the second time over
+it in so short a time, I explained the disposition of the Trescott
+estate.
+
+"But he urged it?" she said. "He insisted upon it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She arose, buttoned her jacket about her, and stood quietly as if to
+test her mastery of herself, once or twice moving as if to speak, but
+stopping short, with a long, quivering sigh. I longed to take her in my
+arms and comfort her; for, in a way, she attracted me strongly.
+
+"Mr. Barslow," said she at last, "I have no apology to make to you; for
+you are my friend. And I have no feeling toward Mr. Elkins of which, in
+my secret heart, and so long as he knows nothing of it, I am not proud.
+To know him ... and love him may be death ... but it is honor!... I am
+sorry Josie is poor, because it is a hard thing for her; but more
+because I know he will be drawn to her in a stronger way by her poverty.
+Shake hands with me, Albert, and be jolly, I'm jollier, away down deep,
+than I've been for a long, long time; and I thank you for that!"
+
+We shook hands warmly, like comrades, and passed down to her carriage
+together. At dinner she was vivacious as ever; but I was downcast. So
+much so that Mrs. Hinckley devoted herself to me, cheering me with a
+dissertation on "Sex in Mind." I asked myself if the atmosphere in which
+she had been reared had not in some degree contributed to the attitude
+of Antonia toward the expression to me of her regard for Jim.
+
+So the Trescott estate matter was arranged. In a few days the boom was
+strengthened by newspaper stories of the purchase, by heavy financial
+interests, of the entire list of assets in the hands of the
+administrator.
+
+"This immense deal," said the _Herald_, "is new proof of the
+desirability of Lattimore property. The Acme Investment Company, which
+will handle the properties, has bought for investment, and will hold for
+increased prices. It may be taken as certain that in no other city in
+the country could so large and varied a list of holdings be so quickly
+and advantageously realized upon."
+
+This was cheering--to the masses. But to us it was like praise for the
+high color of a fever patient. Even while the rehabilitated Giddings
+thus lifted his voice in paeans of rejoicing, the lurid signals of danger
+appeared in our sky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+Of Conflicts, Within and Without.
+
+
+I have often wished that some sort of a business weather-chart might be
+periodically got out, showing conditions all over the world. It seems to
+me that with such a map one could forecast financial storms and squalls
+with an accuracy quite up to the weather-bureau standard.
+
+Had we at Lattimore been provided with such a chart, and been reminded
+of the wisdom of referring to it occasionally, we might have saved
+ourselves some surprises. We should have known of certain areas of
+speculative high pressure in Australasia, Argentina, and South Africa,
+which existed even prior to my meeting with Jim that day in the Pullman
+smoking-room coming out of Chicago. These we should have seen changing
+month by month, until at the time when we were most gloriously carrying
+things before us in Lattimore, each of these spots on the other side of
+the little old world showed financial disturbances--pronounced "lows."
+We should have seen symptoms of storm on the European bourses; and we
+should have thought of the natural progress of the moving areas, and
+derived much benefit from such consideration. We should certainly have
+paid some attention to it, if we could have seen the black isobars
+drawn about London, when the great banking house of Fleischmann Brothers
+went down in the wreck of their South African and Argentine investments.
+But having no such chart, and being much engrossed in the game against
+the World and Destiny, we glanced for a moment at the dispatches, seeing
+nothing in them of interest to us, congratulated ourselves that we were
+not as other investors and speculators, and played on.
+
+Once in a while we found some over-cautious banker or broker who had
+inexplicable fears for the future.
+
+"Here is an idiot," said Cornish, while we were placing the paper to
+float the Trescott deal, "who is calling his loans; and why, do you
+think?"
+
+"Can't guess," said Jim, "unless he needs the money. How does _he_
+account for it?"
+
+"Read his letter," said Cornish. "Says the Fleischmann failure in London
+is making his directors cautious. I'm calling his attention to the now
+prevailing sun-spots, as bearing on Lattimore property."
+
+Mr. Elkins read the letter carefully, turned it over, and read it again.
+
+"Don't," said he; "he may be one of those asses who fail to see the
+business value of the _reductio ad absurdum_.... Fellows, we must push
+this L. & G. W. business with Pendleton. Some of us ought to be down
+there now."
+
+"That is wise counsel," I agreed, "and you're the man."
+
+"No," said he positively, "I'm not the man. Cornish, can't you go,
+starting, say, to-morrow?"
+
+"No indeed," said Cornish with equal positiveness; "since my turn-down
+by Wade on that bond deal, I'm out of touch with the lower Broadway and
+Wall Street element. It seems clear to me that you are the only one to
+carry this negotiation forward."
+
+"I can't go, absolutely," insisted Jim. "Al, it seems to be up to you."
+
+I knew that Jim ought to do this work, and could not understand the
+reasons for both himself and Cornish declining the mission. Privately, I
+told him that it was nonsense to send me; but he found reasons in plenty
+for the course he had determined upon. He had better control of the hot
+air, he said, but as a matter of fact I was more in Pendleton's class
+than he was, I was more careful in my statements, and I saw further into
+men's minds.
+
+"And if, as you say," said he, "Pendleton thinks me the whole works
+here, it will show a self-possession and freedom from anxiety on our
+part to accredit a subordinate (as you call yourself) as envoy to the
+court of St. Scads. Again, affairs here are likely to need me at any
+time; and if we go wrong here, it's all off. I don't dare leave. Anyhow,
+down deep in your subconsciousness, you know that in diplomacy you
+really have us all beaten to a pulp: and this is a matter as purely
+diplomatic as draw-poker. You'll do all right."
+
+My wife was skeptical as to the necessity of my going.
+
+"Why doesn't Mr. Cornish go, then?" she inquired, after I had explained
+to her the position of Mr. Elkins. "He is a native of Wall Street, I
+believe."
+
+"Well," I repeated, "they both say positively that they can't go."
+
+"Your natural specialty may be diplomacy," said she pityingly, "but if
+you take the reasons they give as the real ones, I must be permitted to
+doubt it. It's perfectly obvious that if Josie were transferred to New
+York, the demands of business would take them both there at once."
+
+This remark struck me as very subtle, and as having a good deal in it.
+Josie had never permitted the rivalry between Jim and Cornish to become
+publicly apparent; but in spite of the mourning which kept the
+Trescott's in semi-retirement, it was daily growing more keen. Elkins
+was plainly anxious at the progress Cornish had seemed to make during
+his last long absence, and still doubtful of his relations with Josie
+after that utterance over her father's body. But he was not one to give
+up, and so, whenever she came over for an evening with Alice, Jim was
+sure to drop in casually and see us. I believe Alice telephoned him. On
+the other hand, Cornish was calling at the Trescott house with
+increasing frequency. Mrs. Trescott was decidedly favorable to him,
+Alice a pronounced partisan of Elkins; and Josie vibrated between the
+two oppositely charged atmospheres, calmly non-committal, and apparently
+pleased with both. But the affair was affecting our relations. There was
+a new feeling, still unexpressed, of strain and stress, in spite of the
+familiarity and comradeship of long and intimate intercourse. Moreover,
+I felt that Mr. Hinckley was not on the same terms with Jim as formerly,
+and I wondered if he was possessed of Antonia's secret.
+
+It was with a prevision of something out of the ordinary, therefore,
+that I received through Alice a request from Josie for a private
+interview with me. She would come to us at any time when I would
+telephone that I was at home and would see her. Of course I at once
+decided I would go to her. Which, that evening, my last in Lattimore
+before starting for the East, I did.
+
+There was a side door to my house, and a corresponding one in the
+Trescott home across the street. We were all quite in the habit, in our
+constant visiting between the households, of making a short cut by
+crossing the road from one of these doors to the other. This I did that
+evening, rapped at the door, and imagining I heard a voice bid me come
+in, opened it, and stepping into the library, found no one. The door
+between the library and the front hall stood open, and through it I
+heard the voice of Miss Trescott and the clear, carrying tones of Mr.
+Cornish, in low but earnest conversation.
+
+"Yes," I heard him say, "perhaps. And if I am, haven't I abundant
+reason?"
+
+"I have told you often," said she pleadingly, "that I would give you a
+definite answer whenever you definitely demand it--"
+
+"And that it would in that case be 'No,'" he added, completing the
+sentence. "Oh, Josie, my darling, haven't you punished me enough for my
+bad conduct toward you in that old time? I was a young fool, and you a
+strange country girl; but as soon as you left us, I began to feel your
+sweetness. And I was seeking for you everywhere I went until I found you
+that night up there by the lake. Does that seem like slighting you? Why,
+I hope you don't deem me capable of being satisfied in this hole
+Lattimore, under any circumstances, if it hadn't been for the hope and
+comfort your being here has given me!"
+
+"I thought we were to say no more about that old time," said she; "I
+thought the doings of Johnny Cornish were not to be remembered by or of
+Bedford."
+
+"The name I've asked you to call me by!" said he passionately. "Does
+that mean--"
+
+"It means nothing," said she. "Oh, please, please!--Good-night!"
+
+I retired to the porch, and rapped again. She came to the door blushing
+redly, and so fluttered by their leave-taking that I thanked God that
+Jim was not in my place. There would have been division in our ranks at
+once; for it seemed to me that her conduct to Cornish was too
+complaisant by far.
+
+"I came over," said I, "because Alice said you wanted to see me."
+
+I think there must have been in my tone something of the reproach in my
+thoughts; for she timidly said she was sorry to have given me so much
+trouble.
+
+"Oh, don't, Josie!" said I. "You know I'd not miss the chance of doing
+you a favor for anything. Tell me what it is, my dear girl, and don't
+speak of trouble."
+
+"If you forbid reference to trouble," said she, smiling, "it will stop
+this conference. For my troubles are what I want to talk to you about.
+May I go on?--You see, our financial condition is awfully queer. Mamma
+has some money, but not much. And we have this big house. It's absurd
+for us to live in it, and I want to ask you first, can you sell it for
+us?"
+
+It was doubtful, I told her. A year or so ago, I went on, it would have
+been easy; but somehow the market for fine houses was dull now. We would
+try, though, and hoped to succeed. We talked at length, and I took
+copious memoranda for my clerks.
+
+"There is another thing," said she when we had finished the subject of
+the house, "upon which I want light, something upon which depends my
+staying here or going away. You know General Lattimore and I are
+friends, and that I place great trust in his conclusions. He says that
+the most terrible hard times here would result from anything happening
+to your syndicate. You have said almost the same thing once or twice,
+and the other day you said something about great operations which you
+have in view which will, somehow, do away with any danger of that kind.
+Is it true that you would all be--ruined by a--breaking up--or anything
+of that sort?"
+
+"Just now," I confessed, "such a thing would be dangerous; but I hope we
+shall soon be past all that."
+
+I told her, as well as I could, about our hopes, and of my mission to
+New York.
+
+"You must suspect," said she, "that my presence here is danger to your
+harmony; and through you, to all these people whose names even we have
+never heard. Shall I go away? I can go almost anywhere with mamma, and
+we can get along nicely. Now that pa is gone, my work here is over, and
+I want to get into the world."
+
+I thought of the parallelism between her discontent and the speech Mr.
+Cornish had made, referring so contemptuously to Lattimore. I began to
+see the many things in common between them, and I grew anxious for Jim.
+
+"Of all things," said she, "I want to avoid the role of Helen setting a
+city in flames. It would be so absurd--and so terrible; and rather than
+do such a hackneyed and harmful thing, I want to go away."
+
+"Do you really mean that?" I asked, "Haven't you a desire to make your
+choice, and stay?"
+
+"You mustn't ask that question, Albert," said she. "The answer is a
+secret--from every one. But I will say--that if you succeed in this
+mission, so as to put people here quite out of danger--I may not go
+away--not for some time!"
+
+She was blushing again, just as she blushed when she admitted me. I
+thought once more of the fluttering cry, "Oh, please--please!" and the
+pause before she added the good-night, and my jealousy for Jim rose
+again.
+
+"Well," said I, rising, "all I can say is that I hope all will be safe
+when I return, and that you will find it quite possible to--remain. My
+advice is: do nothing looking toward leaving until I return."
+
+"Don't be cross with me, Mr. Barslow," said she, "for really, really--I
+am in great perplexity."
+
+"I am not cross," said I, "but don't you see how hard it is for me to
+advise? Things conflict so, and all among your friends!"
+
+"They do conflict," she assented, "they do conflict, every way, and all
+the time--and do, do give me a little credit for keeping the conflict
+from getting beyond control for so long; for there are conflicts within,
+as well as without! Don't blame Helen altogether, or me, whatever
+happens!"
+
+She hung on my arm, as she took me to the door, and seemed deeply
+troubled. I left her, and walked several times around the block,
+ruminating upon the extraordinary way in which these dissolving views of
+passion were displaying themselves to me. Not that the mere matter of
+outburst of confidences surprised me; for people all my life have bored
+me with their secret woes. I think it is because I early formed a habit
+of looking sympathetic. But these concerned me so nearly that their
+gradual focussing to some sort of climax filled me with anxious
+interest.
+
+The next day I spent in the sleeping-car, running into Chicago. As the
+clickety-_clack_, clickety-_clack_, clickety-_clack_ of the wheels
+vibrated through my couch, I pondered on the ridiculous position of that
+cautious Eastern bank as to the Fleischmann Brothers' failure; then on
+the Lattimore & Great Western and Belt Line sale; and finally worked
+around through the Straits of Sunda, in a suspicious lateen-rigged
+craft manned by Malays and Portuguese. Finally, I was horrified at
+discovering Cornish, in a slashed doublet, carrying Josie away in one of
+the boats, having scuttled the vessel and left Jim bound to the mast.
