29 Philip Sterling was on his way to Ilium in the State of Pennsylvania. Ilium was the railway station nearest to the tract of wild land which Mr. Bolton had commissioned him to examine. On the last day of the journey, as the railway train Philip was on was leaving a large city, a lady timidly entered the drawing room car, and hesitatingly took a chair that was at the moment unoccupied. Philip saw from the window that a gentleman had put her upon the car just as it was starting. In a few moments the conductor entered and without waiting an explanation said roughly to the lady, Now you can't sit there. That seat's taken. Go into the other car. I did not intend to take the seat, said the lady rising. I only sat down a moment till the conductor should come and give me a seat. There ain't any. Car's full. You'll have to leave. But sir, said the lady, appealingly, I thought, Can't help what you thought. You must go into the other car. The train is going very fast. Let me stand here till we stop. The lady can have my seat, cried Philip, springing up.  You must go now. The lady, entirely disconcerted by such rudeness, and frightened, moved towards the door, opened it, and stepped out. The train was swinging along at a rapid rate, jarring from side to side. The step was a long one, between the cars, and there was no protecting grating. The lady attempted it, but lost her balance in the wind, and the motion of the car, and fell. She would inevitably have gone down under the wheels if Philip, who had swiftly followed her, had not caught her arm and drawn her up. He then assisted her across, found her a seat, received her bewildered thanks, and returned to his car. The conductor was still there, taking his tickets and growling something about imposition. Philip marched up to him and burst out with, You are a brute, an infernal brute, to treat a woman that way. Perhaps you'd like to make a fuss about it, sneered the conductor. Philip's reply was a blow, given so suddenly and planted so squarely in the conductor's face, that it sent him reeling over a fat passenger, who was looking up in mild wonder, that anyone should dare to dispute with the conductor, and against the side of the car.  I shall not get off, I have as much right here as you. We'll see, said the conductor, advancing with the breakman. The passengers protested, and some of them said to each other, That's too bad. As they always do, in such cases. But none of them offered to take a hand with Philip.  The conductor, read in the face and puffing from his exertion, swaggered through the car, muttering, puppy, I'll learn him. The passengers, when he had gone, were loud in their indignation, and talked about singing a protest. But they did nothing more than talk. The next morning, the Hooverville Patriot and Clarion had this item. Slightly overboard, we learned that as the dawn noon Express was leaving H yesterday, a lady, God saved the mark, attempted to force herself into the already full palatial car, conductor Slum, who is too old a bird to be caught with chaff, courteously informed her that the car was full, and when she insisted on remaining, he persuaded her to go into the car where she belonged. Thereupon a young sprig, from the east, blustered like a Shanghai rooster, and began to sass the conductor with his chin music. That gentleman delivered the young aspirant for a musk, one of his elegant little left handers, which so astonished him that he began to feel for his shooter. Whereupon Mr. Slum gently raised the youth, carried him forth, and set him down just outside the car to cool off. Whether the young blood has yet made his way out of Baskham Swamp, we have not learned. Conductor Slum is one of the most gentlemanly and efficient officers on the road, but he ain't trifled with not much. We learned that the company have put a new engine on the seven o'clock train, and newly upholstered the drawing room car throughout. It spares no effort for the comfort of the traveling public. Philip never had been before in Baskham Swamp, and there was nothing inviting in it to detain him. After the train got out of the way, he crawled out of the briars in the mud and got upon the track. He was somewhat bruised, but he was too angry to mind that. He plodded along over the ties in a very hot condition of mind and body. In the scuffle his railway check had disappeared, and he grimly wondered, as he noticed the loss, if the company would permit him to walk over their track if they should know he hadn't a ticket. Philip had to walk some five miles before he reached a little station where he could wait for a train, and he had ample time for reflection. At first he was full of vengeance on the company. He would sue it. He would make it pay roundly. But then it occurred to him that he did not know the name of a witness he could summon, and that a personal fight against the Railway Corporation was about the most hopeless in the world. He then thought he would seek out that conductor. Lying wait for him at some station and thrash him, or get thrashed himself. But as he got cooler, that did not seem to him a project worthy of a gentleman exactly. Was it possible for a gentleman to get even with such a fellow as that conductor on the latter's own plane? And when he came to this point, he began to ask himself if he had not acted very much like a fool. He didn't regret striking the fellow. He hoped he had left a mark on him. But after all, was that the best way? Here was he, Philip Sterling, calling himself a gentleman, in a brawl with a vulgar conductor about a woman he had never seen before.  Wasn't it enough to have offered the lady his seat? To have rescued her from an accident, perhaps from death? Suppose he had simply said to the conductor, Sir, your conduct is brutal. I shall report you. The passengers who saw the affair might have joined in a report against the conductor, and he might really have accomplished something. And now Philip looked at his torn clothes, and thought with disgust of his haste in getting into a fight with such an autocrat. At the little station where Philip waited for the next train, he met a man who turned out to be a justice of the peace in that neighborhood, and told him of his adventure. He was a kindly sort of man, and seemed very much interested. Dumbum, said he, when he had heard the story. Do you think anything can be done, Sir? Well, I guess, ain't no use. I ain't a might of doubt of every word you say, but soon's no use. The railroad company owns all these people along here, and the judges on the bench, too. Spilled your clothes. Well, least said, soonest mended. You ain't no chance with the company. When next morning he read the humorous account in the Patriot in Clarion, he saw still more clearly what chance he would have had before the public in a fight with the railroad company. Still, Philip's conscience told him that it was his plain duty to carry the matter into the courts. Even with a certainty of defeat, he confessed that neither he nor any citizen had a right to consult his own feelings or conscience in a case where a law of the land had been violated before his own eyes. He confessed that every citizen's first duty in such case is to put aside his own business and devote his time and his best efforts to seeing that the infraction is promptly punished, and he knew that no country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more. As a finality he was obliged to confess that he was a bad citizen and also that the general laxity of the time and the absence of a sense of duty toward any part of the community, but the individual himself were ingrained in him as he was no better than the rest of the people. The result of this little adventure was that Philip did not reach Ilium till daylight the next morning when he descended sleepy and sore from a way train and looked about him. Ilium was in a narrow mountain gorge through which a rapid stream ran. It consisted of the plank platform on which he stood, a wooden house half painted with a dirty piazza unroofed in front, and a signboard hung on a slanting pole bearing the legend Hotel P. Dusenheimer, a sawmill further down the stream, a blacksmith's shop and a store and three or four unpainted dwellings of the slab variety. As Philip approached the hotel he saw what appeared to be a wild beast crouching on the piazza. It did not stir, however, and he soon found that it was only a stuffed skin. This cheerful invitation to the tavern was the remains of a huge panther which had been killed in the region a few weeks before. Philip examined his ugly visage and strong crooked forearm as he was waiting admittance, having pounded upon the door. Yeat a bit, I'll shoot to put on my trousers, shouted a voice from the window, and the door was soon opened by the yawning landlord. Morgan didn't hear the drain on, and them boys geeps me up so spate. Come right in. Philip was shown into a dirty bar room. It was a small room with a stove in the middle, set in a long shallow box of sand for the benefit of the spitters. A bar across one end, a mere counter with a sliding glass case behind it containing a few bottles, having ambitious labels, and a wash sink in one corner. On the walls were the bright yellow and black handbills of a traveling circus, with pictures of acrobats in human pyramids, horses flying in long leaps through the air, and silk-like women in a peridesiac costume, balancing themselves upon the tips of their toes, on the barebacks of franting and plunging steeds, and kissing their hands to the spectators meanwhile. As Philip did not desire a room at that hour, he was invited to wash himself at the nasty stink. A feat somewhat easier than drying his face, for the towel that hung in a roller over the sink was evidently as much a fixture as the sink itself, and belonged like the suspended brush and comb to the traveling public. Philip managed to complete his toilet by the use of his pocket handkerchief, and declining the hospitality of the landlord, implied in the remark, you won't dig noughton. He went into the open air to wait for breakfast. The country he saw was wild but not picturesque. The mountain before him might be eight hundred feet high, and it was only a portion of a long unbroken range, savagely wooded, which followed the stream. Behind the hotel, and across the brawling brook, was another level topped wooded range exactly like it. Illium itself, seen at a glance, was old enough to be dilapidated, and if it had gained anything by being made a wooden water station on the new railroad, it was only a new sort of grime and rawness. Pete Dusenheimer, standing in the door of his uninviting groggery, when the train stopped for water, never received from the traveling public any patronage, except facetious remarks upon his personal appearance. Perhaps a thousand times he had heard the remark, Illium Fuit, followed in most instances by a hail to himself as Aeneas, with the inquiry, where is old Ancheses? At first he had replied, there ain't no such man. But irritated by his senseless repetition, he had later dropped into the formula of you be damned. Philip was recalled from the contemplation of Illium by the rolling and growling of the gong within the hotel, the din and clamor increasing till the house was apparently unable to contain it, when it burst out of the front door and informed the world that breakfast was on the table. The dining room was long, low and narrow, and a narrow table extended its whole length. Upon this was spread a cloth, which from appearance might have been as long in use as the towel on the bar room. Upon the table was the usual service, the heavy, much-nick stoneware, the row of plated and rusty casters, the sugar bowls with the zinc teaspoons sticking up in them, the piles of yellow biscuits, the discouraged looking plates of butter. The landlord waited, and Philip was pleased to observe the change in his manner. In the bar room he was the conciliatory landlord, standing behind his guests at table. He had an air of preemptatory patronage, and the voice in which he shot out the inquiry, as he seized Philip's plates, beasty or liver, quite took away Philip's power of choice. He begged for a glass