University of Virginia Library

27. CHAPTER XXVII.

IT was a hard blow to poor Sellers to see the work on his
darling enterprise stop, and the noise and bustle and confusion
that had been such refreshment to his soul, sicken and
die out. It was hard to come down to humdrum ordinary life
again after being a General Superintendent and the most
conspicuous man in the community. It was sad to see his
name disappear from the newspapers; sadder still to see it
resurrected at intervals, shorn of its aforetime gaudy gear of
compliments and clothed on with rhetorical tar and feathers.

But his friends suffered more on his account than he did.
He was a cork that could not be kept under the water many
moments at a time.

He had to bolster up his wife's spirits every now and then.
On one of these occasions he said:

“It's all right, my dear, all right; it will all come right in
a little while. There's $200,000 coming, and that will set
things booming again. Harry seems to be having some difficulty,
but that's to be expected—you can't move these big

operations to the tune of Fisher's Hornpipe, you know. But
Harry will get it started along presently, and then you'll see!
I expect the news every day now.”

“But Eschol, you've been expecting it every day, all along,
haven't you?”

“Well, yes; yes—I don't know but I have. But anyway,
the longer it's delayed, the nearer it grows to the time when
it will start—same as every day you live brings you nearer
to—nearer—”

“The grave?”

“Well, no—not that exactly; but you can't understand
these things, Polly dear—women haven't much head for business,
you know. You make yourself perfectly comfortable,
old lady, and you'll see how we'll trot this right along. Why
bless you, let the appropriation lag, if it wants to—that's no
great matter—there's a bigger thing than that.”

“Bigger than $200,000, Eschol?”

“Bigger, child?—why, what's $200,000? Pocket money!
Mere pocket money! Look at the railroad! Did you forget
the railroad? It ain't many months till spring; it will be
coming right along, and the railroad swimming right along
behind it. Where'll it be by the middle of summer? Just
stop and fancy a moment—just think a little—don't anything
suggest itself? Bless your heart, you dear women live right in
the present all the time—but a man, why a man lives——

“In the future, Eschol? But don't we live in the future
most too much, Eschol? We do somehow seem to manage to
live on next year's crop of corn and potatoes as a general
thing while this year is still dragging along, but sometimes
it's not a robust diet,—Eschol. But don't look that way,
dear—don't mind what I say. I don't mean to fret, I don't
mean to worry; and I don't, once a month, do I, dear? But
when I get a little low and feel bad, I get a bit troubled and
worrisome, but it don't mean anything in the world. It
passes right away. I know you're doing all you can, and I
don't want to seem repining and ungrateful—for I'm not,
Eschol—you know I'm not, don't you?”

“Lord bless you, child, I know you are the very best little

woman that ever lived—that ever lived on the whole face of
the Earth! And I know that I would be a dog not to work
for you and think for you and scheme for you with all my
might. And I'll bring things all right yet, honey—cheer up
and don't you fear. The railroad—”

“Oh, I had forgotten the railroad, dear, but when a body
gets blue, a body forgets everything. Yes, the railroad—tell
me about the railroad.”

“Aha, my girl, don't you see? Things ain't so dark, are
they? Now I didn't forget the railroad. Now just think
for a moment—just figure up a little on the future dead
moral certainties. For instance, call this waiter St. Louis.

“And we'll lay this fork (representing the railroad) from St.
Louis to this potato, which is Slouchburg:

“Then with this carving knife we'll continue the railroad
from Slouchburg to Doodleville, shown by the black pepper:

“Then we run along the—yes—the comb—to the tumbler
—that's Brimstone:

“Thence by the pipe to Belshazzar, which is the salt-cellar:

“Thence to, to—that quill—Catfish—hand me the pincushion,
Marie Antoinette:

“Thence right along these shears to this horse, Babylon:

“Then by the spoon to Bloody Run—thank you, the ink:

“Thence to Hail Columbia—snuffers, Polly, please—move
that cup and saucer close up, that's Hail Columbia:

“Then—let me open my knife—to Hark-from-the-Tomb,
where we'll put the candle-stick—only a little distance from Hail
Columbia to Hark-from-the-Tomb—down-grade all the way.

“And there we strike Columbus River—pass me two or
three skeins of thread to stand for the river; the sugar bowl
will do for Hawkeye, and the rat trap for Stone's Landing—
Napoleon, I mean—and you can see how much better Napoleon
is located than Hawkeye. Now here you are with your
railroad complete, and showing its continuation to Hallelujah
and thence to Corruptionville.

