Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 197
When Seth Lachford came back to the kitchen where Tom and Min sat shucking butternuts there was resolution in his face.
“Tom,” he said, “when you sell out this company what do you expect to get?”
Tom looked up, stopped shucking. “Thirty thousand dollars at par,” he said. “Ten thousand each for you and me and Min: perhaps a lot more.”
“You’ll sell it to people here in town?”
“Easy,” said Tom. “There are enough suckers right here to buy it all.”
“And what do they get?”
“That’s their lookout,” shrugged Tom. “They can sell again if they’re quick enough.”
“But sooner or later?”
“Oh, sooner or later someone gets stung. But it’s not going to be us.”
Seth sat silent a while.
“And if we let go of it now,” he asked, “where are we?”
“We owe the bank $15,000, and we’re ruined.”
Seth looked Tom right in the face. Dynamic as he was, the younger Lachford’s face fell.
“See here, Tom,” evolved Seth slowly, “I’ll not sell those shares.”
The brothers sat looking at each other, their faces working.
“If you don’t,” said Tom, “it’s ruin.”
“I’ll meet it,” said Seth, his face still working.
“If you do,” said Tom, his face stopping working, “you’ll meet it in the penitentiary.”
“Tom,” said Seth, “there’s been Lachfords on this place for four generations, and never a thief among them.”
VI
For two weeks after that the work at the palladium deposits went on, and the Lachfords walked around the plant, avoiding each other — Tom keen and restless, Seth moody, his eyes ever on the dirt.
Only once Tom spoke to Seth. “The brokers have placed the first lot of my shares at par,” he said, “and they can sell more, they say. They can’t list them but they’ll sell them on the curb. Give me your shares now and Min’s and we’ll sell them and get out.”
Seth turned on his heel and, without a word, went to the house.
He called his wife aside. He took out the assayer’s paper, opened it, and spread it out before her. “Tom says he’ll sell your shares for ten thousand dollars, Min. Are you going to sell off that stuff,” and he tapped the paper fiercely, “to your friends and neighbors, people of your own town?”
Min looked at the document. The chemical analysis was beyond her grasp, but the single item at the bottom, “estimated commercial value,” was plain enough even for a child.
“No, Seth!” she said, “I can’t do it. It ain’t right.”
“Look, Min,” Seth went on, “I want my name to stand right in this town. If Tom tries to sell out those shares, could you get ten thousand dollars from your folks and buy them?”
“I might,” said Min, “I doubt Pa could raise it, but if you want it, Seth, I’ll try.”
VII
The next day Min started off to her folks in Pennsylvania to raise ten thousand dollars, and on the same morning the shares of Amalgamated Palladium Limited went on the local exchange as a curb security, and there was great excitement in financial circles in Smudgeville. The shares opened at eighty, rose straight to par, reacted to fifty, sank down to twenty, lay there gasping and then jumped to par again in four hops. At 2 P. M. they were reported as restless; at 3 buoyant, and at closing time strong with an undercurrent of weakness.
That night Tom Lachford packed his grip to leave by the midnight express, bound towards Havana.
“I’m off, Seth,” he said; “say goodby to Min when she comes back. If you’re wise you’ll get quick. The shares will break tomorrow and then—”
“I’m not quitting, Tom,” said Seth; “goodby.”
VIII
Min came back two days later.
“I got the money, Seth,” she said. “Pa raised it partly on the steers and the rest on a mortgage.”
“Too late, I guess, Min,” said Seth. “The shares went to five hundred yesterday, and this morning they’re holding out for a thousand dollars a share.”
IX
It was a week later that Tom Lachford sat in the Colorado Claro Hotel at Havana with a cocktail in front of him, and $4,000 in Cuban money to his credit. And it was there he got a copy of a home paper sent him by mail. He opened it with trembling hands, looking for Seth’s ruin. And instead of it he saw a big headline saying that Amalgamated Palladium was selling at two thousand a share, and his hands trembled more. Last of all he read a two-column account of the discovery of graphite on the Lachford place, and he shook like a leaf all over.
Meantime Min and Seth were sitting over their buttermilk in the kitchen living-room, adding up figures.
“I can’t cipher it out,” said Seth, “but it’s millions all right.”
“And what is the stuff anyways,” asked Min, “if it ain’t palladium?”
“Graphite, it’s called,” said Seth. “Always noticed those black streaks in the crushings. I guess that’s it. I’m glad I didn’t sell. If I could have bought back those shares. I meant to give them to Tom, didn’t I, Min?”
“Oh, certainly,” said Min, “so did I: and I’m glad too we didn’t sell. I felt bad about it all along, Seth, and when I saw that assayer’s paper where it said ‘commercial value ten thousand dollars a ton’ a light broke in on me and I saw it wasn’t right. But I still don’t see why those shares jumped up that way.”
“The damn fool assayer. He must have put some New York guys wise to it. They were just waiting for us, likely. I doubt, Min, whether those New York financiers are quite as easy as they make out in the story papers.”