of milk, after trying that green-hued compound called coffee, and made his breakfast out of that and some hard crackers, which seemed to have been imported into Ilium before the introduction of the Iron Horse, and to have withstood a ten-year siege of regular borders, Greeks and others. The land that Philip had come to look at was at least five miles distant from Ilium Station. A corner of it touched the railroad, but the rest was pretty much an unbroken wilderness, eight or ten thousand acres of rough country. Most of it such a mountain ranged as he saw at Ilium. His first step was to hire three woodsmen to accompany him. By their help he built a log hut, and established a camp on the land, and then began his explorations, mapping down his survey as he went along, noting the timber and the lay of the land, and making superficial observations as to the prospect of coal. The landlord at Ilium endeavored to persuade Philip to hire the services of a witch-hazel professor of that region, who could walk over the land with his wand and tell him infallibly whether it contained coal, and exactly where the strata ran. But Philip preferred to trust his own study of the country, and his knowledge of the geological formation. He spent a month in traveling over the land and making calculations, and made up his mind that a fine vein of coal ran through the mountain about a mile from the railroad, and that the place to run in a tunnel was halfway towards its summit. Acting with his usual promptness, Philip, with the consent of Mr. Bolton, broke round there at once, and before snow came, had some rude buildings up, and was ready for active operations in the spring. It was true that there were no outcroppings of coal at the place, and the people of Ilium said he might as well dig for plug to backer there. But Philip had great faith in the uniformity of nature's operations in ages past, and he had no doubt that he should strike at this spot the rich vein that had made the fortune of the Golden Briar Company. End of Chapter 29 Chapter 30 of The Gilded Age This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Richard Kilmer. The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner. Chapter 30 Once more, Louise had good news from her Washington. Senator Dillworthy was going to sell the Tennessee land to the government. Louise told Laura in confidence. She had told her parents too and also several bosom friends, but all of these people had simply looked sad when they heard the news, except that Laura. Laura's face suddenly brightened under it. Only for an instant it is true. But poor Louise was grateful for even that fleeting ray of encouragement. When next Laura was alone she fell into a train of thought, something like this. If the senator has really taken hold of this matter, I may look for that invitation to his house at any moment. I am perishing the go. I do long to know whether I am only simply a large-sized pygmy among these pygmies here, who tumble over so easily when one strikes them, or whether I am really. Her thoughts drifted into other channels for a season. Then she continued. He said I could be useful in the great cause of philanthropy and help in the blessed work of uplifting the poor and the ignorant, if he found it feasible, to take hold of our land. Well, that is neither here nor there. What I want is to go to Washington and find out what I am. I want money, too, and if one may judge by what she hears, there are chances there for a... for a fascinating woman, she was going to say, perhaps, but she did not. Along in the fall the invitation came, sure enough. It came officially through Brother Washington, the private secretary, who appended a postscript that was brimming with delight over the prospect of seeing the Duchess again. He said it would be happiness enough to look upon her face once more. It would be almost too much happiness when to it was added the fact that she would bring messages with her that were fresh from Louise's lips. In Washington's letter were several important enclosures. For instance, there was the senator's check for two thousand dollars to buy suitable clothing in New York with. It was alone to be refunded when the land was sold. Two thousand. This was fine indeed. Louise's father was called rich, but Laura doubted if Louise had ever had four hundred dollars worth of new clothing at any one time in her life. With the check came two through tickets, good on the railroad from Hawkeye to Washington via New York. And they were deadhead tickets too, which had been given to Senator Dilworthy by the railway companies. Senators and representatives were paid thousands of dollars by the government for traveling expenses, but they always traveled deadhead both ways, and then did as any honorable, high-minded men would naturally do, declined to receive the mileage tendered them by the government. The senator had plenty of railway passes and could easily spare two to Laura, one for herself and one for a male escort. Washington suggested that she get some old friend of the family to come with her, and said the senator would deadhead him, home again as soon as he had grown tired of the sights of the capital. Laura thought the thing over. At first she was pleased with the idea, but presently she began to feel differently about it. Finally she said, No. Our stead, steady going, Hawkeye friends' notion and mine differ about some things. They respect me, now and I respect them. Better leave it so. I will go alone. I am not afraid to travel by myself. And so, communing with herself, she left the house for an afternoon walk. Almost at the door she met Colonel Sellers. She told him about her invitation to Washington. Bless me, said the Colonel. I have about made up my mind to go there myself. You see, we've got to get another appropriation through, and the company wants me to come east and put it through Congress. Harry's there, and he'll do what he can, of course, and Harry's a good fellow and always does the very best he knows how. But then he's young, rather young for some parts of such work, you know, and besides he talks too much, talks a good deal too much, and sometimes he appears to be a little bit visionary, too. I think the worst thing in the world for a businessman. A man like that always exposes his cards sooner or later. This sort of thing wants an old, quiet, steady hand, wants an old, cool head, you know, that knows men through and through, and is used to large operations. I am expecting my salary, and also some dividends from the company, and if they get along in time, I'll go along with you, Laura. Take you under my wing. You mustn't travel alone. Lord, I wish I had the money right now. But there'll be plenty soon. Plenty. Laura reasoned with herself that if the kindly, simple-hearted Colonel was going anyhow, what could she gain by traveling alone and throwing away his company? So she told him she had accepted his offer gladly, gratefully. She said it would be the greatest of favors if he would go with her and protect her, not at his own expense, as far as railway fares were concerned, of course, she could not expect him to put himself to so much trouble for her and pay his fare besides. But he wouldn't hear of her pay and his fare. It would be only a pleasure to him to serve her. Laura insisted on furnishing the tickets, and finally, when argument failed, she said the tickets cost neither her nor anyone else a cent. She had two of them. She needed but one, and if he would not take the other, she would not go with him. That settled the matter. He took the ticket. Laura was glad that she had the check for new clothing, for she felt very certain of being able to get the Colonel to borrow a little money to pay hotel bills with here and there. She wrote Washington to look for her and Colonel Sellers toward the end of November, and about the time set the two travelers arrived safe in the capital of the nation, sure enough. End of Chapter 30. Recording by Richard Kilmer, Rio Medina, Texas. Chapter 31 of the Gilded Age. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner. Chapter 31. She, the gracious lady, yet no pains did spare, to do him ease or do him remedy. Many restoratives of virtue's rare and costly cordials she did apply to mitigate his stubborn malady. Spencer's Fairy Queen. Mr. Henry Brierly was exceedingly busy in New York, so he wrote Colonel Sellers, but he would drop everything and go to Washington. The Colonel believed that Harry was the prince of lobbyists, a little too sanguine maybe, and given to speculation, but then he knew everybody. The Columbus River navigation scheme was got through almost entirely by his aid. He was needed now to help through another scheme, a benevolent scheme in which Colonel Sellers, through the Hawkins's, had a deep interest. I don't care, you know, he wrote to Harry, so much about the Negroes, but if the government will buy this land it will set up the Hawkins family, make Laura an heiress, and I shouldn't wonder if Bariah Sellers would set up his carriage again. Dillworthy looks at it different, of course. He is all for philanthropy, for benefiting the colored race. There's old Balsam was in the interior, used to be the Reverend Orson Balsam of Iowa. He's made the riffle on the engine. Great engine pacificator and land dealer. Balaam's got the engine to himself, and I suppose that Senator Dillworthy feels that there is nothing left him but the colored man. I do reckon he is the best friend the colored man has got in Washington. Though Harry was in a hurry to reach Washington, he stopped in Philadelphia and prolonged his visit day after day, greatly to the detriment of his business both in New York and Washington. The society at the Bolton's might have been a valid excuse for neglecting business much more important than his. Philip was there. He was a partner with Mr. Bolton now in the new coal venture, concerning which there was much to be arranged in preparation for the spring work, and Philip lingered week after week in the hospitable house. Alice was making a winter visit. Ruth only went to town twice a week to attend lectures, and the household was quite to Mr. Bolton's taste, for he liked the cheer of company and something going on evenings. Harry was cordially asked to bring his traveling bag there, and he did not need urging to do so. Not even the thought of seeing Laura at the capital made him restless in the society of the two young ladies. Two birds in hand are worth one in the bush, certainly. Philip was at home. He sometimes wished he were not so much so. He felt that too much or not enough was taken for granted. Ruth had met him when he first came, with a cordial frankness, and her manner continued entirely unrestrained. She neither sought his company nor avoided it, and this perfectly level treatment irritated him more than any other could have done. It was impossible to advance much in love-making with one who offered no obstacles, had no concealments and no embarrassments, and whom any approach to sentimentality would be quite likely to set into a fit of laughter. Why, Phil, she would say, what puts you in the dumps today? You are as solemn as the upper-benchin meeting. I shall have to call Alice to raise your spirits. My presence seems to depress you. It's not your presence, but your absence when you are present. Began Philip, dolefully, with the idea that he was saying a rather deep thing. But you won't understand me. No, I confess I cannot. If you really are so low as to think that I am absent when I am present, it's a frightful case of aberration. I shall ask Father to bring out Dr. Jackson. Does Alice appear to be present when she is absent? Alice has some human feeling, anyway. She cares for something besides musty books and dry bones. I think, Ruth, when I die, said Philip, intending to be very grim and sarcastic, I'll leave you my skeleton. You might like that. It might be more cheerful than you are at times, Ruth replied with a laugh, but you mustn't do it without consulting Alice. She might not like it. I don't know why you should bring Alice up on every occasion. Do you think I am in love with her? Bless you, no! It never entered my head, are you? The