A HAPPY CONCLUSION.
All the members of our party, to whose courage and independence of
mind my story has borne witness, immediately and anxiously exerted
themselves to relieve their hospitable relative of the burden of their
support, and it was not long before they succeeded.
Aleck and Tug found profitable work to do. Katy was eager to resume
her studies, and therefore gladly accepted an invitation to stay with
her aunt and help her in her sewing before and after school-hours. Jim
roomed with his brother, and went to school also, acting morning and
evening as an office-boy for a lawyer to whom Mr. Porter had given him
a letter of introduction.
To prepare themselves for these different stations used up their stock
of money, but by close economy they came through without any
debt--yes, even with some money left--just nineteen cents among them
all! To this Tug's pocket contributed nothing, but he was happy.
"There's one great comfort in being 'dead broke,'" he told them. "You
know precisely where you are, and that matters can get no worse. You
are ready to begin all new again."
This sense of beginning anew was a tonic that strengthened the hearts
of all of them; for each one knew that, although he had no money, his
feet were planted firmly on the first round of the ladder which, if
steadily climbed, might lead to prosperity.
With this satisfactory state of things the story might end, but twenty
years and more have passed since that hard winter which made their
journey to the island and escape from it possible; twenty years, in
which no such hard winter has been seen again. Aleck is manager and
part owner of a manufactory of gas-fixtures and brass fittings in
Pittsburgh, and Jim is his cashier. Tug lives in Cleveland, where he
is busy, as an inventor, and expects some day to be made rich by his
improvements in railway-brakes and in oil-pumping machinery; but
nobody addresses him as "Tug" except his wife (whom _he_ calls Katy)
and his little boy, who never tires of hearing how papa and mamma and
Uncle Aleck went adrift on an ice-floe in Lake Erie.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Archaic syntax and inconsistent spelling were retained.