The Memoirs of an American Citizen Part 24

CHAPTER XVI

THE STRUGGLE

_Hard times--How to make something out of nothing--The problem of finance--Getting help--Cousin Farson--A trip down the coast--Paternal admonition--The beautiful city beside the lake--The last ditch--A strong woman's nonsense--The Drounds sail for Europe--I am in command_

It is not my purpose to recall all the details of the crowded years that followed. From the autumn of '92, when the events that I have just related occurred, through the period of deepening depression in all business and the succeeding era of prosperity, I can do little more than touch here and there upon more vital events. Suffice it to say that we were met at the start with hard times, a period of tight money, which prevented the quick realization of my plan to incorporate the properties that had been gathered together. One way and another the companies were carried along, by issuing notes and securing what financial help could be got, waiting for the favorable time to launch our enterprise. Here Mr. Dround was a strong help: once committed to the undertaking, he persuaded others and used his credit generously. Sometimes he looked back, seeking to retreat from the positions to which he was being forced; but he saw only ruin behind him, and perforce went ahead.

Strange to say, we met at first little or no opposition from our strong rivals. Whether it was that Strauss and his crowd were willing to let the mice foregather into one trap before showing their claws, or that they despised us as weaklings, no one could say. We were able, even, to join the great packers in one of those private agreements that made it possible for us to secure our share of the home trade. Mr. Dround was aware of this fact, but averted his eyes. Necessity knows little squeamishness. It must have filled John Carmichael with unholy joy to know that Dround had come to this compromise with his virtue.

So, in spite of the hard times, we pushed on, branching out here and there as the chance offered, building a plant in Texas, where Will was sent to take charge, and making a deal with a car line that had been started by some Boston men. But the time came when we had to have more money, and have it at once. There was none to be raised in Chicago, where the frost of the panic had settled first and hardest. Sloc.u.m, who was my right hand all these months, suggested that the money might be had from the Boston men who owned the car line. So in July, '93, we made a hurried trip to the East. They were frightened in Boston, and we met with little but disappointment. Men were waiting for Congress to repeal the silver law, or do something else to make it pleasant, and wouldn't listen to putting out another dollar in a Chicago enterprise. Then it occurred to Sloc.u.m that we might interest a man he knew named Farson, the rich man of his old home, Portland.

Farson, we found, was down the coast somewhere on his vacation, and we followed after him. It was the first time I had ever been in that part of the country, and the look of it was queer to me--a lot of scrawny, rocky fields and wooden-built towns. When we failed to find Farson in Portland, it did not seem to me worth while to go on--I doubted if there was as much money in the whole town as we had to have; but Sloco was strongly of the opinion that these Maine people had fortunes tucked away in their old stockings. So we kept on down the coast, and found our man at his summer cottage, on a little rocky island.

This Mr. Farson was a short, wiry, little man, almost sixty years old, with a close-cropped gray mustache, and looked for all the world like a retired school-teacher. He received us on his front piazza, and it took him and Sloc.u.m half an hour to establish just the degree of cousinship they were to each other. I wanted to laugh and to put in: "We've come to make your fortune, cousin. It don't make any difference whether you are third once removed or second twice removed." But I thought it likely that Sloc.u.m knew his business best with these people and kept quiet.

When Sloc.u.m got around to saying that we were interested in various Western enterprises, the weather seemed to grow cool all of a sudden.

But Cousin Farson listened politely and asked some good questions at the end. Then he let us go all the way across the harbor to the hotel where we had put up, to get our dinner. I thought we had lost him, but Sloc.u.m thought not. For Cousin Farson had asked us to go fishing with him in the afternoon.

"He might have given us a sandwich," I growled to Sloc.u.m. "That place of his looks as if he could afford it."

Sloc.u.m smiled at my irritation.

"He did not ask you down here. He doesn't feel responsible for your coming. Probably Cousin Susan would need a warning before inviting two strangers to dinner."

Well, the little old schoolmaster came over in the afternoon with a very pretty steam launch. The fishing was not all a pretence. He liked to fish; but I never saw a man who listened as keenly as that man did. And I did the talking. I let him see that we were engaged on a big work; that in putting his dollars into our packing-houses he wasn't just taking a flyer, way off at the end of the earth. I had had some experience in dealing with men by this time; it was no raw young schemer who came to this party. And I had observed that what men want when they are thinking of putting their money into a new enterprise is to have confidence in the men who will spend their dollars. My experience has shown me that the cheapest thing to get in this world is money. If you have the ideas, the money will flow like water downhill. At any rate, that was the way it worked with good Mr. Farson.

We stayed there in Deer Isle three days, and had one simple meal in the banker's house after Cousin Susan had been duly warned. At the end of the time Farson thought he would give us a couple of hundred thousand dollars and take some of our bonds, and he thought maybe his brother-in-law would take a few more, and also his brother-in-law's brother. In short, Mr. Farson was the first one in a long row of bricks.

He went up with us on the Boston boat, when we started back, to secure the others. It was a glorious night early in August, and, after Sloc.u.m had gone to bed, the old banker and I sat up there on the deck watching the coast fade away in the moonlight. I had never seen anything like it before in my life--the black rocks starting right out of the water, the stiff little fir trees, the steep hills rolling back from the sea.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The black rocks starting right out of the water._]

"This is the prettiest thing I have ever seen!" I exclaimed. "My wife must come down here next summer."

"Yes," the old gentleman replied, with evident pleasure in my praise of his native rocks. "I can tell you that there is very little in the world to compare with the charm of this coast."