thought of Philip sterling in love is too comical. I thought you were only in love with the Illium coalmine, which you and Father talk about half the time. This is a specimen of Philip's wooing. Confound the girl, he would say to himself, why does she never tease Harry and that young Shepley who comes here? How differently Alice treated him. She at least never mocked him, and it was a relief to talk with one who had some sympathy with him. And he did talk to her by the hour about Ruth. The blundering fellow poured all his doubts and anxieties into her ear, as if she had been the impassive occupant of one of those little wooden confessionals in the cathedral on Logan Square. Has a confessor, if she is young and pretty, any feeling? Does it mend the matter by calling her your sister? Philip called Alice his good sister and talked to her about love and marriage, meaning Ruth, as if sisters could by no possibility have any personal concern in such things. Did Ruth ever speak of him? Did she think Ruth cared for him? Did Ruth care for anybody at Falkill? Did she care for anything except her profession? And so on. Alice was loyal to Ruth and if she knew anything she did not betray her friend. She did not, at any rate, give Philip too much encouragement. What woman under the circumstances would? I can tell you one thing, Philip. She said, if ever Ruth Bolton loves it will be with her whole soul in a depth of passion that will sweep everything before it and surprise even herself. A remark that did not much console Philip, who imagined that only some grand heroism could unlock the sweetness of such a heart. And Philip feared that he wasn't a hero. He did not know out of what materials a woman can construct a hero when she is in the creative mood. Harry skipped into the society with his usual lightness and gaiety. His good nature was inexhaustible and though he liked to relate his own exploits he had a little tact in adapting himself to the tastes of his hearers. He was not long in finding out that Alice liked to hear about Philip and Harry launched out into the career of his friend in the West with a prodigality of invention that would have astonished the chief actor. He was the most generous fellow in the world and picturesque conversation was the one thing in which he never was bankrupt. With Mr. Bolton he was the serious man of business enjoying the confidence of many of the moneyed men in New York whom Mr. Bolton knew and engaged with them in railway schemes and government contracts. Philip, who had so long known Harry, never could make up his mind that Harry did not himself believe that he was a chief actor in all these large operations of which he talked so much. Harry did not neglect to endeavor to make himself agreeable to Mrs. Bolton by paying great attention to the children and by professing the warmest interest in the friend's faith. It always seemed to him the most peaceful religion. He thought it must be much easier to live by an internal light than by a lot of outward rules. He had a dear Quaker aunt in Providence of whom Mrs. Bolton constantly reminded him. He insisted upon going with Mrs. Bolton and the children to the friend's meeting on first day when Ruth and Alice and Philip, world's people, went to a church in town and he sat through the hour of silence with his hat on in most exemplary patients. In short this amazing actor succeeded so well with Mrs. Bolton that she said to Philip one day, ''Thy friend, Henry Brierly, appears to be a very worldly-minded young man. Does he believe in anything?'' ''Oh, yes,'' said Philip, laughing, ''he believes in more things than any other person I ever saw.'' To Ruth Harry seemed to be very congenial. He was never moody for one thing but lent himself with alacrity to whatever her fancy was.  No one apparently could enter more fully into her plans for an independent career. ''My father,'' said Harry, ''was bred a physician and practiced a little before he went into Wall Street. I always had a leaning to the study. There was a skeleton hanging in the closet of my father's study when I was a boy that I used to dress up in old clothes. Oh, I got quite familiar with the human frame.'' ''You must have,'' said Philip. ''Was that where you learned to play the bones? He is a master of those musical instruments, Ruth. He plays well enough to go on the stage.'' ''Philip hates science of any kind and steady application,'' retorted Henry. He didn't fancy Philip's banter and when the letter had gone out and Ruth asked. ''Why don't you take up medicine, Mr. Brierly?'' Harry said. ''I have it in mind. I believe I would begin attending lectures this winter if it weren't for being wanted in Washington. But medicine is particularly women's province.'' ''Why so?'' asked Ruth, rather amused. ''Well, the treatment of disease is a good deal a matter of sympathy. A woman's intuition is better than a man's. Nobody knows anything really you know and a woman can guess a good deal nearer than a man.'' ''You are very complementary to my sex.'' ''But,'' said Henry frankly, ''I should want to choose my doctor.  The disease would be sure to strike in and kill me at sight of her. I think a pretty physician with engaging manners would coax a fellow to live through almost anything.'' ''I am afraid you are a scoffer, Mr. Brierly. On the contrary, I am quite sincere. Wasn't it old What's-his-name that said only the beautiful is useful?'' Whether Ruth was anything more than diverted with Harry's company, Philip could not determine. He scorned at any rate to advance his own interest by any disparaging communications about Harry, both because he could not help liking the fellow himself and because he may have known that he could not more surely create a sympathy for him in Ruth's mind. That Ruth was in no danger of any serious impression he felt pretty sure, felt certain of it when he reflected upon her severe occupation with her profession. ''Hang it,'' he would say to himself, she is nothing but pure intellect anyway. And he only felt uncertain of it when she was in one of her moods of railery with mocking mischief in her eyes. At such times she seemed to prefer Harry's society to his. When Philip was miserable about this, he always took refuge with Alice, who was never moody, and who generally laughed him out of his sentimental nonsense. He felt at his ease with Alice, and was never in want of something to talk about. And he could not account for the fact that he was so often dull with Ruth, with whom of all persons in the world he wanted to appear at his best. Harry was entirely satisfied with his own situation. A bird of passage is always at its ease, having no house to build and no responsibility. He talked freely with Philip about Ruth, an almighty fine girl, he said, but what the deuce she wanted to study medicine for he couldn't see. There was a concert one night at the musical Fund Hall and the forehead arranged to go in and return by the Germantown cars. It was Philip's plan, who had engaged the seats, and promised himself an evening with Ruth walking with her, sitting by her in the hall, and enjoying the feeling of protecting that a man always has of a woman in a public place. He was fond of music, too, in a sympathetic way. At least he knew that Ruth's delight in it would be enough for him. Perhaps he meant to take the advantage of the occasion to say some very serious things. His love for Ruth was no secret to Mrs. Bolton, and he felt almost sure that he should have no opposition in the family. Mrs. Bolton had been cautious in what she said, but Philip inferred everything from her reply to his own questions one day. Has the ever spoken thy mind to Ruth? Why shouldn't he speak his mind and end his doubts? Ruth had been more tricksy than usual that day and in a flow of spirits quite inconsistent it would seem in a young lady devoted to grave studies. Had Ruth a premonition of Philip's intention in his manner? It may be, for when the girls came downstairs ready to walk to the cars and met Philip and Harry in the hall, Ruth said, laughing, �The two tallest must walk together.� And before Philip knew how it happened, Ruth had taken Harry's arm and his evening was spoiled. He had too much politeness and good sense and kindness to show in his manner that he was hit. So he said to Harry, �That's your disadvantage in being short.� And he gave Alice no reason to feel during the evening that she would not have been his first choice for the excursion. But he was none the less chagrined and not a little angry at the turn the affair took. The hall was crowded with the fashion of the town. The concert was one of those fragmentary drearinesses that people endure because they are fashionable. Tours de force on the piano and fragments from operas which have no meaning without the setting with weary pauses of waiting between. There is the comic basso who is so amusing and on such familiar terms with the audience and always sings the barber, the aditudinizing tenor with his languishing, �Oh summer night�, the soprano with her batibati who warbles and trills and runs and fetches her breath and ends with a noble scream that brings down a tempest of applause in the midst of which she backs off the stage smiling and bowing.  The hall is long and narrow and there is only one place of egress. Instantly the audience was on its feet and a rush began for the door. Men shouted, women screamed and panic seized the swaying mass. A second's thought would have convinced everyone that getting out was impossible and that the only effect of a rush would be to crush people to death. But a second's thought was not given.  But the mass was turned towards the door. Women were down and trampled on in the aisles and stout men utterly lost to self-control were mounting the benches as if to run a race over the mass to the entrance. Philip who had forced the girls to keep their seats saw in a flash the new danger and sprang to avert it. In a second more those infuriated men would be over the benches and crushing Ruth and Alice under their boots. He leaped upon the bench in front of them and struck out before him with all his might, felling one man who was rushing on him and checking for an instant the movement or rather parting it and causing it to flow on either side of him. But it was only for an instant. The pressure behind was too great and the next Philip was dashed backwards over the seat. And yet that instant of arrest had probably saved the girls, for as Philip fell the orchestra struck up Yankee Doodle in the liveliest manner. The familiar tune caught the ear of the mass which paused in wonder and gave the conductor's voice a chance to be heard. It's a false alarm. The tumult was over in a minute, and the next laughter was heard and not a few said, I knew it wasn't anything, what fools people are at such a time. The concert was over, however. A good many people were hurt, some of them seriously, and among them Philip Sterling was found bent across the seat, insensible, with his left arm hanging limp and a bleeding wound on his head. When he was carried into the air he revived and said it was nothing. A surgeon was called and it was thought best to drive it once to the Boltons, the surgeon supporting Philip, who did not speak the whole way. His arm was set and his head dressed, and the surgeon said he would come round all right in his mind by mourning. He was very weak. Alice, who was not much frightened and blasted in the hall, was very much unnerved by seeing Philip so pale and bloody. Ruth assisted the surgeon with the utmost coolness and with skillful hands helped to dress Philip's wounds. And there was a certain intentness and fierce energy in what she did that might have revealed something to Philip if he had been in his senses. But he was not or he would not have murmured, let Alice do it she is not it was Ruth's first case. End of Chapter 31 Chapter 32 of The Gilded Age This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording Vigilian Weiss. The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner Chapter 32 Washington's delight in his beautiful sister was measureless. He said that she had always been the queenliest creature in the land. But that she was only commonplace before compared to what she was now, so extraordinary was the improvement wrought by rich fashionable attire.  