University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.
TWO BUSINESS MEN TRANSACT A LITTLE BUSINESS.

—“Pray, sir, have you seen a gentleman with a weed
hereabouts, rather a saddish gentleman? Strange where
he can have gone to. I was talking with him not
twenty minutes since.”

By a brisk, ruddy-cheeked man in a tasseled traveling-cap,
carrying under his arm a ledger-like volume,
the above words were addressed to the collegian before
introduced, suddenly accosted by the rail to which not
long after his retreat, as in a previous chapter recounted,
he had returned, and there remained.

“Have you seen him, sir?”

Rallied from his apparent diffidence by the genial
jauntiness of the stranger, the youth answered with unwonted
promptitude: “Yes, a person with a weed was
here not very long ago.”

“Saddish?”

“Yes, and a little cracked, too, I should say.”

“It was he. Misfortune, I fear, has disturbed his
brain. Now quick, which way did he go?”

“Why just in the direction from which you came,
the gangway yonder.”

“Did he? Then the man in the gray coat, whom I

just met, said right: he must have gone ashore. How
unlucky!”

He stood vexedly twitching at his cap-tassel, which
fell over by his whisker, and continued: “Well, I am very
sorry. In fact, I had something for him here.”—Then
drawing nearer, “you see, he applied to me for relief,
no, I do him injustice, not that, but he began to intimate,
you understand. Well, being very busy just then, I
declined; quite rudely, too, in a cold, morose, unfeeling
way, I fear. At all events, not three minutes afterwards
I felt self-reproach, with a kind of prompting, very peremptory,
to deliver over into that unfortunate man's
hands a ten-dollar bill. You smile. Yes, it may be
superstition, but I can't help it; I have my weak side,
thank God. Then again,” he rapidly went on, “we
have been so very prosperous lately in our affairs—by
we, I mean the Black Rapids Coal Company—that, really,
out of my abundance, associative and individual, it is
but fair that a charitable investment or two should be
made, don't you think so?”

“Sir,” said the collegian without the least embarrassment,
“do I understand that you are officially connected
with the Black Rapids Coal Company?”

“Yes, I happen to be president and transfer-agent.”

“You are?”

“Yes, but what is it to you? You don't want to
invest?”

“Why, do you sell the stock?”

“Some might be bought, perhaps; but why do you
ask? you don't want to invest?”

“But supposing I did,” with cool self-collectedness,
“could you do up the thing for me, and here?”

“Bless my soul,” gazing at him in amaze, “really,
you are quite a business man. Positively, I feel afraid
of you.”

“Oh, no need of that.—You could sell me some of
that stock, then?”

“I don't know, I don't know. To be sure, there are
a few shares under peculiar circumstances bought in by
the Company; but it would hardly be the thing to
convert this boat into the Company's office. I think
you had better defer investing. So,” with an indifferent
air, “you have seen the unfortunate man I spoke of?”

“Let the unfortunate man go his ways.—What is
that large book you have with you?”

“My transfer-book. I am subpœnaed with it to court.”

“Black Rapids Coal Company,” obliquely reading
the gilt inscription on the back; “I have heard much of
it. Pray do you happen to have with you any statement
of the condition of your company.”

“A statement has lately been printed.”

“Pardon me, but I am naturally inquisitive. Have
you a copy with you?”

“I tell you again, I do not think that it would be
suitable to convert this boat into the Company's office.
—That unfortunate man, did you relieve him at all?”

“Let the unfortunate man relieve himself.—Hand
me the statement.”

“Well, you are such a business-man, I can hardly
deny you. Here,” handing a small, printed pamphlet.

The youth turned it over sagely.

“I hate a suspicious man,” said the other, observing
him; “but I must say I like to see a cautious one.”

“I can gratify you there,” languidly returning the
pamphlet; “for, as I said before, I am naturally inquisitive;
I am also circumspect. No appearances can deceive
me. Your statement,” he added “tells a very fine
story; but pray, was not your stock a little heavy
a while ago? downward tendency? Sort of low spirits
among holders on the subject of that stock?”

“Yes, there was a depression. But how came it?
who devised it? The `bears,' sir. The depression of
our stock was solely owing to the growling, the hypocritical
growling, of the bears.”

“How, hypocritical?”

“Why, the most monstrous of all hypocrites are these
bears: hypocrites by inversion; hypocrites in the simulation
of things dark instead of bright; souls that thrive,
less upon depression, than the fiction of depression;
professors of the wicked art of manufacturing depressions;
spurious Jeremiahs; sham Heraclituses, who, the
lugubrious day done, return, like sham Lazaruses among
the beggars, to make merry over the gains got by their
pretended sore heads—scoundrelly bears!”

“You are warm against these bears?”

