 21 O lift your natures up, embrace our aims, work out your freedom. Knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed. Drink deep till the habits of the slave, the sins of emptiness, gossip in spite, and slander die. The Princess. Whether medicine is a science, or only an empirical method of getting a living out of the ignorance of the human race, Ruth found before her first term was over at the medical school that there were other things she needed to know quite as much as that which is taught in medical books and that she could never satisfy her aspirations without more general culture. Does your doctor know anything? I don't mean about medicine, but about things in general. Is he a man of information and good sense? Once asked an old practitioner. If he doesn't know anything but medicine, the chance is he doesn't know that. The close application to her special study was beginning to tell upon Ruth's delicate health also, and the summer brought with it only weariness and indisposition for any mental effort. In this condition of mind and body the quiet of her home and the unexciting companionship of those about her were more than ever tiresome. She followed with more interest Phillips sparkling account of his life in the West and longed for his experiences and to know some of those people of a world so different from here who alternately amused and displeased him. He at least was learning the world, the good and the bad of it, as must happen to everyone who accomplishes anything in it. But what, Ruth wrote, could a woman do tied up by custom and cast into particular circumstances out of which it was almost impossible to extricate herself? Philip thought that he would go some day and extricate Ruth, but he did not write that, for he had the instinct to know that this was not the extrication she dreamed of, and that she must find out by her own experience what her heart really wanted. Philip was not a philosopher to be sure, but he had the old-fashioned notion that whatever a woman's theories of life might be she would come round to matrimony only give her time. He could indeed recall to mind one woman and he never knew a nobler whose whole soul was devoted and who believed that her life was consecrated to a certain benevolent project in singleness of life who yielded to the touch of matrimony as an icicle yields to a sunbeam. Neither at home nor elsewhere did Ruth utter any complaint or admit any weariness or doubt of her ability to pursue the path she had marked out for herself. But her mother saw clearly enough her struggle with infirmity, and was not deceived by either her gaiety or by the cheerful composure which she carried into all the ordinary duties that fell to her. She saw plainly enough that Ruth needed an entire change of scene and of occupation, and perhaps she believed that such a change, with the knowledge of the world it would bring, would divert Ruth from a course for which she felt she was physically entirely unfitted. It therefore suited the wishes of all concerned when Autumn came that Ruth should go away to school. She selected a large New England seminary, of which she had often heard Philip speak, which was attended by both sexes and offered almost collegiate advantages of education. Thither she went in September and began for the second time in the year a life new to her. The seminary was the chief feature of Falk Hill, a village of two to three thousand inhabitants. It was a prosperous school, with three hundred students, a large corps of teachers, men and women, and with a venerable rusty row of academic buildings on the shaded square of the town. The students lodged and boarded in private families in the place, and so it came about that while the school did a great deal to support the town, the town gave the students society and the sweet influences of home life. It is at least respectful to say that the influences of home life are sweet. Ruth's home, by the intervention of Philip, was in a family, one of the rare exceptions in life or in fiction, that had never known better days. The Montague's, it is perhaps well to say, had intended to come over in the Mayflower, but were detained at Delftaven by the illness of a child. They came over to Massachusetts Bay in another vessel, and thus escaped the onus of that brevet nobility under which the successors of the Mayflower pilgrims have descended. During no factitious weight of dignity to carry, the Montague's steadily improved their condition from the day they landed, and they were never more vigorous or prosperous than at the date of this narrative. With character compacted by the rigid Puritan discipline of more than two centuries, they had retained its strength and purity and thrown off its narrowness, and were now blossoming under the generous modern influences. Squire Oliver Montague, a lawyer who had retired from the practice of his profession, except in rare cases, dwelt in a square old-fashioned New England mansion a quarter of a mile away from the Green. It was called a mansion because it stood alone with ample fields about it, and had an avenue of trees leading to it from the road, and on the west commended a view of a pretty little lake with gentle slopes and knotting groves. But it was just a plain roomy house capable of extending to many guests an unpretending hospitality. The family consisted of the Squire and his wife, a son and a daughter married and not at home, a son in college at Cambridge, another son at the seminary, and a daughter Alice, who was a year or more older than Ruth, having only riches enough to be able to gratify reasonable desires, and yet make their gratifications always a novelty and a pleasure, the family occupied just that mean in life which is so rarely attained and still more rarely enjoyed without discontent. If Ruth did not find so much luxury in the house as in her own home, there were evidences of culture, of intellectual activity, and of a zest in the affairs of all the world which greatly impressed her. Every room had its bookcases or bookshelves, and was more or less a library. Upon every table was liable to be a litter of new books, fresh periodicals and daily newspapers. There were plants in the sunny windows and some choice engravings on the walls, with bits of color in oil or watercolors. The piano was sure to be open and strewn with music, and there were photographs and little souvenirs here and there of foreign travel. An absence of any what-nots in the corners with rows of cheerful shells and Hindu gods and Chinese idols and nests of useless boxes of lacquered wood might be taken as denoting a languidness in the family concerning foreign missions, but perhaps unjustly. At any rate the life of the world flowed freely into this hospitable house, and there was always so much talk there of the news of the day, of the new books and of authors, of Boston Radicalism and New York Civilization and the virtue of Congress, that small gossips stood a very poor chance. All this was in many ways so new to Ruth that she seemed to have passed into another world in which she experienced a freedom and a mental exhilaration unknown to her before. Under this influence she entered upon her studies with keen enjoyment, finding for a time all the relaxation she needed in the charming social life at the Montague House. It is strange, she wrote to Philip in one of her occasional letters, that you never told me more about this delightful family, and scarcely mentioned Alice, who is the life of it, just the noblest girl, unselfish, knows how to do so many things with lots of talent, with a dry humor, and an odd way of looking at things, and yet quiet and even serious often. One of your capable New England girls. We shall be great friends. It had never occurred to Philip that there was anything extraordinary about the family that needed mention. He knew dozens of girls like Alice, he thought to himself, but only one like Ruth. Good friends the two girls were from the beginning. Ruth was a study to Alice, the product of a culture entirely foreign to her experience, so much a child in some things, so much a woman in others. And Ruth in turn it must be confessed, probing Alice sometimes with her serious grey eyes, wondered what her object in life was, and whether she had any purpose beyond living as she now saw her. For she could scarcely conceive of a life that should not be devoted to the accomplishment of some definite work, and she had no doubt that in her own case everything else would yield to the professional career she had marked out. So you know Philip Sterling, said Ruth one day as the girls sat at their sowing. Ruth never embroidered and never sewed when she could avoid it. Bless her. Oh yes, we are old friends. Philip used to come to Falkill often when he was in college. He was once rusticated here for a term. Rusticated? Suspended for some college scrape. He was a great favourite here. Father and he were famous friends. Father said that Philip had no end of nonsense in him and was always blundering into something, but he was a royal good fellow and would come out all right. Did you think he was fickle? Why, I never thought whether he was or not, replied Alice, looking up. I suppose he was always in love with some girl or another as college boys are. He used to make me his confidant now and then and be terribly in the dumps. Why did he come to you? pursued Ruth. You were younger than he. I'm sure I don't know. He was at our house a good deal. Once at a picnic by the lake at the risk of his own life he saved sister Millie from drowning and we all liked to have him here. Perhaps he thought as he had saved one sister the other ought to help him when he was in trouble. I don't know. The fact was that Alice was a person who invited confidances because she never betrayed them and gave abundant sympathy in return. There are persons whom we all know, to whom human confidances, troubles and heartaches flow as naturally as streams to a placid lake. This is not a history of Falkill nor of the Montague family worthy as both are of that honor and this narrative cannot be diverted into long loitering with them. If the reader visits the village today he will doubtless be pointed out the Montague dwelling where Ruth lived, the crosslots path she traversed to the seminary and the venerable chapel with its cracked bell. In the little society of the place the Quaker girl was a favorite and no considerable social gathering or pleasure party was thought complete without her. There was something in this seemingly transparent and yet deep character in her childlike gaiety and enjoyment of the society about her and in her not seldom absorption in herself that would have made her long remembered there if no events had subsequently occurred to recall her to mind. To the surprise of Alice Ruth took to the small gaieties of the village with a zest of enjoyment that seemed foreign to one who had devoted her life to a serious profession from the highest motives. Alice liked society well enough, she thought, but there was nothing exciting in that of Falkill nor anything novel in the attentions of the well bred young gentleman one met in it. It must have worn a different aspect to Ruth for she entered into its pleasures at first with curiosity and then with interest and finally with a kind of state abandon that no one would have deemed possible for her. Parties, picnics, rowing matches, moonlight strolls, nutting expeditions in the October woods, Alice declared that it was a whirl of dissipation. The fondness of Ruth which was scarcely disguised for the company of agreeable young fellows who talked nothings gave Alice opportunity for no end of banter. Do you look upon them as subjects dear? she would ask. And Ruth laughed her merriest laugh and then looked sober again. Perhaps she was thinking, after all, whether she knew herself. If you should rear a duck in the heart of the Sahara, no doubt it would swim if you brought it