CHAPTER XIV The letter that Philip Sterling wrote to Ruth Bolton on the evening of setting out to seek his fortune in the West, found that young lady in her own father's house in Philadelphia. It was one of the pleasantest of the many charming suburban houses in that hospitable city, which is territorially one of the largest cities in the world, and only prevented from becoming the convenient metropolis of the country by the intrusive strip of Camden and Amboy Sand, which shuts it off from the Atlantic Ocean. It is a city of steady thrift, the arms of which might well be the deliberate but delicious terrapin that imparts such a royal flavor to its feasts. It was a spring morning, and perhaps it was the influence of it that made Ruth a little restless, satisfied neither with the outdoors nor the indoors. Her sisters had gone to the city to show some country visitors Independence Hall, Gerard College, and Fairmount Water Works and Park, four objects which Americans cannot die peacefully, even in Naples, without having seen. But Ruth confessed that she was tired of them, and also of the mint. She was tired of other things. She tried this morning an air or two upon the piano, saying a simple song in a sweet but slightly metallic voice, and then, seating herself by the open window, read Philip's letter. Was she thinking about Philip as she gazed across the fresh lawn over the treetops to the Chelten Hills, or of that world which is entrance into her tradition-bound life had been one of the means of opening to her? However she thought, she was not idly musing, as one might see by the expression of her face. After a time she took up a book. It was a medical work, and to all appearance about as interesting to a girl of eighteen, as the statutes at large, but her face was soon aglow over its pages, and she was so absorbed in it that she did not notice the entrance of her mother at the open door. Ruth? Well, mother, said the young student, looking up with a shade of impatience. I wanted to talk with thee a little about thy plans. Mother, thee knows I couldn't stand it at Westfield. The school stifled me. It's a place to turn young people into dried fruit. I know, said Margaret Bolton, with a half-anxious smile, thee chafes against all the ways of friends, but what will thee do? Why is thee so discontented?  With a look half of pain and half of pity, her mother answered. I am sure thee is little interfered with, thee dresses as thee will, and goes where thee pleases, to any church thee likes, and thee has music. I had a visit yesterday from the Society's Committee by way of discipline, because we have a piano in the house, which is against the rules. I hope thee told the elders that father and I are responsible for the piano, and that, much as thee loves music, thee is never in the room when it is played. Fortunately, father is already out of meeting, so they can't discipline him. I heard father tell cousin Abner that he was whipped so often for whistling when he was a boy, that he was determined to have what compensation he could get now. Thy ways greatly try me, Ruth, and all thy relations. I desire thy happiness, first of all, but thee is starting out on a dangerous path. Is thy father willing thee should go away to a school of the world's people? I have not asked him. Ruth replied, with a look that might imply that she was one of those determined little bodies who first made up her own mind and then compelled others to make up theirs in accordance with hers. And when thee has got the education thee wants and lost all relish for the society of thy friends and the way of thy ancestors, what then? Ruth turned square round to her mother, and with an impassive face and not the slightest change of tone said, Mother, I am going to study medicine. Margaret Bolton almost lost for a moment her habitual placidity. Thy study medicine! A slight frail girl like thee, study medicine! Does thee think thee could stand it six months? And the lectures and the dissecting rooms, has thee thought of the dissecting rooms? Mother, said Ruth calmly, I have thought it all over. I know I can go through the whole, clinics, dissecting room, and all. Does thee think I lack nerve? What is there to fear in a person dead more than in a person living? But thy health and strength, child, thee can never stand the severe application, and besides, suppose thee does learn medicine? I will practice it. Here? Here. Where thee and thy family are known? If I can get patience? I hope at least, Ruth, thee will let us know when thee opens an office, said her mother, with an approach to sarcasm that she rarely indulged in, as she rose and leapt the room.  It was out now. She had begun her open battle. The sightseers returned in high spirits from the city. Was there any building in Greece to compare with Gerard College? Was there ever such a magnificent pile of stones devised for the shelter of orphans? Think of the stone shingles of the roof, eight inches thick! Ruth asked the enthusiasts if they would like to live in such a sounding mausoleum, with its great halls and echoing rooms, and no comfortable place in it for the accommodation of any body? If they were orphans, would they like to be brought up in a Grecian temple? And then there was Broad Street. Wasn't it the broadest and the longest street in the world? There certainly was no end to it, and even Ruth was Philadelphian enough to believe that a street ought not to have any end, or architectural point upon which the weary eye could rest. But neither St. Gerard, nor Broad Street, neither wonders of the mint nor the glories of the hall, or the ghosts of our fathers sit always signing the declaration, impress the visitors so much as the splendors of the chestnut street windows and the bargains on Eighth Street. The truth is that the country cousins had come to town to attend the yearly meeting, and the amount of shopping that preceded that religious event was scarcely exceeded by the preparations for the opera in more worldly circles. Is thee going to the yearly meeting, Ruth? asked one of the girls. I have nothing to wear, replied that demure person. If thee wants to see new bonnets, orthodox to a shade, and conform to the letter of the true form, thee must go to the Arch Street meeting. Any departure from either color or shape would be instantly taken note of. It has occupied mother a long time to find at the shops the exact shade for her new bonnet.  And thee won't go? Why should I? I've been again and again. If I go to meeting at all, I like best to sit in the quiet old house in Germantown, where the windows are all open and I can see the trees, and hear the stir of the leaves. It's such a crush at the yearly meeting at Arch Street, and then there's the row of sleek-looking young men who lie in the curb-stone and stare at us as we come out. No, I don't feel at home there. That evening Ruth and her father sat late by the drawing-room fire, as they were quite apt to do at night. It was always a time of confidences. thee has another letter from young Sterling, said Eli Bolton. Yes, Philip has gone to the far west. How far? He doesn't say, but it's on the frontier, and on the map, everything beyond it is marked Indians and Desert, and looks as desolate as a Wednesday meeting. It was time for him to do something. Is he going to start a daily newspaper among the kick-a-poos? Father, these aren't just to Philip. He's going into business. What sort of business can a young man go into without capital? He doesn't say exactly what it is, said Ruth a little dubiously, but it's something about land and railroads and the nose-father that fortunes are made nobody knows exactly how in a new country. I should think so, you innocent puss, and in an old one, too. But Philip is honest, and he has talent enough, if he will stop scribbling, to make his way. But thee may as well take care of thee self, Ruth, and not go dawdling along with a young man and his adventures, until thy own mind is a little more settled what thee wants. This excellent advice did not seem to impress Ruth greatly, for she was looking away with that abstraction of vision which often came into her gray eyes, and at length she exclaimed with a sort of impatience, I wish I could go west or south or somewhere. What a box women are put into, measured for it, and put in young. If we go anywhere, it's in a box, veiled and pinioned and shut in by disabilities. Father, I should like to break things and get loose. What a sweet voice, little innocent it was, to be sure. Thee will no doubt break things enough when thy time comes, child. Women always have. But what does thee want now that thee hasn't? I want to be something, to make myself something, to do something.  What would happen to me if thee should lose thy property and die? What one useful thing could I do for a living, for the support of mother and the children? And if I had a fortune, would thee want me to lead a useless life? Has thy mother led a useless life?  What's the good father of a series of human beings who don't advance any? Friend Eli, who had long ago laid aside the Quaker dress, and was out of meeting, and who, in fact, after a youth of doubt could not yet define his belief, nevertheless looked with some wonder at this fierce young eagle of his, hatched in a friend's dub coat. But he only said, has thee consulted thy mother about a career? I suppose it is a career thee wants. Ruth did not reply directly. She complained that her mother didn't understand her. But that wise and placid woman understood the sweet rebel a great deal better than Ruth understood herself. She also had a history, possibly, and had some time beaten her young wings against the cage of custom, and indulged in dreams of a new social order, and had passed through that fiery period when it seems possible for one mind, which has not yet tried its limits, to break up and rearrange the world. Ruth replied to Philip's letter in due time, and in the most cordial and unsentimental manner. Philip liked the letter, as he did everything she did. But he had a dim notion that there was more about herself in the letter than about him. He took it with him from the southern hotel when he went to walk, and read it over and again in an unfrequented street as you stumble along. The rather commonplace and unformed handwriting seemed to him peculiar and characteristic, different from that of any other woman. Ruth was glad to hear that Philip had made a push into the world, and she was sure that his talent and courage would make a way for him. She should pray for his success at any rate, and especially that the Indians, in St. Louis, would not take his scalp. Philip looked rather dubious at this last sentence, and wished that he had written nothing about Indians. CHAPTER XIV CHAPTER XV 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 Erin Waters. The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner. CHAPTER XV Eli Bolton and his wife talked over Ruth's case, as they had often done before, with no little anxiety. Alone of all their children, she was impatient of the restraints and monotony of the friend's society, and wholly indisposed to accept the inner light as a guide into a life of acceptance and inaction. When Margaret told her husband of Ruth's newest project, he did not exhibit so much surprise as she hoped for. In fact, he said that he did not see why a woman should not enter the medical profession if she felt a call to it. But, said Margaret, consider her total inexperience of the world and her frail health, can such a slight little body endure the ordeal of the preparation for, or the strain of, the practice of the profession? Did thee ever think, Margaret, whether she can endure being thwarted in an object on which she has so set her heart, as she has on this? Thee has trained thyself at home, in her enfeebled childhood, and thee knows how strong her will is, and what she has been able to accomplish in self-culture by the simple force of her determination. She never will be satisfied until she has tried her own strength. I wish, said Margaret, with an inconsequence that is not exclusively feminine, that she were