Then he began to talk of other lands, and I found that he had been all over the earth. He talked of Italy, and India, and j.a.pan, and parts of Russia. After a time he began to ask me questions about myself, and being an easy talker, and happy over the success we had had, I told him a good deal of my story, and how I had come to enter the present undertaking. It was easy to tell him things--he had quick sympathy and was as keen as a boy. He seemed to approve of my general plan, but advised patience.

"This silver trouble will lead to a period of bad times," he remarked.

"The very time to prepare," I retorted.

"True," he laughed, "when you have the faith and energy. But I am an old man. I wish to live in peace the rest of my life. Young man, I have been through two panics and the war. I lost a son while I was in the Wilderness. He would have been about your age," he added, in a far-away tone.

That switched the talk from business, and we sat there on deck until nearly dawn, discussing religion all the time. As he bade me good-by at the Boston station the next evening, I remember his saying to me with one of the pleasantest smiles I ever saw on a man's face:--

"Now, Mr. Harrington, I can see that yours will be a busy life. Success will come not merely in these matters, but in many others." He wagged his head confidently. "I don't make many mistakes in men. But if you ever want to have such pleasant talks as we had last night, when you get to be an old man like me, you must see to it that your hands are kept clean. Remember that, my boy!" And he patted my shoulder like a father.

It was a queer thing for one man to say to another at the end of a business day. I had occasion to think of it later, although at the time I put it down to the old gentleman's eccentricity. We parted very cordially. I felt that a valuable ally had been secured--one who had it in his power to bring others with him to our aid,--and I liked the old boy himself.

Among other things, Mr. Farson had asked me casually about a little line of Missouri railroad--the St. Louis Great Southern, it was called. He and his friends were pretty well loaded with the securities of this bankrupt little road, and the banker wanted me to look into it and advise him what to do with the property. Thus it happened that the St.

Louis Great Southern became another link in my plan of conquest.

Altogether it was a most important connection, that between us and Farson's crowd, and it was fortunate that Sloc.u.m thought of Cousin Farson in our hour of need.

All this time there had been building the beautiful city of white palaces on the lake, and it was now open for the world to see what Chicago had dreamed and created. Although it had made me impatient to have Mr. Dround spend on it his energy that was needed in his own business, now that it was accomplished, in all its beauty and grandeur, it filled me with admiration.

There were few hours that I could spend in its enjoyment, but I remember one evening after my return from the East when we had a family party at the Fair. May and Will were spending his vacation with us during the hot weather, and the four of us, having had our dinner, took an electric launch and glided through the lagoons beneath the lofty peristyle out to the lake, which was as quiet as a pond. The long lines of white buildings were ablaze with countless lights; the music from the bands scattered over the grounds floated softly out upon the water; all else was silent and dark. In that lovely hour, soft and gentle as was ever a summer night, the toil and trouble of men, the fear that was gripping men's hearts in the market, fell away from me, and in its place came Faith. The people who could dream this vision and make it real, those people from all parts of the land who thronged here day after day--their st.u.r.dy wills and strong hearts would rise above failure, would press on to greater victories than this triumph of beauty--victories greater than the world had yet witnessed!

Nevertheless, in spite of hopeful thoughts like these, none knew better than I the skeleton that lay at the feast, the dread of want and failure that was stealing over all business. But for that night we were happy and without fear....

As our launch drew up at the landing beside the great fountain, another launch glided by our side, holding a number of the Commissioners and some guests of distinction. Among them were the Drounds, who had entertained liberally all this season. The two boat parties came to sh.o.r.e together, and stood looking at the display of fireworks. The Court of Honor was thronged with thousands and thousands; the great fountain rippled in a blaze of light; the dark peristyle glowed for a moment in the fantastic flame from the fireworks. I turned and caught the light of the illumination in the dark face of Jane Dround. She bowed and smiled.

"In your honor!" she murmured half mockingly, as a rocket burst into a shower of fiery spray in the heavens above. "I hear that you return from Boston victor. You should hear Henry! He has no doubts now." She laughed in high spirits, and we stood there awhile gazing.

"To-night I have no doubts; but to-morrow--who knows?"

Her brows contracted seriously.

"You need, my friend, one great quality, and you must get it somehow--patience!"

"That is true, but--"

"Patience!" she repeated slowly; "the patience that covers years.

Perhaps you think that is a woman's virtue, but men, too, must have it if they are to endure. Remember--patience! Now, before any one comes, let me tell you: we are to leave for Europe as soon as the Fair closes.

Do you think that it will be all right by that time? Say yes or no," she added, as we were approached by May and Sarah.

"Yes," I answered with a strange feeling of sadness.

Once more, before we left the grounds, I caught a moment of talk with Mrs. Dround.

"To you the game--the great game!" she exclaimed softly. "And to me the waiting. But remember, one useless woman is watching across the water every move you make, and when the time comes that you want help, when you cannot go on alone--"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_When the time comes that you want help, when you cannot go on alone_--"]

It sounded like woman's sentiment, and I interrupted jokingly:--

"When I am in the last ditch, cable you?"

"Don't laugh at me! I am more earnest than you know. If that time comes--if you don't know which way to turn for help, if you have done _all_, and still--"

We were standing beside a bandstand, and at that moment the music crashed out, flooding us with deafening sound.

She pressed my hand, smiled, and turned away. I thought no more of her words then. But some weeks later, before the Drounds sailed for Europe, there came in my mail an envelope addressed in a woman's hand. Inside there was only another envelope, marked:--

"For the last ditch!"