to the Nile. Surely no one would have predicted when Ruth left Philadelphia that she would become absorbed to this extent and so happy in a life so unlike that she thought she desired. But no one can tell how a woman will act under any circumstances. The reason novelists nearly always fail in depicting women when they make them act is that they let them do what they have observed some woman has done at some time or another. And that is where they make a mistake, for a woman will never do again what has been done before. It is this uncertainty that causes women, considered as materials for fiction, to be so interesting to themselves and to others. As the fall went on and the winter, Ruth did not distinguish herself greatly at the Fall Kill Seminary as a student, a fact that apparently gave her no anxiety and did not diminish her enjoyment of a new sort of power which had awakened within her. CHAPTER XXII In midwinter an event occurred of unusual interest to the inhabitants of the Montague House and to the friends of the young ladies who sought their society. This was the arrival at the Sasaqua Hotel of two young gentlemen from the West. It is the fashion in New England to give Indian names to the public houses, not that the late lamented savage knew how to keep a hotel, but that his war-like name may impress the traveller who humbly craves shelter there and make him grateful to the noble and gentlemanly clerk if he is allowed to depart with his scalps safe. The two young gentlemen were neither students for the Fall Kill Seminary nor lecturers on physiology, nor yet life- insurance solicitors, three suppositions that almost exhausted the guessing power of the people at the hotel in respect to the names of Philip Sterling and Henry Briarley, Missouri, on the register. They were handsome enough fellows that was evident, browned by outdoor exposure, and with a free and lordly way about them that almost odd the hotel clerk himself. Indeed, he very soon set down Mr. Briarley as a gentleman of large fortune, with enormous interests on his shoulders. Harry had a way of casually mentioning Western investments through lines, the freighting business, and the route through the Indian territory to lower California, which was calculated to give an importance to his lightest word. You've a pleasant town here, sir, and the most comfortable-looking hotel I've seen out of New York, said Harry to the clerk. We shall stay here a few days if you can give us a roomy suite of apartments. Harry usually had the best of everything wherever he went, as such fellows always do have in this accommodating world. Philip would have been quite content with less expensive quarters, but there was no resisting Harry's generosity in such matters. Railroad surveying and real estate operations were at a standstill during the winter in Missouri, and the young men had taken advantage of the lull to come east, Philip to see if there was any disposition in his friends the railway contractors to give him a share in the Salt Lake Union Pacific extension, and Harry to open out to his uncle the prospects of the new city at Stone's Landing, and to procure congressional appropriations for the harbor and for making Goose Run navigable. Harry had with him a map of that noble stream and of the harbor, with a perfect network of railroads centering in it, pictures of wharves crowded with steamboats, and of huge grain elevators on the bank, all of which grew out of the combined imaginations of Colonel Sellers and Mr. Briarley. The Colonel had entire confidence in Harry's influence with Wall Street and with congressmen to bring about the consummation of their scheme, and he waited his return in the empty house at Hawkeye, feeding his pinched family upon the most gorgeous expectations with a reckless prodigality. Don't let him into the thing more than is necessary, says the Colonel to Harry. Give him a small interest, a lot of peace in the suburbs of the Landing ought to do a congressman, but I reckon you'll have to mortgage a part of the city itself to the brokers. Harry did not find that eagerness to lend money on Stone's Landing in Wall Street, which Colonel Sellers had expected. It had seen too many such maps as he exhibited, although his uncle and some of the brokers looked with more favour on the appropriation for improving the navigation of Columbus River, and were not disinclined to form a company for that purpose. An appropriation was a tangible thing if you could get hold of it, and it made little difference what it was appropriated for so long as you got hold of it. Pending these weighty negotiations, Philip had persuaded Harry to take a little run up to Fallkill, a not difficult task, for that young man would at any time have turned his back upon all the land in the West at sight of a new and pretty face, and he had, it must be confessed, a facility in love-making which made it not at all an interference with the more serious business of life. He could not, to be sure, conceive how Philip could be interested in a young lady who was studying medicine, but he had no objection to going, for he did not doubt that there were other girls in Fallkill who were worth a week's attention. The young men were received at the house of the Montague's with the hospitality which never failed there. We are glad to see you again, exclaimed the squire heartily. You are welcome, Mr. Briarley, any friend of Phil's is welcome at our house. It's more like home to me than any place except my own home, cried Philip, as he looked about the cheerful house and went through a general handshaking. It's a long time, though, since you have been here to say so, Alice said, with her father's frankness of manner, and I suspect we owe the visit now to your sudden interest in the Fallkill Seminary. Philip's color came as it had an awkward way of doing in his tell-tale face, but before he could stammer or reply, Harry came in with. That accounts for Phil's wish to build a seminary at Stone's Landing, our place in Missouri, when Colonel Sellers insisted it should be a university. Philip appears to have a weakness for seminaries. It would have been better for your friend Sellers, retorted Philip, if he had had a weakness for district schools. Colonel Sellers, Miss Alice, is a great friend of Harry's who is always trying to build a house by beginning at the top. I suppose it's as easy to build a university on paper as a seminary and it looks better, was Harry's reflection, at which the squire laughed and said he quite agreed with him. The old gentleman understood Stone's Landing a good deal better than he would have done after an hour's talk with either of its expectant proprietors. At this moment, and while Philip was trying to frame a question that he found it exceedingly difficult to put into words, the door opened quietly and Ruth entered. Taking in the group with a quick glance, her eye lighted up and with a merry smile she advanced and shook hands with Philip. She was so unconstrained and sincerely cordial that it made that hero of the West feel somehow young and very ill at ease. For months and months he had thought of this meeting and pictured it to himself a hundred times, but he had never imagined it would be like this. He should meet Ruth unexpectedly as she was walking alone from the school perhaps or entering a room where he was waiting for her and she would cry, Oh, Phil! and then check herself and perhaps blush and Philip, calm but eager and enthusiastic, would reassure her by his warm manner and he would take her hand impressively and she would look up timidly and after his long absence perhaps he would be permitted to good heavens how many times had he come to this point and wondered if it could happen so. Well, well, he had never supposed that he should be the one embarrassed and above all by a sincere and cordial welcome. We heard you were at the Sassacus House, were Ruth's first words, and this I suppose is your friend? I beg your pardon, Philip at length blundered out. This is Mr. Briarly of whom I have written you. And Ruth welcomed Harry with a friendliness that Philip thought was due to his friend, to be sure, but which seemed to him too level with her reception of himself but which Harry received as his due from the other sacks. Questions were asked about the journey and about the West and the conversation became a general one until Philip at length found himself talking with the squire in relation to land and railroads and things he couldn't keep his mind on, especially as he heard Ruth and Harry in an animated discourse and caught the words New York and opera and reception and knew that Harry was giving his imagination full range in the world of fashion. Harry knew all about the opera, Green Room and All, at least he said so, and knew a good many of the operas and could make very interesting stories of their plots, telling how the soprano came in here and the basso there, humming the beginning of their airs, tum-t-tum-t-t, suggesting the profound dissatisfaction of the basso recitativ down among the dead men, and touching off the whole with an airy grace quite captivating, though he couldn't have sung a single air through to save himself, and he hadn't an ear to know whether it was sung correctly. All the same he doted on the opera and kept a box there, into which he lounged occasionally to hear a favorite scene and meet his society friends. If Ruth was ever in the city he should be happy to place his box at the disposal of Ruth and her friends. Needless to say she was delighted with the offer. When she told Philip of it that discreet young fellow only smiled and said that he hoped she would be fortunate enough to be in New York some evening when Harry had not already given the use of his private box to some other friend. The squire pressed the visitors to let him send for their trunks and urged them to stay at his house, and Alice joined in the invitation, but Philip had reasons for declining. They stayed to supper, however, and in the evening Philip had a long talk apart with Ruth, a delightful hour to him in which she spoke freely of herself as of old, of her studies at Philadelphia and of her plans, and she entered into his adventures and prospects in the West with a genuine and almost sisterly interest. An interest, however, which did not exactly satisfy Philip. It was too general and not personally enough to suit him. And with all her freedom in speaking of her own hopes Philip could not detect any reference to himself in them, whereas he never undertook anything that he did not think of Ruth in connection with it. He never made a plan that had not reference to her, and he never thought of anything as complete if she could not share it. Fortune, reputation, these had no value to him except in Ruth's eyes, and there were times when it seemed to him that if Ruth was not on this earth he should plunge off into some remote wilderness and live in a purposeless seclusion. I hoped, said Philip, to get a little start in connection with this new railroad and make a little money so that I could come east and engage in something more suited to my tastes. I shouldn't like to live in the West, would you? It never occurred to me whether I would or not, was the unembarrassed reply. One of our graduates went to Chicago and has a nice practice there. I don't know where I shall go. It would mortify mother dreadfully to have me driving about Philadelphia in a doctor's jig. Philip laughed at the idea of it. And does it seem as necessary to you to do it as it did before you came to Fallkill? It was a home question and went deeper than Philip knew, for Ruth at once thought of practicing her profession among the young gentlemen and ladies of her acquaintance in the village. But she was reluctant to admit to herself that her notions of a career had undergone any change. Oh, I don't think I should come to Fallkill to practice, but I must do something when I am through school. And why