Uncle Adam cleared his throat. "This is very handsome, father," said he;
"and I am sure Loudon feels it so. Very handsome, and as you say, very
just; but will you allow me to say that it had better, perhaps, be put
in black and white?"

The enmity always smouldering between the two men at this ill-judged
interruption almost burst in flame. The stonemason turned upon his
offspring, his long upper lip pulled down, for all the world, like a
monkey's. He stared a while in virulent silence; and then "Get Gregg!"
said he.

The effect of these words was very visible. "He will be gone to his
office," stammered my uncle.

"Get Gregg!" repeated my grandfather.

"I tell you, he will be gone to his office," reiterated Adam.

"And I tell ye, he's takin' his smoke," retorted the old man.

"Very well, then," cried my uncle, getting to his feet with some
alacrity, as upon a sudden change of thought, "I will get him myself."

"Ye will not!" cried my grandfather. "Ye will sit there upon your
hinderland."

"Then how the devil am I to get him?" my uncle broke forth, with not
unnatural petulance.

My grandfather (having no possible answer) grinned at his son with the
malice of a schoolboy; then he rang the bell.

"Take the garden key," said Uncle Adam to the servant; "go over to the
garden, and if Mr. Gregg the lawyer is there (he generally sits under
the red hawthorn), give him old Mr. Loudon's compliments, and will he
step in here for a moment?"

"Mr. Gregg the lawyer!" At once I understood (what had been puzzling me)
the significance of my grandfather and the alarm of my poor uncle: the
stonemason's will, it was supposed, hung trembling in the balance.

"Look here, grandfather," I said, "I didn't want any of this. All
I wanted was a loan of (say) two hundred pounds. I can take care
of myself; I have prospects and opportunities, good friends in the
States----"

The old man waved me down. "It's me that speaks here," he said curtly;
and we waited the coming of the lawyer in a triple silence. He appeared
at last, the maid ushering him in--a spectacled, dry, but not ungenial
looking man.


"Here, Gregg," cried my grandfather. "Just a question: What has Aadam
got to do with my will?"

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand," said the lawyer, staring.

"What has he got to do with it?" repeated the old man, smiting with his
fist upon the arm of his chair. "Is my money mine's, or is it Aadam's?
Can Aadam interfere?"

"O, I see," said Mr. Gregg. "Certainly not. On the marriage of both
of your children a certain sum was paid down and accepted in full of
legitim. You have surely not forgotten the circumstance, Mr. Loudon?"

"So that, if I like," concluded my grandfather, hammering out his
words, "I can leave every doit I die possessed of to the Great
Magunn?"--meaning probably the Great Mogul.

"No doubt of it," replied Gregg, with a shadow of a smile.

"Ye hear that, Aadam?" asked my grandfather.

"I may be allowed to say I had no need to hear it," said my uncle.

"Very well," says my grandfather. "You and Jeannie's yin can go for a
bit walk. Me and Gregg has business."

When once I was in the hall alone with Uncle Adam, I turned to him, sick
at heart. "Uncle Adam," I said, "you can understand, better than I can
say, how very painful all this is to me."

"Yes, I am sorry you have seen your grandfather in so unamiable a
light," replied this extraordinary man. "You shouldn't allow it
to affect your mind though. He has sterling qualities, quite an
extraordinary character; and I have no fear but he means to behave
handsomely to you."

His composure was beyond my imitation: the house could not contain
me, nor could I even promise to return to it: in concession to which
weakness, it was agreed that I should call in about an hour at the
office of the lawyer, whom (as he left the library) Uncle Adam should
waylay and inform of the arrangement. I suppose there was never a more
topsy-turvy situation: you would have thought it was I who had suffered
some rebuff, and that iron-sided Adam was a generous conqueror who
scorned to take advantage.

It was plain enough that I was to be endowed: to what extent and upon
what conditions I was now left for an hour to meditate in the wide
and solitary thoroughfares of the new town, taking counsel with
street-corner statues of George IV. and William Pitt, improving my
mind with the pictures in the window of a music-shop, and renewing my
acquaintance with Edinburgh east wind. By the end of the hour I made my
way to Mr. Gregg's office, where I was placed, with a few appropriate
words, in possession of a cheque for two thousand pounds and a small
parcel of architectural works.

"Mr. Loudon bids me add," continued the lawyer, consulting a little
sheet of notes, "that although these volumes are very valuable to the
practical builder, you must be careful not to lose originality. He tells
you also not to be 'hadden doun'--his own expression--by the theory of
strains, and that Portland cement, properly sanded, will go a long way."

I smiled, and remarked that I supposed it would.

"I once lived in one of my excellent client's houses," observed the
lawyer; "and I was tempted, in that case, to think it had gone far
enough."

"Under these circumstances, sir," said I, "you will be rather relieved
to hear that I have no intention of becoming a builder."

At this, he fairly laughed; and, the ice being broken, I was able to
consult him as to my conduct. He insisted I must return to the house,
at least, for luncheon, and one of my walks with Mr. Loudon. "For the
evening, I will furnish you with an excuse, if you please," said he, "by
asking you to a bachelor dinner with myself. But the luncheon and the
walk are unavoidable. He is an old man, and, I believe, really fond of
you; he would naturally feel aggrieved if there were any appearance of
avoiding him; and as for Mr. Adam, do you know, I think your delicacy
out of place.... And now, Mr. Dodd, what are you to do with this money?"

