Chapter 18

STAGE VII.—IN WHICH MR. HERON ARRIVES AT THE SHOP OF THE HAND-MADE GENTLEMAN

OCTOBER had returned, and a letter had come from my friend McCarthy, asking me to visit him. My sister had learned telegraphy at home, and could take and send well enough to do my work at the office. It was arranged, therefore, that she and my mother should close the Mill House and come to town for a week or two, so that she could take my place.

The hand-made gentleman had built his factory in the thriving town of Rushwater, on the Central Railroad. It took a long summer day to get there, for the engine was fed with wood, and we had now and then to load the tender with fuel, corded on the right of way, or drive cattle from the track or water the locomotive or mend a coupling, and had to wait at the junction for trains in equally bad luck.

Early in the evening I found my friend McCarthy at the leading hotel in Rushwater, where he boarded.

“Pleased to see you,” he said, with dignity, as he shook my hand. “Have you been to supper?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Is there any kind of refreshment I can offer you?”

“Nothing except your company.”

He took me to the desk and introduced me as his friend, “Jacob Ezra Heron, Esq., a gentleman from St. Lawrence County.”

“Give Mr. Heron the best the house affords, and put it on my bill,” he added. I protested, whereupon he touched my arm and said: “You will find, sir, that nobody will take your money in this town. If you will walk with me, I will show you my factory.”

I asked for my friend Pearl, and McCarthy said that Pearl and Barker were in New York, and were coming to Rushwater in a day or two. The inventor had worked awhile in the shop, and planned a lot of machines which had hastened the process of manufacture. In June he had drawn his pay and left suddenly for parts unknown.

“I think that he went to the war,” said Mr. McCarthy; “but he never let on. Said he’d turn up here one of these days, and last week I got a long letter from the old man. Said he’d been sick, and was ready to come back to the shop if I wanted him. Of course, I said come on. We made our way through dark streets and stopped in front of a building—large for that day and country—on the river shore.

“There it is,” he remarked, as we gazed for half a moment at the dim outlines of his building. “I am the most extensive shipper of small freight on the railroad.”

We entered the building, and he led me to his office and lighted a lamp. It was a large room, elegantly furnished. The chairs and table were made of mahogany and a soft carpet covered the floor. A large portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte hung on the wall.

Those days the face and story of “The Little Corporal” were a power in the land, and not the most wholesome one, I have thought.

“This is grand,” was my remark.

“I am making money,” said the hand-made gentleman, “and I propose to look as prosperous as I am. Sal is now the smallest part of my business. I spend twenty thousand a year advertising. My harp has four strings and one tune. Here it is.”

The hand-made gentleman began to read from a newspaper as follows:

“SPEAKING OF SAL

“Sal is willing; Sal can make the house shine; Sal is a worker—never cross and tired; the best and cheapest hired girl in the country. Cleans silver, glass, metal, and woodwork. Give Sal a chance.

“SAL’S SISTERS

“There are three of them: Sally, the Brick, who cleans knives, forks, pots, and kettles; Sal’s Sister, a wonderful laundry soap; also Salome, a clover-scented soap for the toilet. You will find them in all groceries.”

“I began little—put it in a paper of five thousand circulation. I found that every dollar that I invested brought me four dollars and thirty-four and a half cents. The second ad. brought me four dollars and thirty-seven cents; the third four dollars and forty-one, and so it grew. I tried all the leading papers, and got the rate of profit and learned the exact value of repetition for each. The return increased as my goods travelled, and people began to talk about ‘em. You see, I make something that the people want, and my first problem was to let them know it. That was easy. My next problem was to manufacture within a certain limit of cost. In that Pearl has helped. My next problem was to deliver the goods, and that is the greatest problem of all. The railroads are slow and unreliable. They have no more system than a carrier-pigeon. Y our freight is transferred until the boxes are worn out; it is side-tracked and lost and forgotten. You see, there are eleven railroads between here and Buffalo. They have been consolidated, but not harmonized. They are like eleven horses in the hands of a poor teamster; they don’t pull together. They waste their strength. I complained to Mr. Dean Richmond.

