Aladdin & Co.: A Romance of Yankee Magic
and pushed an electric button. A young man from an outer office
responded.
"Tell Mr. Moore," said Pendleton to him, "that he will have to see the
gentlemen who will call at twelve--on that lake terminal matter--he will
understand. And see that I am not disturbed until after lunch.... And,
say, Frank! See if Mr. Adams can come in here--at once, please."
Mr. Adams, who turned out to be some sort of a freight expert, came in,
and the rest of the interview was a bombardment of questions, in which
we all took turns as targets. When we went to lunch we felt that Mr.
Pendleton had possessed himself of all we knew about our enterprise, and
filed the information away in some vast pigeon-hole case with his own
great stock of knowledge.
We met Mr. Wade over an elaborate lunch. He said, as he shook hands with
Cornish, that he believed they had met somewhere, to which Cornish bowed
a frigid assent. Mr. Wade was the head of The Allen G. Wade Trust
Company, and seemed in a semi-comatose condition, save when cakes,
wine, or securities were under discussion. He addressed me as "Mr.
Corning," and called Cornish "Atkins," and once in a while opened his
mouth to address Jim by name, but halted, with a distressful look, at
the realization of the fact that he could not remember names enough to
go around. He made an appointment with me for the party for the next
morning.
"If you will come to my office before you call on Mr. Wade," said Mr.
Pendleton, "I will have a memorandum prepared of what we will do with
you in the way of a traffic agreement: it may be of some use in
determining the desirability of your bonds. I'm very glad to have met
you, gentlemen. When Lattimore gets into my world--by which I mean our
system and connections--I hope to visit the little city which has so
strong a business community as to be able to send out such a committee
as yourselves; good-afternoon!"
"Well," said I, as we went toward our hotel, "this looks like progress,
doesn't it?"
"I sha'n't feel dead sure," said Jim, "until the money is in bank,
subject to the check of the construction company. But doesn't it look
juicy, right now! Why, boys, with that traffic agreement we can get the
money anywhere--on the prairie, out at sea--anywhere under the shining
sun! They can't beat us. What do you say, Cornish? Will, your friend
Wade jar loose, or shall we have to seek further?"
"He'll snap at your bonds now," said Cornish, rather glumly, I thought,
considering the circumstances; "but don't call him a friend of mine!
Why, damn him, not a week ago he turned me out of his office, saying
that he didn't want to look into any more Western railway schemes! And
now he says he believes we've met before!"
This seemed to strike Mr. Elkins as the best practical joke he had ever
heard of; and Cornish suggested that for a man to stop in Homeric
laughter on Broadway might be pleasant for him, but was embarrassing to
his companions. By this time Cornish himself was better-natured. Jim
took charge of our movements, and commanded us to a dinner with him, in
the nature of a celebration, with a theater-party afterward.
"Let us," said he, "hear the chimes at midnight, or even after, if we
get buncoed doing it. Who cares if we wind up in the police court! We've
done the deed; we've made our bluff good with Halliday and his gang of
highwaymen; and I feel like taking the limit off, if it lifts the roof!
Al, hold your hand over my mouth or I shall yell!"
"Come into my parlor, and yell for me," said Cornish, "and you may do my
turn in police court, too. Come in, and behave yourself!"
I began writing a telegram to my wife, apprising her of our good luck.
The women in our circle knew our hopes, ambitions, and troubles, as the
court ladies know the politics of the realm, and there were anxious
hearts in Lattimore.
"I'm going down to the telegraph-office with this," said I; "can I take
yours, too?"
When I handed the messages in, the man who received them insisted on my
reading them over with him to make sure of correct transmission. There
was one to Mr. Hinckley, one to Mr. Ballard, and two to Miss Josephine
Trescott. One ran thus, "Success seems assured. Rejoice with me. J. B.
C." The other was as follows: "In game between Railway Giants and
Country Jakes here to-day, visiting team wins. Score, 9 to 0. Barslow,
catcher, disabled. Crick in neck looking at high buildings. Have Mrs. B.
prepare porous plaster for Saturday next. Sell Halliday stock short, and
buy L. & G. W. And in name all things good and holy don't tell Giddings!
J. R. E."
CHAPTER XIV.
In which we Learn Something of Railroads, and Attend Some Remarkable
Christenings.
And so, in due time, it came to pass that, our Aladdin having rubbed the
magic ring with which his Genius had endowed him, there came, out of
some thunderous and smoky realm, peopled with swart kobolds, and lit by
the white fire of gushing cupolas and dazzling billets, a train of
carriages, drawn by a tamed volcanic demon, on a wonderful way of steel,
armed strongly to deliver us from the Castle Perilous in which we were
besieged by the Giants. The way was marvelously prepared by theodolite
and level, by tented camps of men driving, with shouts and cracking
whips, straining teams in circling mazes, about dark pits on grassy
hillsides, and building long, straight banks of earth across swales; by
huge machines with iron fists thrusting trunks of trees into the earth;
by mighty creatures spinning great steel cobwebs over streams.