in the way to fall in love and marry by and by. I think that would cure her of some of her notions. I am not sure, but if she went away, to some distant school, into an entirely new life, her thoughts would be diverted. Eli Bolton almost laughed as he regarded his wife, with eyes that never looked at her except fondly, and replied, Perhaps thee remembers that thee had notions also, before we married, and before thee became a member of meeting. I think Ruth comes honestly by certain tendencies, which thee has hidden under the friend's dress. Margaret could not say no to this, and while she paused, it was evident that memory was busy with suggestions to shake her present opinions. Why not let Ruth try the study for a time, suggested Eli? There is a fair beginning of a woman's medical college in the city. Quite likely she will soon find that she needs first a more general culture, and fall in with thy wish that she should see more of the world at some large school. There really seemed to be nothing else to be done, and Margaret consented at length without approving. And it was agreed that Ruth, in order to spare her fatigue, should take lodgings with friends near the college and make a trial in the pursuit of that science, to which we all owe our lives, and sometimes as by a miracle of escape. That day Mr. Bolton brought home a stranger to dinner, Mr. Bigler, of the great firm of Pennybacker, Bigler, and small railroad contractors. He was always bringing home somebody who had a scheme, to build a road, or open a mine, or plant a swamp with cane to grow paper stock, or found a hospital, or invest in a patent-shad-bone separator, or start a college somewhere on the frontier, contiguous to a land speculation. The Bolton house was a sort of hotel for this kind of people. They were always coming. Ruth had known them from childhood, and she used to say that her father attracted them as naturally as a sugar hog's head does flies. Ruth had an idea that a large portion of the world lived by getting the rest of the world into schemes. Mr. Bolton never could say no to any of them. Not even, said Ruth again, to the society for stamping oyster shells with scripture texts before they were sold at retail. Mr. Bigler's plan this time, about which he talked loudly, with his mouth full, all dinner time, was the building of the Tunkanock, Rattlesnake, and Young Woman's Town Railroad, which would not only be a great highway to the west, but would open to market inexhaustible coal fields and untold millions of lumber. The plan of operations was very simple. We'll buy the lands, said he, on long time, backed by the notes of good men, and then mortgage them for money enough to get the road well on. Then get the towns on the line to issue their bonds for stock, and sell their bonds for enough to complete the road, and partly stock it, especially if we mortgage each section as we complete it. We can then sell the rest of the stock on the prospect of the business of the road through an improved country, and also sell the lands at a big advance on the strength of the road. All we want, continued Mr. Bigler in his frank manner, is a few thousand dollars to start the surveys and arrange things in the legislature. There is some parties will have to be seen who might make us trouble. It will take a good deal of money to start the enterprise, remarked Mr. Bolton, who knew very well what seeing a Pennsylvania legislature meant, but was too polite to tell Mr. Bigler what he thought of him while he was his guest, what security would one have for it? Mr. Bigler smiled a hard kind of smile and said, you'd be inside, Mr. Bolton, and you'd have the first chance in the deal. This was rather unintelligible to Ruth, who was, nevertheless, somewhat amused by the study of a type of character she had seen before. At length, she interrupted the conversation by asking, you'd sell the stock, I suppose, Mr. Bigler, to anybody who was attracted by the prospectus? Oh, certainly, serve all alike, said Mr. Bigler, now noticing Ruth for the first time, and a little puzzled by the serene intelligent face that was turned towards him. Well, what would become of the poor people who had been led to put their money into the speculation when you got out of it and left it halfway? It would be no more true to say of Mr. Bigler that he was or could be embarrassed than to say that a brass counterfeit dollar piece would change color when refused. The question annoyed him a little in Mr. Bolton's presence. Why, yes, miss, of course, in a great enterprise for the benefit of the community, there will little things occur which, which, and, of course, the poor ought to be looked into, I tell my wife that the poor must be looked into if you can tell who are poor. There's so many imposters, and then there's so many poor in the legislature to be looked after, said the contractor with a sort of chuckle. Isn't that so, Mr. Bolton? Eli Bolton replied that he never had much to do with the legislature. Yes, continued this public benefactor. An uncommon poor lot this year, uncommon, consequently an expensive lot. The fact is, Mr. Bolton, that the price is raised so high on United States senator now, that it affects the whole market. You can't get any public improvement through unreasonable terms. Simony is what I call it, Simony, repeated Mr. Bigler as if he had said a good thing. Mr. Bigler went on and gave some very interesting details of the intimate connection between railroads and politics, and thoroughly entertained himself all dinner time, and as much disgusted Ruth, who asked no more questions at her father who replied in monosyllables. I wish, said Ruth to her father after the guests had gone, that you wouldn't bring home any more such horrid men. Do all men who wear big diamond breastpins flourish their knives at table, and use bad grammar and cheat? Oh, child, thee mustn't be too observing. Mr. Bigler is one of the most important men in the state. He has more influence at Harrisburg. I don't like him any more than thee does, but I'd better lend him a little money than to have his ill-will. Father, I think they'd better have his ill-will than his company. Is it true that he gave money to help build the pretty little church of St. James the Less, and that he is one of the vestrymen? Yes. He is not such a bad fellow. One of the men in Third Street asked him the other day, whether his was a high church or a low church. Bigler said he didn't know. He'd been in it once, and he could touch the ceilings in the side aisle with his hand. I think he's just horrid. Was Ruth's final summary of him, after the manner of the swift judgment of women, with no consideration of the extenuating circumstances? Mr. Bigler had no idea that he had not made a good impression on the whole family. He certainly intended to be agreeable. Ruth agreed with her daughter, and though she never said anything to such people, she was grateful to Ruth for sticking at least one pin into him. Such was the serenity of the Bolton household that a stranger in it would never have suspected that there was any opposition to Ruth's going to medical school. And she went quietly to take her residence in town and began her attendance of the lectures, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She did not heed, if she heard, the busy and wandering gossip of relations and acquaintances, gossip that has no less currency among the friends than elsewhere, because it is whispered slyly, and creeps about in an undertone. Ruth was absorbed, and for the first time in her life, thoroughly happy. Happy in the freedom of her life, and in the keen enjoyment of the investigation that broadened its field day by day. She was in high spirits when she came home to spend her first days. The house was full of her gaiety and her merry laugh, and the children wished that Ruth would never go away again. But her mother noticed, with a little anxiety, the sometimes flushed face, and the sign of an eager spirit in the kindling eyes, and, as well, the serious air of determination and endurance in her face at unguarded moments. The college was a small one, and it sustained itself not without difficulty in this city, which is so conservative, and is yet the origin of so many radical movements. There was not more than a dozen attendance on the lectures altogether, so that the enterprise had the air of an experiment, and the fascination of pioneering for those engaged in it. There was one woman physician driving about town in her carriage, attacking the most violent diseases in all quarters with persistent courage, like a modern Malona and her war chariot, who was popularly supposed to gather and feast to the amount $10,000 to $20,000 a year. Perhaps some of these students looked forward to the near day when they would support such a practice and a husband besides. But it is unknown that any of them ever went further than practice in hospitals and in their own nurseries, and it is feared that some of them were quite as ready as their sisters in emergencies to call a man. If Ruth had any exaggerated expectations of a professional life, she kept them to herself, and was known to her fellows of the class as a cheerful, sincere student, eager in her investigations, and never impatient at anything, except an insinuation that women had not as much mental capacity for science as men. They really say, said one young Quaker Sprig to another youth of his age, that Ruth Bolton is really going to be a saw-bones, attends lectures, cuts up bodies, and all that. She's cool enough for a surgeon anyway.  Such young men at this time did not come very distinctly into Ruth's horizon, except as amusing circumstances. About the details of her student life, Ruth said very little to her friends, but they had reason to know afterwards that it required all her nerve and the almost complete exhaustion of her physical strength to carry her through. She began her anatomical practice upon detached portions of the human frame, which were brought into the demonstrating room, dissecting the eye, the ear, and a small tangle of muscles and nerves, an occupation which had not much more savor of death in it than the analysis of a portion of a plant out of which the life went when it was plucked up by the roots. Custom endures the most sensitive persons to that, which is at first most repellent. And in the late war, we saw the most delicate women who could not at home endure the sight of blood become so used to scenes of carnage that they walked the hospitals and the margins of battlefields amid the poor remnants of torn humanity with as perfect self-possession as if they were strolling in a flower garden. It happened to Ruth that one evening, deep in a line of investigation, which she could not finish or understand without demonstration and so eager was she in it that it seemed as if she could not wait till the next day. She, therefore, persuaded a fellow student who was reading that evening with her to go down to the dissecting room of the college and ascertain what they wanted to know by an hour's work there. Perhaps also Ruth wanted to test her own nerve and to see whether the power of association was stronger in her mind than her own will. The janitor of the shabby and comfortless old building admitted the girls, not without suspicion, and gave them lighted candles, which they would need, without other remark than, there's a new one, Miss, as the girls went up the broad stairs. They climbed to the third storey and paused before a door, which they unlocked, and which admitted them into a long apartment with a row of windows on one side and one at the end. The room was without light, saved from the stars and the candles the girls carried, which revealed to them dimly too long in several small tables, a few benches and chairs, a couple of skeletons hanging on the wall, a sink, and cloth covered heaps of something upon the tables here and there. The windows were open, and the cool night wind came in strong enough to flutter a white covering now and then, and to shake loose the casements. But all the sweet odors of the night could not take from the room a faint suggestion of mortality. The young ladies paused a moment. The room itself was familiar enough, but night makes almost any chamber eerie, and especially such a room of detention, as this were the mortal parts of the unburied might, almost be supposed to be, visited on the sighing night winds by the wandering spirits of their late tenants. Opposite and at some distance across the roofs of lower buildings, the girls saw a tall edifice, the long upper story of which seemed to be a dancing hall. The windows of that were also open, and through them they heard the scream of the jiggered and tortured violin, and the pump-pump of the oboe, and saw the moving shapes of men and women in quick transition, and heard the prompter's drawl. I wonder, said Ruth, what the girls dancing there would think if they saw us, or knew that there was such a room of this so near them. She did not speak very loud, and perhaps unconsciously, the girls drew near to each other as they approached the long table in the center of the room. A straight object lay upon it, covered with a sheet. This was doubtless the new one of which the janitor spoke. Ruth advanced, and with a not very steady hand, lifted the white covering from the upper part of the figure, and turned it down. Both the girls started. It was a negro.   