“But you shipped it as copper at your own risk, did you not, Mr. Morning?”
“Of course I shipped it as copper at my own risk, and on ten bars, worth really $400,000, which were lost from the ferryboat in transporting freight during the flood at Yuma, I collected from the company only their supposed copper value of $320, and I had no end of trouble and delay in making the collection. But they assert that in covering the gold bars with copper sheaths, I worked a ‘gold brick swindle’ on them, and they want the difference.”
“Will you pay the $6,000,000 claimed, Mr. Morning?”
“Not if I can help it,” smiled the gentleman. “I have other uses for the money. I have in view several other reforms in railroad management. Railroad employers who, through no fault of their own, are hurt in railroad accidents caused by the negligence of a fellow employe, shall have the same right of recovery at law against the company as an injured passenger would have. Train men, in stopping at country stations, shall consult the convenience of passengers rather than their own, and shall not halt the baggage car in a sheltered spot, while they compel disembarking passengers to wade through the mud. Brass-mounted conductors shall not glower at question-asking passengers, and, to all requests for information, answer flippantly, ‘Damfino,’ and small dogs shall not be torn from their friends and suffered to wail their strength away in mute despair in a strange and comfortless baggage car, without bones to beguile or friendly faces to encourage them; but every reputable lapdog who pays his fare, and abides noiseless and contented in the same seat with his mistress, shall be left in peace.”
CHAPTER XXI.
“Their country’s wealth, our mightier misers drain.”
It was a bright, warm day in December, 1895, when a tall man, with iron gray hair surmounting a wrinkled and careworn face, paused for a moment before the plate-glass front of the Tenth National Bank of Birmingham, Alabama.
Making his way into the building, he walked to the cashier’s office in the rear, which he entered without knocking. A short, stout gentleman of forty years looked up from the desk at which he was writing, and inquired of the stranger who it was that he wished to see?
“I kem in, suh, to see the Kashyea,” was the reply.
“I am the cashier of this bank, sir. What can I do for you?”
“Well, I allowed to bowwow some money foh to stock my fahm foh a cotton crap, and to cahy me ovah the season, suh, and I heard as how the money might be had heah.”