Other people will judge differently. Indeed, they won't. You'll see there will never be a woman in Washington that can compare with you. You'll be famous within a fortnight, Laura. Everybody will want to know you. You wait. You'll see. Laura wished in her heart that the prophecy might come true. And privately, she even under sharp inspection, and the result had not been unsatisfactory to her. During a week or two, Washington drove about the city every day with her and familiarized her with all of its salient features. She was beginning to feel very much at home with the town itself. And she was also fast acquiring ease with the distinguished people she met at the Dilworthy table and losing what little of country timidity she had brought to life. She noticed with secret pleasure the little start of admiration that always manifested itself in the faces of the guests when she entered the drawing room a raid in evening costume. She took comforting note of the fact that these guests directed a very liberal share of their conversation toward her. She observed with surprise that famous statesmen and soldiers in most part and she was filled with gratification to discover that she on the contrary was making a good many shrewd speeches and now and then a really brilliant one and furthermore that they were beginning to be repeated in social circles about the town. Congress began its sittings and every day or two Washington escorted her to the galleries set apart for lady members of the households of senators and representatives. She saw that many eyes were uplifted toward her face and that first one person and then another called a neighbor's attention to her she was not too dull to perceive that the speeches of some of the younger statesmen were delivered about as much and perhaps more at her than to the presiding officer and she was not sorry to see that the dapper young senator from Iowa came at once and stood in the open space to exhibit his feet as soon as she entered the gallery where she had early learned from common report that his usual custom was to prop them on his desk and enjoy them himself with a selfish disregard of other people's longings. Invitations began to flow in upon her and soon she was fairly in society. The season was now in full bloom and the first select reception was at hand that is to say yes. Senator Dilworthy had become well convinced by this time that his judgment of the country of the Missouri girl had not deceived him. It was plain that she was going to be a peerless missionary in the field of labor he had designed for her and therefore it would be perfectly safe and likewise judicious to send her forth well panoply for her work so it added new and still richer costumes to her wardrobe as well. The first select reception took place at a cabinet ministers or rather a cabinet secretary's mansion. When Laura and the senator arrived about half past nine or ten in the evening the place was already pretty well crowded and the white-gloved Negro servant at the door was still receiving streams of gas the drawing rooms were brilliant with gaslight and as hot as ovens the host and hostess Laura was presented and then she passed on into the maelstrom of bejeweled and richly attired low-necked ladies and white-kid-gloved and steel pen-coded gentlemen and wherever she moved she was followed by a buzz of admiration that was grateful to all her senses so grateful indeed that her white face was tinged and its beauty heightened by a perceptible suffusion of color she caught who is she? superb woman that's the new beauty from the west etc etc whenever she halted she was presently surrounded by ministers generals congressmen and all manner of aristocratic people introductions followed and then the usual original question how do you like Washington Miss Hawkins supplemented by that other usual original question is this your first visit these two were requested conversation generally drifted into calmer channels only to be interrupted at frequent intervals by new introductions and new inquiries as to how Laura liked the capital and whether it was her first visit or not and thus for an hour or more the duchess moved through the crush in a rapture of happiness for her doubts were dead and gone now she knew she could conquer here a familiar face appeared in the midst of the multitude and harry brierly fought his difficult way to her side shouting her gratification so to speak oh this is a happiness tell me my dear Miss Hawkins shh I know what you're going to ask I do like Washington I like it ever so much no but I was going to ask yes I'm coming to it coming to it as fast as I can it is my first visit I think you should know that yourself and straight away the wave of the crowd swept her beyond his reach now what can that girl mean of course she likes Washington I'm not such a dummy as to have to ask her that and as to it's being her first visit why bang it she knows that I knew it was does she think I've turned idiot curious girl anyway but how do they swarm about her she is the reigning bell of Washington after this night she'll know 500 of the heaviest guns in the town before this night's nonsense is over and this isn't even the beginning just as I used to say she'll be a card in the matter of yes sir she shall turn the men's heads and I'll turn the women's what a team that will be in politics here I wouldn't take a quarter of a million for what I can do in this present session no indeed I wouldn't now here I don't altogether like this that insignificant secretary of legation is why she's smiling on him as if he and now on the admiral now she's illuminating that stuffy congressman from Massachusetts vulgar ungrammatical shovel maker greasy shades I don't like this sort of thing she doesn't appear to be much distressed about me she hasn't looked this way once alright my bird of paradise if it suits you go on but I think I know your sex I'll go to smiling around a little two and see what effect that will have on you and he did smile around a little and got as near to her as he could to watch the effect but the scheme was a failure for him and so he could not flirt with any spirit he could only talk disjointedly he could not keep his eyes in the charmers he talked to he grew irritable jealous and very unhappy he gave up his enterprise leaned his shoulder against a fluted pilaster and pouted while he kept watch upon Laura's every movement his other shoulder stole the bloom for being an egotistical imbecile an hour ago he had thought to take this country last under his protection and show her life and enjoy her wonder and delight and here she was immersed in the marvel up to her eyes and just a trifle more at home in it than he was himself and now his angry comments ran on again now she's sweet in an old brother and he he's inviting her to the congressional prayer meeting overlook that and now it's splurge of New York and now it's batters of New Hampshire and now the vice president well I may as well adjourn I've got enough but he hadn't he got as far as the door and then struggled back to take one more look hating himself all the while for his weakness toward midnight when supper was announced the crowd thronged to the supper room where a long table was decked out where we passed but which consisted of things better calculated to feast the eye than the appetite the ladies were soon seated in files along the wall and in groups here and there and the colored waiters filled the plates and glasses and the male guests moved hither and thither conveying them to the privileged sex Harry took an ice and stood up by the table with other gentlemen and listened to the buzz of conversation while he ate from these remarks he learned a good deal about Laura that was news to him for instance that she was of a distinguished western family that she was highly educated that she was very rich and a great landed heiress that she was not a professor of religion and yet was a Christian in the truest and best sense of the word for her whole heart was devoted to the accomplishment of a great and noble enterprise none other than the sacrificing of her landed estates the uplifting of the downtrodden negro and the turning of his erring feet into the way of light and righteousness Harry observed that as soon as one listener had absorbed the story he turned about and delivered it to his next neighbor and the latter individual straight away passed it on and thus he saw traveled around to the gentlemen and overflow rearward among the ladies he could not trace it backward to his fountain head and so he could that started it one thing annoyed Harry a great deal and that was the reflection that he might have been in Washington days and days ago and thrown his fascinations about Laura with permanent effect while she was new and strange to the capital instead of dawdling in Philadelphia to no purpose he feared he had missed a trick as he expressed it he only found one little opportunity of speaking again with Laura before the evening's festivities ended and then for the first time in years his airy self complacency failed him his tongue's easy confidence foresook it in great measure and he was conscious of an unheroic timidity he was glad to get away and find a place where he could despise himself in private and try to grow his clipped plumes again when Laura reached home she was tired but exultant and Senator Dillworthy was pleased and satisfied he called Laura my daughter next morning and gave her some pin money as he termed it and she sent $150 of it to her mother and loaned a trifle to Colonel Sellers then the senator had a long private conference with Laura and unfolded certain plans of his for the good of the country and religion and the poor and temperance and showed her how she could assist him in developing these worthy and noble enterprises Chapter 33 of the Gilded Age This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Richard Kilmer The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner Chapter 33 Laura soon discovered that there were three distinct aristocracies in Washington One of these nicknamed the antiques consisted of cultivated hybrid old families who looked back with pride upon an ancestry that had been always great in the nation's councils and its wars from the birth of the republic downward into this select circle it was difficult to gain admission Number two was the aristocracy of the middle ground of which more anon Number three lay beyond of it we will say a word here we will call it the aristocracy of the Parva News as indeed the general public did official position no matter how obtained entitled a man to a place in it and carried his family with him no matter whence they sprang great wealth gave a man a still higher and nobler place in it then did official position if this wealth had been acquired conspicuous ingenuity with just a pleasant little spice of illegality about it all the better this aristocracy was fast and not adverse to ostentation the aristocracy of the antiques ignored the aristocracy of the Parva News the Parva News laughed at the antiques and secretly envied them there were certain important society customs which one in Laura's position understood for instance when a lady of any prominence comes to one of our cities and takes up her residence all the ladies of her grade favor her in turn with an initial call giving their cards to the servant at the door by way of introduction they come singly sometimes sometimes in couples and always in elaborate full dress they talk two minutes and a quarter and then go if the lady calls desires of further acquaintance she must return the visit within two weeks to neglect it beyond that time means let the matter drop but if she does return the visit within two weeks it then becomes the other party's privilege to continue the acquaintance or drop it she signifies her willingness to continue it by calling again any time within 12 months after that if the parties go on calling upon each other once a year in large cities that is sufficient and the acquaintance holds