LETTER No. I.
My bright anticipations—Melancholy forebodings—Bound for the Rockies—Frank's start for the Far West—Farming in Minnesota—A new scheme—Starting a creamery—Glowing hopes—Failure and disappointment.
London, July, 1885.
Last year I spent a pleasant time in Dovedale, and "The Amateur Angler" told you all about it. This autumn I had looked forward to a holiday in some retired nook in leafy Herefordshire or Shropshire. I had my eye on an old farmhouse at which to make my headquarters for fishing in The Teme, or The Lugg, or The Arrow.
As a boy, I knew that old house well; every corner of it, all the buildings, orchards, and lovely green meadows surrounding it; the woods, the ravines, the far-off mountains, and, above all, the pleasant river which ran through and around the farm, wherein I used to swim and fish for trout and grayling, are vividly before me now.
"I knew each lane and every alley green,
Dingle and bushy dell....
And every bosky bourn from side to side,
My daily walk and ancient neighbourhood."
But hard and inexorable fate has ordered me off in quite a different direction. All being well, my autumnal holiday will be spent in the Rocky Mountains! If I have called such a fate as that hard, it is only because of the uncertainty of it. A young man, I fancy, would see nothing but delight in it; but for an old man in his seventh decade, and one not accustomed to travel, it is like tearing up his roots and plunging down stream into the unknown.
I am going to fish in the Rockies. I shall take with me that immaculate tackle which last year inspired me with such hopes in Dovedale. I hear of places where you have only to cast your fly and you pull out a 5 lb. trout (nothing less) with positive certainty; and without taking him off your hook, you have simply to swing him a little behind you into a natural boiling geyser, and in ten minutes your 5-pounder is cooked and ready for your lunch. That is but a small specimen of the kind of sport I am anticipating! That's the sort of thing that inspires me!
But then there is the reverse of this pretty picture, which sometimes, in melancholy moments, makes me contemplate my enforced holiday as a hardship on the part of fate. Are there not mosquitoes on that side of the broad Atlantic? Are there not Red Indians and grizzly bears? I have pictured myself walking though a narrow glen, fishing-rod in hand, in the angler's contemplative mood, and suddenly finding myself confronted by a grizzly! Must, or rather will, he retire, or must I? I never fired a revolver in my life, so I should not think of carrying one; besides, I have no thirst for a grizzly's blood, and I only hope he has none for mine. I am sure if he will let me alone I won't meddle with him. Alas! I get a hug and a pat, and my fate and my fishing are ended!
Then, again, I dream of encountering a band of black-feet, or crow's feet, or spotted-tailed Indians, in feathers and war-paint, armed with tomahawk and scalping-knife. I yield my hoary, or I may say my bald scalp to that horrid knife, and so my fate is ended. When I think of things in that way, am I wrong in talking of it as a hard fate? Then there are six-shooters, bowie-knives, buffaloes, and rattlesnakes!
Nevertheless, to the Rockies I am bound, in spite of all such gloomy possibilities. My passage money is already paid and my berth secured in the good ship "Cunardia": which is, I am told, one of the finest vessels afloat; so I hope I shall be able to give a good account of her.
My youngest son Frank, who has always been somewhat of a rolling stone, and to whom, in the old country, neither wool nor pelf would stick, is now settled away up at the foot of the Rocky Mountains; and when he has sometimes written to me for money, and I have asked him how he has spent it, his answer has invariably been "Come and see!"
Year after year I have put off going, but now I am beginning to feel that if I am ever to go, I must delay no longer; so I am about to see with my own eyes where my money has gone to, and what may be the chances of any portion of it coming back to me.
Frank was always a peculiar youth to manage. He began life in my City counting-house, but he soon tired of it. He had formed the notion that he was better suited to the free life of the prairie than to the routine work of City business. Of course he knew nothing about prairie life, and he would not be persuaded that his notions were but the outcome of a disordered imagination; he was well off where he was, with fair chances before him; but he was quite prepared to throw those chances away, and to strike out into the Far West. He was a strong, healthy, good-looking youth, fond of society, and very popular, and consequently, was gradually being led into habits of extravagance which might have ended badly. I was therefore, willing to humour his wishes.