Ay, there was the question. With two thousand pounds--fifty thousand
francs--I might return to Paris and the arts, and be a prince and
millionaire in that thrifty Latin Quarter. I think I had the grace, with
one corner of my mind, to be glad that I had sent the London letter: I
know very well that with the rest and worst of me, I repented bitterly
of that precipitate act. On one point, however, my whole multiplex
estate of man was unanimous: the letter being gone, there was no help
but I must follow. The money was accordingly divided in two unequal
shares: for the first, Mr. Gregg got me a bill in the name of Dijon to
meet my liabilities in Paris; for the second, as I had already cash in
hand for the expenses of my journey, he supplied me with drafts on San
Francisco.

The rest of my business in Edinburgh, not to dwell on a very agreeable
dinner with the lawyer or the horrors of the family luncheon, took the
form of an excursion with the stonemason, who led me this time to no
suburb or work of his old hands, but with an impulse both natural and
pretty, to that more enduring home which he had chosen for his clay. It
was in a cemetery, by some strange chance, immured within the bulwarks
of a prison; standing, besides, on the margin of a cliff, crowded with
elderly stone memorials, and green with turf and ivy. The east wind
(which I thought too harsh for the old man) continually shook the
boughs, and the thin sun of a Scottish summer drew their dancing
shadows.

"I wanted ye to see the place," said he. "Yon's the stane. Euphemia
Ross: that was my goodwife, your grandmither--hoots! I'm wrong; that was
my first yin; I had no bairns by her;--yours is the second, Mary Murray,
Born 1819, Died 1850: that's her--a fine, plain, decent sort of
a creature, tak' her athegether. Alexander Loudon, Born Seventeen
Ninety-Twa, Died--and then a hole in the ballant: that's me. Alexander's
my name. They ca'd me Ecky when I was a boy. Eh, Ecky! ye're an awfu'
auld man!"

I had a second and sadder experience of graveyards at my next
alighting-place, the city of Muskegon, now rendered conspicuous by
the dome of the new capitol encaged in scaffolding. It was late in the
afternoon when I arrived, and raining; and as I walked in great streets,
of the very name of which I was quite ignorant--double, treble, and
quadruple lines of horse-cars jingling by--hundred-fold wires of
telegraph and telephone matting heaven above my head--huge, staring
houses, garish and gloomy, flanking me from either hand--the thought of
the Rue Racine, ay, and of the cabman's eating-house, brought tears to
my eyes. The whole monotonous Babel had grown, or I should rather say
swelled, with such a leap since my departure, that I must continually
inquire my way; and the very cemetery was brand new. Death, however, had
been active; the graves were already numerous, and I must pick my way
in the rain, among the tawdry sepulchres of millionnaires, and past the
plain black crosses of Hungarian labourers, till chance or instinct led
me to the place that was my father's. The stone had been erected (I
knew already) "by admiring friends"; I could now judge their taste in
monuments; their taste in literature, methought, I could imagine, and I
refrained from drawing near enough to read the terms of the inscription.
But the name was in larger letters and stared at me--JAMES K. DODD.
What a singular thing is a name, I thought; how it clings to a man, and
continually misrepresents, and then survives him; and it flashed across
my mind, with a mixture of regret and bitter mirth, that I had never
known, and now probably never should know, what the K had represented.
King, Kilter, Kay, Kaiser, I went, running over names at random, and
then stumbled with ludicrous misspelling on Kornelius, and had nearly
laughed aloud. I have never been more childish; I suppose (although the
deeper voices of my nature seemed all dumb) because I have never been
more moved. And at this last incongruous antic of my nerves, I was
seized with a panic of remorse and fled the cemetery.

Scarce less funereal was the rest of my experience in Muskegon, where,
nevertheless, I lingered, visiting my father's circle, for some days. It
was in piety to him I lingered; and I might have spared myself the pain.
His memory was already quite gone out. For his sake, indeed, I was made
welcome; and for mine the conversation rolled awhile with laborious
effort on the virtues of the deceased. His former comrades dwelt, in
my company, upon his business talents or his generosity for public
purposes; when my back was turned, they remembered him no more. My
father had loved me; I had left him alone to live and die among the
indifferent; now I returned to find him dead and buried and forgotten.
Unavailing penitence translated itself in my thoughts to fresh resolve.
There was another poor soul who loved me: Pinkerton. I must not be
guilty twice of the same error.

A week perhaps had been thus wasted, nor had I prepared my friend for
the delay. Accordingly, when I had changed trains at Council Bluffs, I
was aware of a man appearing at the end of the car with a telegram in
his hand and inquiring whether there were any one aboard "of the name of
LONDON Dodd?" I thought the name near enough, claimed the despatch,
and found it was from Pinkerton: "What day do you arrive? Awfully
important." I sent him an answer giving day and hour, and at Ogden found
a fresh despatch awaiting me: "That will do. Unspeakable relief. Meet
you at Sacramento." In Paris days I had a private name for Pinkerton:
"The Irrepressible" was what I had called him in hours of bitterness,
and the name rose once more on my lips. What mischief was he up to now?
What new bowl was my benignant monster brewing for his Frankenstein? In
what new imbroglio should I alight on the Pacific coast? My trust in
the man was entire, and my distrust perfect. I knew he would never
mean amiss; but I was convinced he would almost never (in my sense) do
aright.

I suppose these vague anticipations added a shade of gloom to that
already gloomy place of travel: Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, scowled
in my face at least, and seemed to point me back again to that other
native land of mine, the Latin Quarter. But when the Sierras had been
climbed, and the train, after so long beating and panting, stretched
itself upon the downward track--when I beheld that vast extent
of prosperous country rolling seaward from the woods and the blue
mountains, that illimitable spread of rippling corn, the trees growing
and blowing in the merry weather, the country boys thronging aboard
the train with figs and peaches, and the conductors, and the very
darky stewards, visibly exulting in the change--up went my soul like a
balloon; Care fell from his perch upon my shoulders; and when I spied
my Pinkerton among the crowd at Sacramento, I thought of nothing but to
shout and wave for him, and grasp him by the hand, like what he was--my
dearest friend.