Perhaps it was the wavering light of the candles. Perhaps it was only the agony from a death of pain. But the repulsive black face seemed to wear a scowl that said, Haven't you yet done with the outcast-persecuted black man? But you must now haul him from his grave, and send even your women to dismember his body. Who is this dead man, one of the thousands who died yesterday, and will be dust a-none? To protest that science shall not turn his worthless carcass to some account? Ruth could have had no such thought, for with a pity in her sweet face that for the moment overcame fear and disgust, she reverently replaced the covering, and went away to her own table, as her companion did to hers. In there for an hour they worked at their several problems without speaking, but not without an awe of the presence there, the new one, and not without an awful sense of life itself, as they heard the pulsations of the music and the light laughter from the dancing hall. When at length they went away, and locked the dreadful room behind them, and came out into the street, where people were passing, they, for the first time, realized in the relief they felt, what a nervous strain they had been under. CHAPTER XVI 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 Ron Thomas, Tacoma, Washington, USA. The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner. CHAPTER XVI by Charles Dudley Warner While Ruth was thus absorbed in who knew occupation, and the spring was wearing away, Philip and his friends were still detained at the Southern Hotel. The great contractors had concluded their business with the state and railroad officials, and with the lesser contractors, and departed for the East. But the serious illness of one of the engineers kept Philip and Henry in the city, and occupied in alternate watchings. Philip wrote to Ruth of the new acquaintance they'd made, Colonel Sellers, an enthusiastic and hospitable gentleman, very much interested in the development of the country, and in their success. They had not had an opportunity to visit at his place up in the country yet, but the Colonel often dined with them, and in confidence confided to them his projects, and seemed to take a great liking to them, especially to his friend Harry. It was true that he never seemed to have ready money, but he was engaged in very large operations. The correspondence was not very brisk between these two young persons, so differently occupied, for though Philip wrote long letters he got brief ones in reply, full of sharp little observation, however such as one concerning Colonel Sellers, finally that such men dined at their house every week. Ruth's proposed occupation astonished Philip immensely, but while he argued it and discussed it he did not dare hint to her his fear that it would interfere with his most cherished plans. He too sincerely respected Ruth's judgment to make any protest, however, and he would have defended her course against the world. This enforced waiting at St. Louis was very irksome to Philip. Harry was running away for one thing, and he longed to get into the field and see for himself what chance there was for a fortune or even an occupation. The contractors had given the young men leave to join the engineer corps as soon as they could, but otherwise had made no provision for them, and in fact had left them with only the most indefinite expectations of something large in the future. Harry was entirely happy in his circumstances. He very soon knew everybody, from the governor of the state down to the waiters at the hotel. He had the Wall Street slaying at his tongue's end. He always talked like a capitalist and entered with enthusiasm into all the land and railway schemes with which the air was thick. Colonel Sellers and Harry talked together by the hour and by the day. Harry informed his new friend that he was going out with the engineer corps of the Salt Lake Pacific Extension, but that wasn't his real business. I'm to have, with another party, said Harry, a big contract in the road as soon as it is let, and, meantime, I'm with the engineers to spy out the best land and the depot sites. It's everything, suggested the Colonel, in knowing where to invest. I've known people throw away their money because they were too consequential to take Sellers advice. Others, again, have made their pile on taking it. I've looked over the ground. I've been studying it for twenty years. You can't put your finger on a spot in the map of Missouri that I don't know is if I made it. When you want to place anything, continue the Colonel confidently, just let the raw Sellers know that's all. Oh, I haven't got much in ready money I can lay my hands on now, but if a fellow could do anything with fifteen or twenty thousand dollars as a beginning, I shall draw for that when I see the right opening. Well, that's something, that's something, fifteen or twenty thousand dollars, say twenty, as in advance, said the Colonel reflectively, as if turning over into his mind for a project that could be entered on with such a trifling sum. I'll tell you what it is, but only to you, Mr. Briarley, own to you, mind. I've got a little project that I've been keeping. It looks small, looks small on paper, but it's got a big future. What should you say, sir, to a city, built up like the rod of Aladdin had touched it, built up in two years, where now you wouldn't expect it any more than you'd expect a lighthouse on the top of Pilot Knob, and you could own the land. It can be done, sir. It can be done. The Colonel hitched up his chair close to Harry, laid his hand on his knee, and, first looking about him, said in a low voice, the salt-lick Pacific extension is going to run through stones landing. The Almighty never laid out a cleaner piece of level prayer for a city, and it's the natural center of all that region of hemp and tobacco. What makes you think the road will go there? It's twenty miles on the map off the straight line of the road. You can't tell what is straight till the engineers have been over it, between us. I have talked with Jeff Thompson, the division engineer. He understands the wants of stones landing and the claims of the inhabitants are to be there. Jeff says that a railroad is for the accommodation of the people and not for the benefit of gophers. And if he don't run this to stones landing, he'll be damned. You ought to know, Jeff, he's one of the most enthusiastic engineers in this western country, and one of the best fellows that ever looked through the bottom of a glass. The recommendation was not undeserved. There was nothing that Jeff wouldn't do to accommodate a friend, from sharing his last dollar with him to winging him in a duel. When he understood from Colonel Sellers how the land lay at stones landing, he cordially shook hands with that gentleman, asked him to drink, and fairly roared out, why, God bless my soul, Colonel. A word from one Virginia gentleman to another is enough said. There's stones landing been waiting for a railroad more than four thousand years, and damn if she shan't have it. Philip had not so much faith as Harry in stones landing when the latter opened the project to him, but Harry talked about it as if he already owned that incipient city. Harry thoroughly believed in all his projects and inventions, and lived day by day in their golden atmosphere. Everybody liked the young fellow for how could they help liking one of such engaging manners and large fortune. The waiters at the hotel would do more for him than for any other guest, and he made a great many acquaintances among the people of St. Louis, who liked his sensible and liberal views about the development of the western country and about St. Louis. He said it ought to be the national capital. Harry made partial arrangements with several of the merchants for furnishing supplies for his contract on the Salt Lake Pacific extension, consulted the maps with the engineers, and went over the profiles with the contractors, figuring out estimates for bids. He was exceedingly busy with those things when he was not at the bedside of his sick acquaintance or arranging the details of his speculation with Colonel Sellers. Meantime the days went along in the weeks, and the money in Harry's pocket got lower and lower. He was just as liberal with what he had as before. Indeed it was his nature to be free with his money or with that of others, and he could lend or spend a dollar with an heir that made it seem like ten. At length, at the end of one week, when his hotel bill was presented, Harry found not a cent in his pocket to meet it. He careless remarked to the landlord that he was not that day in funds, but he would draw on New York, and he sat down and wrote to the contractors in that city a glowing letter about the prospects of the road, and asked them to advance a hundred or two until he got at work. No reply came. He wrote again, in an unaffended business-like tone, suggesting that he had better draw at three days. A short answer came to this, simply saying that money was very tight in Wall Street just then, and that he had better join the engineer corps as soon as he could. But the bill had to be paid, and Harry took it to Philip, and asked him if he thought he hadn't better draw on his uncle. Philip had not much faith in Harry's power of drawing, and told him that he would pay the bill himself. Thereupon Harry dismissed the matter, then and thereafter from his thoughts, and like a light-hearted good-fellow as he was gave himself no more trouble about his board-bills. Philip paid them, swollen as they were, with a monstrous list of extras, but he seriously counted the diminishing bulk of his own hoard, which was all the money he had in the world. Had he not tacitly agreed to share with Harry to the last in this adventure, and would not the generous fellow divide with him if he, Philip, were in want and Harry had anything? The fever at length got tired of tormenting the stout young engineer who lay sick at the hotel, and left him, very thin, a little sallow, but an acclimated man. Everybody said he was acclimated now, and said it cheerfully. What it is to be acclimated to Western fevers no two persons exactly agree.  