“Now then—there you are! It's a beautiful road, beautiful.
Jeff Thompson can out-engineer any civil engineer
that ever sighted through an aneroid, or a theodolite, or

whatever they call it—he calls it sometimes one and sometimes
the other—just whichever levels off his sentence neatest,
I reckon. But ain't it a ripping road, though? I tell you,
it'll make a stir when it gets along. Just see what a country
it goes through. There's your onions at Slouchburg—noblest
onion country that graces God's footstool; and there's your
turnip country all around Doodleville—bless my life, what
fortunes are going to be made there when they get that contrivance
perfected for extracting olive oil out of turnips—if
there's any in them; and I reckon there is, because Congress
has made an appropriation of money to test the thing, and
they wouldn't have done that just on conjecture, of course.
And now we come to the Brimstone region—cattle raised
there till you can't rest—and corn, and all that sort of thing.
Then you've got a little stretch along through Belshazzar
that don't produce anything now—at least nothing but rocks
—but irrigation will fetch it. Then from Catfish to Babylon
it's a little swampy, but there's dead loads of peat down
under there somewhere. Next is the Bloody Run and Hail
Columbia country—tobacco enough can be raised there to
support two such railroads. Next is the sassparilla region. I
reckon there's enough of that truck along in there on the line
of the pocket knife, from Hail Columbia to Hark-from-the-Tomb
to fat up all the consumptives in all the hospitals from
Halifax to the Holy Land. It just grows like weeds! I've
got a little belt of sassparilla land in there just tucked away
unobstrusively waiting for my little Universal Expectorant
to get into shape in my head. And I'll fix that, you know.
One of these days I'll have all the nations of the earth expecto—”

“But Eschol, dear—”

“Don't interrupt me, Polly—I don't want you to lose the
run of the map—well, take your toy-horse, James Fitz-James,
if you must have it—and run along with you. Here, now
—the soap will do for Babylon. Let me see—where was I?
Oh yes—now we run down to Stone's Lan—Napoleon—now
we run down to Napoleon. Beautiful road. Look at that,

now. Perfectly straight line—straight as the way to the
grave. And see where it leaves Hawkeye—clear out in the
cold, my dear, clear out in the cold. That town's as bound
to die as—well if I owned it I'd get its obituary ready, now,
and notify the mourners. Polly, mark my words—in three
years from this, Hawkeye'll be a howling wilderness. You'll
see. And just look at that river—noblest stream that mean-ders
over the thirsty earth!—calmest, gentlest artery that
refreshes her weary bosom! Railroad goes all over it and
all through it—wades right along on stilts. Seventeen
bridges in three miles and a half—forty-nine bridges from
Hark-from-the-Tomb to Stone's Landing altogether—forty-nine
bridges, and culverts enough to culvert creation itself!
Hadn't skeins of thread enough to represent them all—but
you get an idea—perfect trestle-work of bridges for seventy-two
miles. Jeff Thompson and I fixed all that, you know;
he's to get the contracts and I'm to put them through on the
divide. Just oceans of money in those bridges. It's the
only part of the railroad I'm interested in,—down along the
line—and it's all I want, too. It's enough, I should judge.
Now here we are at Napoleon. Good enough country—
plenty good enough—all it wants is population. That's all
right—that will come. And it's no bad country now for
calmness and solitude, I can tell you—though there's no
money in that, of course. No money, but a man wants rest,
a man wants peace—a man don't want to rip and tear around
all the time. And here we go, now, just as straight as a
string for Hallelujah—it's a beautiful angle—handsome upgrade
all the way—and then away you go to Corruptionville,
the gaudiest country for early carrots and cauliflowers that
ever—good missionary field, too. There ain't such another
missionary field outside the jungles of Central Africa. And
patriotic?—why they named it after Congress itself. Oh, I
warn you, my dear, there's a good time coming, and it'll be
right along before you know what you're about, too. That
railroad's fetching it. You see what it is as far as I've got,
and if I had enough bottles and soap and boot-jacks and such
things to carry it along to where it joins onto the Union
Pacific, fourteen hundred miles from here, I should exhibit
to you in that little internal improvement a spectacle of inconceivable
sublimity. So, don't you see? We've got the rail-road
to fall back on; and in the meantime, what are we
worrying about that $200,000 appropriation for? That's all
right. I'd be willing to bet anything that the very next
letter that comes from Harry will—”

The eldest boy entered just in the nick of time and brought
a letter, warm from the post-office.

“Things do look bright, after all, Eschol. I'm sorry I
was blue, but it did seem as if everything had been going
against us for whole ages. Open the letter—open it quick,
and let's know all about it before we stir out of our places.
I am all in a fidget to know what it says.”

The letter was opened, without any unnecessary delay.