+
+"Chicago in fifteen minutes, suh," said the porter, at this critical
+point. "Just in time to dress, suh."
+
+And as I awoke, my approach toward New York brought to me a sickening
+consciousness of the struggle which awaited me there, and the fatal
+results of failure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+In which I Win my Great Victory.
+
+
+My plan was our old one--to see both Pendleton and Halliday, and, if
+possible, to allow both to know of the fact that we had two strings to
+our bow, playing the one off against the other. Whether or not there was
+any likelihood of this course doing any good was dependent on the
+existence of the strained personal relations, as well as the business
+rivalry, generally supposed to prevail between the two Titans of the
+highways. As conditions have since become, plans like mine are quite
+sure to come to naught; but in those days the community of interests in
+the railway world had not reached its present perfection of
+organization. Men like Pendleton and Halliday were preparing the way for
+it, but the personal equation was then a powerful factor in the problem,
+and these builders of their own systems still carried on their private
+wars with their own forces. In such a war our properties were important.
+
+The Lattimore & Great Western with the Belt Line terminals would make
+the Pendleton system dominant in Lattimore. In the possession of
+Halliday it would render him the arbiter of the city's fortunes, and
+would cut off from his rival's lines the rich business from this feeder.
+Both men were playing with the patience of Muscovite diplomacy the old
+and tried game of permitting the little road to run until it got into
+difficulties, and then swooping down upon it; but either, we thought,
+and especially Pendleton, would pay full value for the properties rather
+than see them fall into his opponent's net.
+
+I wired Pendleton's office from home that I was coming. At Chicago I
+received from his private secretary a telegram reading: "Mr. Pendleton
+will see you at any time after the 9th inst.                 SMITH."
+
+We had been having some correspondence with Mr. Halliday's office on
+matters of disputed switching and trackage dues. The controversy had
+gone up from subordinate to subordinate to the fountain of power itself.
+A contract had been sent on for examination, embodying a _modus vivendi_
+governing future relations. I had wired notice of my coming to him also,
+and his answer, which lay alongside Pendleton's in the same box, was
+evidently based on the supposition that it was this contract which was
+bringing me East, and was worded so as to relieve me of the journey if
+possible.
+
+"Will be in New York on evening of 11th," it read, "not before. With
+slight modifications, contract submitted as to L. & G. W. and Belt Line
+matter will be executed.                                   HALLIDAY."
+
+I spent no time in Chicago, but pushed on, in the respectable isolation
+of a through sleeper on a limited train. Once in a while I went forward
+into the day coach, to give myself the experience of the complete
+change in the social atmosphere. On arrival, I began killing time by
+running down every scrap of our business in New York. My gorge rose at
+all forms of amusement; but I had a sensation of doing something while
+on the cars, and went to Boston, and down to Philadelphia, all the time
+feeling the pulse of business. There was a lack of that confident
+hopefulness which greeted us on our former visits. I heard the
+Fleischmann failure spoken of rather frequently. One or two financial
+establishments on this side of the water were looked at askance because
+of their supposed connections with the Fleischmanns. Mr. Wade, in hushed
+tones, advised me to prepare for some little stringency after the
+holidays.
+
+"Nothing serious, you know, Mr. Borlish," said he, still paying his
+mnemonic tribute to the other names of our syndicate; "nothing to be
+spoken of as hard times; and as for panic, the financial world is too
+well organized for _that_ ever to happen again! But a little tightening
+of things, Mr. Cornings, to sort of clear the decks for action on lines
+of conservatism for the year's business."
+
+I talked with Mr. Smith, Mr. Pendleton's private secretary, and with Mr.
+Carson, who spoke for Mr. Halliday. In fact I went over the L. & G. W.
+proposition pretty fully with each of them, and each office had a
+well-digested and succinct statement of the matter for the examination
+of the magnates when they came back. Once while Mr. Carson and I were on
+our way to take luncheon together, we met Mr. Smith, and I was glad to
+note the glance of marked interest which he bestowed upon us. The
+meeting was a piece of unexpected good fortune.
+
+On the 10th I had my audience with Mr. Pendleton. He had the typewritten
+statement of the proposition before him, and was ready to discuss it
+with his usual incisiveness.
+
+"I am willing to say to you, Mr. Barslow," said he, "that we are willing
+to take over your line when the propitious time comes. We don't think
+that now is such a time. Why not run along as we are?"
+
+"Because we are not satisfied with the railroad business as a side line,
+Mr. Pendleton," said I. "We must have more mileage or none at all, and
+if we begin extensions, we shall be drawn into railroading as an
+exclusive vocation. We prefer to close out that department, and to put
+in all our energies to the development of our city."
+
+"When must you know about this?" he asked.
+
+"I came East to close it up, if possible," I answered. "You are familiar
+with the situation, and we thought must be ready to decide."
+
+"Two and a quarter millions," he objected, "is out of the question. I
+can't expect my directors to view half the price with any favor. How can
+I?"
+
+"Show them our earnings," I suggested.
+
+"Yes," said he, "that will do very well to talk to people who can be
+made to forget the fact that you've been building a city there from a
+country village, and your line has been pulling in everything to build
+it with. The next five years will be different. Again, while I feel sure
+the business men of your town will still throw things our way, as they
+have your way--tonnage I mean--there might be a tendency to divide it up
+more than when your own people were working for the trade. And the next
+five years will be different anyhow."
+
+"Do you remember," said I, "how skeptical you were as to the past five?"
+
+"I acknowledge it," said he, laughing. "The fact is I didn't give you
+credit for being as big men as you are. But even a big man, or a big
+town, can reach only as high as it can. But we can't settle that
+question. I shouldn't expect a Lattimore boomer ever to adopt my view of
+it. I shall give this matter some attention to-day, and while I feel
+sure we are too far apart ever to come together, come in in the morning,
+and we will look at it again."
+
+"I hope we may come together," said I, rising; "we built the line to
+bring you into Lattimore, and we want to keep you there. It has made our
+town, and we prize the connection highly."
+
+"Ah, yes," he answered, countering. "Well, we are spread out a good deal
+now, you know; and some of our directors look with suspicion upon your
+sudden growth, and would not feel sorry to withdraw. I don't agree with
+'em, you know, but I must defer to others sometimes. Good-morning."
+
+I passed the evening with Carson at the theatre, and supped with him
+afterward. He gave me every opportunity to indulge in champagne, and
+evinced a desire to know all about business conditions in Lattimore, and
+the affairs of the L. & G. W. I suspected that the former fact had some
+connection with the latter. I went to my hotel, however, in my usual
+state of ebriety, while Mr. Carson had attained a degree of friendliness
+toward me bordering on affection, as a direct result of setting the pace
+in the consumption of wine. I listened patiently to his complaints of
+Halliday's ungratefulness toward him in not giving him the General
+Managership of one of the associated roads; but when he began to confide
+to me the various pathological conditions of his family, including Mrs.
+Carson, I drew the line, and broke up the party. I retired, feeling a
+little resentful toward Carson. His device seemed rather cheap to try on
+a full-grown man. Yet his entertainment had been undeniably good.
+
+Next morning I was admitted to the presence of the great man with less
+than half an hour's delay. He turned to me, and plunged at once into the
+midst of the subject. Evidently some old misunderstanding of the
+question came up in his mind by association of ideas, as a rejected
+paper will be drawn with its related files from a pigeon-hole.
+
+"That terminal charge," said he, "has not counted for much against the
+success of your road, yet; but the contract provides for increasing
+rentals, and it is already too much. The trackage and depots aren't
+worth it. It will be a millstone about your necks!"
+
+"Well," said I, "you can understand the reason for making the rentals
+high. We had to show revenue for the Belt Line system in order to float
+the bonds, but the rentals become of no consequence when once you own
+both properties--and that's our proposal to you."
+
+"Oh, yes!" said he, and at once changed the subject.
+
+This was the only instance, in all my observation of him, in which he
+forgot anything, or failed correctly to see the very core of the
+situation. I felt somehow elated at being for a moment his superior in
+any respect.
+
+We began discussing rates and tonnage, and he sent for his freight
+expert again. I took from my pocket some letters and telegrams and made
+computations on the backs of them. Some of these figures he wanted to
+keep for further reference.
+
+"Please let me have those figures until this afternoon," said he. "I
+must ask you to excuse me now. At two I'll give the matter another
+half-hour. Come back, Mr. Barslow, prepared to name a reasonable sum,
+and I will accept or reject, and finish the matter."
+
+I left the envelopes on his desk and went out. At the hotel I sat down
+to think out my program and began arranging things for my departure. Was
+it the 11th or the 12th that Mr. Halliday was to return? I would look at
+his message. I turned over all my telegrams, but it was gone.
+
+Then I thought. That was the telegram I had left with Pendleton! Would
+he suspect that I had left it as a trick, and resent the act? No, this
+was scarcely likely, for he himself had asked for it. Suddenly the
+construction of which it was susceptible flashed into my mind. "With
+slight modifications contract submitted as to L. & G. W. and Belt Line
+matter will be executed.                                   HALLIDAY."
+
+I was feverish until two o'clock; for I could not guess the effect of
+this telegram, should it be read by Pendleton. I found him impassive and
+keen-eyed, and I waited longer than usual for that aquiline swoop of
+his, as he turned in his revolving chair. I felt sure then that he had
+not read the message. I think differently now.
+
+"Well, Mr. Barslow," said he smilingly, "how far down in the millions
+are we to-day?"
+
+"Mr. Pendleton," I replied, steady as to tone, but with a quiver in my
+legs, "I can say nothing less than an even two millions."
+
+"It's too much," said he cheerfully, and my heart sank, "but I like
+Lattimore, and you men who live there, and I want to stay in the town.
+I'll have the legal department prepare a contract covering the whole
+matter of transfers and future relations, and providing for the price
+you mention. You can submit it to your people, and in a short time I
+shall be in Chicago, and, if convenient to you, we can meet there and
+close the transaction. As a matter of form, I shall submit it to our
+directors; but you may consider it settled, I think."
+
+"One of our number," said I, as calmly as if a two-million-dollar
+transaction were common at Lattimore, "can meet you in Chicago at any
+time. When will this contract be drawn?"
+
+"Call to-morrow morning--say at ten. Show them in," this last to his
+clerk, "Good-morning, Mr. Barslow."
+
+One doesn't get as hilarious over a victory won alone as when he goes
+over the ramparts touching elbows with his charging fellows. The hurrah
+is a collective interjection. So I went in a sober frame of mind and
+telegraphed Jim and Alice of my success, cautioning my wife to say
+nothing about it. Then I wandered about New York, contrasting my way of
+rejoicing with the demonstration when we three had financed the
+Lattimore & Great Western bonds. I went to a vaudeville show and
+afterward walked miles and miles through the mysteries of the night in
+that wilderness. I was unutterably alone. The strain of my solitary
+mission in the great city was telling upon me.
+
+"Telegram for you, Mr. Barslow," said the night clerk, as I applied for
+my key.
+
+It was a long message from Jim, and in cipher. I slowly deciphered it,
+my initial anxiety growing, as I progressed, to an agony.
+
+"Come home at once," it read. "Cornish deserting. Must take care of the
+hound's interest somehow. Threatens litigation. A hold-up, but he has
+the drop. Am in doubt whether to shoot him now or later. Stop at
+Chicago, and bring Harper. Bring him, understand? Unless Pendleton deal
+is made, this means worse things than we ever dreamed of; but don't
+wait. Leave Pendleton for later, and come home. If I follow my
+inclinations, you will find me in jail for murder.           ELKINS."
+
+All night I sat, turning this over in my mind. Was it ruin, or would my
+success here carry us through? Without a moment's sleep I ate my
+breakfast, braced myself with coffee, engaged a berth for the return
+journey, and promptly presented myself at Pendleton's office at ten.
+Wearily we went over the precious contract, and I took my copy and
+left.
+
+All that day I rode in a sort of trance, in which I could see before my
+eyes the forms of the hosts of those whom Jim had called "the captives
+below decks," whose fortunes were dependent upon whether we striving,
+foolish, scheming, passionate men went to the wall. A hundred times I
+read in Jim's telegram the acuteness of our crisis; and a sense of our
+danger swept dauntingly over my spirit. A hundred times I wished that I
+might awake and find that the whole thing--Aladdin and his ring, the
+palaces, gnomes, genies, and all--could pass away like a tale that is
+told, and leave me back in the rusty little town where it found me.
+
+I slept heavily that night, and was very much much more myself when I
+went to see Harper in Chicago. He had received a message from Jim, and
+was ready to go. He also had one for me, sent in his care, and just
+arrived.
+
+"You have saved the fight," said the message; "your success came just as
+they were counting nine on us. With what you have done we can beat the
+game yet. Bring Harper, and come on."
+
+Harper, cool and collected, big and blonde, with a hail-fellow-well-met
+manner which spoke eloquently of the West, was a great comfort to me. He
+made light of the trouble.
+
+"Cornish is no fool," said he, "and he isn't going to saw off the limb
+he stands on."
+
+I tried to take this view of it; but I knew, as he did not, the real
+source of the enmity between Elkins and Cornish, and my fears returned.
+Business differences might be smoothed over; but with two such men, the
+quarrel of rivals in love meant nothing but the end of things between
+them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+The "Dutchman's Mill" and What It Ground.
+
+
+We sat in conclave about the table. I saw by the lined faces of Elkins
+and Hinckley that I had come back to a closely-beleaguered camp, where
+heavy watching had robbed the couch of sleep, and care pressed down the
+spirit. I had returned successful, but not to receive a triumph: rather,
+Harper and myself constituted a relief force, thrown in by stratagem,
+too weak to raise the siege, but bearing glad tidings of strong succor
+on the way.