Some regard it as a sort of initiation, like that into the odd fellows, which renders one liable to his regular dues thereafter. Others consider it merely the acquisition of a habit of taking every morning before breakfast a dose of bitters, composed of whiskey and asafetida out of the acclimation jog. Jeff Thompson afterwards told Philip that he once asked Senator Acheson, then-acting vice president of the United States, about the possibility of acclimation. He thought the opinion of the second officer of our great government would be valuable on this point. They were sitting together on a bench before a country tavern, in the free converse permitted by our democratic habits. I suppose, Senator, that you have become acclimated to this country? Well, said the vice president, crossing his legs, pulling his wide awake down over his forehead, causing a passing chicken to hop quickly one side by the accuracy of his aim, and speaking with senatorial deliberation, I think I have. I've been here twenty-five years, and dash, dash, my dash to dash, if I haven't entertained twenty-five separate and distinct earthquakes one a year. The Negro is the only person who can stand the fever and ague of this region. The convalescence of the engineer was the signal for breaking up quarters at St. Louis, and the young fortune hunters started up the river in good spirits. It was only the second time either of them had been upon a Mississippi steamboat, and nearly everything they saw had the charm of novelty. Colonel Sellers was at the landing to bid them good-bye. I shall send you up that basket of champagne by the next boat. No, no, no thanks. You'll find it not bad in camp," he cried out as the plank was hauled in. My respects to Thompson. Tell him to sight for stones. Let me know, Mr. Briarly, when you are ready to locate. I'll come over from Hawkeye. Good-bye. And the last the young fellow saw of the Colonel he was waving his hat and beaming prosperity and good luck. The voyage was delightful, and was not long enough to become monotonous. The travellers scarcely had time, indeed, to get accustomed to the splendours of the great saloon where the tables were spread for meals, a marble of paint and gilding, its ceiling hung with fanciful cut tissue paper of many colours, festooned and arranged in endless patterns. The whole was more beautiful than a barber's shop. The printed bill of ferret dinner was longer and more varied, the proprietors justly boasted, than that of any hotel in New York. It must have been the work of an author of talent and imagination, and it surely was not his fault if the dinner itself was to a certain extent a delusion, and if the guests got something that tasted pretty much the same whatever dish they ordered. Nor was it his fault if a general flavour of rose and all the dessert dishes suggested that they had passed through the barber's saloon on their way from the kitchen. The travellers landed at a little settlement on the left bank, and at once took horses for the camp in the interior, carrying their clothes and blankets strapped behind the saddles. Harry was dressed as we have seen him once before, and his long and shining boots attracted not a little the attention of the few persons they met on the road, and especially of the bright-faced wenches who lightly stepped along the highway, picturesque in their coloured kerchiefs, carrying light baskets or riding upon mules and balancing before them a heavier load. Harry sang fragments of operas and talked about their fortune. Philip even was excited by the sense of freedom and adventure and the beauty of the landscape. The prairie, with its new grass and unending acres of brilliant flowers, chiefly the innumerable varieties of flocks bore the look of years of cultivation, and the occasional open groves of white oaks gave it a park-like appearance. It was hardly unreasonable to expect to see at any moment the gables and square windows of an Elizabethan mansion in one of the well-kept groves. Towards sunset of the third day, when the young gentlemen thought they ought to be near the town of Magnolia, near which they had been directed to find the engineers' camp, they described a log house and drew up before it to inquire the way. Half the building was store and half was dwelling-house.  Can you tell me, auntie, how far is it to the town of Magnolia?  It was true. This log-house was the compactly built town, and all creation was its suburbs. The engineers' camp was only two or three miles distant. It was bound to find it, directed auntie. If you don't care, nothing bout to road and go foe to sundown. A brisk gallop brought the riders inside of the twinkling light of the camp just as the stars came out. It lay in a little hollow, where a small stream ran through a sparse grove of young white oaks. A half-dozen tents were pitched under the trees, horses and oxen were corralled at a little distance, and a group of men sat on camp stools or lay on blankets about a bright fire. The twang of a banjo became audible as they drew nearer, and they saw a couple of negroes from some neighboring plantation breaking down a juba in approved style amid the high eyes of the spectators. Mr. Jeff Thompson, for it was the camp of this redoubtable engineer, gave the travelers a hearty welcome, offered them ground room in his own tent, ordered supper and set out a small jug, a drop from which he declared necessary on account of the chill of the evening. I never saw an eastern man, said Jeff, who knew how to drink from a jug with one hand. It's as easy as lying. So. He grasped the handle with the right hand, threw the jug back upon his arm, and applied his lips to the nozzle. It was an act as graceful as it was simple. Besides, said Mr. Thompson, setting it down, it puts every man on his honor as to quantity. Early to turn in was the rule of the camp, and by nine o'clock everybody was under his blanket, except Jeff himself, who worked a while at his table over his fieldbook, and then arose, stepped outside the tent door, and sang in a strong and not unmalodious tenor the star-spangled banner from beginning to end. It proved to be his nightly practice to let off the unexpended steam of his conversational powers in the words of this stirring song. It was a long time before Philip got to sleep. He saw the firelight, he saw the clear stars through the treetops. He heard the gurgle of the stream, the stamp of the horses, the occasional barking of the dog which followed the cook's wagon, the hooting of an owl, and when these failed he saw Jeff, standing on a battlement, mid the rocket's red glare, and heard him sing, O say can you see! It was the first time he had ever slept on the ground. CHAPTER XVII OF THE GUILDED 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 XVII We have viewed it, and measured it within all by the scale. The richest tract of land, love, and the kingdom. There will be made seventeen or eighteen millions, or more asked may be handled.  Nobody dressed more like an engineer than Mr. Henry Brearley. The completeness of his appointments was the envy of the core, and the gay fellow himself was the admiration of the camp servants, axmen, teamsters, and cooks. I reckon you didn't get them boots no worse this side of St. Louis, queried the tall Missouri youth who acted as commissary's assistant. No, New York. Yes, I've heard in New York, continued the better nutlad, attentively studying each item of Harry's dress, and endeavoring to cover his design with interesting conversation. And there's Massachusetts. It's not far off. I've heard Massachusetts was a, of a place. Let's see, what state's Massachusetts in? Massachusetts, kindly replied Harry, is in the state of Boston. Abolition, on it. They must have cost right smart, referring to the boots. Harry shouldered his rod and went to the field, tramped over the prairie by day, and figured up results at night, with the utmost cheerfulness and industry, and plotted the line on the profile paper. Without, however, the least idea of engineering practical or theoretical. Perhaps there was not a great deal of scientific knowledge in the entire core, nor was very much needed. They were making what is called a preliminary survey, and the chief object of a preliminary survey was to get up in excitement about the road, to interest every town in that part of the state in it, under the belief that the road would run through it, and to get the aid of every planter upon the prospect that a station would be on his land. Mr. Jeff Thompson was the most popular engineer who could be found for this work. He did not bother himself much about details or practice abilities of location, but ran merrily along, citing from the top of one divide to the top of another, and striking plumb every town site and big plantation within 20 or 30 miles of his route. In his own language he just went booming. This course gave Harry an opportunity, as he said, to learn the practical details of engineering, and it gave Philip a chance to see the country, and to judge for himself what prospect of a fortune it offered. Both he and Harry got the refusal of more than one plantation as they went along, and wrote urgent letters to their eastern correspondence upon the beauty of the land, and the certainty that it would quadruple in value as soon as the road was finally located. It seemed strange to them that capitalists did not flock out there and secure this land. They had not been in the field over two weeks when Harry wrote to his friend Colonel Sellers that he'd better be on the move, for the line was certain to go to stone's landing. Anyone who looked at the line on the map, as it was laid down from day to day, would have been uncertain which way it was going. But Jeff had declared that in his judgment the only practiceable route from the point they then stood on was to follow the divide to stone's landing, and it was generally understood that that town would be the next one hit. We'll make it, boys, said the Chief, if we have to go in a balloon, and make it they did in less than a week. This indomitable engineer had carried his moving caravan over slews and branches, across bottoms and along divides, and pitched his tents in the very heart of the city of stone's landing. Well, I'll be dashed, was heard the cheery voice of Mr. Thompson as he stepped outside the tent door at sunrise the next morning. If this don't get me. I say, on Grayson, get out your sighting-iron, and see if you can find old cellars' town. Blame me if we wouldn't have run plumb by it if twilight had held on a little longer. Oh, sterling, brerly, get up and see the city. There's a steamboat just coming round the bend, and Jeff roared with laughter. The mare'll be round here to breakfast. The fellows turned out of the tents, rubbing their eyes and stared about them. They were camped on the second bench of the narrow bottom of a crooked, sluggish stream that was some five rods wide in the present good stage of water. Before them were a dozen log cabins with stick and mud chimneys, irregularly disposed on either side of a not very well-defined road, which did not seem to know its own mind exactly, and after straggling through the town, wandered off over the rolling prairie in an uncertain way, as if it had started for nowhere and was quite likely to reach its destination. Just as it left the town, however, it was cheered and assisted by a guideboard upon which was the legend ten miles to Hawkeye. The road had never been made except by the travel over it, and at this season, the rainy June, it was a way of ruts cut in the black soil and of fathomless mud-holes. In the principal street of the city it had received more attention. For hogs, great and small, rooted about in it and wallowed in it, turning the street into a liquid quagmire which could only be crossed on pieces of plank thrown here and there. About the chief cabin, which was the store and grocery of this mard of trade, the mud was more liquid than elsewhere, and the reed platform in front of it and the dry goods boxes mounted thereon were places of refuge for all the loafers of the place. Down by the stream was a dilapidated building which served for a hemp warehouse and a shaky wharf extended out from it into the water. In fact, a flatboat was there moored by it, its setting poles lying across the gunwales. Above the town the stream was crossed by a crazy wooden bridge, the supports of which leaned always in the soggy soil. The absence of a plank here and there in the flooring made the crossing of the bridge faster than a walk, an offense not necessary to be prohibited by law. This gentleman said, Jeff, is Columbus River, alias Goose Run. If it was widened and deepened and straightened and made long enough it would be one of the finest rivers in the western country. As the sun rose and sent his level beams along