Aladdin & Co.: A Romance of Yankee Magic
I was in those doldrums which beset the politician when rivals justle
him from his little eminence. One who, for years, is annually or
biennially complimented by the suffrages of even a few thousands of his
fellow citizens, and is invited into the penetralia of a great political
party, is apt to regard himself, after a while, as peculiarly deserving
of the plaudits of the humble and the consideration of the powerful.
Then comes the inevitable hour when pussy finds himself without a
corner. The deep disgust for party and politics which then takes
possession of him demands change of scene and new surroundings. Any
flagging in partisan enthusiasm is sure to be attributed to
sore-headedness, and leads to charges of perfidy and thanklessness. Yet,
for him, the choice lies between abated zeal and hypocrisy, inasmuch as
no man can normally be as zealous for his party as the fanatic into
which the candidate or incumbent converts himself.
Underlying my whole frame of mind was the knowledge that, so far as
making a career was concerned, I had wasted several years of my life,
and had now to begin anew. Add to this a slight sense of having played
an unworthy part in life (although here I was unable to particularize),
and a new sense of aloofness from the people with whom I had been for
so long on terms of hearty and back-slapping familiarity, and no further
reason need be sought for a desire which came mightily upon me to go
away and begin life over again in a new _milieu_. In spite of the mild
opposition of my wife, this desire grew to a resolve; and I came to look
upon myself as a temporary sojourner in my own home.
Such was the state of our affairs, when a letter came from Mr. Elkins
(in lieu of the promised visit) urging me to remove to the then obscure
but since celebrated town of Lattimore.
"I got to be too rich for Charley Harper's blood," said the letter,
among other things. "I wanted as much in the way of salary as I could
earn, working for myself, and Charley kicked--said the directors
wouldn't consent, and that such a salary list would be a black eye for
the Frugality and Indemnity if it showed up in its statements. So I
quit. I am loan agent for the company here, which gives me a visible
means of support, and keeps me from being vagged. But, in confidence, I
want to tell you that my main graft here is the putting in operation of
my boom-hatching scheme. Come out, and I'll enroll you as a member of
the band once more; for this is the coral atoll for me. You ought to get
out of that stagnant pond of yours, and come where the natatory medium
is fresh, clean, and thickly peopled with suckers, and a new run of 'em
coming on right soon. In other words, get into the swim."
After reading this letter and considering it as a whole, I was so much
impressed by it that Lattimore was added to the list of places I meant
to visit, on a tour I had planned for myself.
In the West, all roads run to or from Chicago. It is nearer to almost
any place by the way of Chicago than by any other route: so Alice and I
went to the city by the lake, as the beginning of our prospecting tour.
I took her to the art gallery and showed her just where my two lovers
had stood,--telling her the story for the first time. Then she wanted to
eat a supper at Auriccio's; and after the play we went there, and I was
forced to describe the whole scene over again.
"Didn't she see you at all?" she asked.
"Not at all," said I.
"You are a good boy," said my wife, judging me by one act which she
approved. "Kiss me."
This occurred after we reached our lodgings. I suggested as a change of
subject that my next day's engagements took me to the Stock Yards, and I
assumed that she would scarcely wish to accompany me.
"I think I prefer the stores," said she, "and the pictures. Maybe _I_
shall have an adventure."
At the big Exchange Building, I found that the acquaintance whom I
sought was absent from his office, and I roamed up and down the
corridors in search of him. As usual the gathering here was intensely
Western. There were bronzed cattlemen from every range from Amarillo to
the Belle Fourche, sturdy buyers of swine from Iowa and Illinois,
sombreroed sheepmen from New Mexico, and vikingesque Swedes from North
Dakota. Men there were wearing thousand-dollar diamonds in red flannel
shirts, solid gold watch-chains made to imitate bridle-bits, and heavy
golden bullocks sliding on horse-hair guards. It pleased me, as such a
crowd always does. The laughter was loud but it was free, and the hunted
look one sees on State Street and Michigan Avenue was absent.
"I wish Alice had come," said I, noting the flutter of skirts in a group
of people in the corridor; and then, as I came near, the press divided,
and I saw something which drew my eyes as to a sight in which lay
mystery to be unraveled.
Facing me stood a stout farmer in a dark suit of common cut and texture.
He seemed, somehow, not entirely strange; but the petite figure of the
girl whose back was turned to me was what fixed my attention.
She wore a smart traveling-gown of some pretty gray fabric, and bore
herself gracefully and with the air of dominating the group of
commission men among whom she stood. I noted the incurved spine, the
deep curves of the waist, and the liberal slope of the hips belonging to
a shapely little woman in whom slimness was mitigated in adorable ways,
which in some remote future bade fair to convert it into matronliness.
Under a broad hat there showed a wealth of red-brown hair, drawn up like
a sunburst from a slender little neck.
"I have provided a box at Hooley's," said the head of a great commission
firm. "Mrs. Johnson will be with us. We may count upon you?"
"I think so," said the girl, "if papa hasn't made any engagements."
The stout farmer blushed as he looked down at his daughter.
