Squills leaped up, and wiping his eyes with one hand, gave me a sounding slap on the shoulder with the other.
“I am proud of the care I took of your infancy, Master Caxton. That comes of strengthening the digestive organs in early childhood. Such sentiments are a proof of magnificent ganglions in a perfect state of order. When a man’s tongue is as smooth as I am sure yours is, he slips through misfortune like an eel.”
I laughed outright, my father smiled faintly; and, seating myself, I drew towards me a paper filled with Squills’s memoranda, and said, “Now to find the unknown quantity. What on earth is this? ‘Supposed value of books, L750.’ Oh, father! this is impossible. I was prepared for anything but that. Your books,—they are your life!”
“Nay,” said my father; “after all, they are the offending party in this case, and so ought to be the principal victims. Besides, I believe I know most of them by heart. But, in truth, we are only entering all our effects, to be sure [added my father, proudly], that, come what may, we are not dishonored.”
“Humor him,” whispered Squills; “we will save the books.” Then he added aloud, as he laid finger and thumb on my pulse, “One, two, three, about seventy,—capital pulse, soft and full; he can bear the whole: let us administer it.”
My father nodded: “Certainly. But, Pisistratus, we must manage your dear mother. Why she should think of blaming herself because poor Jack took wrong ways to enrich us, I cannot understand. But as I have had occasion before to remark, Sphinx is a noun feminine.”
My poor father! that was a vain struggle for thy wonted innocent humor. The lips quivered.
Then the story came out. It seems that when it was resolved to undertake the publication of the “Literary Times,” a certain number of shareholders had been got together by the indefatigable energies of Uncle Jack; and in the deed of association and partnership, my father’s name figured conspicuously as the holder of a fourth of this joint property. If in this my father had committed some imprudence, he had at least done nothing that, according to the ordinary calculations of a secluded student, could become ruinous. But just at the time when we were in the hurry of leaving town, Jack had represented to my father that it might be necessary to alter a little the plan of the paper, and in order to allure a larger circle of readers, touch somewhat on the more vulgar news and Interests of the day. A change of plan might involve a change of title; and he suggested to my father the expediency of leaving the smooth hands of Mr. Tibbets altogether unfettered, as to the technical name and precise form of the publication. To this my father had unwittingly assented, on hearing that the other shareholders would do the same. Mr. Peck, a printer of considerable opulence and highly respectable name, had been found to advance the sum necessary for the publication of the earlier numbers, upon the guarantee of the said act of partnership and the additional security of my father’s signature to a document authorizing Mr. Tibbets to make any change in the form or title of the periodical that might be judged advisable, concurrent with the consent of the other shareholders.
Now, it seems that Mr. Peck had, in his previous conferences with Mr. Tibbets, thrown much cold water on the idea of the “Literary Times,” and had suggested something that should “catch the moneyed public,”—the fact being, as was afterwards discovered, that the printer, whose spirit of enterprise was congenial to Uncle Jack’s, had shares in three or four speculations to which he was naturally glad of an opportunity to invite the attention of the public. In a word, no sooner was my poor father’s back turned than the “Literary Times” was dropped incontinently, and Mr. Peck and Mr. Tibbets began to concentrate their luminous notions into that brilliant and comet-like apparition which ultimately blazed forth under the title of “The Capitalist.”
From this change of enterprise the more prudent and responsible of the original shareholders had altogether withdrawn. A majority, indeed, were left; but the greater part of those were shareholders of that kind most amenable to the influences of Uncle Jack, and willing to be shareholders in anything, since as yet they were possessors of nothing.