TO
HIRAM CLAPP, ESQ.,
_This Book_
IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
BY HIS FRIEND
WILLIAM T. ADAMS.
[Illustration: DRIFTING TO SEA.]
THREE MILLIONS!
OR
THE WAY OF THE WORLD
BY
WILLIAM T. ADAMS
(_OLIVER OPTIC_)
AUTHOR OF “LIVING TOO FAST,” “IN DOORS AND OUT,” “TAKEN BY THE ENEMY,”
“WITHIN THE ENEMY’S LINES,” “ON THE BLOCKADE,” ETC.
_ILLUSTRATED_
BOSTON MDCCCXCI
LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS
10 MILK STREET NEXT “THE OLD SOUTH MEETING HOUSE”
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by
WILLIAM T. ADAMS,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
Copyright, 1894, by WILLIAM T. ADAMS
THE WAY OF THE WORLD
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THREE MILLIONS. 7
II. MR. ELIOT BUCKSTONE. 21
III. THE HUNGERFORD FAMILY. 33
IV. OFF THE GREAT BELL. 45
V. THE KINGMAN FAMILY. 58
VI. A STRANGE STORY. 71
VII. POOR MARY! 83
VIII. TO EUROPE AND BACK. 96
IX. HEALING THE WOUNDS. 109
X. ROSS KINGMAN. 122
XI. DOCTOR BILKS. 135
XII. DICK BIRCH. 144
XIII. DICK UNDER A SHADOW. 161
XIV. IN THE LIBRARY. 174
XV. DR. BILKS ON THE STAND. 188
XVI. DR. BILKS’S BABY. 203
XVII. THE SETTLEMENT. 217
XVIII. EVIDENCE WANTED. 231
XIX. THE ROPE AND THE WEIGHT. 244
XX. THE SHADOW AT PINE HILL. 256
XXI. THE DEMIGOD OF PINE HILL. 269
XXII. DICK BIRCH’S SUGGESTION. 282
XXIII. JULIA HUNGERFORD. 296
XXIV. POPPLETON GOSPEL. 309
XXV. DOCTOR LYNCH. 321
XXVI. THE PENITENT DEMIGOD. 335
XXVII. THE VERDICT. 349
XXVIII. THE DOCTOR HIMSELF AGAIN. 362
XXIX. FORGIVE AND FORGET. 374
XXX. THE RUSTIC BRIDGE. 387
XXXI. A HOMŒOPATHIC DOSE. 400
XXXII. CRIMINAL CARELESSNESS. 412
XXXIII. DICK BIRCH AND LADY. 425
XXXIV. THIRTY YEARS OLD. 438
XXXV. THE LAST OF THE THREE MILLIONS. 450
THE
WAY OF THE WORLD.
CHAPTER I.
THREE MILLIONS.
Three million dollars! In round numbers, three million dollars, after
the legacies to individuals and the bequests to charitable institutions
had been paid!
Three million dollars! Suggestive of mighty air-castles, of untold
grandeur, of matchless liberality to the poor and needy! Suggestive,
also, of long and weary years of patient seeking after worldly wealth,
of painful struggles with adverse circumstances, and of parsimonious
self-denial extending even to the very necessities of life.
There had been three great epochs in the life of John Hungerford, the
Baltimore _millionnaire_, at each of which he had annexed a zero to
the number indicating his worldly wealth; and it must also be said
that he was continually adding zeros to the sum total of his moral and
spiritual possessions. When he commenced his business career, he had
three thousand dollars. Operating with care and prudence, it required
twenty years to annex the first zero, and he was forty-one when the
first financial cycle was completed. Another twenty years of care
and toil annexed the second zero, and John Hungerford was more than
threescore. Then fortune, always constant, became lavish, and the very
skies seemed to rain down wealth. His real estate doubled, tripled,
and quadrupled, and ten years placed the third and last zero against
the accumulations of his lifetime. Then, having passed his threescore
years and ten, he retired from active business with fear and trembling
for the stupendous fortune he had made. Only three years more of life
were vouchsafed to him; but one with his simple habits could not spend
a tithe of his income, and another half million was added, almost in
spite of himself.
