J. RUFUS PREFERS FARMING IN AMERICA TO PROMOTING IN EUROPE
The Battlesburg _Blade_ was full of the big consolidation for a week
following the providential visit of Mr. Lott. The Lewisville,
Battlesburg and Elliston traction line was not merely an assured
fact--it had always been that since the coming of Colonel
Wallingford--but it was now even a bigger and better thing than ever,
the key to a vast network of trolleys which, with this connecting link,
would have its ramifications across more than the fourth part of a
continent. The only drawback to all this good was that they were to lose
as a permanent resident their esteemed fellow citizen, Colonel J. Rufus
Wallingford--since he had sold his right of way, franchises, concessions
and good will--and every issue of the _Blade_, from news columns to
editorials, was a tribute to all that this noble, high-spirited
gentleman had done for Battlesburg.
A score of impulsive women kissed Mrs. Wallingford good-by at the
train, while the Honorable G. W. Battles strove against Billy Ricks and
Judge Lampton and Clint Richards for the honor of the last handshake
with her husband; and after Mrs. Wallingford had fluttered her
handkerchief from the car window for the last time, she pressed it to
her eyes.
"I'm going to keep my house there always," she said, when she had
calmed, "and whenever we're tired of living at other places I want to
come here--home! Why, just think, Jim, it's the only town you ever did
business in that you can come back to!"
He agreed with her in this, but, by and by, she found his shoulders
heaving with his usual elephantine mirth.
"What is it?" she asked him.
"The joke's on me," he laughed. "The biggest stunt I ever pulled off,
and even the baa-baas satisfied. Why, Fanny," and the surprise in his
face was almost ludicrous, "it turned out to be a legitimate deal, after
all!"
That was the keynote of a startling new thought which came to him: that
there might actually be more money in legitimate deals than in the
dubious ones in which he had always engaged; and that thought he took to
Europe with him. It dwelt with him in the fogs of London and the
sunshine of Paris, at the roulette tables of Monte Carlo and on the
canals of Venice. It was an ambition-rousing idea, and with perfect
confidence in his own powers he saw himself rising to a commanding
position in American financial affairs. Why, he already owned a round
half million of dollars, and the mere momentum of this huge amount
caused quite an alteration, not only in his mode of thought, but of
life. Heretofore he had looked upon such gain as he wrested from his
shady transactions as a mere medium of quick exchange, which was to be
turned into pleasure and lavish display as rapidly as possible. When he
secured money his only impulse had been to spend all of it and then get
more; but a half million! It was a sum large enough to represent earning
capacity, and his always creative mind was busy with the thought of how
he might utilize its power. After all, it was only another new and
expensive pleasure that he desired, the pleasure of swaying big affairs,
of enrolling himself upon the roster of the pseudo-great, and to that
end, during his entire European trip he devoured American newspapers
wherever he could find them, seeking for means by which he could
increase his fortune to one of truly commanding proportions. In the
meantime he was as lavish as ever, scattering money with a prodigal
hand; but now it was with a different motive. He used it freely to
secure the best to be found in the way of luxury, but no longer spent it
merely to get rid of it.
Mrs. Wallingford, content, viewed Europe with appreciative eyes, and no
empress swathed in silk and diadem-crowned ever took more graciously to
the pomp with which their royal progress was attended wherever they
went. Wallingford's interest in foreign lands, however, had suddenly
become a business one. Restless as ever, he moved from place to place
with rapid speed, and covered in two months the ground that ordinary
tourists above the financial standing of "trippers" would think they had
slighted in six. Europe, as a matter of fact, did not please him at all.
Its laws were too strict, and he found in nearly every country he
visited, that a man, unless he happened to be an innkeeper, was expected
to actually deliver value received for every coin that came into his
possession! This was so vastly different from the financial and
commercial system to which he had been used that he became eager to get
back home, and finally, having been visited over night with the
inspiration for a brilliant new enterprise, he cabled his bankers to
throw open a portion of his account to Blackie Daw, and to the latter
gentleman cabled instructions to buy him a good farm in the middle of
the wheat belt and fit it for his residence regardless of cost. Then he
started back for the land where the money grows.