good the thing goes along smoothly now the annual visits are made and returned with peaceful regularity and bland satisfaction although it is not necessary that the two ladies shall actually see each other oftener than once every few years their cards preserve the intimacy and keep the acquaintance intact for instance Mrs. A pays her annual visit sits in her carriage and sends in her card with the lower right hand corner turned down which signifies that she is called in person Mrs. B sends down word that she is engaged or wishes to be excused or if she is a parvenu and lowbred she perhaps sends word that she is not at home very good Mrs. A drives on if Mrs. A's daughter marries or a child is born to the family Mrs. B calls sends in her card with the upper left hand corner turned down and then goes along about her affairs for that inverted corner means congratulations if Mrs. B's husband falls downstairs and breaks his neck Mrs. A calls leaves her card with the upper right hand corner turned down and then takes her departure this corner means condolence it is very necessary to get the corners right else one may unintentionally condol with a friend on a wedding or congratulate her upon a funeral if either lady is about to leave the city she goes to the other's house and leaves her card with ppc engraved under the name which signifies pay parting call but enough of etiquette Laura was early instructed in the mysteries of the city life by a competent mentor and thus was reserved from troublesome mistakes the first fashionable call she received from a member of the ancient nobility otherwise the antiques was of a pattern with all she received from that limb of the aristocracy afterwards this call was paid by Mrs. Major General Folk Folkerson and daughter they drove up at one antiquated vehicle with a faded coat of arms on the panels an aged white-walled negro coachman on the box and a younger darky beside him the footman both of these servants were dressed in dull brown livery that had seen considerable service the ladies entered the drawing room in full character that is to say with Elizabethan stateliness on the part of the dowager and an easy grace and dignity on the part of the young lady that had a nameless something about it that suggested conscious superiority the dresses of both ladies were exceedingly rich as to material but as notably modest as to color and ornament all parties having seated themselves the dowager delivered herself of a remark that was not unusual in its form and yet it came from her lips with the impressiveness of scripture the weather has been great Miss Hawkins it has indeed said Laura the climate seems to be variable it is its nature of old here said the daughter stating it apparently has a fact only and by her manner waving aside all personal responsibility on account of it is it not so mama quite so my child do you like winter Miss Hawkins she said like as if she had an idea that its dictionary meaning was approve of not as well as summer though I think all seasons have their charms it is a very just remark the general held similar views he considered snow in winter proper sultriness in summer legitimate frosts in the autumn the same and rain and spring not objectionable he was not an exacting man and I call it thunder you remember child your father always admired thunder he adored it no doubt it reminded him of battle said Laura yes I think perhaps it did he had a great respect for nature he often said there was something striking about the ocean you remember him saying that daughter yes often mother I remember it very well and hurricanes he took a great interest in hurricanes animals dogs especially hunting dogs also comets I think we all have our predilections I think it is this that gives variety to our tastes Laura coincided with this view do you find it hard and lonely to be so far from your home and friends Miss Hawkins I do find it depressing sometimes but then more of sunshine than shadow Washington is not a dull city in the season said the young lady we have some very good society indeed and one need not be at a loss for means to pass the time pleasantly are you fond of watering places Miss Hawkins I have really had no experience of them but I have always felt a strong desire to see something in that respect said the Dowager it is a tedious distance to Newport but there is no help for it Laura said to herself Long Branch in Cape May are nearer than Newport doubtless these places are low I'll feel my way a little and see then she said aloud why I thought that Long Branch there was no need the Dowager said nobody goes there Miss Hawkins at least only persons of no position in society and the president she added with tranquility Newport is damp and cold and windy and excessively disagreeable said the daughter but it is very select one cannot be facitious about minor matters when one has no choice the visit had spun out both ladies rose with grave dignity and conferred upon Laura a formal invitation to call and then retired from the conference Laura remained in the drawing room and left them to pilot themselves out of the house an inhospitable thing it seemed to her but then she was following her instructions she stood steeped in reverie awhile and then she said I think I could always enjoy icebergs as scenery but not as company still she knew these two people by reputation and was aware that they were not icebergs when they were in their own waters and amid their legitimate surroundings but on the contrary were people to be respected for their stainless characters and esteemed for their social virtues and their benevolent impulses she thought at a pity that they had to be such changed and dreary creatures the first call Laura received from the other extremity of the Washington aristocracy followed close upon the heels of the one we have just been describing the callers this time were the Honorable Mrs. Oliver Higgins the Honorable Mrs. Patric Orilet Miss Brzee Orilet Mrs. Peter Gashley Miss Gashley and Miss Emmeline Gashley the three carriages arrived at the same moment from different directions they were new and wonderfully shiny and the brasses on the harnesses were highly polished and bore complicated monograms there were showy coats of arms too with Latin mottos the coachmen and footmen were clad in bright new livery of striking colors and they had black rosettes with shaving brushes projecting above them on the sides of their stove-pipe hats when the visitors swept into the drawing room they filled the place with a suffocating sweetness procured at the perfumers their costumes as to architecture were the latest fashion intensified they were rainbow-hued they were hung with jewels chiefly diamonds it would have been plain to any eye that it had cost something to upholster these women the Honorable Mrs. Oliver Higgins was the wife of a delegate from a distant territory a gentleman who had kept the principal saloon and sold the best whiskey in the principal village of his wilderness and so of course was recognized as the first man of his Commonwealth and its fittest representative he was a man of paramount influence at home for he was public-spirited he was chief of the fire department he had an admirable command of profane language and had killed several parties his shirt fronts were always immaculate his boots daintily polished and no man could lift the foot and fire a dead shot at a stray speck of dirt on it with a white handkerchief with a finer grace than he his watch chain weighed a pound the gold in his finger ring was worth $45 he wore a diamond cluster pin and he parted his hair behind he had always been regarded as the most elegant gentleman in his territory and it was conceded by all that no man thereabouts was anywhere near as equal in the telling of an obscene story except the venerable white-haired governor himself the Honorable Higgins had not come to serve his country in Washington for nothing the appropriation which he had engineered through Congress for the maintenance of the Indians would have made all of those savages rich if it had ever got to them the Honorable Mrs. Higgins was a picturesque woman and a fluent talker and she held a tolerably high station among the Parva news her English was fair enough as a general thing though being of New York origin she had the fashion peculiar to many natives of that city of pronouncing saw and law as if they were felt saw and law petroleum was the agent that had suddenly transformed the gashleys from modest hard-working country village folk into loud aristocrats and ornaments of the city the Honorable Patrick Orilet was a wealthy Frenchman from Cork not that he was wealthy when he first came from Cork but just the reverse when he first landed in New York with his wife he had only halted the castle garden for a few minutes to receive an exhibit papers showing that he had resided in this country two years and then he voted the Democratic ticket and went uptown to hunt a house he found one and then went to work as an assistant to an architect and builder carrying a hard all day and studying politics evenings industry and economy soon enabled him to start a low rum shop in a foul locality and this gave him political influence in our country it is always our first care to see that our people have the opportunity of voting for their choice of men to represent and govern them we do not permit our great officials to appoint the little officials we prefer to have so tremendous a power as that in our own hands we hold it safest to elect our judges and everybody else in our cities the ward meetings elect delegates to the nominating conventions and instruct them whom to nominate the publicans and the retainers rule the ward meetings for everybody else hates the worry of politics and stays at home the delegates from the ward meetings organize as a nominating convention and make up a list of candidates one convention offering a democratic and another a republican list of incorruptibles and then the great meek public comes forward at the proper time make unhampered choice and bless heaven that they live in a free land where no form of despotism can ever intrude Patrick O'Reilly as his name then stood created friends and influence very fast for he was always on hand at the police courts to give straw bail for his customers or establish an alibi for them in case they had been beating anybody to death on his premises consequently he became a political leader and was elected to a petty office under the city government out of a meager salary he soon saved enough money to open quite a stylish liquor saloon higher uptown with a pharaoh bank attached and plenty of capital to conduct it with this gave him fame and great respectability the position of alderman was forced upon him and it was just the same as presenting him a gold mine he had fine horses now and closed up his whiskey mill by and by he became a large contractor for city work and was a bosom friend of a great and good William M. Weed himself who had sold in twenty million six hundred thousand dollars from the city and was a man so envied so honored so adored indeed that when the sheriff went to his office to arrest him as a felon the sheriff blushed the papers made a picture of the scene and spoke of the matter in such a way as to show that the editor regretted that the offence of an arrest had been offered to so an exalted a personage as Mr. Weed Mr. O'Reilly furnished shingle nails to the new courthouse at three thousand dollars a keg and eighteen gross of sixty cent thermometers at fifteen hundred dollars a dozen the controller and the board who was simply ignorant but not criminal signed them when they were paid Mr. O'Reilly's admirers gave him a solitaire diamond pin of the size of a fill-bear an imitation of the liberality of Mr. Weed's friends and then Mr. O'Reilly retired from active service and amused himself with buy in real estate at enormous figures and holding it in other people's names and the publisher and called Weed and O'Reilly thieves were upon the people rose as one man voting repeatedly and elected the two gentlemen to their proper theater of action the New York Legislature the newspapers