rapt and enthusiastic listener, but he was not, for
two matters disturbed his mind and distracted his
attention. One was, that he discovered, to his
confusion and shame, that in allowing himself to be
helped a second time to the turnips, he had robbed
those hungry children. He had not needed the
dreadful “fruit,” and had not wanted it;
and when he saw the pathetic sorrow in their faces
when they asked for more and there was no more to
give them, he hated himself for his stupidity and pitied
the famishing young things with all his heart.
The other matter that disturbed him was the dire
inflation that had begun in his stomach. It grew
and grew, it became more and more insupportable.
Evidently the turnips were “fermenting.”
He forced himself to sit still as long as he could,
but his anguish conquered him at last.
He rose in the midst of the Colonel’s talk and
excused himself on the plea of a previous engagement.
The Colonel followed him to the door, promising over
and over again that he would use his influence to get
some of the Early Malcolms for him, and insisting
that he should not be such a stranger but come and
take pot-luck with him every chance he got. Washington
was glad enough to get away and feel free again.
He immediately bent his steps toward home.
In bed he passed an hour that threatened to turn his
hair gray, and then a blessed calm settled down upon
him that filled his heart with gratitude. Weak
and languid, he made shift to turn himself about and
seek rest and sleep; and as his soul hovered upon the
brink of unconciousness, he heaved a long, deep sigh,
and said to himself that in his heart he had cursed
the Colonel’s preventive of rheumatism, before,
and now let the plague come if it must—he
was done with preventives; if ever any man beguiled
him with turnips and water again, let him die the
death.
If he dreamed at all that night, no gossiping spirit
disturbed his visions to whisper in his ear of certain
matters just then in bud in the East, more than a
thousand miles away that after the lapse of a few years
would develop influences which would profoundly affect
the fate and fortunes of the Hawkins family.
CHAPTER XII
“Oh, it’s easy enough to make a fortune,”
Henry said.
“It seems to be easier than it is, I begin to
think,” replied Philip.
“Well, why don’t you go into something?
You’ll never dig it out of the Astor Library.”
If there be any place and time in the world where
and when it seems easy to “go into something”
it is in Broadway on a spring morning, when one is
walking city-ward, and has before him the long lines
of palace-shops with an occasional spire seen through
the soft haze that lies over the lower town, and hears
the roar and hum of its multitudinous traffic.
To the young American, here or elsewhere, the paths
to fortune are innumerable and all open; there is
invitation in the air and success in all his wide
horizon. He is embarrassed which to choose, and
is not unlikely to waste years in dallying with his
chances, before giving himself to the serious tug
and strain of a single object. He has no traditions
to bind him or guide him, and his impulse is to break
away from the occupation his father has followed,
and make a new way for himself.
Copyrights
The Gilded Age from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