The task he had set Blackie Daw was very much to that gentleman's
liking. There had arisen a sudden crisis in his "business affairs," that
very morning, which demanded his immediate absence, not only from his
office, but from any other spot in which the authorities might be able
to find him, and, relieved of his dilemma in the nick of time by
Wallingford's money, he immediately put an enormous number of miles
between himself and New York. A week he spent in search, and when he
found the location which suited him, he set about his task of
constructing a Wallingford estate in great glee. He built a big new
barn, the finest in the county; he put a new front to the house, bigger
than the house itself had been; he brought on load after load of fine
furniture; he stocked the big cellar with beer and wines and liquors of
all kinds; he piped natural gas from twelve miles away and installed a
gas furnace in the cellar and a gas engine in a workshop near the barn;
he had electricians wire the place from cellar to attic, including the
barn and the front porch and the trees in the front yard, and had a
dynamo put in to be run by the gas engine and to illuminate the entire
estate; he installed both line and house telephone systems, with
extension phones wherever they would be handy, and, his work finished,
surveyed it with much satisfaction. With the mail carrier stopping every
day, with the traction line running right past the door, and with plenty
of money, he decided that J. Rufus would be able to get along, through
the winter, at least.
It was in the early part of September when J. Rufus, clad according to
his notions of what a gentleman farmer should look like--a rich brown
velvet corduroy suit with the trousers neatly tucked into an
eighteen-dollar pair of seal leather boots; a twenty-dollar
broad-brimmed felt hat upon his head; a brown silk neglige shirt and a
scarf of a little deeper shade in the "V" of his broad vest; an immense
diamond gleaming from the scarf--arrived at the Wallingford estate in a
splendid equipage drawn by a pair of sleek bays.
Marching in time to the ringing "Soldiers' Chorus" from _Faust_, Blackie
Daw came down the walk from the wide Colonial porch, carrying in his
arms the huge phonograph from which the music proceeded, and greeted
the laughing new master and mistress of the house with extravagant
ceremony, while three country girls, a red-cheeked one, a thin one, and
a mortally ugly one, stood giggling upon the porch.
"Welcome to Wallingford Villa!" exclaimed Blackie, setting the blaring
phonograph on the gate post, and, with his left hand tucked into his
coat bosom, extending his right hand dramatically toward the porch.
"Welcome to your ancestral estates and adoring tenantry!"
"Fine business!" approved J. Rufus, shaking hands with Mr. Daw. "Invite
the band in to have a drink, Blackie."
"Hush!" admonished Mr. Daw in a hoarse stage whisper. "_Not_ Blackie.
Here, in hiding from the minions of Uncle Sam, I am Horatio Raven.
Remember the name."
"What's the matter?" asked Wallingford, detecting something real beneath
all this absurdity. "I called at your place in Boston, and found a corn
doctor's sign on the door. I didn't mean to plant you out here."
"Plant is the word," responded Mr. Daw, "and I've rooted fast in the
soil. I'm going to take out naturalization papers and grow a chin beard.
You're harboring a fugitive, Jim. The very day I got your letter from
dear old Lunnon, throwing open a section of your bank account and
telling me to buy a farm, the postal authorities took it into their
heads to stop all traffic in the Yellow Streak gold mine; also they
wanted to mark one Horace G. Daw 'Exhibit A,' and slam him in a cold
cage for future reference; so I put on my green whiskers and snuck here
to the far, far prairies."
A certain amount of reserve had been quite noticeable in Mrs.
Wallingford, and it was still apparent as she asked courteously:
"Where is Mrs. Daw?"
"Raven, if you please," he corrected her, and, in spite of his general
air of flippancy, his face lengthened a trifle. "Mrs. Violet Bonnie D.,"
he replied, "has returned to the original lemon box of which she was so
perfect a product, and is now delighting a palpitating public in 'The
Jolly Divorcee,' with a string of waiting Johnnies from the stage door
two blocks down Broadway every night. Let us mention the lady no more
lest I use language."
"What a pretty place you have made of this!" exclaimed Mrs. Wallingford,
thawing into instant amiability. She had her own reasons for being
highly pleased with the absence of Violet Bonnie Daw.
"Pretty good," agreed the pseudo Raven. "Step inside and imagine you're
in Peacock Alley at the Waldorf."
With considerable pride he led them inside. Knowing Wallingford as he
did, he had spared no expense to make this house as luxurious as fine
furnishings would render it, and, having considerable taste in
Wallingford's own bizarre way, he had accomplished rather flaming
results.
"And this," said he, throwing open a door upstairs, "is my own room;
number twenty-three. Upon the walls you will observe the mournful relics
of a glorious past."
