[Chapter XXXIV]
We knew the voice. Our American friend, John B. Bellamy, was in form, and held a select audience interested in the smoke-room of the Royal at Plymouth. This is what we heard him say—
"Why, gentlemen, the people of this old country don't know a good thing when they've got it. What is it, all of it, from the Tamar to the Land's End? A nice little estate in size for a cattle ranch out West, with everything on it for making a pile. Why, gentlemen, every breath of air is worth dollars, your skies are worth dollars, your seas are worth dollars, all your old piskies and saints and giants are worth dollars—just ask John B. Bellamy to run the show.
"Why, gentlemen, we, in America, make dollars; we can't help it. Then we get tired, but must go on because we have nothing else to do. A man may make dollars in the States faster than he can give'm away. I know a man who has charity-cheques signed by an electric machine, and still his pile grows, and he says it'll pay to give away all he possibly can now, rather than let his heirs pay death duties, which will be quite a sum on his little concern; for he is a small man compared with some. These are the men who want a place like this to come to when tired of pile-raising. You may say, gentlemen, some other place your side of the pond will do just as well; but it won't. You can't work in this country; John B. Bellamy has tried it. Why, gentlemen, in the States you must work; and when the day ends, you don't know you've finished, but go to bed looking for a job; but here, there's something in the air, and you just don't want to work, and don't care if the whole durned sub-lunary universe tumbles into space. That's how I feel.
"Just put up a big board, gentlemen, and advertise 'Cornwall to Let: leases of life renewed to men with dollar-piles and tired of trying to be tired.' You'll have'm tumbling over in shiploads, for it'll suit their complaint, just like Lancashire air suits cotton. It'll just suit the Cornish complaint for them to come, now that 'fish, tin, and copper' aren't all flourishing.