“Our friend Bilderby, for example, who writes letters for your paper on finance, and who professes to know all about money, in reality knows so little about his subject that he cannot earn a living, although he seems to be constantly worried with the fear that, from a mistaken financial policy, the government will come to ruin. In fact, Bilderby only gets time to write his letters on finance, and make excuses to his creditors. The fellow owes the doctor for nearly all his children; I am certain he has not paid for the younger ones. That is Bilderby’s way of being a humbug; I have a different way; you have another, and there are so many varieties, that every man is accommodated.”
Mr. Biggs was warming up, and unbuttoned his collar to talk with more freedom.
“I see occasional notices in your publication to the effect that Chugg, the groceryman, or whatever the name or the business may be, has just returned from the East, which is extremely dull, and that he is extremely glad to get back to the enterprising, the pushing, the promising, the noble, and the beautiful West. That is YOUR way of being a humbug, for in reality Chugg is glad to get back to the West because he is of some importance here, and none there. The East is full of hungry and ragged men who are superior in every way to the prominent citizen of the name of Chugg, and Chugg knows it, therefore he is glad to get back where he is looked upon as a superior creature. I have no hesitancy in saying privately that the people in this direction are not warranted in the belief that all the capable and energetic men have left the East, though it would be disastrous to say as much publicly. When I am in the East it occurs to me with great force that the miles of splendid business buildings I see on every hand must be occupied by talented and energetic men, and as we have no such buildings in the West, it follows that we have no such men. When I see towering manufactories—swarming with operatives who would be ornaments to the best society out here—I think that at least a few men of energy and capacity have been left to operate them, for ordinary men could not do it. I ride down the long avenues of private palaces, each one of them worth a township in the Smoky Hill country, and I am convinced that we are mistaken in the opinion that a man must live on the frontier in order to be energetic.”
I had a habit of scribbling with a pencil when idle, and as I picked up a piece of paper to amuse myself in this manner, Mr. Biggs caught my hand, and said, “No notes!” fearing I intended to publish his opinions. He then explained, as he had often done before, that he talked candidly to me for my own good, and that he would be ruined if I quoted him either in print or privately. Being assured that I had no such intention, he went on:—
“Haven’t you noticed that when a Western man gets a considerable sum of money together, he goes East to live? Well, what does it mean except that the good sense which enabled him to make money teaches him that the society there is preferable to ours? When we go away for recreation and pleasure, in what direction do we go? East, of course, because it rains oftener there than here; because the caves, the lakes, the falls, the sea, and the comforts are in that direction. If I should get rich, I would leave this country, because I know of another where I could live more comfortably. I stay here because it is to my interest; all of us do, and deserve no credit. It is rather humiliating to me than otherwise that I am compelled to live where living is cheap, because I cannot afford the luxuries. Men who are prosperous, or men who live in elegant houses, do not come West, but it is the unfortunate, the poor, the indigent, the sick—the lower classes, in short—who came here to grow up with the country, having failed to grow up with the country where they came from.”
My visitor got up at this, and without ceremony took his hat, and walked out, giving me to understand that I should feel greatly favored. I followed him soon afterward, and passing along the street, I heard him gayly talking to a crowd of men in front of one of the stores, but in a different strain—in fact, he seemed to feel guilty for what he had said, and was denying it.
CHAPTER XXII.
A SKELETON IN THE HOUSE AT ERRING’S FORD.
MORE than three years had passed since Jo and Mateel were married, and I was alone on the last night of the year, thinking that the years were slipping away wonderfully fast of late, it seemed so short a time since we had lived in the country; since the Rev. John Westlock so strangely disappeared, and since I was a boy in distress at my own and Jo’s misfortunes. The good year was dying, and would soon pass peacefully into the dim past, after the watchers had tired of waiting, and gone to sleep. As is the case when an old man dies, the announcement is speedily followed by the birth of a babe, and so the race and the years are continued. As is now said of the dying year, so it will be said of all of us. At some time in the mysterious future—nobody knows when—the hand that writes this will be picking uneasily at the covering of a death-bed, and it will be whispered in the room, and in all the house, and down the streets, “He is dying; poor fellow, he is dead.” The eye that reads this—at some time in the future; nobody knows when—will become fixed, and it will be gently said “Dying; dead.” The front door will be black with crape for a few days, and the people will pass the house reverently and silently, but after a very little while the token of death will be removed, the house will be thrown open and aired, and laughter will be heard on the inside. Birds will sing merrily at the front door, and flowers appear, and happy children play about the house, and through it, as though nothing had happened. The dead man may have been dearly loved, but everything and everybody encourages his friends to forget him, and they laugh in the room where he died, and where his coffin sat through the long nights before the burial.
The relics of departed friends, which were at first carefully laid away, are in the course of months or years resurrected, and given to their successors. The hat worn by the pretty boy who died last year, or the year before, is worn to-day by the boy who came after him, and he plays with his toys, which were at first so sacred, as though they had been brought to the house for him. The mother who put the little hat away no doubt thought she would keep it for years, and look at it to imagine that her first-born was wearing it again, but time has softened her grief; friends told her he was better off, and she hoped so, and tried to convince herself that it was all for the best.
So it will be with the dying year; it was well loved while it lasted, and brought us many good gifts, but it will be speedily forgotten, and in twelve months we shall be equally indifferent as to its successor. One dies; another is born; so go the people and the years. There will be a birth and a death to-night, but it is not an uncommon circumstance: there will be a little mourning for the death, but a great deal of rejoicing and ringing of bells for the birth.