"O Loudon!" he cried. "Man, how I've pined for you! And you haven't come
an hour too soon. You're known here and waited for; I've been booming
you already; you're billed for a lecture to-morrow night: _Student
Life in Paris, Grave and Gay_: twelve hundred places booked at the last
stock! Tut, man, you're looking thin! Here, try a drop of this." And
he produced a case bottle, staringly labelled PINKERTON'S THIRTEEN STAR
GOLDEN STATE BRANDY, WARRANTED ENTIRE.

"God bless me!" said I, gasping and winking after my first plunge into
this fiery fluid. "And what does 'Warranted Entire' mean?"

"Why, Loudon! you ought to know that!" cried Pinkerton. "It's real,
copper-bottomed English; you see it on all the old-time wayside
hostelries over there."

"But if I'm not mistaken, it means something Warranted Entirely
different," said I, "and applies to the public house, and not the
beverages sold."

"It's very possible," said Jim, quite unabashed. "It's effective,
anyway; and I can tell you, sir, it has boomed that spirit: it goes now
by the gross of cases. By the way, I hope you won't mind; I've got your
portrait all over San Francisco for the lecture, enlarged from that
carte de visite: H. Loudon Dodd, the Americo-Parisienne Sculptor. Here's
a proof of the small handbills; the posters are the same, only in red
and blue, and the letters fourteen by one."

I looked at the handbill, and my head turned. What was the use of
words? why seek to explain to Pinkerton the knotted horrors of
"Americo-Parisienne"? He took an early occasion to point it out as
"rather a good phrase; gives the two sides at a glance: I wanted the
lecture written up to that." Even after we had reached San Francisco,
and at the actual physical shock of my own effigy placarded on the
streets I had broken forth in petulant words, he never comprehended in
the least the ground of my aversion.

"If I had only known you disliked red lettering!" was as high as he
could rise. "You are perfectly right: a clear-cut black is preferable,
and shows a great deal further. The only thing that pains me is the
portrait: I own I thought that a success. I'm dreadfully and truly
sorry, my dear fellow: I see now it's not what you had a right to
expect; but I did it, Loudon, for the best; and the press is all
delighted."

At the moment, sweeping through green tule swamps, I fell direct on the
essential. "But, Pinkerton," I cried, "this lecture is the maddest of
your madnesses. How can I prepare a lecture in thirty hours?"

"All done, Loudon!" he exclaimed in triumph. "All ready. Trust me to
pull a piece of business through. You'll find it all type-written in my
desk at home. I put the best talent of San Francisco on the job: Harry
Miller, the brightest pressman in the city."

And so he rattled on, beyond reach of my modest protestations, blurting
out his complicated interests, crying up his new acquaintances, and ever
and again hungering to introduce me to some "whole-souled, grand fellow,
as sharp as a needle," from whom, and the very thought of whom, my
spirit shrank instinctively.

Well, I was in for it: in for Pinkerton, in for the portrait, in for the
type-written lecture. One promise I extorted--that I was never again to
be committed in ignorance; even for that, when I saw how its extortion
puzzled and depressed the Irrepressible, my soul repented me; and in all
else I suffered myself to be led uncomplaining at his chariot wheels.
The Irrepressible, did I say? The Irresistible were nigher truth.

But the time to have seen me was when I sat down to Harry Miller's
lecture. He was a facetious dog, this Harry Miller; he had a gallant way
of skirting the indecent which (in my case) produced physical nausea;
and he could be sentimental and even melodramatic about grisettes and
starving genius. I found he had enjoyed the benefit of my correspondence
with Pinkerton: adventures of my own were here and there horridly
misrepresented, sentiments of my own echoed and exaggerated till I
blushed to recognise them. I will do Harry Miller justice: he must have
had a kind of talent, almost of genius; all attempts to lower his
tone proving fruitless, and the Harry-Millerism ineradicable. Nay, the
monster had a certain key of style, or want of style, so that certain
milder passages, which I sought to introduce, discorded horribly, and
impoverished (if that were possible) the general effect.

By an early hour of the numbered evening I might have been observed at
the sign of the Poodle Dog, dining with my agent: so Pinkerton delighted
to describe himself. Thence, like an ox to the slaughter, he led me
to the hall, where I stood presently alone, confronting assembled San
Francisco, with no better allies than a table, a glass of water, and a
mass of manuscript and typework, representing Harry Miller and myself.
I read the lecture; for I had lacked both time and will to get the trash
by heart--read it hurriedly, humbly, and with visible shame. Now and
then I would catch in the auditorium an eye of some intelligence, now
and then, in the manuscript, would stumble on a richer vein of Harry
Miller, and my heart would fail me, and I gabbled. The audience yawned,
it stirred uneasily, it muttered, grumbled, and broke forth at last
in articulate cries of "Speak up!" and "Nobody can hear!" I took to
skipping, and being extremely ill-acquainted with the country, almost
invariably cut in again in the unintelligible midst of some new topic.
What struck me as extremely ominous, these misfortunes were allowed to
pass without a laugh. Indeed, I was beginning to fear the worst, and
even personal indignity, when all at once the humour of the thing broke
upon me strongly. I could have laughed aloud; and being again summoned
to speak up, I faced my patrons for the first time with a smile. "Very
well," I said, "I will try, though I don't suppose anybody wants to
hear, and I can't see why anybody should." Audience and lecturer laughed
together till the tears ran down; vociferous and repeated applause
hailed my impromptu sally. Another hit which I made but a little after,
as I turned three pages of the copy: "You see, I am leaving out as much
as I possibly can," increased the esteem with which my patrons had begun
to regard me; and when I left the stage at last, my departing form was
cheered with laughter, stamping, shouting, and the waving of hats.

