CHAPTER I.—THE SINGULAR BEGINNING OF A NEW CAREER
ARLY next morning Mr. McCarthy came and took me for a drive. He was a new man, quiet, serious, and inclined to let me do the talking. I thought of him no more as the land-made gentleman. Just the one word was enough for him now.
Something had gone wrong with him, and I wondered what it might be. I hoped he would speak of the love-affair. He put many questions, and said, by-and-by:
“I'm glad you've come, for the railroad work takes half my time, and poor Sal is neglected. I want you to tackle Sal. I'm going to organize a stock company for Sal, and make you president perhaps, and give all my time to larger things. The army of steam-power is going to need help at Albany, and I may try for a seat in the legislature. But you know Horace Bulger runs the county, and I won't buy honor. I've got to beat him. I thought it would be easy, with three hundred voters in my shop, but the first I knew Bulger had stirred them up. They're growling about our machines, and the trouble will last until convention time, you see. He did it to block my game. If I want to go I've got to settle with him.” After a moment of silence, he added: “There's a lot for you to do. I want you to begin by advertising the hygienic value of a bath every day. Keep dinging on the idea that soap and civilization go hand in hand. Let it be understood that a clean mind can only live in a clean body, that decency begins with soap. Let us assail the great army of the unwashed, and increase the respect of the people for Salome, the clover-scented sister of Sal.”
The shop had doubled its size, and now covered half an acre of the river shore.
I found Pearl and Barker in a larger basement shop. The gray-haired man put his one arm around me and held me close for half a moment, and said not a word. Then he sat down and raised his goggles and wiped his eyes, and I remember that I felt a little ashamed of my own weakness.