The Gilded Age, page 12
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,1 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 Schaick 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-pan—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 sub-contract for the first fifty miles, and you can bet it’s a soft thing.”
“I’ll tell you what you do, Philip,” continued Harry, 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 dêpot, buy the land of the farmer before he knows where the dêpot 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. Schaick 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 bagatelle. 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 preferred to take the chances out here. Did I tell you I had an offer from Bobbett 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 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 St. Louis? Ah, yes—yes. From the East, perhaps? Ah, just so, just so. Eastern born myself— Virginia. Sellers is my name—Eschol Sellers. Ah—by the way—New York, did you say? That reminds me; 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 “Mr.” 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 Planter’s, old, aristocratic house. We Southern gentlemen don’t change our ways, you know. I always make it my home there when I run down from Hawkeye—my plantation is in Hawkeye, a little up in the country. You should know the Planter’s.”
Philip and Harry both said they should like to see a hotel that had been so famous in its day—a cheerful hostelrie, 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 openheartedness that inspired confidence.
“Yes, born East myself, raised all along, know the West—a great country, gentlemen. The place for a young fellow of 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 whole 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?”
Col. Sellers led the way to a saloon on Fourth street under the hotel, and the young gentlemen 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 Otard2 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 gentleman, 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 Havanas, those in separate wrappers.
“I always smoke this sort, gentlemen; 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 pocketbook. 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 couldn’t think of it, and muttered something to the bar-keeper about “hanging it up,”3 but the vender of exhilaration made no sign, and Philip had the privilege of paying the costly shot; Col. Sellers profusely apologizing and claiming the right “next time, next time.”
As soon as Eschol Sellers had bade his friends good night and seen them depart, he did not retire to apartments in the Planter’s, but took his way to his lodgings with a friend in a distant part of the city.
CHAPTER 14
Pulchra duos inter sita stat Philadelphia rivos;
Inter quos duo sunt millia longa viæ.
Delawar his major, Sculkil minor ille vocatur;
Indis et Suevis notus uterque diu.
Hic plateas mensor spatiis delineat æquis,
Et domui recto est ordine juncta domus.
T. MAKIN.
Vergin era fra lor di già matura
Verginità, d’alti pensieri e regi,
D’alta beltà; ma sua beltà non cura,
O tanta sol, quant’ onestà sen fregi.
TASSO.
The letter that Philip Sterling wrote to Ruth Bolton, on the evening of setting out to seek his fortune in the west, found that young lady in her own father’s house in Philadelphia. It was one of the pleasantest of the many charming suburban houses in that hospitable city, which is territorially one of the largest cities in the world, and only prevented from becoming the convenient metropolis of the country by the intrusive strip of Camden and Amboy sand which shuts it off from the Atlantic ocean. It is a city of steady thrift, the arms of which might well be the deliberate but delicious terrapin that imparts such a royal flavor to its feasts.
It was a spring morning, and perhaps it was the influence of it that made Ruth a little restless, satisfied neither with the out-doors nor the in-doors. Her sisters had gone to the city to show some country visitors Independence Hall, Girard College and Fairmount Water Works and Park, 1 four objects which Americans cannot die peacefully, even in Naples, without having seen. But Ruth confessed that she was tired of them, and also of the Mint. She was tired of other things. She tried this morning an air or two upon the piano, sang a simple song in a sweet, but slightly metallic voice, and then seating herself by the open window, read Philip’s letter.
Was she thinking about Philip, as she gazed across the fresh lawn over the tree tops to the Chelton Hills, or of that world which his entrance into her tradition-bound life had been one of the means of opening to her? Whatever she thought, she was not idly musing, as one might see by the expression of her face. After a time she took up a book; it was a medical work, and to all appearance about as interesting to a girl of eighteen as the statutes at large; but her face was soon aglow over its pages, and she was so absorbed in it that she did not notice the entrance of her mother at the open door.
“Ruth?”
“Well, mother,” said the young student, looking up, with a shade of impatience.
“I wanted to talk with thee a little about thy plans.”
“Mother, thee knows I couldn’t stand it at Westfield; the school stifled me, it’s a place to turn young people into dried fruit.”
“I know,” said Margaret Bolton, with a half anxious smile, “thee chafes against all the ways of Friends, but what will thee do? Why is thee so discontented?”
“If I must say it, mother, I want to go away, and get out of this dead level.”
With a look half of pain and half of pity, her mother answered, “I am sure thee is little interfered with; thee dresses as thee will, and goes where thee pleases, to any church thee likes, and thee has music. I had a visit yesterday from the society’s committee by way of discipline, because we have a piano in the house, which is against the rules.”
“I hope thee told the elders that father and I are responsible for the piano, and that, much as thee loves music, thee is never in the room when it is played. Fortunately father is already out of meeting, so they can’t discipline him. I heard father tell cousin Abner that he was whipped so often for whistling when he was a boy that he was determined to have what compensation he could get now.”
“Thy ways greatly try me, Ruth, and all thy relations. I desire thy happiness first of all, but thee is starting out on a dangerous path. Is thy father willing thee should go away to a school of the world’s people?”
“I have not asked him,” Ruth replied with a look that might imply that she was one of those determined little bodies who first made up her own mind and then compelled others to make up theirs in accordance with hers.
Ruth’s Mother Makes Enquiries.
“And when thee has got the education thee wants, and lost all relish for the society of thy friends and the ways of thy ancestors, what then?”
Ruth turned square round to her mother, and with an impassive face and not the slightest change of tone, said,
“Mother, I’m going to study medicine?”
Margaret Bolton almost lost for a moment her habitual placidity.
“Thee, study medicine! A slight frail girl like thee, study medicine! Does thee think thee could stand it six months? And the lectures, and the dissecting rooms, has thee thought of the dissecting rooms?”
“Mother,” said Ruth calmly, “I have thought it all over. I know I can go through the whole, clinics, dissecting room and all. Does thee think I lack nerve? What is there to fear in a person dead more than in a person living?”
“But thy health and strength, child; thee can never stand the severe application. And, besides, suppose thee does learn medicine?”
“I will practice it.”
“Here?”
“Here.”
“Where thee and thy family are known?”
“If I can get patients.”
“I hope at least, Ruth, thee will let us know when thee opens an office,” said her mother, with an approach to sarcasm that she rarely indulged in, as she rose and left the room.
Ruth sat quite still for a time, with face intent and flushed. It was out now. She had begun her open battle.
The sight-seers returned in high spirits from the city. Was there any building in Greece to compare with Girard College, was there ever such a magnificent pile of stone devised for the shelter of poor orphans? Think of the stone shingles of the roof eight inches thick! Ruth asked the enthusiasts if they would like to live in such a sounding mausoleum, with its great halls and echoing rooms, and no comfortable place in it for the accommodation of any body? If they were orphans, would they like to be brought up in a Grecian temple?
And then there was Broad street! Wasn’t it the broadest and the longest street in the world? There certainly was no end to it, and even Ruth was Philadelphian enough to believe that a street ought not to have any end, or architectural point upon which the weary eye could rest.
But neither St. Girard, nor Broad street, neither wonders of the Mint nor the glories of the Hall where the ghosts of our fathers sit always signing the Declaration, impressed the visitors so much as the splendors of the Chestnut street windows, and the bargains on Eighth street.2 The truth is that the country cousins had come to town to attend the Yearly Meeting, and the amount of shopping that preceded that religious event was scarcely exceeded by the preparations for the opera in more worldly circles.
“Is thee going to the Yearly Meeting, Ruth?” asked one of the girls.
“I have nothing to wear,” replied that demure person. “If thee wants to see new bonnets, orthodox to a shade and conformed to the letter of the true form, thee must go to the Arch Street Meeting.3 Any departure from either color or shape would be instantly taken note of. It has occupied mother a long time, to find at the shops the exact shade for her new bonnet. Oh, thee must go by all means. But thee won’t see there a sweeter woman than mother.”
“And thee won’t go?”
“Why should I? I’ve been again and again. If I go to Meeting at all I like best to sit in the quiet old house in Germantown, where the windows are all open and I can see the trees, and hear the stir of the leaves. It’s such a crush at the Yearly Meeting at Arch Street, and then there’s the row of sleek-looking young men who line the curbstone and stare at us as we come out. No, I don’t feel at home there.”
That evening Ruth and her father sat late by the drawing-room fire, as they were quite apt to do at night. It was always a time of confidences.
“Thee has another letter from young Sterling,” said Eli Bolton.
“Yes. Philip has gone to the far west.”
“How far?”
“He doesn’t say, but it’s on the frontier, and on the map everything beyond it is marked ‘Indians’ and ‘desert,’ and looks as desolate as a Wednesday Meeting.”
“Humph. It was time for him to do something. Is he going to start a daily newspaper among the Kick-a-poos?”4
“Father, thee’s unjust to Philip. He’s going into business.”
“What sort of business can a young man go into without capital?”
“He doesn’t say exactly what it is,” said Ruth a little dubiously, “but it’s something about land and railroads, and thee knows, father, that fortunes are made nobody knows exactly how, in a new country.”
“I should think so, you innocent puss, and in an old one too. But Philip is honest, and he has talent enough, if he will stop scribbling, to make his way. But thee may as well take care of theeself, Ruth, and not go dawdling along with a young man in his adventures, until thy own mind is a little more settled what thee wants.”
