“And is thee satisfied with it?”

  “If thee means, if I have had enough of it, no. I just begin to see what I can do in it, and what a noble profession it is for a woman. Would thee have me sit here like a bird on a bough and wait for somebody to come and put me in a cage?”

  Mr. Bolton was not sorry to divert the talk from his own affairs, and he did not think it worth while to tell his family of a performance that very day which was entirely characteristic of him.

  Ruth might well say that she felt as if she were living in a house of cards, although the Bolton household had no idea of the number of perils that hovered over them, any more than thousands of families in America have of the business risks and contingencies upon which their prosperity and luxury hang.

  A sudden call upon Mr. Bolton for a large sum of money, which must be forthcoming at once, had found him in the midst of a dozen ventures, from no one of which a dollar could be realized. It was in vain that he applied to his business acquaintances and friends; it was a period of sudden panic and no money. “A hundred thousand! Mr. Bolton,” said Plumly. “Good God, if you should ask me for ten, I shouldn’t know where to get it.”

  And yet that day Mr. Small (Pennybacker, Bigler and Small) came to Mr. Bolton with a piteous story of ruin in a coal operation, if he could not raise ten thousand dollars. Only ten, and he was sure of a fortune. Without it he was a beggar. Mr. Bolton had already Small’s notes for a large amount in his safe, labeled “doubtful;” he had helped him again and again, and always with the same result. But Mr. Small spoke with a faltering voice of his family, his daughter in school, his wife ignorant of his calamity, and drew such a picture of their agony, that Mr. Bolton put by his own more pressing necessity, and devoted the day to scraping together, here and there, ten thousand dollars for this brazen beggar, who had never kept a promise to him nor paid a debt.

  Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark:—“I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.”

  CHAPTER 27

  It was a hard blow to poor Sellers to see the work on his darling enterprise stop, and the noise and bustle and confusion that had been such refreshment to his soul, sicken and die out. It was hard to come down to humdrum ordinary life again after being a General Superintendent and the most conspicuous man in the community. It was sad to see his name disappear from the newspapers; sadder still to see it resurrected at intervals, shorn of its aforetime gaudy gear of compliments and clothed on with rhetorical tar and feathers.

  But his friends suffered more on his account than he did. He was a cork that could not be kept under the water many moments at a time.

  He had to bolster up his wife’s spirits every now and then. On one of these occasions he said:

  “It’s all right, my dear, all right; it will all come right in a little while. There’s $200,000 coming, and that will set things booming again. Harry seems to be having some difficulty, but that’s to be expected— you can’t move these big operations to the tune of Fisher’s Hornpipe, 1 you know. But Harry will get it started along presently, and then you’ll see! I expect the news every day now.”

  “But Eschol, you’ve been expecting it every day, all along, haven’t you?”

  “Well, yes; yes—I don’t know but I have. But anyway, the longer it’s delayed, the nearer it grows to the time when it will start—same as every day you live brings you nearer to—nearer—”

  “The grave?”

  “Well, no—not that exactly; but you can’t understand these things, Polly dear—women haven’t much head for business, you know. You make yourself perfectly comfortable, old lady, and you’ll see how we’ll trot this right along. Why bless you, let the appropriation lag, if it wants to—that’s no great matter—there’s a bigger thing than that.”

  “Bigger than $200,000, Eschol?”

  “Bigger, child?—why, what’s $200,000? Pocket money! Mere pocket money! Look at the railroad! Did you forget the railroad? It ain’t many months till spring; it will be coming right along, and the railroad swimming right along behind it. Where’ll it be by the middle of summer? Just stop and fancy a moment—just think a little—don’t anything suggest itself? Bless your heart, you dear women live right in the present all the time—but a man, why a man lives———”

  “In the future, Eschol? But don’t we live in the future most too much, Eschol? We do somehow seem to manage to live on next year’s crop of corn and potatoes as a general thing while this year is still dragging along, but sometimes it’s not a robust diet,—Eschol. But don’t look that way, dear—don’t mind what I say. I don’t mean to fret, I don’t mean to worry; and I don’t, once a month, do I, dear? But when I get a little low and feel bad, I get a bit troubled and worrisome, but it don’t mean anything in the world. It passes right away. I know you’re doing all you can, and I don’t want to seem repining and ungrateful— for I’m not, Eschol—you know I’m not, don’t you?”