“He said to me, ‘We’re doing our best, and if you want a better service you’ll have to show us how to give it.’

“I gave him a few ideas, and he liked ‘em, and what do you suppose happened?”

Mr. McCarthy paused, but I could only shake my head and await his revelation.

“Well, one day the manager called and said the Chairman of the Executive Committee would like to see me,” Mr. McCarthy went on. “I pulled up my check-rein a little and went to Albany. It surprised him to see how young I was.

“‘Why,’ said he, ‘you’re nothing but a boy!’

“‘I’m twenty-three,’ I said, ‘but they count double. I’ve done two years’ work in every one that I’ve lived.’

“He asked me to dinner; it was grand. I didn’t dare eat much—just sat and talked and listened and saw how they behaved themselves at his table. I learnt a number of things.”

“What were they?”

“To keep my knife away from my face, for one thing,” he answered. “Then a gentleman eats very slowly while he indulges in conversation. He’s got to be able to talk about Brignoli and Madame Piccolomini—ain’t that a grand name?—and Mrs. Siddons and Lester Wallack, with a word once in a while about the Missouri Compromise. When he gets through he washes the tips of his fingers. One of them told a vulgar story, and it seemed to me that we needed a bath for our minds as well as for our fingers. The chairman liked me, I guess, for he offered me some of his stock at a low price, and said they wanted me on the directory. I went in, and now I’m looking into the whole railroad problem.”

He began to unroll a great map which he had been making, and which lay on a broad table. It was sixty feet long, and showed a section of the country some two hundred miles wide from Boston to Chicago.

“I won’t bother you with details,” he ‘said, “but I have a great plan. It will narrow this space between New York and Chicago. It will build up a chain of great cities. It will make a market for goods and quicken their delivery. It will furnish a model for the development of other parts of the republic.”

The eyes of the young man glowed with enthusiasm. Then he shook with laughter.

“That’s pretty good for the boy with a wooden leg that you met on the road to Canaan, isn’t it?” he asked. “You see, the hand-made gentleman is getting along. He’s took his mind off himself—partly—and put it on to other things. I don’t need so much looking after as I did. I can talk pretty well, and know how to conduct myself in any company. Ye see, practice makes perfect, and I’ve practised decency for a long time. It’s like breathing. Of course, I might be better inside, but outside I’ll do for the time being.”

“I’d like to hear more of your plan,” I suggested.

“It’s this, in a nutshell,” he said: “I want to combine all the railroads between Boston, New York, and Chicago in one system. Now, if you’re going from New York to Chicago, you change at Albany and stay all night; you change again at Syracuse and stay all night, and again at Buffalo, and so on. Of course, you can ride all night, but it wears you out. I want a better road-bed and heavier rails and lighter cars and bigger engines and more power to handle ‘em, and a continuous trip. Why shouldn’t we travel nights with comfort?”

The hand-made gentleman strode up and down the room and gestured like a man making a speech.

“Five men have twenty times the power of one. Did you ever think of that?” he asked. “When you put two and two together you get about sixteen, but they’ve got to be one before they can be sixteen. That suggests the value of combination.” He paused before me, and added: “Here’s the trouble. The idea is bigger’n I am. There’s only one man in the world who can carry it out.”

“Who is that?” I inquired.

“Vanderbilt,” said he. “There’s the biggest man in the country. He’s made twenty million dollars with his brain. Think of that! He’s the Napoleon of this day.”

There came a rap at the door, and Mr. McCarthy shouted, “Come in!” and a young man entered with a large blank-book in his hand.

“Mr. Heron, this is Mr. Magillies, a graduate of the commercial college at Poughkeepsie, and a grand penman,” said the hand-made gentleman. “He takes down my letters for me, and writes ‘em off and sees that they’re worded proper. Would you like to hear me answer my correspondence?”

I assured him of my interest, and thereupon the hand-made gentleman dictated many letters with a look and tone of great dignity. Now and then he addressed some delinquent and unscrupulous debtor with great emphasis, and more than once he described the virtues of Sal and Sal’s sisters and the clover-scented soap loudly and with gestures suited to the word, so that he reminded me of the picture in my reading-book of a Roman senator addressing the populace.