Wherefore had John Hungerford struggled so patiently with the tide of
fortune? Wherefore had he neglected his body and his soul for fifty
long years? Wherefore had he lived in a mean house, upon the coarsest
fare, with never a horse, and hardly a servant to ease his toilsome but
successful march up to the pinnacle of his worldly ambition? He had not
a child to inherit his hard-earned gains. He had no friends but those
who had been constant to him in business relations, and they never
crossed the threshold of his homely dwelling. Nothing but the love of
wealth could have sustained him in his fierce struggles for the mammon
of the world.
Yet John Hungerford was not a bad man. He had cheated no one; had never
wronged the widow and the fatherless. He had no friends, because he
wanted none; his blood relations had long ago ceased to darken his
doors, feeling that they were not welcome guests. They were few in
number, including only the son and daughter of his only brother, for
the Baltimore _millionnaire_ could boast of no long line of ancestors,
and the family tree, so far as his knowledge extended, had its root in
the preceding generation.
John Hungerford, senior, had never known a father or a mother. He was,
at his earliest recollection, an inmate of an English workhouse, and
he had at a tender age been bound out to a farmer. From this humble
beginning he had bettered his condition until he was able to save a few
pounds, when he married. Prosperity smiled upon him in a small way,
and about the year 1790 he had emigrated to America, bringing with him
his wife and his four children, the oldest of whom, John, junior, was
nineteen years of age, while the youngest, James, was twelve.
The whole family went to work in good earnest, and for a year were
prosperous and happy; but the angel of death swept through the
contented household during the following year. A malignant fever
carried off first the mother, then the two daughters, and finally the
father, leaving only John and James to mourn the wreck which death had
made in their home. The old man, who had learned industry and thrift in
an English workhouse, left six thousand dollars.
John was now twenty-one years of age, and, besides receiving the
portion that fell to him, he was appointed the guardian of his younger
brother. Then he commenced the career of which we have given the result
at the beginning of this chapter. James worked in a store till he was
of age; and then, with his three thousand dollars, which John promptly
paid to him, with interest, he went farther north, where he invested
his little capital in a cotton-mill, and obtained the situation of
overseer in the factory.
James Hungerford had none of the genius for money getting which
distinguished his brother. He was content with his position in the
cotton-mill, and hardly doubled his capital in twenty years. At the age
of thirty-four he married a lady of twenty; but it was ten years later
when his first child, Eugene, was born, who was followed, four years
after, by a daughter, Julia.
When the patient, plodding father died at the age of fifty-four, he
left only the small cottage in which he lived, and the three thousand
dollars in mill stock, which had paid him dividends for over thirty
years. Mrs. Hungerford was a prudent and skilful woman, and she
contrived to live very comfortably with her little family on the income
of the stock, still occupying the small cottage which her husband had
left. At this time John Hungerford had added the second zero to the
number which indicated his wealth. For many years there had been no
regular communication between the families of John and James. Mrs.
Hungerford had written to her brother-in-law, whom she had never seen,
the particulars of the death of her husband. A prompt reply had been
returned, in which the man of money deplored the loss of the husband
and father, and even intimated that, if any assistance were required,
it would be rendered. The widow was too high-spirited and self-reliant
to make any demands upon the wealthy brother, and she replied that
her family was in comfortable circumstances, and had no occasion to
trespass upon his liberality.
In the mean time John himself, at the age of fifty-three, had married
a widow who was the mother of a boy four years of age. Mrs. Lynch, who
became Mrs. Hungerford by this arrangement, was an ambitious woman,
who knew something of the extent of her husband’s possessions; but she
found that John had an iron will. He would not even move from the mean
dwelling he occupied to one better adapted to a man of his wealth. Few
and slight were the changes adopted in the household; indeed, they were
little more than the substitution of a wife for a housekeeper. The
widow was disappointed and indignant; but John was growing old, and
she temporized with the present that the future might yield a golden
harvest.
The man of wealth, as before hinted, was not a bad nor a hard-hearted
man, and though Tom Lynch, his wife’s son, was not the most promising
youth in the world, John Hungerford derived a solid pleasure from his
company, and favors which the mother could not obtain were readily won
by the son. Mrs. Hungerford was delighted with these indications, and
hoped and expected that her boy would be the fortunate heir of the rich
man. She kept the peace, and submitted to her disappointments in the
most exemplary manner, believing that the day of her triumph was not
far distant.
Tom Lynch, in due time, was sent to a Pennsylvania college by his
indulgent step-father, who had thus far obstinately refused to die,
as his loving wife wished; and when John Hungerford had closed up
his warehouses, and nominally retired from business, Tom had been
graduated, and was studying a profession in Philadelphia.
When his wife’s son had completed his collegiate course, a bright
thought entered the brain of the _millionnaire_. As sending Tom to
college had not ruined him, it occurred to him that he might make
another venture of the same kind. Having more time on his hands than
ever before, having, in fact, so closed up his business that he had
little to do but collect and invest his income, he had bestowed a
thought upon the family of his brother James. In six lines of a letter,
penned with difficulty, he had informed the widow Hungerford that he
was tolerably well, and wished to know something about her family. The
answer assured him that all were well and happy; that the children
were growing finely, and in due time would doubtless ripen into an
excellent young man and an excellent young woman. Eugene, she wrote,
had particularly distinguished himself as a scholar, and a minister of
Poppleton had intimated that the young man ought to be sent to college;
but, the widow added, her means were utterly insufficient to enable
her to carry out such a magnificent project, though her son would be
rejoiced to continue his studies. She declared that Eugene was a noble
boy, and submitted without a murmur to his disappointment. In a few
weeks he would go into a store.
Whether the statement was intended as a hint or not, the uncle promptly
sent her a draft for two thousand dollars, which he thought would take
the boy through college handsomely. The letter of thanks in which this
gift was acknowledged was so warm and earnest, that the old man’s heart
was kindled to finer issues than he had ever before known. He wrote
again, insisting that Mrs. Hungerford and her two children should visit
him in Baltimore without delay. He was too old and feeble to go to
them, and they must come to him. Of course the widow could raise no
objections to a project so reasonable, and she immediately announced
her intention to accept the invitation. Though she was an independent
and high-minded woman, who would not thrust herself or her children
upon the notice of her wealthy brother-in-law, very likely she felt
that it would be trifling with Providence to neglect this opportunity
to improve the relations subsisting between them and the childless
_millionnaire_.
John Hungerford told his wife what he had done, and announced the visit
of his relatives. She turned pale, and trembled for the future of her
son. She would have rebelled, if policy had not suggested a milder
course, and she only declared that the house was in no condition to
receive guests. The only practical result of the lady’s protest was, a
few hundred dollars were spent in “tidying” up the establishment.
Mrs. Hungerford and her children came. They were kindly welcomed by the
old man, and prudentially welcomed by the old man’s wife. It is true
the visitors were astonished to find that the man of millions dwelt in
a mean, poorly furnished house, without the slightest pretension to
luxury or style; but they made no comments. Uncle John was kind and
attentive to them; and this was all they could expect of him. Eugene
was a fine, manly youth of seventeen, gentle and winning in all his
ways; and the fond mother could hardly conceal her satisfaction, when,
at the expiration of a week, she realized that her boy was a decided
favorite of the old man. The boy was too artless to be mercenary; so he
resorted to no tricks to win the regards of his uncle.
John Hungerford was too keenly schooled in human nature to be deceived
by a false show of attention. He read his nephew’s noble nature; he
understood it perfectly; and day by day the old man’s wife became more
troubled and anxious about the prospects of her son. The visit was
terminated only when Eugene was obliged to return home to attend the
examination for admission to Harvard College. The uncle expressed his
desire that the visit should be repeated, and Mrs. Hungerford readily
promised to come again.
Tom Lynch went home to spend his vacation a few months after the
departure of the widow and her family. His mother imparted to him the
appalling intelligence that he was in danger of being supplanted in
the regards of her husband; but the young man was confident, and by
every art and device which his ingenuity could suggest, he labored to
make himself useful and agreeable to his step-father. His mother still
dreaded the impending evil. John Hungerford, so far as she knew, had
made no will. As the case now stood, the children of James Hungerford
were his sole heirs. Nothing but a wife’s portion could come to her,
and her son would be utterly excluded from the division. She did not
dare to suggest the propriety of his making a will; but she commenced
upon a series of hints, and a course of expedients, which were intended
to effect her purpose. Thus months and years wore away, and Eugene
Hungerford was graduated at Harvard; but the visit to Baltimore was not
repeated.
Long and not very patiently had Mrs. Hungerford been waiting for the
old man to die. He was aged and feeble, and he would be better off in
heaven than upon the earth. It would be better for him to die, even
though she obtained no more than her legal share of his estates. More
must be obtained if possible, and while she was hinting and studying up
expedients, which the superannuated _millionnaire_ persistently refused
to notice, she died herself: a violent attack of disease carried her
off even before her son could arrive to close her eyes in death.
John Hungerford was alone in the world again. Perhaps his experience
of wedded life had not been wholly satisfactory; at any rate, he
bore his bereavement with much calmness and resignation, and meekly
submitted to the necessity of supplying the place of the departed
one by employing a housekeeper. If this sudden death in his little
family had no other influence upon him, it forcibly reminded him of
the uncertainty of life. For two whole years he labored upon his will,
elaborating whole pages of details, freely consulting his business
friends, before he instructed the lawyer to embody his intentions in
legal forms. Strange as it may seem, he did not send for his brother’s
family, as he had intimated he should, at least once a year. Mrs.
Hungerford wrote to him occasionally, and with business-like promptness
he answered her letters; but no invitation came for the family to
repeat the visit. After the death of his wife, his sister-in-law had
even proposed to move to Baltimore, and take care of him in his age and
feebleness; but the old man, evading a direct reply, continued to study
upon the details of his will, which document certainly promised to be
the crowning work of his life. He wrote that he was so much occupied,
the visit must be deferred; and he continued to postpone it, until one
morning his housekeeper found him dead in his bed.
Three staid, dignified, elderly merchants had been John Hungerford’s
most intimate friends--friends only in the worldly and business sense.
They had been his advisers, and during those two years of patient toil
over his will--the master-work of his career--they had been occasional
visitors in the little back parlor where the _millionnaire_ now spent
most of his time. They had furnished him with all his information of
the outer world, and assisted him, so far as they could, in performing
the task on which all his remaining energies were concentrated. For
two weeks the best lawyer in the city had been closeted with John
Hungerford during a portion of each day; and the great deed which
finally disposed of the old man’s immense property was completed only a
few days before his death. Perhaps he felt that he had nothing more to
live for; and permitting his energies to relax, this suspension of his
wonted activity had hastened his death.
The housekeeper sent for John’s trio of business friends as soon as
she discovered that the vital spark had fled. One after the other they
came, and when all had arrived, a solemn and dignified conference was
held. There were no friends to be sent for but the Hungerfords of
Poppleton, and Tom Lynch, who was attempting to establish himself as a
physician in an interior town of Ohio, though reports came to Baltimore
that he was too unsteady to achieve a success. Telegraph messages were
immediately sent to Mrs. Hungerford and Tom Lynch. The former, with her
family, arrived in season to attend the funeral, but the despatch did
not promptly reach the young physician, and he did not appear.
John Hungerford went to his grave in greater state than he had ever
moved in the flesh, for the three eminent merchants who managed the
affair had a high regard for the proprieties of the solemn occasion.
A long procession of carriages, occupied by men and women who were
willing to join the brilliant funeral _cortége_ for the gloomy
excitement of the scene, though they had no interest in, and only a few
had any acquaintance with, the deceased, followed the plumed hearse
to the cemetery, and the tomb closed upon all that was mortal of the
Baltimore _millionnaire_.