not, medicine? Philip would like to have explained why not, but the explanation would be of no use if it were not already obvious to Ruth. Harry was equally in his element, whether instructing Squire Montague about the investment of capital in Missouri, the improvement of Columbus River, the project he and some gentlemen in New York had for making a shorter Pacific connection with the Mississippi than the present one, or diverting Mrs. Montague with his experience in cooking in camp, or drawing for Miss Alice an amusing picture of the social contrasts of New England and the border where he had been. Harry was a very entertaining fellow, having his imagination to help his memory and telling his stories as if he believed them, and perhaps he did. Alice was greatly amused with Harry and listened so seriously to his romanticizing that he exceeded his usual limits. Chance allusions to his bachelor establishment in town and the place of his family on the Hudson could not have been made by a millionaire more naturally. I should think, queried Alice, you would rather stay in New York than to try the rough life in the West you have been speaking of. Oh, adventure, says Harry. I get tired of New York, and besides I got involved in some operations that I had to see through. Parties in New York only last week wanted me to go down into Arizona in a big diamond interest. I told them no, no speculation for me. I've got my interests in Missouri, and I wouldn't leave Philip as long as he stays there. When the young gentlemen were on their way back to the hotel, Mr. Philip, who was not in very good humor, broke out. What the deuce, Harry, did you go on in that style to the Montague's for? Go on, cried Harry. Why shouldn't I try to make a pleasant evening? And besides, ain't I going to do those things? What difference does it make about the mood in the tense of a mere verb? Didn't Uncle tell me only last Saturday that I might as well go down to Arizona and hunt for diamonds? A fellow might as well make a good impression as a poor one. Nonsense, you'll get to believing your own romancing by and by. Well, you'll see. When sellers and I get that appropriation, I'll show you an establishment in town and another on the Hudson and a box at the opera. Yes, it will be like Colonel Seller's's plantation at Hawkeye. Did you ever see that? Now don't be cross, Phil. She's just superb, that little woman. You never told me. Who's just superb? growled Philip, fancying this turn of the conversation less than the other. Well, Mrs. Montague, if you must know. And Harry stopped to light a cigar and then puffed on in silence. The little quarrel didn't last overnight, for Harry never appeared to cherish any ill-will half a second, and Philip was too sensible to continue a row about nothing, and he had invited Harry to come with him. The young gentlemen stayed in Falkill a week and were every day at the Montague's and took part in the winter gayities of the village. There were parties here and there to which the friends of Ruth and the Montague's were of course invited, and Harry in the generosity of his nature gave in return a little supper at the hotel, very simple indeed, with dancing in the hall and some refreshments passed round, and Philip found the whole thing in the bill when he came to pay it. Before the week was over Philip thought he had a new light on the character of Ruth. Her absorption in the small gayities of the society there surprised him. He had few opportunities for serious conversation with her. There was always some butterfly or another flitting about, and when Philip showed by his manner that he was not pleased, Ruth laughed merrily enough and rallied him on his soberness. She declared he was getting to be grim and unsocial. He talked indeed more with Alice than with Ruth, and scarcely concealed from her the trouble that was in his mind. It needed in fact no word from him, for she saw clearly enough what was going forward and knew her sex well enough to know that there was no remedy for it but time. Ruth is a dear girl, Philip, and has as much firmness of purpose as ever, but don't you see she has just discovered that she is fond of society? Don't you let her see you are selfish about it is my advice. The last evening they were to spend in Falkill they were at the Montague's, and Philip hoped he would find Ruth in a different mood. But she was never more gay, and there was a spice of mischief in her eye and in her laugh. Confound it, said Philip to himself, she's in a perfect Twitter. He would have liked to quarrel with her and fling himself out of the house in tragedy style, going perhaps so far as to blindly wander off miles into the country and bathe his throbbing brow in the chilling reign of the stars as people do in novels. But he had no opportunity. For Ruth was as serenely unconscious of mischief as women can be at times, and fascinated him more than ever with her little demurenesses and half-confidences. She even said thee to him once in reproach for a cutting speech he began, and the sweet little word made his heart beat like a trip hammer, for never in all her life had she said thee to him before. Was she fascinated with Harry's careless bonamie and gay assurance? Both chatted away in high spirits and made the evening whirl along in the most mirthful manner. Ruth sang for Harry, and that young gentleman turned the leaves for her at the piano, and put in a bass note now and then where he thought it would tell. Yes, it was a merry evening, and Philip was heartily glad when it was over, and the long leave-taking with the family was through with. Farewell, Philip! Good night, Mr. Briarly! Ruth's clear voice sounded after them as they went down the walk. And she spoke Harry's name last, thought Philip. CHAPTER XXIII O. C. E. Nott, Yon, Narrow Road. So thick be set with thorns and briars? That is the path of righteousness, though after it but few inquires. And see ye not, Yon-braid, braired road, that lies across the lily-leaven? That is the path of wickedness, though some call it the road to heaven. TOMAS THE RIMER Philip and Harry reached New York in very different states of mind. Harry was buoyant. He found the letter from Colonel Sellers urging him to go to Washington and confer with Senator Dillworthy. The petition was in his hands. It had been signed by everybody of any importance in Missouri and would be presented immediately. I should go myself, wrote the Colonel, but I am engaged in the invention of a process for lighting such a city as St. Louis by means of water. Just attach my machine to the water-pipes anywhere, and the decomposition of the fluid begins, and you will have floods of light for the mere cost of the machine. I nearly got the lighting part, but I want to attach to it a heating, cooking, washing, and ironing apparatus. It's going to be the great thing, but we'd better keep this appropriation going while I am perfecting it. Harry took letters to several congressmen from his uncle and from Mr. Duff Brown, each of whom had an extensive acquaintance in both houses where they were well known as men engaged in large private operations for the public good, and men, besides who in the slang of the day understood the virtues of addition, division, and silence. Senator Dillworthy introduced the petition into the Senate with the remark that he knew personally the signers of it, that they were men interested, it was true, in the improvement of the country, but he believed without any selfish motive, and that so far as he knew the signers were loyal. It pleased him to see upon the roll the names of many colored citizens, and it must rejoice every friend of humanity to know that this lately emancipated race were intelligently taking part in the development of the resources of their native land. He moved the reference of the petition to the proper committee. Senator Dillworthy introduced his young friend to influential members, as a person who was very well informed about the salt-lick extension of the Pacific, and was one of the engineers who had made a careful survey of Columbus River, and left him to exhibit his maps and plans, and to show the connection between the public treasury, the city of Napoleon, and legislation for the benefit of the whole country. Harry was the guest of Senator Dillworthy. There was scarcely any good movement in which the Senator was not interested. This house was open to all the laborers in the field of total abstinence, and much of his time was taken up in attending the meetings of this cause. He had a Bible class in the Sunday school of the church which he attended, and he suggested to Harry that he might take a class during the time he remained in Washington. Mr. Washington Hawkins had a class. Harry asked the Senator if there was a class of young ladies for him to teach, and after that the Senator did not press the subject. Philip, if the truth must be told, was not well satisfied with his Western prospects, nor altogether with the people he had fallen in with. The railroad contractors held out large, but rather indefinite, promises. Opportunities for a fortune he did not doubt existed in Missouri, but for him he saw no better means of livelihood than the mastery of the profession he had rather thoughtlessly entered upon. In the summer he made considerable practical advance in the science of engineering. He had been diligent and made himself to a certain extent necessary to the work he was engaged on. The contractors called him into their consultations frequently, as to the character of the country he had been over, and the cost of constructing the road, and the nature of the work, etc. Still Philip felt that if he was going to make either reputation or money as an engineer, he had a great deal of hard study before him, and it is to his credit that he did not shrink from it. While Harry was in Washington, dancing attendance upon the national legislature and making the acquaintance of the vast lobby that encircled it, Philip devoted himself day and night with an energy and a concentration he was capable of to the learning and theory of his profession, and to the science of railroad building. He wrote some papers at this time for the plough, the loom, and the anvil, upon the strength of materials and especially upon bridge building, which attracted considerable attention and were copied into the English practical magazine. They served at any rate to raise Philip in the opinion of his friends, the contractors, for practical men have a certain superstitious estimation of ability with the pen, and though they may a little despise the talent, they are quite ready to make use of it. Philip sent copies of his performances to Ruth's father and to other gentlemen whose good opinion he coveted, but he did not rest upon his laurels. Indeed, so diligently had he applied himself that when it came time for him to return to the West, he felt himself, at least in theory, competent to take charge of a division in the field. CHAPTER XXIV The capital of the Great Republic was a new world to country bread Washington Hawkins. St. Louis was a greater city, but its floating population did not hail from great distances, and so it had the general family aspect of the permanent population. But Washington gathered its people from the four winds of heaven, and so the manners, the faces, and the fashions there presented a variety that was infinite. Washington had never been in society in St. Louis, and he knew nothing of the ways of its wealthier citizens, and had never inspected one of their dwellings. Consequently, everything in the nature of modern fashion and grandeur was a new and wonderful revelation to him. Washington is an interesting city to any of us. It seems to become more and more interesting the oftener we visited. Perhaps the reader has never been there? Very well. You arrive either at night, rather too late to do anything or see anything until morning, or you arrive so early in the morning that