I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
David Morning.
The fame of Morning, as the greatest wealth owner in the world, was now coextensive with civilization, and his invitation had been promptly and generally accepted. The Emperor Wilhelm II. chose for the German delegation, five of his most distinguished field marshals, five high officials of the German navy, five great civil engineers, and five members of the diplomatic corps. Among the latter was the Baron Von Eulaw, who was indebted for his appointment—although he did not know it-to an urgent unofficial representation made by the American envoy to the German Chancellor, to the effect that, for certain personal reasons, Mr. David Morning greatly desired the attendance of the Baron and Baroness Von Eulaw. Such a request from such a source was favorably considered, and the baron—greatly to his astonishment, for he had not been in favor at court since the affair at the Chateau d’Or—received the appointment.
Professor Thornton and Doctor Eustace had received invitations to attend, and the baron, finding it convenient to leave Berlin in advance of the other members of the German delegation, sailed from Hamburg late in January, and, after a brief visit with his wife’s parents at Roxbury, the party journeyed to the Pacific Coast, to enjoy its climate and scenery for a month or more in advance of the “dynamic exposition.”
“I feel,” said the baroness, as the train rolled out of Benson, “as if I had a renewed lease of life; these delicious airs stir the blood like wine, and, entranced with the perfume of almond and oleander and jasmine bloom, I forget that it is still midwinter in the East.”
“You are drugged, madame,” said the doctor, slowly passing his finger scrutinizingly over the soft flesh upon his hand. “You could be lured to your death in a few hours by—I wonder what ails my hand?” he broke off meditatively, still feeling for the insidious and evasive little hair.
“Cactus, sir,” put in an “old-timer” across the car, “and you ain’t got no use to look for it, if it does feel like an oxgad. I could hev tole you when I see you foolin’ around them fine flowers at the station, but you fellers hev all got to try it once; another time you’ll know better.”
“This is Mr. Morning’s state, I believe,” observed the doctor, after the laugh at his expense had subsided, and all sat dreamily looking away to the dimly-outlined mountains in the distance, “and we must be nearing the place of the wonderful gold deposit, with the results of which he is rapidly revolutionizing the world.”
“You are right, sir,” said a bright-eyed, smooth-shaven, portly gentleman, of forty years of age, who occupied an adjoining seat. “It is Morning’s state in every sense of the word. He has made it—industrially, politically, and socially. His enterprise and money have constructed great reservoirs, and laced the land with irrigating canals, and changed its wastes into orchards, and its deserts into lawns. He is the idol of its people, as he ought to be, and his ideas are embodied in our constitution and laws. They are all the product of his thought, from marriage contract-laws to abolition of trial by jury.”
“Abolition of trial by jury,” said Doctor Eustace.