Such was Samuel's life until he was seventeen, and then a sad experience
came to the family.
It was because of the city people. They brought prosperity to the
country, everyone said, but old Ephraim regretted their coming, none the
less. They broke down the old standards, and put an end to the old ways
of life. What was the use of grubbing up stumps in a pasture lot,
when one could sell minnows for a penny apiece? So all the men became
“guides” and camp servants, and the girls became waitresses. They wore
more stylish clothes and were livelier of speech; but they were also
more greedy and less independent. They had learned to take tips, for
instance; and more than one of the girls went away to the city to
nameless and terrible destinies.
These summer boarders all had money. Young and old, it flowed from them
in a continuous stream. They did not have to plow and reap--they bought
what they wanted; and they spent their time at play--with sailboats and
fishing tackle, bicycles and automobiles, and what not. How all this
money came to be was a thing difficult to imagine; but it came from the
city--from the great Metropolis, to which one's thoughts turned with
ever livelier interest.
Then, one August, came a man who opened the gates of knowledge a little.
Manning was his name--Percival Manning, junior partner in the firm
of Manning & Isaacson, Bankers and Brokers--with an address which had
caused the Prescott family to start and stare with awe. It was Wall
Street!
Mr. Percival Manning was round and stout, and wore striped shirts,
and trousers which were like a knife blade in front; also, he fairly
radiated prosperity. His talk was all of financial wizardry by which
fortunes were made overnight. The firm of Manning & Isaacson was one of
the oldest and most prosperous in the street, so he said; and its junior
partner was in the confidence of some of the greatest powers in the
financial affairs of the country. And, alas! for the Prescott family,
which did not read the magazines and had never even heard of a
“bucket-shop”!
Adam, the oldest brother, took Mr. Manning back to Indian Pond on a
fishing trip; and Samuel went along to help with the carries. And all
the way the talk was of the wonders of city life. Samuel learned that
his home was a God-forsaken place in winter--something which had never
been hinted at in any theological book which he had read. Manning
wondered that Adam didn't get out to some place where a man had a
chance. Then he threw away a half-smoked cigar and talked about the
theaters and the music halls; and after that he came back to the
inexhaustible topic of Wall Street.
He had had interesting news from the office that day; there was a big
deal about to be consummated--the Glass Bottle Trust was ready for
launching. For nearly a year old Harry Lockman--“You've heard of him, no
doubt--he built up the great glass works at Lockmanville?” said Manning.
No, Adam confessed that he had never heard of Lockman, that shrewd
and crafty old multi-millionaire who had gone on a still hunt for
glass-bottle factories, and now had the country in the grip of the
fourteen-million-dollar “Glass Bottle Securities Company.” No one knew
it, as yet; but soon the enterprise would be under full sail--“And won't
the old cormorant take in the shekels, though!” chuckled Manning.
“That might be a good sort of thing for a man to invest in,” said Adam
cautiously.
“Well, I just guess!” laughed the other. “If he's quick about it.”
“Do you suppose you could find out how to get some of that stock?” was
the next question.
“Sure,” said Manning--“that's what we're in business for.”
And then, as luck would have it, a city man bought the old Wyckman farm,
and the trustees of the estate came to visit Ephraim in solemn state
and paid down three crisp one-thousand-dollar bills and carried off the
canceled mortgage. And the old man sat a-tremble holding in his hands
the savings of his whole lifetime, and facing the eager onslaught of his
two eldest sons.
“But, Adam!” he protested. “It's gambling!”
“It's nothing of the kind,” cried the other. “It's no more gambling than
if I was to buy a horse because I knowed that horses would be scarce
next spring. It's just business.”
“But those factories make beer bottles and whisky bottles!” exclaimed
the old man. “Does it seem right to you to get our money that way?”
“They make all kinds of bottles,” said Adam; “how can they help what
they're used for?”
“And besides,” put in Dan, with a master-stroke of diplomacy, “it will
raise the prices on 'em, and make 'em harder to git.”
“There's been fortunes lost in Wall Street,” said the father. “How can
we tell?”
“We've got a chance to get in on the inside,” said Adam. “Such chances
don't happen twice in a lifetime.”
“Just read this here circular!” added Dan. “If we let a chance like this
go we'll deserve to break our backs hoeing corn the rest of our days.”
That was the argument. Old Ephraim had never thought of a broken back in
connection with the hoeing of corn. There were four acres in the field,
and every spring he had plowed and harrowed it and planted it and
replanted what the crows had pulled up; and all summer long he had
hoed and tended it, and in the fall he had cut it, stalk by stalk,
and stacked it; and then through October, sitting on the bare bleak
hillside, he had husked it, ear by ear, and gathered it in baskets--if
the season was good, perhaps a hundred dollars' worth of grain. That
was the way one worked to create a hundred dollars' worth of Value; and
Manning had paid as much for the fancy-mounted shotgun which stood in
the corner of his room! And here was the great fourteen-million-dollar
Glass Bottle Trust, with properties said to be worth twenty-five
million, and the control of one of the great industries of the
country--and stock which might easily go to a hundred and fifty in a
single week!
“Boys,” said the old man, sadly, “it won't be me that will spend this
money. And I don't want to stand in your way. If you're bent on doing
it--”
“We are!” cried Adam.
“What do you say, Samuel?” asked the father.