At last, a short branch of steel shot off from Pendleton's Pacific
Division, grew daily longer and longer, pushed across the level
earth-banks, the rows of driven tree-trunks, and the spun steel cobwebs,
through the dark pits, nearer and nearer to Lattimore, and at last
entered the beleaguered city, amid rejoicings of the populace. Most of
whom knew but vaguely the facts of either siege or deliverance; but who
shouted, and tossed their caps, and blew the horns and beat the drums,
because the _Herald_ in a double-leaded editorial assured them that this
was _the_ event for which Lattimore had waited to be raised to complete
parity with her envious rivals. Furthermore, Captain Tolliver,
magniloquently enthusiastic, took charge of the cheering, artillery, and
band-music, and made a tumultuous success of it.
"He told me," said Giddings, "that when the people of the North can be
brought for a moment into that subjection which is proper for the
masses, 'they make devilish good troops, suh, devilish good troops!'"
And so it also happened that Mr. Elkins found himself the president of a
real railway, with all the perquisites that go therewith. Among these
being the power to establish town-sites and give them names. The former
function was exercised according to the principles usually governing
town-site companies, and with ends purely financial in view. The latter
was elevated to the dignity of a ceremony. The rails were scarcely laid,
when President Elkins invited a choice company to go with him over the
line and attend the christening of the stations. He convinced the rest
of us of the wisdom of this, by showing us that it would awaken local
interest along the line, and prepare the way for the auction sales of
lots the next week.
"It's advertising of the choicest kind," said he. "Giddings will sow it
far and wide in the press dispatches, and it will attract attention; and
attention is what we want. We'll start early, run to the station
Pendleton has called Elkins Junction, at the end of the line, lie over
for a couple of hours, and come home, bestowing names as we come. Help
me select the party, and we'll consider it settled."
As the train was to be a light one, consisting of a buffet-car and a
parlor-car, the party could not be very large. The officers of the road,
Mr. Adams, who was general traffic manager, and selected by the
bondholders, and Mr. Kittrick, the general manager, who was found in
Kansas City by Jim, went down first as a matter of course. Captain
Tolliver and his wife, the Trescotts, the Hinckleys, with Mr. Cornish
and Giddings, were put down by Jim; and to these we added the
influential new people, the Alexanders, who came with the cement-works,
of which Mr. Alexander was president, Mr. Densmore, who controlled the
largest of the elevators, and Mr. Walling, whose mill was the first to
utilize the waters of our power-tunnel, and who was the visible
representative of millions made in the flouring trade. Smith, our
architect, was included, as was Cecil Barr-Smith, sent out by his
brother to be superintendent of the street-railway, and looking upon the
thing in the light of an exile, comforted by the beautiful native
princess Antonia. We left Macdonald out, because he always called the
young man "Smith," and could not be brought to forget an early
impression that he and the architect were brothers; besides, said Jim,
Macdonald was afraid of the cars as he was of the hyphen, being most of
the time on the range with the cattle belonging to himself and Hinckley.
Which, being interpreted, meant that Mr. Macdonald would not care to go.
Mr. Ballard was invited on account of his early connection with the L. &
G. W. project, although he was holding himself more and more aloof from
the new movements, and held forth often upon the value of conservatism.
Miss Addison, who was related to the Lattimore family, was commissioned
to invite the old General, who very unexpectedly consented. His son
Will, as solicitor for the railway company and one of the directors, was
to be one of us if he could. These with their wives and some invited
guests from near-by towns made up the party.
We were well acquainted with each other by this time, so that it was
quite like a family party or a gathering of old friends. Captain
Tolliver was austerely polite to General Lattimore, whose refusal to
concern himself with the question as to whether our city grew to a
hundred thousand or shrunk to five he accounted for on the ground that a
man who had led hired ruffians to trample out the liberty of a brave
people must be morally warped.
The General came, tall and spare as ever, wearing his beautiful white
moustache and imperial as a Frenchman would wear the cross of the Legion
of Honor. He was quite unable to sympathize with our lot-selling, our
plenitude of corporations, or our feverish pushing of "developments."
But the building of the railway attracted him. He looked back at the
new-made track as we flew along; and his eyes flashed under the bushy
white brows. He sat near Josie, and held her in conversation much of the
outward trip; but Jim he failed to appreciate, and treated
indifferently.
"He is History incarnate," said Mrs. Tolliver, "and cannot rejoice in
the passing of so much that is a part of himself."
Giddings said that this was probably true; and under the circumstances
he couldn't blame him. He, Giddings, would feel a little sore to see
things which were a part of _himself_ going out of date. It was a
natural feeling. Whereupon Mrs. Tolliver addressed her remarks very
pointedly elsewhere; and Antonia Hinckley privately admonished Giddings
not to be mean; and Giddings sought the buffet and smoked. Here I joined
him, and over our cigars he confessed to me that life to him was an
increasing burden, rapidly becoming intolerable.
We had noticed, I informed him, an occasional note of gloom in his
editorials. This ought not to be, now that the real danger to our
interests seemed to be over, and we were going forward so wonderfully.
To which he replied that with the gauds of worldly success he had no
concern. The editorials I criticised were joyous and ebulliently
hilarious compared with those which might be expected in the future. If