MR. WALLINGFORD SHOWS MR. CLOVER HOW TO DO THE WIDOWS AND ORPHANS GOOD
Mrs. Bishop, a small, nervous-looking woman of forty-five, with her thin
hair drawn back so tightly from her narrow forehead that it gave one the
headache to look at her, was in her dismal "front room" with her
wrinkled red hands folded in her lap when Mr. Wallingford and Mr. Clover
called. It was only the day after the funeral, and she broke into tears
the moment they introduced themselves.
"Madam," declaimed Mr. Clover in his deepest and most sympathetic voice,
"it is the blessed privilege of the Noble Order of Friendly Hands to dry
the tears of the widows and orphans, and to shed the light of hope upon
their disconsolate pathway. It is our pleasure to bring you, as a
testimonial of your husband's affection and loving care, this check for
one thousand dollars."
Mrs. Bishop took the check and burst into uncontrollable sobs, whereat
Mr. Wallingford looked distinctly annoyed. If he could help it, he
never, by any possibility, looked upon other than the most cheerful
aspects of life.
Mr. Clover cleared his throat.
"But the broad paternal interest of the Noble Order of Friendly Hands
does not stop here," he went on, turning for a glance of earned approval
from J. Rufus Wallingford. "The family of every member of our Order
becomes at once a ward of ours, and they may look to us for assistance,
advice, and benefit in every way possible. We are a group of friends,
banded together for mutual aid in time of trouble and sorrow."
Mr. Wallingford judged this magnificent flight to be a quotation from
the ritual of the Noble Order of Friendly Hands, and he was correct;
but, as Mrs. Bishop had ventured to look up at them, he nodded his head
gravely.
"It is about that thousand dollars you hold in your hand, Mrs. Bishop,"
Clover continued, resuming his oratorical version of the lesson he had
carefully learned from Wallingford; "and we feel it our duty to remind
you that, unless it is wisely used, the plans of your thoughtful husband
for your safe future will not have been carried out. How had you thought
of investing this neat little sum?"
Mrs. Bishop gazed at the check through her tears and tried to comprehend
that it was real money, as it would have been but for the astuteness of
Mr. Wallingford. Mr. Clover had proposed to bring her ten new, crisp
one-hundred-dollar bills, but his monitor had pointed out that if she
ever got that money between her fingers and felt it crinkle she would
never let go of it. A check was so different.
"Well," she faltered, "my daughter Minnie wanted me to get us some
clothes and pay some down on a piano and lay in the winter coal and
provisions and put the rest in a bank for a rainy day. Minnie's my
youngest. She's just quit the High School because she wants to go to a
commercial college. But my oldest daughter, Hattie, wouldn't hear to it.
She says if Minnie'll only take a job in the store where she works they
can run the family, and for me to take this thousand dollars and finish
paying off the mortgage on the house with it. The mortgage costs six per
cent. a year."
"Your daughter Hattie is a very sensible young lady," said Mr.
Wallingford with great gravity. "It would be folly to expend this
thousand dollars upon personal luxuries; but equally wrong to lose its
earning power."
It was the voice of Wall Street, of the Government Mint, of the very
soul and spirit of all financial wisdom, that spoke here, and Mrs.
Bishop felt it with a thrill.
"Madam," orated Mr. Clover, "the Noble Order of Friendly Hands has
provided a way for the safe and profitable investment of the funds left
to the widows and orphans under its protection. It has set aside a
certain amount of high-dividend-bearing stock in the Order itself, or
rather in its operating department, of which, by the way, I am the
president, and of which the eminent capitalist and philanthropist, Mr.
J. Rufus Wallingford, is a leading spirit." His sweeping gesture toward
that benevolent multi-millionaire, and Mr. Wallingford's bow in return,
were sights worth beholding. "The benevolent gentlemen who organized
this generous association have just made possible this further
beneficence to its dependents. The stock should pay you not less than
twelve per cent. a year, and your original capital can be withdrawn at
any time. With this income you can pay the interest on your mortgage,
and have a tidy little sum left at the end of each quarter. Think of it,
madam! Money every three months, and your thousand dollars always
there!"
Mrs. Bishop glanced at him in slow comprehension. The figures that he
gave her did not, as yet, mean so much, but the sight of Mr. Wallingford
did. He was so big, so solid looking, so much like substantial
prosperity itself. A huge diamond glowed from his finger. It must be
worth several hundred dollars. Another one gleamed from his scarf. His
clothing was of the latest cut and the finest material. Even his socks,
in the narrow rim which showed above his low-cut shoes, were silk; she
could see that clear across the room.
The door opened, and a girl of seventeen or eighteen came in. That she
was unusually pretty was attested by the suddenly widening eyes of Mr.
Wallingford.
"And is this your daughter Minnie?" asked the benevolent gentleman, all
his protecting and fostering instincts aroused.
Mrs. Bishop, in a flutter, presented her younger daughter to the
fortune-bringing gentlemen, and Minnie fluttered a bit on her own
account. She knew she was pretty; she read in the eyes of the
wealthy-looking, perfectly groomed Mr. Wallingford that she was pretty;
she saw in the smile of Mr. Clover that she was pretty, and her vanity
was pleased inordinately.
A sudden brilliant idea came to Mr. Wallingford.
"I have the solution to your problem, Mrs. Bishop," he said. "We shall
need more help in our offices, and your daughter shall have the place.
She can soon earn more money than she ever could in a store, and can
secure as good a training as she could in a business college. How would
you like that, Miss Bishop?"
"I think it would be fine," replied the young lady, with a large-eyed
glance toward Mr. Wallingford.
The glance was more of habit than intent. Minnie's mirror and what she
had heard from her boy friends had given her an impulse toward coquetry.
