University of Virginia Library

3. THIRD INSTALLMENT.

Fits of pride, more from the consciousness of power
than the conceit of riches, attacked me from time to time.
These I could cure with the greatest ease and certainty by
promptly shutting up my business office and going out into
the woods. If the weather were not too bitter, I would
go even in midwinter. What comes out of the speechless
trees, up from the bubbling waters, and down from
the deep heaven, I cannot tell; how the sweet influences
of nature operate upon the vanity-swollen spirit I cannot
tell. But I do know, and it is all I can tell about it, that
on my return from the forest I was no more humble than
a tree is humble, and no more proud; simple, natural,
healthful, and you may add helpful, as a tree is helpful to
give shade to the fawn or shelter to the birds; that I was,
and that is all I was. Try the forest for an hour or two,
my opulent friend.

Something very much more crafty, creeping, and villainous
than the ordinary vanity of wealth assailed me over
and again. It was what the theologians, if I do not misunderstand
them, call spiritual pride—Pharisaism. Going
along the street I would have to haul myself short up, for
while my heart would be floating in a delicious warm-bath
of self-love my heart would be saying, “You certainly
are one of the best men that ever lived in this world!”

I wonder, as my pen traces this very word “world,” if
my readers will believe me when I tell them that in my
dream about riches I had foreseen and provided for this
cunningest and vilest of all the devils that sneak into the
human soul? It was even so, whether they believe it or
not.

“But why do you tell it but to make out that you are
the best man in the world?”

Partly to show that the imagination, by carefully going
over for years and years the possibilities of a given situation,
may realize even its most unpleasant details, but
more to remind you, my friend, that in a small way you
have yourself been plagued by this identical devil. Own
up, now. Haven't you?

Lest it be inferred, in spite of my disclaimer, that I was
a “mighty good man,” let me hasten to say that I was
not one of those unpardonably excellent worthies who do
not permit their right hand to know what their left hand
doeth. No, indeed! Charles Lamb thought that the
greatest pleasure in life was to do good by stealth, and
have it found out by accident. Well, there is something
in that, provided the party to whom the good is done is
comparatively a stranger to you. But in the case of friends,
I always took care that they found out (not always by accident
either) that I was the fellow who had done the good
deed. Not for the world would I have missed the pleasure
of seeing their pleasure, and of knowing that they knew I
knew the source from which their pleasure came. I wanted
to see it in their eyes, and feel it come back straight and
warm into my own eyes and heart. In a word, I wanted
to be loved, and, above all, I wanted to be loved by those
I loved best. That was life in its fullness; that was the
charm of wealth.

To know that riches enabled my children to escape the
myriad pangs that beset my own clouded and poverty-stricken
boyhood and early manhood, when one is most
capable of enjoying and giving enjoyment, was a great
deal to me. But more, far more, was it to know that they
could feel the warmth and brilliancy of their sunlit morning
reflected back from the faces of those whom they had
befriended and made even happier than themselves; that
is, if it be true that it is better to give than to receive,
which I much doubt, because the giver can never surprise
himself in giving, and the “sky-surprise,” as I have
already intimated, is as near as can be the coming down
from heaven of something direct from God. And what
can be better than that? Don't think me impious if I
sometimes question myself as to how it may be with Him
who can never be surprised by receiving what He longed
to get, but never dreamed He would obtain, and to whom
nothing, literally nothing, can ever be given; since from
the infinite wearisome beginning He hath had all things.

I have now, I believe, finished all my twaddle about
matters purely personal, and, after narrating a few specific
donations which gave me unusual pleasure, will proceed at
once to detail those public benefactions which I may reasonably
presume to be of general interest.

