University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.

THE supper at Col. Sellers's was not sumptuous, in the
beginning, but it improved on acquaintance. That is to
say, that what Washington regarded at first sight as mere
lowly potatoes, presently became awe-inspiring agricultural
productions that had been reared in some ducal garden
beyond the sea, under the sacred eye of the duke himself,
who had sent them to Sellers; the bread was from corn
which could be grown in only one favored locality in the
earth and only a favored few could get it; the Rio coffee,
which at first seemed execrable to the taste, took to itself an
improved flavor when Washington was told to drink it slowly
and not hurry what should be a lingering luxury in order to
be fully appreciated—it was from the private stores of a
Brazilian nobleman with an unrememberable name. The
Colonel's tongue was a magician's wand that turned dried
apples into figs and water into wine as easily as it could change
a hovel into a palace and present poverty into imminent
future riches.

Washington slept in a cold bed in a carpetless room and
woke up in a palace in the morning; at least the palace lingered
during the moment that he was rubbing his eyes and
getting his bearings—and then it disappeared and he recognized

that the Colonel's inspiring talk had been influencing
his dreams. Fatigue had made him sleep late; when he
entered the sitting room he noticed that the old hair-cloth
sofa was absent; when he sat down to breakfast the Colonel
tossed six or seven dollars in bills on the table, counted them
over, said he was a little short and must call upon his banker;
then returned the bills to his wallet with the indifferent air
of a man who is used to money. The breakfast was not an
improvement upon the supper, but the Colonel talked it up
and transformed it into an oriental feast. Bye and bye, he
said:

“I intend to look out for you, Washington, my boy. I
hunted up a place for you yesterday, but I am not referring
to that, now—that is a mere livelihood—mere bread and butter;
but when I say I mean to look out for you I mean something
very different. I mean to put things in your way that
will make a mere livelihood a trifling thing. I'll put you in
a way to make more money than you'll ever know what to do
with. You'll be right here where I can put my hand on you
when anything turns up. I've got some prodigious operations
on foot; but I'm keeping quiet; mum's the word;
your old hand don't go around pow-wowing and letting everybody
see his k'yards and find out his little game. But all in
good time, Washington, all in good time. You'll see. Now
there's an operation in corn that looks well. Some New
York men are trying to get me to go into it—buy up all the
growing crops and just boss the market when they mature—
ah I tell you it's a great thing. And it only costs a trifle;
two millions or two and a half will do it. I haven't exactly
promised yet—there's no hurry—the more indifferent I seem,
you know, the more anxious those fellows will get. And
then there is the hog speculation—that's bigger still. We've
got quiet men at work,” [he was very impressive here,]
“mousing around, to get propositions out of all the farmers
in the whole west and northwest for the hog crop, and other
agents quietly getting propositions and terms out of all the
manufactories—and don't you see, if we can get all the hogs

[ILLUSTRATION]

BIG THINGS SHOWN UP.

[Description: 499EAF. Page 085. In-line image of two men and a woman sitting at a table talking. The woman has her head in her hands.] and all the slaughter houses into our hands on the dead quiet
—whew! it would take three ships to carry the money.—I've
looked into the thing—calculated all the chances for and all
the chances against, and though I shake my head and hesitate
and keep on thinking, apparently, I've got my mind made up
that if the thing can be done on a capital of six millions,
that's the horse to put up money on! Why Washington—
but what's the use of talking about it—any man can see that
there's whole Atlantic oceans of cash in it, gulfs and bays
thrown in. But there's a bigger thing than that, yet—a bigger——”

“Why Colonel, you can't want anything bigger!” said
Washington, his eyes blazing. “Oh, I wish I could go into
either of those speculations—I only wish I had money—I
wish I wasn't cramped and kept down and fettered with poverty,
and such prodigious chances lying right here in sight!
Oh, it is a fearful thing to be poor. But don't throw away
those things—they are so splendid and I can see how sure

they are. Don't throw them away for something still better
and maybe fail in it! I wouldn't, Colonel. I would stick to
these. I wish father were here and were his old self again
—Oh, he never in his life had such chances as these are.
Colonel, you can't improve on these—no man can improve
on them!”