you consider it best to go to your hotel and sleep an hour or two while the sun bothers along over the Atlantic. You cannot well arrive at a pleasant intermediate hour, because the railway corporation that keeps the keys of the only door that leads into the town or out of it take care of that. You arrive in tolerably good spirits, because it is only thirty-eight miles from Baltimore to the capital. And so you have only been insulted three times, provided you are not in a sleeping car, the average is higher there. Once when you renewed your ticket after stopping over in Baltimore, once when you were about to enter the ladies' car without knowing it was a ladies' car, and once when you asked the conductor at what hour you would reach Washington. You are assailed by a long rank of hack men who shake their whips in your face as you step out upon the sidewalk. You enter what they regard as a carriage in the capital, and you wonder why they do not take it out of service and put it in the museum. We have few enough antiquities, and it is little to our credit that we make scarcely any effort to preserve the few that we have. You reach your hotel presently, and here let us draw the curtain of charity, because of course you have gone to the wrong one. You, being a stranger, how could you do otherwise? There are a hundred and eighteen bad hotels, and only one good one. The most renowned and popular hotel of them all is perhaps the worst one known to history. It is winter and night. When you arrived it was snowing. When you reached the hotel it was sleeting. When you went to bed it was raining. During the night it froze hard and the wind blew some chimneys down. When you got up in the morning it was foggy. When you finished your breakfast at ten o'clock and went out, the sunshine was brilliant, the weather balmy and delicious, and the mud and slush deep and all pervading. You will like the climate when you get used to it. You naturally wish to view the city, so you take an umbrella, an overcoat, and a fan and go forth. The prominent features you soon locate and get familiar with. First you glimpse the ornamental upper works of a long snowy palace projecting above a grove of trees and a tall graceful white dome with a statue on it surmounting the palace and pleasantly contrasting with the background of blue sky. That building is the capital. Gossips will tell you that by the original estimates it was to cost twelve million dollars and that the government did come within twenty one million two hundred thousand dollars of building it for that sum. You stand at the back of the capital to treat yourself to a view and it is a very noble one. You understand the capital stands upon the verge of a high piece of table-land, a fine commanding position, and its front looks out over this noble situation for a city. But it don't see it for the reason that when the capital extension was decided upon, the property owners at once advanced their prices to such inhuman figures that the people went down and built the city in the muddy low marsh behind the Temple of Liberty. So now the lordly front of the building with its imposing colonnades, its projecting graceful wings, its picturesque groups of statuary and its long terraced ranges of steps flowing down in white marble waves to the ground merely looks out upon a sorrowful little desert of cheap boarding houses. So you observe that you take your view from the back of the capital, and yet not from the airy outlooks of the dome, by the way, because to get there you must pass through the great rotunda, and to do that you would have to see the marvelous historical paintings that hang there and the bob relieves, and what have you done that you should suffer thus? And besides you might have to pass through the old part of the building, and you could not help seeing Mr. Lincoln as petrified by a young lady artist for ten thousand dollars, and you might take his marble emancipation proclamation which he holds out in his hand and contemplates for a folded napkin, and you might conceive from his expression and his attitude that he is finding fault with the washing, which is not the case. Nobody knows what is the matter with him, but everybody feels for him. Well, you ought not to go into the dome anyhow because it would be utterly impossible to go up there without seeing the frescoes in it, and why should you be interested in the delirium tremens of art? The capital is a very noble and a very beautiful building, both within and without, but you need not examine it now. Still, if you greatly prefer going into the dome, go. Now your general glance gives you picturesque stretches of gleaming water on your left, with a sail here and there, and a lunatic asylum on shore. Over beyond the water, on a distant elevation, you see a squat yellow temple which your eye dwells upon lovingly through a blur of unmanly moisture. For it recalls your lost boyhood, and the Parthenon's done in molasses candy which made it blessed and beautiful. Still in the distance, but on this side of the water and close to the edge, the monument to the father of his country towers out of the mud, sacred soil as the customary term. It has the aspect of a factory chimney with the top broken off. The skeleton of a decaying scaffolding lingers about its summit, and the tradition says that the spirit of Washington often comes down and sits on those rafters to enjoy the tribute of respect which the nation has reared as the symbol of its unappeasable gratitude. The monument is to be finished some day, and at that time our Washington will have risen still higher in the nation's veneration, and will be known as the great-great-grandfather of his country. The memorial chimney stands in a quiet pastoral locality that is full of reposeful expression. With a glass you can see the cow sheds about its base, and the contented sheep, nimbling pebbles in the desert solitudes that surround it, and the tired pigs dozing in the holy calm of its protecting shadow. Now you wrench your gaze loose, and you look down in front of you and see the broad Pennsylvania Avenue stretching straight ahead for a mile or more till it brings you up against the iron fence in front of a pillared granite pile, the Treasury Building, an edifice that would command respect in any capital. The stores and hotels that wall in this broad avenue are mean and cheap and dingy, and are better left without comment. Beyond the Treasury is a fine large white barn with wide, unhandsome grounds about it. The President lives there. It is ugly enough outside, but that is nothing to what it is inside. Dreariness, flimsiness, bad taste reduced to mathematical completeness is what the inside offers to the eye, if it remains yet what it always has been. The front and right hand views give you the city at large. It is a wide stretch of cheap little brick houses, with here and there a noble architectural pile lifting itself out of the midst government billings these. If the thaw is still going on when you come down and go about town, you will wonder at the shortsightedness of the city fathers when you come to inspect the streets, in that they do not dilute the mud a little more and use them for canals. If you inquire around a little, you will find that there are more boarding houses to the square acre in Washington than there are in any other city in the land, perhaps. If you apply for a home in one of them, it will seem odd to you to have the landlady inspect you with a severe eye and then ask you if you are a member of Congress. Perhaps, just as a pleasantry, you will say yes, and then she will tell you that she is full. Then you show her her advertisement in the morning paper, and there she stands convicted and ashamed. She will try to blush, and it will be only polite in you to take the effort for the deed. She shows you her rooms now and lets you take one, but she makes you pay in advance for it. That is what you will get for pretending to be a member of Congress. If you had been content to be merely a private citizen, your trunk would have been sufficient security for your board. If you are curious and inquire into this thing, the chances are that your landlady will be ill-natured enough to say that the person and property of a congressman are exempt from arrest or detention, and that with the tears in her eyes she has seen several of the people's representatives walk off to their several states and territories, carrying her unreseded board-bills in their pockets for keepsakes. And before you have been in Washington many weeks, you will be mean enough to believe her, too. Of course, you can try to see everything and find out everything. And one of the first and most startling things you find out is that every individual you encounter in the city of Washington almost, and certainly every separate and distinct individual in the public employment, from the highest bureau chief, clear down to the maid who scrubs department halls, the night watchman of the public buildings, and the darky boy who purifies the department's patoons, represents political influence. Unless you can get the ear of a senator, or a congressman, or a chief of a bureau or department, and persuade him to use his influence in your behalf, you cannot get an employment of the most trivial nature in Washington. Mere merit, fitness, and capability are useless baggage to you without influence. The population of Washington consists pretty much entirely of government employees and the people who board them. There are thousands of these employees, and they have gathered there from every corner of the union, and got their burst through the intercession, command is nearer the word, of the senators and representatives of their respective states. It would be an odd circumstance to see a girl get employment at three or four dollars a week in one of the great public cribs without any political grandee to back her, but merely because she was worthy and competent, and a good citizen of a free country that treats all persons alike. Washington would be mildly thunderstruck at such a thing as that. If you are a member of Congress, no offense, and one of your constituents who doesn't know anything and does not want to go into the bother of learning something, and has no money, and no employment, and can't earn a living, comes besieging you for help, do you say, come, my friend, if your services were valuable, you could get employment elsewhere. Don't want you here? Oh no. You take him to a department and say, here, give this person something to pass away the time at, and a salary, and the thing is done. You throw him on his country. He is his country's child. Let his country support him. There is something good and motherly about Washington, the grand old benevolence national asylum for the helpless. The wages received by this great hive of employees are placed at the liberal figure meat and just for skilled and competent labor. Such of them, as are immediately employed about the two houses of Congress, are not only liberally paid also, but are remembered in the customary extra compensation bill, which slides neatly through annually with the general grab that signalizes the last night of a session, and thus 20% is added to their wages for for fun, no doubt. Washington Hawkins' new life was an unceasing delight to him. Senator Dillworthy lived sumptuously, and Washington's quarters were charming. Gas, running water, hot and cold, bathroom, coal fires, rich carpets, beautiful pictures on the walls, books on religion, temperance, public charities and financial schemes, trim colored servants, dainty food, everything a body could wish for. And as for the stationery, there was no end to it. The government furnished it, posted stamps were not needed. The senator's frank could convey a horse through the mails if necessary. And then he saw such dazzling company, renowned generals and admirals who had seemed but colossal myths when he was in the far west, went