After the old man’s dust had been solemnly disposed of, there was
an intense curiosity to ascertain what disposition he had made of
his princely fortune. This was really the most interesting question
connected with the life or death of the departed. Few, if any, asked
what he was; all, what he had. Hardly one wanted to know what pleasant
memories he had left behind him; all, the sum total of his worldly
possessions. None but fanatics asked where the old man had gone; but
every one, where his fortune was to go.
What John Hungerford had been doing in the little back parlor for the
last two years was to be made manifest. It had cost the old man fifty
years of severe struggles to get his three and a half millions; it had
cost him two years of diligent thought, and what struggles none could
know,--it had cost him two years of hard labor, more trying, perhaps,
in his age and feebleness, than the half century of toil in the vigor
of his healthy life,--to give it away. The will was read. There were
present at the reading only the three eminent merchants, the Hungerford
family from Poppleton, and the housekeeper.
Mrs. Hungerford was quiet and self-possessed. The neglect to send for
her, as had been arranged with her brother-in-law, to pay the proposed
annual visits, had prepared her to expect nothing more than a simple
remembrance. Her son, Eugene, was calm and dignified, but there was
something in the expression of his manly face which indicated his
dislike of the proceedings. Like his mother, he was independent and
self-reliant; and, very likely, he felt that the position of the family
before the lawyer and the merchants was an exceedingly unpleasant one.
They were to be regarded as expectants, if not supplicants, before
the still closed coffers of the dead man; but Eugene repudiated the
position. He asked nothing, expected nothing. He was deeply grateful
to his uncle for the means of obtaining his education, and he was
prepared to be entirely satisfied if this proved to be the total of his
indebtedness to the deceased.
Julia Hungerford was nineteen, and she was so fair to look upon that
even the dignified merchants stole frequent glances at her, as she
sat annoyed and embarrassed, like her brother and her mother, by the
awkwardness of the situation.
The lawyer read, and two mortal hours were consumed in the reading; and
more of John Hungerford’s life and thought was revealed than the world
had ever known before. No one had ever suspected the _millionnaire_ of
any family ambition, or of any special affection for the name he bore;
but this posthumous document convinced the listeners that the old man
regarded the word “Hungerford” as the apple of his eye. The two years
of hard reflection had been employed in devising schemes to prevent the
name of Hungerford from being forgotten. He had labored to honor it
and to perpetuate it.
The great disappointment of John Hungerford’s life, as the truth was
educed from the will, was, that no son had blessed his lot--no son
to be called John Hungerford, to live like a prince, and to keep the
name alive. The testator, however, was not to be wholly balked. He was
strenuous for the whole name of John Hungerford; and in spite of his
disappointment, he determined to have a representative in the future
who should be known and called as he had been known and called. It
appeared that he had intended at one time to make Tom Lynch change his
name, and become the fortunate owner of the appellation; but the young
man had shown a disposition to follow after strange gods, and was not
therefore a suitable person to support the honor and dignity of the
Hungerford name, and the plan was discarded for the one which was now
shadowed forth in the will. But even this might fail, and the old man,
in this event, had finally resolved to satisfy himself by rendering
immortal and glorious the single name of Hungerford, though his hopes
and expectations still coupled it with the dearly beloved John.
To the end that his intentions might be clearly understood, the
deceased had compelled the unwilling lawyer to preface the will with
the matter from which the information we have given is derived; and it
was estimated that the word “Whereas” occurred two hundred and some odd
number of times in the folios devoted to this preliminary statement.
But this story, in spite of the legal verbiage with which it was
encumbered, proved to be of the deepest interest to all present, even
including the eminent merchants, whose ideas were generally expressed
by figures.
The reader turned the folios for an hour before he came to the pith and
cream of the document, the masterpiece of John Hungerford’s labors.