“I don't know what to say,” said Samuel. “It seems to me that three
thousand dollars is a lot of money. And I don't see why we need any
more.”
“Do you want to stand in the way?” demanded Adam.
“No, I don't want to stand in the way,” said Samuel.
And so the decision was made. When they came to give the order they
found themselves confronted with a strange proposition; they did not
have to buy the whole stock, it seemed--they might buy only the increase
in its value. And the effect of this marvelous device would be that they
would make ten times as much as they had expected to make! So, needless
to say, they bought that way.
And they took a daily paper and watched breathlessly, while “Glass
Bottle Securities” crept up from sixty-three and an eighth to sixty-four
and a quarter. And then, late one evening, old Hiram Johns, the
storekeeper, drove up with a telegram from Manning and Isaacson, telling
them that they must put up more “margin”--“Glass Bottle Securities” was
at fifty-six and five eighths. They sat up all night debating what this
could mean and trying to lay the specters of horror. The next day Adam
set out to go to the city and see about it; but he met the mail on the
way and came home again with a letter from the brokers, regretfully
informing them that it had been necessary to sell the stock, which
was now below fifty. In the news columns of the paper they found the
explanation of the calamity--old Henry Lockman had dropped dead of
apoplexy at the climax of his career, and the bears had played havoc
with “Glass Bottle Securities.”
Their three thousand dollars was gone. It took them three days to
realize it--it was so utterly beyond belief, that they had to write to
the brokers and receive another letter in which it was stated in black
and white and beyond all misunderstanding that there was not a dollar
of their money left. Adam raged and swore like a madman, and Dan vowed
savagely that he would go down to the city and kill Manning. As for the
father, he wrote a letter of agonized reproach, to which Mr. Manning
replied with patient courtesy, explaining that he had had nothing to
do with the matter; that he was a broker and had bought as ordered, and
that he had been powerless to foresee the death of Lockman. “You will
remember,” he said, “that I warned you of the uncertainties of the
market, and of the chances that you took.” Ephraim did not remember
anything of the sort, but he realized that there was nothing to be
gained by saying so.
Samuel did not care much about the loss of his share of the money; but
he did care about the grief of his father, which was terrible to see.
The blow really killed him; he looked ten years older after that week
and he failed all through the winter. And then late in the spring he
caught a cold, and took to his bed; and it turned to pneumonia, and
almost before anyone had had time to realize it, he was gone.
He went to join Samuel's mother. He had whispered this as he clutched
the boy's hand; and Samuel knew that it was true, and that therefore
there was no occasion for grief. So he was ashamed for the awful waves
of loneliness and terror which swept over him; and he gulped back
his feelings and forced himself to wear a cheerful demeanor--much too
cheerful for the taste of Adam and Dan, who were more concerned with
what their neighbors would think than they were with the subtleties of
Samuel's faith.
The boy had been doing a great deal of thinking that winter; and after
the funeral he called a council of the family.
“Brothers,” he said, “this farm is too small for three men. Dan wants
to marry already; and we can't live here always. It's just as Manning
said--”
“I don't want to hear what that skunk said!” growled Adam.
“Well, he was right that time. People stay on the land and they divide
it up and get poorer and poorer. So I've made up my mind to break away.
I'm going to the city and get a start.”
“What can you do in the city?” asked Dan.
“I don't know,” said Samuel. “I'll do my best. I don't expect to go to
Wall Street and make my fortune.”
“You needn't be smart!” growled Dan.
But the other was quite innocent of sarcasm. “What I mean is that I'll
have to work,” said he. “I'm young and strong, and I'm not afraid to
try. I'll find somebody to give me a chance; and then I'll work hard and
learn and I'll get promoted. I've read of boys that have done that.”
“It's not a bad idea,” commented Adam.
“Go ahead,” said Dan.
“The only thing is,” began Samuel, hesitatingly, “I shall have to have a
little money for a start.”
“Humph!” said Adam. “Money's a scarce thing here.”
“How much'll ye want?” asked the other.
“Well,” said the boy, “I want enough to feel safe. For if I go, I
promise you I shall stay till I succeed. I shan't play the baby.”
“How do you expect to raise it?” was the next question.
“I thought,” replied Samuel, “that we might make some kind of a
deal--let me sell out my share in the farm.”
“You can't sell your share,” said Adam, sharply. “You ain't of age.”
“Maybe I'm not,” was the answer; “but all the same you know me. And if I
was to make a bargain I'd keep it. You may be sure I'll never come back
and bother you.”
“Yes, I suppose not,” said Adam, doubtfully. “But you can't tell--”
“How much do you expect to git?” asked Dan warily.
“Well, I thought maybe I could get a hundred dollars,” said the other
and then he stopped, hesitating.
Adam and Dan exchanged a quick glance.
“Money's mighty scarce hereabouts,” said Adam.
“Still,” said Dan, “I don't know, I'll go to the village tomorrow and
see what I can do.”
So Dan drove away and came back in the evening and there was another
council; he produced eight new ten-dollar bills.
“It was the best I could do,” he said. “I'm sorry if it ain't
enough”--and then he stopped.
“I'll make that do,” said Samuel.
And so his brother produced a long and imposing-looking document; Samuel
was too polite to read it but signed at once, and so the bargain was
closed. And that night Samuel packed his few belongings in a neat
newspaper bundle and before sunrise the next morning he set out upon his
search.