in and out before him, or sat at the senator's table, solidified into palpable flesh and blood. Famous statesmen crossed his path daily, that once rare and awe-inspiring being, a congressman, was now become a common spectacle, a spectacle so common indeed, that he could contemplate it without excitement, even without embarrassment. Foreign ministers were visible to the naked eye at happy intervals. He had looked upon the president himself and lived. And more, this world of enchantment teamed with speculation. The whole atmosphere was thick with hand, that indeed was Washington Hawkins' native air. None other refreshed his lungs so gratefully. He had found paradise at last. The more he saw of his chief the senator, the more he honored him, and the more conspicuously the moral grandeur of his character appeared to stand out. To possess the friendship and the kindly interest of such a man, Washington said in a letter to Louise, was a happy fortune for a young man whose career had been so impeded and so clouded as his. The weeks drifted by, Harry brierly flirted, danced, added luster to his brilliant senatorial receptions, and diligently buzzed and button-holed congressmen in the interest of the Columbia River scheme. Meantime, Senator Dillworthy labored hard in the same interest, and in others of equal national importance. Harry wrote frequently to cellars, and always encouragingly, and from these letters it was easy to see that Harry was a pet with all Washington, and was likely to carry the thing through. That the assistance rendered him by old Dillworthy was pretty fair. Pretty fair, and every little help, you know, said Harry. Washington wrote cellars officially now and then. In one of his letters it appeared that whereas no member of the House Committee favored the scheme at first, there was now needed but one more vote to compass a majority report. Closing Sentence Providence seems to further our efforts, signed Abner Dillworthy U.S.S. Per Washington Hawkins, P.S. At the end of a week Washington was able to send the happy news officially, as usual, that the needed vote had been added, and the bill favorably reported from the Committee. Other letters recorded its perils in Committee of the Whole, and by and by its victory by just the skin of its teeth on third reading and final passage. Then came letters telling of Mr. Dillworthy's struggles with a stubborn majority in his own Committee in the Senate of how these gentlemen succumbed, one by one, till a majority was secured. Then there was a hiatus. Washington watched every move on the board, and he was in a good position to do this, for he was clerk of this Committee and also one other. He received no salary as private secretary, but these two clerkships, procured by his benefactor, paid him an aggregate of twelve dollars a day, without counting the twenty percent extra compensation, which would of course be voted to him on the last night of the session. He saw the bill go into Committee of the Whole and struggle for its life again, and finally worry through. In the fullness of time he noted its second reading, and by and by the day arrived when the grand ordeal came, and it was put upon its final passage. Washington listened with bated breath to the I, no, I, no, of the voters for a few dread minutes, and then could bear the suspense no longer. He ran down from the gallery and hurried home to wait. At the end of two or three hours the Senator arrived in the bosom of his family and dinner was waiting. Washington sprang forward with the eager question on his lips, and the Senator said, We may rejoice freely now, my son. Providence has crowned our efforts with success. Washington sent grand good news to Colonel Sellers that night. To Louise, he wrote, It is beautiful to hear him talk when his heart is full of thankfulness for some manifestation of the divine favor. You shall know him some day, my Louise, and knowing him you will honor him as I do. Harry wrote, I pulled it through, Colonel, but it was a tough job. There was no question about that. There was not a friend in the measure in the House Committee when I began, and not a friend in the Senate Committee except Old Dill himself. But they were all fixed for a majority report when I hauled off my forces. Everybody here says you can't get a thing like this through Congress without buying committees for straight out cash on delivery. But I think I've taught them a thing or two, if I could only make them believe it. When I tell the old residenters that this thing went through without buying a vote or making a promise they say, that's rather too thin. And when I say thin or not thin, it's a fact anyway, they say come now, but do you really believe that? And when I say I don't believe anything about it? I know it, they smile and say, well, you are pretty innocent or pretty blind, one or the other. There's no getting around that. Why, they really do believe that votes have been bought, they do indeed. But let them keep on thinking so. I have found out that if a man knows how to talk to women, and has a little gift in the way of argument with men, he can afford to play for an appropriation against a money bag, and give the money bag odds in the game. We've raked in $200,000 of Uncle Sam's money, say what they will. And there is more where this came from when we won it, and I rather fancy I am the person that can go in and occupy it too, if I do say it myself. That shouldn't, perhaps. I'll be with you within a week, scare up all the men you can, put them to work at once. When I get there I propose to make things home. The great news lifted sellers into the clouds. He went to work on the instant. He flew hither and thither making contracts, engaging men, and steeping his soul in the ecstasies of business. He was the happiest man in Missouri, and Louise was the happiest woman, for presently came a letter from Washington which said, Rejoice with me for the long agony is over. We have waited patiently and faithfully all these years, and now at last the reward is at a hand. I manage to pay our family $40,000 for the Tennessee land. It is but a little sum compared to what we could get by waiting, but I do so long to see the day when I can call you my own, that I have said to myself, better take this and enjoy life in a humble way than wear out our best days in this miserable separation. Besides, I can put this money into operations here that will increase at a hundredfold. Yes, a thousandfold in a few months. The air is full of such chances, and I know our family will consent in a moment that I should put in their shares with mine. Without a doubt we shall be worth half a million dollars in a year from this time. I put it at the very lowest figure because it is always best to be on the safe side. Half a million at the very lowest calculation, and then your father will give his consent and we can marry at last. Oh, that will be a glorious day. Tell our friends the good news. I want all to share it." And she did tell her father and mother, but they said, let it be kept still for the present. The careful father also told her to write Washington and warn him not to speculate with the money but to wait a little and advise with one or two wise old heads. She did this, and she managed to keep the good news to herself, though it would seem that the most careless observer might have seen by her springing step and her radiant countenance that some fine piece of good fortune had descended upon her. Harry joined the Colonel at Stone's Landing, in that dead place sprang into sudden life. A swarm of men were hard at work, and the dull air was filled with their cheery music of labor. Harry had been constituted engineer in general, and he threw the full strength of his powers into his work. He moved among his hirelings like a king. Authority seemed to invest him with a new splendor. Colonel Sellers, as general superintendent of a great public enterprise, was all that a mere human being could be, and more. These two grandees went at their imposing improvement with the air of men who had been charged with the work of altering the foundations of the globe. They turned their first attention to straightening the river just above the landing, where it made a deep bend, and where the maps and plans showed that the process of straightening would not only shorten the distance but increase the fall. They started a cut-off canal across the peninsula formed by the bend, and such another tearing up of the earth and slopping around in the mud as followed the order to the men had never been seen in that region before. There was such a panic among the turtles that at the end of six hours there was not one to be found within three miles of stones landing. They took the young and the aged, the decrepit and the sick upon their backs, and left for tide water in disorderly procession, the tadpoles following and the bullfrogs bringing up the rear. Saturday night came, but the men were obliged to wait, because the appropriation had not come. Harry said he had written to hurry up the money and it would be along presently, so the work continued on Monday. Stone's landing was making quite a stir in the vicinity by this time. Sellers threw a lot or two on the market as a feeler and they sold well. He reclothed his family, laid in a good stock of provisions and still had money left. He started a bank account in a small way, and mentioned the deposit casually to friends, and to strangers too, to everybody in fact, but not as the new thing, on the contrary, as a matter of life longstanding. He could not keep from buying trifles every day that were not wholly necessary. It was such a gaudy thing to get out his bank book and draw a check instead of using his old customary formula, charge it. Harry sold a lot or two also, and had a dinner party or two at Hawkeye, and a general good time with the money. Both men held on pretty strenuously for the coming big prices, however. At the end of a month things were looking bad. Harry had besieged the New York headquarters of the Columbus River Slackwater Navigation Company with demands, then commands, and finally appeals, but to no purpose. The appropriation did not come. The letters were not even answered. The workmen were clamorous now. The Colonel and Harry retired to consult. What's to be done, said the Colonel. Hang to find, oh! Company say anything? Not a word. You telegraphed yesterday? Yes, in the day before, too. No answer? None. Con found them? And there was a long pause. Finally both spoke at once. I've got it! I've got it! What's yours, said Harry? Give the boys thirty-day orders on the Company for the back pay. That's it. That's my own idea to adopt. But then, but then? Yes, I know, said the Colonel. I know they can't wait for the orders to go to New York and be cashed, but what's the reason they can't get them discounted in Hawkeye? Of course they can't. That solves the difficulty. Everybody knows the appropriation's been made and the Company's perfectly good. So the orders were given, and the men appeased, though they grumbled a little at first. The orders went well enough for groceries and such things at a fair discount, and the work danced along gaily for a time. Two or three purchasers put up frame houses at the landing and moved in, and of course a far-sighted but easy-going journeyman printer wandered along and started the Napoleon Weekly Telegraph and Literary Repository, a paper with a Latin motto from the Unabridged Dictionary and plenty of fat conversational tales and double-headed poetry, all for two dollars a year strictly in advance. Of course the merchants forwarded the orders at once to New York and never heard of them again. At the end of some weeks Harry's orders were a drug in the market. Nobody would take them at any discount whatever. The second month closed with a riot. Sellers was absent at the time, and Harry began an active absence himself with the mob at his heels. But being on