“Everything,” said Schuyler.
“Your gran’f’ther bought the place for fifteen hundred,” said One Eye. “But money was wuth more then.”
While listening to this conversation, I had taken out my cookies, and I was eating the last of them, when One Eye made his last recorded remark.
“Won’t you come in, sonny, and stay over night?” said Schuyler.
“Thank you, sir,” said I; “but I can’t stop.”
“Then don’t be mussing up my clean steps,” said he.
I looked at him to see if he was in earnest; for I was too hungry to let a single crum fall, and could not conceive what should make a muss. The whole company were staring at me most uncomfortably. Without saying another word, I picked up my stick and bundle, and walked off.
“Thirteen thousand five hundred,” said I to myself, slowly,—“in three generations—four thousand five hundred to a generation. I ought to have come over with Christopher Columbus, and set up a tavern for the red-skins to lounge around. Then maybe if I never let any little Indian boys eat their lunches on the steps, I’d be a rich man now. Fifteen thousand dollars—and so mean, so abominably mean—and such a crowd of loafers for company. No, I wouldn’t keep tavern if I could get rich in one generation.”
At the close of this soliloquy, I found I had instinctively turned towards home when I left Schuyler’s Hotel. “It’s just as well,” said I, “just as well! I’d rather stay at home and mind my business, like father, and not have any fortune, if that’s the way people get them nowadays.”
I had the good luck to fall in with my friend the teamster, who gave me a longer lift than before, and sounded me once more on the subject of hiring out to drive team for him.