009 - The Gilded Age a Tale of Today Chapter 8

are the golden mines. Great Solomon's offer b. Johnson. The supper at Colonel Seller's was not sumptuous in the beginning, but it improved on acquaintance. That is to say that what Washington regarded at first sight mere lowly potatoes presently became awe inspiring agricultural productions that had been reared in some ducal garden beyond the sea, under the sacred eye of the Duke himself, who had sent them to cellars.

The bread was from corn, which could be grown in only one favored locality in the earth, and only a favored few could get it. The rio coffee, which at first seemed execrable to the taste, took to itself an improved flavor when Washington was told to drink it slowly and not hurry. What should be a lingering luxury in order to be fully appreciated. It was from the private

stores of a Brazilian nobleman with an unrememberable name. The colonel's tongue was a magician's wand that turned dried apples into figs and water into wine as easily as it could change a hovel into a palace, and present poverty into imminent future riches. Washington slept in a cold bed and a carpetless room, and woke up in a palace

in the morning. At least the palace lingered during the moment that he was rubbing his eyes and getting his bearings, and then it disappeared, and he recognized that the colonel's inspiring talk had been influencing his dreams. Fatigue had made him sleep late. When he entered the sitting room, he

noticed that the old haircloth sofa was absent. When he sat down to breakfast, the colonel tossed six or seven dollars in bills on the table, counted them over, said he was a little short and must call upon his banker. Then returned the bills to his wallet with the indifferent air of a man who is used to money. The breakfast was not an improvement upon the supper, but the Colonel talked it up and transformed it into an oriental feast. By and by, he said, I intend to look out

for you, Washington, my boy. I hunted up a place for you yesterday. But I am not referring to that now. That is a mere livelihood, mere bread and butter. But when I say I mean to look out for you, I mean something very different. I mean to put things in your way that will make a mere livelihood a trifling thing. I'll put you in a way to make more money than you'll ever know what to do with. You'll be right here where I can put my hand on you when anything turns up. I've got some prodigious

operations on foot, but I'm keeping quiet. Mum's the word, your old hand. Don't go round pow wowing and letting everybody see his yards and find out his little game. But all in good time, Washington, All in good time. You'll see now there's an operation in Corn that looks well. Some New York men are trying to get me to go into it, buy up all the growing crops and

just boss the market when they mature. Ah, I tell you it's a great thing, and it only costs a trifle two millions or two and a half will do it. I haven't exactly promised yet, there's no hurry. The more indifferent I seem, you know, the more anxious those fellows will get. And then there is the hog speculation that's bigger. Still,

we've got quiet men at work. He was very impressive here, mousing around to get propositions out of all the farmers in the whole West and Northwest for the hog crop, and other agents quietly getting propositions and terms out of all the manufactories. And don't you see if we can get all the hogs and all the slaughter houses into our hands on the dead quiet whew. It would take three ships to carry the money. I've looked into the thing, calculated all the chances for and all the chances against.

And though I shake my head and hesitate and keep on thinking, apparently I've got my mind made up that if the thing can be done on a capital of six millions. That's the horse to put up money on. Why, Washington, But what's the use of talking about it? Any man can see that there's whole Atlantic oceans of cash in it, gulfs and bays thrown in. But there's a bigger thing than that, Yes, bigger. Why, Colonel, you can't want anything bigger, said Washington, his eyes blazing. Oh, I wish I could

go into either of those speculations. I only wish I had money. I wish I wasn't cramped and kept down and fettered with poverty and such prodigious chances lying right here in sight. Oh, it is a fearful thing to be poor. But don't throw away those things. They are so splendid, and I can see how sure they are. Don't throw them away for something still better, and maybe fail in it. I wouldn't, Colonel, I would stick to these.

I wish father were here and were his old self again. Oh, he never in his life had such chances as these are, Colonel. You can't improve on these, No man can improve on them. A sweet, compassionate smile played about the colonel's features, and he leaned over the table with the air of a man who is going to show you and do it without the least trouble. Why, Washington, my boy, these things are nothing. They look large, of course, they look large

to a novice. But to a man who has been all his life accustomed to large operations, shah, they're well enough to while away an idle hour with or furnish a bit of employment that will give a trifle of idle capital a chance to earn its bread while it is waiting for something to do. But now, just listen the moment. Just let me give you an idea of what we old veterans of commerce call business. Here's the Rothschild's proposition. This is between you and me. You understand.