“That’s so,” subsided Min. “And where Tom was a bum promoter, Seth was wrong in underestimating the commercial value of scientific analysis applied to the basic data of modern business.”
No. III
Our Business Benefactors
An After-Dinner Symposium, as
Reported by the Humblest of the Guests
“No,” said Mr. Spugg, the host of the party, as he held one hand on the stem of his port wine glass and kept his second after-dinner cigar in the fingers of the other, “no Sir, I never could do fractions.”
He looked round the table with a sort of pride. All the other men, except myself, grunted assent. “And what’s more,” added Spugg, “I’ve never felt the need of them to this day.” There was a chorus of approval. Spugg of course is a big man, one of the biggest men in rubber, so they say, on the continent. There were other big men present at the dinner too. There was a big shirt man, and a big fruit man and a man at the end of the table that I had frequently heard referred to as the Napoleon of frozen meat. In fact, as has been indicated in earlier pages of this book, in such a gathering as this there were certain to be several Napoleons present, — who were spoken of as “regular Napoleons,” “perfect Napoleons” and so on. They are always found in any business gathering. There were some “revolutionists” present also; one man was pointed out to me as having revolutionized the dried apple business: another had revolutionized the sale of weatherproof paint, and a third was “working up a revolution” in eggs. In short they were a typical group of what are now called “big” men — men who do “big” things. They were not “thinkers.” They were men who don’t need to think. So it is naturally most impressive to hear these men say that they had never done fractions in their lives. If big men like them have no use for fractions what earthly good are fractions anyway? But what interested me most was to hear the “big men” talk of the “side lines,” the things that they carried on as mere appendages to the main interests of their business lives.
“How’s that University of yours getting on, Spugg?” asked the big pulp man. “Better,” said Spugg, “We’ve got a business man at the head of it at last and he’s putting it on business lines. We expect that our next balance sheet will make a pretty good showing.”
“That’s good,” said the other. Then they both fell silent to listen to the Napoleon of frozen meat who was talking, so I gathered presently, about the church that he “controlled.”
“He had,” the Napoleon was saying “no pep, no punch. Sunday after Sunday it was the same thing, — every sermon, you know, just so much straight Theology. Well, you see, a congregation won’t stand for Theology today. They want something up-to-date. Two or three times I got hold of the old fellow and I said to him, ‘can’t you take up something that will let the people get away a little further from religion.’ But he couldn’t. It wasn’t in him.”
“Couldn’t you retire him?” asked one of the listeners.
“Not so very easily. We had no written contract, you know, just the old fashioned appointment by letter — (it was forty years ago when they put him in) and all the original letter said, was, ‘as long as it shall please God to bless his ministration,’ — Well, I began to say what can you do with that? Our lawyers admitted that they couldn’t make sense of it.
“Then there was all the trouble about the churchyard,” — went on the big man, pausing to light a new cigar. “You remember that churchyard that there was all round our church with the willow trees and the gravestone and the old slabs laid flat right in the grass?”
Several men nodded.
“Well you know, that sort of thing is a pretty poor ad. for a church. The stones were old, half crumbling and there wasn’t a willow tree in the lot in decent shape. Of course we wanted to level it all out, clean out the old monuments, cut out the trees and turf it neatly, put a good gravel motor drive in a crescent right through it. Well, the old fellow stood out against it and without his consent, so our lawyers said, we ran a certain risk in removing the dead. There is some old law it seems against ‘breaking the repose of the dead.’ It has no application I understand to an up-to-date cemetery. But it applies here. So we were stuck. Meantime the churchyard was doing us harm: a congregation don’t want to drive their cars among graves over grass. The broken stone will blow a tire as quick as anything.”
“Well, what did you do?” asked Spugg. “Oh we got him out all right,” the big man went on. “We managed to get him in a corner on the pension question and he let us have his resignation.” “And who have you got now?” “We’ve got an A. 1 man, all right. He was with the Presbyterians (though I think he’d been an Anglican for a while before that) but we went straight after him, met him at his own figure and signed him.”
“What are you giving him?” asked Spugg. “Fifteen Thousand,” said the Napoleon, puffing at his cigar. “You can’t get them for less, or not good ones. They simply won’t come: They know what they’re worth. There’s an insurance company that would take our man at fifteen thousand tomorrow.”
“He’s pretty good, is he?” asked one of the men.
“Absolutely first class. He’s the best publicity man I ever saw in a pulpit. You’ve seen that big sign he’s put up, with great gilt letters, — just where the old willow with the sundial under it used to be. Every week there’s the topic of the discourse in big lettering so that people can read it from their cars: and those are the people, mind you, that we’re going after. Under the old fellow we had, I suppose, the poorest congregation in the city. A church can’t get very far with them.”
There was a general growl of agreement.
“And every Sunday some new up-to-date subject, not theology you know but something that will hold and interest the people. Last Sunday, for example, he preached on the Holy Land (he was there for the Standard Oil people six or seven years ago). And he showed it all so vividly (we’ve fixed a moving picture machine where the font used to be), with the borings that they’re making for oil near Damascus, and the new derricks at the Sea of Galilee. It was wonderful.”