the stream, the thin stratum of mist, or malaria, rose also and dispersed, but the light was not able to enliven the dull water nor give any hint of its apparently fathomless depth. Venerable mud turtles crawled up and roosted upon the logs in the stream, their backs glistening in the sun, the first inhabitants of the metropolis to begin the act of business of the day. It was not long, however, before smoke began to issue from the city chimneys, and before the engineers had finished their breakfast they were the object of the curious inspection of six or eight boys and men who lounged into the camp and gazed about them with languid interest, their hands in their pockets every one. Good morning, gentlemen, called out the chief engineer from the table. Good morning, drawled out the spokesman of the party. I allow this year's the railroad, I heard it was a coming. Yes, this is the railroad, all but the rails and the iron horse. I reckon you can get all the rails you want out in my white oak timber over there," replied the first speaker, who appeared to be a man of property and willing to strike up trade. You'll have to negotiate with the contractors about the rails, sir, said Jeff. Here's Mr. Briarley, I've no doubt would like to buy your rails when the time comes. Oh, said the man, I thought maybe you'd fetch the whole billon along with you. But if you want rails, I've got them, ain't I, F? Heaps, said F, without taking his eyes off the group at the table. Well, said Mr. Thompson, rising from his seat and moving towards his tent, the railroad has come to Stone's Landing, sure. I move we take a drink on it all around. The proposal met with universal favor. Jeff gave prosperity to Stone's Landing in navigation to Goose Run, and the toast was washed down with gusto in the simple fluid of corn, and with the return compliment that a railroad was a good thing and that Jeff Thompson was no slouch. About ten o'clock a horse and wagon was described, making a slow approach to the camp over the prairie. As it drew near, the wagon was seen to contain a portly gentleman who hitched impatiently forward on his seat, shook the reins and gently touched up his horse in the vain attempt to communicate his own energy to that dull beast, and looked eagerly at the tents. When the conveyance of length drew up to Mr. Thompson's door, the gentleman descended with great deliberation, straightened himself up, rubbed his hands, and beaming satisfaction from every part of his radiant frame advanced to the group that was gathered to welcome him, and which had saluted him by name as soon as he came within hearing. Welcome to Napoleon, gentlemen, welcome. I'm proud to see you here, Mr. Thompson. You're looking well, Mr. Sterling. This is the country, sir. Right glad to see you, Mr. Briarley. You got that basket of champagne? No. Those blasted river thieves all never send anything more by them. The best brand, Rotorer. The last I had in my cellar from a lot sent me by Sir George Gore, took him out on a buffalo hunt when he visited our country, is always sending me some trifle. You haven't looked about any yet, gentlemen? It's in the rough yet, in the rough. Those buildings will all have to come down. That's the place for the public square, courthouse, hotels, churches, jail, all that sort of thing. About where we stand, the depot. How does that strike your engineering eye, Mr. Thompson? On yonder, the business streets running to the wharves, the university up there on rising ground, sightly place, see the river for miles. That's Columbus River, only 49 miles to the Missouri. You see what it is, placid, steady, no current to interfere with navigation, once widening in places and dredging, dredged out the harbor and raised a levee in front of the town, made by nature on purpose for a mart. Look at all this country, not another building within ten miles. No other navigable stream. Lay of the land points right here. Hemp, tobacco, corn must come here. The railroad will do it, Napoleon won't know itself in a year. Don't now, evidently, said Philip, aside to Harry. Have you breakfasted, Colonel? Hastily. Cup of coffee. Can't trust any coffee I don't import myself. But I put up a basket of provisions. Wife would put in a few delicacies, women always will. And a half dozen of that burgundy I was telling you of, Mr. Barley. By the way, you never got to dine with me. And the Colonel strode away to the wagon and looked under the seat for the basket. Apparently it was not there, for the Colonel raised up the flap, looked in front and behind and then exclaimed, Confound it, that comes of not doing a thing yourself. I trusted the women folks to set that basket in the wagon and it ain't there. When camp cook speedily prepared a savory breakfast for the Colonel, broiled chicken, eggs, cornbread and coffee, to which he did ample justice, and topped off with a drop of old bourbon from Mr. Thompson's private store, a brand which he said he knew well he should think it came from his own sideboard. While the engineer corps went to the field to run back a couple of miles and ascertain approximately if a road could ever get down to the landing, and to side head across the run and see if it could ever get out again, Colonel Sellers and Harry sat down and began to roughly map out the city of Napoleon on a large piece of drawing paper. I've got the refusal of a mile square here, said the Colonel, in our names for a year, with the quarter interest reserved for the four owners. They laid out the town liberally, not lacking room, leaving space for the railroad to come in and for the river as it was to be when improved. The engineers reported that the railroad could come in by taking a little sweep and crossing the stream on a high bridge, but the grades would be steep. Colonel Sellers said he didn't care so much about the grades if the road could only be made to reach the elevators on the river. The next day Mr. Thompson made a hasty survey of the stream for a mile or two so that the Colonel and Harry were enabled to show on their map how nobly that would accommodate the city. Jeff took a little writing from the Colonel and Harry for a prospective share, but the Philip declined to join in, saying that he had no money and didn't want to make engagements he couldn't fulfill. The next morning the camp moved on, followed till it was out of sight by the listless eyes of the group in front of the store, one of whom remarked that he'd be doggone if he ever expected to see that railroad any more. He went with the Colonel to Hawkeye to complete their arrangements, part of which was the preparation of a petition to Congress for the improvement of the navigation of the Columbus River. Chapter 18 of The Gilded Age. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by John Kaye. The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner. Chapter 18. Eight years have passed since the death of Mr. Hawkins. Eight years are not many in the life of a nation or the history of a state, but they may be years of destiny that shall fix the current of the century following. Such years were those that followed the little scrimmage of Lexington Common. Such years were those that followed the double-shotted demand for the surrender of Fort Sumter. History is never done with inquiring of these years and so many witnesses about them and trying to understand their significance. The Eight Years America from 1860 to 1868 uprooted institutions that were centuries old, changed the politics of a people, transformed the social life of half the country, and wrought so profoundly upon the entire national character that the influence cannot be measured short of two or three generations. As we are accustomed to interpret the economy of Providence, the life of the individual is as nothing to that of the nation or the race. But who can say, in a broader view, and the more intelligent way to values, that the life of one man is not more than that of a nationality, and that there is not a tribunal where the tragedy of one human soul shall not seem more significant than the overturning of any human institution, whatever? When one thinks of the tremendous forces of the upper and the nether world, which play for the mastery of the soul of a woman during the few years in which she passes from plastic girlhood to the right maturity of womanhood, he may well stand in awe before the momentous drama. What capacity she has of purity, tenderness, goodness? What capacities of vileness, bitterness, and evil? Nature must needs be lavish with the mother and creator of men, and center in her all the possibilities of life.  There are women, it is true, who seem to be capable neither of rising much nor falling much, and whom a conventional life saves from any special development of character. But Laura was not one of them. She had the fatal gift of beauty, and that more fatal gift which does not always accompany mere beauty, the power of fascination, a power that may indeed exist without beauty. She had will and pride and courage and ambition, and she was left to be very much her own guide at the age when romance comes to the aid of passion, and when the awakening powers of her vigorous mind had little object on which to discipline themselves. Her tremendous conflict that was fought in this girl's soul, none of these knew about her, and very few knew that her life had in it anything unusual or romantic or strange. These were troubleous days in Hawkeye, as well as in most other Missouri towns. Days of confusion when between Unionists and Confederate occupations sudden maraudings and bushwhackings and raids. Individuals escaped observation or comment in actions that would have filled the town with scandal in quiet times. Fortunately, we all need to deal with Laura's life at this period historically, and look back upon such portions as if it will serve to reveal the woman as she was at the time of the arrival of Mr. Harry Briarley in Hawkeye. The Hawkins family were settled there, and had a hard enough struggle with poverty and the necessity of keeping up appearances in accord with their own family pride and the large expectations they secretly cherished of a fortune in the knobs of East Tennessee, how pinched they were perhaps. No one knew but Clay, to whom they looked for almost their whole support. Washington had been in Hawkeye often on, attracted away occasionally by some tremendous speculation, from which he invariably returned to General Boswell's office as poor as he went. He was the inventor of no one knew how many useless contrivances, which were not worth patenting, and his years had been passed in dreaming and planning to no purpose, until he was now a man of about thirty. Without a profession or permanent occupation, a tall, brown-haired, dreamy person of the best intentions and the frailest resolution. Probably however, the eight years had been happier to him than to any others in his circle, for the time had been mostly spent in a blissful dream of the coming of enormous wealth. He went out with a company from Hawkeye to the war and was not wanting in courage, but he would have been a better soldier if he had been less engaged in contrivances for circumventing the enemy by strategy unknown to the books. It happened to him to be captured in one of his self-appointed expeditions, but the Federal Colonel released him after a short examination, satisfied that he could most injure the Confederate forces opposed the Unionists by returning him to his regiment. Colonel Sellers was of course a prominent man during the war. He was captain of the Home Guards in Hawkeye, and he never left home except upon one occasion, when on the strength of a rumour he executed a flank movement in fortified stone's landing, a place which no one acquainted with the country would be likely to find. Gad, said Colonel afterwards, the landing is the key to Upper Missouri, and it is the only place the enemy never captured. If other places had been defended as well as that was, the result would have been different, sir. The Colonel had his own theories about war as he had in other things. If everybody had stayed at home as he did, he said the South never would have been conquered. For what would there have been to conquer? Mr. Jeff Davis was constantly writing him to take command of a corps in the Confederate Army, but Colonel Sellers said no, his duty was at home, and he was by no means idle. He was inventor of the famous Air Torpedo, which came very near destroying the Union armies in Missouri and the city of St. Louis itself. His plan was to fill a torpedo with Greek fire and poisonous and deadly missiles, a tattoo balloon, and let it sail away over the hostile camp and explode at the right moment when the time fused burnt out. He intended to use the invention in the capture of St. Louis, exploding his torpedoes over the city and raining destruction upon it until the Army of Occupation would gladly capitulate. He was unable to procure the Greek fire, but he constructed a vicious torpedo which would have answered the purpose, but the first one prematurely exploded in his wood house, blowing it clean away and setting fire to his house. The neighbors helped him put out the conflagration, but they discouraged any more experiments of that sort. The patriotic gentleman, however, planted so much powder and so many explosive contrivances in the roads leading into Hawkeye and then forgot the exact spots or danger that people were afraid to travel the highways and used to come to town across the fields. The Colonel's motto was, millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute. When Laura came to Hawkeye, she might have forgotten the annoyances of the gossips of Murphysburg and have lived out the bitterness that was growing in her heart if she had been thrown less upon herself or if the surroundings of her life had been more congenial and helpful.  