Washington nodded three or four times impatiently, and his glowing eyes said, yes, yes, hurry, I understand, for I wouldn't have it get out for a fortune. They want me to go in with them on the sly. Agent was here two weeks ago about it. Go in on the Sly, voiced down to an impressive whisper, now and buy up a hundred and thirteen wildcat banks in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, and Missouri. Notes of these banks are at all sorts of discount. Now average discount of the hundred and thirteen

is forty four percent. Buy them all up, you see, and then all of a sudden, let the cat out of the bag. Whiz. The stock of every one of those wildcats would spin up to a tremendous premium before you could turn a handspring profit on the speculation, not a dollar less than forty millions. An eloquent pause while the marvelous vision settled into W's focus. Where's your hogs? Now? Why, my dear innocent boy, we would just sit down on

the front doorstep and peddle banks like Lucifer Matches. Washington finally got his breath and said, oh, it is perfectly wonderful. Why couldn't these things have happened in Father's day? And I it's of no use. They simply lie before my face and mock me. There is nothing for me but to stand helpless and see other people reap the astonishing harvest. Never mind, Washington, don't you worry. I'll fix you. There's plenty of chances. How much money have you got in

the presence of so many millions? Washington could not keep from blushing when he had to confess that he had but eighteen dollars in the world. Well, all right, don't despair. Other people have been obliged to begin with less. I have a small idea that may develop into something for us. Both all in good time, keep your money close and

add to it. I'll make it breed. I've been experimenting to pass away the time on a little preparation for curing sore eyes, a kind of decoction nine tenths water and the other tenth drugs that don't cost more than a dollar a barrel. I'm still experimenting. There's one ingredient wanted yet to perfect the thing, and somehow I can't

just manage to hit upon the thing that's necessary. And I don't dare talk with a chemist, of course, but I'm progressing, and before many weeks, I wager the country will ring with the name of Bariah Cellar's Infallible Imperial Oriental Optic Lineament and Salvation for sore eyes, the medical wonder of the age. Small bottles fifty cents, large ones a dollar average cost five and seven cents for the

two sizes. The first year or cells, say ten thousand bottles in Missouri seven thousand in Iowa, three thousand in Arkansas, four thousand in Kentucky, six thousand in Illinois, and say twenty five thousand in the rest of the country. Total fifty five thousand bottles profit clear of all expenses, twenty thousand dollars. At the very lowest calculation, all the capital needed is to manufacture the first two thh thousand bottles, say one hundred and fifty dollars, and then the money

would begin to flow. In the second year, sales would reach two hundred thousand bottles clear profits say seventy five thousand dollars, and in the meantime, the great factory would be building in Saint Louis, to cost, say one hundred thousand dollars. The third year, we could easily sell a million bottles in the United States, And oh splendid, said Washington.

Let's commence right away. Let's one million bottles in the United States profit at least three hundred and fifty thousand, and then it would begin to be time to turn our attention toward the real idea of the business. The real idea of it ain't three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, A pretty real stuff. Why what an infant you are, Washington? What a guileless, short sighted, easily contented innocent you are? My poor little country bread know nothing?

Would I go to all that trouble and bother for the poor crumbs a body might pick up in this country? Now do I look like a man who does? My history suggest that I am a man who deals in trifles, contents himself with the narrow horizon that hems in the common herd sees no further than the end of his nose. Now you know that that is not me. Couldn't be me.

You ought to know that if I throw my time and abilities into a patent medicine, it's a patent medicine whose field of operations is the solid earth, its clients, the swarming nations that inhabit it. Why what is the Republic of America for an eye water country? Lord, bless you? It is nothing but a barren highway that you've got to cross to get to the true eye water market. Why Washington. In the Oriental countries, people swarm like the

sands of the desert. Every square mile of ground upholds its thousands upon thousands of struggling human creatures and every separate and individual devil of them's got the ophthalmia. It's as natural to them as noses are and sin. It's born with them, it stays with them. It's all that some of them have left when they die. Three years of introductory trade in the Orient, and what will be the result. Why our headquarters would be in Constantinople, and

our hind quarters in further India. Factories and warehouses in Cairo, Ispahan, Baghdad, Damascus, Jerusalem, Yedo, Pei, king Bangkok, Delhi, Bombay, and Calcutta. Annual income well, God only knows how many millions and millions apiece. Washington was

