Young Stewart could have borrowed money to keep him in college, for he knew that when he was twenty-one he would come into an inheritance from his father's estate. However, on an impulse, he just sold his books, pawned his watch and bought passage for America, the land of promise. The boy had the look of a scholar, and he had dignity, as shy folks often have. Also, he had a Trinity College brogue, a thing quite as desirable as a Trinity College degree. Later, A. T. Stewart lost his brogue, but Trinity College sent him all the degrees she had, including the LL. D., which arrived on his seventieth birthday.
The Irish built our railroads, but Paddy no longer works on the section—he owns the railroad. Note the Harrimans, the Hanrahans, the McCreas, the McDougalls, the O'Donnells, the O'Days, the Hills—all just one generation removed from the bog, and the smell of peat-smoke still upon them.
The Irish schoolmasters glided easily from taking charge of the school into taking charge of our municipal affairs—for a consideration—and their younger brothers, their cousins, their uncles and their aunts, found jobs yawning for them as soon as they had pushed past the gates of Castle Garden.
One year of schoolteaching in New York City, and A. T. Stewart reached his majority. He had saved just two hundred dollars of his salary; and he sailed away, back to Ould Ireland, a successful man. Now he would go back to Trinity and complete his course, and be glorified. He had proved his ability to meet the world on a fair footing and take care of himself. All of which speaks well for young Misther Stewart, and it also speaks well for his grandparents, who had brought him up in a good, sensible way to work, economize and keep a civil tongue in his Irish head. His grandfather didn't exactly belong to the gentry—it was better than that: he was an Irish clerque who had become a scrivener, and then risen to a professorship.
A. T. Stewart was heir to a goodly amount of decent pride, which always kept him in the society of educated people, and made him walk with the crown of his head high and his chin in. He thought well of himself—and the world is very apt to take a man at his own estimate.
A year in "The States" had transformed the young man from a greenhorn into a gentleman. The climate of the West had agreed with him. He himself told how on going back to Belfast the city seemed to have grown smaller and very quiet. He compared everything to Broadway, and smiled at a jaunting-car compared to a 'bus.
When he went to Trinity College, and saw his class, from whom he had parted only a year before, all thought of remaining two years to graduate faded from his mind. An ocean seemed to divide him from both teachers and pupils. The professors were stupid and slow; the pupils were boys—he was a man. They, too, felt the difference, and called him "Sir." And when one of them introduced him to a Freshman as "an American," Freshy bowed low, and the breast of A. T. Stewart expanded with pride. Not even the offer of a professorship could have kept him in Ireland. He saw himself the principal of an American College, "filling" the pulpit of the college chapel on Sunday, picturing the fate of the unregenerate in fiery accents. The Yankee atmosphere had made him a bit heady. The legacy left him by his grandfather was exactly one thousand pounds—five thousand dollars. What to do with this money, he did not know! Anyway, he would take it to America and wisely invest it.
In New York he had boarded with an Irish family, the head of which was a draper. This man had a small store on West Street, and Alexander had helped tend store on Saturdays, and occasionally evenings when ships came in and sailors with money to waste lumbered and lubbered past, often with gay painted galleys in tow.
The things you do at twenty are making indelible marks on your character. Stewart had no special taste for trade, but experience spells power—potential or actual. With five thousand dollars in his belt, all in gold, he felt uncomfortable. And so on a venture he expended half of it in good Irish lace, insertions and scallop trimmings. Irish linens, Irish poplins and Irish lace were being shipped to New York—it could not be a loss! He would follow suit. If he was robbed of his money he could not at the same time be robbed of the drapery. And so he sailed away for New York—and Ireland looked more green and more beautiful as the great, uplifting, green hills faded from sight and were lost to view in the mist.