+
+It was our first full meeting without Cornish; and Harper sat in his
+place. He was unruffled and buoyant in manner, in spite of the stock in
+the Grain Belt Trust Company which he held, and the loans placed with
+his insurance company by Mr. Hinckley.
+
+"I believe," said he, "that we are here to consider a communication from
+Mr. Cornish. It seems that we ought to hear the letter."
+
+"I'll read it in a minute," said Jim, "but first let me say that this
+grows out of a talk between Mr. Cornish and myself. Hinckley and Barslow
+know that there have been differences between us here for some time."
+
+"Quite natural," said Harper; "according to all the experience-tables,
+you ought to have had a fight somewhere in the crowd long before this."
+
+"Mr. Cornish," went on Mr. Elkins, "has favored the policy of converting
+our holdings into cash, and letting the obligations we have floated
+stand solely on the assets by which they are secured. The rest of us
+have foreseen such rapid liquidation, as a certain result of such a
+policy, that not only would our town receive a blow from which it could
+never recover, but the investment world would suffer in the collapse."
+
+"I should say so," said Harper; "we'll have to look closely to the
+suicide clause in our policies held in New England, if that takes
+place!"
+
+"Well," said Jim, continuing, "last Tuesday the matter came to an issue
+between us, and some plain talk was indulged in; perhaps the language
+was a little strong on my part, and Mr. Cornish considered himself
+aggrieved, and said, among other things, that he, for one, would not
+submit to extinguishment, and he would show me that I could not go on in
+opposition to his wishes."
+
+"What did you say to that?" asked Hinckley.
+
+"I informed him," said Jim, "that I was from Missouri, or words to that
+effect; and that my own impression was, the majority of the stock in our
+concerns would control. My present view is that he's showing me."
+
+A ghost of a smile went round at this, and Jim began reading Cornish's
+letter.
+
+"Events of the recent past convince me," the secessionist had written,
+"that no good can come from the further continuance of our syndicate. I
+therefore propose to sell all my interest in our various properties to
+the other members, and to retire. Should you care to consider such a
+thing, I am prepared to make you an alternative offer, to buy your
+interests. As the purchase of three shares by one is a heavier load than
+the taking over of one share by three, I should expect to buy at a lower
+proportional price than I should be willing to sell for. As the
+management of our enterprises seems to have abandoned the tried
+principles of business, for some considerations the precise nature of
+which I am not acute enough to discern, and as a sale to me would balk
+the very benevolent purposes recently avowed by you, I assume that I
+shall not be called upon to make an offer.
+
+"There is at least one person among those to whom this is addressed who
+knows that in beginning our operations in Lattimore it was understood
+that we should so manage affairs as to promote and take advantage of a
+bulge in values, and then pull out with a profit. Just what may be his
+policy when this reaches him I cannot, after my experience with his
+ability as a lightning change artist, venture to predict; but my last
+information leads me to believe that he is championing the utopian plan
+of running the business, not only past the bulge, but into the slump. I,
+for one, will not permit my fortune to be jeopardized by so palpable a
+piece of perfidy.
+
+"I may be allowed to add that I am prepared to take such measures as may
+seem to my legal advisers best to protect my interests. I am assured
+that the funds of one corporation will not be permitted by the courts
+to be donated to the bolstering up of another, over the protest of a
+minority stockholder. You may confidently assume that this advice will
+be tested to the utmost before the acts now threatened are permitted to
+be actually done.
+
+"I attach hereto a schedule of our holdings, with the amount of my
+interest in each, and the price I will take. I trust that I may have an
+answer to this at your earliest convenience. I beg to add that any great
+delay in answering will be taken by me as a refusal on your part to do
+anything, and I shall act accordingly.
+
+                                    "Very respectfully,
+                                            "J. Bedford Cornish."
+
+"Huh!" ejaculated Harper, "would he do it, d'ye think?"
+
+"He's a very resolute man," said Hinckley.
+
+"He calculates," said Jim, "that if he begins operations, he can have
+receiverships and things of that kind in his interest, and in that way
+swipe the salvage. On the other hand, he must know that his loss would
+be proportioned to ours, and would be great. He's sore, and that counts
+for something. I figure that the chances are seven out of ten that he'll
+do it--and that's too strong a game for us to go up against."
+
+"What would be the worst that could happen if he began proceedings?"
+said I.
+
+"The worst," answered Jim laconically. "I don't say, you know," he went
+on after a pause, "that Cornish hasn't some reason for his position.
+From a cur's standpoint he's entirely right. We didn't anticipate the
+big way in which things have worked out here, nor how deep our roots
+would strike; and we did intend to cash in when the wave came. And a cur
+can't understand our position in the light of these developments. He
+can't see that in view of the number of people sucked down with her when
+a great ship like ours sinks, nobody but a murderer would needlessly see
+her wrecked. What he proposes is to scuttle her. Sell to him! I'd as
+soon sell Vassar College to Brigham Young!"
+
+This tragic humorousness had the double effect of showing us the
+dilemma, and taking the edge off the horror of it.
+
+"If it were my case," said Harper, "I'd call him. I don't believe he'll
+smash things; but you fellows know each other best, and I'm here to give
+what aid and comfort I can, and not to direct. I accept your judgment as
+to the danger. Now let's do business. I've got to get back to Chicago by
+the next train, and I want to go feeling that my stock in the Grain Belt
+Trust Company is an asset and not a liability. Let's do business."
+
+"As for going back on the next train," said Mr. Elkins, "you've got
+another guess coming: this one was wrong. As for doing business, the
+first thing in my opinion is to examine the items of this bill of
+larceny, and see about scaling them down."
+
+"We might be able," said I, "to turn over properties instead of cash,
+for some of it."
+
+Elkins appointed Harper and Hinckley to do the negotiating with
+Cornish. It was clear, he said, that neither he nor I was the proper
+person to act. They soon went out on their mission and left me with Jim.
+
+"Do you see what a snowfall we've had?" he asked. "It fell deeper and
+deeper, until I thought it would never stop. No such sleighing for
+years. And funny as it may seem, it was that that brought on this
+crisis. Josie and I went sleighing, and the hound was furious. Next time
+we met he started this business going."
+
+I was studying the schedule, and said nothing. After a while he began
+talking again, in a slow manner, as if the words came lagging behind a
+labored train of thought.
+
+"Remember the mill the Dutchman had?... Ground salt, and nothing but
+salt ... Ours won't grind anything but mortgages ... Well, the hair of
+the dog must cure the bite ... Fight fire with fire ... _Similia
+similibus curantur_ ... We can't trade horses, nor methods, in the
+middle of the ford.... The mill has got to go on grinding mortgages
+until we're carried over; and Hinckley and the Grain Belt Trust must
+float 'em. Of course the infernal mill ground salt until it sent the
+whole shooting-match to the bottom of the sea; but you mustn't be misled
+by analogies. The Dutchman hadn't any good old Al to lose telegrams in
+an absent-minded way where they would do the most good, and sell
+railroads to old man Pendleton ... As for us, it's the time-worn case of
+electing between the old sheep and the lamb. We'll take the adult
+mutton, and go the whole hog ... And if we lose, the tail'll have to go
+with the hide.... But we won't lose, Al, we won't lose. There isn't
+treason enough in all the storehouses of hell to balk or defeat us. It's
+a question of courage and resolution and confidence, and imparting all
+those feelings to every one else. There isn't malice enough, even if it
+were a whole pack, instead of one lone hyena, to put out the fires in
+those furnaces over there, or stop the wheels in that flume, or make our
+streets grow grass. The things we've built are going to stay built, and
+the word of Lattimore will stand!"
+
+"My hand on that!" said I.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was little in the way of higgling: for Cornish proudly refused
+much to discuss matters; and when we found what we must pay to prevent
+the explosion, it sickened us. Jim strongly urged upon Harper the taking
+of Cornish's shares.
+
+"No," said Harper, "the Frugality and Indemnity is too good a thing to
+drop; and I can't carry both. But if you can show me how, within a short
+time, you can pay it back, I'll find you the cash you lack."
+
+We could not wait for the two millions from Pendleton; and the interim
+must be bridged over by any desperate means. We took, for the moment
+only, the funds advanced through Harper; and Cornish took his price.
+
+The day after Harper went away we were busy all day long, drawing notes
+and mortgages. Every unincumbered piece of our property, the orts,
+dregs, and offcast of our operations, were made the subjects of
+transfers to the rag-tag and bobtail of Lattimore society. A lot worth
+little or nothing was conveyed to Tom, Dick, or Harry for a great
+nominal price, and a mortgage for from two-thirds to three-fourths of
+the sum given back by this straw-man purchaser. Our mill was grinding
+mortgages.
+
+I do not expect that any one will say that this course was justified or
+justifiable; but, if anything can excuse it, the terrible difficulty of
+our position ought to be considered in mitigation, if not excuse.
+Pressed upon from without, and wounded by blows dealt in the dark from
+within; with dreadful failure threatening, and with brilliant success,
+and the averting of wide-spread calamity as the reward of only a little
+delay, we used the only expedient at hand, and fought the battle
+through. We were caught in the mighty swirl of a modern business
+maelstrom, and, with unreasoning reflexes, clutched at man or log
+indifferently, as we felt the waters rising over us; and broadcast all
+over the East were sown the slips of paper ground out by our mill,
+through the spout of the Grain Belt Trust Company; and wherever they
+fell they were seized upon by the banks, which had through years of
+experience learned to look upon our notes and bonds as good.
+
+"Past the bulge," quoted Jim, "and into the slump! We'll see what the
+whelp says when he finds that, in spite of all his attempts to scuttle,
+there isn't going to be any slump!"
+
+By which observation it will appear that, as our operations began to
+bring in returns in almost their old abundance, our courage rose. At the
+very last, some bank failures in New York, and a bad day on 'Change in
+Chicago, cut off the stream, and we had to ask Harper to carry over a
+part of the Frugality and Indemnity loan until we could settle with
+Pendleton; but this was a small matter running into only five figures.
+
+Perhaps it was because we saw only a part of the situation that our
+courage rose. We saw things at Lattimore with vivid clearness. But we
+failed to see that like centers of stress were sprinkled all over the
+map, from ocean to ocean; that in the mountains of the South were the
+Lattimores of iron, steel, coal, and the winter-resort boom; and in the
+central valleys were other Lattimores like ours; that among the peaks
+and canyons further west were the Lattimores of mines; that along the
+Pacific were the Lattimores of harbors and deep-water terminals; that
+every one of these Lattimores had in the East and in Europe its
+clientage of Barr-Smiths, Wickershams, and Dorrs, feeding the flames of
+the fever with other people's money; and that in every village and
+factory, town and city, where wealth had piled up, seeking investment,
+were the "captives below decks," who, in the complex machinery of this
+end-of-the-century life, were made or marred by the same influences
+which made or marred us.
+
+The low area had swept across the seas, and now rested on us. The clouds
+were charged with the thunder and lightning of disaster. Almost any
+accidental disturbance might precipitate a crash. Had we known all this,
+as we now know it, the consciousness of the tragical race we were
+running to reach the harbor of a consummated sale to Pendleton might
+have paralyzed our efforts. Sometimes one may cross in the dark, on
+narrow footing, a chasm the abyss of which, if seen, would dizzily draw
+one down to destruction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+The Beginning of the End.
+
+
+Court parties and court factions are always known to the populace, even
+down to the groom and scullions. So the defection of Cornish soon became
+a matter of gossip at bars, in stables, and especially about the desks
+of real-estate offices. Had it been a matter of armed internecine
+strife, the Elkins faction would have mustered an overwhelming majority;
+for Jim's bluff democratic ways, and his apparent identity of fibre with
+the mass of the people, would have made him a popular idol, had he been
+a thousand times a railroad president.
+
+While these rumors of a feud were floating about, Captain Tolliver went
+to Jim's office several times, dressed with great care, and sat in
+silence, and in stiff and formal dignity, for a matter of five minutes
+or so, and then retired, with the suggestion that if there was any way
+in which he could serve Mr. Elkins he should be happy.
+
+"Do you know," said Jim to me, "that I'm afraid Hamlet's 'bugs and
+goblins' are troubling Tolliver; in other words, that he's getting
+bughouse?"
+
+"No," said I; "while I haven't the slightest idea what ails him, you'll
+find that it's something quite natural for him when you get a full view
+of his case."
+
+Finally, Jim, in thanking him for his proffered assistance, inquired
+diplomatically after the thing which weighed upon the Captain's mind.
+
+"I may be mistaken, suh," said he, drawing himself up, and thrusting one
+hand into the tightly-buttoned breast of his black Prince Albert,
+"entiahly mistaken in the premises; but I have the impression that
+diffe'ences of a pussonal nature ah in existence between youahself and a
+gentleman whose name in this connection I prefuh to leave unmentioned.
+Such being the case, I assume that occasion may and naturally will arise
+foh the use of a friend, suh, who unde'stands the code--the code,
+suh--and is not without experience in affaiahs of honah. I recognize the
+fact that in cehtain exigencies nothing, by Gad, but pistols, ovah a
+measu'ed distance, meets the case. In such an event, suh, I shall be mo'
+than happy to suhve you; mo' than happy, by the Lord!"
+
+"Captain," said Jim feelingly, "you're a good fellow and a true friend,
+and I promise you I shall have no other second."
+
+"In that promise," replied the Captain gravely, "you confeh an honah,
+suh!"
+
+After this it was thought wise to permit the papers to print the story
+of Cornish's retirement; otherwise the Captain might have fomented an
+insurrection.
