The crowd was a very silent one. Burton wondered why, until he suddenly realized that he, himself was silent, oppressed and feeling almost solemn at the wonderful event that was taking place. The people took their gold, glanced at it, signed a receipt for it and retired at once, some furtively counting the piles as they went, some affecting indifference, others openly exulting in the shining twenties as they walked along gazing at them.
When it came Burton’s turn he received fifty broad gold $20 pieces—more gold than he had ever before owned. “You know there’ll be as much for you to-morrow,” the paying teller said as Burton signed his receipt, and Carroll was so awe-stricken at the idea that he could only nod without speaking. Then he fell back to watch the crowd. Poor widows, wondering young men and maidens, prosperous business men, business men whom he knew to be tottering on the brink of ruin, hard-handed workmen, pompous millionaires, writers, mechanics, ministers, college professors,—every class and grade of the body social, was represented in turn as the people filed up to the window.
After a while Burton turned and went to his place of business—a commission office, where he spent eight and a half hours every day in adding rows of figures and carrying results from page to page in a complex system of “bookkeeping by double-entry,” to acquire which he had years ago attended a business college. Every one about the place was jubilant. Even the errand-boy, a chuckleheaded lad just turned eighteen, had drawn a thousand dollars, and was already, in expectation, drawing another cool thousand on the morrow, and succeeding morrows.
Business throve that day, in all its branches. Men who, the day before, had been seeking extended time on small accounts, now came in to pay up and make new purchases. Men who had never bought in their line came forward as purchasers. In all departments of trade money was plentiful; people bought freely and everybody was happy as the day is long.
A second distribution the next day gave another impetus to the market. “Now,” said Burton to himself, when at noon he had a breathing spell, “we can begin to live. I’m going to treat myself to one of Reading’s wheels and take an occasional spin into the country.”
“Yes,” said the man whom he addressed, an old forty-niner, “there’ll be good times now. Haven’t seen anything like this since ‘the days of old, the days of gold,’ and so forth. Why it’s regular diggings times again.” The day passed by. Every one was in good spirits, buying everything he wanted.
It is curious to note how quickly we become accustomed to pleasant things. Carroll drew his thousand dollars on the morning of the third day, quite as a matter of course, and even felt that ’twas not such a very great matter after all. “I wish they’d give it to me all in a lump, instead of in these daily driblets. Then a man could really do something with it,” he thought to himself as he carelessly dropped into an outside pocket, what was really more than under the old system he would have earned by six months’ work.
Through the day, however, he did a little thinking. “There’s really no occasion for my working now,” he said. “I never did like this business. I’ll quit, and go on with my electrical studies, as I’ve always longed to do.”
No sooner thought of than decided upon. That night, as he was going home, Burton stepped into the private office of the head of the firm and announced his intention of leaving.
“Oh, is that so, Burton?” said his employer. “I’m sorry to hear that. I am thinking of going out of business in order to travel, and had hit upon you as just the man to succeed me. I’d make very easy terms with you.”