This is section thirteen of The Gilded Age. The LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Gilded Age, A Tale of to Day by Mark Twain and C. D. Warner, Chapter thirteen. Whatever to say be tooke in his intante. His language was so fair and pertinanite, yet seemeth unto many hearing not only the ward, but verily the thinning Caxton's Book of Courtesy. In the party of which our travelers found themselves members was Duff Brown, the great railroad
contractor and subsequently a well known member of Congress. A bluff, jovial Boston Man, thick set, close shaven, with a heavy jaw and a low forehead, A very pleasant man if he were not in his way. He had government contracts, also custom houses and dry docks from Portland to New Orleans, and managed to get out of Congress in appropriations about
wait for weight of for the stone furnished. Associated with him, and also of this party, was Rodney Shake, a sleek New York broker, a man as prominent in the church as in the stock exchange, dainty in his dress, smooth of speech, the necessary compliment of Duff Brown in any enterprise that needed assurance and adroitness. It would be difficult to find a pleasanter traveling party, one that shook off more readily the artificial restraints of Puritanic strictness and took
the world with good natured allowance. Money was plenty for every attainable luxury, and there seemed to be no doubt that its supply would continue, and that fortunes were about to be made without a great deal of toil. Even Philip soon caught the prevailing spirit. Barry did not need any inoculation. He always talked in six figures. It was as natural for the dear boy to be rich as
it is for most people to be poor. The l of the party were not long in discovering the fact which almost all travelers to the west soon find out, that the water was poor. It must have been by a lucky premonition of this that they all had brandy flasks with which to qualify the water of the country.
And it was no doubt, from an uneasy feeling of the danger of being poisoned, that they kept experimenting, mixing a little of the dangerous and changing fluid as they passed along with the contents of the flasks, thus saving their lives hour by hour. Philip learned afterwards that temperance and the strict observance of Sunday, and a certain gravity of deportment are geographical habits which people do not usually
carry with them away from home. Our travelers stopped in Chicago long enough to see that they could make their fortunes there in two weeks time, but it did not seem worthwhile the West was more attractive. The further one went, the wider the opportunities open. They took railroad to Alton and the steamboat from there to Saint Louis for the change and to have a glimpse of the river. Isn't
this jolly? Cried Henry, dancing out of the barber's room and coming down the deck with a one two three step, shaven, curled and perfumed after his usual exquisite fashion. What's jolly? Asked Philip, looking out upon the dreary and monotonous waste through which the shaking steamboat was coughing its way. Why the whole thing? It's immense, I can tell you I wouldn't give that to be guaranteed a hundred thousand cold
cash in a year's time. Where's mister Brown. He's in the saloon playing poker with Shike and that long haired party with the striped trousers who scrambled aboard when the stage plank was half hauled in. And the big delegate to Congress from out West. That's a fine looking fellow. That delegate with his glossy black whiskers looks like a Washington man. I shouldn't think he'd be at poker. Oh it's only five cent, Auntie. Just to make it interesting,
the delegate said. But I shouldn't think a representative in Congress would play poker anyway in a public steamboat. Nonsense. You've got to pass the time. I try to hand myself, but those old fellows are too many for me. The delegate knows all the points. I'd bet a hundred dollars he will ant he his way right into the United States Senate when his territory comes in. He's got the cheek for it. He has the grave and thoughtful manner
of expectoration of a public man. For one thing, added Philip, Harry said, Philip, after a pause, what have you got on those big boots for? Do you expect to wade ashore? I'm breaking him in the fact was Harry had got himself up in what he thought a proper costume for the new country, and was in appearance a sort of compromise between a dandie of Broadway and a backwoodsman. Harry, with blue eyes, bush complexion, silken whiskers, and curly chestnut hair,
was as handsome as a fashion plate. He wore this morning, a soft hat, a short cutaway coat, an open vest displaying immaculate linen, a leathern belt round his waist, and top boots of soft leather, well polished, that came above his knees and required a string attached to his belt to keep them up. The light hearted fellow gloried in these shining encasements of his well shaped legs, and told Philip that they were a perfect protection against prairie rattlesnakes,
which never strike above the knee. The landscape still wore an almost wintry appearance when our travelers left Chicago. It was a genial spring day when they landed at Saint Louis. The birds were singing. The blossoms of peach trees in city garden plots made the air sweet, and in the roar and tumult. On the Long River Levee, they found
