University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.

BEARING Washington Hawkins and his fortunes, the
stage-coach tore out of Swansea at a fearful gait, with
horn tooting gaily and half the town admiring from doors
and windows. But it did not tear any more after it got to
the outskirts; it dragged along stupidly enough, then—
till it came in sight of the next hamlet; and then the bugle
tooted gaily again and again the vehicle went tearing by the
houses. This sort of conduct marked every entry to a
station and every exit from it; and so in those days children
grew up with the idea that stage-coaches always tore and
always tooted; but they also grew up with the idea that
pirates went into action in their Sunday clothes, carrying the
black flag in one hand and pistolling people with the other,
merely because they were so represented in the pictures—
but these illusions vanished when later years brought their
disenchanting wisdom. They learned then that the stage-coach
is but a poor, plodding, vulgar thing in the solitudes

of the highway; and that the pirate is only a seedy, unfantastic.
“rough,” when he is out of the pictures.

Toward evening, the stage-coach came thundering into
Hawkeye with a perfectly triumphant ostentation—which
was natural and proper, for Hawkeye was a pretty large
town for interior Missouri. Washington, very stiff and tired
and hungry, climbed out, and wondered how he was to proceed
now. But his difficulty was quickly solved. Col. Sellers
came down the street on a run and arrived panting for
breath. He said:

“Lord bless you—I'm glad to see you, Washington—perfectly
delighted to see you, my boy! I got your message.
Been on the look-out for you. Heard the stage horn, but
had a party I couldn't shake off—man that's got an enormous
thing on hand—wants me to put some capital into it—and I
tell you, my boy, I could do worse, I could do a deal worse.
No, now, let that luggage alone; I'll fix that. Here, Jerry,
got anything to do? All right—shoulder this plunder and
follow me. Come along, Washington. Lord I'm glad to see
you! Wife and the children are just perishing to look at
you. Bless you, they won't know you, you've grown so.
Folks all well, I suppose? That's good—glad to hear that.
We're always going to run down and see them, but I'm into
so many operations, and they're not things a man feels like
trusting to other people, and so somehow we keep putting it
off. Fortunes in them! Good gracious, it's the country to
pile up wealth in! Here we are—here's where the Sellers
dynasty hangs out. Dump it on the door-step, Jerry—the
blackest niggro in the State, Washington, but got a good
heart—mighty likely boy, is Jerry. And now I suppose
you've got to have ten cents, Jerry. That's all right—when
a man works for me—when a man—in the other pocket, I
reckon—when a man—why, where the mischief is that portmonnaie!—when
a—well now that's odd—Oh, now I remember,
must have left it at the bank; and b'George I've
left my check-book, too—Polly says I ought to have a nurse

[ILLUSTRATION]

ATTEMPTED CORNER IN SPECIE.

[Description: 499EAF. Page 077. In-line image of two men talking while a slave stands next to them with a luggage trunk.] —well, no matter. Let me have a dime, Washington, if
you've got—ah, thanks. Now clear out, Jerry, your complexion
has brought on the twilight half an hour ahead of
time. Pretty fair joke—pretty fair. Here he is, Polly!
Washington's come, children!—come now, don't eat him up
—finish him in the house. Welcome, my boy, to a mansion
that is proud to shelter the son of the best man that walks on
the ground. Si Hawkins has been a good friend to me, and
I believe I can say that whenever I've had a chance to put
him into a good thing I've done it, and done it pretty cheerfully,
too. I put him into that sugar speculation—what a
grand thing that was, if we hadn't held on too long!”

True enough; but holding on too long had utterly ruined
both of them; and the saddest part of it was, that they never
had had so much money to lose before, for Sellers's sale of
their mule crop that year in New Orleans had been a great
financial success. If he had kept out of sugar and gone back

home content to stick to mules it would have been a happy
wisdom. As it was, he managed to kill two birds with one
stone—that is to say, he killed the sugar speculation by holding
for high rates till he had to sell at the bottom figure, and
that calamity killed the mule that laid the golden egg—which
is but a figurative expression and will be so understood.
Sellers had returned home cheerful but empty-handed, and
the mule business lapsed into other hands. The sale of the
Hawkins property by the Sheriff had followed, and the Hawkins
hearts been torn to see Uncle Dan'l and his wife pass
from the auction-block into the hands of a negro trader and
depart for the remote South to be seen no more by the
family. It had seemed like seeing their own flesh and blood
sold into banishment.

