University of Virginia Library

31. CHAPTER XXXI.

The very next intelligence from our urban rival
came in the shape of a polite note to Mr. Clavers,
offering him any amount of stock in the “Merchants'
and Manufacturers' Bank of Tinkerville.” My honoured
spouse—I acknowledge it with regret—is any thing
but “an enterprising man.” But our neighbour, Mr.
Rivers, or his astute father for him, thought this chance
for turning paper into gold and silver too tempting to
be slighted, and entered at once into the business of
making money on a large scale.

I looked at first upon the whole matter with unfeigned
indifference, for money has never seemed so valueless
to me as since I have experienced how little it will
buy in the woods; but I was most unpleasantly surprised
when I heard that Harley Rivers, the husband
of my friend, was to be exalted to the office of President
of the new bank.

“Just as we were beginning to be so comfortable,
to think you should leave us,” said I to Mrs. Rivers.

“Oh! dear no,” she replied; “Harley says it will
not be necessary for us to remove at present. The

business can be transacted just as well here, and we
shall not go until the banking-house and our own can
be erected.”

This seemed odd to a novice like myself; but I
rejoiced that arrangements were so easily made which
would allow me to retain for a while so pleasant a
companion.

As I make not the least pretension to regularity, but
only an attempt to “body forth” an unvarnished picture
of the times, I may as well proceed in this place
to give the uninitiated reader so much of the history
of the Tinkerville Bank, as has become the property of
the public; supposing that the effects of our “General
Banking Law” may not be as familiarly known elsewhere
as they unfortunately are in this vicinity.

When our speculators in land found that the glamour
had departed, that the community had seen the ridicule
of the delusion which had so long made

And poverty seem riches, and idleness industry, and
fraud enterprise; some of these cunning magicians set
themselves about concocting a new species of gramarye,
by means of which the millions of acres of wild
land which were left on their hands might be turned
into bonâ fide cash—paper cash at least, to meet certain
times of payment of certain moneys borrowed at
certain rates of interest during the fervour of the speculating
mania. The “General Banking Law” of
enviable notoriety, which allowed any dozen of men
who could pledge real estate to a nominal amount, to
assume the power of making money of rags; this was
the magic cauldron, whose powers were destined to
transmute these acres of wood and meadow into splendid
metropolitan residences, with equipages of corresponding
elegance. It was only “bubble-bubble,” and burroaks
were turned into marble tables, tall tamaracks
into draperied bedsteads, lakes into looking-glasses,
and huge expanses of wet marsh into velvet couches,
and carpets from the looms of Agra and of Ind.

It is not to be denied that this necromantic power
had its limits. Many of these successful wizards seemed
after all a little out of place in their palaces of enchantment;
and one could hardly help thinking, that
some of them would have been more suitably employed
in tramping, with cow-hide boot, the slippery marshes
on which their greatness was based, than in treading
mincingly the piled carpets which were the magical
product of those marshes. But that was nobody's
business but their own. They considered themselves
as fulfilling their destiny.

Some thirty banks or more were the fungous growth
of the new political hot-bed; and many of these were
of course without a “local habitation,” though they
might boast the “name,” it may be, of some part of
the deep woods, where the wild cat had hitherto been
the most formidable foe to the unwary and defenceless.
Hence the celebrated term “Wild Cat,” justified fully
by the course of these cunning and stealthy blood-suckers;
more fatal in their treacherous spring than

ever was their forest prototype. A stout farmer might
hope to “whip” a wild cat or two; but once in the
grasp of a “wild cat bank,” his struggles were unavailing.
Hopeless ruin has been the consequence in
numerous instances, and every day adds new names to
the list.

But I have fallen into the sin of generalizing, instead
of journalizing, as I promised. The interesting nature
of the subject will be deemed a sufficient justification,
by such of my readers as may have enjoyed the pleasure
of making alumets of bank-notes, as so many
Michiganians have done, or might have done if they
had not been too angry.

