 | CHAPTER VIII. Bankrupt stories |  |
8. CHAPTER VIII.
DIFFICULTIES IN BUSINESS.
WE know not what temptations may beset the paths of
other historians, leading them off from their legitimate
labors into dismal swamps of digression, but the will-o'-the-wisp
that most frequently flashes across our path, is a disposition
to sermonise as we hurry along. We see not how it can
well be otherwise, since every act of a man's life would furnish
a text for a discourse as long as an Oxford tract; and we
who write the histories of mankind, with their lives spread
before us like a map and know in the beginning to what catastrophe
or good fortune each particular action will lead, how
their most serious interests will be travestied by themselves or
their decendants, and their loftiest aspirations soonest tumbled
into the dust, above all others, might preach with good effect
on the uncertainties of human labor if it were our vocation to
do so in direct terms. But the sermons that men find in
stories must be like those which the exiled Duke found in
stones, unwritten and unspoken. Our privilege is limited,
we must teach by example only; but, were it otherwise, we
should be tempted past resistance to dilate at some length on
the vanity of human calculations when we took note of the
remarkable manner in which the wishes of those hard working
and thrifty merchants, Hubbard Croaker Tremlett and
Griswold Bacon Tuck, had been thwarted in the disposition
many years of their lives and so many of the world's pleasures.
Mr. Tremlett had been forty years in accumulating his property;
the anxieties, the sleepless nights, the heart burnings,
the unwholsome labor, and the waste of thought it had cost
him, were vastly disproportioned to its value, but he repined
not at these things, because, at last, he could enrich with it one
whom he loved; and yet, by some slight accident, his wishes
were defeated, the object of his affections received not a penny
of his earnings, and his life and his labors had been spent in
vain. But still worse did it happen to Mr. Tuck, for those
who were the especial objects of his dislike, whom he had
designed to cut off from the least participation in his wealth
were the complete masters of his earnings, and made themselves
drunk with the sweat of his brow, while they despised
him for his labors. Poor man, he had been hoarding up dollars
all his life for his worthless nephews to squander, when
he would not while living have given them a shilling.
If departed spirits ever do look upon the earth, what a perturbed
condition must the unhappy ghost of poor Mr. Tuck
have been in, had he chanced to be regarding his two nephews
one morning, when seated alone in their private office, the
following conversation passed between them.
Tom.—What, does that scoundrel Jacobs ask for more
money?
Fred.—Yes, and he must have it. Listen to his unconscionable
demands. The low wretch; the ungrateful tiger! I'll
kill him. If there's any virtue in lead or steel he's a dead Jew
Tom.—Don't trifle about the matter; read the letter.
Fred.—(Reads) “Friend T.” (the rattlesnake,) “I want
a trifle to help me out of a little difficulty which I got into
about something which I got accused of, and which I am innocent
as the child unborn. Friend T. you must send me
this or I shall be down upon you like bricks. I'm sorry it's
so much, but it can't be helped, I want five thousand six
nothing, but you know what I mean; you must send the
money. I want the dust and no mistake. You have always
been a trump card, so am I. Times are hard. I have been
unfortunate in my speculations, and if you don't send it you
know what will happen. I can give you my word and honor
as a gentleman. But send the money and there's no mistake
in me.
Your Ob't S'vt and esteemed friend,
S. Jacobs.
P. S. Don't mistake about the amount, five thousand six
hundred (5,600 dollars,) if you don't send it there's no Texas
about me, and you know what comes next.
Tom.—Curse him, the Iscariot wretch; I wish there was
an Inquisition for his sake and that I was grand Inquisitor, I
would tear his dog's flesh with hot pincers for this. The
whelp, he has already spent almost half of old uncle Gris's
earnings, and but for the miserly old hound I should not have
got in this villian Jew's clutches.
Fred.—That's true, confound him, if he had left us his
money in a gentlemanly decent manner, as he should have
done, we should never have been compelled to make a league
with this Isrealitish devil to secure our own rights. However
it's done now, and there's no help for it. He must have the
money. One thing I will swear to, I will never take a rogue
into my confidence again. I would sooner make a contract
with the old boy himself than with one of his agents. Curse
every body and every thing. To be threatened by a scoundrel
Jew. I am half resolved to go to Europe.
