Three millions! or, The way of the world
Edition opening
Contents and reading sections
TO
HIRAM CLAPP, ESQ.,
_This Book_
IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
BY HIS FRIEND
WILLIAM T. ADAMS.
THREE MILLIONS!
OR
THE WAY OF THE WORLD
BY
WILLIAM T. ADAMS
(_OLIVER OPTIC_)
AUTHOR OF “LIVING TOO FAST,” “IN DOORS AND OUT,” “TAKEN BY THE ENEMY,”
“WITHIN THE ENEMY’S LINES,” “ON THE BLOCKADE,” ETC.
_ILLUSTRATED_
BOSTON MDCCCXCI
LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS
10 MILK STREET NEXT “THE OLD SOUTH MEETING HOUSE”
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by
WILLIAM T. ADAMS,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
Copyright, 1894, by WILLIAM T. ADAMS
THE WAY OF THE WORLD
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THREE MILLIONS. 7
II. MR. ELIOT BUCKSTONE. 21
III. THE HUNGERFORD FAMILY. 33
IV. OFF THE GREAT BELL. 45
V. THE KINGMAN FAMILY. 58
VI. A STRANGE STORY. 71
VII. POOR MARY! 83
VIII. TO EUROPE AND BACK. 96
IX. HEALING THE WOUNDS. 109
X. ROSS KINGMAN. 122
XI. DOCTOR BILKS. 135
XII. DICK BIRCH. 144
XIII. DICK UNDER A SHADOW. 161
XIV. IN THE LIBRARY. 174
XV. DR. BILKS ON THE STAND. 188
XVI. DR. BILKS’S BABY. 203
XVII. THE SETTLEMENT. 217
XVIII. EVIDENCE WANTED. 231
XIX. THE ROPE AND THE WEIGHT. 244
XX. THE SHADOW AT PINE HILL. 256
XXI. THE DEMIGOD OF PINE HILL. 269
XXII. DICK BIRCH’S SUGGESTION. 282
XXIII. JULIA HUNGERFORD. 296
XXIV. POPPLETON GOSPEL. 309
XXV. DOCTOR LYNCH. 321
XXVI. THE PENITENT DEMIGOD. 335
XXVII. THE VERDICT. 349
XXVIII. THE DOCTOR HIMSELF AGAIN. 362
XXIX. FORGIVE AND FORGET. 374
XXX. THE RUSTIC BRIDGE. 387
XXXI. A HOMŒOPATHIC DOSE. 400
XXXII. CRIMINAL CARELESSNESS. 412
XXXIII. DICK BIRCH AND LADY. 425
XXXIV. THIRTY YEARS OLD. 438
XXXV. THE LAST OF THE THREE MILLIONS. 450
THE
WAY OF THE WORLD.
CHAPTER I.
THREE MILLIONS.
Three million dollars! In round numbers, three million dollars, after
the legacies to individuals and the bequests to charitable institutions
had been paid!
Three million dollars! Suggestive of mighty air-castles, of untold
grandeur, of matchless liberality to the poor and needy! Suggestive,
also, of long and weary years of patient seeking after worldly wealth,
of painful struggles with adverse circumstances, and of parsimonious
self-denial extending even to the very necessities of life.
There had been three great epochs in the life of John Hungerford, the
Baltimore _millionnaire_, at each of which he had annexed a zero to
the number indicating his worldly wealth; and it must also be said
that he was continually adding zeros to the sum total of his moral and
spiritual possessions. When he commenced his business career, he had
three thousand dollars. Operating with care and prudence, it required
twenty years to annex the first zero, and he was forty-one when the
first financial cycle was completed. Another twenty years of care
and toil annexed the second zero, and John Hungerford was more than
threescore. Then fortune, always constant, became lavish, and the very
skies seemed to rain down wealth. His real estate doubled, tripled,
and quadrupled, and ten years placed the third and last zero against
the accumulations of his lifetime. Then, having passed his threescore
years and ten, he retired from active business with fear and trembling
for the stupendous fortune he had made. Only three years more of life
were vouchsafed to him; but one with his simple habits could not spend
a tithe of his income, and another half million was added, almost in
spite of himself.
Wherefore had John Hungerford struggled so patiently with the tide of
fortune? Wherefore had he neglected his body and his soul for fifty
long years? Wherefore had he lived in a mean house, upon the coarsest
fare, with never a horse, and hardly a servant to ease his toilsome but
successful march up to the pinnacle of his worldly ambition? He had not
a child to inherit his hard-earned gains. He had no friends but those
who had been constant to him in business relations, and they never
crossed the threshold of his homely dwelling. Nothing but the love of
wealth could have sustained him in his fierce struggles for the mammon
of the world.
Yet John Hungerford was not a bad man. He had cheated no one; had never
wronged the widow and the fatherless. He had no friends, because he
wanted none; his blood relations had long ago ceased to darken his
doors, feeling that they were not welcome guests. They were few in
number, including only the son and daughter of his only brother, for
the Baltimore _millionnaire_ could boast of no long line of ancestors,
and the family tree, so far as his knowledge extended, had its root in
the preceding generation.