During our entire married life Mrs. Adams had manifested
a strong fondness for a half-dozen or so of Virginia
schoolmarms. My yielding and obedient disposition made
me a meek participator in this fondness, and the consequence
was a serious injury to the youth of Virginia by
robbing them of their teachers. But, to atone for the
loss, a number of middle-aged men, who had not hitherto
been able to perceive how closely their happiness
was bound up with the aforesaid marms, became the most
radiant and bounding of husbands, bestowing on me
whenever I chanced to meet them a cataract of gratitude
which made the back streets more than ever desirable as
a route to my office. On the part of the marms, truth
compels me to say there was not quite so copious a downpour
of thankfulness. One of these went so far as to tell
me frankly that she wished I had kept my plaguey dollars
to myself, so that she might have opened a boardinghouse

as soon as she got old and ugly enough, and so
have been free as the wild gazelle on Judah's hills. [I
do not believe that boarding-house keepers enjoy any
large freedom.] But when I remembered how jaded the
poor souls had looked at the close of their sessions, and
the evident pleasure they took in new bonnets and in the
coat-tailed thing, all their own, that dangled behind them
as they entered church, I could not repent me of the evil
I had done.

Hampden Chamberlayne having a fondness, and not a
little fitness, for the editorial calling, I thought to surprise
and please him by presenting him with a couple of
newspaper toys in New York (the Times and World, if I
remember aright, which I hoped he would consolidate
under the name of the Wordly Times), but he surprised
and enraged me by promptly selling them out, and establishing
a semi-weekly in Richmond, his State and its
capital being very dear to him. So successful was he,
that some time early in the 80's he was sent to the United
States Senate, where, against my earnest advice, he distinguished
himself by his efforts against centralization,
already too far gone to admit of hopeful opposition.

[A worthy, good man, talented beyond question. The
War of the German Uprising in '88 was no sooner begun
than he joined the army at St. Louis, rose rapidly to the
rank of General of Division, was captured after the sacking
of Philadelphia, and instead of being shot, as a brave
soldier should have been, was guillotined in front of
the Imperial Palace, and immediately under the eye of
Ulysses II.[1] A serious loss, not only to the army, but
to the cause of liberty, 1895.] [My mind is now being
made up that the friends of liberty should have no heads.]

No amount of money could keep me from scribbling,
and no amount of money could insure me against the
rejection of my articles by editors who presumed to
know better than myself the style of articles best suited
to their papers, and so being obliged to have a scape-pipe
for my foolishness, I, with extreme difficulty, persuaded

Stofer and Scott to part with the Piedmont Virginian
and the Gordonsville Gazette. Stofer did not consent
until I bargained to pay him one thousand dollars a year
for his services, and agreed that he should sleep at Orange
Court-House every night, which he did, purchasing a neat
horse and buggy for that purpose. Consolidating the two
journals under the name of the Native Virginian, at Gordonsville
(which had increased to four thousand souls
under the stimulus of the Chester Gap Railroad, and the
unremitting immigration exertion of Digges), Stofer and
I published the paper there for a good long time, affording
snack-buyers an abudance of cheap, but not very
clean, wrapping-paper, and annoying the editors throughout
the State by incessant personalities and political inconsistencies.
Charging nothing for subscription, or for
advertisements, except in the case of patent medicines
and circuses, we gradually ran up our list to three hundred
and fifty, including exchanges and copies given to
friends on the cars.

The hearts of numerous widows, ay! and married
women, and maids too, sang with joy after I got my
money. I went all the way to Kansas to find a widow
of whom I had long lost sight, but never for an instant
forgotten. And lo! she was married, and so were two of
her daughters. But that circumstance did not daunt me
a bit. I hadn't come all that way to return with my
finger in my mouth, I tell you. Help I would, and did.
There, too, I encountered a person named Christian,
grizzled and furrowed by plenteous hard knocks, but
warm and true as of yore. In vain I tried to win him
and his back to old Virginia, so that we twain might
roam once more the wooded hills above the James, as
in the halcyon days agone. “No; he had outlived that
life. He could not bear to see the change in his dear
native State. Please God, he would teach his boys that
a man could die clean-handed and upright-hearted in the
midst of roughs, villains, thieves, and dogs.” There,
then, after a charming two-months' visit, I left him with
greenbacks enough to brighten his old age and give his
children a good go-off in life; and I saw him no more.

