The Wapshot Chronicle - John Cheever [54]
Blow to feelings not improved by receipt of enclosed letter from Hamlet: “Hello old scout. We reached this happy land after traveling 7 months and 9 days. I stood the trip well although the hardships of the voyage exceeded my anticipations. Out of a company of thirty, seven of our brother argonauts were taken by the grim reaper. My own skin is hale and hearty and we’re a whip-cracking, bushy-bearded, sun-burned brother-hood, bound to make our million or go to H—.
“We made the passage from the Isthmus to San Francisco in the company of many women and children, going to be reunited with their loved ones. There is nothing in the world like the arrival of a ship in San Francisco to pluck at your heart-strings. I wish you could get out here and see the sights. I pity you in that musty old burg, compared to which San Francisco is an honest to G——d beehive. However the necessities of life were costly—board was four dollars a day and we lingered in San Francisco only a week and then came north where provisions still set me back two dollars a day. When you see Cousin Minerva don’t spare the hard facts.
“Among us is an Irishman whose name is Clancy and is from Dedham. He is come out here to find a dowery for his daughter so that she can marry into the “edicated” classes. There are also 3 carpenters, 2 shoemakers, a blacksmith and many other trades represented including the genteel art of music for one of the company has brought his violin with him and entertains us at night with symphonius strains. We had no sooner settled here than Howie Cockaigne and me got to work with our pick-axes in the bed of the river and when we had been digging for less than an hour two Mexicans came along and offered to buy the digging for an ounce of flour-gold and so we took the offer and had our first gold in less time than it takes to tell and you see that with gold selling at $5.60 an ounce and if our luck holds out we will be making forty or fifty dollars per day. Now under Captain Marsons leadership we are making a race in the river and turning its course so that we will be able to take the gold out of the dry bed.
“Don’t expect many letters from me Old Scout because this happy land is still wild and as I am writing you now the ground is my chair and the night is my roof. But oh its a grand feeling to be out here and even with the professor playing symphonius strains on his violin and bringing back to me the sweet remembrance of all by-gone days there isn’t a king or a merchant prince in the whole world that I envy for I always knew I was born to be a child of destiny and that I was never meant to be subservient to the wealth, fame, power, etc. of others or to wring my living from detestable, low, degrading, mean and ordinary kinds of business.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
To create or build some kind of bridge between Leander’s world and that world where he sought his fortune seemed to Coverly a piece of work that would take strength and perseverance. The difference between the sweet-smelling farmhouse and the room where he lived was abysmal. They seemed to have come from the hands of different creators and to deny one another. Coverly thought about this one rainy night on his way to Cousin Mildred’s, wearing a rented tuxedo. “Come for dinner,” she had asked him, “and then we’ll go to the opera. That ought to be fun for you. It’s Monday night so you’ll have to dress. Everyone dresses on Mondays.” Cousin Mildred’s apartment was in one of those large buildings that Coverly, on his first day, had wondered if he would ever penetrate. Looking up at the building Coverly realized that by all the standards of St. Botolphs it would be condemned as expensive, pretentious, noisy and unsafe. It could not be compared to a nice farm. He took an elevator to the eighteenth floor. He had never approached such an altitude and he entertained himself with some imaginary return to St. Botolphs where he regaled Pete Meacham