She was proud and she felt the sting of poverty. She could not but be conscious of her beauty also, and she was vain of that, and some to take a sort of delight in the exercise of her fascinations upon the rather loutish young men who came in her way and whom she despised. There was another world open to her, a world of books, but it was not the best world of that sort. For the small libraries she had access to in Hawkeye were decidedly miscellaneous and largely made up of romances and fictions which fed her imagination with the most exaggerated notions of life and showed her men and women in a very sort of heroism. From these stories she learned what a woman of keen intellect and some culture joined beauty and fascination of manner might expect to accomplish in society as she read of it, and along with these ideas she imbibed other very crude ones in regard to the matts patient of women. There were also the other books, histories, biographies and distinguished people travels in farlands, poems, especially those of Byron Scott and Chellian Moore which she eagerly absorbed and appropriated therefrom what was to her. Nobody in Hawkeye had read so much or, after a fashion, studied so diligently as Laura. She passed for an accomplished girl and no doubt thought herself one as she was judged by any standard near her. During the war there came to Hawkeye a Confederate officer, Colonel Celebi, who was stationed there for a time and in command of that district. He was a handsome, soldierly man of thirty years, a graduate of the University of Virginia and of a distinguished family if his story might be believed and, it was evident, a man of the world and of extensive travel and adventure.  He was studiously polite to her and treated her with a consideration to which she was unaccustomed. She had read of such men, but she had never seen one before, one so high-bred, so noble in sentiment, so entertaining in conversation, so engaging in manner. It is a long story, unfortunately, it is an old story and it need not be dwelt on. Laura loved him and believed that his love for her was as pure and deep as her own. She worshipped him and would have counted her life a little thing to give him if he would only love her and let her feed the hunger of her heart upon him. The passion possessed her whole being and lifted her up till she seemed to walk on air. It was all true then, the romances she had read, the bliss of love she had dreamed of. Why had she never noticed before how blightsome the world was, how jocun with love, the birds sang it, the trees whispered it to her as she passed, the very flowers beneath her feet strewed the way as for a bridal march. When the colonel went away, they were engaged to be married, as soon as he could make certain arrangements which he represented to be necessary and quit the army. He wrote to her from Harding, a small town in the southwest corner of the state, saying that he should be held in the service longer than he had expected, but that would not be more than a few months. Then he should be at liberty to take her to Chicago, where he had property and should have business, either now or as soon as the war was over, which he thought could not last long. Meantime, why should they be separated? He was established in comfortable quarters, and if she could find company and join him, they would be married and gain so many more months of happiness. Was woman ever prudent when she loved? Laura went to Harding, the neighbor supposed to nurse Washington, who had fallen ill there. Her engagement was, of course, known in Hawkeye, and was indeed a matter of pride to her family. Mrs. Hawkins would have told the first inquire that Laura had gone to be married, and Laura had cautioned her. She did not want to be thought of, she said, as going in search of a husband let the news come back after she was married. So she traveled to Harding on the pretense we have mentioned and was married. She was married, but something must have happened on that very day or the next that alarmed her. Women did not know then or after what it was, but Laura bound him not to send news of her marriage to Hawkeye yet, and to enjoin her mother not to speak of it. Whatever cruel suspicion or nameless dread this was, Laura tried bravely to put it away and not let it cloud her happiness. Communication that summer, as may be imagined, was neither regular nor frequent between the remote Confederate camp at Harding and Hawkeye, and Laura was in a measure lost sight of. Indeed, everyone had troubles enough of his own without borrowing from his neighbors. Laura had given herself utterly to her husband, and if he had faults, if he was selfish, if he was sometimes coarse, if he was dissipated, she did not or would not see it. It was the passion of her life and the time whom her whole nature went to flood, tide, and swept away all barriers. Was her husband ever cold or indifferent?  Three months passed. One morning her husband informed her that he had been ordered south and must go within two hours. I can be ready, said Laura cheerfully, but I can't take you. You must go back to Hawkeye. Can't take me, Laura asked, with wonder in her eyes, I can't live without you.  The fact is, Laura, our romance has played out. Laura heard, but she did not comprehend. She caught his arm and cried, George, how can you joke so cruelly? I'll go anywhere with you. I will wait anywhere. I can't go back to Hawkeye. Well, go where you like. Perhaps continued he with a sneer. You would do as well to wait here for another Colonel. Laura's brain whirled. She did not yet comprehend. What does this mean? Where are you going? It means, said the officer in measured words, that you haven't anything to show for legal marriage, and that I am going to New Orleans. It's a lie, George, it's a lie. I'm your wife, I shall go. I shall follow you to New Orleans. Perhaps my wife might not like it. Laura raised her head, her eyes flamed with fire. She tried to utter a cry and fell senseless to the floor. When she came to herself, the Colonel was gone. Washington Hawkins stood at her bedside. Did she come to herself? Was there anything left in her heart but hate and bitterness? A sense of an infamous wrong at the hands of the only man she had ever loved. She returned to Hawkeye. With the exception of Washington and his mother, no one knew what had happened. The neighbors supposed that the engagement with Colonel Selvy had fallen through. Laura was ill for a long time, but she recovered. She had that resolution in her that could conquer death almost. And with her health came back her beauty and an added fascination. Something that might be taken for sadness. Is there a beauty in the knowledge of evil?  Is the pathos in the eyes of the Beatrice Chenxi from her guilt or her innocence? Laura was not much changed. The lovely woman had a devil in her heart, that was all. End of chapter 18, recording by John K. www.validateyourlife.com Chapter 19 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 19 Mr. Harry Briarley drew his pay as an engineer while he was living at the City Hotel in Hawkeye. Mr. Thompson had been kind enough to say that it didn't make any difference whether he was with the Corps or not. And although Harry protested to the Colonel Daly and to Washington Hawkins, that he must go back at once to the line and superintend the layout with reference to his contract, yet he did not go, but wrote instead long letters to Philip, instructing him to keep his eye out and to let him know when any difficulty occurred that required his presence. Meantime, Harry blossomed out in the Society of Hawkeye, as he did in any society where fortune cast him, and he had the slightest opportunity to expand. Indeed, the talents of a rich and accomplished young fellow like Harry were not likely to go unappreciated in such a place. A land operator engaged in vast speculations, a favorite in the select circles of New York, in correspondence with brokers and bankers, intimate with public men at Washington, one who could play the guitar and touch the banjo lightly, and who had an eye for a pretty girl and knew the language of flattery was welcomed everywhere in Hawkeye. Even Miss Laura Hawkins thought it worthwhile to use her fascinations upon him and to endeavor to entangle the volatile fellow in the meshes of her attractions. Gad, says Harry to the Colonel, she's a superb creature. She'd make a stir in New York, money or no money. There are men I know would give her a railroad or an opera house, or whatever she wanted, at least they'd promise. Harry had a way of looking at women as he looked at anything else in the world he wanted, and he half resolved to appropriate Miss Laura during his stay in Hawkeye. Perhaps the Colonel divined his thoughts, or was offended at Harry's talk, for he replied, no nonsense, Mr. Briarley. Nonsense won't do in Hawkeye, not with my friends. The Hawkins blood is good blood, all the way from Tennessee. The Hawkins us are under the weather now, but their Tennessee property is millions when it comes into market. Of course, Colonel, not the least the fence intended, but you can see she is a fascinating woman. I was only thinking as to this appropriation. Now, what such a woman could do in Washington? All correct, too. All correct. Common thing, I assure you, in Washington. The wives of senators, representatives, cabinet officers, all sorts of wives, and some who are not wives, use their influence. You want an appointment?  