Deacon Moses P. Handy, being the son of a most

worthy Patriarch and Presbyterian preacher, and having
done me many a good turn, I did something in return
for him.

[Note.—For the matter of turn, all the editors and
reporters in Virginia and Maryland, and a good many in
Tennessee, and others in other States (take them “by
and large,” they are the best class of people in the
world), had been kind to me, and I remembered every
one of them to the extent of one thousand dollars in
gold, a house and lot, a barrel of whisky, a box of
cigars, a set of open-back shirts, by Spence,[2] and a
basket of champagne for their wives, apiece.]

Deacon Handy being enough of an old and new school
Presbyterian, and also enough of a Baptist and Methodist,
for the purpose, I attempted to gather unto him all
the religious papers of Richmond, satisfied that he would
so combine them as to make out of them a colossal fortune.
Sectarian influences easily thwarted me and my
money, and consequently the good deacon had to scuffle
along with the combined evening papers as best he could.
Summoning Chesterman to his aid, he made so good thing
of it that he was able to bring all the boys under cover,
including even wild Moral Donater.[3]

Colonel James McDonald for twenty years had exhibited
so persistent a purpose to help me on to the full
measure of his ability that I was bound by natural law
to hate him. I did not give him one single cent. But,
on going to the bank one day, Mr. Davenport said to
him,—

“Colonel, interest has been piling up here for three
or four years. Are you going to let it run on indefinitely?”

“Interest! What interest?”

Then for the first time he discovered that his three

children had to their credit rather more money than was
good for them. They pulled through, though, thanks to
their excellent training, enjoying life, and making citizens
of whom the community, and especially the poor
people, might well be proud.[4]

There was an old doctor in Middleburg whose name
and face were associated with some of the most sorrowful
and sacred memories of my life. Thirty or forty years
of arduous country practice had obtained for him the
unbounded esteem and affection of scores of people, who
were too poor to compensate him, if, indeed, monetary
compensation could have repaid him for all he had done
for them. Him I placed upon his pins so firmly that there
was no danger of his ever being shaken, demanding only
that he and his dear wife should make us a real old Virginia
visit once a year. This they unfailingly did, and
the way in which I used to beat the old man at backgammon
was something for him to brood over in a mildly
vengeful fashion during the remaining eleven months of
the year.

There was another doctor, not quite so old as my
Middleburg friend, but much more rotund. He had
placed me under such obligations that for a long time I
had not been able to look him straight in the face. It
was imperatively incumbent upon me to proceed for him,
and for him I proceeded in my own style. One winter
evening, just as he had seated himself at his table, on
which a superb dinner was served, and had paved the
way to a first-rate talk with the particular friends around
him, the door-bell rang.

“Man want to see you.”

“Tell him I'm at dinner.”

“Say he 'bleest to see you”

“Let him wait, then.”

“Say he 'bleest to see you right now.”

“Tell him I am—at—dinner!” thundered the doctor.

“Say he don' keer if you is; he got a wheelbarrer
full o' silver and gold out dar, and it a rainin'; he bound
to see you.”

“Burbage, hand me that stick!”

His son having handed him the cane, the doctor was
about to bring it down with all the force of his massive
frame upon his servant, when the guests, rising with one
accord, restrained him.

“Fo' Gawd, sir, de man do say de money ar dar; I
ain't a lyin', sir, ef he ar.”

To shorten the story, the money was “dar,” sure
enough. Night had fallen; it was raining; the banks
were closed, and so were the brokers' offices.

The doctor was furious; dinner getting cold, and nowhere
to put all that money. For a moment his brain,
large as it was, was utterly at fault—for a moment only.

“Here, boy, dump that stuff upon the floor of my
office. My son, run and hire a section of artillery to
stay up all night and take care of it. Give them whatever
they ask; hang me if I'll miss my dinner for forty
thousand wheelbarrows full of silver!”

It took half a decanter of the best sherry to quiet him
down, but then he forgave me (there was no mistaking
the source of the annoying present), and his guests say
he never talked more charmingly in his whole life.[5]