John Hungerford, senior, had never known a father or a mother. He was,
at his earliest recollection, an inmate of an English workhouse, and
he had at a tender age been bound out to a farmer. From this humble
beginning he had bettered his condition until he was able to save a few
pounds, when he married. Prosperity smiled upon him in a small way,
and about the year 1790 he had emigrated to America, bringing with him
his wife and his four children, the oldest of whom, John, junior, was
nineteen years of age, while the youngest, James, was twelve.
The whole family went to work in good earnest, and for a year were
prosperous and happy; but the angel of death swept through the
contented household during the following year. A malignant fever
carried off first the mother, then the two daughters, and finally the
father, leaving only John and James to mourn the wreck which death had
made in their home. The old man, who had learned industry and thrift in
an English workhouse, left six thousand dollars.
John was now twenty-one years of age, and, besides receiving the
portion that fell to him, he was appointed the guardian of his younger
brother. Then he commenced the career of which we have given the result
at the beginning of this chapter. James worked in a store till he was
of age; and then, with his three thousand dollars, which John promptly
paid to him, with interest, he went farther north, where he invested
his little capital in a cotton-mill, and obtained the situation of
overseer in the factory.
James Hungerford had none of the genius for money getting which
distinguished his brother. He was content with his position in the
cotton-mill, and hardly doubled his capital in twenty years. At the age
of thirty-four he married a lady of twenty; but it was ten years later
when his first child, Eugene, was born, who was followed, four years
after, by a daughter, Julia.
When the patient, plodding father died at the age of fifty-four, he
left only the small cottage in which he lived, and the three thousand
dollars in mill stock, which had paid him dividends for over thirty
years. Mrs. Hungerford was a prudent and skilful woman, and she
contrived to live very comfortably with her little family on the income
of the stock, still occupying the small cottage which her husband had
left. At this time John Hungerford had added the second zero to the
number which indicated his wealth. For many years there had been no
regular communication between the families of John and James. Mrs.
Hungerford had written to her brother-in-law, whom she had never seen,
the particulars of the death of her husband. A prompt reply had been
returned, in which the man of money deplored the loss of the husband
and father, and even intimated that, if any assistance were required,
it would be rendered. The widow was too high-spirited and self-reliant
to make any demands upon the wealthy brother, and she replied that
her family was in comfortable circumstances, and had no occasion to
trespass upon his liberality.
In the mean time John himself, at the age of fifty-three, had married
a widow who was the mother of a boy four years of age. Mrs. Lynch, who
became Mrs. Hungerford by this arrangement, was an ambitious woman,
who knew something of the extent of her husband’s possessions; but she
found that John had an iron will. He would not even move from the mean
dwelling he occupied to one better adapted to a man of his wealth. Few
and slight were the changes adopted in the household; indeed, they were
little more than the substitution of a wife for a housekeeper. The
widow was disappointed and indignant; but John was growing old, and
she temporized with the present that the future might yield a golden
harvest.
The man of wealth, as before hinted, was not a bad nor a hard-hearted
man, and though Tom Lynch, his wife’s son, was not the most promising
youth in the world, John Hungerford derived a solid pleasure from his
company, and favors which the mother could not obtain were readily won
by the son. Mrs. Hungerford was delighted with these indications, and
hoped and expected that her boy would be the fortunate heir of the rich
man. She kept the peace, and submitted to her disappointments in the
most exemplary manner, believing that the day of her triumph was not
far distant.
Tom Lynch, in due time, was sent to a Pennsylvania college by his
indulgent step-father, who had thus far obstinately refused to die,
as his loving wife wished; and when John Hungerford had closed up
his warehouses, and nominally retired from business, Tom had been
graduated, and was studying a profession in Philadelphia.
When his wife’s son had completed his collegiate course, a bright
thought entered the brain of the _millionnaire_. As sending Tom to
college had not ruined him, it occurred to him that he might make
another venture of the same kind. Having more time on his hands than
ever before, having, in fact, so closed up his business that he had
little to do but collect and invest his income, he had bestowed a
thought upon the family of his brother James. In six lines of a letter,
penned with difficulty, he had informed the widow Hungerford that he
was tolerably well, and wished to know something about her family. The
answer assured him that all were well and happy; that the children
were growing finely, and in due time would doubtless ripen into an
excellent young man and an excellent young woman. Eugene, she wrote,
had particularly distinguished himself as a scholar, and a minister of
Poppleton had intimated that the young man ought to be sent to college;
but, the widow added, her means were utterly insufficient to enable
her to carry out such a magnificent project, though her son would be
rejoiced to continue his studies. She declared that Eugene was a noble
boy, and submitted without a murmur to his disappointment. In a few
weeks he would go into a store.
Whether the statement was intended as a hint or not, the uncle promptly
sent her a draft for two thousand dollars, which he thought would take
the boy through college handsomely. The letter of thanks in which this