Pinkerton was in the waiting-room, feverishly jotting in his
pocket-book. As he saw me enter, he sprang up, and I declare the tears
were trickling on his cheeks.

"My dear boy," he cried, "I can never forgive myself, and you can never
forgive me. Never mind: I did it for the best. And how nobly you clung
on! I dreaded we should have had to return the money at the doors."

"It would have been more honest if we had," said I.

The pressmen followed me, Harry Miller in the front ranks; and I was
amazed to find them, on the whole, a pleasant set of lads, probably
more sinned against than sinning, and even Harry Miller apparently
a gentleman. I had in oysters and champagne--for the receipts were
excellent--and being in a high state of nervous tension, kept the table
in a roar. Indeed, I was never in my life so well inspired as when I
described my vigil over Harry Miller's literature or the series of my
emotions as I faced the audience. The lads vowed I was the soul of good
company and the prince of lecturers; and--so wonderful an institution
is the popular press--if you had seen the notices next day in all the
papers, you must have supposed my evening's entertainment an unqualified
success.

I was in excellent spirits when I returned home that night, but the
miserable Pinkerton sorrowed for us both.

"O, Loudon," he said, "I shall never forgive myself. When I saw you
didn't catch on to the idea of the lecture, I should have given it
myself!"




CHAPTER VII. IRONS IN THE FIRE.


Opes Strepitumque.

The food of the body differs not so greatly for the fool or the sage,
the elephant or the cock-sparrow; and similar chemical elements,
variously disguised, support all mortals. A brief study of Pinkerton
in his new setting convinced me of a kindred truth about that other and
mental digestion, by which we extract what is called "fun for our money"
out of life. In the same spirit as a schoolboy, deep in Mayne Reid,
handles a dummy gun and crawls among imaginary forests, Pinkerton sped
through Kearney Street upon his daily business, representing to himself
a highly coloured part in life's performance, and happy for hours if
he should have chanced to brush against a millionnaire. Reality was his
romance; he gloried to be thus engaged; he wallowed in his business.
Suppose a man to dig up a galleon on the Coromandel coast, his rakish
schooner keeping the while an offing under easy sail, and he, by the
blaze of a great fire of wreckwood, to measure ingots by the bucketful
on the uproarious beach: such an one might realise a greater material
spoil; he should have no more profit of romance than Pinkerton when he
cast up his weekly balance-sheet in a bald office. Every dollar gained
was like something brought ashore from a mysterious deep; every venture
made was like a diver's plunge; and as he thrust his bold hand into the
plexus of the money-market, he was delightedly aware of how he shook the
pillars of existence, turned out men (as at a battle-cry) to labour
in far countries, and set the gold twitching in the drawers of
millionnaires.

I could never fathom the full extent of his speculations; but there were
five separate businesses which he avowed and carried like a banner. The
Thirteen Star Golden State Brandy, Warranted Entire (a very flagrant
distillation) filled a great part of his thoughts, and was kept before
the public in an eloquent but misleading treatise: _Why Drink French
Brandy? A Word to the Wise._ He kept an office for advertisers,
counselling, designing, acting as middleman with printers and
bill-stickers, for the inexperienced or the uninspired: the dull
haberdasher came to him for ideas, the smart theatrical agent for his
local knowledge; and one and all departed with a copy of his pamphlet:
_How, When, and Where; or, the Advertiser's Vade-Mecum._ He had a tug
chartered every Saturday afternoon and night, carried people outside the
Heads, and provided them with lines and bait for six hours' fishing,
at the rate of five dollars a person. I am told that some of
them (doubtless adroit anglers) made a profit on the transaction.
Occasionally he bought wrecks and condemned vessels; these latter (I
cannot tell you how) found their way to sea again under aliases, and
continued to stem the waves triumphantly enough under the colours of
Bolivia or Nicaragua. Lastly, there was a certain agricultural engine,
glorying in a great deal of vermilion and blue paint, and filling (it
appeared) a "long-felt want," in which his interest was something like a
tenth.

This for the face or front of his concerns. "On the outside," as he
phrased it, he was variously and mysteriously engaged. No dollar slept
in his possession; rather he kept all simultaneously flying like a
conjurer with oranges. My own earnings, when I began to have a share, he
would but show me for a moment, and disperse again, like those illusive
money gifts which are flashed in the eyes of childhood only to be
entombed in the missionary box. And he would come down radiant from a
weekly balance-sheet, clap me on the shoulder, declare himself a winner
by Gargantuan figures, and prove destitute of a quarter for a drink.

"What on earth have you done with it?" I would ask.

"Into the mill again; all re-invested!" he would cry, with infinite
delight. Investment was ever his word. He could not bear what he called
gambling. "Never touch stocks, Loudon," he would say; "nothing but
legitimate business." And yet, Heaven knows, many an indurated gambler
might have drawn back appalled at the first hint of some of Pinkerton's
investments! One, which I succeeded in tracking home, and instance for
a specimen, was a seventh share in the charter of a certain ill-starred
schooner bound for Mexico, to smuggle weapons on the one trip, and
cigars upon the other. The latter end of this enterprise, involving (as
it did) shipwreck, confiscation, and a lawsuit with the underwriters,
was too painful to be dwelt upon at length. "It's proved a
disappointment," was as far as my friend would go with me in words; but
I knew, from observation, that the fabric of his fortunes tottered. For
the rest, it was only by accident I got wind of the transaction; for
Pinkerton, after a time, was shy of introducing me to his arcana: the
reason you are to hear presently.