clamored and the courts proceeded to try the new legislators for their small irregularities our admirable jury system enabled the persecuted from a neighbor in asylum and three graduates from Sing Sing and presently they walked forth with characters that vindicated the legislature was called upon to spew them forth a thing what's the legislature declined to do it was like asking children to repudiate their own father it was the legislature of the modern pattern being now wealthy and distinguished Mr. O'Reilly still bearing a slate of honorable attached to his name for titles never die in America although we do take a Republican pride in poking fun at such trifles sailed for Europe with his family they traveled all about turning their noses up at everything and not finding it a difficult thing to do either because nature had originally given these features a cast in that direction and finally they established themselves in Paris that paradise of Americans of their sort they stayed there two years and learned to speak English with a foreign accent not that it hadn't always had a foreign accent which was indeed the case but now the nature of it was changed finally they returned home and became ultra fashionables they landed here as honorable Patrick O'Reilly and family and so are known until this day Laura provided seats for her visitors and they immediately launched forth into a breezy sparkling conversation with that easy confidence which is to be found only among persons accustomed to high life I've been intending to call sooner Miss Hawkins said the honorable Mrs. O'Reilly but the weather has been so horrid how do you like Washington? Laura liked it very well indeed Mrs. Gashley is it your first visit? Yes it was her first visit all indeed Mrs. O'Reilly I'm afraid you'll despise the weather Miss Hawkins it's perfectly awful it always is I tell Mr. O'Reilly I can't and I won't put up with any such a climate if we were obliged to do it I wouldn't mind it but we are not obliged to and so I don't see the use of it sometimes it's real pitiful the way the children pine for Paris don't look so sad mancherie poor child she can't hear Paris mentioned without getting the blues Mrs. Gashley well I should think so Mrs. O'Reilly a body lives in Paris but a body only stays here I don't on Paris I'd rather scrimp it along on ten thousand dollars a year there than suffer and worry here on a real decent income Miss Gashley well then I wish you'd take us back mother I sure hate this stupid country enough even if it is our dear native land Miss Emeline Gashley what and leave poor Johnny Peterson behind then airy genio laugh applaud it this Sally Miss Gashley sister I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself Miss Emeline oh you need and ruffle your feathers so I was only joking he don't mean anything by coming to the house every evening only comes to see mother of course that's all general laughter Miss G prettily confused Emeline how can you Mrs. G let your sister alone Emeline I never saw such a tease Mrs. O'Reilly what lovely corals you have Miss Hawkins just look at them Bridget dear I have a great passion for corals it's a pity they're getting a little common I have some elegant ones not as elegant as yours though but of course I don't wear them now Laura I suppose they're rather common but still I have a great affection for these because they were given to me by a dear old friend of our family named the Murphy he was a very charming man but very eccentric we always supposed he was an Irishman but after he got rich he went a year or two and when he came back you would have been amused to see how interested he was in a potato he asked what it was now you know that when Providence shapes a mouth especially for the accommodation of a potato you can detect that fact at a glance when that mouth is in repose foreign travel can never remove that sign but he was a very delightful gentleman and his little foible did not hurt the shams I suppose there is a sham somewhere about every individual if we could manage to ferret it out I would so like to go to France I suppose our society here compares very favorably with French society does it not Mrs. Aurelès Mrs. Oh not by any means Miss Honkins French society is much more elegant much more so Laura I am so sorry to hear that I suppose you deteriorated of late Mrs. Oh very much indeed there are people in society here that really have no more money to live on than what some of us pay for servant hire still I won't say what some of them are very good people and respectable too Laura the old families seem to be holding themselves aloof from what I hear I suppose you seldom meet in society now the people you used to be with twelve or fifteen years ago Mrs. Oh oh no hardly ever Mr. O'Reilly kept his first rum mill and protected his customers from the law in those days and this turn of the conversation was rather uncomfortable to madam than otherwise Honorable Mrs. Higgins is French was health good now Mrs. Aurelès Mrs. Oh thankful for the intervention not very a body couldn't expected he was always delicate especially his lungs and this odious climate tells on him strong now after Paris which is so mild Mrs. H I should think so husband says Percy will die if he don't have a change and so I'm going to swap around a little and see what can be done I saw a lady from Florida last week and she recommended Key West I told her Percy couldn't abide winds as he was threatened with a pulmonary affection and then she said Try St. Augustine it's an awful distance 10 or 1200 miles they say but then in a case of this kind a body can't stand back for trouble you know Mrs. Oh no of course that's off if Francois don't get better soon we've got to look out for some other place or else Europe we've thought some of the hot springs but I don't know it's a great responsibility and a body wants to go cautious is Hildebrand about again Mrs. Gashley Mrs. G yes but that's about all it was in digestion you know and it looks as if it was chronic and you know I do dread dyspepsia we've all been worried the deal about him the doctor recommended baked apple and spoiled meat and I think it's done him good it's about the only thing that will stay on his stomach nowadays we have Dr. Chevel now who's your doctor Mrs. Higgins Mrs. H well we had Dr. Spooner a good while but he runs so much to a medics which I think are weakening that we changed off and took doctor leathers we like him very much he has a fine european reputation too we have him taken out in the back yard for an airing every afternoon with nothing on at all Mrs. O. and Mrs. G what? Mrs. H as true as I'm sitting here and it actually helped him for two or three days it did indeed but after that the doctor said it seemed to be too severe so he fell back on hot foot baths at night and cold showers in the morning but I don't think there can be any good sound help for him in such a climate as this I believe we are going to lose him if we don't make a change Mrs. O I suppose you heard of the fright we had two weeks ago last saturday no why that is strange but come to remember you've all been away to Richmond Francois tumbled from the skylight in the second story hall cleaned down to the first floor everybody mercy Mrs. O yes indeed and broke two of his ribs everybody what? Mrs. O just as true as you live first we thought he must be injured internally it was fifteen minutes past eight in the evening of course we were all distracted in a moment everybody was flying everywhere and nobody doing anything worth anything by and by I flung out next door and dragged in Dr. Sprague president of the medical university no time to go for our own doctor of course and the minute he saw Francois he said send for your own physician madam said it has crossed as a bear too and turned right on his heel and cleared out without doing a thing everybody that mean contemptible brute Mrs. O well you may say it I was nearly out of my wits by this time but we hurried off the servants after our own doctor she was a photograph mother she was in New York and rushed down on the first train and when the doctor got there lo and behold you he found that Francois had broken one of his legs too everybody goodness Mrs. O yes so he set his leg and banished it up and fixed his ribs and gave him a dose of something to quiet down his excitement and put him to sleep poor thing he was trembling and frightened to death it was pitiful to see him we had him in my bed Mr. Orelé slept in the guest room and I laid down beside Francois but not to sleep bless you no Bridget and I sat up all night and the doctors stayed till two in the morning bless his old heart when mother got there she was so used up with anxiety that she had to go to bed and have the doctor but when she found that Francois was not an immediate danger she rallied and by night she was able to take a watch herself well for three days and nights we three never left that bedside only to take an hour's nap at a time and then the doctor said Francois was out of danger and if ever there was a thankful set in this world it was us Laura's respect for these women had augmented during this conversation naturally enough affection and devotion are qualities that are able to adorn and render beautiful a character that is otherwise unattractive and even repulsive Mrs. Gashley I do believe I would have died if I had been in your place Mrs. Orelé the time Hildebrand was so low with the pneumonia Emmeline and me were all alone with him most of the time and we never took a minute's sleep for as much as two days and nights it was at Newport we wouldn't trust hired nurses one afternoon he had a fit and jumped up and run out on the portico of the hotel with nothing in the world on and the wind blowing like an ice and we after him scared the death and when the ladies and gentlemen saw that he had a fit every lady scattered for her room and not a gentleman lifted his hand to help the wretches well after that his life hung by a thread for as much as ten days and the minute he was out of danger Emmeline and me just went to bed sick and worn out I never want to pass through such a time again poor dear Francois which leg did he break Mrs. Orelé Mrs. O it was his right hand hind leg jump down Francois dear and show the ladies what a cruel limp you've got yet Francois demurred but being coaxed and delivered kindly upon the floor he performed very satisfactorily with his right hand hind leg in the air all were affected even Laura but hers was an affection of the stomach the country bread girl had not suspected that the little whining ten ounce black and tan reptile clad in a red embroidered pygmy blanket and reposing in Mrs. Orelé's lap all through the visit was the individual whose sufferings had been stirring the dormant generosity of her nature she said poor little creature you might have lost him Mrs. O O pray don't mention it Miss Hawkins it gives me such a turn Laura and Hildebrand and Percy are they are they like this one Mrs. G no Hilly has considerable sky blood in him I believe Mrs. H Percy's the same only his two months and ten days older and has his ears cropped his father Martin Farquhar Tupper was sickly and died young but he was the sweetest disposition his mother had heart disease but was very gentle and resigned and a wonderful ratter as impossible and exasperating as this conversation may sound to a person who is not an idiot it is scarcely in any respect an exaggeration of one which one of us actually listened to in an American drawing room otherwise we could not venture to put such a chapter in a book which professes to deal with social possibilities the authors so carried away had the visitors become by their interest attracting to the discussion of family matters that their stay had been prolonged to a very improper unfashionable length but they suddenly recollected themselves now and took their departure Laura's scorn was boundless the more she thought of these people and their extraordinary talk the more offensive they seemed to her and yet she confessed that if one was choose between the two extreme aristocracies it might be best on the whole looking at things from a strictly business