+
+"The reasons for this step on the part of Mr. Cornish are purely
+personal," said the _Herald_. "While retaining his feeling of interest
+in Lattimore, his desire to engage in certain broader fields of
+promotion and development in the tropics had made it seem to him
+necessary to lay down the work here which up to this time he has so well
+done. He will still remain a citizen of our city. On the other hand,
+while we shall not lose Mr. Cornish, we shall gain the active and
+powerful influence of Mr. Charles Harper, the president of the Frugality
+and Indemnity Life Insurance Company. It is thus that Lattimore rises
+constantly to higher prosperity, and wields greater and greater power.
+The remarkable activity lately noted in the local real-estate market,
+especially in the sales of unconsidered trifles of land at high prices,
+is to be attributed to the strengthening of conditions by these steps in
+the ascent of the ladder of progress."
+
+Cornish, however, was not without his partisans. Cecil Barr-Smith almost
+quarreled with Antonia because she struck Cornish off her books, Cecil
+insisting that he was an entirely decent chap. In this position Cecil
+was in accord with the clubmen of the younger sort, who had much in
+common with Cornish, and little with the overworked and busy railway
+president. Even Giddings, to me, seemed to remain unduly intimate with
+Cornish; but this did not affect the utterances of his paper, which
+still maintained what he called the policy of boost.
+
+The behavior of Josie, however, was enigmatical. Cornish's attentions to
+her redoubled, while Jim seemed dropped out of the race--and therefore
+my wife's relations with Miss Trescott were subjected to a severe
+strain. Naturally, being a matron, and of the age of thirty-odd years,
+she put on some airs with her younger friend, still in the chrysalis of
+maidenhood. Sometimes, in a sweet sort of a way, she almost domineered
+over her. On this Elkins-Cornish matter, however, Josie held her at
+arms' length, and refused to make her position plain; and Alice nursed
+that simulated resentment which one dear friend sometimes feels toward
+another, because of a real or imagined breach of the obligations of
+reciprocity.
+
+One night, as we sat about the grate in the Trescott library, some
+veiled insinuations on Alice's part caused a turning of the worm.
+
+"If there is anything you want to say, Alice," said Josie, "there seems
+to be no good reason why you shouldn't speak out. I have asked your
+advice--yours and Albert's--frequently, having really no one else to
+trust; and therefore I am willing to hear your reproof, if you have it
+for me. What is it?"
+
+"Oh, Josie," said I, seeking cover. "You are too sensitive. There isn't
+anything, is there, Alice?"
+
+Here I scowled violently, and shook my head at my wife; but all to no
+effect.
+
+"Yes, there is," said Alice. "We have a dear friend, the best in the
+world, and he has an enemy. The whole town is divided in allegiance
+between them, about nine on one side to one on the other--"
+
+"Which proves nothing," said Josie.
+
+"And now," Alice went on, "you, who have had every opportunity of
+seeing, and ought to know, that one of them is, in every look, and
+thought, and act, a _man_, while the other is--"
+
+"A friend of mine and of my mother's," said Josie; "please omit the
+character-sketch. And remember that I refuse even to consider these
+business differences. Each claims to be right; and I shall judge them by
+other things."
+
+"Business differences, indeed!" scoffed Alice, albeit a little impressed
+by the girl's dignity. "As if you did not know what these differences
+came from! But it isn't because you remain neutral that we com--"
+
+"_You_ complain, Alice," said I; "I am distinctly out of this."
+
+"That I complain, then," amended Alice reproachfully. "It is because you
+dismiss the _man_ and keep the--other! You may say I have no right to be
+heard in this, but I'm going to complain Josie Trescott, just the same!"
+
+This seemed to approach actual conflict, and I was frightened. Had it
+been two men, I should have thought nothing of it, but with women such
+differences cut deeper than with us. Josie stepped to her writing-desk
+and took from it a letter.
+
+"We may as well clear this matter up," said she, "for it has stood
+between us for a long time. I think that Mr. Elkins will not feel that
+any confidences are violated by my showing you this--you who have been
+my dearest friends--"
+
+She stopped for no reason, unless it was agitation.
+
+"Are," said I, "I hope, not 'have been.'"
+
+"Well," said she, "read the letter, and then tell me who has been
+'dismissed.'"
+
+I shrank from reading it; but Alice was determined to know all. It was
+dated the day before I left New York.
+
+"Dear Josie," it read, "I have told you so many times that I love you
+that it is an old story to you; yet I must say it once more. Until that
+night when we brought your father home, I was never able to understand
+why you would never say definitely yes or no to me; but I felt that you
+could not be expected to understand my feeling that the best years of
+our lives were wasting--you are so much younger than I--and so I hoped
+on. Sometimes I feared that somebody else stood in the way, and do fear
+it now, but that alone would have been a much simpler thing, and of that
+I could not complain. But on that fearful night you said something which
+hurt me more than anything else could, because it was an accusation of
+which I could not clear myself in the court of my own conscience--except
+so far as to say that I never dreamed of doing your father anything but
+good. Surely, surely you must feel this!
+
+"Since that time, however, you have been so kind to me that I have
+become sure that you see that terrible tragedy as I do, and acquit me of
+all blame, except that of blindly setting in motion the machinery which
+did the awful deed. This is enough for you to forgive, God knows; but I
+have thought lately that you had forgiven it. You have been very kind
+and good to me, and your presence and influence have made me look at
+things in a different way from that of years ago, and I am now doing
+things which ought to be credited to you, so far as they are good. As
+for the bad, I must bear the blame myself!"
+
+Thus far Alice had read aloud.
+
+"Don't, don't," said Josie, hiding her face. "Don't read it aloud,
+please!"
+
+"But now I am writing, not to explain anything which has taken place,
+but to set me right as to the future. You gave me reason to think, when
+we met, that I might have my answer. Things which I cannot explain have
+occurred, which may turn out very evilly for me, and for any one
+connected with me. Therefore, until this state of things passes, I shall
+not see you. I write this, not that I think you will care much, but that
+you may not believe that I have changed in my feelings toward you. If my
+time ever comes, and I believe it will, and that before very long, you
+will find me harder to dispose of without an answer than I have been in
+the past. I shall claim you in spite of every foe that may rise up to
+keep you from me. You may change, but I shall not.
+
+    "'Love is not love
+    Which alters when it alteration finds.'
+
+And mine will not alter. J. R. E."
+
+"My dear," said Alice very humbly, "I beg your pardon. I have misjudged
+you. Will you forgive me?"
+
+Josie came to take her letter, and, in lieu of other answer, stood with
+her arm about Alice's waist.
+
+"And now," said Alice, "have you no other confidences for us?"
+
+"No!" she cried, "no! there is nothing more! Nothing, absolutely
+nothing, believe me! But, now, confidence for confidence, Albert, what
+is this great danger? Is it anything for which any one here--for which I
+am to blame? Does it threaten any one else? Can't something be done
+about it? Tell me, tell me!"
+
+"I think," said I, "that the letter was written before my telegram from
+New York came, and after--some great difficulties came upon us. I don't
+believe he would have written it five hours later; and I don't believe
+he would have written it to any one in anything but the depression
+of--the feeling he has for you."
+
+"If that is true," said she, "why does he still avoid me? Why does he
+still avoid me? You have not told me all; or there is something you do
+not know."
+
+As we went home, Alice kept referring to Jim's letter, and was as much
+troubled by it as was Josie.
+
+"How do you explain it?" she asked.
+
+"I explain it," said I, "by ranging it with the well-known phenomenon of
+the love-sick youth of all lands and in every time, who revels in the
+thought of incurring danger or death, and heralding the fact to his
+loved one. Even Jim is not exempt from the feelings of the boy who
+rejoices in delicious tears at the thought of being found cold and dead
+on the doorstep of the cruel maiden of his dreams. And that letter, with
+a slight substratum of fact, is the result. Don't bother about it for a
+moment."
+
+This answer may not have been completely frank, or quite expressive of
+my views; but I was tired of the subject. It was hardly a time to play
+with mammets or to tilt with lips, and it seemed that the matter might
+wait. There was a good deal of the pettishness of nervousness among us
+at that time, and I had my full share of it. Insomnia was prevalent, and
+gray hairs increased and multiplied. The time was drawing near for our
+meeting with Pendleton in Chicago. We had advices that he was coming in
+from the West, on his return from a long journey of inspection, and
+would pass over his Pacific Division. We asked him to run down to
+Lattimore over our road, but Smith answered that the running schedule
+could not be altered.
+
+There seemed to be no reason for doubting that the proposed contract
+would be ratified; for the last desperate rally on our part appeared to
+have put a crash out of the question, for some time at least. To him
+that hath shall be given; and so long as we were supposed to possess
+power, we felt that we were safe. Yet the blow dealt by Cornish had
+maimed us, no matter how well we hid our hurt; and we were all too
+keenly conscious of the law of the hunt, by which it is the wounded
+buffalo which is singled out and dragged down by the wolves.
+
+On Wednesday Jim and I were to start for Chicago, where Mr. Pendleton
+would be found awaiting us. On Sunday the weather, which had been cold
+and snowy for weeks, changed; and it blew from the southeast, raw and
+chill, but thawy. All day Monday the warmth increased; and the farmers
+coming into town reported great ponds of water dammed up in the swales
+and hollows against the enormous snow-drifts. Another warm day, and
+these waters would break through, and the streams would go free in
+freshets. Tuesday dawned without a trace of frost, and still the strong
+warm wind blew; but now it was from the east, and as I left the carriage
+to enter my office I was wet by a scattering fall of rain. In a few
+moments, as I dictated my morning's letters, my stenographer called
+attention to the beating on the window of a strong and persistent
+downpour.
+
+Elkins, too much engrossed in his thoughts to be able to confine himself
+to the details of his business, came into my office, where, sometimes
+sitting and sometimes walking uneasily about, he seemed to get some sort
+of comfort from my presence. He watched the rain, as one seeing visions.
+
+"By morning," said he, "there ought to be ducks in Alderson's pond.
+Can't we do our chores early and get into the blind before daylight, and
+lay for 'em?"
+
+"I heard Canada geese honking overhead last night," said I.
+
+"What time last night?"
+
+"Two o'clock."
+
+"Well, that lets us out on the Alderson's pond project," said he; "the
+boys who hunted there weren't out walking at two. In those days they
+slept. It can't be that we're the fellows.... Why, there's Antonia,
+coming in through the rain!"
+
+"I wonder," said I, "if la grippe isn't taking a bad turn with her
+father."
+
+She came in, shedding the rain from her mackintosh like a water-fowl,
+radiant with health and the air of outdoors.
+
+"Gentlemen," said she gaily, "who but myself would come out in anything
+but a diving-suit to-day!"
+
+"It's almost an even thing," said Jim, "between a calamity, which brings
+you, and good fortune, which keeps you away. I hope it's only your
+ordinary defiance of the elements."
+
+"The fact is," said she, "that it's a very funny errand. But don't laugh
+at me if it's absurd, please. It's about Mr. Cornish."
+
+"Yes!" said Jim, "what of him?"
+
+"You know papa has been kept in by la grippe for a day or so," she went
+on, "and we haven't been allowing people to see him very much; but Mr.
+Cornish has been in two or three times, and every time when he went away
+papa was nervous and feverish. To-day, after he left, papa asked--" here
+she looked at Mr. Elkins, as he stood gravely regarding her, and went on
+with redder cheeks--"asked me some questions, which led to a long talk
+between us, in which I found out that he has almost persuaded papa
+to--to change his business connections completely."
+
+"Yes!" said Jim. "Change, how?"
+
+"Why, that I didn't quite understand," said Antonia, "except that there
+was logwood and mahogany and Mexico in it, and--and that he had made
+papa feel very differently toward you. After what has taken place
+recently I knew that was wrong--you know papa is not as firm in his
+ideas as he used to be; and I felt that he--and you, were in danger,
+somehow. At first I was afraid of being laughed at--why, I'd rather
+you'd laugh at me than to look like _that_!"
+
+"You're a good girl, Antonia," said Jim, "and have done the right thing,
+and a great favor to us. Thank you very much; and please excuse me a
+moment while I send a telegram. Please wait until I come back."
+
+"No, I'm going, Albert," said she, when he was gone to his own office.
+"But first you ought to know that man told papa something--about me."
+
+"How do you know about this?" said I.
+
+"Papa asked me--if I had--any complaints to make--of Mr. Elkins's
+treatment of me! What do you suppose he dared to tell him?"
+
+"What did you tell your father?" I asked.
+
+"What could I tell him but 'No'?" she exclaimed. "And I just had a
+heart-to-heart talk with papa about Mr. Cornish and the way he has
+acted; and if his fever hadn't begun to run up so, I'd have got the
+rubber, or Peruvian-bark idea, or whatever it was, entirely out of his
+mind. Poor papa! It breaks my heart to see him changing so! And so I
+gave him a sleeping-capsule, and came down through this splendid rain;
+and now I'm going! But, mind, this last is a secret."
+
+And so she went away.
+
+"Where's Antonia?" asked Jim, returning.
+
+"Gone," said I.
+
+"I wanted to talk further about this matter."
+
+"I don't like it, Jim. It means that the cruel war is not over."
+
+"Wait until we pass Wednesday," said Jim, "and we'll wring his neck.
+What a poisonous devil, to try and wean from us, to his ruin, an old man
+in his dotage!--I wish Antonia had stayed. I went out to set the boys
+wiring for news of washouts between here and Chicago. We mustn't miss
+that trip, if we have to start to-night. This rain will make trouble
+with the track.--No, I don't like it, either. Wasn't it thoughtful of
+Antonia to come down! We can line Hinckley up all right, now we know it;
+but if it had gone on--we can't stand a third solar-plexus blow...."