The office which was (or should have been) the point of rest for so many
evolving dollars stood in the heart of the city: a high and spacious
room, with many plate-glass windows. A glazed cabinet of polished
redwood offered to the eye a regiment of some two hundred bottles,
conspicuously labelled. These were all charged with Pinkerton's Thirteen
Star, although from across the room it would have required an expert to
distinguish them from the same number of bottles of Courvoisier. I used
to twit my friend with this resemblance, and propose a new edition of
the pamphlet, with the title thus improved: _Why Drink French Brandy,
when we give you the same labels?_ The doors of the cabinet revolved all
day upon their hinges; and if there entered any one who was a stranger
to the merits of the brand, he departed laden with a bottle. When I used
to protest at this extravagance, "My dear Loudon," Pinkerton would cry,
"you don't seem to catch on to business principles! The prime cost of
the spirit is literally nothing. I couldn't find a cheaper advertisement
if I tried." Against the side post of the cabinet there leaned a gaudy
umbrella, preserved there as a relic. It appears that when Pinkerton was
about to place Thirteen Star upon the market, the rainy season was
at hand. He lay dark, almost in penury, awaiting the first shower, at
which, as upon a signal, the main thoroughfares became dotted with his
agents, vendors of advertisements; and the whole world of San Francisco,
from the businessman fleeing for the ferry-boat, to the lady waiting
at the corner for her car, sheltered itself under umbrellas with this
strange device: Are you wet? Try Thirteen Star. "It was a mammoth boom,"
said Pinkerton, with a sigh of delighted recollection. "There wasn't
another umbrella to be seen. I stood at this window, Loudon, feasting
my eyes; and I declare, I felt like Vanderbilt." And it was to this neat
application of the local climate that he owed, not only much of the sale
of Thirteen Star, but the whole business of his advertising agency.

The large desk (to resume our survey of the office) stood about the
middle, knee-deep in stacks of handbills and posters, of _Why Drink
French Brandy?_ and _The Advertiser's Vade-Mecum._ It was flanked upon
the one hand by two female type-writers, who rested not between
the hours of nine and four, and upon the other by a model of the
agricultural machine. The walls, where they were not broken by telephone
boxes and a couple of photographs--one representing the wreck of the
James L. Moody on a bold and broken coast, the other the Saturday tug
alive with amateur fishers--almost disappeared under oil-paintings
gaudily framed. Many of these were relics of the Latin Quarter, and I
must do Pinkerton the justice to say that none of them were bad,
and some had remarkable merit. They went off slowly but for handsome
figures; and their places were progressively supplied with the work of
local artists. These last it was one of my first duties to review and
criticise. Some of them were villainous, yet all were saleable. I said
so; and the next moment saw myself, the figure of a miserable renegade,
bearing arms in the wrong camp. I was to look at pictures thenceforward,
not with the eye of the artist, but the dealer; and I saw the stream
widen that divided me from all I loved.

"Now, Loudon," Pinkerton had said, the morning after the lecture, "now
Loudon, we can go at it shoulder to shoulder. This is what I have longed
for: I wanted two heads and four arms; and now I have 'em. You'll find
it's just the same as art--all observation and imagination; only more
movement. Just wait till you begin to feel the charm!"

I might have waited long. Perhaps I lack a sense; for our whole
existence seemed to me one dreary bustle, and the place we bustled in
fitly to be called the Place of Yawning. I slept in a little den behind
the office; Pinkerton, in the office itself, stretched on a patent sofa
which sometimes collapsed, his slumbers still further menaced by an
imminent clock with an alarm. Roused by this diabolical contrivance, we
rose early, went forth early to breakfast, and returned by nine to what
Pinkerton called work, and I distraction. Masses of letters must be
opened, read, and answered; some by me at a subsidiary desk which had
been introduced on the morning of my arrival; others by my bright-eyed
friend, pacing the room like a caged lion as he dictated to the tinkling
type-writers. Masses of wet proof had to be overhauled and scrawled upon
with a blue pencil--"rustic"--"six-inch caps"--"bold spacing here"--or
sometimes terms more fervid, as for instance this, which I remember
Pinkerton to have spirted on the margin of an advertisement of Soothing
Syrup: "Throw this all down. Have you never printed an advertisement?
I'll be round in half an hour." The ledger and sale-book, besides,
we had always with us. Such was the backbone of our occupation, and
tolerable enough; but the far greater proportion of our time was
consumed by visitors, whole-souled, grand fellows no doubt, and as sharp
as a needle, but to me unfortunately not diverting. Some were apparently
half-witted, and must be talked over by the hour before they could reach
the humblest decision, which they only left the office to return again
(ten minutes later) and rescind. Others came with a vast show of hurry
and despatch, but I observed it to be principally show. The agricultural
model for instance, which was practicable, proved a kind of flypaper for
these busybodies. I have seen them blankly turn the crank of it for five
minutes at a time, simulating (to nobody's deception) business interest:
"Good thing this, Pinkerton? Sell much of it? Ha! Couldn't use it,
I suppose, as a medium of advertisement for my article?"--which was
perhaps toilet soap. Others (a still worse variety) carried us to
neighbouring saloons to dice for cocktails and (after the cocktails were
paid) for dollars on a corner of the counter. The attraction of dice for
all these people was indeed extraordinary: at a certain club, where I
once dined in the character of "my partner, Mr. Dodd," the dice-box came
on the table with the wine, an artless substitute for after-dinner wit.