  “Lord bless you, child, I know you are the very best little woman that ever lived—that ever lived on the whole face of the Earth! And I know that I would be a dog not to work for you and think for you and scheme for you with all my might. And I’ll bring things all right yet, honey—cheer up and don’t you fear. The railroad———”

  “Oh, I had forgotten the railroad, dear, but when a body gets blue, a body forgets everything. Yes, the railroad—tell me about the railroad.”

  “Aha, my girl, don’t you see? Things ain’t so dark, are they? Now I didn’t forget the railroad. Now just think for a moment—just figure up a little on the future dead moral certainties. For instance, call this waiter St. Louis.

  “And we’ll lay this fork (representing the railroad) from St. Louis to this potato, which is Slouchburg:

  “Then with this carving knife we’ll continue the railroad from Slouchburg to Doodleville, shown by the black pepper:

  “Then we run along the—yes—the comb—to the tumbler—that’s Brimstone:

  “Thence by the pipe to Belshazzar, which is the salt-cellar:

  “Thence to, to—that quill—Catfish—hand me the pincushion, Marie Antoinette:

  “Thence right along these shears to this horse, Babylon:

  “Then by the spoon to Bloody Run—thank you, the ink:

  “Thence to Hail Columbia—snuffers, Polly, please—move that cup and saucer close up, that’s Hail Columbia:

  “Then—let me open my knife—to Hark-from-the-Tomb, where we’ll put the candle-stick—only a little distance from Hail Columbia to Hark-from-the-Tomb—down-grade all the way.

  “And there we strike Columbus River—pass me two or three skeins of thread to stand for the river; the sugar bowl will do for Hawkeye, and the rat trap for Stone’s Landing—Napoleon, I mean—and you can see how much better Napoleon is located than Hawkeye. Now here you are with your railroad complete, and showing its continuation to Hallelujah and thence to Corruptionville.

  “Now then—there you are! It’s a beautiful road, beautiful. Jeff Thompson can out-engineer any civil engineer that ever sighted through an aneroid,2 or a theodolite, or whatever they call it—he calls it sometimes one and sometimes the other—just whichever levels off his sentence neatest, I reckon. But ain’t it a ripping road, though? I tell you, it’ll make a stir when it gets along. Just see what a country it goes through. There’s your onions at Slouchburg— noblest onion country that graces God’s footstool; and there’s your turnip country all around Doodleville—bless my life, what fortunes are going to be made there when they get that contrivance perfected for extracting olive oil out of turnips—if there’s any in them; and I reckon there is, because Congress has made an appropriation of money to test the thing, and they wouldn’t have done that just on conjecture, of course. And now we come to the Brimstone region— cattle raised there till you can’t rest—and corn, and all that sort of thing. Then you’ve got a little stretch along through Belshazzar that don’t produce anything now—at least nothing but rocks—but irrigation will fetch it. Then from Catfish to Babylon it’s a little swampy, but there’s dead loads of peat down under there somewhere. Next is the Bloody Run and Hail Columbia country—tobacco enough can be raised there to support two such railroads. Next is the sassparilla region. I reckon there’s enough of that truck along in there on the line of the pocket knife, from Hail Columbia to Hark-from-the-Tomb to fat up all the consumptives in all the hospitals from Halifax to the Holy Land. It just grows like weeds! I’ve got a little belt of sassparilla land in there just tucked away unobstrusively waiting for my little Universal Expectorant to get into shape in my head. And I’ll fix that, you know. One of these days I’ll have all the nations of the earth expecto—”

  Scale- Miles to the inch.

