"CALEB," said Philip one evening, as the partners and their wives sat in the parlor of the Somerton home and enjoyed the leisure hour that came between store-closing and bed-time, "so much important business has been crowded into the past few months that some smaller ventures have almost escaped my mind. What ever came of that car-load of walnut stumps that I sent East last summer?"
"I couldn't have told you much about it if you'd asked me a day earlier," Caleb replied. "I turned it over to a man in the fine-woods business—a Grand Army comrade that I met at my old chum Jim's post. He said at the time that the stumps would undoubtedly pay expenses of diggin' and shipment, an' maybe a lot more, but 'twould depend entirely on the stumps themselves. He'd have each of 'em sawed lengthwise an' a surface section dressed, to show the markings of the grain o' the wood. It seems that they were so water-soaked that 'twas months after sawin' before the wood of any of 'em was dry enough to dress, but he got at some of 'em a few weeks ago, an' though most of 'em wa'n't above the ordinary, there were two or three that made the furniture an' decoration men bid against each other at a lively rate. One of 'em panned out over sixty dollars."
"What? One walnut stump? Sixty dollars?"
"Oh, that's nothing. To work me up, he told me of one, picked up in the country a few years ago, that brought more than a thousand dollars to the buyer. The markings were so fine that it was sawn into thin veneers that were sold for more than their weight in silver. Still, to come to the point, your entire lot brought about two hundred and seventy dollars net, an' I've got the check in my pocket to prove it."
"And the land from which they were taken cost me only two hundred dollars in goods! And there are still hundreds of stumps in it! And I felt so ashamed and babyish when I learned that I'd been tricked into buying cleared land, that I almost resolved to recall you by wire, so that I should be kept from being tricked again in some similar manner! I shall have to drive out to old Weefer's farm, tell him the story, and ask him if he has any more walnut clearings for sale."
"Hadn't you better keep quiet about it? Where's the use in killin' the goose that lays the golden egg? Pick up all the walnut clearin's that are for sale, an' make what you can out of 'em, before you go to talkin'; but if you feel that you must say somethin' on the subject to somebody, an' jubilate a little, go tell Doc Taggess, who owns the lot you thought you were buyin'. If anybody deserves to make money in the boom that's comin', Doc does, an' if he could clear his land, now that he can railroad the logs to market, an' then get out his stumps, he might get cash enough ahead to pick up a lot of real estate, or take stock in millin' enterprises, when the water-power ditch is made, an' so lay up somethin' to keep him out of the poor-house in old age; for as long as he can practise, he'll give to the poor all that he can collect from patients that are better off. The chap that handled the stumps for you asked me a lot of questions about the kind an' quantity of standin' timber out here, and said he didn't see why we didn't start mills to turn out furniture lumber an' dimension-stuff, like some that have made fortunes for men in the backwoods of Indiana and Michigan an' some other states."
"Let's try it, if our cash and credit aren't already used as far as they should be. By the way, how is Claybanks corn-flour, Somerton's brand, going in England?"
"Fairly. We've sent, in all, about four hundred barrels; that's an average of a hundred a month, with a net profit to us of about thirty per cent, which is better, I reckon, than any of the big flour shippers ever dreamed o' makin'. I've been hopin' that the good tidin's of good food-stuff at about half the price o' bad would work its way into other parts of London an' out into the country, too; but English people don't seem to move about an' swap stories an' prices, like us Americans. I reckon I came home too soon, for the good o' that deal, for I had a lot o' things in mind to do in London to make corn-meal popular. It seems to be the English way to let things alone until some of the upper classes take to 'em, so I was goin' to try the meal on some o' the swells; but the more I thought of it, the more it seemed that they too belonged to the follow-my-leader class. So I made up my mind to begin way up at the tip-top, an' so I wrote a letter to Queen Victoria, sayin' I'd come all the way from America to make the English people practically acquainted with the cheapest and most nutritious food known in the temperate zone, an' that I was catchin' on fairly, but the common people seemed to think it was common stuff, which it wasn't, as I would be glad to prove to her. Besides, I knew of Americans richer than any nobleman in England who had it on their tables every day. I said I could make six kinds o' bread an' three kinds o' puddin' out o' corn-meal, an' I'd like a chance to do it some day for her own table; if she'd let me do it in the palace kitchen, I'd bring my own pans an' things, so's not to put the help to any trouble,—an' I'd—"
"You—wrote—to—the Queen—of England," Philip exclaimed, "offering to make corn-bread and meal-pudding for the royal table!"
"That's what I did, an' I took pains to specify that 'twould be made of Claybanks corn-flour, Somerton's brand, too—not the common meal that again an' again has let down American corn in foreign minds to the level of the hog-trough. But it didn't work. Though I put in an addressed postal card for reply, the good lady never answered my letter. Too busy, I s'pose."