Of all our visitors, I believe I preferred Emperor Norton; the very
mention of whose name reminds me I am doing scanty justice to the
folks of San Francisco. In what other city would a harmless madman who
supposed himself emperor of the two Americas have been so fostered
and encouraged? Where else would even the people of the streets have
respected the poor soul's illusion? Where else would bankers and
merchants have received his visits, cashed his cheques, and submitted to
his small assessments? Where else would he have been suffered to attend
and address the exhibition days of schools and colleges? where else,
in God's green earth, have taken his pick of restaurants, ransacked
the bill of fare, and departed scathless? They tell me he was even an
exacting patron, threatening to withdraw his custom when dissatisfied;
and I can believe it, for his face wore an expression distinctly
gastronomical. Pinkerton had received from this monarch a cabinet
appointment; I have seen the brevet, wondering mainly at the good nature
of the printer who had executed the forms, and I think my friend was at
the head either of foreign affairs or education: it mattered, indeed,
nothing, the presentation being in all offices identical. It was at a
comparatively early date that I saw Jim in the exercise of his public
functions. His Majesty entered the office--a portly, rather flabby man,
with the face of a gentleman, rendered unspeakably pathetic and absurd
by the great sabre at his side and the peacock's feather in his hat.


"I have called to remind you, Mr. Pinkerton, that you are somewhat in
arrear of taxes," he said, with old-fashioned, stately courtesy.

"Well, your Majesty, what is the amount?" asked Jim; and when the figure
was named (it was generally two or three dollars), paid upon the nail
and offered a bonus in the shape of Thirteen Star.

"I am always delighted to patronise native industries," said Norton the
First. "San Francisco is public-spirited in what concerns its Emperor;
and indeed, sir, of all my domains, it is my favourite city."

"Come," said I, when he was gone, "I prefer that customer to the lot."

"It's really rather a distinction," Jim admitted. "I think it must have
been the umbrella racket that attracted him."

We were distinguished under the rose by the notice of other and greater
men. There were days when Jim wore an air of unusual capacity and
resolve, spoke with more brevity like one pressed for time, and took
often on his tongue such phrases as "Longhurst told me so this morning,"
or "I had it straight from Longhurst himself." It was no wonder, I used
to think, that Pinkerton was called to council with such Titans; for the
creature's quickness and resource were beyond praise. In the early
days when he consulted me without reserve, pacing the room, projecting,
ciphering, extending hypothetical interests, trebling imaginary capital,
his "engine" (to renew an excellent old word) labouring full steam
ahead, I could never decide whether my sense of respect or entertainment
were the stronger. But these good hours were destined to curtailment.

"Yes, it's smart enough," I once observed. "But, Pinkerton, do you think
it's honest?"

"You don't think it's honest!" he wailed. "O dear me, that ever I should
have heard such an expression on your lips!"

At sight of his distress, I plagiarised unblushingly from Myner. "You
seem to think honesty as simple as Blind Man's Buff," said I. "It's a
more delicate affair than that: delicate as any art."

"O well! at that rate!" he exclaimed, with complete relief. "That's
casuistry."

"I am perfectly certain of one thing: that what you propose is
dishonest," I returned.

"Well, say no more about it. That's settled," he replied.

Thus, almost at a word, my point was carried. But the trouble was that
such differences continued to recur, until we began to regard each other
with alarm. If there were one thing Pinkerton valued himself upon, it
was his honesty; if there were one thing he clung to, it was my
good opinion; and when both were involved, as was the case in these
commercial cruces, the man was on the rack. My own position, if you
consider how much I owed him, how hateful is the trade of fault-finder,
and that yet I lived and fattened on these questionable operations,
was perhaps equally distressing. If I had been more sterling or more
combative things might have gone extremely far. But, in truth, I was
just base enough to profit by what was not forced on my attention,
rather than seek scenes: Pinkerton quite cunning enough to avail himself
of my weakness; and it was a relief to both when he began to involve his
proceedings in a decent mystery.

Our last dispute, which had a most unlooked-for consequence, turned on
the refitting of condemned ships. He had bought a miserable hulk, and
came, rubbing his hands, to inform me she was already on the slip, under
a new name, to be repaired. When first I had heard of this industry I
suppose I scarcely comprehended; but much discussion had sharpened my
faculties, and now my brow became heavy.

"I can be no party to that, Pinkerton," said I.

He leaped like a man shot. "What next?" he cried. "What ails you,
anyway? You seem to me to dislike everything that's profitable."

"This ship has been condemned by Lloyd's agent," said I.

"But I tell you it's a deal. The ship's in splendid condition;
there's next to nothing wrong with her but the garboard streak and the
sternpost. I tell you Lloyd's is a ring like everybody else; only it's
an English ring, and that's what deceives you. If it was American, you
would be crying it down all day. It's Anglomania, common Anglomania," he
cried, with growing irritation.

"I will not make money by risking men's lives," was my ultimatum.

"Great Caesar! isn't all speculation a risk? Isn't the fairest kind of
shipowning to risk men's lives? And mining--how's that for risk? And
look at the elevator business--there's danger, if you like! Didn't I
take my risk when I bought her? She might have been too far gone; and
where would I have been? Loudon," he cried, "I tell you the truth:
you're too full of refinement for this world!"

"I condemn you out of your own lips," I replied. "'The fairest kind of
shipowning,' says you. If you please, let us only do the fairest kind of
business."

The shot told; the Irrepressible was silenced; and I profited by the
chance to pour in a broadside of another sort. He was all sunk in
money-getting, I pointed out; he never dreamed of anything but dollars.
Where were all his generous, progressive sentiments? Where was his
culture? I asked. And where was the American Type?

"It's true, Loudon," he cried, striding up and down the room, and
wildly scouring at his hair. "You're perfectly right. I'm becoming
materialised. O, what a thing to have to say, what a confession to make!
Materialised! Me! Loudon, this must go on no longer. You've been a loyal
friend to me once more; give me your hand!--you've saved me again. I
must do something to rouse the spiritual side; something desperate;
study something, something dry and tough. What shall it be? Theology?
Algebra? What's Algebra?"

