The Gilded Age - Mark Twain [215]
“You wouldn’t! Well, that beats me. Now what would you call stealing?”
“Why, taking property is stealing.”
“Property! Now what a way to talk that is. What do you suppose that trunk is worth?”
“Is it in good repair?”
“Perfect. Hair rubbed off a little, but the main structure is perfectly sound.”
“Does it leak anywhere?”
“Leak? Do you want to carry water in it? What do you mean by does it leak?”
“Why—a—do the clothes fall out of it when it is—when it is stationary?”
“Confound it, Washington, you are trying to make fun of me. I don’t know what has got into you to-day; you act mighty curious. What is the matter with you?”
“Well, I’ll tell you, old friend. I am almost happy. I am, indeed. It wasn’t Clay’s telegram that hurried me up so and got me ready to start with you. It was a letter from Louise.”
“Good! What is it? What does she say?”
“She says come home—her father has consented, at last.”
“My boy, I want to congratulate you; I want to shake you by the hand! It’s a long turn that has no lane at the end of it, as the proverb says, or somehow that way. You’ll be happy yet, and Eschol Sellers will be there to see, thank God!”
“I believe it. General Boswell is pretty nearly a poor man, now. The railroad that was going to build up Hawkeye made short work of him, along with the rest. He isn’t so opposed to a son-in-law without a fortune, now.”
“Without a fortune, indeed! Why that Tennessee Land—”
“Never mind the Tennessee Land, Colonel. I am done with that, forever and forever—”
“Why no! You can’t mean to say—”
“My father, away back yonder, years ago, bought it for a blessing for his children, and—”
“Indeed he did! Si Hawkins said to me—”
“It proved a curse to him as long as he lived, and never a curse like it was inflicted upon any man’s heirs—”
“I’m bound to say there’s more or less truth—”
“It began to curse me when I was a baby, and it has cursed every hour of my life to this day—”
“Lord, lord, but it’s so! Time and again my wife—”
“I depended on it all through my boyhood and never tried to do an honest stroke of work for my living—”
“Right again—but then you—”
“I have chased it years and years as children chase butterflies. We might all have been prosperous, now; we might all have been happy, all these heart-breaking years, if we had accepted our poverty at first and gone contentedly to work and built up our own weal by our own toil and sweat—”
“It’s so, it’s so; bless my soul, how often I’ve told Si Hawkins—”
“Instead of that, we have suffered more than the damned themselves suffer! I loved my father, and I honor his memory and recognize his good intentions; but I grieve for his mistaken ideas of conferring happiness upon his children. I am going to begin my life over again, and begin it and end it with good solid work! I’ll leave my children no Tennessee Land!”
“Spoken like a man, sir, spoken like a man! Your hand, again my boy! And always remember that when a word of advice from Eschol Sellers can help, it is at your service. I’m going to begin again, too!”
“Indeed!”
“Yes, sir. I’ve seen enough to show me where my mistake was. The law is what I was born for. I shall begin the study of the law. Heavens and earth, but that Braham’s a wonderful man—a wonderful man sir! Such a head! And such a way with him! But I could see that he was jealous of me. The little licks I got in in the course of my argument before the jury—”
“Your argument! Why, you were a witness.”
“Oh, yes, to the popular eye, to the popular eye—but I knew when I was dropping information and when I was letting drive at the court with an insidious argument. But the court knew it, bless you, and weakened every time! And Braham knew it. I just reminded him of it in a quiet way, and its final result, and he said in a whisper, ‘You did it, Colonel, you did it, sir—but keep it mum for my sake; and I’ll tell you what you do,’ says he, ‘you go into the law, Col. Sellers—go into the law, sir; that’s your native element!’ And into the law the subscriber is going. There’s worlds of money in it!—whole