(I have noticed that women find it hard to reconcile themselves to a rich man's early taste in their sex.)
"She don't dress very stylish, that's true," Hillary observed thoughtfully. "But it weren't so very long ago, I guess, that she was saving his money."
Strauss, surrounded by his women folk, marched up the avenue in solemn order. We followed along slowly on the other side of the street.
"He didn't make his pile at the Enterprise Market," Grace remarked. She spoke the idea that was in all our minds: how did he and the others make their money?
"I guess they began like other folks," Hillary contended, "saving their earnings and not putting all their money in their stomachs and on their backs."
This last was aimed at Grace, who was pretty smartly dressed.
"Well," said Slocum, dryly, "probably by this time Strauss has something more than his savings in the bank."
Thus we followed them down the street, speculating on the great packer's success, on the success of all the fortunate ones in the great game of the market, wondering what magic power these men possessed to lift themselves out of the mass of people like ourselves. Pretty simple of us, perhaps you think, hanging around on the street a good winter morning and gossiping about our rich neighbors! But natural enough, too: we had no place to loaf in, except Ma Pierson's smelly dining room, and nothing to do with our Sunday holiday but to walk around the streets and stare up at the handsome new houses and our well-dressed and prosperous neighbors. Every keen boy who looks out on life from the city sidewalk has a pretty vigorous idea that if he isn't as good as the next man, at least he will make as much money if he can only learn the secret. We read about the rich and their doings in the newspapers; we see them in the streets; their horses and carriages flash by us—do you wonder that some poor clerks on a Sunday gape at the Steeles and the Strausses from the sidewalk?
What was the golden road? These men had found it—hundreds, thousands of them,—farming tools, railroads, groceries, gas, dry-goods. It made no matter what: fortunes were building on every side; the flowers of success were blooming before our eyes. To take my place with these mighty ones—I thought a good deal about that these days! And I remember Grace saying sentimentally to Slocum that Sunday:—
"You fellers keep thinkin' of nothin' but money and how you're goin' to make it. Perhaps rich folks ain't the only happy ones in the world."