CHAPTER VIII
THE NEW PARTNER.
Tom Allis, my new partner, was one of the most peculiar men I have ever met. In social life he was affable and self-possessed, but in his business intercourse exhibited confusion and a shyness that was simply amazing.
Actually and in appearance he was about my age, while in his manner he was a bashful boy of seventeen. It was impossible for him to talk without blushing and appearing extremely embarrassed.
As I had only met him socially, this phase was a revelation to me. I tried to get him out amongst the trade, thinking that after he had become well acquainted his embarrassment would be overcome, or at least partially so. My efforts in this direction failed and he settled down to a routine office-man, and while he looked after that end of the business satisfactorily, I could easily have found a clerk at fifteen dollars per week to do as well.
This was disappointing, but I hoped that as he gained experience his services would be of greater value to the firm. Meanwhile, I let him relieve me entirely of the office work.
Tom had been with me only a few months when he came to me for advice in a matter in which he felt he had become involved.
It appeared he had been calling regularly on a young lady, a pretty little French girl. I had met her but once and then was impressed with the idea that she had a temper which it would be unpleasant to arouse, though I may have done her an injustice.
At all events, Tom said he thought the girl was in love with him; that probably he had given her reason to believe his attentions were serious, and he saw no honorable way out except to ask her to be his wife.
I saw that the boy, so he seemed to me, was really very much disturbed. I told him before I could offer any advice I must know every detail, and after learning that not one word of love had ever passed between them, that their intercourse was really nothing more than that of intimate friends, and he assuring me that he had not a particle of love for the girl, I advised him strongly to give up any idea of offering her marriage and to gently but firmly break off the intimacy.
He accepted the advice gratefully and acted on it.
A few years later he married the girl, and I presume that he told her of my share in this matter. She probably held me responsible and no doubt influenced him to some extent in a course of action, referred to farther on in this narrative, that I have always regarded with regret.
It is a thankless task to advise one in such matters, even though the one be your friend.
Business continued to improve slowly, but at the end of the year my partner had drawn as his share of the profits, for the eight months he had been with me, twenty-two hundred dollars.
He was more than satisfied, and well he might be.
During the winter of 1874 and '75 I had another and more trying siege of rheumatism. As in the previous spring, with the advent of warmer weather I found relief, but I knew the disease had become chronic and it worried me.
This worry, however, I soon dismissed from my mind to make room for one more formidable and pressing.
Hard times were coming again and there were two now to divide the profits.
The furnishing of our home had absorbed a good portion of the three thousand dollars I had received from my partner, and my living expenses together with what it was necessary for me to do toward the support of my parents and sisters exhausted my income.
My always-cheerful and devoted wife, and my boy, just arriving at an interesting age, made home so attractive that I was able to forget business when away from the office.
Each morning with the parting caress came words of loving encouragement that did much to support me through the day, and at night on my return home, my greeting from wife and boy always dispelled the clouds hanging over me.
I was happy, infinitely so, despite the business worry.
My physicians had advised my leaving Brooklyn for a dryer atmosphere.
We had a lease of our house until the spring of 1876, but had decided that then we would try country life.
Many hours were passed pleasantly in discussing the plan and its probable results. My wife's fertile brain would paint to me in pleasing colors what the country home should be—the cottage and its coziness, the garden, the lawn and flowers, my health restored, the benefit of country life to the boy, and the relief to my mind through largely reduced living expenses.
We were eager for the time to come to make the change.
On the twelfth of December our second child was born. My first boy had a brother, and again my wife, noble woman, gave testimony of her great love.
No trials that came to her prevented the outpouring of that love to me.
She knew how I needed her fond encouragement, particularly at that period, and she gave it to me daily, always with the same sweet smile and tender caress.
That winter will never be forgotten by me for the torture which I suffered from the almost nightly attacks of that awful rheumatism. Medicine did not seem of any use.
Night after night until long past midnight my devoted wife, with ceaseless energy, would apply every few moments hot applications to relieve the cruel pains, until finally I would fall asleep for a few hours' rest.
I lost flesh rapidly, and when spring came was hardly more than a semblance of my former self.
It was indeed time that I should shake the dust of Brooklyn from my feet.
Before the winter was over we had commenced to scan the advertising columns of the daily papers for "country places to rent." We wanted if possible to get a place in the mountainous section of New Jersey. I wanted to get away from air off the salt water and this section of the country seemed the best.
It must be healthy and at a low rent. For the rest we must take what we could get at the price we could pay.
Our search ended in our taking a place of about six acres, five minutes' walk from a station on the Morris & Essex Railroad, between Summit and Morristown.
On the property was a farm-house more than one hundred years old, and this the owner repaired and improved by building an extra room and a piazza across the front of the house.
The rent was two hundred dollars a year. We moved there early in April. The last night in the Brooklyn house I had one of my worst attacks of rheumatism. I have never had the slightest twinge of it since.
Blessed be New Jersey!