A sweet, compassionate smile played about the Colonel's
features, and he leaned over the table with the air of a man
who is “going to show you” and do it without the least
trouble:

“Why Washington, my boy, these things are nothing.
They look large—of course they look large to a novice, but to
a man who has been all his life accustomed to large operations—shaw!
They're well enough to while away an idle
hour with, or furnish a bit of employment that will give a
trifle of idle capital a chance to earn its bread while it is waiting
for something to do, but—now just listen a moment—just
let me give you an idea of what we old veterans of commerce
call `business.' Here's the Rothschild's proposition—this is
between you and me, you understand——”

Washington nodded three or four times impatiently, and
his glowing eyes said, “Yes, yes—hurry—I under
stand——”

——“for I wouldn't have it get out for a fortune. They
want me to go in with them on the sly—agent was here two
weeks ago about it—go in on the sly” [voice down to an impressive
whisper, now,] “and buy up a hundred and thirteen
wild cat banks in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri—notes
of these banks are at all sorts of discount now
—average discount of the hundred and thirteen is forty-four
per cent —buy them all up, you see, and then all of a sudden
let the cat out of the bag! Whiz! the stock of every one of
those wildcats would spin up to a tremendous premium before
you could turn a handspring—profit on the speculation not a
dollar less than forty millions!” [An eloquent pause, while
the marvelous vision settled into W.'s focus.] “Where's your
hogs now! Why my dear innocent boy, we would just sit

down on the front door-steps and peddle banks like lucifer
matches!”

Washington finally got his breath and said:

“Oh, it is perfectly wonderful! Why couldn't these
things have happened in father's day? And I—it's of no
use—they simply lie before my face and mock me. There
is nothing for me but to stand helpless and see other people
reap the astonishing harvest.”

“Never mind, Washington, don't you worry. I'll fix you.
There's plenty of chances. How much money have you
got?”

In the presence of so many millions, Washington could not
keep from blushing when he had to confess that he had but
eighteen dollars in the world.

“Well, all right—don't despair. Other people have been
obliged to begin with less. I have a small idea that may develop
into something for us both, all in good time. Keep
your money close and add to it. I'll make it breed. I've
been experimenting (to pass away the time,) on a little preparation
for curing sore eyes—a kind of decoction nine-tenths
water and the other tenth drugs that don't cost more than a
dollar a barrel; I'm still experimenting; there's one ingredient
wanted yet to perfect the thing, and somehow I can't
just manage to hit upon the thing that's necessary, and I
don't dare talk with a chemist, of course. But I'm progressing,
and before many weeks I wager the country will ring
with the fame of Eschol Sellers' Infallible Imperial Oriental
Optic Liniment and Salvation for Sore Eyes—the Medical
Wonder of the Age! Small bottles fifty cents, large ones a
dollar. Average cost, five and seven cents for the two sizes.
The first year sell, say, ten thousand bottles in Missouri,
seven thousand in Iowa, three thousand in Arkansas, four
thousand in Kentucky, six thousand in Illinois, and say
twenty-five thousand in the rest of the country. Total, fifty-five
thousand bottles; profit clear of all expenses, twenty
thousand dollars at the very lowest calculation. All the
capital needed is to manufacture the first two thousand bottles

—say a hundred and fifty dollars—then the money would
begin to flow in. The second year, sales would reach 200,000
bottles—clear profit, say, $75,000—and in the meantime the
great factory would be building in St. Louis, to cost, say,
$100,000. The third year we could easily sell 1,000,000
bottles in the United States and——”

“O, splendid!” said Washington. “Let's commence right
away—let's——”

“——1,000,000 bottles in the United States—profit at
least $350,000—and then it would begin to be time to turn
our attention toward the real idea of the business.”

“The real idea of it! Ain't $350,000 a year a pretty
real——”

“Stuff! Why what an infant you are, Washington—what
a guileless, short-sighted, easily-contented innocent you are,
my poor little country-bred know-nothing! Would I go to
all that trouble and bother for the poor crumbs a body might
pick up in this country? Now do I look like a man who—
does my history suggest that I am a man who deals in trifles,
contents himself with the narrow horizon that hems in the
common herd, sees no further than the end of his nose?
Now you know that that is not me—couldn't be me. You
ought to know that if I throw my time and abilities into a
patent medicine, it's a patent medicine whose field of operations
is the solid earth! its clients the swarming
nations that inhabit it! Why what is the republic
of America for an eye-water country? Lord bless you,
it is nothing but a barren highway that you've got
to cross to get to the true eye-water market! Why, Washington,
in the Oriental countries people swarm like the sands
of the desert; every square mile of ground upholds its thousands
upon thousands of struggling human creatures—and
every separate and individual devil of them's got the ophthalmia!
It's as natural to them as noses are—and sin. It's born
with them, it stays with them, it's all that some of them have
left when they die. Three years of introductory trade in the
orient and what will be the result? Why, our headquarters

[ILLUSTRATION]

COL. SELLERS BLOWING BUBBLES FOR WASHINGTON.