point of view she was in Washington solely to compass a certain matter and to do it at any cost and these people might be useful to her while it was plain that her purpose and her schemes for pushing them would not find favor in the eyes of the antiques if it came to choice and it might come to that sooner or later she believed she could come to a decision without much difficulty or many pangs but the best aristocracy of the three Washington castes and really the most powerful by far was that of the middle ground it was made up of the families of public men from nearly every state in the union men who held positions in both the executive and legislative branches of the government and whose characters had been for years blemishless both at home and at the capital these gentlemen and their households were ostentatious people they were educated and refined they troubled themselves but little about the two other orders of nobility but moved serenely in their wide orbit confident in their own strength and well aware of the potency of their influence they had no troublesome appearances to keep up no rivalries which they cared to distress themselves about no jealousies to fret over they could afford to mind affairs and leave other combinations to do the same or do otherwise just as they chose they were people who were beyond reproach and that was sufficient Senator Dillworthy never came in the collision with any of these factions he labored for them all and with them all he said that all men were brethren and all were entitled to the honest unselfish help and countenance of a Christian laborer in the public vineyard Laura concluded after reflection to let circumstances determine the course it might be best for her to pursue has regarded the several aristocracies now it might occur to the reader that perhaps Laura had been somewhat rudely suggestive in her remarks to Mrs. Aurelay when the subject of corals was under discussion but it did not occur to Laura herself she was not a person of exaggerated refinement the society and the influences that had formed her character had not been of a nature calculated to make her so she thought that give and take was fair play and that to parry an offensive thrust with sarcasm was a neat and legitimate thing to do she sometimes talked to people in a way which some ladies would consider actually shocking but Laura rather prided herself upon some of her exploits of that character we are sorry we cannot make her a faultless heroine but we cannot for the reason that she was human she considered herself a superior conversationist long ago when the possibility had first been brought before her mind that someday she might move in Washington society she had recognized the fact that practice conversational powers would be a necessary weapon in that field she had also recognized the fact that since her dealings there must be mainly with men and men whom she supposed to be exceptionally cultivated and able she would need heavier shot in her magazine than mere brilliant society nothings whereupon she had at once entered upon a tireless and elaborate course of reading and had never since ceased to devote every unoccupied moment to this sort of preparation having now acquired a happy smattering of various information she used it with good effect she passed for a singularly well informed woman in Washington the quality of her literary tastes had necessarily undergone constant improvement under this regime and has necessarily also the duality of her language had improved though it cannot be denied that now and then her former condition of life betrayed itself in just perceptible in elegancies of expression and lapses of grammar End of Chapter 33 Recording by Richard Kilmer Rio Medina, Texas Chapter 34 of the Gilded Age This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Richard Kilmer The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner Chapter 34 When Laura had been in Washington three months she was still the same person in one respect that she was when she first arrived there that is to say she still bore the name of Laura Hawkins Otherwise she was perceptibly changed She had arrived in a state of grievous uncertainty as to what manner of woman she was physically and intellectually as compared with eastern women She was well satisfied now that her beauty was confessed her mind great above the average and her powers of fascination rather extraordinary So she was at ease upon those points When she arrived she was possessed of habits of economy and not possessed of money Now she dressed elaborately gave but little thought to the cost of things and was very well fortified financially She kept her mother in Washington freely supplied with money and did the same by Colonel Sellers who always insisted upon giving his note for loans with interest He was rigid upon that She must take interest and one of the Colonel's greatest satisfactions was to go over his accounts and note what a handsome sum this accruing interest amounted to and what a comfortable though modest support it would yield Laura in case reverses should overtake her In truth he could not help feeling that he was an efficient shield for her against poverty and so if her expensive ways ever troubled him for a brief moment he presently dismissed the thought and said to himself go on even if she loses everything she is still safe this interest will always afford her a good easy income Laura was on excellent terms with a great many members of Congress and there was an undercurrent of suspicion in some quarters that she was one of the detested class known as lobbyists but what Bell could escape the slander in such a city Fair-minded people declined to condemn her on mere suspicion and so the injurious talk made no very damaging headway she was very gay now and very celebrated and she might well expect to be assailed by many kinds of gossip she was growing used to celebrity and could already sit calm and seemingly unconscious under the fire of fifty Laura Nets in a theater or even overhear the low voice that's she on the street without betraying annoyance the whole air was full of a vague vast scheme which was to eventuate infilling Laura's pockets with millions of money some had one idea of the scheme and some another but nobody had any exact knowledge upon the subject all that anyone felt sure about was that Laura's landed estates were princely in value and was anxious to get hold of them for public purposes and that Laura was willing to make the sale but not at all anxious about the matter and not at all in a hurry it was whispered that Senator Dillworthy was a stumbling block in the way of an immediate sale because he was resolved that the government should not have the lands except with the understanding that they should be devoted to not what they were devoted to it was said a world a very different gossip to the contrary not withstanding but there were several other heirs and they would be guided entirely by the senator's wishes and finally many people veered that while it would be easy to sell the lands to the government for the benefit of the Negro by resorting to the usual methods of influencing votes Senator Dillworthy was unwilling to have the sole charity sullied by any taint of corruption he was resolved that not a vote should be bought nobody could get anything definite from Laura about these matters and so gossip had defeated itself chiefly upon guesses but the effect of it all was that Laura was considered to be very wealthy and likely to be vastly more so in a little while consequently she was much courted her wealth attracted many suitors perhaps they came to worship her riches but they remained to worship her some of the noblest men of the time succumbed to her fascinations she frowned upon no-lover when he made his first advances but by and by when she was hopelessly enthralled he learned from her own lips that she had formed a resolution never to marry then he would go away hating the whole sex and she would calmly add his scalp to her string while she mused upon the bitter day that Colonel Selby trampled her love and her pride in the dust in time it came to be said that her way was paved with broken hearts poor Washington gradually woke up to the fact that he too was an intellectual marvel as well as his gifted sister he could not conceive how it had come about it did not occur to him that gossip about his family's great wealth had anything to do with it he could not account for it by any process of reasoning and was simply obliged to accept the fact and give up trying to solve the riddle he found himself dragged into society and courted wondered at and envied very much as if he were one of those foreign barbers who flipped over here now and then with a self conferred title of nobility and marry some rich fool's absurd daughter sometimes at a dinner party or a reception he would find himself the center of interest and feel unutterably uncomfortable in the discovery being obliged to say something he would mine his brain and put in a blast and when the smoke and flying debris had cleared away the result would be what seemed to him but a poor little thing to do and then he would be astonished to see everybody has lost an admiration as if he had brought up a ton or two of virgin gold every remark he made delighted his hearers and compelled their applause he overheard people say he was exceedingly bright they were chiefly mamas and marriageable young ladies he found that some of his good things were being repeated about the town of this kind he would keep that particular remark in mind and analyze it at home in private at first he could not see that the remark was anything better than a parrot might originate but by and by he began to feel that perhaps he underrated his powers and after that he used to analyze his good things with a deal of comfort and find in them a brilliancy which would have been and then he would make a note of that good thing and say it again the first time he found himself in a new company presently he had saved up quite a repertoire of brilliancies and after that he confined himself to repeating these and ceased to originate any more least he might injure his reputation by an unlucky effort he was constantly having young ladies thrust upon his notice at receptions and left upon his hands at parties and in time he began to feel that he was being deliberately persecuted in this way and after that he could not enjoy society because of his constant dread of these female ambushes and surprises he was distressed to find that nearly every time he showed a young lady a polite attention he was straight away reported to be engaged to her and as some of these reports got into the newspapers occasionally he had to keep writing Louise that they were lies and she must believe in him and not mind them or allow them to grieve her Washington was as much in the dark as anybody with regard to the great wealth that was hovering in the air and seemingly on the point of tumbling into the family pocket Laura would give him no satisfaction all she would say was wait be patient you will see but will it be soon Laura it will not be very long I think but what makes you think so I have reasons and good ones just wait and be patient but is it going to be as much as people say it is what do they say it is oh ever so much millions yes it will be a great sum but how great Laura will it be millions yes you may call it that yes it will be millions does that satisfy you splendid I can wait I can wait patiently ever so patiently once I was near selling the land for $20,000 once for $30,000 once after that for $7,000 and once for $40,000 but something always told me not to do it what a fool I would have been to sell it for such a beggarly trifle it is the land that's to bring the money isn't it Laura maybe that much can't you yes I don't mind saying that much it is the land but mind don't ever hint that you got it from me don't mention me in the matter at all Washington all right I won't millions isn't it splendid I mean to look around for a building lot a lot with fine ornamental shrubbery and all that sort of thing I will do it today and I might as well see an