In the year 1880 I paid his passage to America, and he began his career by engaging himself to a farmer in Minnesota, who for a small stipend was to instruct him in farming and give him his board in exchange for his work.
When Frank began with the farmer, it is not too much to say that he was totally ignorant of everything belonging to a farm; but he had not been on this farm for six months before he became convinced that he had learnt everything there was to learn, and that he could give a few wrinkles to his master.
Then he told me that there was a wonderful farm to be had close at hand, dirt cheap, a chance not to be lost; it was a small place of about 200 acres with good house and building, and splendid feeding prairie-land adjoining. This, he said, was just the place for him to begin on; and he produced such elaborate figures to prove to me that, although the previous occupant had failed there, enormous profits—one hundred per cent. at least—could be made of it, if managed in accordance with his enlightened views, rather than in the humdrum way in which the previous farmer had come to grief. He wrote to me so urgently, so persistently, so enthusiastically, that I, although with many misgivings, found him the money wherewith to purchase and stock the place. More money was expended on that farm than I am now willing to acknowledge, but everything went along swimmingly for a short period.
As time went on things did not seem to thrive so well as was hoped. The corn crop was not up to the mark; the cattle did not fetch the expected price; two or three horses died, and, on the whole, the first year's work had not paid its expenses. But Frank was not disheartened; he wrote courageously home for more money, and worked hard, ploughing and planting, digging and hoeing. I was at least pleased to find him sticking to his work so bravely, and exhibiting no desire to "cave in," although it was evident that his life was a pretty hard one, and his daily fare rough enough.
One day I got a letter from him telling me that he was going to sell the farm, as he had got another scheme in view which would land him in a fortune in a very short time.
The scheme was something quite new in that part of the country, and was a safe success.
The idea was to sell his farm, and with the produce establish a Creamery, for the purpose of buying up all the cream from the farmers for many miles round, and supply all the western cities, and even eastward, as far as New York, with the best butter that could be made, and at prices of hitherto unknown moderation.
Frank supplied me with figures which proved conclusively that after estimating cost of plant, and interest thereon, horses and carts for driving round and collecting, wages of carters and butter-makers, and the prime cost of the cream, the best butter could be produced at a prime cost of sixpence a pound, while the very lowest at which it could possibly be sold was a shilling or 1s. 2d. a pound. This, after making ample allowance for cost of transit, &c., would clearly leave a very handsome profit; the success of the thing was too obvious to be for a moment questioned.
So Frank sold his farm at about what it had originally cost him, but with a total loss of his year's labour, and money sunk in improvements; and went to work in connection with a partner, a practical man, who joined him with no capital, but who, in consideration of his knowledge and experience, was to share equally in the profits, first allowing Frank fair interest for his capital. The local newspapers puffed the new enterprise, and spoke in glowing terms of the pluck and energy of the young Englishman: for a time things looked quite promising.
Frank wrote home with his usual buoyancy and asked for more money to purchase sundry articles and machinery absolutely needed to carry on the rapidly-growing business.
But, alas! for the glowing hopes of youth! At the end of a year it was found by a balance-sheet carefully, and I believe fairly, drawn up by the business partner, that there was nothing left but the plant; the working capital for purchases and expenses was gone. The price of butter had fallen enormously, and the price of cream and cost of collecting it had exceeded the original calculations, whilst the plant, except as a going concern, was not worth much.
It was found necessary either that Frank should put in 2,000 dollars more capital (which he said would set them right), or he must give up the creamery. He did give it up, and was left high and dry to begin the world again with a capital of about two hundred dollars.
I am told that the working partner still carries on the business, and having got hold of the plant at a nominal price, is now really making the thing pay.
But Frank was out of it, and Minnesota was no longer a place for him. With the small capital above mentioned he decided to strike out west for the Rockies.
How he fared I will tell you in my next letter.