"Engagements, eh? No, sir!" he replied. "She runs things after the
steers is unloaded. Whatever the little gal says goes with me."
They turned, and as they came on down the hall, still chatting, I saw
her face, and knew it. It was the Empress! But even in that glimpse I
saw the change which years had brought. Now she ruled instead of
submitting; her voice, still soft and low, had lost its rustic
inflections; and in spite of the change in the surroundings,--the leap
from the art gallery to the Stock Yards,--there was more of the artist
now, and less of the farmer's lass. They turned into a suite of offices
and disappeared.
"Well, Mr. Barslow," said my friend, coming up. "Glad to see you. I've
been hunting for you."
"Who is that girl and her father?" I asked.
"One of the Johnson Commission Company's Shippers," said he, "Prescott,
from Lattimore; I wish I could get his shipments."
"No!" said I, "Not Lattimore!"
"Prescott of Lattimore," he repeated. "Know anything of him?"
"N-no," said I. "I have friends in that town."
"I wish I had," was the reply; "I'd try to get old Prescott's business."
* * * * *
"There's destiny in this," said Alice, when I told her of my encounter
with the Empress and her father. "Her living in Lattimore is not an
accident."
"I doubt," said I, "if anybody's is."
"She looked nice, did she?" Alice went on, "and dressed well?" and
without waiting for an answer added: "Let's leave Chicago. I'm anxious
to get to Lattimore!"
CHAPTER V.
We Reach the Atoll.
So we journeyed on to Duluth, to St. Paul and Minneapolis, and to the
cities on the Missouri. It was at one of those recurrent periods when
the fever of material and industrial change and development breaks out
over the whole continent. The very earth seemed to send out tingling
shocks of some occult stimulus; the air was charged with the ozone of
hope; and subtle suggestions seemed to pass from mind to mind, impelling
men to dare all, to risk all, to achieve all. In every one of these
young cities we were astonished at the changes going on under our very
eyes. Streets were torn up for the building of railways, viaducts, and
tunnels. Buildings were everywhere in course of demolition, to make room
for larger edifices. Excavations yawned like craters at street-corners.
Steel pillars, girders, and trusses towered skyward,--skeletons to be
clothed in flesh of brick and stone.
Suburbs were sprouting, almost daily, from the mould of the
market-gardens in the purlieus. Corporations were contending for the
possession of the natural highway approaches to each growing city.
Street-railway companies pushed their charters to passage at midnight
sessions of boards of aldermen, seized streets in the night-time, and
extended their metallic tentacles out into the fields of dazed farmers.
On the frontiers, counties were organized and populated in a season.
Every one of them had its two or three villages, which aped in puny
fashion the achievements of the cities. New pine houses dotted prairies,
unbroken save for the mile-long score of the delimiting plow. Long
trains of emigrant-cars moved continually westward. The world seemed
drunk with hope and enthusiasm. The fulfillment of Jim's careless
prophecy had burst suddenly upon us.
Such things as these were fresh in our memories when we reached
Lattimore. I had wired Elkins of our coming, and he met us at the
station with a carriage. It was one sunny September afternoon when he
drove us through the streets of our future home to the principal hotel.
"We have supper at six, dinner at twelve-thirty, breakfast from seven to
ten," said Jim, as we alighted at the hotel. "That's the sort of bucolic
municipality you've struck here; we'll shove all these meals several
hours down, when we get to doubling our population. You'll have an hour
to get freshened up for supper. Afterwards, if Mrs. Barslow feels equal
to the exertion, we'll take a drive about the town."
Lattimore was a pretty place then. Low, rounded hills topped with green
surrounded it. The river flowed in a broad, straight reach along its
southern margin. A clear stream, Brushy Creek, ran in a miniature
canyon of limestone, through the eastern edge of the town. On each side
of this brook, in lawns of vivid green, amid natural groves of oak and
elm, interspersed with cultivated greenery, stood the houses of the
well-to-do. Trees made early twilight in most of the streets.
People were out in numbers, driving in the cool autumnal evening. As a
handsome girl, a splendid blonde, drove past us, my wife spoke of the
excellent quality of the horseflesh we saw. Jim answered that Lattimore
was a center of equine culture, and its citizens wise in breeders' lore.
The appearance of things impressed us favorably. There was an air of
quiet prosperity about the place, which is unusual in Western towns,
where quietude and progress are apt to be thought incompatible. Jim
pointed out the town's natural advantages as we drove along.
"What do you think of that, now?" said he, waving his whip toward the
winding gorge of Brushy Creek.
"It's simply lovely!" said Alice, "a little jewel of a place."
"A bit of mountain scenery on the prairie," said Jim. "And more than
that, or less than that, just as you look at it, it's the source from
which inexhaustible supplies of stone will be quarried when we begin to
build things."
"But won't that spoil it?" said Alice.
"Well, yes; and down on that bottom we've found as good clay for
pottery, sewer-pipes, and paving-brick as exists anywhere. Back there
where you saw that bluff along the river--looks as if it's sliding down
into the water--remember it? Well, there's probably the only place in
the world where there's just the juxtaposition of sand and clay and
chalk to make Portland cement. Supply absolutely unlimited! Why, there