Tom.—Stop. You talk like a woman. The man must
have the money and we will dispose of him afterwards. It
will be the last. And now for the means. Our account at
the Bank is already overdrawn, so you must shin for it. I
it. I have got other matters to attend to.
The great coffee speculation had been entered into so deeply
that the entire funds of the house were absorbed in their
purchases; they had got the sole control of the market and
their venture promised to return them a profit nearly equal to
all their losses, when a cargo unexpectedly arrived from
Sumatra, and the owners of it, knowing that our firm would
be compelled to purchase it or lose the advantage which they
had gained at so great a risk, refused to sell it, except for cash
and at a very great advance on the current price. The resources
of the financier were already exhausted; all the paper,
stock, and merchandise of the House had been hypothecated,
and their credit exhausted, in making their purchases; they
had sold all their negotiable notes to the Brothers Mildmen,
and used to its fullest extent the line of discount allowed them
at the Banks, and the only possible means by which they
could obtain more money was by procuring good endorsers to
their notes. They had already used the names of their friends
to as great an extent as they could be procured, but there was
one name, if they could by any means get it, that would enable
them to procure the sum they needed. This was the
name of Andrew Kittle, a Scotchman, who had once been in
the service of the old firm of Tremlett & Tuck as a porter,
and who had saved up enough from his monthly salary to
establish himself in a grocery in the Five Points, and had
there made money enough to enable him to set up as a jobber
in Front Street, where he had become very rich, and was
looked upon, not without good reason, as the very staunchest
merchant in his line of business in the city. The financier
proposed to John to call upon Mr. Kittle and offer him a share
in the profits of the coffee speculation, for the use of his name
to the amount of twenty thousand dollars. But John refused,
knowing the cautions and griping disposition of the grocer,
consented to make the application, and entertained some hope
that the favors which his father had done for Mr. Kittle, in
his outset in business, might induce him to comply with their
proposition.
It was dark when John called at Mr. Kittle's store, and he
found the rich old grocer busily engaged in mixing liquors
with the aid of a young lad whom he was instructing in this
lucrative part of his profession. But the old gentleman dropped
his proof-glass, and invited John into his back office, when
he began to talk about the money market and the prospects
of trade, for these were the only subjects upon which he was
ever known to converse, excepting only church affairs, which
occupied his attention on Sundays. John made known the
object of his visit, but did not at first offer him a portion of the
profits in the speculation.
“Well, and what good will it do me to endorse a note for
you?” replied Mr. Kittle.
“It may not do you any good, sir,” said John, “but it will
do me and my partner a great deal of good.”
“But that's nothing to me. My money is mine, young
man, mine, mine,” said the old man, striking his breast vehemently,
to impress the idea more forcibly upon his auditor's
mind that he meant himself and nobody else. It was an intensely
selfish motion. “My money belongs to me, myself. I
made it and I mean to keep it, young man. It belongs to me.”
“I did not ask you for money, sir, but your signature,
which will cost nothing.”
“Ha, ha, young man, my signature, what shall I get by
that?”
“Do you never do anything, but for a consideration?” said
John, “would you refuse to save a man from drowning because
you were not paid for your labour?”
“Ah, ha,” said Mr Kittle, “you will never get rich, young
it's against scripture. I earned it and I mean to keep it good;
always above proof. You won't find old Kittle's paper flying
about in the market; that's the way to have a credit.”
“I proposed offering you a per centage on the profits growing
out of this operation,” said John, “and besides, we will
guarantee you against loss in the case of any accident.”
“You can't afford it; it's not safe; no, no, your father
wouldn't have done such a thing. It's too much. I can't. It
won't do. I'm principled against it. You have no right to
ask such a thing of me.”
“I know I have no right, but—”
“Well, well, then don't do it; don't do a thing you know
to be wrong,” said the grocer, impressively, at the same time
taking hold of the candle-stick as though he was impatient to
return to his brandy-pipe, “I am afraid, young man, you don't
go to church on Sundays. You musn't do things that are
wrong. It's no way to get along in the world. Do as I have
done, and as your father did before you; keep your own money
and ask no favors, and then you'll not be obliged to grant
them to others.”
“Good night,” said John, making no other reply to his excellent
advice but hurried out of the store.