architect too at a plan for a house I don't intend to spare any expense I mean to have the noblest house that money can build then after a pause he did not notice Laura's smiles Laura would you lay the main hall in in caustic tiles or just in fancy patterns of hardwood Laura laughed a good old fashioned laugh that had more of a former natural self in it than any sound that had issued from her mouth in many weeks she said you don't change Washington you still begin the squander of fortune right and left the instant you hear of it in the distance you never wait till the foremost dollar of it arrives within a hundred miles of you and she kissed her brother goodbye and left him well trained in his dreams so to speak he got up and walked the floor feverishly during two hours when he sat down he had married Louise built a house reared a family married them off spent upwards of eight hundred thousand dollars on mirror luxuries and died worth twelve millions end of chapter 34 recording by Richard Kilmer Real Medina, Texas chapter 35 of The Gilded Age this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner chapter 35 Laura went downstairs knocked at the study door and entered scarcely waiting for the response Senator Dillworthy was alone with an open Bible in his hand upside down Laura smiled and said forgetting her acquired correctness of speech it is only me ah come in sit down and the senator closed the book and laid it down I wanted to see you time to report progress from the committee of the whole and the senator beamed with his own congressional wit in the committee of the whole things are working very well we have made ever so much progress in a week I believe that you and I together could run this government beautifully uncle the senator beamed again he liked to be called uncle by this beautiful woman did you see Hopperson last night after the congressional prayer meeting yes he came he's a kind of a he is one of my friends Laura he's a fine man a very fine man I don't know any man in Congress I'd sooner go to for help in any Christian work what did he say oh he beat around a little he said he should like to help the Negro his heart went out to the Negro and all that plenty of them say that but he was a little afraid of the Tennessee land bill if senator Dillworthy wasn't in it he should suspect there was a fraud on the government he said that did he yes and he said he felt he couldn't vote for it he was shy not shy child cautious he's a very cautious man I have been with him a great deal on conference committees he wants reasons good ones didn't you show him he was an error about the bill I did I went over the whole thing I had to tell him some of the side arrangements some of the you didn't mention me oh no I told him you were daft about the Negro and the philanthropy part of it as you are daft is a little strong Laura but you know that I wouldn't touch this bill if it were not for the public good and for the good of the colored race much as I am interested in the heirs of this property and would like to have them succeed Laura looked a little incredulous and the senator proceeded don't misunderstand me I don't deny that it is for the interest of all of us that this bill should go through and it will I have no concealments from you but I have one principle in my public life which I should like you to keep in mind it has always been my guide I never push a private interest if it is not justified and ennobled by some larger public good I doubt Christian would be justified in working for his own salvation if it was not to aid in the salvation of his fellow men the senator spoke with feeling and then added I hope you showed Hopperson that our motives were pure yes and he seemed to have a new light on the measure I think we'll vote for it I hope so his name will give tone and strength to it I knew you would only have to show him that it was just and pure in order to secure his cordial support I think I convinced him yes, I am perfectly sure he will vote right now that's good said the senator smiling and rubbing his hands is there anything more you'll find some changes in that I guess handing the senator a printed list of names those checked off are all right ah hmm, running his eye down the list that's encouraging what is the C before some of the names the BB those are my private marks that C stands for convinced with argument the BB is a general sign for a relative you see it stands before three of the honorable committee I expect to see the chairman of the committee today Mr. Buckstone so you must, he ought to be seen without any delay Buckstone is a worldly sort of fellow but he has charitable impulses if we secure him we shall have a favorable report by the committee and it will be a great thing to be able to state that fact quietly where it will do good oh I saw senator balloon he will help us I suppose balloon is a wholehearted fellow I can't help loving that man for all his drollery and waggishness he puts on an air of levity sometimes but there ain't a man in the senate knows the scriptures as he does he did not make any objections not exactly he said shall I tell you what he said asked Laura glancing furtively at him certainly he said he had no doubt it was a good thing if senator dillworthy was in it it would pay to look into it the senator laughed but rather feebly and said balloon is always full of his jokes I explained it to him he said it was all right he only wanted a word with you continued Laura he is a handsome old gentleman and he is gallant for an old man my daughter said the senator with a grave look I trust there was nothing free in his manner free repeated Laura with indignation in her face there there child I meant nothing balloon talks a little freely sometimes with men but he is right at heart his term expires next year and I fear we shall lose him he seemed to be packing the day I was there his rooms were full of dry goods boxes into which his servant was crowding all manner of old clothes and stuff I suppose he will paint pub docks on them and frank them home that's good economy isn't it yes yes but child all congressmen do that I may not be strictly honest indeed it is not unless he had some public documents mixed in with the clothes it's a funny world goodbye uncle I'm going to see that chairman and humming a cheery opera air she departed to her room to dress for going out before she did that however she took out her notebook and was soon deep in its contents marking, dashing, erasing, figuring and talking to herself free I wonder what Dilworthy does think of me anyway 2 8 17 21 it takes a heap for a majority wouldn't Dilworthy open his eyes if he knew some of the things balloon did say to me there Hoppersons influence ought to count 20 the sanctimonious old curmudgeon son-in-law sinecure in the negro institution that about gauges him the three committeemen sons-in-law nothing like a son-in-law here in Washington or a brother-in-law and everybody has him let's see, 61 with places 25 persuaded it is getting on we'll have two-thirds of congress in time Dilworthy must surely know I understand him Uncle Dilworthy Uncle balloon tells very amusing stories when ladies are not present I should think so hmm 85 there I must find that chairman queer Buckstone X seemed to be in love I was sure of it he promised to come here and he hasn't strange very strange I must chance to meet him today Laura dressed and went out thinking she was perhaps too early for Mr. Buckstone to come from the house but as he lodged near the bookstore she would drop in there and keep a look out for him while Laura is on her errand to find Mr. Buckstone it may not be out of the way to remark that she knew quite as much of Washington life as Senator Dilworthy gave her credit for and more than she thought proper to tell him she was acquainted by this time with a good many of the young fellows of newspaper row and exchanged gossip with them to their mutual advantage they were always talking in the row everlastingly gossiping bantering and sarcastically praising things and going on in a style which was a curious commingling of earnest and persophage Colonel Sellers liked this talk amazingly though he was sometimes a little at sea in it and perhaps that didn't lessen the relish of the conversation to the correspondence it seems that they had got hold of the dry-goods box packing story about balloon one day and were talking it over when the Colonel came in the Colonel wanted to know all about it and Hicks told him and then Hicks went on with a serious error Colonel if you register a letter it means that it is of value doesn't it and if you pay fifteen cents for registering it the government will have to take extra care of it and even pay you back its full value if it is lost isn't that so yes I suppose it so well Senator Balloon put fifteen cents worth of stamps on each of those seven huge boxes of old clothes and shipped that ton of second hand rubbish old boots and pantaloons and what not through the mails as registered matter it was an ingenious thing and it had a genuine touch of humor about it too I think there is more real talent among our public men of today than there was among those of old times a far more fertile fancy a much happier ingenuity now Colonel can you picture Jefferson or Washington or John Adams franking their wardrobes through the mails and adding the facetious idea of making the government responsible for the cargo for the sum of one dollar and five cents statesmen were dull creatures in those days I have a much greater admiration for Senator Balloon yes Balloon is a man of parts there's no denying it I think so he has spoken of for the post of minister to China or Austria and I hope will be appointed what we want to brought is good examples of the national character John Jay and Benjamin Franklin were well enough in their day but the nation has made progress since then Balloon is a man we know and can depend on to be true to himself yes and Balloon has had a good deal of public experience he is an old friend of mine he was governor of one of the territories a while and was very satisfactory indeed he was he was ex-officio he would have taken the Indian appropriation and devoted the money to feeding and clothing the helpless savages whose land had been taken from them by the white man in the interests of civilization but Balloon knew their needs better he built a government sawmill on the reservation with the money and the lumber sold for enormous prices a relative of his did all the work free of charge that is to say he charged nothing more than the lumber would bring but the poor engines not that I care much for engines what did he do for them what's in the reservation with Governor Balloon was nothing less than a father to the poor Indians but Balloon is not alone we have many truly noble statesmen in our country service like Balloon the senate is full of them don't you think so Colonel well I don't know I honor my country's public servants as much as anyone can I meet them sir every day and the more I see of them the more I esteem them and the more grateful I am that our institutions give us the opportunity of securing their services that is true Colonel to be sure you can buy now and then a senator or a representative but they do not know it is wrong and so they are not ashamed of it they are gentle and confiding in childlike and in my opinion these are qualities that ennobled them far more than any amount of sinful sagacity should I quite agree with you Colonel Sellers well hesitated the Colonel I am afraid some of them do by their seats yes I am afraid they do but as senator Dilworthy himself said to me it is sinful it is very wrong it is shameful heaven protect me from such a charge that is what Dilworthy said and yet when you come to look at it you cannot deny that we would have to go without the services of some of our ableist men sir if the country were opposed to to bribery it is a harsh term I do not like to use it the Colonel interrupted himself at this point to meet an engagement with the Austrian minister and took his leave with his usual courtly bow End of Chapter 35 Read by Richard Wallace Liberty, Missouri August 11th, 2010