horseback he had the advantage. He did not tarry in Hawkeye but went on, thus missing several appointments with creditors. He was far on his flight eastward and well out of danger when the next morning dawned. He telegraphed the Colonel to go down and quiet the laborers. He was bound east for money. Everything would be right in a week. Tell the men so. Tell them to rely on him and not be afraid. Sellers found the mob quiet enough when he reached the landing. They had gutted the navigation office, then piled the beautiful engraved stock books and things in the middle of the floor and enjoyed the bonfire while it lasted. They had a liking for the Colonel, but still they had some idea of hanging him as a sort of makeshift it might answer after a fashion in place of more satisfactory game. But they made the mistake of waiting to hear what he had to say at first. Within fifteen minutes his tongue had done its work and they were all rich men. He gave every one of them a lot in the suburbs of the city of Stones Landing within a mile and a half of the future post office and railway station and they promised to resume work as soon as Harry got east and started the money along. Now things were blooming and pleasant again, but the men had no money and nothing to live on. The Colonel divided with them the money he still had in bank, an act which had nothing surprising about it because he was generally ready to divide whatever he had with anybody that wanted it, and it was owing to this very trait that his family spent their days in poverty and at times were pinched with famine. When the men's minds had cooled and cellars was gone they hated themselves for letting him beguile them with fine speeches, but it was too late now. They agreed to hang him another time, such time as Providence should appoint. CHAPTER 26 RUMOURS OF ROOTS FOR VOLITY AND WORLDLYNESS AT FALKILL TRAVELED TO PHILIDOLPHIA IN DUE TIME AND OCCASIONED NO LITTLE UNDERTALK AMONG THE BOLTON RELATIVES Hanna Shoecraft told another cousin that, for her part, she never believed that Ruth had so much more mind than other people. And cousin Hulda added that she always thought Ruth was fond of admiration, and that was the reason she was unwilling to wear plain clothes and attend meetings. The story that Ruth was engaged to a young gentleman of fortune in Falkill came with other news and helped to give point to the little satirical remarks that went round about Ruth's desire to be a doctor. Margaret Bolton was too wise to either be surprised or alarmed by these rumors. They might be true. She knew a woman's nature too well to think them improbable, but she also knew how steadfast Ruth was in her purposes, and that, as a brook breaks into ripples and eddies and dances and sports by the way, and yet keeps on to the sea, it was in Ruth's nature to give back cheerful answer to the solicitations of friendliness and pleasure, to appear idly delaying even and sporting in the sunshine while the current of her resolution flowed steadily on. That Ruth had this delight in the mere surface play of life that she could, for instance, be interested in somewhat serious bi-play called flirtation, or take any delight in the exercise of those little arts of pleasing and winning which are nonetheless genuine and charming because they are not intellectual, Ruth herself had never suspected until she went to Falkill. She had believed her duty to subdue her gaiety of temperament, and let nothing divert her from what are called serious pursuits. In her limited experience she brought everything to the judgment of her own conscience, and settled the affairs of all the world in her own serene judgment hall. Perhaps her mother saw this and saw also that there was nothing in the friend's society to prevent her from growing more and more opinionated. When Ruth returned to Philadelphia it must be confessed, though it would not have been by her, that a medical career did seem a little less necessary for her than formerly. And coming back in a glow of triumph as it were, and in the consciousness of the freedom in life in a lively society, and in new and sympathetic friendship, she anticipated pleasure in an attempt to break up the stiffness and levelness of the society at home, and infusing into it something of the motion and sparkle which were so agreeable at Falkill. She expected visits from her new friends, she would have company, the new books and the periodicals about which all the world was talking, and in short she would have life. For a little while she lived in this atmosphere which she had brought with her. Her mother was delighted with this change in her, with the improvement in her health, and the interest she exhibited in home affairs. Her father enjoyed the society of his favorite daughter as he did few things besides. He liked her mirthful and teasing ways, and not less a keen battle over something she had read. He had been a great reader all his life, and a remarkable memory had stored his mind with encyclopedic information. It was one of Ruth's delights to cram herself with some out-of-the-way subject and endeavor to catch her father, but she almost always failed. Mr. Bolton liked company, a houseful of it, and the mirth of young people, and he would have willingly entered into any revolutionary plans Ruth might have suggested in relation to friend's society. But custom in the fixed order are stronger than the most enthusiastic and rebellious young lady, as Ruth very soon found. In spite of all her brave efforts, her frequent correspondence, and her determined animation, her books and her music, she found herself settling into the clutches of the old monotony, and as she realized the hopelessness of her endeavors, the medical scheme took new hold of her, and it seemed to her the only method of escape. Mother thee does not know how different it is in Falkill how much more interesting the people are when one meets how much more life there is. But thee will find the world-child pretty much all the same when thee knows it better. I thought once as thee does now, and had as little thought of being a friend as thee has. Perhaps when thee has seen more, thee will appreciate a quiet life. thee married young, I shall not marry young, and perhaps not at all, said Ruth, with a look of vast experience. Perhaps thee doesn't know the own mind, I have known persons of thy age who did not. Did thee see anybody whom thee would like to live with always in Falkill? Not always, replied Ruth with a little laugh. Mother, I think I wouldn't say always to anyone until I have a profession, and am as independent as he is. Then my love would be a free act, and not in any way a necessity. Margaret Bolton smiled at this new fangled philosophy. Thie will find that love, Ruth, is a thing thee won't reason about when it comes, nor make any bargains about. Thie wrote that Philip Sterling was at Falkill. Yes, and Henry Briarley, a friend of his, a very amusing young fellow, and not so serious-minded as Philip, but a bit of a fop, maybe. And thee preferred the fop to the serious-minded? I didn't prefer anybody, but Henry Briarley was good company which Philip wasn't always. Did thee know the father had been in correspondence with Philip? Ruth looked up surprised and with a plain question in her eyes. Oh, it's not about thee. What then, and if there was any shade of disappointment in her tone, probably Ruth herself did not know it. It's about some land up in the country. That man Bigler has got father into another speculation. That odious man, why will father have anything to do with him? Is it that railroad? Yes. Father advanced money and took land as security. And whatever has gone with the money and the bonds he has on his hands a large tract of wild land. And what has Philip to do with that? It has good timber, if it could ever be got out, and father says that there must be coal in it. It's in a coal region. He wants Philip to survey it and examine it for indications of coal. It's another of father's fortunes, I suppose, said Ruth. He has put away so many fortunes for us that I'm afraid we shall never find them. Ruth was interested in it, nevertheless. And perhaps mainly because Philip was to be connected with the enterprise. Mr. Bigler came to dinner with her father next day, and talked a great deal about Mr. Bolton's magnificent tract of land, extolled the sagacity that led him to secure such a property, and led the talk along to another railroad which would open a northern communication with this very land. Pennybacker says it's full of coal. He's no doubt of it, and a railroad to strike the eerie would make it a fortune. Suppose you take the land and work the thing up, Mr. Bigler. You may have the tract for three dollars an acre. You'd throw it away, then, said Mr. Bigler, and I'm not the man to take advantage of a friend. But if you'll put a mortgage on it for the northern road, I wouldn't mind taking an interest if Pennybacker is willing. But Pennybacker, you know, don't go much on land. He sticks to the legislature. And Mr. Bigler laughed. When Mr. Bigler had gone, Ruth asked her father about Philip's connection with the land scheme. There's nothing definite, said Mr. Bolton. Philip is showing aptitude for his profession. I hear the best reports of him in New York, though these sharpers don't intend to do anything but use him. I've written and offered him employment in surveying and examining the land. We want to know what it is. And if there is anything in it that his enterprises can dig out, he shall have an interest. I shall be glad to give the young fellow a lift. All his life, Eli Bolton had been giving young fellows a lift, and shouldering the losses when things turned out, unfortunately. His ledger, take it all together, would not show a balance on the right side. But perhaps the losses on his books will turn out to be credits in a world where accounts are kept on a different basis. The left hand of the ledger will appear the right, looked at from the other side. Philip wrote to Ruth rather a comical account of the bursting up of the city of Napoleon and the navigation improvement scheme of Harry's flight and the Colonel's discomforture. Harry left in such a hurry that he hadn't even time to bid Miss Laura Hawkins goodbye, but he had no doubt that Harry would console himself with the next pretty face he saw. A remark which was thrown in for Ruth's benefit. Colonel Sellers had, in all probability by this time, some other equally brilliant speculation in his brain. As to the railroad, Philip had made up his mind that it was merely kept on foot for speculative purposes in Wall Street, and he was about to quit it. Would Ruth be glad to hear he wondered that he was coming east? For he was coming in spite of a letter from Harry in New York, advising him to hold on until he had made some arrangements in regard to contracts. He'd to be a little careful about Sellers, who was somewhat visionary, Harry said. The summer went on without much excitement for Ruth. She kept up a correspondence with Alice, who promised a visit in the fall. She read, she earnestly tried to interest herself in home affairs, and such people as came to the house. But she found herself falling more and more into reveries, and growing weary of things as they were. She felt that everybody might become, in time, like two relatives from a shaker establishment in Ohio, who visited the Bolton's about this time, a father and son, clad exactly alike, and alike in manners. The son, however, who was not of age, was more unworldly and sanctimonious than his father. He always addressed his parent as brother plum, and bore himself altogether in such a superior manner that Ruth longed to put bent pins in his chair. Both father and son wore the long, single-breasted, colorless coats of their society without buttons, before or behind, but with a row of hooks and eyes on either side in front. It was Ruth's suggestion that the coats would be improved by a single