an excitement that accorded with their own hopeful anticipations. The party went to the Southern Hotel, where the Great Duff Brown was very well known, and indeed was a man of so much importance that even the office clerk was respectful to him. He might have respected in him also a certain vulgar swagger and insolence of money, which the clerk greatly admired. The young fellows liked the house and liked the city. It seemed to them a mighty free
and hospitable town. Coming from the east, they were struck with many peculiarities. Everybody smoked in the streets, for one thing. They noticed everybody took a drink in an open manner whenever he wished to do so, or was asked, as if the habit needed no concealment or apology. In the evening, when they walked about, they found people sitting on the doorsteps of their dwellings in a manner not usual in
a northern city. In front of some of the hotels and saloons, the sidewalks were filled with chairs and benches. Paris fashion said Harry upon which people lounged in these warm spring evenings smoking. All was smoking, and the clink of glasses and of billiard balls was in the air. It was delightful. Harry at once found on landing that his backwoods custom would not be needed in Saint Louis, and that in fact he had need of all the resources of his wardrobe to keep even with the young
swells of the town. But this did not much matter, for Harry was always superior to his clothes, as they were likely to be detained some time in the city. Harry told Philip that he was going to improve his time, and he did. It was an encouragement any industrious man to see this young fellow rise carefully, dress himself, eat his breakfast, deliberately, smoke his cigar tranquility, and then repair to his room to what he called his work. With
a grave and occupied manner, but with perfect cheerfulness. Harry would take off his coat, remove his cravat, roll up his shirt sleeves, give his curly hair the right touch before the glass, get out his book on engineering, his boxes of instruments, his drawing paper, his profile paper, open the book of logarithms, mix his india ink, sharpen his pencils, light a cigar, and sit down at the table to lay out a line, with the most grave notion that
he was mastering the details of engineering. He would spend half a day in these preparations without ever working out a problem or having the faintest conception of the use of lines or logarithms, and when he had finished, he had the most cheerful confidence that he had done a good day's work. It made no difference, however, whether Harry was in his room in a hotel or in a tent. Philip soon found he was just the same. In camp.
He would get himself up in the most elaborate toilet at his command, polish his long boots to the top, lay out his work before him, and spend an hour or longer. If anybody was looking at him, humming airs, knitting his brows and working at engineering, and if a crowd of gaping rustics were looking on all the while,
it was perfectly satisfactory to him. You see, he says to Philip one morning at the hotel, when he was thus engaged, I want to get the theory of this thing so that I can have a check on the engineers. I thought you were going to be an engineer yourself, queried Philip. Not many times. If the court knows herself,
there's better game. Brown and Shike have or will have the control for the whole line of the Salt Lick Pacific Extension forty thousand dollars a mile over the prairie, with extra for hard pen, and it'll be pretty much all hard pan. I can tell you, besides every alternate section of land on this line, there's millions in the job. I'm to have the subcontract for the first fifty miles, and you can bet it's a soft thing. I'll tell you what to do, Philip continued Larry in a burst
of generosity. If I don't get you into my contract, you'll be with the engineers, and you just stick a stake at the first ground marked for a depot, buy the land of the farmer before he knows where the depot will be, and we'll turn a hundred or so on that. I'll advance the money for the payments and you can sell the lots. Shake is going to let me have ten thousand just for a flyer in such operations. But that's a good deal. Of money. Wait till you
are used to handling money. I didn't come out here for a bagatell My uncle wanted me to stay east and go in on the mobile custom house work up the Washington end of it. He said, there was a fortune in it for a smart young fellow. But I prefer to take the chances out here. Did I tell you I had an offer from Bobbitt and Fanshaw to go into their office as confidential clerk on a salary of ten thousand. Why didn't you take it? Asked Philip, to whom a salary of two thousand would have seemed
wealth before he's started on this journey. Take it. I'd rather operate on my own hook, said Harry in his most airy manner. A few evenings after their arrival at the Southern, Philip and Harry made the acquaintance of a very agreeable gentleman whom they had frequently seen before, about the hotel corridors, and passed a casual word with He had the air of a man of business, and was
evidently a person of importance. The precipitating of this casual intercourse into the more substantial form of an acquaintanceship was the work of the gentleman himself, and occurred in this wise. Meeting the two friends in the lobby one evening, he asked them to give him the time and added, excuse me, gentlemen, strangers in Saint Louis. Ah. Yes, yes, from the east perhaps, ah, just so, just so Eastern born myself, Virginia Sellers. Is my name, Beriah Sellars. Ah. By the way, New York?