“Imprimis” gave to John Lester, Edward Baker, and Loring Greene, the
eminent merchants, each the sum of fifty thousand dollars. These
gentlemen were John’s best friends, and he made them his executors
and trustees for the disposal of his property as “hereinafter
mentioned.” To the widow of his late brother James he gave twenty
thousand dollars. To Julia Hungerford and Thomas Lynch he gave a
like sum. Then were mentioned twenty-eight literary, scientific, and
charitable associations, to each of which the testator gave the sum of
ten thousand dollars. John Hungerford must have been terribly puzzled
to find all these names, and without the assistance of the eminent
merchants he would certainly have neglected many of them. He was
impartial in his bequests, for without regard to the objects or the
magnitude of the enterprises to which he contributed, he gave to each
the same sum.
These bequests, with an allowance of ten thousand dollars for present
expenses of probate--there were no stamps then--used up only the
half million, which was but a kind of flourish on the end of John
Hungerford’s fortune, and which had accumulated since he retired from
active pursuits. The grand army of zeros, marshalled by its significant
three, was yet in the field, and the three eminent merchants actually
gasped with anxiety to hear the name of the residuary legatee. And now
came John Hungerford’s dying crotchet; now came the notable scheme by
which John Hungerford, dead and in his grave, was to be represented in
the coming generation by a John Hungerford, alive and glorious in the
possession of a princely fortune; or, failing the “John,” by which the
name of Hungerford, simply, was to be honorably sent down to remote
ages.
The whole three millions was to be placed in the hands of the eminent
merchants, as trustees, who for their valuable services were to receive
a fixed sum per annum, the whole income of which, after deducting the
expenses, was to be paid to his “beloved nephew,” Eugene Hungerford.
Eugene did not faint when he heard that he was to be the recipient
of one hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year, but his mother
absolutely gasped for breath.
The lawyer proceeded. The eminent trustees were to retain possession of
the three millions, all safely and profitably invested at the present
time, until the before-mentioned beloved nephew, Eugene Hungerford, had
attained the age of thirty years; at which time, if the said Eugene was
legally married, and was the legal father of a legal son, then the said
eminent trustees should pay over to the said beloved nephew, Eugene
Hungerford, the said legal father of the said legal son, absolutely
and irrevocably the said three millions, now invested as aforesaid:
_provided_ that the name of John Hungerford shall be unchangeably given
by the said legal father to the said legal son.
Eugene twisted uneasily in his chair. Mrs. Hungerford looked very
complacent, as though the conditions of the will, in her estimation,
were not very difficult to be complied with. Julia wanted to laugh, but
the eminent merchants, who continued to glance at her occasionally,
were too solemn and dignified to permit her to indulge in any levity.
The reading was not finished. If the said beloved nephew was not
married when he attained the said age of thirty; or, if married, and
being the legal father of a legal daughter or daughters only, and not
being the said legal father of a said legal son; or if the said son was
called by any other than the said name of “John Hungerford,”--then the
three millions was to be shattered and divided into six equal parts of
half a million each; one part to be paid to the said beloved nephew,
Eugene Hungerford; one part to the before-mentioned beloved niece,
Julia Hungerford; one part to the son of his late wife, Thomas Lynch;
one part to the Hungerford Orphan Asylum; one part to the Hungerford
Institute for Aged Women; and one part to the Hungerford Home for Aged
Men.
Every provision of the will was carefully set forth, and nicely
protected from any possible misconstruction. John made things strong.
It was duly signed and sealed, and was witnessed by the twelve
proprietors of the twelve nearest stores; for though the testator knew
that three witnesses were enough, he insisted upon having an army of
them, at least one half of whom should not be over thirty years of age;
so that if any trouble came, some of them could be found, and not all
of them would have died of old age.
The reading of the will was completed. The eminent merchants and the
sharp lawyer congratulated Eugene, his mother, and especially his
sister. They were astonishingly polite to the whole family. Eugene
tried to be good natured, but, with his peculiar temperament, he found
it even more difficult than if he had been cut off with a shilling. As
Eugene is the hero of the story, we will not attempt to use him up in
the first chapter, or even to indicate his views of the magnificent
position to which he had suddenly been elevated.
Tom Lynch had not yet been heard from, and Eugene, after listening to
all the trustees had to say, started for Poppleton with his mother and
sister.