hook and eye, sewed on in the small of the back where the buttons usually are. Amusing as this shaker caricature of the friends was, it oppressed Ruth beyond measure, and increased her feeling of being stifled. It was the most unreasonable feeling. No home could be pleasanter than Ruth's. The house, a little out of the city, was one of those elegant country residences which so much charm visitors to the suburbs of Philadelphia. A modern dwelling and luxurious in everything that wealth could suggest for comfort, it stood in the midst of exquisitely kept lawns with groups of trees, parters of flowers masked in colors, with greenhouse, grape-ery, and garden, and on one side the garden sloped away in undulations to a shallow brook that ran over a pebbly bottom and sang under forest trees. The country about teased the perfection of cultivated landscape, dotted with colleges and stately mansions of revolutionary date, and sweet as an English countryside, whether seen in the soft bloom of May or in the mellow ripeness of late October. It needed only the peace of the mind within to make it a paradise. One riding by on the old Germantown road and seeing a young girl swinging in the hammock on the Piazza and intent upon some volume of old poetry or the latest novel would no doubt have envied a life so idyllic. He could not have imagined that the young girl was reading a volume of reports of clinics and longing to be elsewhere. Ruth could not have been more discontentative all the wealth about her had been as unsubstantial as a dream. Perhaps she so thought it. I feel, she once said to her father, as if I were living in a house of cards. And thee would like to turn it into a hospital? No, but tell me, father, continued Ruth, not to be put off. Is thee still going on with that bigler and those other men who come here and entice thee? Mr. Bolton's smile is men do when they talk with women about business. Such men have their uses, Ruth. They keep the world active, and I owe a great many of my best operations to such men. Who knows, Ruth, but this new land purchase, which I confess I yielded a little too much to bigler in, may not turn out a fortune for thee and the rest of my children. Ah, father, thee sees everything in a rose-colored light. I do believe thee wouldn't have so readily allowed me to begin the study of medicine if it hadn't had the novelty of an experiment to thee. 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 bow 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 worthwhile 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 plumbly, 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 pittiest 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 already had 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. End of Chapter 26 Read by Richard Wallace, Liberty, Missouri, 21 April 2010 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 four-time 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 two hundred thousand dollars 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, you know. But Harry will get it started along presently, and then you'll see. I expect the news every day now. But, Briah, 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 it will trot this thing 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 two hundred thousand dollars, Briah? Bigger child? Why, what's two hundred thousand dollars? Pocket money. Mirror 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, Briah? But don't we live in the future most too much, Briah? We do somehow seem to manage to live on next year's crop of corn and potatoes is a general thing, while this year is still dragging along. But sometimes it's not a robust diet, Briah. 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 want some 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, Briah. You know I'm not, don't you? Lord bless you, child. I know you're 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. Ah, 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 Slouchberg. Then with this carving knife, we'll continue the railroad from Slouchberg to Doodleville, shown by the black pepper. Then we run along the, yes, the comb to the tumbler. That's brimstone. Then by the pipe to Belchazar, which is the salt cellar. Then to, to that quill, catfish. Hand me the pin cushion, Marie Antoinette. Then stride along these shears to this horse, Babylon. Then by the spoon to Bloody Run, thank you, the ink. Then to Hale, Columbia, Snuffers. Polly, please move that cup and saucer close up. That's Hale, Columbia. Then let me open my knife to Hark from the tomb, where we'll put the candlestick, only a little distance from Hale, Columbia to Hark from the tomb, downgrade 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 Hale, Columbia 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 or a theodolite or whatever they call it. He calls it sometimes one and sometimes the other. Just whichever levels off his sentence need a stir, 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, noblestonian country that graces God's footstool. And there's your turnip country all along 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 Hale, Columbia country. Tobacco enough can be raised there to support two such railroads. Next is the Sasparello region. I reckon there's enough of that truck along in there on the line of the pocket knife from Hale, 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 Sasparello land in there just tucked away unobtrusively 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 expected, but Bariah 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 land Napoleon now we run down to Napoleon beautiful road look at that now perfectly straight line straight is 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 is bound to die as well if I owned it I'd get it's a bitch where ready now and notify the mourners Polly mark my words in three years from this Hawkeye will 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 wage right along on stilts 17 bridges and three miles and a half 49 bridges from hark from the tomb to stone's landing all together 49 bridges and culverts enough to culvert creation itself hadn't skeens enough of thread to represent them all but you get an idea perfect trestle work of bridges for 72 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 to 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 upgrade all the way and then away you go to corruptionville the gaudiest country for early carrots and cauliflower's 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 to that railroad's fetching it you see what it is as far as I've got it and if I had enough bottles and soap and bootjacks and such things to carry it along to where it joins on to the union pacific 1400 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 two hundred thousand dollar 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 things do look bright after all bariah 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'm all in a fidget to know what it says the letter was opened without any unnecessary delay end of chapter 27 recording by d y cough chapter 28 of the gilded age this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox org recording by Piper Hayes the gilded age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner chapter 28 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 main at number blank wall street where a great guilt sign betoken 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 the sort of anti-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 gentleman sir says he will be done with them directly that a copper plate card with engineering chief on it should be received with such tranquility as this annoyed mr. Brearly 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 of frill half hour in the anti-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 with sumptuously carpeted and furnished and while garnished with pictures good morning sir take seat take seat thank you sir said harry throwing as much chill into his manner as his ruffled dignity prompted we perceived 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 we're not honored nor by the reception of any part of the appropriation no part of it having come to hand why my dear Mr. Brearley 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 percent 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 credit 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 do 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 straightforward business way now let us look at the thing a moment you subscribed for 100 shares of the capital stock at $1000 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 at 10 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 nine thousand six hundred ten dollars upon the said work two months salary to you two officers amounts all together to two thousand four hundred dollars about one eighth of your ten percent assessment you see which leaves you in debt to the company for the other seven eighths of the assessment these something over eight thousand dollars a piece now instead of requiring you to forward the segregate of sixteen thousand or seventeen thousand dollars to new york the company voted unanimously to let you pay it over to the contractors laborers from time to time can 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 we're 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 ten thousand dollars a trifle let me see nine thousand six hundred forty dollars from twenty thousand dollars salary two thousand four hundred dollars added i s the balance to the company from yourself and mr sellers is seven thousand nine hundred sixty dollars which i will take the responsibility of the line to stand for the present unless you prefer to draw check now and thus confound it do you mean to say that instead of the company owing us two thousand four hundred dollars we owe the company seven thousand nine hundred sixty dollars 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 in clasp 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 then he threw himself into his chair and said my dear mr bryerson this is dreadful perfectly dreadful it will be found out it is bound to tarnish the good name of the company our credit will be seriously most seriously impaired how could you be so thoughtless the men ought to have been paid though it beggar to saw they ought ought they then why the devil my name is not bryerson by the way why the mischief didn't accompany why what in the nation ever became of the appropriation where is that appropriation if a stockholder may make so bold as to ask the appropriation that paltry two hundred thousand dollars do you mean of course but i didn't know that two hundred thousand dollars was so very paltry though i grant of course that it is not a large sum strictly speaking but where is it my dear sir you surprised me you surely cannot have had a large acquaintance with this sort of thing otherwise you would not have expected much of a result from a mere initial appropriation like that it was never intended for anything but a mere nest egg for the future and real appropriations to cluster around indeed well was it a myth or was it a reality whatever become of it why the matter is simple enough a congressional appropriation cost money just reflect for instance a majority of the house committee say ten thousand dollars apiece forty thousand dollars a majority of the senate committee the same each say forty thousand dollars a little extra to one or two chairman of one or two such committees say ten thousand dollars each twenty thousand dollars and there is one hundred thousand dollars of the money gone to begin with then seven male lobbyists at three thousand dollars each twenty one thousand dollars one female lobbyist ten thousand dollars a high moral congressman or senator here in there the high moral ones cost more because they give tone to a measure