Let me take you—as the clairvoyants say—to a large, sooty, toiling city in the West. From street to street you shall go, and see but little to excite your admiration, unless you are a constant believer that work is worship. But here, in the centre of the city, is a noble old mansion with its beautiful park around it, which a traveller who saw it once compared to a pearl on the breast of a blacksmith. Here it was that the Golden Wedding took place.
Who that was there can ever forget it? In my own memory that throng of the worthy, the beautiful, the gay of a great city will stand as the one fulfilment which Fate has given me of many Oriental promissory dreams, most of which she has failed to honor. In that great company you might have traced all the circles of that city's growth, as you may trace a tree's history in its rings. That lady there was the first white baby born here, where now over two hundred thousand human beings reside. Here are the pioneers who filled the first log-huts on the city's site, until they overflowed through the roofs. And here is an inner circle of children, and an outer one of grandchildren, about the two who are the heart of this beautiful celebration. Can that lovely, erect, blooming lady be a bride of fifty years? Looking at her, one would say it is a great and unnecessary mistake of ours to grow old. But more closely must we look at that quaint old man by her side. Lately he has passed away; but every day of his long life left a trace worthy to be noted well. His eighty years and twenty-five days of life comprise an epitome of the history and growth of a great community. Not so would you at first interpret that plain old man; though, to a knowing eye, that eye, clear with looking at the duty that lies nearest, that mouth, telling of patient, unimpulsive energy, that broadness about the brow, would be guaranties of a marked life.
And now for my story, which you must let me tell in a rambling way; for any systematic biography of that man would be like putting one of his own Catawba-vines into your herbarium.
I introduce you to a fair-haired, handsome youth, on the deck of a small steamboat, which is bearing him to his fortune in the great West. He is penniless. His father was wealthy; but in the war he was a Tory, and, in the confiscation of his property, his sin was visited upon his son. But he was not the boy to repine, with youth and the great West before him. And now as from the steamer's deck he sees a fine landscape with a few log-houses on it, he believes that it is one day to be a great city, and concludes to stop there. So he is put ashore with his trunk.
He has already determined to study law. He goes to the one judge who resides there, and is taken as a student into his office. More log-houses are built; a court-house is erected; and presently that institution at sight of which the shipwrecked Englishman fell on his knees and thanked God he was in a Christian land—the gallows—made its appearance. So the young man had a fair practice.
The records of the West, if they are ever written, will testify how often whimsical Fortune thrusts her favors on men against their will. This very judge with whom our youth studied law became environed with pecuniary difficulties, and wished once to satisfy a claim of a few hundred dollars by deeding away a sheep-pasture of a few acres, which was of no sort of use to him. But when he went to get his wife's signature to the conveyance, she burst into tears; she knew, she said, that the pasture was worthless; but she had in her childhood heard there the tinkling of the bells of her father's sheep; it was very foolish, she knew, but now that they had all passed away, the bells over in the pasture tinkled on in her memory, and she hated to give it up. The kind husband would not insist, but went sadly to his work. It was not long before the sheep-pasture was worth a million dollars! Sentiment, you see, is not always an unproductive article.
But this case was scarcely so curious as that which presently thrust a goodly capital on the hands of our young law-student. His first case in the court was that of a horse-thief, whom he induced a jury to acquit. When he came to his client for a fee, the scapegrace whispered that he had nothing on earth wherewith to pay the fee except two old whiskey-stills and—a horse. When he heard this last word, the lawyer's conscience gave him a twinge. After a moment's reflection, he said,—"You will need the horse; and you had best make him take you as far as possible from this region of country. I must be satisfied with the whiskey-stills." It was not for a long time that he thought even to inquire about the stills. When he did so, he found them in possession of a man who implored him not to take them away, and promised to pay something for them. Finding that he could not do this, he begged our hero to accept as payment for them a few acres of barren land, which, with great reluctance, he agreed to do. Erelong the tide of emigration set westward, and this land is to-day worth two million dollars!
But his subsequent life showed that the man's fortune was not luck; for by economy, not by hoarding,—by foresight, and a generous trust to all laborers who wished to lease lands, his wealth grew to nearly fifteen million dollars.
When he found that he had enough to live comfortably upon, he retired from the bar, and devoted himself to horticulture. He found that the region in which he lived was adapted to the growth of the vine, and began his experiments, which, during his life, extended to the culture of more than forty varieties. He laid before the community, from time to time, a report of his successes, he called on all to come and taste the wines he made, until the tidings went over the earth, and from Germany, France, Italy, came vine-dressers and wine-makers, who covered every hill-side for miles around him with vintages.
Those who came from afar to inquire into this new branch of industry, for which he had opened the way, were surprised to meet the millionnaire, the Catawba-Prince, in his plain garb and with his humble habits.