+
+The sky darkened, until we had to turn on the lights, and the rain fell
+more and more heavily. Once or twice there were jarring rolls of distant
+thunder. To me there was something boding and ominous in the weather.
+The day wore on interminably in the quiet of a business office under
+such a sky. Elkins sent in a telegram which he had received that no
+trouble with water was looked for along our way to Chicago, which was by
+the Halliday line. As the dark day was lowering down to its darker
+close, I went into President Elkins's office to take him home with me.
+As I entered through my private door, I saw Giddings coming in through
+the outer entrance.
+
+"Say," said he, "I wanted to see you two together. I know you have some
+business with Pendleton, and you've promised the boys a story for
+Thursday or Friday. Now, you've been a little sore on me because I
+haven't absolutely cut Cornish."
+
+"Not at all," said Jim. "You must have a poor opinion of our
+intelligence."
+
+"Well, you had no cause to feel that way," he went on, "because, as a
+newspaperman, I'm supposed to have few friends and no enemies. Besides,
+you can't tell what a man might sink to, deprived all at once of the
+friendship of three such men as you fellows!"
+
+"Quite right," said I; "but get to the point."
+
+"I'm getting to it," said he. "I violate no confidence when I say that
+Cornish has got it in for your crowd in great shape. The point is
+involved in that. I don't know what your little game is with old
+Pendleton, but whatever it is, Cornish thinks he can queer it, and at
+the same time reap some advantages from the old man, if he can have a
+few minutes' talk with Pen before you do. And he's going to do it, if he
+can. Now, I figure, with my usual correctness of ratiocination, that
+your scheme is going to be better for the town, and therefore for the
+_Herald_, than his, and hence this disclosure, which I freely admit has
+some of the ear-marks of bad form. Not that I blame Cornish, or am
+saying anything against him, you know. His course is ideally Iagoan: he
+stands in with Pendleton, benefits himself, and gets even with you all
+at one fell--"
+
+"Stop this chatter!" cried Jim, flying at him and seizing him by the
+collar. "Tell me how you know this, and how much you know!"
+
+"My God!" said Giddings, his lightness all departed, "is it as vital as
+that? He told me himself. Said it was something he wouldn't put on paper
+and must tell Pendleton by word of mouth, and he's on the train that
+just pulled out for Chicago."
+
+"He'll beat us there by twelve hours," said I, "and he can do all he
+threatens! Jim, we're gone!"
+
+Elkins leaped to the telephone and rang it furiously. There was the ring
+of command sounding through the clamor of desperate and dubious conflict
+in his voice.
+
+"Give me the L. & G. W. dispatcher's office, quick!" said he. "I can't
+remember the number ... it's 420, four, two, naught. Is this Agnew? This
+is Elkins talking. Listen! Without a moment's delay, I want you to find
+out when President Pendleton's special, east-bound on his Pacific
+Division, passes Elkins Junction. I'm at my office, and will wait for
+the information here.... Don't let me wait long, please, understand?
+And, say! Call Solan to the 'phone.... Is this Solan? Mr. Solan, get out
+the best engine you've got in the yards, couple to it a caboose, and put
+on a crew to make a run to Elkins Junction, as quick as God'll let you!
+Do you understand? Give me Schwartz and his fireman.... Yes, and
+Corcoran, too. Andy, this is a case of life and death--of life and
+death, do you understand? See that the line's clear, and no stops. I've
+got to connect east at Elkins Junction with a special on that line....
+_Got to_, d'ye see? Have the special wait at the State Street crossing
+until we come aboard!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+That Last Weird Battle in the West.
+
+
+There was still some remnant of daylight left when we stepped from a
+closed carriage at the State Street crossing and walked to the train
+prepared for us. The rain had all but ceased, and what there was came
+out of some northern quarter of the heavens mingled with stinging
+pellets of sleet, driven by a fierce gale. The turn of the storm had
+come, and I was wise enough in weather-lore to see that its rearguard
+was sweeping down upon us in all the bitterness of a winter's tempest.
+
+Beyond the tracks I could see the murky water of Brushy Creek racing
+toward the river under the State Street bridge.
+
+"I believe," said I, "that the surface-water from above is showing the
+flow from the flume."
+
+"Yes," said Jim absently, "it must be about ready to break up. I hope we
+can get out of the valley before dark."
+
+The engine stood ready, the superabundant power popping off in a
+deafening hiss. The fireman threw open the furnace-door and stoked the
+fire as we approached. Engineer Schwartz, the same who had pulled us
+over the road that first trip, was standing by his engine, talking with
+our old conductor, Corcoran.
+
+"Here's a message for you, Mr. Elkins," said Corcoran, handing Jim a
+yellow paper, "from Agnew."
+
+We read it by Corcoran's lantern, for it was getting dusky for the
+reading of telegraph operator's script.
+
+"Water out over bottoms from Hinckley to the Hills," so went the
+message. "Flood coming down valley. Snow and drifting wind reported from
+Elkins Junction and Josephine. Look out for washouts, and culverts and
+bridges damaged by running ice and water. Pendleton special fully up to
+running schedule, at Willow Springs."
+
+"Who've you got up there, Schwartz? Oh, is that you, Ole?" said Mr.
+Elkins. "Good! Boys, to-night our work has got to be done in time, or we
+might as well go to bed. It's a case of four aces or a four-flush, and
+no intermediate stations. Mr. Pendleton's special will pass the Junction
+right around nine--not ten minutes either way. Get us there before that.
+If you can do it safely, all right; but get us there. And remember that
+the regular rule in railroading is reversed to-night, and we are ready
+to take any chance rather than miss--_any_ chances, mind!"
+
+"We're ready and waiting, Mr. Elkins," said Schwartz, "but you'll have
+to get on, you know. Looks like there was time enough if we keep the
+wheels turning, but this snow and flood business may cut some figure.
+_Any_ chances, I believe you said, sir. All right! Ready when you are,
+Jack."
+
+"All aboard!" sang out Corcoran, and with a commonplace ding-dong of
+the bell, and an every-day hiss of steam, which seemed, somehow, out of
+keeping with the fearful and unprecedented exigency now upon us, we
+moved out through the yards, jolting over the frogs, out upon the main
+line; and soon began to feel a cheering acceleration in the recurrent
+sounds and shocks of our flight, as Schwartz began rolling back the
+miles under his flying wheels.
+
+We sat in silence on the oil-cloth cushions of the seats which ran along
+the sides of the caboose. Corcoran, the only person who shared the car
+with us, seemed to have some psychical consciousness of the peril which
+weighed down upon us, and moved quietly about the car, or sat in the
+cupola, as mute as we.
+
+There was no need for speech between my friend and me. Our minds,
+strenuously awake, found a common conclusion in the very nature of the
+case. Both doubtless had considered and rejected the idea of
+telegraphing Pendleton to wait for us at the Junction. No king upon his
+throne was more absolute than Avery Pendleton, and to ask him to waste a
+single quarter-hour of his time might give great offense to him whom we
+desired to find serene and complaisant. Again, any apparent anxiety for
+haste, any symptom of an attempt to rush his line of defenses, would
+surely defeat its object. No, we must quietly and casually board his
+train, and secure the signing of the contract before we reached Chicago,
+if possible.
+
+"You brought that paper, Al?" said Jim, as if my thoughts had been
+audible to him.
+
+"Yes," said I, "it's here."
+
+"I think we'd better be on our way to St. Louis," said he. "He can
+hardly refuse to oblige us by going through the form of signing, so as
+to let us turn south at the river."
+
+"Very well," said I, "St. Louis--yes."
+
+Out past the old Trescott farm, now covered with factories, cottages,
+and railway tracks, leaving Lynhurst Park off to our left, curving with
+the turnings of Brushy Creek Valley, through which our engineers had
+found such easy grades, dropping the straggling suburbs of the city
+behind us, we flew along the rails in the waning twilight of this
+grewsome day. On the windward windows and the roof rattled fierce
+flights of sleet and showers of cinders from the engine. Occasionally we
+felt the car sway in the howling gusts of wind, as we passed some
+opening in the hills and neared the more level prairie. Stories of cars
+blown from the rails flitted through my mind; and in contemplating such
+an accident my thoughts busied themselves with the details of plans for
+getting free from the wrecked car, and pushing on with the engine, the
+derailing of which somehow never occurred to me.
+
+"We're slowing down!" cried Jim, after a half-hour's run. "I wonder
+what's the matter!"
+
+"For God's sake, look ahead!" yelled Corcoran, leaping down from the
+cupola and springing to the door. We followed him to the platform, and
+each of us ran down on the step and, swinging out by the hand-rail,
+peered ahead into the dusk, the sleet stinging our cheeks like shot.
+
+We were running along the right bank of the stream, at a point where the
+valley narrowed down to perhaps sixty rods of bottom. At the first dim
+look before us we could see nothing unusual, except that the background
+of the scene looked somehow as if lifted by a mirage. Then I noticed
+that up the valley, instead of the ghostly suggestions of trees and
+hills which bounded the vista in other directions, there was an
+appearance like that seen on looking out to sea.
+
+"The flood!" said Jim. "He's not going to stop, is he Corcoran?"
+
+At this moment came at once the explanation of Schwartz's hesitation and
+the answer to Jim's question. We saw, reaching clear across the narrow
+bottom, a great wave of water, coming down the valley like a liquid
+wall, stretching across the track and seeming to forbid our further
+progress, while it advanced deliberately upon us, as if to drown engine
+and crew. Driven on by the terrific gale, it boiled at its base, and
+curled forward at its foamy and wind-whipped crest, as if the upper
+waters were impatient of the slow speed of those below. Beyond the wave,
+the valley, from bluff to bluff, was a sea, rolling white-capped waves.
+Logs, planks, and the other flotsam of a freshet moved on in the van of
+the flood.
+
+It looked like the end of our run. What engineer would dare to dash on
+at such speed over a submerged track--possibly floated from its bed,
+possibly barricaded by driftwood? Was not the wave high enough to put
+out the fires and kill the engine? As we met the roaring eagre we felt
+the engine leap, as Schwartz's hesitation left him and he opened the
+throttle. Like knight tilting against knight, wave and engine met. There
+was a hissing as of the plunging of a great red-hot bar into a vat. A
+roaring sheet of water, thrown into the air by our momentum, washed cab
+and tender and car, as a billow pours over a laboring ship; and we stood
+on the steps, drenched to the skin, the water swirling about our ankles
+as we rushed forward. Then we heard the scream of triumph from the
+whistle, with which Schwartz cheered us as the dripping train ran on
+through shallower and shallower water, and turning, after a mile or so,
+began climbing, dry-shod, the grade which led from the flooded valley
+and out upon the uplands.
+
+"Come in, Mr. Elkins," said Corcoran. "You'll both freeze out there, wet
+as you are."
+
+Not until I heard this did I realize that we were still standing on the
+steps, our clothes congealing about us, peering through the now dense
+gloom ahead, as if for the apparition of some other grisly foe to daunt
+or drive us back.
+
+We went in, and sat down by the roaring fire, in spite of which a chill
+pervaded the car. We were now running over the divide between the valley
+we had just left and that of Elk Fork. Up here on the highlands the wind
+more than ever roared and clutched at the corners of the car, and
+sometimes, as with the palm of a great hand, pressed us over, as if a
+giant were striving to overturn us. We could hear the engine struggling
+with the savage norther, like a runner breathing hard, as he nears
+exhaustion. Presently I noticed fine particles of snow, driven into the
+car at the crevices, falling on my hands and face, and striking the hot
+stove with little hissing explosions of steam.
+
+"We're running into a blizzard up here," said Corcoran. "It's a terror
+outside."
+
+"A terror; yes," said Jim. "What sort of time are we making?"
+
+"Just about holding our own," said Corcoran. "Not much to spare. Got to
+stop at Barslow for water. But there won't be any bad track from there
+on. This snow won't cut any figure for three hours yet, and mebbe not at
+all, there's so little of it."
+
+"Kittrick has been asking for an appropriation to rebuild the Elk Fork
+trestle," said Jim. "Will it stand this flood?"
+
+"Well," said Corcoran, "if the water ain't too high, and the ice don't
+run too swift in the Fork, it'll be all right. But if there's any such
+mixture of downpour and thaw as there was along the Creek back there, we
+may have to jump across a gap. It'll probably be all right."
+
+I remembered the Elk Fork, and the trestle just on the hither side of
+the Junction. I remembered the valley, green with trees, and populous
+with herds, winding down to the lake, and the pretty little town of
+Josephine. I remembered that gala day when we christened it. I groaned
+in spirit, as I thought of finding the trestle gone, after our
+hundred-and-fifty-mile dash through storm and flood. Yet I believed it
+would be gone. The blows showered upon us had beaten down my courage. I
+felt no shrinking from either struggle or danger; but this was merely
+the impulse which impels the soldier to fight on in despair, and sell
+his life dearly. I believed that ruin fronted us all; that our great
+system of enterprises was going down; that, East and West, where we had
+been so much courted and admired, we should become a by-word and a
+hissing. The elements were struggling against us. That vengeful flood
+had snatched at us, and barely missed; the ruthless hurricane was
+holding us back; and somehow fate would yet find means to lay us low. I
+had all day kept thinking of the lines:
+
+    "Nor ever yet had Arthur fought a fight
+    Like this last dim, weird battle of the west.
+    A death-white mist slept over land and sea:
+    Whereof the chill, to him who breathed it, drew
+    Down to his blood, till all his heat was cold
+    With formless fear: and even on Arthur fell
+    Confusion, since he saw not whom he fought."