"It's dry and tough enough," said I; "a squared + 2ab + b squared."

"It's stimulating, though?" he inquired.

I told him I believed so, and that it was considered fortifying to
Types.

"Then that's the thing for me. I'll study Algebra," he concluded.

The next day, by application to one of his type-writing women, he got
word of a young lady, one Miss Mamie McBride, who was willing and able
to conduct him in these bloomless meadows; and, her circumstances
being lean, and terms consequently moderate, he and Mamie were soon
in agreement for two lessons in the week. He took fire with unexampled
rapidity; he seemed unable to tear himself away from the symbolic art;
an hour's lesson occupied the whole evening; and the original two was
soon increased to four, and then to five. I bade him beware of female
blandishments. "The first thing you know, you'll be falling in love with
the algebraist," said I.

"Don't say it even in jest," he cried. "She's a lady I revere. I could
no more lay a hand upon her than I could upon a spirit. Loudon, I don't
believe God ever made a purer-minded woman."

Which appeared to me too fervent to be reassuring.

Meanwhile I had been long expostulating with my friend upon a different
matter. "I'm the fifth wheel," I kept telling him. "For any use I am,
I might as well be in Senegambia. The letters you give me to attend
to might be answered by a sucking child. And I tell you what it is,
Pinkerton: either you've got to find me some employment, or I'll have to
start in and find it for myself."

This I said with a corner of my eye in the usual quarter, toward the
arts, little dreaming what destiny was to provide.

"I've got it, Loudon," Pinkerton at last replied. "Got the idea on the
Potrero cars. Found I hadn't a pencil, borrowed one from the conductor,
and figured on it roughly all the way in town. I saw it was the thing at
last; gives you a real show. All your talents and accomplishments come
in. Here's a sketch advertisement. Just run your eye over it. 'Sun,
Ozone, and Music! PINKERTON'S HEBDOMADARY PICNICS!' (That's a good,
catching phrase, 'hebdomadary,' though it's hard to say. I made a note
of it when I was looking in the dictionary how to spell hectagonal.
'Well, you're a boss word,' I said. 'Before you're very much older, I'll
have you in type as long as yourself.' And here it is, you see.) 'Five
dollars a head, and ladies free. MONSTER OLIO OF ATTRACTIONS.' (How does
that strike you?) 'Free luncheon under the greenwood tree. Dance on
the elastic sward. Home again in the Bright Evening Hours. Manager and
Honorary Steward, H. Loudon Dodd, Esq., the well-known connoisseur.'"


Singular how a man runs from Scylla to Charybdis! I was so intent on
securing the disappearance of a single epithet that I accepted the rest
of the advertisement and all that it involved without discussion. So it
befell that the words "well-known connoisseur" were deleted; but that
H. Loudon Dodd became manager and honorary steward of Pinkerton's
Hebdomadary Picnics, soon shortened, by popular consent, to the
Dromedary.

By eight o'clock, any Sunday morning, I was to be observed by an
admiring public on the wharf. The garb and attributes of sacrifice
consisted of a black frock coat, rosetted, its pockets bulging with
sweetmeats and inferior cigars, trousers of light blue, a silk hat
like a reflector, and a varnished wand. A goodly steamer guarded my
one flank, panting and throbbing, flags fluttering fore and aft of her,
illustrative of the Dromedary and patriotism. My other flank was covered
by the ticket-office, strongly held by a trusty character of the Scots
persuasion, rosetted like his superior and smoking a cigar to mark the
occasion festive. At half-past, having assured myself that all was well
with the free luncheons, I lit a cigar myself, and awaited the strains
of the "Pioneer Band." I had never to wait long--they were German and
punctual--and by a few minutes after the half-hour, I would hear them
booming down street with a long military roll of drums, some score of
gratuitous asses prancing at the head in bearskin hats and buckskin
aprons, and conspicuous with resplendent axes. The band, of course,
we paid for; but so strong is the San Franciscan passion for public
masquerade, that the asses (as I say) were all gratuitous, pranced for
the love of it, and cost us nothing but their luncheon.

The musicians formed up in the bows of my steamer, and struck into
a skittish polka; the asses mounted guard upon the gangway and the
ticket-office; and presently after, in family parties of father, mother,
and children, in the form of duplicate lovers or in that of solitary
youth, the public began to descend upon us by the carful at a time; four
to six hundred perhaps, with a strong German flavour, and all merry as
children. When these had been shepherded on board, and the inevitable
belated two or three had gained the deck amidst the cheering of the
public, the hawser was cast off, and we plunged into the bay.

And now behold the honorary steward in hour of duty and glory; see me
circulate amid crowd, radiating affability and laughter, liberal with
my sweetmeats and cigars. I say unblushing things to hobbledehoy girls,
tell shy young persons this is the married people's boat, roguishly
ask the abstracted if they are thinking of their sweethearts, offer
Paterfamilias a cigar, am struck with the beauty and grow curious about
the age of mamma's youngest who (I assure her gaily) will be a man
before his mother; or perhaps it may occur to me, from the sensible
expression of her face, that she is a person of good counsel, and I
ask her earnestly if she knows any particularly pleasant place on the
Saucelito or San Rafael coast, for the scene of our picnic is always
supposed to be uncertain. The next moment I am back at my giddy badinage
with the young ladies, wakening laughter as I go, and leaving in my wake
applausive comments of "Isn't Mr. Dodd a funny gentleman?" and "O, I
think he's just too nice!"