“But that’s a pretty heavy sum to pay him,” one of the guests said, “I don’t see how your funds can meet that.”
“Just the other way,” said the big man, “we make on it. With a live man like that you get it all back. Last Sabbath day our offertory alone broke even with the week’s expenses: that will show you the class of people that we’re attracting.”
“That’s certainly pretty good,” assented several of the men.
“Yes and more than that. Take the overhead. Now, in the old fashioned church the overhead was everything. Light and power alone were among the biggest items that they thought about. Well, we’ve changed all that. You can’t exactly cut out the overhead altogether in running a church, but you can reduce it to a point where it doesn’t matter. And what we find is that with plenty of current receipts from Social entertainments, — concerts and lotteries and dances and so on, we don’t have to worry about the questions of light and power at all. In fact we never think of it.”
The speaker paused. And the host took occasion of the pause to start the port wine moving round and to beckon to the butler for more cigars. Whereupon the general talk broke out again and the purely spiritual tone of the conversation was lost.
But I couldn’t help revolving in mind as I presently wended my way home, the wonderful things that the Big Business men are doing for our Colleges and Churches.
The Perfect Lover’s Guide
Or
How to Select a Mate, on Sea or
on Shore
Our progress through the Garden of Folly having led us to view the follies of the mind and body, of failure and success, we are now brought in sight of the supremest folly of all, the most ancient and the most modern, the folly of love. We suppose that even the dullest of our readers — and we are speaking with emphasis — will sit up here and give evidence of something approaching to an intelligent interest. Indeed we may say that we have been induced to make up this part of our enquiry in response to a wide public demand, — the only reason, by the way, which induces us to do anything. We therefore propose to construct in condensed form a sort of Lover’s Guide or Manual of Love.
Preface
On the Importance of Selecting a Wife
Few people appreciate at its true importance the selection of a wife. One has only to look at other men’s wives to realize how carelessly they have been selected. A great many of them are too small, others are too large. Others again, while suitable as to size are of poor quality. With others the colouring is imperfect, or easily washed out. In short if a man desires to select a wife of the right size and shape, of good colour and wearing quality, one that is washable and will not bleach out in the sun, he must be willing to devote time and study to the question. Many a young man admits after marriage with regret that he has selected his wife too rashly: that if he had used an intelligence test on her he would never have taken her: that he thought she knew things that she doesn’t know: that her sense of humour is away below his standard: that she can’t play poker, — and that he would like another pick.
For such young men there is no hope to be given. Their choice is made. But those whose selection is still to be taken we would advise to be warned in time and to study the whole problem of selecting a wife with the care that it deserves.
At What Age Should a Man Marry
Our first enquiry, then, is the age at which a man ought to turn his thoughts towards marriage? The law of the State of New York, and of many other states, and the common law of England on which these laws are based, all assign as the age of marriage fourteen years for a man and twelve years for a woman. But we are against this. We have a feeling that it is too soon. A man of fourteen still lacks something in breadth, — and even in height. We doubt if his character has reached the maturity that it will have at sixty. Similarly a woman of twelve is still in a way, — indeed in a whole lot of ways — undeveloped, she has scarcely seen enough of life to be able to select a mate with the same certainty with which the shipping companies pick them. We are informed, it is true, that the Hindoo women are married at twelve years of age. But on this point we can only refer our readers to the Hindoo edition of our manual. Western women, at twelve, are not yet formed. The wise young man will wait until they get bigger. Anyone who wants one of those little wee Hindoos is welcome to her.
At what age, then, should a young girl or a young man begin to think of marriage? We are not prepared to indicate any precise moment in life. But there will come a time in the life of any of them at which new aspirations and new wants will turn their thoughts towards marriage. When a young girl begins to feel that she wants a house of her own, — a large one, — with a butler and a chauffeur, and two motor cars and a box at the Opera, then the time has come when she must seek a husband. Her father will never give her these things. So too with the young man. The time comes when his surroundings begin to pall on him — when he ceases to care to spend his evenings with billiard markers, prize fighters and dog fanciers: when he begins to want to pass his time with some companion softer than a prize fighter and dearer, — if it is possible, — than a dog fancier, — then, we say, and we say it emphatically, the young man ought to get married.
What Young People Ought to Know
But stop! Before the young man, or the young woman, can take any steps in the direction of marriage they must first fit themselves for it. All the manuals on the subject are united on this. Young people must not be hurried into matrimony until they have an adequate knowledge of a great many things that it will be essential for them to know in married life. Most important is it that our young people should have a proper acquaintance with the laws of health, a knowledge in short, of their own bodies. The young men and women of our present generation, — in spite of the existence of the admirable little manuals of Dr. Snide, Dr. Snoop and others, — are painfully ignorant of their own bodies. We ourselves met a girl the other day, — a great big one, not a little Hindoo, — who didn’t know where her œsophagus was. Apparently she had been going round with her œsophagus for twenty years and didn’t know that she had one. Enquiry showed that she was also ignorant of her diaphragm and what it did for her, and knew nothing of her cerebellum except that it was part of her foot.
