"Now, that's all very well for you to talk so here just now; but you know yourself, I don't doubt, that your own object, as well as all the world's around you, is to make money. It is with that object that you work hard and save up: you do not work only to live, or make yourself more comfortable, but to get money: and money is the be-all and end-all of all and every body; and that only commands consideration and respect."
"That only, sir, would never command mine, and—"
"Why, how you talk now! if you meet a fine dressed-out gentleman in one of these stages, you look on him as one directly—you don't ask him did he make or take his money—what's that to you?—there he is, and it is not for you to busy or bother yourself to find out all the private particulars of his history; and if you find him, as I say, well dressed in superfine, and he acts the gentleman to you, he may be the greatest rogue in existence, but he will be treated by you like a gentleman—yes, even by you."
"Yes, sir, that maybe while I know nothing of him—while, as you say, he acts the gentleman to me; but let me once find out what he is, and I would never show him respect more—no! though he had all the gold of California."
"Ah, California! just look at that now—look at people by scores and thousands, leaving their families, and friends, and homes—and what for but for gold? people with a comfortable competence already; but it's fine talking. Why, what are you taking this very journey for?—why, I can answer for you—for gold, I doubt not; and every other action of your life is for that object: confess the real truth now."
"I will, sir—I am come here from Indiana, for though I'm a Kentucky man, I live in the Hoosier State. I'm come here to see a dear brother; and instead of gaining money I'm spending it in these stages to get to see him and 'old Kentuck' agin. So you see, Sir, I love my brother—I do, more than money, poor man as I am; ay, and that I do, too."
"Well, I dare say you do; but come now, just tell me—haven't you a little bit of a speculation, now, here, that you're come after, as well as your brother—some trifle of a speculation afoot? You know you have now. You must have. Some horse, perhaps—"
It was quite delightful to see and hear the indignant burst of eager denial which this elicited from the ingenuous Kentuckian.
"No, sir! no, I have not—none whatever, indeed I have not:" his voice quivered with emotion; the earnest expression of his countenance was more than eloquent. If his interrogator had accused him of a serious crime he could hardly more anxiously and more earnestly have disclaimed it. To him, I thought the bare suspicion seemed like a coarse desecration of his real motives, a kind of undervaluing even of his "dear brother," to suppose he must have had a "little speculation on hand" to make it worth his while to go to see him.
He went on in an agitated, eager tone: