Aladdin & Co.: A Romance of Yankee Magic

------------------------------------------------------------------------ ALADDIN & CO. A ROMANCE OF YANKEE MAGIC BY HERBERT QUICK Author of "Virginia of the Air Lanes," "Double Trouble," etc. GROSSET & DUNLAP Publishers--New York ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright 1904 Henry Holt and Company Copyright 1907 The Bobbs-Merrill Company ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Contents. PAGE CHAPTER I. Which is of an Introductory Character 1 CHAPTER II. Still Introductory 13 CHAPTER III. Reminiscentially Autobiographical 20 CHAPTER IV. Jim Discovers his Coral Island 39 CHAPTER V. We Reach the Atoll 46 CHAPTER VI. I am Inducted into the Cave, and Enlist 55 CHAPTER VII. We Make our Landing 67 CHAPTER VIII. A Welcome to Wall Street and Us 77 CHAPTER IX. I Go Abroad and We Unfurl the Jolly Roger 86 CHAPTER X. We Dedicate Lynhurst Park 96 CHAPTER XI. The Empress and Sir John Meet Again 112 CHAPTER XII. In which the Burdens of Wealth Begin to Fall upon Us 120 CHAPTER XIII. A Sitting or Two in the Game with the World and Destiny 137 CHAPTER XIV. In which we Learn Something of Railroads, and Attend Some Remarkable Christenings 152 CHAPTER XV. Some Affairs of the Heart Considered in their Relation to Dollars and Cents 169 CHAPTER XVI. Some Things which Happened in our Halcyon Days 185 CHAPTER XVII. Relating to the Disposition of the Captives 201 CHAPTER XVIII. The Going Away of Laura and Clifford, and the Departure of Mr. Trescott 214 CHAPTER XIX. In which Events Resume their Usual Course--at a Somewhat Accelerated Pace 231 CHAPTER XX. I Twice Explain the Condition of the Trescott Estate 248 CHAPTER XXI. Of Conflicts, Within and Without 260 CHAPTER XXII. In which I Win my Great Victory 270 CHAPTER XXIII. The "Dutchman's Mill" and What it Ground 281 CHAPTER XXIV. The Beginning of the End 291 CHAPTER XXV. That Last Weird Battle in the West 306 CHAPTER XXVI. The End--and a Beginning 320 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ALADDIN & CO ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE PERSONS OF THE STORY. James Elkins, the "man who made Lattimore," known as "Jim." Albert Barslow, who tells the tale; the friend and partner of Jim. Alice Barslow, his wife; at first, his sweetheart. William Trescott, known as "Bill," a farmer and capitalist. Josephine Trescott, his daughter. Mrs. Trescott, his wife. Mr. Hinckley, a banker of Lattimore. Mrs. Hinckley, his wife; devoted to the emancipation of woman. Antonia, their daughter. Aleck Macdonald, pioneer and capitalist. General Lattimore, pioneer, soldier, and godfather of Lattimore. Miss Addison, the general's niece. Captain Marion Tolliver, Confederate veteran and Lattimore boomer. Mrs. Tolliver, his wife. Will Lattimore, a lawyer. Mr. Ballard, a banker. J. Bedford Cornish, a speculator, who with Elkins, Barslow, and Hinckley make up the great Lattimore "Syndicate." Clifford Giddings, editor and proprietor of the Lattimore Herald. De Forest Barr-Smith, an Englishman "representing capital." Cecil Barr-Smith, his brother. Avery Pendleton, of New York, a railway magnate; head of the "Pendleton System." Allen G. Wade, of New York; head of the Allen G. Wade Trust Co. Halliday, a railway magnate; head of the "Halliday System." Watson, a reporter. Schwartz, a locomotive engineer on the Lattimore & Great Western. Hegvold, a fireman. Citizens of Lattimore, Politicians, Live-stock Merchants, Railway Clerks and Officials, etc. Scene: Principally in the Western town of Lattimore, but partly in New York and Chicago. Time: Not so very long ago. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ALADDIN & CO CHAPTER I. Which is of Introductory Character. Our National Convention met in Chicago that year, and I was one of the delegates. I had looked forward to it with keen expectancy. I was now, at five o'clock of the first day, admitting to myself that it was a bore. The special train, with its crowd of overstimulated enthusiasts, the throngs at the stations, the brass bands, bunting, and buncombe all jarred upon me. After a while my treason was betrayed to the boys by the fact that I was not hoarse. They punished me by making me sing as a solo the air of each stanza of "Marching Through Georgia," "Tenting To-night on the Old Camp-ground," and other patriotic songs, until my voice was assimilated to theirs. But my gorge rose at it all, and now, at five o'clock of the first day, I was seeking a place of retirement where I could be alone and think over the marvelous event which had suddenly raised me from yesterday's parity with the fellows on the train to my present state of exaltation. I should have preferred a grotto in Vau Vau or some south-looking mountain glen; but in the absence of any such retreat in Chicago, I turned into the old art-gallery in Michigan Avenue. As I went floating in space past its door, my eye caught through the window the gleam of the white limbs of statues, and my being responded to the soul vibrations they sent out. So I paid my fee, entered, and found the tender solitude for which my heart longed. I sat down and luxuriated in thoughts of the so recent marvelous experience. Need I explain that I was young and the experience was one of the heart? I was so young that my delegateship was regarded as a matter to excite wonder. I saw my picture in the papers next morning as a youth of twenty-three who had become his party's leader in an important agricultural county. Some, in the shameless laudation of a sensational press, compared me to the younger Pitt. As a matter of fact, I had some talent for organization, and in any gathering of men, I somehow never lacked a following. I was young enough to be an honest partisan, enthusiastic enough to be useful, strong enough to be respected, ignorant enough to believe my party my country's safeguard, and I was prominent in my county before I was old enough to vote. At twenty-one I conducted a convention fight which made a member of Congress. It was quite natural, therefore, that I should be delegate to this convention, and that I had looked forward to it with keen expectancy. The remarkable thing was my falling off from its work now by virtue of that recent marvelous experience which as I have admitted was one of the heart. Do not smile. At three-and-twenty even delegates have hearts. My mental and sentimental state is of importance in this history, I think, or I should not make so much of it. I feel sure that I should not have behaved just as I did had I not been at that moment in the iridescent cloudland of newly-reciprocated love. Alice had accepted me not an hour before my departure for Chicago. Hence my loathing for such things as nominating speeches and the report of the Committee on Credentials, and my yearning for the Vau Vau grotto. She had yielded herself up to me with such manifold sweetnesses, uttered and unutterable (all of which had to be gone over in my mind constantly to make sure of their reality), that the contest in Indiana, and the cause of our own State's Favorite Son, became sickening burdens to me, which rolled away as I gazed upon the canvases in the gallery. I lay back upon a seat, half closed my eyes, and looked at the pictures. When one comes to consider the matter, an art gallery is a wonderfully different thing from a national convention! As I looked on them, the still paintings became instinct with life. Yonder shepherdess shielding from the thorns the little white lamb was Alice, and back behind the clump of elms was myself, responding to her silvery call. The cottage on the mountain-side was ours. That lady waving her handkerchief from the promontory was Alice, too; and I was the dim figure on the deck of the passing ship. I was the knight and she the wood-nymph; I the gladiator in the circus, she the Roman lady who agonized for me in the audience; I the troubadour who twanged the guitar, she the princess whose fair shoulder shone through the lace at the balcony window. They lived and moved before my very eyes. I knew the unseen places beyond the painted mountains, and saw the secret things the artists only dreamed of. Doves cooed for me from the clumps of thorn; the clouds sailed in pearly serenity across the skies, their shadows mottling mountain, hill, and plain; and out from behind every bole, and through every leafy screen, glimpsed white dryads and fleeing fays. Clearly the convention hall was no place for me. "Hang the speech of the temporary chairman, anyhow!" thought I; "and as for the platform, let it point with pride, and view with apprehension, to its heart's content; it is sure to omit all reference to the overshadowing issue of the day--Alice!" All the world loves a lover, and a true lover loves all the world,--especially that portion of it similarly blessed. So, when I heard a girl's voice alternating in intimate converse with that of a man, my sympathies went out to them, and I turned silently to look. They must have come in during my reverie; for I had passed the place where they were sitting and had not seen them. There was a piece of grillwork between my station and theirs, through which I could see them plainly. The gallery had seemed deserted when I went in, and still seemed so, save for the two voices. Hers was low and calm, but very earnest; and there was in it some inflection or intonation which reminded me of the country girls I had known on the farm and at school. His was of a peculiarly sonorous and vibrant quality, its every tone so clear and distinct that it would have been worth a fortune to a public speaker. Such a voice and enunciation are never associated with any mind not strong in the qualities of resolution and decision. On looking at her, I saw nothing countrified corresponding to the voice. She was dressed in something summery and cool, and wore a sort of flowered blouse, the presence of which was explained by the easel before which she sat, and the palette through which her thumb protruded. She had laid down her brush, and the young man was using her mahlstick in a badly-directed effort to smear into a design some splotches of paint on the unused portion of her canvas. He was by some years her senior, but both were young--she, very young. He was swarthy of complexion, and his smoothly-shaven, square-set jaw and full red lips were bluish with the subcutaneous blackness of his beard. His dress was so distinctly late in style as to seem almost