The ceiling was papered with silver stock certificates of the late Los
Pocos Lead Development Company, the walls with dark green shares of the
late Mexican and Rio Grande Rubber Company, and dark red ones of the
late St. John's Blood Orange Plantation Company, while walls and ceiling
were divided by a frieze of the beautiful orange-colored stock
certificates of the late Yellow Streak Gold Mining Company.
"My own little idea," he explained, as Mrs. Wallingford smiled her
appreciation of the grim humor and went to her own dainty apartment to
remove the stains of travel. "A reminder of the happy times that once
were but that shall be no more. I have now to figure out another stunt
for skinning the beloved public, and it's hard work. I wish I had your
ability to dope up gaudy new boob-stringers. What are you going to do
with the farm, anyhow?"
"Save the farmers," replied J. Rufus Wallingford solemnly. "The farmers
of the United States are the most downtrodden people in the world. The
real producers of the wealth of our great nation hold the bag, and the
non-producers reap the golden riches of the soil. Who rises in his might
and comes to their rescue? Who overturns the old order of things, puts
the farmer upon a pinnacle of prosperity and places his well-deserved
earnings beyond the reach of avarice and greed? Who, I ask? J. Rufus
Wallingford, the friend of the oppressed and the protector of the poor!"
"Good!" responded Mr. Daw, "and the way you say it it's worse than ever.
I'm in on the play, but please give me a tip before the blow-off comes
so I can leave the county."
"The county is safe," responded Mr. Wallingford. "It's nailed down. You
know me, Blackie. The law and I are old college chums and we never go
back on each other. I'm going to lift my money out of the Chicago wheat
pit, and when I get through that pit will be nothing but an empty hole.
By this time next fall I'll have a clean, cool million, and then I can
buy a stack of blue chips and sit in the big game. I'll never rest easy
till I can hold a royal flush against Morgan and Rockefeller, and when I
skin them all will be forgiven."
"Jump right in, Jim; the water's fine for you just now. I'm not wised up
yet to this new game of yours, but I've got a bet on you. Go to it and
win."
"It's my day to break the bank," asserted J. Rufus. "Your bet's safe. Go
soak your watch and play me across the board."
The telephone bell rang and Blackie answered it.
"Come right over," he told the man at the other end of the wire. "Mr.
Wallingford has arrived."
He hung up the receiver and conducted Wallingford downstairs into a
well-lighted room that jutted out in an "L" from the house, with a
separate outside entrance toward the rear.
"Observe the center of a modern agriculturist's web," he declaimed. "Sit
at your desk, farmer, for your working superintendent is about to call
on you."
J. Rufus looked around him with vast appreciation.
"I thought I had my own ideas about looking the part," he observed, "but
you have me skinned four ways from the Jack."
In the center of the room was a large, flat-top desk, and upon it was an
extension 'phone from the country line. On the other side was the desk
'phone and call board of a private line which connected the house, the
barn, the granary and a dozen fields throughout the farm. On one side
was a roll-top desk, and this was Mr. Daw's. Opposite was another
roll-top desk, for the "working superintendent."
"At least one real farmer will have to be on the job," Blackie
explained, "and I nabbed Hamlet Tinkle, the prize of the neighborhood.
He is a graduate of an agricultural college and all the farmers think
he's a joke; but I have him doped out as being able to coax more fodder
from unwilling mud than any soil tickler in these parts. He helped me
select the farm library."
With a grin at his own completeness of detail, Mr. Daw indicated the
sectional bookcases, where stood, in neat rows, the Government reports
on everything agricultural, and treatises on every farm subject under
the sun from the pip to the boll weevil. Filing cases there were, and
card indexes, and every luxury that has been devised for modern office
work. With an amused air the up-to-date farmer was leafing through one
after the other of the conglomeration of strange books, when Hamlet
Tinkle was ushered in by the ever-grinning Nellie. He was a tall,
big-boned fellow, who had divided his time at the agricultural college
between playing center rush and studying the chemical capabilities of
various soils. Just now, though the weather was bracing, he wore a
broad-brimmed straw hat with the front turned up, and a flannel shirt
with no coat or vest; and he had walked two miles, from the place at
which he had telephoned, in twenty-two minutes.
"Mr. Tinkle--Mr. Wallingford," said Mr. Daw. "Mr. Wallingford, this is
the gentleman whom I recommend as your working superintendent."
Both Mr. Wallingford and Mr. Tinkle accepted this title with perfect
gravity.
"Sit down," said Wallingford cordially, and himself took his place at
the flat-top desk in the midst of the telephones and push buttons.
Already he began to feel the exhilaration of his new _role_ and loomed
broadly above his desk, from the waist line up a most satisfying
revelation to Mr. Tinkle of what the farmer of the future ought to be
like. "Mr. Raven tells me," observed Wallingford, "that you are prepared
to conduct this farm on scientific principles."
"Yes, sir," admitted Mr. Tinkle. "I shall be very glad to show to
Truscot County what can be done with advanced methods. Father doesn't
seem to care to have me try it on his farm. He says he made enough out
of his own methods to send me to college, and I ought to be satisfied
with that."
"Your father's all right, but maybe we can teach even him some new
tricks. The first question, Mr. Tinkle, is how much money you want."
"Fifteen a week and board," responded Mr. Tinkle promptly. "The seasons
through."
"Fine!" responded Wallingford with a wave of the hand which indicated
that fifty a week and board would have been no bar, as, indeed, it would
not have been. "Consider yourself engaged from the present moment. Now
let's get down to brass tacks, Mr. Tinkle. I don't know enough about
farming to stuff up the middle of a cipher; I don't know which end down
you plant the grains of wheat; but wheat is what I want, and nothing but
wheat!"
Mr. Tinkle shook his head.
"With Mr. Raven's permission I have been making tests of your soil," he
observed. "Your northeast forty is still good for wheat and will make a
good yield, possibly thirty bushels, but the southwest forty will do
well if it gives you eight to ten bushels without thorough
fertilization; and this will be much more expensive than planting it in
some other crop for a couple of years."
"Jolly it any old way to get wheat," directed Wallingford. "Wheat is
what I want; all you can get."
Mr. Tinkle hesitated. He made two or three false starts, during which
his auditors waited with the patience born to those who lie in crouch
for incautious money, and then displayed his altruistic youth.
"I have to tell you," he blurted. "You have here one hundred and sixty
acres. Suppose that you could get the high average of thirty bushels per
acre from it. Suppose you got a dollar a bushel for that wheat, your
total income would still be less than five thousand dollars. You are
hiring me as manager, and you will need other hands; you have a
machinist, who is also to be your chauffeur, I understand; you have
three house servants, and upon the scale you evidently intend to conduct
this farm and your residence I judge that you cannot get along for less
than eight to ten thousand a year. I am bound to tell you that I cannot
see a profit for you."
"Which of these buttons calls one of the girls?" asked Wallingford.
"The third button is Nellie," replied Mr. Daw gravely, and touched it.
The rosy-cheeked girl appeared instantly, on the point of giggling, as
she had been from the moment Mr. Daw first engaged her.
"Bring in my grip from the hall," Mr. Wallingford directed; "the one
with the labels on it."
This brought in, Mr. Wallingford extracted from it a huge bundle of
documents bound with rubber bands. Unfolded, they proved to be United
States Government bonds, shares of railroad stocks and of particularly
stable industrials, thousands of dollars worth of them. For Mr. Tinkle's
inspection he passed over his bank book, showing a balance of one
hundred and fifty thousand.
"Wheat," cheerfully lied Mr. Wallingford, with a wave of his hand; "all
wheat! Half a million dollars!"
"Speculation?" charged Mr. Tinkle, a trace of sternness in his voice.
"Investment," protested Wallingford. "I never sold; I bought, operating
always upon margin sufficient for ample protection, and always upon
absolute information gathered directly from the centers of production.
This farm is for the purpose of bringing me more thoroughly in touch
with the actual conditions that make prices. So, as you see, Mr. Tinkle,
the trifling profit or loss of this venture in a business way is a mere
bagatelle."
Both Mr. Daw and Mr. Tinkle were regarding Mr. Wallingford with awe and
admiration, but for somewhat different reasons. Mr. Tinkle, elated, went
home to get his clothes and books, and on the way he put into breathless
circulation the fact that the new proprietor of the old Spicer place was
the greatest man on earth, with the possible exception of Theodore
Roosevelt, and that he had already made half a million dollars in wheat!
He had seen the money!
"I pass," observed Mr. Daw to Mr. Wallingford. "I'm in the kindergarten
class, and I take off my lid to you as being the most valuable
combination known to the history of plain or fancy robbery. You have
them all beat twice around the track. You make an amateur of Ananias and
a piker of Judas Iscariot."