“Or Indiana is still better. I was reading that you can establish a residence there after a night’s lodging. Men and women leave home saying they’re going away for a little visit or on business and they never come back, or come back single. If Harry Chalender didn’t behave, I could surprise him. Besides, Harry would give me anything I want, even a divorce, if I asked him. But don’t you worry, I’ll get along somehow.”
And she was gone, leaving her parents marooned on a barren arctic island.
CHAPTER XL
When his term as judge ended, RoBards declined to try for re-election, and returned to the practice of law.
Once more the Croton River brought him clients—but also a civil war with his son Keith. This was a sore hurt to RoBards’ heart, for he and the boy had been mysteriously drawn together years before, and he had found such sympathy and such loyalty in Keith’s devotion, that he had counted upon him as a future partner in his legal career.
The water lust of New York was insatiable. As fast as new supplies were found they were outgrown. And the more or less anonymous and gloryless lovers of the city had always to keep a generation ahead of its growth.
The vice of water had led to the use of an average of seventy-eight gallons a day by each inhabitant. Every Saturday the reservoir at Forty-second Street was half drained. A new invention called the bathtub was coming into such favor especially of Saturdays that some legislatures made bathing without a doctor’s advice as illegal as drinking alcohol. The ever-reliable pulpit denounced such cleanliness as next to ungodliness: attention to the wicked body was indecent.
But already the need was urgent for a new reservoir. Another lake must be established within the city. The Croton Department had been authorized to acquire land. After much debate a thousand lots held by a hundred owners were doomed to be submerged. They lay in a sunken tract in the heart of a region set apart for the new park—to be called Central because it was miles to the north of all access. Nearly eight million dollars were voted for the purchase and improvement of this wilderness. The project came in handy during the panic of 1857, when the poor grew so peevish and riotous that the city was forced to distribute bread and provide jobs. Twelve hundred hungry citizens and a hundred horses were set to work leveling the Park.
But first the city had to battle with the landholders and many of them engaged RoBards as their counsel. There were many houses on the bed of the new lake, gardens and squatters’ cabins.
Keith protested against his father’s activity, and tried to convert him to the great principles of the city’s higher rights.