Of the locale of the Merchants' and Manufacturers'
Bank of Tinkerville, I have already attempted to give
some faint idea; and I doubt not one might have ridden
over many of the new banks in a similar manner,
without suspecting their existence. The rubicand and
smooth-spoken father-in-law of my friend was the mainspring
of the institution in question; and his son
Harley, who “did not love work,” was placed in a
conspicuous part of the panorama as President. I
thought our Caleb Quotem neighbour, Mr. Simeon
Jenkins, would have found time to fulfil the duties of
cashier, and he can write “S. Jenkins” very legibly;
so there would have been no objection on that score:
but it was thought prudent to give the office to a
Tinkervillian—a man of straw, for aught I know to
the contrary; for all I saw or heard of him was his
name, “A. Bite,” on the bills. A fatal mistake this,
according to Mr. Jenkins. He can demonstrate, to
any body who feels an interest in the facts of the case,

that the bank never would have “flatted out,” if he had
had a finger in the pie.

Just as our Wild Cat was ready for a spring, the
only obstacle in her path was removed, by the abolition
of the old-fashioned-and-troublesome-but-now-exploded
plan of specie payments; and our neighbours
went up like the best rocket from Vauxhall. The
Tinkerville Astor House, the County Offices, the Banking
House, were all begun simultaneously, as at the
waving of a wand of power. Montacute came at once
to a dead stand; for not a workman could be had for
love or flour. Those beautifully engraved bills were
too much for the public spirit of most of us, and we forgot
our Montacute patriotism for a time. “Real estate
pledged;” of course, the notes were better than gold
or silver, because they were lighter in the pocket.

Time's whirligig went round. Meanwhile all was
prosperous at the incipient capital of our rising county.
Mr. President Rivers talked much of removing
to the bank; and in preparation, sent to New-York
for a complete outfit of furniture, and a pretty carriage;
while Mrs. Rivers astonished the natives in our
log meeting-house, and the wood-chucks in our forest
strolls, by a Parisian bonnet of the most exquisite rose-colour,
her husband's taste. Mr. Rivers, senior, and
sundry other gentlemen, some ruddy-gilled and full-pocketed
like himself, others looking so lean and hungry,
that I wondered any body would trust them in a bank
—a place where, as I supposed in my greenness,

Made frequent and closetted sojourn at Montacute.
Our mill whirred merrily, and toll-wheat is a currency
that never depreciates; but in other respects, we were
only moderately prosperous. Our first merchant, Mr.
Skinner, did not clear above three thousand dollars the
first year. Slow work for Michigan; and somehow,
Mr. Jenkins was far from getting rich as fast as he
expected.

One bright morning, as I stood looking down Main-street,
thinking I certainly saw a deer's tail at intervals
flying through the woods, two gentlemen on horseback
rode deliberately into town. They had the air of men
who were on serious business; and as they dismounted
at the door of the Montacute House, a messenger was
despatched in an instant to Mr. Rivers. Ere long, I
discovered the ruddy papa wending his dignified way
towards the Hotel, while the President, on his famous
trotter Greenhorn, emerged from the back-gate, and
cleared the ground in fine style towards Tinkerville.

A full hour elapsed before the elder Mr. Rivers was
ready to accompany the gentlemen on their ride. He
happened to be going that way, which was very convenient,
since the Bank Commissioners, for our portly
strangers were none other, did not know in what part
of the unsurveyed lands the new city lay. The day
was far spent when the party returned to take tea
with Mrs. Rivers. All seemed in high good humour.
The examination prescribed by our severe laws had
been exceedingly satisfactory. The books of the Bank
were in apple-pie order. Specie certificates, a newly-invented
kind of gold and silver, were abundant. A
long row of boxes, which contained the sinews of peace
as well as of war, had been viewed and “hefted” by

the Commissioners. The liabilities seemed as nothing
compared with the resources; and the securities were
as substantial as earth and stone could make them.

If the height of prosperity could have been heightened,
Tinkerville would have gone on faster than ever
after this beneficent visitation. Mr. Rivers' new furniture
arrived, and passed through our humble village
in triumphal procession, pile after pile of huge boxes,
provokingly impervious to the public eye; and, last of
all, the new carriage, covered as closely from the vulgar
gaze as a celebrated belle whose charms are on the
wane. The public buildings at the county seat were
proclaimed finished, or nearly finished, a school-house
begun, a meeting-house talked of; but for the latter, it
was supposed to be too early—rather premature.