University of Virginia Library

2. SECOND INSTALLMENT.

But you should have seen her face that bright day (the
brightest of my life, I sometimes think), when I broke
the news of my good fortune to her, and proved it by
incontestable vouchers. It was worth fifty-one millions
of dollars at the very least, that face was.

The next day I was back in Lynchburg.

There is a pea-green edifice on Court Street, opposite
the court-house. I went there first. There is a smaller
edifice a little way down the hill, behind the pea-green
house. I went there next. There is a brick house near
the reservoir, and about a square from West Street. I
went there, smiling openly [W. R. M. and self got
arrested there one night for serenading a tree-box], as
I slowly walked along the wall of the reservoir. Then I
went to a house on Federal Hill, which has a large garden
attached to it. And then I went up to Liberty.

What happened in consequence of these visits is, so
far as I am aware, none of your business; but if I had
given my friends in Lynchburg and at Avenel the whole
world, I would have done for them no more than they
deserved. To them I owed many, a great many, of the
happiest hours of my life. “Owed,” did I say? There
was no debt, no sense of obligation, on my part; nothing
of the kind. I would have been a dog, the biggest
and most villainous of dogs, if I had not gone straight to
them. I simply could not have been happy if they had
not shared largely of my happiness.

But the cat was out of the bag.

Everybody knew (it ran like lightning over the whole
State and to the very ends of the earth, I believe) that
Moses was what they called “immensely rich,” and that
he intended Lynchburg should have a magnificent park
and a reservoir, the like of which had not been seen since
the days of the Romans, nor even then. Other things, it
was whispered, were to come.

I wish very much I could say that the change in my
circumstances produced no change in myself, or in others.
But it was not so. Success had never greatly elated me
or made me conceited, nor did it now. But one of the
annoyances of pecuniary success is that it parts one from
his friends, and this from no fault of either the rich or
the poor man. The former cannot make his friend as
rich as himself, while the latter, if a man of spirit, is not
content to be on unequal terms with any one, even in the
matter of money. Affiliation of rich with rich, and poor
with poor, is inevitable. So it would have been with me,
had I not been too old to form intimacies of any kind,
save with womenfolks, to whom I had belonged for many
years, and continued to belong. But men of wealth,
gravitating towards me naturally, became my associates
to such an extent that one day I suddenly waked up to
the fact that those who had not succeeded, had no money
nor the art of making it, no longer interested me. How
often I had decried this and sneered at it in some of my
acquaintances who had gone ahead of me! And now I
caught myself saying testily of this or that man who had
once been tolerably dear to me, “He is down on his

luck.” As if it were the man's fault, when I knew he
was doing his utmost to rise. But such knowledge does
not better the matter nor soften the heart. For the
innate weakness of not being able to get along in the
world there is no remedy; it is the least curable of diseases.
Pity for the weakling is of no avail. All of this
is very natural. The traveler ascending a river in a
powerful steamer cannot long concern himself about the
poor creature who is drifting downward in a canoe, and
is soon lost to sight. Sympathy for him is a waste of
energy, which had better be preserved until it can do
some good.

This, I believe, is the ordinary course of reasoning in
the minds of men who rise above their fellows, and fancy
they are the engine in the steamboat, and not the cwt and
a half of humanity on the deck. It was in my own case,
despite the fact that my money had come to me as it were
out of heaven. And whence comes every good and
perfect gift but from heaven?

You made your money, you say. But, my friend, who
made you?

I am persuaded that there will be plenty of conceit in
this world, pride of riches, of talent, station, what not,
so long as the delusion about free-will[1] lasts. But what
has that to do with my fifty millions? Find out, if you
can, my friend.

A very few experiments satisfied me that there was
scarcely one of the “poor devils who could not get along
in the world” who did not crawl, and that quite rapidly
in some instances, where the proper remedy was applied,
when help was given in time, and thoughtfully.[2] [I am
more doubtful about helping than I was ten years ago—
1892.]

“Fortunately, it was in your power to render just that
kind of aid.”

Yes, I am aware of the fact. I am also aware of the
fact that there never was a thoughtful rich man before my
time.

The change in other people towards myself was at first
not what I had anticipated; nor did I ever receive the
worship [I sometimes regret this] which some of my
readers may suppose I received. Here and there turned
up a wretch who would have eaten my shoes if I had
permitted him; now and then a great man, failing,
clutched at me with a desperation that excited my profound
pity; sometimes I was amused, and sometimes
disgusted, at the obsequious fawning of certain parties,
whose names I am tempted to mention; but in the main
people were manly enough, and soon gave me to know
that in their eyes I was no better than I had been before.

Nevertheless, it is very certain that I became in no
time a most respectable person, and received a deal of
attention. The courtesy of life-insurance and sewing-machine
agents was marked. Circulars of every description
made waste-paper a drug in my house. Editors
kindly chronicled my every movement. Photographers
seemed to have a high opinion of my face. Biographies
of Adams became the order of the day. Mr. Smyth
haunted me, and my likeness appeared in Frank Leslie
within a week after my wealth was heralded to the world.
Bank presidents sometimes bowed to me. Mr. Z., of the
Big Concern, suddenly ceased to forget that he had been
repeatedly introduced to me; and it was intimated to me
that an article from my pen would be acceptable to any
country paper in Virginia.

Opportunities to invest, to take stock, to go into partnership,
and to promote the most meritorious business
enterprises, were frequent. A hint about starting a literary
paper in Richmond was boldly thrown at me. I
neither invested nor took stock, my money being already
well placed, so as to yield me an income of four and a half
millions.

A person whom I had good reason to consider the
most consummate [something erased here—Ed. Whig],
and yet a good sort of a fellow, too, who had professed
warm friendship for me, and had a thousand opportunities
to give me a lift, but deserted me when I was down,
played his game with his wonted smartness. Meeting me
on the street, he shook my hand, said warmly enough,

but not a shade too warmly, “Congratulate you, Moses,”
and walked on. It was not in the least overdone, one
way or the other. For weeks I did not lay eyes on him.
But I knew my man. In due time he came, not in
person, but through his agents (men he fancied had
influence with me, and flattered them by so telling them),
with the most cunning and insidious propositions, seemingly
in my own interest, to all of which I replied,
calmly,—

“Tell Ben Brown I can do nothing for him now.”

But when he went down into the deepest depths, then
I came to him and lifted him up as high as it was possible
ever again to lift him. For all along I had well remembered
how kind he had been to me before good fortune
had hardened him into adamant. Moreover, I had long
known that, in society as in the forest, there are beasts
of prey who delight to lap the blood of the gazelles and
springboks. Rather than give up their nuts and wine for
a single day, these human tigers would crunch the bones
of their best friends, yes, of their own fathers. It is their
nature. They cannot help it. And yet tigers are very
beautiful.[3]

The increase of general destitution around me in the
State, and indeed over the whole land, after I became
rich, was something alarming. I was beset for charity on
all sides. For this I had provided years before when putting
myself to sleep with waking dreams of what I would
do with my fifty millions. Accordingly I selected Mr.
Wm. E. Binford [a worthy, good man, still living. A
useful citizen, too. There are now said to be more Binfords
than Smiths in Virginia—1901] as my almoner for
the males, and for the females, after patient inquiry and
research, I chose a powerful widow of Culpeper.[4] My
selections were well made. Both possessed the physical

strength, the natural benevolence, the equable temperament,
and the discretion indispensable to their trying
offices. By saving me a world of annoyance they earned
my lasting gratitude, and so well and wisely did they discharge
their duties that they became the best-loved people
in Virginia. All minor charities were referred to them.
Special cases, and they were not a few, I reserved for myself.

[Wealth acquaints one with a world of poverty which
otherwise would never have been known. Worse still,
they seem to be poor who once appeared in easy circumstances.
It is very sad. And yet I love to be sad. I was
always sad, very sad. 1888.]

My immediate kin, whether by blood or marriage, were
amply provided for, perhaps too amply. Little or no
harm befell those of mature age, but in the second and
third generations I had much cause to repent my benevolence.
Call it that, in the sense of well-wishing, because
I am not benevolent otherwise. Some of the girls became
the prey of fortune-hunters, and not a few of the boys
went heels-over-head to the devil. Anticipating this, I
was well steeled against their troubles when they came,
but confess that the repeated applications for assistance
from the ne'er-do-weels fretted me so that I almost longed
to regain the quietude of poverty. Yet, what could I do?
Upon occasion I could shut the purse-strings as tight as
any man, but if I didn't help them their parents or grand-parents
would; and, as I was so much more able to bear
the burden than they were, I signed many a check with
more of a snort than a sigh. Truly, “if riches increase,
so do they that consume them,” as the Psalmist saith.
My bed was not all of roses by any means. The world
went not as I would fain have made it go with my millions.

That my own children did not share the fate of so many
of their kinsfolk was due to the good sense, the patient
watchfulness and determination of their excellent mother.
No credit is due me, for the simple reason that my mind
was so occupied with other matters that household cares
were left perforce to the dear, capable hands which had
always controlled them. My children were good children.
When they reached manhood and womanhood my affairs

had assumed such a shape, and my schemes were in a state
of such forwardness, that I could devote myself, in a great
measure, to the heavenliest of delights—the doing of good
where it was needed in a way that made it appear to come
suddenly from the skies. In this my children and their
mother aided me signally, each vying with the other in
displaying tact, delicacy, and wisdom. One of my grand-daughters
discovered unquestionable genius for these
“sky-surprises,” as we called them, and so extraordinary
were her inventions, and so discreet her gifts, that I think
it not immodest in me to say that during her lifetime,
which was all too brief, more good was done in a more
delighting and oftentimes enrapturing manner than in all
the other years of my life put together.