“If I am, it is less from the remembrance of their
stratagems as to our stock, than from the persuasion
that these same destroyers of confidence, and gloomy
philosophers of the stock-market, though false in themselves,
are yet true types of most destroyers of confidence

and gloomy philosophers, the world over. Fellows
who, whether in stocks, politics, bread-stuffs,
morals, metaphysics, religion—be it what it may—
trump up their black panics in the naturally-quiet
brightness, solely with a view to some sort of covert
advantage. That corpse of calamity which the gloomy
philosopher parades, is but his Good-Enough-Morgan.”

“I rather like that,” knowingly drawled the youth.
“I fancy these gloomy souls as little as the next one.
Sitting on my sofa after a champagne dinner, smoking
my plantation cigar, if a gloomy fellow come to me—
what a bore!”

“You tell him it's all stuff, don't you?”

“I tell him it ain't natural. I say to him, you are
happy enough, and you know it; and everybody else is
as happy as you, and you know that, too; and we shall
all be happy after we are no more, and you know that,
too; but no, still you must have your sulk.”

“And do you know whence this sort of fellow gets
his sulk? not from life; for he's often too much of a
recluse, or else too young to have seen anything of it.
No, he gets it from some of those old plays he sees on
the stage, or some of those old books he finds up in
garrets. Ten to one, he has lugged home from auction
a musty old Seneca, and sets about stuffing himself with
that stale old hay; and, thereupon, thinks it looks wise
and antique to be a croaker, thinks it's taking a standway
above his kind.”

“Just so,” assented the youth. “I've lived some, and

seen a good many such ravens at second hand. By the
way, strange how that man with the weed, you were inquiring
for, seemed to take me for some soft sentimentalist,
only because I kept quiet, and thought, because
I had a copy of Tacitus with me, that I was reading him
for his gloom, instead of his gossip. But I let him talk.
And, indeed, by my manner humored him.”

“You shouldn't have done that, now. Unfortunate
man, you must have made quite a fool of him.”

“His own fault if I did. But I like prosperous
fellows, comfortable fellows; fellows that talk comfortably
and prosperously, like you. Such fellows are
generally honest. And, I say now, I happen to have a
superfluity in my pocket, and I'll just—”

“— Act the part of a brother to that unfortunate
man?”

“Let the unfortunate man be his own brother.
What are you dragging him in for all the time? One
would think you didn't care to register any transfers,
or dispose of any stock—mind running on something
else. I say I will invest.”

“Stay, stay, here come some uproarious fellows—this
way, this way.”

And with off-handed politeness the man with the
book escorted his companion into a private little haven
removed from the brawling swells without.

Business transacted, the two came forth, and walked
the deck.

“Now tell me, sir,” said he with the book, “how
comes it that a young gentleman like you, a sedate student

at the first appearance, should dabble in stocks and
that sort of thing?”

“There are certain sophomorean errors in the world,”
drawled the sophomore, deliberately adjusting his shirt-collar,
“not the least of which is the popular notion
touching the nature of the modern scholar, and the nature
of the modern scholastic sedateness.”

“So it seems, so it seems. Really, this is quite a
new leaf in my experience.”

“Experience, sir,” originally observed the sophomore,
“is the only teacher.”

“Hence am I your pupil; for it's only when experience
speaks, that I can endure to listen to speculation.”

“My speculations, sir,” dryly drawing himself up,
“have been chiefly governed by the maxim of Lord
Bacon; I speculate in those philosophies which come
home to my business and bosom—pray, do you know of
any other good stocks?”

“You wouldn't like to be concerned in the New Jerusalem,
would you?”

“New Jerusalem?”

“Yes, the new and thriving city, so called, in northern
Minnesota. It was originally founded by certain fugitive
Mormons. Hence the name. It stands on the
Mississippi. Here, here is the map,” producing a roll.
“There—there, you see are the public buildings—here
the landing—there the park—yonder the botanic gardens—and
this, this little dot here, is a perpetual fountain,
you understand. You observe there are twenty

asterisks. Those are for the lyceums. They have lignum-vitæ
rostrums.”

“And are all these buildings now standing?”

“All standing—bona fide.”

“These marginal squares here, are they the water-lots?”

“Water-lots in the city of New Jerusalem? All terra
firma—you don't seem to care about investing, though?”

“Hardly think I should read my title clear, as the
law students say,” yawned the collegian.

“Prudent—you are prudent. Don't know that you are
wholly out, either. At any rate, I would rather have
one of your shares of coal stock than two of this other.
Still, considering that the first settlement was by two
fugitives, who had swum over naked from the opposite
shore—it's a surprising place. It is, bona fide.—But
dear me, I must go. Oh, if by possibility you should
come across that unfortunate man—”

“— In that case,” with drawling impatience, “I
will send for the steward, and have him and his misfortunes
consigned overboard.”

“Ha ha!—now were some gloomy philosopher here,
some theological bear, forever taking occasion to growl
down the stock of human nature (with ulterior views,
d'ye see, to a fat benefice in the the gift of the worshipers
of Ariamius), he would pronounce that the sign of a
hardening heart and a softening brain. Yes, that would
be his sinister construction. But it's nothing more than
the oddity of a genial humor—genial but dry. Confess
it. Good-bye.”