Did you say that? For my just met some gentlemen from your state a week or two ago. Very prominent gentlemen in public life. They are. You must know them without doubt. Let me see, let me see. Curious those names have escaped me. I know they were from your state because I remember afterward my old friend, Governor Shackleby said to me, fine man, is the governor one of the finest men our country has produced, said he, Colonel, how did you like those New York gentlemen? Not many
such men in the world, Colonel Sellers, said the governor. Yes, it was New York, he said, I remember it distinctly. I can't recall those names somehow, but no matter. Stopping here, gentlemen stopping at the southern in shaping their reply in their minds. The title mister had a place in it, But when their turn had arrived to speak, the title colonel came from their lips instead. They said, yes, they were abiding at the Southern and thought it a very
good house. Yes, yes, the Southern is fair. I myself go to the Planters, old aristocratic house. We Southern gentlemen don't change our ways. You know. I always make it my home there when I run adown from Hawkeye. My plantation is in Hawkeye, a little up in the country. You should know the planters. Philip and Harry both said they should like to see a hotel that had been so famous in its day, a cheerful Hostelry Philip said it must have been where duels were fought there across
the dining room table. You may believe it, sir, an uncommonly pleasant lodging. Shall we walk? And the three strolled along the streets, the colonel talking all the way in the most liberal and friendly manner, and with a frank, open heartedness that inspired confidence. Yes, born East myself raised all along know the West a great country, gentleman, the place for a young fellow spirit to pick up a fortune, simply pick it up it's lying round loose here. Not
a day that I don't put aside an opportunity. Too busy to look into it. Management of my own property takes my time first visit looking for an opening. Yes, looking around, replied Harry, Ah, here we are. You'd rather sit here in front than go to my apartments. So had I an opening? Eh? The colonel's eyes twinkled. Ah, Just so, the country is opening up. All we want is capital to develop it, slap down the rails and bring the land into market. The richest land on God
Almighty's footstool is lying right out there. If I had my capital free, I could plant it for millions. I suppose your capital is largely in your plantation, asked Philip. Well, partly, sir, partly. I'm down here now with reference to a little operation, a little side thing, merely by the way, gentlemen, excuse
the liberty, but it's about my usual time. The colonel paused, But as no movement of his acquaintances followed this plain remark, he added, in an explanatory manner, I'm rather particular about the exact time have to be in this climate. Even this open declaration of his hospitable intention. Not being understood, the colonel politely said, gentlemen, will you take something? Colonel Sellers led the way to a saloon on Fourth Street under the hotel, and the young gentleman fell into the
custom of the country. Not that, said the colonel to the bar keeper, who shoved along the counter a bottle of apparently corn whiskey, as if he had done it before. On the same order. Not that, With a wave of the hand that uttered, if you please, yes, never take an inferior liquor, gentlemen, not in the evening, in this climate. There that's the stuff my respects. The hospitable man, having disposed of his liquor, remarking that it was not quite
the thing. When a man has his own cellar to go to, he is apt to get a little fastidious about his liquors, called for cigars, but the brand offered did not suit him. He motioned the box away and asked for some particular hawass those in separate wrappers. I always smoke this sort, gentleman. They are a little more expensive, but you'll learn in this climate that you'd better not
economize on poor cigars. Having imparted this valuable piece of information, the colonel lighted the fragrant cigar with satisfaction, and then carelessly put his fingers into his right vest pocket, that movement being without result. With a shade of disappointment on his face, he felt in his left vest pocket. Not finding anything there, he looked up with a serious and annoyed air, anxiously slapped his right pantaloon's pocket and then
his left, and exclaimed, by George, that's annoying. By George, that's mortifying. Never had anything of that kind happen to me before, I've left my pocket book. Hold, here's a bill after all, No thunder, it's a receipt, allow me, said Philip, seeing how seriously the Colonel was annoyed, and
taking out his purse. The colonel protested he could think of it, and muttered something to the bar keeper about hanging it up, But the vendor of exhilaration made no sign, and Philip had the privilege of paying the costly shot. Colonel Sellers profusely, apologizing and claiming the right next time,
next time. As soon as Pariah Sellars had bade his friends good night and seen them depart, he did not retire apartments in the planters but took his way to his lodgings with a friend in a distant part of the city. End of Chapter thirteen.