  “But Eschol, dear—”

  “Don’t interrupt me, Polly—I don’t want you to lose the run of the map—well, take your toy-horse, James Fitz-James, if you must have it—and run along with you. Here, now—the soap will do for Babylon. Let me see—where was I? Oh yes—now we run down to Stone’s Lan—Napoleon—now we run down to Napoleon. Beautiful road. Look at that, now. Perfectly straight line—straight as the way to the grave. And see where it leaves Hawkeye—clear out in the cold, my dear, clear out in the cold. That town’s as bound to die as—well if I owned it I’d get its obituary ready, now, and notify the mourners. Polly, mark my words—in three years from this, Hawkeye’ll be a howling wilderness. You’ll see. And just look at that river—noblest stream that meanders over the thirsty earth!—calmest, gentlest artery that refreshes her weary bosom! Railroad goes all over it and all through it—wades right along on stilts. Seventeen bridges in three miles and a half—forty-nine bridges from Hark-from-the-Tomb to Stone’s Landing altogether—forty-nine bridges, and culverts enough to culvert creation itself! Hadn’t skeins of thread enough to represent them all—but you get an idea—perfect trestle-work of bridges for seventy-two miles. Jeff Thompson and I fixed all that, you know; he’s to get the contracts and I’m to put them through on the divide. Just oceans of money in those bridges. It’s the only part of the railroad I’m interested in,—down along the line—and it’s all I want, too. It’s enough, I should judge. Now here we are at Napoleon. Good enough country—plenty good enough—all it wants is population. That’s all right—that will come. And it’s no bad country now for calmness and solitude, I can tell you—though there’s no money in that, of course. No money, but a man wants rest, a man wants peace—a man don’t want to rip and tear around all the time. And here we go, now, just as straight as a string for Hallelujah—it’s a beautiful angle—handsome up-grade all the way—and then away you go to Corruptionville, the gaudiest country for early carrots and cauliflowers that ever—good missionary field, too. There ain’t such another missionary field outside the jungles of Central Africa. And patriotic?—why they named it after Congress itself. Oh, I warn you, my dear, there’s a good time coming, and it’ll be right along before you know what you’re about, too. That railroad’s fetching it. You see what it is as far as I’ve got, and if I had enough bottles and soap and boot-jacks and such things to carry it along to where it joins onto the Union Pacific, fourteen hundred miles from here, I should exhibit to you in that little internal improvement a spectacle of inconceivable sublimity. So, don’t you see? We’ve got the railroad to fall back on; and in the meantime, what are we worrying about that $200,000 appropriation for? That’s all right. I’d be willing to bet anything that the very next letter that comes from Harry will—”

  The eldest boy entered just in the nick of time and brought a letter, warm from the post-office.

  Result of a Straight Line.

  “Things do look bright, after all, Eschol. I’m sorry I was blue, but it did seem as if everything had been going against us for whole ages. Open the letter—open it quick, and let’s know all about it before we stir out of our places. I am all in a fidget to know what it says.”

  The letter was opened, without any unnecessary delay.

  CHAPTER 28

  Hvo der vil kjöbe Pölse af Hunden maa give ham Flesk igjen.

  —Mit seinem eignen Verstande wurde Thrasyllus schwerllch durchgekommen seyn. Aber in solchen Fällen finden seinesgleichen für ihr Geld immer einen Spitzbuben, der ihnen seinen Kopf leiht; und dann ist es so viel als ob sie selbst einen hätten.

  WIELAND. DIE ABDERITEN.

  Whatever may have been the language of Harry’s letter to the Colonel, the information it conveyed was condensed or expanded, one or the other, from the following episode of his visit to New York:

  He called, with official importance in his mien, at No. ———, Wall street, where a great gilt sign betokened the presence of the headquarters of the “Columbus River Slack-Water Navigation Company.” He entered and gave a dressy porter his card, and was requested to wait a moment in a sort of ante-room. The porter returned in a minute, and asked whom he would like to see?