Not much. You get on the right side of his wife. Is it an appropriation? You'd go straight to the committee or the interior office, I suppose. You'd learn better than that. It takes a woman to get anything through the land office. I tell you, Miss Laura would fascinate an appropriation right through the Senate and the House of Representatives in one session if she was in Washington. As your friend, Colonel, of course, as your friend. Would you have her sign our petition, asked the Colonel innocently? Harry laughed. Women don't get anything by petitioning Congress. Nobody does. That's for form. Petitions are referred somewhere and that's the last of them. You can't refer a handsome woman so easily when she is present. They prefer them mostly. The petition, however, was elaborately drawn up with a glowing description of Napoleon and the adjacent country and a statement of the absolute necessity to the prosperity of that region and of one of the stations on the great through route to the Pacific of the immediate improvement of Columbus River. To this was appended a map of the city and a survey of the river. It was signed by all the people at Stones Landing who could write their names. By Colonel Baraya Sellers and the Colonel agreed to have the names headed by all the senators and representatives from the state and by a sprinkling of ex-governors and ex-members of Congress. When completed, it was a formidable document. Its preparation and that of more minute plots of the new city consumed the valuable time of Sellers and Harry for many weeks and served to keep them both in the highest spirits. In the eyes of Washington Hawkins, Harry was a superior being, a man who was able to bring things to pass in a way that excited his enthusiasm. He never tired of listening to his stories of what he had done and of what he was going to do. As for Washington, Harry thought, he was a man of ability and comprehension but too visionary, he told the Colonel. The Colonel said he might be right but he had never noticed anything visionary about him. He's got his plans, sir. God bless my soul at his age, I was full of plans but experienced sober as a man. I never touch anything now that hasn't been weighed in my judgment and when Bariah Sellers puts his judgment on a thing, there it is. Whatever might have been Harry's intentions with regard to Laura, he saw more and more of her every day until he got to be restless and nervous when he was not with her. That consummate artist in passion allowed him to believe that the fascination was mainly on his side and so worked upon his vanity while inflaming his ardor that he scarcely knew what he was about. Her coolness and coyness were even made to appear the simple precautions of a modest timidity and attracted him even more than the little tendernesses into which she was occasionally surprised. He could never be away from her long, day or evening and in a short time, their intimacy was the town talk. She played with him so adroitly that Harry thought that she was absorbed in love for him and yet he was amazed that he did not get on faster in his conquest. And when he thought of it, he was peaked as well. A country girl, poor enough, that was evident, living with her family in a cheap and most unattractive frame house such as carpenters build in America, scantily furnished and unadorned without the adventitious aids of dress or jewels or the fine manners of society. Harry couldn't understand it. But she fascinated him and held him just beyond the line of absolute familiarity at the same time. While he was with her, she made him forget that the Hawkins house was nothing but a wooden tenement with four small square rooms on the ground floor and a half story. It might have been a palace for oughty new. Perhaps Laura was older than Harry. She was at any rate at that right age when beauty in woman seems more solid than in the budding period of girlhood. And she had come to understand her powers perfectly and to know exactly how much of the susceptibility and archness of the girl it was profitable to retain. She saw that many women with the best intentions make a mistake of carrying too much girlishness into womanhood. Such a woman would have attracted Harry at any time, but only a woman with a cool brain and exquisite art could have made him lose his head in this way. For Harry thought himself a man of the world. The young fellow never dreamed that he was merely being experimented on. He was to her a man of another society and another culture different from that she had any knowledge of except in books. And she was not unwilling to try on him the fascinations of her mind and person. For Laura had her dreams. She detested the narrow limits in which her lot was cast. She hated poverty. Much of her reading had been of modern works of fiction written by her own sex, which had revealed to her something of her own powers and given her indeed an exaggerated notion of the influence, the wealth, the position a woman may attain who has beauty and talent and ambition and a little culture and is not too scrupulous in the use of them. She wanted to be rich. She wanted luxury. She wanted men at her feet, her slaves, and she had not, thanks to some of the novels she had read, the nicest discrimination between notoriety and reputation. Perhaps she did not know how fatal notoriety usually is to the bloom of womanhood. With the other Hawkins children, Laura had been brought up in the belief that they had inherited a fortune in the Tennessee lands. She did not by any means share all the delusion with the family, but her brain was not seldom busy with schemes about it. Washington seemed to her only to dream of it and to be willing to wait for its riches to fall upon him in a golden shower. But she was impatient and wished she were a man to take hold of the business. You men must enjoy your schemes and your activity and liberty to go about the world, she said to Harry one day when he had been talking of New York and Washington and his incessant engagements. Oh yes, replied the martyr to business. It's all well enough if you don't have too much of it, but it only has one object. What is that?  What do you suppose I am staying in Hawkeye for week after week when I ought to be with my core? I suppose it's your business with Colonel Sellers about Napoleon. You've always told me so, answered Laura, with a look intended to contradict her words. And now I tell you that is all arranged. I suppose you'll tell me I ought to go. Harry exclaimed Laura, touching his arm and letting her pretty hand rest there a moment. Why should I want you to go away? The only person in Hawkeye who understands me. But you refused to understand me, replied Harry, flattered but still petulant. You are like an iceberg when we are alone. Laura looked up with wonder in her great eyes and something like a blush, suffusing her face, followed by a look of languor that penetrated Harry's heart as if it had been a longing. Did I ever show anyone the confidence in you, Harry? And she gave him her hand, which Harry pressed with effusion. Something in her manner told him that he must be content with that favor. It was always so. She excited his hopes and denied him, inflamed his passion and restrained it and wound him in her coils day by day. To what purpose? It was keen delight to Laura to prove that she had power over men. Laura liked to hear about life at the East and especially about the luxurious society in which Mr. Briarly moved when he was at home. It pleased her imagination to fancy herself a queen in it. You should be a winter in Washington, Harry said, but I have no acquaintances there. Don't know any of the families of the congressman? They like to have a pretty woman staying with them. Not one. Suppose Colonel Sellers should have business there, say about this Columbus River appropriation. Sellers and Laura laughed. You needn't laugh. Queerer things have happened. Sellers knows everybody from Missouri and from the West too, for that matter. He'd introduce you to Washington life quick enough. It doesn't need a crowbar to break your way into society there as it does in Philadelphia. It's democratic, Washington is. Money or beauty will open any door. If I were a handsome woman, I shouldn't want any better place than the Capitol to pick up a prince or a fortune. Thank you, replied Laura, but I prefer the quiet of home and the love of those I know. And her face wore a look of sweet contentment and unworldliness that finished Mr. Harry Briarley for the day. Nevertheless, the hint that Harry had dropped fell upon good ground and bore fruit in hundred fold. It worked in her mind until she had built up a plan on it and almost a career for herself. Why not, she said? Why shouldn't I do as other women have done? She took the first opportunity to see Colonel Sellers and to sound him about the Washington visit. How was he getting on with his navigation scheme? Would it be likely to take him from home to Jefferson City or to Washington perhaps? Well, maybe if the people of Napoleon want me to go to Washington and look after that matter, I might tear myself from my home. It's been suggested to me, but not a word of it to Mrs. Sellers and the children. Maybe they wouldn't like to think of their father in Washington, but Dilworthy, Senator Dilworthy, says to me, Colonel, you are the man. You could influence more votes than anyone else on such a measure. An old settler, a man of the people, you know the ones in Missouri. You have a respect for religion too, says he, and know how the cause of the gospel goes with improvements. Which is true enough, Ms. Laura, and it hasn't been enough thought of in connection with Napoleon. He's an able man, Dilworthy, and a good man. A man has got to be good to succeed as he has. He's only been in Congress a few years and he must be worth a million. First thing in the morning when he stayed with me, he asked about family prayers, whether we had him before or after breakfast. I hated to disappoint the senator, but I had to out with it. Tell him that we didn't have him, not steady. He said he understood business interruptions and all that. Some men were well enough without, but as for him, he never neglected the ordinances of religion. He doubted if the Columbus River Appropriation would succeed if we did not invoke the divine blessing on it. Perhaps it is not necessary to say to the reader that Senator Dilworthy had not stayed with Colonel Sellers while he was in Hawkeye. This visit to his house being only one of the Colonel's hallucinations. One of those instant creations of his fertile fancy, which were always flashing into his brain and out of his mouth, in the course of any conversation and without interrupting the flow of it. During the summer, Philip rode across the country and made a short visit in Hawkeye, giving Harry an opportunity to show him the progress that he and the Colonel had made in their operation at Stone's Landing. To introduce him also to Laura and to borrow a little money when he departed, Harry bragged about his conquest, as was his habit, and took Philip round to see his Western prize. Laura received Mr. Philip with a courtesy and a slight hauteur that rather surprised and not a little interested him. He saw at once that she was older than Harry and soon made up his mind that she was leading his friend a country dance to which he was unaccustomed. At least he thought he saw that and half hinted as much to Harry, who flared up at once. But on the second visit, Philip was not so sure. The young lady was certainly kind and friendly and almost confiding with Harry and treated Philip with the greatest consideration. She deferred to his opinions and listened attentively when he talked and in time met his frank manner with an equal frankness so that he was quite convinced that whatever she might feel towards Harry, she was sincere with him. Perhaps his manly way did win her liking. Perhaps in her mind, she compared him with Harry and recognized in him a man to whom a woman might give her whole soul, recklessly and with little care if she lost it. Philip was not invincible to her beauty nor to the intellectual charm of her presence. The week seemed very short that he passed in Hawkeye and when he bade Laura goodbye, he seemed to have known her a year. We shall see you again, Mr. Sterling, she said as she gave from her hand with just the shade of sadness in her handsome eyes. And when he turned away, she followed him with a look that might have disturbed his serenity. If he had not at that moment had a little square letter in his breast pocket dated at Philadelphia and signed Ruth. End of chapter 19. Chapter 20 of The Guilted 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 Nicola Kaye. The Guilted Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner. Chapter 20. The visit of Senator Abner Dilworthy was an event in Hawkeye. When a senator whose place is in Washington moving among the great and guiding the destinies of the nations, conned the sense to mingle among the people and accept the hospitalities of such a place as Hawkeye, the