[Description: 499EAF. Page 089. In-line image of two men looking at a bubble which contains a bank, money, and straw in it.] would be in Constantinople and our hindquarters in Further
India! Factories and warehouses in Cairo, Ispahan, Bagdad,
Damascus, Jerusalem, Yedo, Peking, Bangkok, Delhi, Bombay
and Calcutta! Annual income—well, God only knows
how many millions and millions apiece!”

Washington was so dazed, so bewildered—his heart and his
eyes had wandered so far away among the strange lands
beyond the seas, and such avalanches of coin and currency
had fluttered and jingled confusedly down before him, that
he was now as one who has been whirling round and round
for a time, and, stopping all at once finds his surroundings
still whirling and all objects a dancing chaos. However,
little by little the Sellers family cooled down and crystalized
into shape, and the poor room lost its glitter and resumed its
poverty. Then the youth found his voice and begged Sellers
to drop everything and hurry up the eye-water; and he got
his eighteen dollars and tried to force it upon the Colonel—
pleaded with him to take it—implored him to do it. But
the Colonel would not; said he would not need the capital
(in his native magnificent way he called that eighteen dollars

Capital) till the eye-water was an accomplished fact. He
made Washington easy in his mind, though, by promising
that he would call for it just as soon as the invention was
finished, and he added the glad tidings that nobody but just
they two should be admitted to a share in the speculation.

When Washington left the breakfast table he could have
worshiped that man. Washington was one of that kind of
people whose hopes are in the very clouds one day and in the
gutter the next. He walked on air, now. The Colonel was
ready to take him around and introduce him to the employment
he had found for him, but Washington begged for a
few moments in which to write home; with his kind of people,
to ride to-day's new interest to death and put off yesterday's
till another time, is nature itself. He ran up stairs and
wrote glowingly, enthusiastically, to his mother about the
hogs and the corn, the banks and the eye-water—and added a
few inconsequential millions to each project. And he said
that people little dreamed what a man Col. Sellers was, and
that the world would open its eyes when it found out. And
he closed his letter thus:

Poor lad, he could not know that his mother would cry
some loving, compassionate tears over his letter and put off
the family with a synopsis of its contents which conveyed a
deal of love to them but not much idea of his prospects or
projects. And he never dreamed that such a joyful letter
could sadden her and fill her night with sighs, and troubled

[ILLUSTRATION]

GEN'L BOSWELL'S OFFICE.

[Description: 499EAF. Page 091. In-line image of three men standing next to a railing in an office.] thoughts, and bodings of the future, instead of filling it with
peace and blessing it with restful sleep.

When the letter was done, Washington and the Colonel
sallied forth, and as they walked along Washington learned
what he was to be. He was to be a clerk in a real estate
office. Instantly the fickle youth's dreams forsook the magic
eye-water and flew back to the Tennessee Land. And the
gorgeous possibilities of that great domain straightway began
to occupy his imagination to such a degree that he could
scarcely manage to keep even enough of his attention upon
the Colonel's talk to retain the general run of what he was
saying. He was glad it was a real estate office—he was a
made man now, sure.

The Colonel said that General Boswell was a rich man and
had a good and growing business; and that Washington's
work would be light and he would get forty dollars a month
and be boarded and lodged in the General's family—which
was as good as ten dollars more; and even better, for he
could not live as well even at the “City Hotel” as he would
there, and yet the hotel charged fifteen dollars a month where
a man had a good room.

General Boswell was in his office; a comfortable looking
place, with plenty of outline maps hanging about the walls

[ILLUSTRATION] [Description: 499EAF. Page 092. Tail-piece image of three men chasing after a group of pigs that are running away. The men are in top hats and are grabbing for piggy tails.] and in the windows, and a spectacled man was marking out
another one on a long table. The office was in the principal
street. The General received Washington with a kindly but
reserved politeness. Washington rather liked his looks. He
was about fifty years old, dignified, well preserved and well
dressed. After the Colonel took his leave, the General
talked a while with Washington—his talk consisting chiefly
of instructions about the clerical duties of the place. He
seemed satisfied as to Washington's ability to take care of
the books, he was evidently a pretty fair theoretical bookkeeper,
and experience would soon harden theory into practice.
By and by dinner-time came, and the two walked to
the General's house; and now Washington noticed an instinct
in himself that moved him to keep not in the General's rear,
exactly, but yet not at his side—somehow the old gentleman's
dignity and reserve did not inspire familiarity.