The Gilded Age - Mark Twain [60]
The Colonel hitched up his chair close to Harry, laid his hand on his knee, and, first looking about him, said in a low voice, “The Salt Lick Pacific Extension is going to run through Stone’s Landing! The Almighty never laid out a cleaner piece of level prairie for a city; and it’s the natural center of all that region of hemp and tobacco.”
“What makes you think the road will go there? It’s twenty miles, on the map, off the straight line of the road?”
“You can’t tell what is the straight line till the engineers have been over it. Between us, I have talked with Jeff Thompson, the division engineer. He understands the wants of Stone’s Landing, and the claims of the inhabitants—who are to be there. Jeff says that a railroad is for the accommodation of the people and not for the benefit of gophers; and if he don’t run this to Stone’s Landing he’ll be damned! You ought to know Jeff; he’s one of the most enthusiastic engineers in this western country, and one of the best fellows that ever looked through the bottom of a glass.”
The recommendation was not undeserved. There was nothing that Jeff wouldn’t do, to accommodate a friend, from sharing his last dollar with him, to winging him in a duel. When he understood from Col. Sellers how the land lay at Stone’s Landing, he cordially shook hands with that gentleman, asked him to drink, and fairly roared out, “Why, God bless my soul, Colonel, a word from one Virginia gentleman to another is ‘nuff ced.’ There’s Stone’s Landing been waiting for a railroad more than four thousand years, and damme if she shan’t have it.”
Philip had not so much faith as Harry in Stone’s Landing, when the latter opened the project to him, but Harry talked about it as if he already owned that incipient city.
Harry thoroughly believed in all his projects and inventions, and lived day by day in their golden atmosphere. Everybody liked the young fellow, for how could they help liking one of such engaging manners and large fortune? The waiters at the hotel would do more for him than for any other guest, and he made a great many acquaintances among the people of St. Louis, who liked his sensible and liberal views about the development of the western country, and about St. Louis. He said it ought to be the national capital. Harry made partial arrangements with several of the merchants for furnishing supplies for his contract on the Salt Lick Pacific Extension; consulted the maps with the engineers, and went over the profiles with the contractors, figuring out estimates for bids. He was exceedingly busy with those things when he was not at the bedside of his sick acquaintance, or arranging the details of his speculation with Col. Sellers.
Meantime the days went along and the weeks, and the money in Harry’s pocket got lower and lower. He was just as liberal with what he had as before, indeed it was his nature to be free with his money or with that of others, and he could lend or spend a dollar with an air that made it seem like ten. At length, at the end of one week, when his hotel bill was presented, Harry found not a cent in his pocket to meet it. He carelessly remarked to the landlord that he was not that day in funds, but he would draw on New York, and he sat down and wrote to the contractors in that city a glowing letter about the prospects of the road, and asked them to advance a hundred or two, until he got at work. No reply came. He wrote again, in an unoffended business like tone, suggesting that he had better draw at three days. A short answer came to this, simply saying that money was very tight in Wall street just then, and that he had better join the engineer corps as soon as he could.
But the bill had to be paid, and Harry took it to Philip, and asked him if he thought he hadn’t better draw on his uncle. Philip had not much faith in Harry’s power of “drawing,” and told him that he would pay the bill himself. Whereupon Harry dismissed the matter then and thereafter from his thoughts, and, like a light-hearted good