“Good night; be careful of the skids,” said Mr. Kittle, as
he held the candle above his head to light the young man
out. “Now Jake, take fifteen gallons out of that new pipe
of Otard Dupuy and fill it up with pure spirits.”
Mr. Kittle having delivered this order to the lad, returned
to his little back office and took a large yellow pocket-book
out of the iron chest, from whence he drew a huge bundle of
notes and selected four bearing the signature of Tremlett and
Tucks. His hand trembled as he made a minute of their
amounts. It was a large sum, so large that it frightened him.
He had bought these notes of the Messrs. Mildmen at a very
large discount, and the application for his name alarmed him
he would not be able to sell them. Unhappy Mr. Kittle.
After a week of contention and turmoil, one day of holy peace
was necessary to a pious soul like his. Let us hope that the
thoughts of his doubtful paper disturbed not on the morrow
the comforting exercises of the blessed Sabbath, and that he
enjoyed, in his velvet cushioned pew, his accustomed hour of
repose, under the soothing influence of Doctor Slospoken's
drowsy discourse and the slow and solemn chaunt of Mr.
Parsnip, the precentor's voice.
John returned from the grocer's to his own counting room,
and reported his ill success to the financier, who thereupon
gave utterance to prodigious volumes of abusive epithets, not
only upon the head of Mr. Kittle, and the whole Scottish
people, but upon the respectable fraternity of grocers throughout
the world. It was a strange peculiarity of the elder
Tuck's, that when an individual offended him his displeasure
included every possible person and thing in the most remote
degree connected with the offender, extending even to all of
the same name, profession or country. He was, indeed, the
most thorough and complete hater that ever lived, and yet he
never allowed his dislikes to interfere in any manner with
what he conceived to be his interest. To do so would have
been to do an injury to himself, and not to the object of his
hatred. And we must not deny him the justice to admit that
he was a person of such strict impartiality that he had as
little scruple in sacrificing a friend as an enemy, when
either stood in his way. He was one of those people whom
it is dangerous even to know or be known by; and if he did
not do you an injury, it was because it was inconvenient.
And yet, in spite of these singularities, the financier was a
very adroit person in making friends of those from whom he
wanted favors; he had two winning qualities, which are
very serviceable in giving a man a quiet passage through
life; he could always laugh when he thought it necessary,
be gained by it; and he could lie without blushing. He was
a true laughing philosopher, not one of those merry cackling
creatures who are forever throwing away rich streams of
mirth upon promiscuous witticisms, and so exhausting their
powers that when anything is to be gained by laughing at a
dull story, or a stupid practical joke, they cannot command a
smile to save themselves. No, he was none of those vapid
minded ne'er-do-weels, not he. His mirth was always sincere;
he meant something by it.
It was Saturday night, as we have already stated, and on
Monday the bargain for the newly arrived coffee must be either
closed or rejected. Upon this one transaction depended the
result of their speculation. If they could obtain possession
of this one cargo the market would be in their hands, and a
magnificent fortune would be the result; otherwise, the
issue of their extensive and hazardous enterprize would be
extremely doubtful. They required but a small sum of money
compared to the whole amount they had embarked in
this speculation, but they had exhausted all their resources,
and there was no way by which it could be obtained but by
a good endorser, and this they had in vain tried to procure.
The two partners parted for the night, with their minds full
of the matter, and John had been so absorbed in it, that he
could think of nothing but coffee; everything that he saw or
heard, or smelt, was tinged, or scented with coffee; and even
when he fell asleep he dreamed that he had stolen a sack of
Mocha and was pursued over the desert by a horde of wild
Arabs; then again he found himself in that place bargaining
for a cargo of it with an unmentionable prince, where the
Haytien President said that you might lure a Yankee merchant
with only a bag of the berry. As for Fred, the junior
partner, he had selected out a bag of the finest old government
Java from all their purchases, and had sent it over to his beau
ideal villa, where he was entertaining a small party of foreigners,
swore that his coffee was the genuine Mocha, imported in one
of his own ships direct from the Red Sea.
Let us leave them all to their cares and revels, and give
ourselves up to the refreshing quiet and repose of the blessedest
day of the seven, ere we enter upon the exciting and
eventful week which is to follow.
| CHAPTER VIII. Bankrupt stories | |