honour is not considered a light one. All parties are flattered by it and politics are forgotten in the presence of one so distinguished among his fellows. Senator Dilworthy, who was from a neighbouring state, had been a unionist in the darkest days of his country and had driven by it. But was that any reason why Colonel Sellers, who had been a confederate and had not driven by it, should give him the cold shoulder? The senator was the guest of his old friend, General Boswell, but it almost appeared that he was indebted to Colonel Sellers for the unreserved hospitalities of the town. It was the large-hearted Colonel who in a manner gave him the freedom of the city. You are known here, sir, said the Colonel and Hawkeye is proud of you. You will find every door open and a welcome at every hearthstone. I should insist upon your going to my house if you were not claimed by your older friend, General Boswell. But you will mingle with our people and you will see here developments that will surprise you. The Colonel was so profuse in his hospitality that he must have made the impression upon himself that he had entertained the senator at his own mansion during his stay. At any rate he afterwards always spoke of him as his guest and not seldom referred to the senator's relish of certain vians on his table. He did, in fact, press him to dine upon the morning of the day the senator was going away. Senator Dilworthy was large and portly, though not tall, a pleasant-spoken man, a popular man with the people. He took a lively interest in the town and all the surrounding country and made many inquiries as to the progress of agriculture, of education and of religion and especially as to the condition of the emancipated race. Providence, he said, has placed them in our hands and although you and I, General, might have chosen a different destiny for them under the Constitution, yet Providence knows best. You can't do much with them, interrupted Colonel Sellers. They are a speculating race, sir, disinclined to work for white folks without security, planning how to live by only working for themselves. Idle, sir, there's my garden, just a ruin of weeds. Nothing practical in them. There is some truth in your observation, Colonel, but you must educate them. You educate the negro and you make him more speculating than he was before. If he won't stick to any industry except for himself now, what will he do then? But Colonel, the negro and educator will be more able to make his speculations fruitful. Never, sir, never. He would only have a wider scope to injure himself. A negro has no grasp, sir. Now a white man can conceive great operations and carry them out. A negro count. Still, replied the senator, granting that he might injure himself in a worldly point of view, his elevation through education would multiply his chances for the hereafter, which is the important thing after all, Colonel. And no matter what the result is, we must fulfill our duty by this being. I'd elevate his soul, promptly responded the Colonel. That's just it. You can't make his soul too immortal, but I wouldn't touch him himself. Yes, sir, make his soul immortal, but don't disturb the negro as he is. Of course, one of the entertainments offered the senator was a public reception, held in the courthouse, at which he made a speech to his fellow citizens. Colonel Sellers was master of ceremonies. He escorted the band from the city hotel to General Boswells. He marshaled the procession of masons of odd fellows and of firemen, the good Templars, the sons of temperance, the cadets of temperance, the daughters of Rebecca, the Sunday school children, and citizens generally, which followed the senator to the courthouse. He bustled about the room long after everyone else was seated and loudly cried, Order! In the dead silence, which preceded the introduction of the senator by General Boswell, the occasion was one to call out his finest powers of personal appearance and one he long dwelt on with pleasure. This not being an addition of the Congressional Globe, it is impossible to give senator Dilworthy's speech in full. He began somewhat as follows. Fellow citizens, it gives me great pleasure to thus meet and mingle with you, to lay aside for a moment the heavy duties of an official and burden some station and confer in familiar converse with my friends in your great state. The good opinion of my fellow citizens of all sections is the sweetest solace in all my anxieties. I look forward with longing to the time when I can lay aside the cares of office. Downside shouted a tipsy fellow near the door. Cries of, put him out! My friends, do not remove him, let them as guided man stay. I see that he is a victim of that evil which is swallowing up public virtue and sapping the foundation of society. As I was saying when I can lay down the cares of office and retired to the suites of private life in some such sweet, peaceful, intelligent, wide awake and patriotic place as Hawkeye. Applause. I have traveled much, I have seen all parts of our glorious union but I have never seen a lovelier village than yours or one that has more signs of commercial and industrial and religious prosperity. More applause. The senator then launched into a sketch of our great country and dwelt for an hour or more upon its prosperity and the dangers which threatened it. He then touched reverently upon the institutions of religion and upon the necessity of private purity if we were to have any public morality. I trust, he said, that there are children within the sound of my voice and after some remarks to them, the senator closed with an apostrophe to the genius of American liberty walking with the Sunday school in one hand and temperance in the other up the glorified steps of the national capital. Colonel Sellers did not, of course, lose the opportunity to impress upon so influential a person as the senator the desirability of improving the navigation of Columbus River. He and Mr. Briarley took the senator over to Napoleon and opened to him their plan. It was a plan that the senator could understand without a great deal of explanation for he seemed to be familiar with the like improvements elsewhere. When, however, they reached Stone's Landing, the senator looked about him and inquired, is this Napoleon? This is the nucleus. The nucleus, said the Colonel, unrolling his map. Here is the depot, the church, the city hall, and so on. I see, how far from here is Columbus River? Does that stream empty? That, why, that's Goose Run. That ain't no Columbus. It's over to Hawkeye interrupted one of the citizens who had come out to stare at the strangers.  Yes, sir, the Colonel hastened to explain, in the old records Columbus River is called Goose Run. You see how it sweeps round the town 49 miles to the Missouri. Slope navigation all the way pretty much drains this whole country. When it's improved, steamboats will run right up here. It's got to be enlarged, deepened. You see, by the map, Columbus River, this country must have water communication. You'll want a considerable appropriation, Colonel Sellers. I should say a million. Is that your figure, Mr. Briarly? According to our surveys, said Harry, a million would do it. A million spent on the river would make Napoleon worth two millions at least. I see, not at the senator, but you'd better begin by asking only for two or 300,000 the usual way. You can begin to sell town lots on that appropriation, you know. The senator himself to do him justice was not very much interested in the country or the stream, but he favored the appropriation and he gave the Colonel and Mr. Briarly to understand that he would endeavor to get it through. Harry, who thought he was shrewd and understood Washington, suggested an interest, but he saw that the senator was wounded by the suggestion. You will offend me by repeating such an observation, he said. Whatever I do will be for the public interest. It will require a portion of the appropriation for necessary expenses and I am sorry to say that there are members who will have to be seen, but you can reckon upon my humble services. This aspect of the subject was not again alluded to. The senator possessed himself of the facts, not from his observation of the ground but from the lips of Colonel Sellers and laid the appropriation scheme away among his other plans for benefiting the public. It was on this visit also that the senator made the acquaintance of Mr. Washington Hawkins and was greatly taken with his innocence, his guileless manner and perhaps with his ready adaptability to enter upon any plan proposed. Colonel Sellers was pleased to see this interest that Washington had awakened, especially since it was likely to further his expectations with regard to the Tennessee lands. The senator having remarked to the Colonel that he delighted to help any deserving young man when the promotion of a private advantage could at the same time be made to contribute to the general good. And he did not doubt that this was an opportunity of that kind. The result of several conferences with Washington was that the senator proposed that he should go to Washington with him and become his private secretary and the secretary of his committee. A proposal which was eagerly accepted. The senator spent Sunday in Hawkeye and attended church. He cheered the heart of the worthy and zealous minister by an expression of his sympathy and his labors and by many inquiries in regard to the religious state of the region. It was not a very promising state and the good man felt how much lighter his task would be if he had the aid of such a man as Senator Dillworthy. I'm glad to see, my dear sir, said the senator, that you give them the doctrines. It is owing to neglect of the doctrines that there is such a fearful falling away in the country. I wish that we might have you in Washington as chaplain now in the Senate. The good man could not but be a little flattered and if sometimes thereafter in his discouraging work, he allowed the thought that he might perhaps be called to Washington as chaplain of the Senate to cheer him, who can wonder? The senator's commendation at least did one service for him. It elevated him in the opinion of Hawkeye. Laura was at church alone that day and Mr. Briarley walked home with her. A part of their way lay without of General Boswell and Senator Dillworthy and introductions were made. Laura had her own reasons for wishing to know the senator and the senator was not a man who could be called indifferent to charms such as hers. That meek young lady so commended herself to him in the short walk that he announced his intentions of paying his respects to her the next day. An intention which Harry received glumly and when the senator was out of hearing he called him an old fool.  He's a very pleasant man. He said you were a young man of great promise. The senator did call next day and the result of his visit was that he was confirmed in his impression that there was something about him very attractive to ladies. He saw Laura again and again during his stay and felt more and more the subtle influence of her feminine beauty which every man felt who came near her. Harry was beside himself with rage while the senator remained in town. He declared that women were always ready to drop any man for hire game and he attributed his own ill luck to the senator's appearance.  Perhaps Laura enjoyed his torment but she sued him with blandishments that increased his ardor and she smiled to herself to think that he had with all his protestations of love never spoken of marriage. Probably the vivacious fellow never had thought of it. At any rate when he at length went away from Hawkeye he was no nearer it but there was no telling to what desperate lengths his passion might not carry him. Laura bade him goodbye with tender regret which however did not disturb her peace or interfere with her plans. The visit of Senator Dilworthy had become of more importance to her and it by and by bore the fruit she longed for in an invitation to visit his family in the national capitol during the winter session of Congress. End of chapter 20, recording by Nicola Cain.