  “The president of the company, of course.”

  “He is busy with some gentlemen, sir; says he will be done with them directly.”

  That a copper-plate card with “Engineer-in-Chief ” on it should be received with such tranquility as this, annoyed Mr. Brierly not a little. But he had to submit. Indeed his annoyance had time to augment a good deal; for he was allowed to cool his heels a full half hour in the ante-room before those gentlemen emerged and he was ushered into the presence. He found a stately dignitary occupying a very official chair behind a long green morocco-covered table, in a room sumptuously carpeted and furnished, and well garnished with pictures.

  “Good morning, sir; take a seat—take a seat.”

  “Thank you sir,” said Harry, throwing as much chill into his manner as his ruffled dignity prompted.

  “We perceive by your reports and the reports of the Chief Superintendent, that you have been making gratifying progress with the work.—We are all very much pleased.”

  “Indeed? We did not discover it from your letters—which we have not received; nor by the treatment our drafts have met with—which were not honored; nor by the reception of any part of the appropriation, no part of it having come to hand.”

  “Why, my dear Mr. Brierly, there must be some mistake. I am sure we wrote you and also Mr. Sellers, recently—when my clerk comes he will show copies—letters informing you of the ten per cent. assessment.”

  “Oh, certainly, we got those letters. But what we wanted was money to carry on the work—money to pay the men.”

  “Certainly, certainly—true enough—but we credited you both for a large part of your assessments—I am sure that was in our letters.”

  “Of course that was in—I remember that.”

  “Ah, very well then. Now we begin to understand each other.”

  “Well, I don’t see that we do. There’s two months’ wages due the men, and———”

  “How? Haven’t you paid the men?”

  “Paid them! How are we going to pay them when you don’t honor our drafts?”

  “Why, my dear sir, I cannot see how you can find any fault with us. I am sure we have acted in a perfectly straight forward business way. Now let us look at the thing a moment. You subscribed for 100 shares of the capital stock, at $1,000 a share, I believe?”

  “Yes, sir, I did.”

  “And Mr. Sellers took a like amount?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very well. No concern can get along without money. We levied a ten per cent. assessment. It was the original understanding that you and Mr. Sellers were to have the positions you now hold, with salaries of $600 a month each, while in active service. You were duly elected to these places, and you accepted them. Am I right?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Very well. You were given your instructions and put to work. By your reports it appears that you have expended the sum of $9,640 upon the said work. Two months salary to you two officers amounts altogether to $2,400—about one-eighth of your ten per cent. assessment, you see; which leaves you in debt to the company for the other seven-eighths of the assessment—viz, something over $8,000 apiece. Now instead of requiring you to forward this aggregate of $16,000 or $17,000 to New York, the company voted unanimously to let you pay it over to the contractors, laborers from time to time, and give you credit on the books for it. And they did it without a murmur, too, for they were pleased with the progress you had made, and were glad to pay you that little compliment—and a very neat one it was, too, I am sure. The work you did fell short of $10,000, a trifle. Let me see— $9,640 from $20,000—salary $2,400 added—ah yes, the balance due the company from yourself and Mr. Sellers is $7,960, which I will take the responsibility of allowing to stand for the present, unless you prefer to draw a check now, and thus———”

  “Confound it, do you mean to say that instead of the company owing us $2,400, we owe the company $7,960?”

  Touching a Weak Spot.

  “Well, yes.”

  “And that we owe the men and the contractors nearly ten thousand dollars besides?”

  “Owe them! Oh bless my soul, you can’t mean that you have not paid these people?”

  “But I do mean it!”

  The president rose and walked the floor like a man in bodily pain. His brows contracted, he put his hand up and clasped his forehead, and kept saying, “Oh, it is too bad, too bad, too bad! Oh, it is bound to be found out—nothing can prevent it—nothing!”