“And peaceful was the night
Wherein the Prince of Light
His reign of peace upon the earth began;
The winds, with wonder whist,
Smoothly the waters kist,
Whisp’ring new joys to the mild oceàn,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmèd wave!”
One wonders if—in those far-off days of angel-singing—there was such a thing as a millionaire? Not a merely “rich” man;—not a “Wise Man of the East,” who, possessing knowledge and insight as well as wealth, hastened to bring his gold with frankincense and myrrh, and to lay these reverently in the humble manger which served as cradle to a Child, whose vast power was destined to conquer and subdue all the mightiest kings of the earth:—but an actual money-gorged, banknote-stuffed ruler of some octopus-like “Trade,” whose tentacles clutched and held everything within its reach—some owner of huge factories where human creatures “sweated” their lives out to fill his pockets, and died in their hundreds,—perchance their thousands—in order that he, like some monstrous bloated leech, should swell to the point of bursting on the blood he sucked from their throbbing arteries! Was there such an one existing in the miracle days when the “Glory to God in the Highest!” rang from star to star, from point to point of the myriad constellations, like a great wave of melody breaking against illimitable and endless shores? Surely not!—else there would have been some break in the music!—some ugly jar in the divine chorus! For instance, if there had at that time been living a multi-millionaire at all resembling the one whose strange experiences are now about to be related, the angels would have fled in dismay and weeping from the spectacle of a soul so warped from good, so destitute of sympathy, so drained and dry of every drop of the milk of human kindness, and so utterly at variance with the “peace and goodwill” of which they sang!
Yet no one will deny that a multi-millionaire is a great man. What multi-millionaire was ever considered otherwise? It was the glorious environment of multi-millionaire-ism that made Josiah McNason great—and Josiah McNason was a very great man indeed. Quite apart from his connection with you and me, dear reader, as the immediate subject of this story, he was great in business, great in success, great in wealth, great in power, and more than great in his own opinion. Small wonder that he thought much of himself, seeing that thousands of people thought so much of him. Thousands of people had him on their minds, and lay awake at nights, uneasily wondering what might be his next financial “deal.” For on his little finger he balanced mighty “combines.” At his nod “companies” collapsed like card-houses, or rose up again with the aerial brilliancy of “castles in Spain,”—the pulse of Trade beat fast or slow as suited his humour,—speculators on ’Change whispered his name in accents of mingled hope and terror,—aye, even kings were known not to be averse to receiving Josiah in private audience, though they might, and did, deny the privilege to such others of their subjects whose plea was one of merit more than cash. The fact stood out very patently to both royalty and commons alike, that Josiah McNason was a man to be reckoned with,—a man to be studied and considered,—a man whose moods must be tolerated, and whose irritations must be soothed,—a man to be coaxed and coddled,—a man to whom the highest personages in the land might safely—(and even advantageously)—send presents of grouse and salmon in their seasons,—a man whom it was considered politic not to offend. But why? Why all this trouble and anxiety from Majesty itself down to toiling bank-clerks, with respect to the fits and vagaries of one puny biped, neither handsome to look at, nor pleasant to speak with, but merely, taken as nature made him, an irascible, cut-and-dry pigmy of a man, not worth either a curse or a blessing, to judge by his outward appearance? Oh well! Merely because, by speaking him fair and flatteringly, it might be easier to borrow money of him! Everyone with even a small surplus quantity of this world’s goods, knows the taste of that diplomatic bread-and-honey which is always cautiously administered by one dear friend to some other whose pockets are to be tested. Josiah got such bread-and-honey all day long. Someone was always feeding or trying to feed him with it. His appetite however was fastidious, and he seldom swallowed the cloying bait. Even when he did gulp down a large wedge of it with a distrustful smile, it did not have the effect intended. Instead of softening his financial digestion and rendering him pliable, it appeared to make him harder and tougher in mental fibre. The gleam in his cold expressionless eye bored through the soul of the would-be-borrower of cash like a gimlet, and divined his intention before the said borrower could so much as mumble out—“Could you—would you, Mr. McNason—make me a trifling advance?—offer good security—great convenience to me just now!”—trailing the sentence away into indistinguishable fragments as Josiah snapped his thin pale lips on the “No!” which, with sharp snarling sound, hopelessly closed the discussion.