+
+And this, thought I, was the end of the undertaking upon which we had
+entered so lightly, with frolic jests of piracy and Spanish galleons and
+pieces-of-eight, and with all that mock-seriousness with which we
+discussed hypnotic suggestion and psychic force! The bitterness grew
+sickening, as Corcoran, hearing the long whistle of the engine, said
+that we were coming into Barslow. The tragic foolery of giving that name
+to any place!
+
+Out upon the platform here, in the blinding whirl of snow. The night
+operator came out and talked to us of the news of the line, while the
+engine ran on to the tank for water. There was another telegram from
+Agnew, saying that the Pendleton special was on time, and that Mr.
+Kittrick was following us with another train "in case of need."
+
+The operator was full of wild stories of the Brushy Creek flood, caused
+by the thaw and the cloudburst. We cut him short in this narration, and
+asked him of the conditions along the Elk Fork.
+
+"She's up and boomin'," said he. "The trestle was most all under water
+an hour ago, and they say the ice was runnin' in blocks. You may find
+the track left without any underpinnin'. Look out for yourselves."
+
+"Al," said Jim slowly, "can you fire an engine?"
+
+"I guess so," said I, seeing his meaning dimly. "Why?"
+
+"Al," said he, as if stating the conclusion of a complicated
+calculation, "we must run this train in alone!"
+
+I saw his intent fully, and knew why he walked so resolutely up to the
+engine, now backed down to take us on again. Schwartz leaned out of his
+cab, a man of snow and ice. Ole stood with his shovel in his hand white
+and icy like his brother worker. Both had been drenched, as we had; but
+they had had no red-hot stove by which to sit; and buffeted by the
+blizzard and powdered by the snow, they had endured the benumbing cold
+of the hurricane-swept cab.
+
+"Get down here, boys," said Jim. "I want to talk with you."
+
+Ole leaped lightly down, followed by Schwartz, who hobbled laboriously,
+stiffened with cold. Youth and violent labor had kept the fireman warm.
+
+"Schwartz," said Jim, "there is a chance that we'll find the trestle
+weakened and dangerous. We'll stop and examine it if we have time, but
+if it is as close a thing as I think it will be, we propose to make a
+run for it and take chances. Barslow and I are the ones, and the only
+ones, who ought to do this, because we must make this connection. We can
+run the engine. You and Ole and Corcoran stay here. Mr. Kittrick will be
+along with another train in a few hours. Uncouple the caboose and we'll
+run on."
+
+Schwartz blew his nose with great deliberation.
+
+"Ole," said he, "what d'ye think of the old man's scheme?"
+
+"Ay tank," said Ole, "dat bane hellufa notion!"
+
+"Come," said Mr. Elkins, "we're losing time! Uncouple at once!"
+
+We started to mount the engine; but Schwartz and Ole were before us,
+barring the way.
+
+"Wait," said Schwartz. "Jest look at it, now. It's quite a run yet; and
+the chances are you'd have the cylinder-heads knocked out before you'd
+got half way; and then where'd you be with your connections?"
+
+"Do you mean to say," said Jim, "that there's any likelihood of the
+engine's dying on us between here and the Junction?"
+
+"It's a cinch!" said Schwartz.
+
+"For God's sake, then, let's get on!" said Jim. "I believe you're lying
+to me, Schwartz. But do this: As you come to the trestle, stop. From
+the approach we can see down the other track for ten miles. If
+Pendleton's train is far enough off so as to give us time, we'll see how
+the bridge is before we cross. If we're pressed for time too much for
+this, promise me that you'll stop and let us run the engine across
+alone."
+
+"I'll think about it," said Schwartz; "and if I conclude to, I will.
+It's got to clear up, if we can see even the headlight on the other road
+very far. Ready, Jack?"
+
+We wrung their hard and icy hands, leaped upon the train, and were away
+again, spinning down the grade toward the Elk Fork, and comforted by our
+speed. Jim and I climbed into the cupola and watched the track ahead,
+and the two homely heroes in the cab, as the light from the furnace
+blazed out upon them from time to time. Now we could see Schwartz
+stoking, to warm himself; now we could see him looking at his watch and
+peering anxiously out before him.
+
+It was wearing on toward nine, and still our goal was miles away.
+Overhead the sky was clearing, and we could see the stars; but down on
+the ground the light, new snow still glided whitely along before the
+lessening wind. Once or twice we saw, or thought we saw, far ahead,
+lights, like those of a little prairie town. Was it the Junction? Yes,
+said Corcoran, when we called him to look; and now we saw that we were
+rising on the long approach to the trestle.
+
+Would Schwartz stop, or would he run desperately across, as he had
+dashed through the flood? That was with him. His hand was on the lever,
+and we were helpless; but, if there was time, it would be mere
+foolhardiness to go upon the trestle at any but the slowest speed, and
+without giving all but one an opportunity to walk across. One, surely,
+was enough to go down with the engine, if it, indeed, went down.
+
+"Don't stay up there," shouted Corcoran, "go out on the steps so you can
+jump for it if you have to!"
+
+Out upon the platform we went in the biting wind, which still came
+fiercely on, sweeping over the waste of waters which covered the fields
+like a great lake. There was no sign of slowing down: right on, as if
+the road were rock-ballasted, and thrice secure, the engine drove toward
+the trestle.
+
+"She's there, anyhow, I b'lieve," said Corcoran, swinging out and
+looking ahead; "but I wouldn't bet on how solid she is!"
+
+"Can't you stop him?" said Jim.
+
+"Stop nothing!" said Corcoran. "Look over there!"
+
+We looked, and saw a light gleaming mistily, but distinct and
+unmistakable, across the water on the other track. It was the Pendleton
+special! Not much further from the station than were we, the train of
+moving palaces to which we were fighting our way was gliding to the
+point beyond which it must not pass without us. There was now no more
+thought of stopping; rather our desires yearned forward over the course,
+agonizing for greater speed. I did not see that we were actually upon
+the trestle until for some rods we had been running with the inky water
+only a few feet below us; but when I saw it my hopes leaped up, as I
+calculated the proportion of the peril which was passed. A moment more,
+and the solid approach would be under our spinning wheels.
+
+But the moment more was not to be given us! For, even as this joy rose
+in my breast, I felt a shock; I heard a confused sound of men's cries,
+and the shattering of timbers; the caboose whirled over cornerwise,
+throwing up into the air the step on which I stood; the sounds of the
+train went out in sudden silence as engine and car plunged off into the
+stream; and I felt the cold water close over me as I fell into the
+rushing flood. I arose and struck out for the shore; then I thought of
+Jim. A few feet above me in the stream I saw something like a hand or
+foot flung up out of the water, and sucked down again. I turned as well
+as I could toward the spot, and collided with some object under the
+surface. I caught at it, felt the skirt of a garment in my hand, and
+knew it for a man. Then, I remember helping myself with a plank from
+some washed-out bridge, and soon felt the ground under my feet, all the
+time clinging to my man. I tried to lift him out, but could not; and I
+locked my hands under his arm-pits and, slowly stepping backwards, I
+half carried, half dragged him, seeking a place where I could lay him
+down. I saw the dark line of the railroad grade, and made wearily toward
+it. I walked blindly into the water of the ditch beside the track, and
+had scarcely strength to pull myself and my burden out upon the bank.
+Then I stopped and peered into his face, and saw uncertainly that it
+was Jim--with a dark spot in the edge of the hair on his forehead, from
+which black streaks kept stealing down as I wiped them off; and with one
+arm which twisted unnaturally, and with a grating sound as I moved it;
+and from whom there came no other sound or movement whatever.
+
+And over across the stream gleamed the lights of the Pendleton special
+as it sped away toward Chicago.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+The End--and a Beginning.
+
+
+As to our desperate run from Lattimore to the place where it came to an
+end in a junk-heap which had been once an engine, a car reduced to
+matchwood, a broken trestle, and a chaos of crushed hopes, and of the
+return to our homes thereafter, no further details need be set forth.
+The papers in Lattimore were filled with the story for a day or two, and
+I believe there were columns about it in the Associated Press reports. I
+doubt not that Mr. Pendleton and Mr. Cornish each read it in the morning
+papers, and that the latter explained it to the former in Chicago. From
+these reports the future biographer may glean, if he happens to come
+into being and to care about it, certain interesting facts about the
+people of this history. He will learn that Mr. Barslow, having (with
+truly Horatian swimming powers) rescued President Elkins from a watery
+grave, waited with his unconscious derelict in great danger from
+freezing, until they were both rescued a second time by a crew of
+hand-car men who were near the trestle on special work connected with
+the flood and its ravages. That President Elkins was terribly injured,
+having sustained a broken arm and a dangerous wound in the forehead.
+Moreover, he was threatened with pneumonia from his exposure. Should
+this disease really fasten itself upon him, his condition would be very
+critical indeed. That Mr. Barslow, the hero of the occasion, was
+uninjured. And I am ashamed to say that such student of history will
+find in an inconspicuous part of the same news-story, as if by reason of
+its lack of importance, the statement that O. Hegvold, fireman, and J.
+J. Corcoran, conductor of the wrecked train, escaped with slight
+injuries. And that Julius Schwartz, the engineer, living at 2714 May
+Street, and the oldest engineer on the L. & G. W., being benumbed by the
+cold, sank like a stone and was drowned. Poor Schwartz! Magnificent
+Schwartz! No captain ever went down, refusing to leave the bridge of his
+sinking ship, with more heroism than he; who, clad in greasy overalls,
+and sapped of his strength by the icy hurricane, finding his homely duty
+inextricably entangled with death, calmly took them both, and went his
+way.
+
+This mine for the historian will also disclose to him the fact that the
+rescued crew and passengers were brought home by a relief-train in
+charge of General Manager Kittrick, and that Mr. Elkins was taken
+directly to the home of Mr. Barslow, where he at once became subject to
+the jurisdiction of physicians and nurses and "could not be seen." But
+as to the reasons for the insane dash in the dark the historian will
+look in vain. I am disposed now to think that our motives were entirely
+creditable; but for them we got no credit.
+
+Much less than a nine days' wonder, however, was this tragedy of the Elk
+Fork trestle, for other sensations came tumbling in an army upon its
+very heels. Times of war, great public calamities, and panic are the
+harvest seasons of the newspapers; and these were great days for the
+newspapers in Lattimore. Not that they learned or printed all the news.
+I received a telegram, for instance, the day after the accident, which
+merely entered up judgment on the verdict of the day before. It was a
+message from Mr. Pendleton in Chicago.
+
+"In matter of Lattimore & Great Western," this telegram read, "directors
+refuse to ratify contract. This sent to save you trip to Chicago."
+
+"No news in that," said I to Mr. Hinckley; "I wonder that he bothered to
+send it."
+
+But, in the era of slug heads which set in about three days after, and
+while Jim was still helpless up at my house, it would have received
+recognition as news--although they did very well without it.
+
+"Great Failure!" said the _Times_. "Grain Belt Trust Company Goes to the
+Wall! Business Circles Convulsed! Receiver Appointed at Suit of Charles
+Harper of Chicago! Followed by Assignment of Hinckley & Macdonald,
+Bankers! Western Portland Cement Company Assigns! Atlas Power Company
+Follows Suit! Reason, Money Tied up in Banks and Trust Company. Where
+will it Stop? A Veritable Black Friday!"
+
+Thus the headlines. In the news report itself the _Times_ remarked upon
+the intimate connection of Mr. Elkins and myself with all the failed
+concerns. The firm of Elkins & Barslow, being primarily a real-estate
+and insurance agency, would not assign. As to the condition of the
+business of James R. Elkins & Company, whose operations in bonds and
+debentures had been enormous, nothing could be learned on account of the
+critical illness of Mr. Elkins.
+
+"It is not thought," said the _Herald_, "that the failures will carry
+down any other concerns. The run on the First National Bank was one of
+those panicky symptoms which are dangerous because so unreasoning. It is
+to be hoped that it will not be renewed in the morning. The banks are
+not involved in the operations of the Grain Belt Trust Company, the
+failure of which, it must be admitted, is sure to cause serious
+disturbances, both locally and elsewhere, wherever its wide-spread
+operations have extended."
+
+The physical system adjusts itself to any permanent lesion in the body,
+and finally ceases even to send out its complaining messages of pain. So
+we in Lattimore, who a few weeks ago had been ready to sacrifice
+anything for the keeping of our good name; who by stealth justly
+foreclosed mortgages justly due, lest the world should wonder at their
+nonpayment; who so greatly had rejoiced in our own strength; who had
+felt that, surely, we who had wrought such wonders could not now
+fail:--even we numbly came to regard receiverships and assignments as
+quite the thing to be expected. The fact that, all over the country,
+panic, ruin, and business stagnation were spreading like a pestilence,
+from just such centers of contagion as Lattimore, made it easier for
+us. Surely, we felt, nobody could justly blame us for being in the path
+of a tempest which, like a tropic cyclone, ravaged a continent.
+
+This may have been weak self-justification; but, even yet, when I think
+of the way we began, and how the wave of "prosperity" rose and rose, by
+acts in themselves, so far as we could see, in every way praiseworthy;
+how with us, and with people engaged in like operations everywhere, the
+most powerful passions of society came to aid our projects; how the
+winds from the unknown, the seismic throbbings of the earth, and the
+very stars in their courses fought for us; and when, at last, these
+mightinesses turned upon us the cold and evil eye of their displeasure,
+how the heaped-up sea came pouring over here, trickling through there,
+and seeping under yonder, until our great dike toppled over in baleful
+tumult, "and all the world was in the sea"; how business, east, west,
+north, and south, went paralyzed with fear and distrust, and old
+concerns went out like strings of soap-bubbles, and shocks of pain and
+disease went round the world, and everywhere there was that hellish and
+portentous thing known to the modern world only, and called a
+"commercial panic": when I broadly consider these things, I am not vain
+enough seriously to blame myself.
