“You see, boys,” the old judge went on, with a hitch in his voice, addressing than generally, “Press here is under a pledge to me not to touch another drop of licker till he begins servin' the sentence I imposed on him; and, boys, that means Press is goin'' to be a temperance man for the balance of his days—if I know anything about the pardonin' power and the feelin's of the governor of this state!”
So, as the accommodation ran in to the Junction, where crowds were packed on the platform and pretty girls, dressed in white, with touches of red at throat and belt, waved handkerchiefs, and gimpy-legged old men in gray uniforms hobbled stiffly back and forth, and the local band blared out its own peculiar interpretation of My Old Kentucky Home, the tall old man with the gashed cheek sat in his seat, his face transfigured with a great light of joy and his throat muscles clicking with the sobs he was choking down, while little Rita Covington's fingers dabbed caressingly at his wound with a handkerchief dipped in ice water and a dozen old veterans jostled one another to shake his hand. And they hit him on the back with comradely blows—and maybe they did a little crying themselves. But Sergeant Jimmy Bagby and Corporal Jacob Smedley took no part in this. Out on the rear platform they still stood, side by side, waving the flag and firing the unfirable musket harder and faster than ever; and, as one waved and the other loaded and fired, they cheered together:
“'Rah for Jefferson Davis, the Southern Confederacy—and Pressley G. Harper!”
VII. STRATAGEM AND SPOILS
AS THE Daily Evening News, with pardonable enthusiasm, pointed out at the time, three events of practically national importance took place in town all in that one week. On Tuesday night at 9:37 there was a total eclipse of the moon, not generally visible throughout the United States; on Wednesday morning the Tri-State Steam and Hand Laundrymen's Association began a two-days annual convention at St. Clair Hall; and on Saturday at high noon Eastern capital, in the person of J. Hayden Witherbee, arrived.
And the greatest of these was Witherbee. The eclipse of the moon took place on its appointed schedule and was witnessed through opera glasses and triangular fragments of windowpane that had been smudged with candlesmoke. The Tri-State Laundrymen came and heard reports, elected officers, had a banquet at the Richland House and departed to their several homes. But J. Hayden Witherbee stayed on, occupying the bridal chamber at the hotel—the one with the private bath attached; and so much interest and speculation did his presence create, and so much space did the Daily Evening News give in its valued columns to his comings and goings and his sayings and doings, that the name of J. Hayden Witherbee speedily became, as you might say, a household word throughout the breadth and length of the Daily Evening News' circulation.
It seemed that J. Hayden Witherbee, sitting there in his lofty office building far away in Wall Street, New York, had had his keen eye upon the town for some time; and yet—such were the inscrutable methods of the man—the town hadn't known anything about it, hadn't even suspected it. However, he had been watching its growth with the deepest interest; and when, by the count of the last United States census, it jumped from seventh in population in the state to fifth he could no longer restrain himself. He got aboard the first train and came right on. He had, it would appear, acted with such promptness because, in his own mind, he had already decided that the town would make an ideal terminal point for his proposed Tobacco & Cotton States Interurban Trolley line, which would in time link together with twin bonds of throbbing steel—the words are those of the reporter for the Daily Evening News—no less-than twenty-two growing towns, ranging southward from the river. Hence his presence, exuding from every pore, as it were, the very essences of power and influence and money. The paper said he was one of the biggest men in Wall Street, a man whose operations had been always conducted upon the largest scale.
This, within the space of three or four months, had been our second experience of physical contact with Eastern capital. The first one, though, had been in the nature of a disappointment. A man named Betts—Henry Betts—had come down from somewhere in the North and, for a lump sum, had bought outright the city gasworks. It was not such a big lump sum, because the gasworks had been built right after the war and had thereafter remained untouched by the stimulating hand of improvement. They consisted in the main of a crumbly little brick engine house, full of antiquated and self-willed machinery, and just below it, on the riverbank, a round and rusted gas tank, surrounded by sloping beds of coal cinders, through which at times sluggish rivulets of molten coal tar percolated like lava on the flanks of a toy volcano. The mains took in only the old part of town—not the new part; and the quality of illumination furnished was so flickery at all seasons and so given to freezing up in winter that many subscribers, including even the leading families, used coal-oil lamps in their bedchambers until the electric power house was built. A stock company of exceedingly conservative business men had owned the gasworks prior to the advent of Henry Betts, and the general manager of the plant had been Cassius Poindexter, a fellow townsman. Cash Poindexter was a man who, in his day, had tried his 'prentice hand at many things. At one time he traveled about in a democrat wagon, taking orders for enlarging crayon portraits from photographs and tintypes, and also for the frames to accompany the same.