An hour having passed in this airy manner, I start upon my rounds
afresh, with a bag full of coloured tickets, all with pins attached, and
all with legible inscriptions: "Old Germany," "California," "True Love,"
"Old Fogies," "La Belle France," "Green Erin," "The Land of Cakes,"
"Washington," "Blue Jay," "Robin Red-Breast,"--twenty of each
denomination; for when it comes to the luncheon, we sit down by
twenties. These are distributed with anxious tact--for, indeed, this
is the most delicate part of my functions--but outwardly with reckless
unconcern, amidst the gayest flutter and confusion; and are immediately
after sported upon hats and bonnets, to the extreme diffusion of
cordiality, total strangers hailing each other by "the number of their
mess"--so we humorously name it--and the deck ringing with cries of,
"Here, all Blue Jays to the rescue!" or, "I say, am I alone in this
blame' ship? Ain't there no more Californians?"

By this time we are drawing near to the appointed spot. I mount upon the
bridge, the observed of all observers.

"Captain," I say, in clear, emphatic tones, heard far and wide, "the
majority of the company appear to be in favour of the little cove beyond
One Tree Point."

"All right, Mr. Dodd," responds the captain, heartily; "all one to me.
I am not exactly sure of the place you mean; but just you stay here and
pilot me."

I do, pointing with my wand. I do pilot him, to the inexpressible
entertainment of the picnic; for I am (why should I deny it?) the
popular man. We slow down off the mouth of a grassy valley, watered by
a brook, and set in pines and redwoods. The anchor is let go; the
boats are lowered, two of them already packed with the materials of
an impromptu bar; and the Pioneer Band, accompanied by the resplendent
asses, fill the other, and move shoreward to the inviting strains of
Buffalo Gals, won't you come out to-night? It is a part of our programme
that one of the asses shall, from sheer clumsiness, in the course of
this embarkation, drop a dummy axe into the water, whereupon the mirth
of the picnic can hardly be assuaged. Upon one occasion, the dummy axe
floated, and the laugh turned rather the wrong way.

In from ten to twenty minutes the boats are along-side again, the messes
are marshalled separately on the deck, and the picnic goes ashore,
to find the band and the impromptu bar awaiting them. Then come the
hampers, which are piled upon the beach, and surrounded by a stern
guard of stalwart asses, axe on shoulder. It is here I take my place,
note-book in hand, under a banner bearing the legend, "Come here for
hampers." Each hamper contains a complete outfit for a separate twenty,
cold provender, plates, glasses, knives, forks, and spoons: an agonized
printed appeal from the fevered pen of Pinkerton, pasted on the inside
of the lid, beseeches that care be taken of the glass and silver. Beer,
wine, and lemonade are flowing already from the bar, and the various
clans of twenty file away into the woods, with bottles under their arms,
and the hampers strung upon a stick. Till one they feast there, in a
very moderate seclusion, all being within earshot of the band. From one
till four, dancing takes place upon the grass; the bar does a roaring
business; and the honorary steward, who has already exhausted himself to
bring life into the dullest of the messes, must now indefatigably dance
with the plainest of the women. At four a bugle-call is sounded; and by
half-past behold us on board again, pioneers, corrugated iron bar, empty
bottles, and all; while the honorary steward, free at last, subsides
into the captain's cabin over a brandy and soda and a book. Free at
last, I say; yet there remains before him the frantic leave-takings
at the pier, and a sober journey up to Pinkerton's office with two
policemen and the day's takings in a bag.

What I have here sketched was the routine. But we appealed to the taste
of San Francisco more distinctly in particular fetes. "Ye Olde Time
Pycke-Nycke," largely advertised in hand-bills beginning "Oyez, Oyez!"
and largely frequented by knights, monks, and cavaliers, was drowned
out by unseasonable rain, and returned to the city one of the saddest
spectacles I ever remember to have witnessed. In pleasing contrast,
and certainly our chief success, was "The Gathering of the Clans,"
or Scottish picnic. So many milk-white knees were never before
simultaneously exhibited in public, and to judge by the prevalence of
"Royal Stewart" and the number of eagle's feathers, we were a high-born
company. I threw forward the Scottish flank of my own ancestry, and
passed muster as a clansman with applause. There was, indeed, but one
small cloud on this red-letter day. I had laid in a large supply of
the national beverage, in the shape of The "Rob Roy MacGregor O" Blend,
Warranted Old and Vatted; and this must certainly have been a generous
spirit, for I had some anxious work between four and half-past,
conveying on board the inanimate forms of chieftains.

To one of our ordinary festivities, where he was the life and soul of
his own mess, Pinkerton himself came incognito, bringing the algebraist
on his arm. Miss Mamie proved to be a well-enough-looking mouse, with
a large, limpid eye, very good manners, and a flow of the most correct
expressions I have ever heard upon the human lip. As Pinkerton's
incognito was strict, I had little opportunity to cultivate the lady's
acquaintance; but I was informed afterwards that she considered me "the
wittiest gentleman she had ever met." "The Lord mend your taste in wit!"
thought I; but I cannot conceal that such was the general impression.
One of my pleasantries even went the round of San Francisco, and I have
heard it (myself all unknown) bandied in saloons. To be unknown began at
last to be a rare experience; a bustle woke upon my passage; above all,
in humble neighbourhoods. "Who's that?" one would ask, and the other
would cry, "That! Why, Dromedary Dodd!" or, with withering scorn, "Not
know Mr. Dodd of the Picnics? Well!" and indeed I think it marked a
rather barren destiny; for our picnics, if a trifle vulgar, were as gay
and innocent as the age of gold; I am sure no people divert themselves
so easily and so well: and even with the cares of my stewardship, I was
often happy to be there.