It was pleasant to feel her power, to see what instantaneous impression
she could make upon grown men. Such a friendly party it was! Everybody
was pleased, and in the end Mr. Wallingford and Mr. Clover walked away
from the house with Mrs. Bishop's check and her receipt and her policy
in their pockets.
Mr. Clover was lost in profound admiration.
"It worked, all right!" he said exultantly to Mr. Neil, as soon as they
returned to the dingy little office. "Here's the thousand dollars," and
he threw down the check. "Good Lord! I couldn't believe but that
thousand was gone; and then if another man died he would put us on the
toboggan."
Mr. Neil was a thin young man whose forehead wore the perpetual frown of
slow thought. Also his cuffs were ragged. He was the Supreme Exalted
Secretary.
"Now may I have fifty?" he inquired in an aside to Clover. "My board
bill, you know."
"Certainly not!" declared the Supreme Exalted Ruler with loud rectitude.
"This thousand dollars belongs in the insurance reserve fund."
"Tut, tut," interposed Wallingford. "Your alarm clock is out of order.
You just now paid a death claim with that money, and the reserve fund is
out that much. A private individual, however, just now bought a thousand
dollars' worth of stock in the reorganized Friendly Hands Trust Company,
and you have the pay in advance. Let Mr. Neil have his fifty dollars,
and give me a check for my two hundred and fifty; then we'll go out to
hunt a decent suite of offices and buy the furniture for it."
"There wouldn't be much of the thousand left after that," objected Mr.
Clover, frowning.
"Why not? You don't suppose we are going to pay cash for anything, do
you?" returned Wallingford in surprise. "My credit's good, if yours
isn't."
His credit! He had not been in town four hours! As Mr. Clover looked him
over again, however, he saw where he was wrong. Mr. Wallingford's mere
appearance was as good as a bond. He would not ask for credit; he would
take it. Mr. Clover, in a quick analysis of this thought, decided that
this rich man's resources were so vast that they shone through his very
bearing. Mr. Wallingford, at that same moment, after having paid his
enormous hotel bill in New York and the expenses of his luxurious trip,
had only ten dollars in the world.
"Now then," suggested Mr. Clover as he passed the hypnotically won check
to his new partner, "we might as well conclude our personal business.
I'll make you over half my stock in the company, and take your two
thousand."
"All right," agreed Wallingford very cheerfully, and they both sat down
to write.
Mr. Clover transferred to Mr. Wallingford forty-three shares of stock in
the Friendly Hands Trust Company, Incorporated, and received a
rectangular slip of paper in return. His face reddened as he examined
it.
"Why, this isn't a check!" he said sharply. "It's a note for ninety
days!"
"Sure!" said J. Rufus Wallingford. "In our talk there wasn't a word said
about cash."
"But cash is what I want, and nothing but cash!" exploded the other,
smacking his hairy fist upon his desk.
"How foolish!" chided J. Rufus smilingly. "I see I'll have to teach you
a lot about business. Draw up your chairs and get my plan in detail. If,
after that, Clover, you do not want my note, you may give it back and go
broke in your own way. Here's what we will do. We will organize a new
operating company for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, in
twenty-five-dollar shares. We will buy over the old ten-thousand-dollar
company for one hundred and fifty thousand in stock of the new company.
Dividing this pro rata, you and I, Clover, will each have nearly
twenty-six hundred shares. Mr. Neil, in place of his present ten shares,
will have six hundred, and we shall have left four thousand shares of
treasury stock. These we will sell among your members. We will reduce
your present insurance rate one fourth, and use the hundred thousand
dollars we take in on stock sales to get new members to whom to sell
more stock. In the meantime, we'll see money every day. You and I,
Clover, will each draw a hundred a week, and I think Mr. Neil will be
pretty well satisfied if he drags down fifty."
The pleased expression upon Mr. Neil's face struggled with the deepening
creases on his brow. Fifteen dollars a week was the most he had ever
earned in his life, but he was so full of fraternal insurance figures
that his skin prickled.
"But how about the insurance end of it?" he interposed. "How will we
ever keep up at that ridiculously low rate? That might do for a while,
but as our membership becomes older the death rate will increase on us
and we can't pay it. Why, the mortality tables--" and he reached for the
inevitable facts and figures.
"Who's talking about insurance?" demanded Wallingford. "I'm talking
about how to get money. Put up the little red dope-book. Clover, you get
busy right away and write a lot of circus literature about the grand
work your members will be doing for the widows and orphans by buying
this stock; also how much dividend it will pay them. When the treasury
stock is sold, and we have a big enough organization to absorb it, we
will begin to unload our own shares and get out. If you clean up your
sixty-four thousand dollars in this year, I guess you will be willing
to let the stockholders elect new officers and conduct their own
Friendly Hands Trust Company any way they please, won't you?"
Mr. Clover quietly folded Mr. Wallingford's note and put it in his
pocket.
"Let's go out and rent some new offices," he said.
He came back, at Mr. Neil's call, to write out that fifty-dollar check,
and incidentally made out one for himself in a like amount.
"What do you think of him, anyhow?" asked Neil with a troubled
countenance.
"Think of him?" repeated Clover with enthusiasm. "He's the greatest
ever! If I had known him five years ago I'd be worth a million to-day!"
"But is this scheme on the level?" asked Neil.
"That's the beauty of it," said Clover, exulting like a schoolboy. "The
law can't touch us any place."
"Maybe not," admitted Neil; "but somehow I don't quite like it."
"I guess you'll like your fifty a week when it begins to come in, and
your fifteen thousand when we clean up," retorted Clover.
"You bet!" said Neil, but he began to do some bewildered figuring on his
own account. His head was in a whirl.