+
+These thoughts are more than ever in my mind to-day, as I look back over
+the decade of years which have elapsed since our Waterloo at the Elk
+Fork trestle. I look out from the same library in which I once felt a
+sense of guilt at the expense of building it, and see the solid and
+prosperous town, almost as populous as we once saw it in our dreams. I
+am regarded locally as one of the creators of the city; but I know that
+this praise is as unmerited as was that blame of a dozen years ago. We
+rode on the crest of a wave, and we weltered in the trough of the sea;
+but we only seemed to create or control. I hold in my hand a letter from
+Jim, received yesterday, and eloquent of the changes which have taken
+place.
+
+"I am sorry," says he, "to be unable to come to your business men's
+banquet. The building of a great auditorium in Lattimore is proof that
+we weren't so insane, after all. I suppose that the ebb and flow of the
+tide of progress, which yearly gains upon the shore, is inevitable, as
+things are hooked up; but, after the ebb, it's comforting to see your
+old predictions as to gain coming true, even if you do find yourself in
+the discard. It would be worth the trip only to see Captain Tolliver,
+and to hear him eliminate the _r_'s from his mother tongue. Give the
+dear old secesh my dearest love!
+
+"But I can't come, Al. I must be in Washington at that time on business
+of the greatest (presumptive) importance to the cattle interests of the
+buffalo-grass country. I could change my own dates; but my wife has
+arranged a tryst for a day certain with some specialists in her line in
+New York. She's quite the queen of the cattle range--in New York: and,
+to be dead truthful, she comes pretty near it out here. It is rumored
+that even the sheepmen speak well of her.
+
+"These Eastern trips are great things for her and the children. I'm
+riding the range so constantly, and get so much fun out of it, that I
+feel sort of undressed and embarrassed out of the saddle. In Washington
+I'm pointed out as a typical cowboy, the descendant of a Spanish vaquero
+and a trapper's daughter. This helps me to represent my constituents in
+the sessions of the Third House, and to get Congressional attention to
+the ax I want ground. I am looked upon as in line for the presidency of
+the Amalgamated Association of American Ax-grinders.
+
+"If we can make it, we'll look in on you on our way back; but we don't
+promise. With cattle scattered over two counties of buttes and canyons,
+we feel in a hurry when we get started home, after an absence sure to
+have been longer than we intended. Then, you know how I feel;--I wish
+the old town well, but I don't enjoy _every_ incident of my visits
+there.
+
+"We expect to see the Cecil Barr-Smiths in New York. Cecil is the whole
+thing now with their companies--a sort of professional president in
+charge of the American properties; and Mrs. Cecil is as well known in
+some mighty good circles in London as she used to be in Lynhurst Park.
+
+"I am glad to know that things are going toward the good with you.
+Personally, I never expect to be a seven-figure man again, and don't
+care to be. I prefer to look after my few thousands of steers, laying on
+four hundred pounds each per year, far from the madding crowd. You know
+Riley's man who said that the little town of Tailholt was good enough
+for him? Well, that expresses my view of the 'J-Up-and-Down' Ranch as a
+hermitage. It'll do quite well. But these Eastern interests of Mrs. Jim
+are just now menacing to life in any hermitage. She has specifically
+stated on two or three occasions lately that this is no place to bring
+up a family. Think of a rough-rider like me in the wilds of New York! I
+can see plenty of ways of amusing myself down there, but not such
+peaceful ways as putting on my six-shooters and going out after timber
+wolves or mountain lions, or our local representative of the clan of the
+Hon. Maverick Brander. The future lowers dark with the multitudinous
+mouths of avenues of prosperity!"
+
+This letter was a disappointment to Mr. Giddings. His special edition of
+the _Herald_ commemorative of the opening of our Auditorium must now be
+deprived of its James R. Elkins feature, so far as his being the guest
+of honor goes. But there will be Jim's photograph on the first page, and
+a half-tone reproduction of a picture of the wreck at the Elk Fork
+trestle.
+
+"It is a matter of the deepest regret," said the _Herald_ this morning,
+"that Mr. Elkins cannot be with us on this auspicious occasion. He was
+the head of that most remarkable group of men who laid the foundations
+of Lattimore's greatness. Only one of them, Mr. Barslow, still lives in
+Lattimore, where he has devoted his life, since the crash of many years
+ago, to the reorganization of the failed concerns, and especially the
+Grain Belt Trust Company, and to the salving of their properties in the
+interests of the creditors. His present prominence grows out of the
+signal skill and ability with which he has done this work; and he must
+prove a great factor in the city's future development, as he has been in
+its past. Mr. Hinckley, the third member of the syndicate, now far
+advanced in years, is living happily with his daughter and her husband.
+The fourth, Mr. Cornish, resides in Paris, where he is well known as a
+daring and successful financial operator. He, of all the syndicate,
+retired from the Lattimore enterprises rich.
+
+"There have been years when the names of these men were not held in the
+respect and esteem they deserve. The town was going backward. People who
+had been rich were, many of them, in absolute distress for the
+necessaries of life. And these men, in a vague sort of way, were blamed
+for it. Now, however, we can begin to see the wisdom of their plans and
+the vastness of the scope of their combinations. Nothing but the element
+of time was wanting, abundantly to vindicate their judgment and
+sagacity. The industries they founded succeeded as soon as they were
+divorced from the real-estate speculation which unavoidably entered into
+their management at the outset. It is regrettable that their founders
+could not share in their success."
+
+"Nothing but the element of time," said I to Captain Tolliver, who sat
+by me in the car as I read this editorial, "prevents the hot-air balloon
+from carrying its load over the Rockies."
+
+"Nothing but luck," said the Captain, "evah could have beaten us. It was
+the Fleischmann failure, and it was nothing else. As to the great
+qualities of Mr. Elkins, suh, the editorial puts it too mild by fah. He
+was a Titan, suh, a Titan, and we shall not look upon his like again.
+This town at this moment is vegetating fo' the want of some fo'ceful
+Elkins to put life into it. The trilobites, as he so well dubbed them,
+ah in control again. What's this Auditorium we've built? A good thing
+fo' the city, cehtainly, a ve'y good thing: but see the difficulty, the
+humiliatin' difficulty we had, in gettin' togethah the paltry and
+trivial hundred and fifty thousand dolla's! Why in that elder day, in
+such a cause, we'd have called a meetin' in that old office of Elkins &
+Barslow's, and made it up out of ouah own funds in fifteen minutes. It's
+the so't of cattle we've got hyah as citizens that's handicappin' us;
+but in spite of this, suh, ouah unsuhpassed strategical position is
+winnin' fo' us. We ah just now on the eve of great developments,
+Barslow, great developments! All my holdin's ah withdrawn from mahket
+until fu'theh notice. Foh, as we ah so much behind the surroundin'
+country in growth, we must soon take a great leap fo'wahd. We ah past
+the boom stage, I thank God, and what we ah now goin' to get is a rathah
+brisk but entiahly healthy growth. A good, healthy growth, Barslow, and
+no boom!"
+
+The disposition to moralize comes on with advancing middle age, and I
+could not help philosophizing on this perennial optimism of the
+Captain's. He had used these very words when, so long ago, we had begun
+our "cruise." The financial cycle was complete. The world had passed
+from hope to intoxication, from intoxication to panic, from panic to the
+depths, from this depression, ascending the long slope of gradual
+recovery, to the uplands of hope once more. Now, as twenty years ago,
+this feeling covered the whole world, was most pronounced in the newer
+and more progressive lands, and was voiced by Captain Tolliver, the
+grizzled swashbuckler of the land market. In it I recognized the ripple
+on the sands heralding the approach of another wave of speculation,
+which must roll shoreward in splendor and might, and, like its
+predecessors, must spend itself in thunderous ruin.
+
+I often think of what General Lattimore was accustomed to say about
+these matters, and how Josie echoed his words as to the evil of fortunes
+coming to those who never earned them. Some time, I hope, we shall grow
+wise enough to--
+
+I humbly beg your pardon, Madam, and thank you. That charming gesture of
+impatience was the one thing needful to admonish me that lectures are
+dull, and that the time has come to write _finis_. The rest of the
+story? Cornish--Jim--Josie--Antonia? Oh, this proneness of the business
+man to talk shop! Left to myself, I should have allowed their history to
+remain to the end of time, unresolved as to entanglements, and them
+unhealed as to bruises, bodily and sentimental. And, yet, those were the
+things which most filled our minds in the dark days after we missed
+connection with the Pendleton special.
+
+In the first spasm of the crisis I was more concerned for Jim's safety
+than with the long-feared monetary cataclysm. _That_ was upon us in such
+power as to make us helpless; but Jim, wounded and prostrated as he was,
+his very life in danger, was a concrete subject of anxiety and a
+comfortingly promising object of care.
+
+"If we can keep this from assuming the character of true pneumonia,"
+said Dr. Aylesbury, "there's no reason why he shouldn't recover."
+
+He had been unconscious and then delirious from the time when he and I
+had been picked up there by the railroad-dump, until we were well on our
+way home on Kittrick's relief-train. At last he looked about him, and
+his eyes rested on Corcoran.
+
+"Hello, Jack!" said he weakly; and as his glance took in Ole, he smiled
+and said: "A hellufa notion, you tank, do you? Ole, where's Schwartz?"
+
+Ole twisted and squirmed, but found no words.
+
+"We couldn't find Schwartz," said Kittrick. "He was so cold, he went
+right down with the cab."
+
+"I see," said Jim. "It was bitter cold!"
+
+He said no more. I wondered at this, and almost blamed him, even in his
+stricken state, for not feeling the peculiar poignancy of our regret for
+the loss of Schwartz. And then, his face being turned away, I peeped
+over to see if he slept, and saw where his tears had dropped silently on
+the piled-up cushions of his couch.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Trescott came several times a day to inquire as to Mr. Elkins's
+welfare; but Josie not at all. Antonia's carriage stopped often at the
+door; and somebody stood always at the telephone, answering the stream
+of questions. But when, on that third evening, it became known that the
+last "battle in the west" had gone against us, that all our great Round
+Table was dissolved, and that Jim's was a sinking and not a rising sun,
+public interest suddenly fell off. And the poor fellow whose word but
+yesterday might have stood against the world, now lay there fighting for
+very life, and few so poor to do him reverence. I had been so proud of
+his splendid and dominant strength that this, I think, was the thing
+that brought the bitterness of failure most keenly home to me. I could
+not feel satisfied with Josie. There were good reasons why she might
+have refused to choose between Jim and the man who had ruined him, while
+there was danger of her choice itself becoming the occasion of war
+between them. But that was over now, and Cornish was victorious.
+Gradually the fear grew upon me that we had rated Josie's womanhood
+higher than she herself held it, and that Cornish was to win her also.
+He had that magnetism which so attracted her as a girl, but that I had
+believed incapable of holding her as a woman. And now he had wealth, and
+Jim was poor, and the whole world stood with its back to us, and Josie
+held aloof. I was afraid he would speak of it, every time he tried to
+talk.
+
+That night when the evening papers came out with all their plenitude of
+bad news (for we had pleased Watson by dying on the evening papers'
+time), it was a dark moment for us. Jim lay silent and unmoving, as if
+all his ebullient energy had gone forever. The physician omitted the
+dressing of his wound, because, he said, he feared the patient was not
+strong enough to bear it: and this, as well as the strange semi-stupor
+of the sufferer, frightened me. Jim had said little, and most of his
+words had been of the trivial things of the sick-room. Only once did he
+refer to the great affairs in which we had been for so long engrossed.
+
+"What day is this?" he asked.
+
+"Friday," said I, "the twenty-first."
+
+"By this time," said he feebly, "we must be pretty well shot to rags."
+
+"Never mind about that," said I, holding his hands in mine. "Never mind,
+Jim!"
+
+"Some of those gophers," said he, after a while, "used to learn to ...
+rub their noses ... in the dirt ... and always stick their heads
+up--outside the snare!"
+
+"Yes," said I, "I remember. Go to sleep, old man!"
+
+I thought him delirious, and he knew and resented it; being evidently
+convinced that he had just made a wise remark. It touched me to hear
+him, even in his extremity, return to those boyhood days when we trapped
+and hunted and fished together. He saw my pitying look.
+
+"I'm all right," said he; but he said no more.
+
+The nurse came in, and told me that Mrs. Barslow wished to see me in the
+library. I went down, and found Josie and Alice together.
+
+"I got a letter from--from Mr. Cornish," said she, "telling me that he
+was returning from Chicago to-night, and was coming to see me. I ran
+over, because--and told mamma to say that I couldn't see him."
+
+"See him by all means," said I with some bitterness. "You should make
+it a point to see him. Mr. Cornish is a success. He alone of us all has
+shown real greatness."
+
+And it dawned upon me, as I said it, what Jim had meant by his reference
+to the gopher which learns to stick its head up "outside the snare."
+
+"I want to ask you," said Josie, "is it all true--what was in the paper
+to-night about all of you, Mr. Hinckley and yourself, and--all of you
+having failed?"
+
+"It is only a part of the truth," I replied. "We are ruined absolutely."
+
+She said nothing by way of condolence, and uttered no expressions of
+regret or sympathy. She was apparently in a state of suppressed
+excitement, and started at sounds and movements.
+
+"Is Mr. Elkins very ill?" said she at length.
+
+"So ill," said Alice, "that unless he rallies soon, we shall look for
+the worst."
+
+No more at this than at the other ill news did Josie express any regret
+or concern. She sat with her fingers clasped together, gazing before her
+at the fire in the grate, as if making some deep and abstruse
+calculation. But when the door-bell rang, she started and listened
+attentively, as the servant went to the door, and then returned to us.