Washington was greatly pleased with the Sellers mansion.
It was a two-story-and-a-half brick, and much more stylish
than any of its neighbors. He was borne to the family sitting
room in triumph by the swarm of little Sellerses, the
parents following with their arms about each other's waists.

The whole family were poorly and cheaply dressed; and
the clothing, although neat and clean, showed many evidences
of having seen long service. The Colonel's “stovepipe”
hat was napless and shiny with much polishing, but nevertheless
it had an almost convincing expression about it of
having been just purchased new. The rest of his clothing
was napless and shiny, too, but it had the air of being
entirely satisfied with itself and blandly sorry for other peo-ple's
clothes. It was growing rather dark in the house, and
the evening air was chilly, too. Sellers said:

“Lay off your overcoat, Washington, and draw up to the
stove and make yourself at home—just consider yourself
under your own shingles my boy—I'll have a fire going, in a
jiffy. Light the lamp, Polly, dear, and let's have things
cheerful—just as glad to see you, Washington, as if you'd
been lost a century and we'd found you again!”

By this time the Colonel was conveying a lighted match
into a poor little stove. Then he propped the stove door to
its place by leaning the poker against it, for the hinges had

retired from business. This door framed a small square of
isinglass, which now warmed up with a faint glow. Mrs.
Sellers lit a cheap, showy lamp, which dissipated a good deal
of the gloom, and then everybody gathered into the light and
took the stove into close companionship.

The children climbed all over Sellers, fondled him, petted
him, and were lavishly petted in return. Out from this tugging,
laughing, chattering disguise of legs and arms and
little faces, the Colonel's voice worked its way and his tireless
tongue ran blithely on without interruption; and the
purring little wife, diligent with her knitting, sat near at
hand and looked happy and proud and grateful; and she
listened as one who listens to oracles and gospels and whose
grateful soul is being refreshed with the bread of life. Bye
and bye the children quieted down to listen; clustered about
their father, and resting their elbows on his legs, they hung
upon his words as if he were uttering the music of the spheres.

A dreary old hair-cloth sofa against the wall; a few damaged
chairs; the small table the lamp stood on; the crippled
stove—these things constituted the furniture of the room.
There was no carpet on the floor; on the wall were occasional
square-shaped interruptions of the general tint of the plaster
which betrayed that there used to be pictures in the house
—but there were none now. There were no mantel ornaments,
unless one might bring himself to regard as an ornament
a clock which never came within fifteen strokes of
striking the right time, and whose hands always hitched
together at twenty-two minutes past anything and traveled
in company the rest of the way home.

“Remarkable clock!” said Sellers, and got up and wound
it. “I've been offered—well, I wouldn't expect you to
believe what I've been offered for that clock. Old Gov.
Hager never sees me but he says, `Come, now, Colonel, name
your price—I must have that clock!' But my goodness I'd
as soon think of selling my wife. As I was saying to——
silence in the court, now, she's begun to strike! You can't
talk against her—you have to just be patient and hold up till
she's said her say. Ah—well, as I was saying, when—she's

beginning again! Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two,
twen——ah, that's all.—Yes, as I was saying to old
Judge——go it, old girl, don't mind me.—Now how is that?
—isn't that a good, spirited tone? She can wake the dead!
Sleep? Why you might as well try to sleep in a thunder-factory.
Now just listen at that. She'll strike a hundred
and fifty, now, without stopping,—you'll see. There ain't
another clock like that in Christendom.”

