FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   >>  
hat some of them have left when they die. Three years of introductory trade in the orient and what will be the result? Why, our headquarters would be in Constantinople and our hindquarters in Further India! Factories and warehouses in Cairo, Ispahan, Bagdad, Damascus, Jerusalem, Yedo, Peking, Bangkok, Delhi, Bombay--and Calcutta! Annual income--well, God only knows how many millions and millions apiece!" Washington was so dazed, so bewildered--his heart and his eyes had wandered so far away among the strange lands beyond the seas, and such avalanches of coin and currency had fluttered and jingled confusedly down before him, that he was now as one who has been whirling round and round for a time, and, stopping all at once, finds his surroundings still whirling and all objects a dancing chaos. However, little by little the Sellers family cooled down and crystalized into shape, and the poor room lost its glitter and resumed its poverty. Then the youth found his voice and begged Sellers to drop everything and hurry up the eye-water; and he got his eighteen dollars and tried to force it upon the Colonel--pleaded with him to take it--implored him to do it. But the Colonel would not; said he would not need the capital (in his native magnificent way he called that eighteen dollars Capital) till the eye-water was an accomplished fact. He made Washington easy in his mind, though, by promising that he would call for it just as soon as the invention was finished, and he added the glad tidings that nobody but just they two should be admitted to a share in the speculation. When Washington left the breakfast table he could have worshiped that man. Washington was one of that kind of people whose hopes are in the very, clouds one day and in the gutter the next. He walked on air, now. The Colonel was ready to take him around and introduce him to the employment he had found for him, but Washington begged for a few moments in which to write home; with his kind of people, to ride to-day's new interest to death and put off yesterday's till another time, is nature itself. He ran up stairs and wrote glowingly, enthusiastically, to his mother about the hogs and the corn, the banks and the eye-water--and added a few inconsequential millions to each project. And he said that people little dreamed what a man Col. Sellers was, and that the world would open its eyes when it found out. And he closed his letter thus: "So make yoursel
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   >>  



Top keywords:
Washington
 

Colonel

 
people
 

Sellers

 
millions
 
begged
 
whirling
 

eighteen

 

dollars

 

worshiped


Damascus

 

Bagdad

 

speculation

 

breakfast

 

walked

 

gutter

 

clouds

 

Ispahan

 

promising

 

accomplished


Peking

 

Jerusalem

 

tidings

 

invention

 
finished
 
admitted
 

introduce

 

inconsequential

 

project

 

Factories


enthusiastically

 
mother
 
dreamed
 

yoursel

 

letter

 

closed

 

glowingly

 

warehouses

 

Bangkok

 
employment

moments
 
interest
 

nature

 

stairs

 
yesterday
 

called

 

hindquarters

 

stopping

 

apiece

 
introductory