The young man left us late in the evening with his record of their work.

Then said the hand-made gentleman: “I must have somebody for that position who is more than a mere writing-machine. I want some gentleman who thinks as I do and will stand up for me like a brother. I want you!”

It took me by surprise, and I thanked him and expressed doubt of my fitness.

“I know you, and you know me,” he said. “I like you, Mr. Heron, and believe in you; and if you feel the same, let’s pull together. I have some big things to do, and you can help me; and I’ll double the pay you’re getting.”

I was a rapid writer, and many had praised the neatness and legibility of my penmanship. Then, too, I was rather fond of the hand-made gentleman, and had a great faith in him. But how about my mother and sister and Jo, for both Heartsdale and Merrifield were a long way from Rushwater.

“I’d like to go to the war,” I answered, “if my mother will consent.”

“The ambition is meritorious,” said he. “There can be nothing nobler than the wish to serve your country, but I don’t think it needs you. The war will be over in a few weeks. Then there are your mother and sister—don’t they need you more than the country does?”

“I’m afraid they do.”

“Then you mustn’t think of going. Your father gave his life in battle. I think your mother has given the country enough.”

I walked up and down the room thinking. “It’s hard work,” said Mr. McCarthy. “I sit here until midnight sometimes pounding at the letters. But you’ll have a chance to travel and meet men who amount to something, and we’ll have a good time together.”

“It’s only a matter of arranging my affairs,” I said to him. “There’s my mother and sister.”

“Go home and see if you can get them to move here.”

He lighted a long cigar, and sat down with one foot on the desk. The hand-made gentleman had learned to smoke.

“There’s another thing—I want to open my heart to you,” he said. “I haven’t a brother or sister or friend that I can talk to about certain matters. The fact is, I’m in love and engaged to be married.”

He paused, and was smoking thoughtfully, as I asked, “To Miss Fame?”

“No; she didn’t reciprocate; and maybe it’s just as well. I am engaged to a talented actress by the name of Maud Isabel Manning.”

He paused again as if to note the effect of this impressive name, and continued: “She’s from New York, and beautiful as a dream. Came here with a show, and one morning she walked into the office. Told me that she used my toilet soap, and wanted to see the factory. I showed her about, and fell in love with her. She’s a wonder—grand clothes, and knows how to wear ‘em; wonderful education, fine talker, sings like a bird, and can make the piano roar. I told her about my false leg and foot and my family—that’s worse than a wooden leg—but she doesn’t mind, and we’re going to be married.”

I fear that I shared the prejudice of my Puritan fathers against the stage, and was a little taken aback and a bit conservative in my comment.

I think he felt it, for he blushed and began to argue, although a little off the point.

“I think every gentleman ought to marry. There’s something about women that makes a man gentle. Old bachelors are about as ugly as a bear with a sore head. I want somebody to work for besides myself. I can’t love myself well enough to pay for the struggle. I’ve got to have somebody who grows happy as I grow rich, or I wouldn’t care for money, upon my word I wouldn’t. Then the Bible says that men should increase and multiply and replenish the earth.”

I wished him all happiness, and tried to put his mind at ease.

“I am forgetting you in talking of myself—you will want to retire,” he said, and we closed the office and walked to the inn together.

Next morning some one rapped at my bedroom door. “Who’s there?” I demanded.

“A friend and fellow-citizen from St. Lawrence County,” was the answer, and I knew it was Pearl.

I opened the door, and there stood my old friend in the familiar goggles and linen duster, but with his left sleeve empty and a new scar on the side of his face.

“Mr. Pearl!” I exclaimed; “what’s happened to you?”

“Oh, I’ve just been trimmed up a little,” he said, with a smile, as he gave me his hand. “It’s nothing. Every tree needs it once in a while. I had too much wood for my sap.”

“An accident?” I asked, with tears in my eyes.

“An accident, an’ I’m tryin’ to forget it,” said he. “How are the folks?”

And I saw clearly that he wished me to say no more of his misfortunes. Soon Mr. McCarthy came, and he and the Pearl went to the shop together.