"Indeed I do, and you've my most hearty sympathy. Perhaps good health would have seen you through; perhaps not. Your experience is very like mine, in some respects. I didn't start with the purpose of being a preacher, but I was going to become educated so well that whenever I had a message of any sort to give to the world,—for every man occasionally has one, you know,—I should be able to do it in a manner that would command attention. I was fortunate enough to get into a business position in which my duties were almost mechanical, so at night my mind was fresh enough for reading and study. My wife's tastes were very like my own, so we read and studied together; but my message has never come, and here I am where the only writing I'll ever do will be in account books and business correspondence. As to my art studies—"
"They help you to arrange goods on the shelves in a way that attracts attention; there can't be any doubt about that," Caleb interrupted.
"Thank you, Caleb. That is absolutely the first and only commendation that my art education has ever earned for me, and I assure you that I shall remember and prize it forever."
"I'm not an art-sharp," said Caleb, "but I shouldn't wonder if I could show you lots more signs of what you've learned an' think haven't come to anythin'. Same way with literature; nobody in this town, but you an' your wife, could an' would have got up that circulatin' library, an' knowed the names o' three hundred good books for it. Other towns'll hear of it, an' men there'll take up the idea—"
"Which was yours—not ours."
"Never mind; ideas don't come to anythin' till they're froze into facts. Other merchants'll hear of the library an' write you for names o' books an' other p'ints, an' the thing'll go on an' on till it'll amount to more than most any book that was ever writ. Bein' set on makin' a hit in literature an' art an' fetchin' up at dressin' store-shelves an' settin' up a circulatin' library reminds me of Jake Brockleband's steam engine. You hain't met Jake, I reckon?"
"I don't recall the name."
"He's in the next county below us, near the mouth of the crick. He goes in these parts by the name of the Great American Traveller, for he's seen more countries than anybody else about here, an' it all came through a steam engine. It 'pears that years ago Jake, who was a Yankee with a knack at anythin' that was mechanical, was picked out by some New Yorkers to go down to Brazil to preserve pineapples on a large scale for the American market: he was to have a big salary and some shares of the company's stock. Part of his outfit was a little steam engine an' b'iler an' two copper kettles as big as the lard kettles in your pork-house. Well, he got to work, with the idee o' makin' his fortune in a year or two, an' pretty soon he started a schooner load o' canned pineapples up North; but most o' the cans got so het up on the way that they busted, an' when the company found how bizness was, why, 'twas the comp'ny's turn to get het up an' bust. Jake couldn't get his salary, so he 'tached the engine an' kettles, an' looked about for somethin' to do with 'em. He shipped 'em up to a city in Venezuela, where there was plenty of cocoanut oil and potash to be had cheap, and started out big at soap-makin', but pretty soon he found that the Venezuelans wouldn't buy soap at any price: they hadn't been educated up to the use of such stuff. But there wa'n't no give-up blood in Jake, so he packed the engine an' soap over to a big town in Colombia—next country to Venezuela,—an' started a swell laundry, I b'lieve he called it,—a place where they wash clothes at wholesale. He 'lowed that as Colombia was a very hot country, an' the people was said to be of old Spanish stock an' quite up to date, there'd be a powerful lot o' stockin's an' underclothes to be washed. Soon after he'd hung out his shingle, though, he heerd that no Colombians wore underclothes, an' mighty few of 'em wore socks.
"Well, 'Never say die' was Jake's family brand, so he built a boat with paddle-wheels an' fitted the steam engine to it, an' started in the passenger steamboat business on a Colombian river; the big copper kettles he fixed, one on each side, with awnin's over 'em, to carry passengers' young ones, so they couldn't crawl about an' tumble overboard. He did a good business for a spell, but all of a sudden the revolution season come on an' a gang of the rebels seized his boat, an' the gov'ment troops fired on 'em an' sunk it.