This is section twenty six of The Gilded Age. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Gilded Age, A Tale of to Day by Mark Twain and Ceed Warner, Chapter twenty six. Rumors of Ruth's frivolity and worldliness at Fallkill traveled to Philadelphia in due time and occasioned no
little under talk among the Bolton relatives. Hannah Shoecraft told another cousin that, for her part, she never believed that Ruth had so much more mine 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 meeting. The story that Ruth was engaged to a young gentleman of fortune in Fallkill came with the 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 be either 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 answers 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 that somewhat serious by play called flirtation, or take any delight in the exercise of those little arts of pleasing and winning, which are none the less genuine and charming because they are not intellectual. Ruth herself had never suspected until she went to Falkill.
She had believed it 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 friends 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 and 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 emotion 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 interests 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, and she almost always failed. Mister Bolton liked company, a house full 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 friends society. But custom and 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 seemed to her the only method of escape. Mother. THEE does not know how different it is in Fallkill, how much more interesting the people are, 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 better 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 fall Kill? Not always, replied Ruth with a little laugh. Mother, I think I wouldn't say always to any one 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. THEE will find that love, Ruth, is a thing THEE won't reason about when it comes, nor
make any bargains about. THEE wrote that Philip Sterling was at fall Kill, Yes, and Henry Brierly 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 Brierly was good company, which Philip wasn't. Always did THEE know thee 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 Biggler 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 never shall find them. Ruth was interested in it nevertheless, and perhaps mainly because
Philip was to be connected with the enterprise. Mister Bigler came to dinner with her father next day and talked a great deal about mister 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 to this very land. Pennybacker says, it's full 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, mister Bigler, you may have the tract for three dollars an acre. You'd throw it away, then, replied mister 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 Pennybackers will. But Pennybacker, you know, don't go much on land. He
sticks to the legislature, and mister Bigler laughed. When mister Biggiler had gone, Ruth asked her father about Philip's connection with a land scheme there's nothing definite, said mister Bolton. Philip is showing aptitude for his profession. I hear the best reports of him in New York, though those 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 enterprise can dig out, he shall have an interest. I should 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 altogether, would not show a balance on the right side. But perhaps the losses on his books will turn out
to be credits. 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 discomfiture. Harry left in such a hurry that he hadn't even time to bid miss Laura Hawkins good bye, 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 yeast, for he was coming in spite of a letter from Harry in New York advising him to hold on until he
had made so some arrangements in regard to contracts. He 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 Boltons 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, collarless 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 smaller 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 a most unreasonable feeling. No home could be pleasanter than Ruth. 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, parterres of flowers, massed in colors, with greenhouse drapery and gardens, 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 was the perfection of cultivated landscape, dotted with cottages 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 had 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 discontented if 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 Biggler and those other men who come here and entice THEE? Mister Bolton smiled, as 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 Biggler in may not turn out a fortune for THEE and the rest of the 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 he have me sit here like a bird on a bow and wait for somebody to come and put me in a cage. Mister Bolton was not sorry to divert the talk from his own affairs, and he did not think it worth while to tell his family of a performance that very day which was entirely characteristic of him.
Ruth might well say that she felt as if she were living in a house of cards, although the Bolton household had no idea of the number of perils that hovered over them, any more than thousands of families in America have of the business risks and contingencies upon which their prosperity and luxury hang. A sudden call upon mister 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 from ends it was a period of sudden panic and no money. A hundred thousand mister Bolton said plumbily, Good God, if you should ask me for ten, I shouldn't know where to get it. And yet that day mister Small, Pennybacker, Biggler, and Small, came to mister Bolton with a piteous story of ruining 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. Mister Bolton had already Small's notes for a large amount in his safe, labeled doubtful. He had helped him again and again, and always with the
same result. But mister 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 mister 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. Now I owe two millions of dollars. End of Chapter twenty six.