so dazed, so bewildered. His heart and his eyes had wandered so far away among the strange lands beyond the seas, and such avalanches of coin and currency had fluttered and jingled confusedly down before him, that he was now as one who has been whirling round and round for a time, and stopping all at once finds his surroundings still whirling,

and all objects a dancing chaos. However, little by little, the seller's family cooled down and crystallized into shape, and the poor room lost its glitter and resumed its poverty. Then the youth found his voice and begged sellers to drop everything and hurry up the Eyewater. And he got his eighteen dollars and tried to force it upon the colonel. Pleaded with him to take it, implored him to do it, but the colonel would not, said he would not need

the capital. In his native magnificent way, he called that eighteen dollars capital till the Eyewater was an accomplished fact. He made Washington easy in his mind, though, by promising that he would call for it just as soon as the invention was finished. And he added the glad tidings that nobody but just they too, should be admitted to a share in the speculation. When Washington left the breakfast table,

he could have worshiped that man. Washington was one of that kind of people whose hopes are in the very clouds one day and in the gutter the next. He walked on air. Now the colonel was ready to take him around and introduced him to the employment he had found for him. But Washington begged for a few moments in which to write home with his kind of people, to ride to day's new interest to death and put

off yesterday's till another time is nature itself. He ran upstairs and wrote glowingly enthusiastically to his mother about the hogs and the corn, the banks and the eye water, and added a few inconsequential millions to each project. And he said that people little dreamed what a man Colonel Sellers was, and that the world would open its eyes when it found out. And he closed his letter thus, so make yourself perfectly easy, mother. In a little while

you shall have everything you want and more. And I am not likely to stint you in anything. I fancy. This money will not be for me alone, but for all of us. I want all to share alike, and there is going to be far more for each than one person can spend. Break it to father cautiously. You understand the need of that. Break it to him cautiously, for he has had such cruel, hard fortune, and is so stricken by it, that great good news might prostrate

him more surely than even bad. For he is used to the bad, but is grown sadly and accustomed to the other. Tell Laura, tell all the children, and write to Clay about it. If he is not with you yet, you may tell Clay that whatever I get he can freely share in freely. He knows that that is true. There will be no need that I should swear to that to make him believe it. Good Bye, and mind what I say, rest perfectly, easy one and all of you,

for our troubles are nearly at an end. Poor lad he could not know that his mother would cry some loving, compassionate tears over his letter and put off the family with a synopsis of its contents, which conveyed a deal of love to them, but not much idea of his prospects or projects. And he never dreamed that such a joyful letter could sadden her and fill her night with sighs and troubled thoughts and bodings of the future, instead of filling it with peace and blessing it with RESTful sleep.

When the letter was done, Washington and the Colonel sallied forth, and as they walked along, Washington learned what he was to be. He was to be a clerk in a real estate office. Instantly, the fickle youth's dreams forsook the magic eye water and flew back to the Tennessee Land

and the gorgeous possibilities of that great domain. Straightway began to occupy his imagination to such a degree that he could scarcely manage to keep even enough of his attention upon the colonel's talk to retain the general run of what he was saying. He was glad it was a real estate office. He was a made man, now sure.

The colonel said that General Boswell was a rich man and had a good and growing business, and that Washington's work would be light, and he would get forty dollars a month and be boarded and lodged in the General's family, which was as good as ten dollars more, and even better, for he could not live as well even at the city hotel as he would there, And yet the hotel charged fifteen dollars a month, where a man had a

good room. General Boswell was in his office, a comfortable looking place with plenty of outline maps hanging about the walls and in the windows, and a spectacled man was marking out another one on a long table. The office was in the Principal Street. The General received Washington with a kindly but reserved politeness. Washington rather liked his looks. He was about fifty years old, dignified Well preserved and

well dressed. After the colonel took his leave, the General talked a while with Washington, his talk consisting chiefly of instructions about the clerical duties of the place. He seemed satisfied as to washington sensibility to take care of the books. He was evidently a pretty fair theoretical bookkeeper, and experience would soon harden theory into practice. By and by dinner time came, and the two walked to the general's house.

And now Washington noticed an instinct in himself that moved him to keep not in the general's rear exactly, but yet not at his side. Somehow, the old gentleman's dignity and reserve did not inspire familiarity. End of Chapter eight