say ten of these at three thousand dollars each is thirty thousand dollars then a lot of small fried country members who won't vote for anything whatever without pay say twenty at five hundred dollars apiece is ten thousand dollars a lot of dinners to members say ten thousand dollars all together a lot of Jim cracks for congressman's wives and children those go a long way you can't spend too much money in that line well those things cost in a lump say ten thousand dollars along there somewhere and then comes your printed documents your maps your tinted engravings your pamphlets your illuminated choke cards your advertisements in a hundred and fifty papers that ever so much a line because you've got to keep the papers all right are you are gone up you know oh my dear sir printing bills are destruction itself are so far amount to let me see ten fifty two twenty two thirteen and then there's eleven fourteen thirty three well never mind the details the total and clean numbers puts up one hundred eighteen thousand two hundred fifty four dollars and forty two cents thus far what oh yes indeed printing's no bag of tell i can tell you and then there's your contributions as a company to chicago fires and boston fires and orphan asylums and all that sort of thing had the list you see with the company's full name and a thousand dollars set opposite great card sir one of the finest advertisements in the world the preachers mention it in the pulpit when it's a religious charity one of the happiest advertisements in the world is your benevolent donation ours have amounted to sixteen thousand dollars and some sense up to this time good heavens oh yes perhaps the biggest thing we've done in the advertising line was to get an officer of the u.s. government of perfectly Himalayan official altitude to write up our little internal improvement for a religious paper of enormous circulation i tell you that makes our bonds go handsomely among the pious poor your religious paper is by far the best vehicle for a thing of this kind because they'll lead your article and put it right in the midst of the reading matter and if it's got a few scripture quotations in it and some temperance platitudes and a bit of gush here and there about Sunday schools and a sentimental snuffle down then about God's precious ones the honest hard-handed poor it works the nation like a charm my dear sir and never a man suspects that it is an advertisement but your secular paper sticks you right into the advertising columns and of course you don't take a trick give me a religious favor to advertise in every time and if you'll just look at their advertising pages you'll observe that other people think a good deal as I do especially people who have got little financial schemes to make everybody rich with of course I mean your great big metropolitan religious papers that know how to serve God and make money at the same time that's your sort sir that's your sort a religious paper that isn't run to make money is no use to us sir as an advertising medium no use to anybody in our line of business I guess our next best dodge was sending a pleasure trip of newspaper reporters out to Napoleon never paid them a cent just filled them up with champagne and the fat of the land put pen ink and paper before them while they were red hot and bless your soul when you come to read their letters you'd have supposed they'd been to heaven and if I send a mental squeamishness held one or two of them back from taking a less rosy view of Napoleon our hospitality's tied his tongue at least and he said nothing at all and so did us no harm let me see if I stated all the expenses I've been at no I was near forgetting one or two items there's your official salary you can't get good men for nothing salaries cost pretty lively and then there's your big high sounding millionaire names stuck into your advertisements as stockholders another card that and they are stockholders too but you have to give them the stock and not accessible at that so they're an expensive lot very very expensive thing take it all around is a big internal improvement concern but you see that yourself mr. Breierman you see that yourself sir but look here I think you are a little mistaken about it's ever having cost anything for congressional votes I happen to know something about that I've let you say you're saying now let me say mine I don't wish to seem to throw any suspicions on anybody's statements because we are all liable to be mistaken but how would it strike you if I were to say that I was in Washington all the time this bill was pending and what if I added that I put the measure through myself yes sir I did that little thing and more over I never paid a dollar for any man's vote and never promised one there are some ways of doing a thing that are as good as others which other people don't happen to think about or don't have the lack of succeeding in if they do happen to think of them my dear sir I'm obliged to knock some of your expenses in the head for never a cent was paid a congressman or senator on the part of this navigation company the president smiled blandly even sweetly all through this harangue and then said is that so every word of it well it does seem to alter the complexion of things a little you are acquainted with the members down there of course else you could not have worked to such advantage I know them all sir I know their wives their children their babies I even made it a point to be on good terms with their lackeys I know every congressman well even familiarly very good do you know any of their signatures do you know their handwriting why I know their handwriting as well as I know my own have had correspondence enough with them I should think and their signatures why I can tell their initials even the president went to a private safe unlocked it and got out some letters and certain slips of paper then he said now here for instance do you believe that that is a genuine letter do you know this signature here and this one do you know who those initials represent and are they forgeries Harry was stupefied there were things there that made his brain swim presently at the bottom of one of the letters he saw a signature that restored his equilibrium it even brought the sunshine of a smile to his face the president said that one amuses you you never suspected him of course I ought to have suspected him but I don't believe it ever really occurred to me well well well how did you ever have the nerve to approach him of all others why my friend we never think of accomplishing anything without his help he is our mainstay but how do those letters strike you they strike me dumb what a stone blind idiot I have been well take it all around I suppose you had a pleasant time in Washington said the president gathering up the letters of course you must have had very few men could go there and get a money bill through without buying a single come now Mr. President that's plenty of that I take back everything I said on that head I'm a wiser man today than I was yesterday I can tell you I think you are in fact I am satisfied you are but now I showed you these things in confidence you understand mention facts as much as you want to but don't mention names to anybody I can depend on you for that can't I oh of course I understand the necessity of that I will not betray the names but to go back a bit it begins to look as if you never saw any of that appropriation at all we saw nearly $10,000 of it and that was all several of us took turns at log rolling in Washington and if we had charged anything for that service none of that $10,000 would ever have reached New York if you hadn't levied the assessment you would have been in a closed place I judge close have you figured out the total the disbursements I told you of no I didn't think of that well let's see spent in Washington say $191,000 printing advertising et cetera say $118,000 charity say $16,000 total $325,000 the money to do that with comes from appropriation $200,000 10% assessment on capital of $1 million $100,000 total $300,000 which leaves us in debt some $25,000 at this moment salaries of home officers are still going on also printing and advertising next month will show a state of things and then burst up I suppose by no means levy another assessment oh I see that's dismal by no means why isn't it what's the road out another appropriation don't you see bother the appropriations they cost more than they come to not the next one we'll call for half a million get it and go for a million the very next month yes but the cost of it the president smiled and patted his secret letters affectionately he said all these people are in the next congress we should have to pay them a cent and what is more they will work like beavers for us perhaps it might be to their advantage Harry reflected profoundly a while then he said we send many missionaries to lift up the benighted races of other lands how much cheaper and better it would be if those people could only come here and drink of our civilization at its fountainhead I perfectly agree with you Mr. Beverly must you go well good morning look in when you are passing and whenever I can give you any information about our affairs and prospects I shall be glad to do it Harry's letter was not a long one but it contained at least the calamitous figures that came out in the above conversation the colonel found himself in a rather uncomfortable place no $1,200 salary forthcoming and himself held responsible for half the 9,640 do the workmen to say nothing of being in debt to the company to the extent of nearly $4,000 Polly's heart was nearly broken the blues returned in fearful force and she had to go out of the room to hide the tears that nothing could keep back now there was mourning in another quarter too for Louise had a letter Washington had refused at the last moment to take $40,000 for the Tennessee land and had demanded $150,000 so the trade fell through and now Washington was wailing because he had been so foolish but he wrote that his man might probably return to the city soon and then he meant to sell to him sure even if he had to take $10,000 Louise had a good cry several of them indeed and the family charitably forebored to make any comments that would increase her grief spring blossomed summer came drag gets hot weeks by and the Colonel's spirits rose day by day for the railroad was making good progress but by and by something happened Hawkeye had always declined to subscribe anything toward the railway imagining that her large business would be a sufficient compulsory influence but now Hawkeye was frightened and before Colonel Sellers knew what he was about Hawkeye in a panic had rushed to the front and subscribed such a sum that Napoleon's attractions suddenly sank into insignificance and the railroad concluded to follow a comparatively straight course instead of going miles out of its way to build up a metropolis in the muddy desert of Stone's Landing the Thunderbolt fell after all the Colonel's deep planning after all his brainwork and tonguework in drawing public attention to his pet project and enlisting interest in it after all his faithful hard toil with his hands and running hither and thither on his busy feet after all his high hopes and splendid prophecies the fates had turned their backs on him at last and all in a moment his air castles crumbled ruins about him Hawkeye rose from her fright triumphant and rejoicing and down went Stone's Landing one by one its meager parcel of inhabitants packed up and moved away as the summer waned and fall approached town lots were no longer saleable traffic ceased a deadly lethargy fell upon the place once more the weekly telegraph faded into an early grave the wary tadpole returned from exile the bullfrog resumed his ancient song the tranquil turtle sunned his back upon bank and log and drowsed his grateful life away as in the old sweet days of yore end of chapter 28