Washington hoped that this might be true, for the din was
distracting—though the family, one and all, seemed filled
with joy; and the more the clock “buckled down to her
work” as the Colonel expressed it, and the more insupportable
the clatter became, the more enchanted they all appeared
to be. When there was silence, Mrs Sellers lifted upon Washington
a face that beamed with a childlike pride, and said:

“It belonged to his grandmother.”

The look and the tone were a plain call for admiring surprise,
and therefore Washington said—(it was the only thing
that offered itself at the moment:)

“Indeed!”

“Yes, it did, didn't it father!” exclaimed one of the
twins. “She was my great-grandmother—and George's too;
wasn't she, father! You never saw her, but Sis has seen her,
when Sis was a baby—didn't you, Sis! Sis has seen her
most a hundred times. She was awful deef—she's dead,
now. Ain't she, father!”

All the children chimed in, now, with one general Babel
of information about deceased—nobody offering to read the
riot act or seeming to discountenance the insurrection or disapprove
of it in any way—but the head twin drowned all the
turmoil and held his own against the field:

“It's our clock, now—and it's got wheels inside of it, and
a thing that flutters every time she strikes—don't it, father!
Great-grandmother died before hardly any of us was born—
she was an Old-School Baptist and had warts all over her—
you ask father if she didn't. She had an uncle once that was
bald-headed and used to have fits; he wasn't our uncle, I
don't know what he was to us—some kin or another I reckon

[ILLUSTRATION]

A BRILLIANT IDEA.

[Description: 499EAF. Page 081. In-line image of a family gathered around their father who is sitting near a fire place. He has a small child on his knee.] —father's seen him a thousand times—hain't you, father!
We used to have a calf that et apples and just chawed up
dishrags like nothing, and if you stay here you'll see lots of
funerals—won't he, Sis! Did you ever see a house afire?
I have! Once me and Jim Terry——”

But Sellers began to speak now, and the storm ceased. He
began to tell about an enormous speculation he was thinking
of embarking some capital in— a speculation which some London
bankers had been over to consult with him about—and
soon he was building glittering pyramids of coin, and Washington
was presently growing opulent under the magic of his
eloquence. But at the same time Washington was not able
to ignore the cold entirely. He was nearly as close to the
stove as he could get, and yet he could not persuade himself
that he felt the slightest heat, notwithstanding the isinglass
door was still gently and serenely glowing. He tried to get
a trifle closer to the stove, and the consequence was, he
tripped the supporting poker and the stove-door tumbled
to the floor. And then there was a revelation—there

was nothing in the stove but a lighted tallow-candle!

The poor youth blushed and felt as if he must die with
shame. But the Colonel was only disconcerted for a moment
—he straightway found his voice again:

“A little idea of my own, Washington—one of the greatest
things in the world! You must write and tell your father
about it—don't forget that, now. I have been reading up
some European Scientific reports—friend of mine, Count Fugier,
sent them to me—sends me all sorts of things from
Paris—he thinks the world of me, Fugier does. Well, I saw
that the Academy of France had been testing the properties
of heat, and they came to the conclusion that it was a nonconductor
or something like that, and of course its influence
must necessarily be deadly in nervous organizations with excitable
temperaments, especially where there is any tendency
toward rheumatic affections. Bless you I saw in a moment
what was the matter with us, and says I, out goes your fires!
—no more slow torture and certain death for me, sir. What
you want is the appearance of heat, not the heat itself—that's
the idea. Well how to do it was the next thing. I just put
my head to work, pegged away a couple of days, and here
you are! Rheumatism? Why a man can't any more start
a case of rheumatism in this house than he can shake an
opinion out of a mummy! Stove with a candle in it and a
transparent door—that's it—it has been the salvation of this
family. Don't you fail to write your father about it, Washington.
And tell him the idea is mine—I'm no more conceited
than most people, I reckon, but you know it is human
nature for a man to want credit for a thing like that.”

Washington said with his blue lips that he would, but he
said in his secret heart that he would promote no such iniquity.
He tried to believe in the healthfulness of the invention,
and succeeded tolerably well; but after all he could
not feel that good health in a frozen body was any real improvement
on the rheumatism.