+
+"A gentleman, Mr. Cornish, to see Miss Trescott," said the maid. "And he
+says he must see her for a moment."
+
+"Alice," said Josie, under her breath, "you go, please! Say to him that
+I cannot see him--now! Oh, why did he follow me here?"
+
+"Josie," said Alice dramatically, "you don't mean to say that you are
+afraid of this man! Are you?"
+
+"No, no!" said the girl doubtfully and distressfully; "but it's so hard
+to say 'No' to him! If you only knew all, Alice, you wouldn't blame
+me--and you'd go!"
+
+"If you're so far gone--under his influence," said Alice, "that you
+can't trust yourself to say 'No,' Josephine Trescott, go, in Heaven's
+name, and say 'Yes,' and be the wife of a millionaire--and a traitor and
+scoundrel!"
+
+As Alice said this she came perilously near the histrionic standard of
+the tragic stage. Josie rose, looked at her in surprise, in which there
+seemed to be some defiance, and walked steadily out to the parlor. I was
+glad to be out of the affair, and went back to Jim. I stood regarding my
+broken and forsaken friend, in watching whose uneasy sleep I forgot the
+crisis downstairs, when I was startled and angered by the slamming of
+the front door, and heard a carriage rattle furiously away down the
+street.
+
+Soon I heard the rustle of skirts, and looked up, thinking to see my
+wife. But it was Josie. She came in, as if she were the regularly
+ordained nurse, and stepped to the bedside of the sleeping patient. The
+broken arm in its swathings lay partly uncovered; and across his wounded
+brow was stretched a broad bandage, below which his face showed pale and
+weary-looking, in the half-stupor of his deathlike slumber: for he had
+become strangely quiet. His uninjured arm lay inertly on the
+counterpane beside him.
+
+She took his hand, and, seating herself on the bed, began softly
+stroking and patting the hand, gazing all the time in his face. He
+stirred, and, turning his eyes toward her, awoke.
+
+"Don't move, my darling," said she quietly, and as if she had been for a
+long, long time quite in the habit of so speaking to him; "don't move,
+or you'll hurt your arm." Then she bent down her head, lower and lower,
+until her cheek touched his.
+
+"I've come to sit with you, Jim, dear," said she, softly--"if you want
+me--if I can do you any good."
+
+"I want you, always," said he.
+
+She stooped again, and this time laid her lips lingeringly on his; and
+his arm stole about the slim waist.
+
+"If you'll just get well," she whispered, "you may have me--always!"
+
+He passed his fingers over her hair, and kissed her again and again.
+Then he looked at her long and earnestly.
+
+"Where's Al?" said he; "I want Al!"
+
+I came forward promptly. I thought that this violation of the doctor's
+regulation requiring rest and quiet had gone quite far enough.
+
+"Al," said he, still holding her hand, "do you remember out there by the
+windmill tower that night, and the petunias and four-o'clocks?"
+
+"Yes, Jim, I remember," said I. "But you mustn't talk any more now."
+
+"No, I won't," said he, and went right on; "but even before that, and
+ever since, I haven't wanted anything we've been trying so hard to get,
+half as much as I've wanted Josie; and now--we lost the fight, didn't
+we? Things have been slipping away from us, haven't they? Gone, aren't
+they?"
+
+"Go to sleep now, Jim," said I. "Plenty of time for those things when
+you wake up."
+
+"Yes," said he; "but before I do, I want you to tell me one thing,
+honest injun, hope to die, you know!"
+
+"Yes," said I; "what is it, Jim?"
+
+"I've been seeing a lot of funny things in the dark corners about here;
+but this seems more real than any of them," he went on; "and I want you
+to tell me--_is this really Josie_?"
+
+"Really," I assured him, "really, it is."
+
+"Oh, Jim, Jim!" she cried, "have you learned to doubt my reality, just
+because I'm kind! Why, I'm going to be good to you now, dearest, always,
+always! And kinder than you ever dreamed, Jim. And I'm going to show you
+that everything has not slipped away from you, my poor, poor boy; and
+that, whatever may come, I shall be with you always. Only get well; only
+get well!"
+
+"Josie," said he, smiling wanly, "you couldn't kill me--now--not with an
+ax!"
+
+THE END.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+FAMOUS COPYRIGHT BOOKS IN POPULAR PRICED EDITIONS
+
+Re-issues of the great literary successes of the time. Library size.
+Printed on excellent paper--most of them with illustrations of marked
+beauty--and handsomely bound in cloth. Price, 75 cents a volume,
+postpaid.
+
+THE CIRCULAR STAIRCASE, By Mary Roberts Reinhart
+
+With illustrations by Lester Ralph.
+
+In an extended notice the _New York Sun_ says: "To readers who care for
+a really good detective story 'The Circular Staircase' can be
+recommended without reservation." The _Philadelphia Record_ declares that
+"The Circular Staircase" deserves the laurels for thrills, for weirdness
+and things unexplained and inexplicable.
+
+THE RED YEAR, By Louis Tracy
+
+"Mr. Tracy gives by far the most realistic and impressive pictures of
+the horrors and heroisms of the Indian Mutiny that has been available in
+any book of the kind * * * There has not been in modern times in the
+history of any land scenes so fearful, so picturesque, so dramatic, and
+Mr. Tracy draws them as with the pencil of a Verestschagin of the pen of
+a Sienkiewics."
+
+ARMS AND THE WOMAN, By Harold MacGrath
+
+With inlay cover in colors by Harrison Fisher.
+
+The story is a blending of the romance and adventure of the middle ages
+with nineteenth century men and women; and they are creations of flesh
+and blood, and not mere pictures of past centuries. The story is about
+Jack Winthrop, a newspaper man. Mr. MacGrath's finest bit of character
+drawing is seen in Hillars, the broken down newspaper man, and Jack's
+chum.
+
+LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL, By Geo. Cary Eggleston
+
+With illustrations by Hermann Heyer.
+
+In this "plantation romance" Mr. Eggleston has resumed the manner and
+method that made his "Dorothy South" one of the most famous books of its
+time.
+
+There are three tender love stories embodied in it, and two unusually
+interesting heroines, utterly unlike each other, but each possessed of a
+peculiar fascination which wins and holds the reader's sympathy. A
+pleasing vein of gentle humor runs through the work, but the "sum of it
+all" is an intensely sympathetic love story.
+
+HEARTS AND THE CROSS, By Harold Morton Cramer
+
+With illustrations by Harold Matthews Brett.
+
+The hero is an unconventional preacher who follows the line of the Man
+of Galilee, associating with the lowly, and working for them in the ways
+that may best serve them. He is not recognized at his real value except
+by the one woman who saw clearly. Their love story is one of the
+refreshing things in recent fiction.
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+FAMOUS COPYRIGHT BOOKS IN POPULAR PRICED EDITIONS
+
+Re-issues of the great literary successes of the time. Library size.
+Printed on excellent paper--most of them with illustrations of marked
+beauty--and handsomely bound in cloth. Price, 75 cents a volume,
+postpaid.
+
+NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA,
+
+By Kate Douglas Wiggin With illustrations by F. C. Yohn
+
+Additional episodes in the girlhood of the delightful little heroine at
+Riverboro which were not included in the story of "Rebecca of Sunnybrook
+Farm," and they are as characteristic and delightful as any part of that
+famous story. Rebecca is as distinct a creation in the second volume as
+in the first.
+
+THE SILVER BUTTERFLY, By Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
+
+With illustrations in colors by Howard Chandler Christy.
+
+A story of love and mystery, full of color, charm, and vivacity, dealing
+with a South American mine, rich beyond dreams, and of a New York
+maiden, beyond dreams beautiful--both known as the Silver Butterfly.
+_Well named is The Silver Butterfly!_ There could not be a better symbol
+of the darting swiftness, the eager love plot, the elusive mystery and
+the flashing wit.
+
+BEATRIX OF CLARE, By John Reed Scott
+
+With illustrations by Clarence F. Underwood.
+
+A spirited and irresistibly attractive historical romance of the
+fifteenth century, boldly conceived and skilfully carried out. In the
+hero and heroine Mr. Scott has created a pair whose mingled emotions and
+alternating hopes and fears will find a welcome in many lovers of the
+present hour. Beatrix is a fascinating daughter of Eve.
+
+A LITTLE BROTHER OF THE RICH,
+
+By Joseph Medill Patterson
+
+Frontispiece by Hazel Martyn Trudeau, and illustrations by Walter Dean
+Goldbeck.
+
+Tells the story of the idle rich, and is a vivid and truthful picture of
+society and stage life written by one who is himself a conspicuous
+member of the Western millionaire class. Full of grim satire, caustic
+wit and flashing epigrams. "Is sensational to a degree in its theme,
+daring in its treatment, lashing society as it was never scourged
+before."--New York Sun.
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+FAMOUS COPYRIGHT BOOKS IN POPULAR PRICED EDITIONS
+
+Re-issues of the great literary successes of the time. Library size.
+Printed on excellent paper--most of them with illustrations of marked
+beauty--and handsomely bound in cloth. Price, 75 cents a volume,
+postpaid.
+
+THE FAIR GOD; OR, THE LAST OF THE TZINS. By Lew Wallace. With
+illustrations by Eric Pape.
+
+"The story tells of the love of a native princess for Alvarado, and it
+is worked out with all of Wallace's skill * * * it gives a fine picture
+of the heroism of the Spanish conquerors and of the culture and nobility
+of the Aztecs."--_New York Commercial Advertiser_.
+
+"_Ben Hur_ sold enormously, but _The Fair God_ was the best of the
+General's stories--a powerful and romantic treatment of the defeat of
+Montezuma by Cortes."--_Athenaeum_.
+
+THE CAPTAIN OF THE KANSAS. By Louis Tracy.
+
+A story of love and the salt sea--of a helpless ship whirled into the
+hands of cannibal Fuegians--of desperate fighting and tender romance,
+enhanced by the art of a master of story telling who describes with his
+wonted felicity and power of holding the reader's attention * * * filled
+with the swing of adventure.
+
+A MIDNIGHT GUEST. A Detective Story. By Fred M. White. With a
+frontispiece.
+
+The scene of the story centers in London and Italy. The book is
+skilfully written and makes one of the most baffling, mystifying,
+exciting detective stories ever written--cleverly keeping the suspense
+and mystery intact until the surprising discoveries which precede the
+end.
+
+THE HONOUR OF SAVELLI. A Romance. By S. Levett Yeats. With cover and
+wrapper in four colors.
+
+Those who enjoyed Stanley Weyman's _A Gentleman of France_ will be
+engrossed and captivated by this delightful romance of Italian history.
+It is replete with exciting episodes, hair-breath escapes, magnificent
+sword-play, and deals with the agitating times in Italian history when
+Alexander II was Pope and the famous and infamous Borgias were tottering
+to their fall.
+
+SISTER CARRIE. By Theodore Drieser. With a frontispiece, and wrapper in
+color.
+
+In all fiction there is probably no more graphic and poignant study of
+the way in which man loses his grip on life, lets his pride, his
+courage, his self-respect slip from him, and, finally, even ceases to
+struggle in the mire that has engulfed him. * * * There is more tonic
+value in _Sister Carrie_ than in a whole shelfful of sermons.
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP--NEW YORK.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+FAMOUS COPYRIGHT BOOKS IN POPULAR PRICED EDITIONS
+
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+Printed on excellent paper--most of them with illustrations of marked
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+postpaid.
+
+LAVENDER AND OLD LACE. By Myrtle Reed.
+
+A charming story of a quaint corner of New England where bygone romance
+finds a modern parallel. One of the prettiest, sweetest, and quaintest
+of old-fashioned love stories * * * A rare book, exquisite in spirit and
+conception, full of delicate fancy, of tenderness, of delightful humor
+and spontaneity. A dainty volume, especially suitable for a gift.
+
+DOCTOR LUKE OF THE LABRADOR. By Norman Duncan. With a frontispiece and
+inlay cover.
+
+How the doctor came to the bleak Labrador coast and there in saving life
+made expiation. In dignity, simplicity, humor, in sympathetic etching of
+a sturdy fisher people, and above all in the echoes of the sea, _Doctor
+Luke_ is worthy of great praise. Character, humor, poignant pathos, and
+the sad grotesque conjunctions of old and new civilizations are
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+a note of rare personality.
+
+THE DAY'S WORK. By Rudyard Kipling. Illustrated.
+
+The _London Morning Post_ says: "It would be hard to find better reading
+* * * the book is so varied, so full of color and life from end to end,
+that few who read the first two or three stories will lay it down till
+they have read the last--and the last is a veritable gem gem * * *
+contains some of the best of his highly vivid work * * * Kipling is a
+born story-teller and a man of humor into the bargain."
+
+ELEANOR LEE. By Margaret E. Sangster. With a frontispiece.
+
+A story of married life, and attractive picture of wedded bliss * * * an
+entertaining story of a man's redemption through a woman's love * * * no
+one who knows anything of marriage or parenthood can read this story
+with eyes that are always dry * * * goes straight to the heart of every
+one who knows the meaning of "love" and "home."
+
+THE COLONEL OF THE RED HUZZARS. By John Reed Scott. Illustrated by
+Clarence F. Underwood.
+
+"Full of absorbing charm, sustained interest, and a wealth of thrilling
+and romantic situations. So naively fresh in its handling, so plausible
+through its naturalness, that it comes like a mountain breeze across the
+far-spreading desert of similar romances."--_Gazette-Times, Pittsburg_.
+"A slap-dashing day romance."--_New York Sun_.
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP--NEW YORK.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Aladdin & Co., by Herbert Quick
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