“Yes,” sez I, “I set store by what they’ve done, just as I do on them good old creeters who used to carry the mails in their saddle-bags for so much a year. Folks felt tickled to death, I spoze, when they could send a letter by somebody for 10 cents a letter. And it wuz a great improvement on havin’ to write and send it by hum labor, a boy and a ox team. But when I see Uncle Sam can carry ’em for two cents and one cent a-piece, why I can’t help favorin’ the idee of givin’ Uncle Sam the job. And if he can carry letters so much cheaper why can’t he carry packages at just the same reduced rate, and talk over the wires, etc., etc.?
“Not that I look down on them saddle-bags––fur from 383 it––I honor ’em and I honor the rich men that have cut iron roads through continents, mountain and abyss, honor them that have made talkin’ under the ocean possible and through the pathless air. Yes, indeed, I honor ’em from nearly the bottom of my heart. But I would honor ’em still more if they should now all on ’em stand up in a row before Uncle Sam, and say, We have done all we could to help the people (and ourselves at the same time), and now as we see that you can help ’em still more than we can, we turn our improvements all over into your hands to use for the people, for you can make travel jest as much cheaper as letter carryin’, and do it just as peaceable. Why, what a stir it would make on earth and in heaven, and Uncle Sam would see that they didn’t lose anything by it. He’d see jest what a grand thing they wuz doin’, and pay ’em well for it. And these rich men, instead of leavin’ their wealth in bags of greenbacks for moth and rust and lawyers to corrupt, and fightin’ heirs to break through their wills and steal, would leave it in grateful memories and a niche in history where their benine faces would stand up with all the great benefactors of the race. Hain’t that better, Mr. Astofeller, than to leave jest money for a fashionable wife and golf-playin’ sons to run through?”
Mr. Astofeller said he believed it wuz better; he looked real convinced. And seein’ him in this softened frame of mind I went on and brung up a number of incidents provin’ that the great folks of the past had held a good many of my idees in regard to wealth. I reminded him of Mr. Cincinnatus who did so much to make Rome glorious, when the public sought him out for honors (he not a-prancin’ through the country with torch-light processions and a brass band, talkin’ himself hoarse, and lavishin’ money to git it), no indeed, when they sought him for a candidate for public honors they found him a not fixin’ up the primarys and buyin’ bosses, but ploughin’ away, just as peaceable as his oxen, workin’ on his own little farm of four acres. He wuz satisfied 384 with makin’ enough to live on. Live and let live was his motto.
“And Mr. Regulus, the leader of the great Roman forces, wuz satisfied with his little farm of seven acres, creepin’ up a little in amount from four to seven. But it wuzn’t till long, long afterwards that the rich grew enormously rich and the poor poorer, and what a man had wuz honored instead of what he wuz. Over and over the drama has been played out, moderation and contentment, luxury and discontent, revolution and ruin, but I did hope that our republic, havin’ more warnin’s and nigher the millenium, wouldn’t go the same old jog trot up, up––up, and down, down, down. I wuz some in hopes they would hear to me, but I d’no.”
I could see that Mr. Astofeller wuz greatly impressed by what I said. I see he took out his watch a number of times, wantin’ to see, I mistrusted, the exact minute that I said different things. He wuz jest like the rest of them millionaires, a first-rate lookin’ and actin’ creeter when you git down to the real man, but run away with by Ambition and Greed, a span that will take the bits in their mouth and dash off and carry any one further than they mean to be carried. He didn’t say so right out but he kinder gin me to understand that I’d convinced him more’n a little. And I am lookin’ every day to see him make a dicker with Uncle Sam (a good-hearted creeter too as ever lived Uncle Sam is, only led away sometimes by bad councillors), yes, I expect he will make a dicker with Uncle Sam for the good of the public and hasten on the day of love and justice. I am lookin’ for it and prayin’ for it; in fact the hull world is prayin’ for it every day whether they know it or not when they pray “Thy kingdom come.”
But to resoom: Robert Strong and Josiah come back almost simeltaneously, and I don’t know what Mr. Astofeller’s bizness wuz with Robert, sunthin’ about California affairs, I guess, mebby politics or sunthin’. But ’tennyrate, if it wuz anything out of the way I know he would never get Robert to jine in with him.
CHAPTER XXXI
From Naples we went to Athens, Dorothy wantin’ to see Greece while she was so nigh to it, and Robert Strong wantin’ just what she did every time. And Miss Meechim sayin’ that it would be a pity to go home and not be able to say that we had been to what wuz once the most learned and genteel place in the hull world.