A MERCHANT'S STORY.
'All of which I saw, and part of which I was.'
CHAPTER I.
It is a dingy old sign. It has hung there in sun and rain till its letters are faint and its face is furrowed. It has looked down on a generation that has passed away, and seen those who placed it there go out of that doorway never to return; still it clings to that dingy old warehouse, and still Russell, Rollins & Co. is signed in that dingy old counting-room at the head of the stairway. It is known the world over. It is heard of on the cotton-fields of Texas, in the cane-brakes of Cuba, and amid the rice-swamps of Carolina. The Chinaman speaks of it as he sips his tea and handles his chop-sticks in the streets of Canton, and the half-naked negro rattles its gold as he gathers palm-oil and the copal-gum on the western coast of Africa. Its plain initials, painted in black on a white ground, float from tall masts over many seas, and its simple 'promise to pay,' scrawled in a bad hand on a narrow strip of paper, unlocks the vaults of the best bankers in Europe. And yet, it is a dingy old sign! Men look up to it as they pass by, and wonder that a cracked, weather-beaten board that would not sell for a dollar, should be counted 'good for a million.'
It is a dingy old warehouse, with narrow, dark, cobwebbed windows, and wide, rusty iron shutters, which, as the bleak November wind sweeps up old Long Wharf, swing slowly on their hinges with a sharp, grating creak. I heard them in my boyhood. Perched on a tall stool at that old desk, I used to listen, in the long winter-nights, to those strange, wild cries, till I fancied they were voices of the uneasy dead, come back to take the vacant seats beside me, and to pace again, with ghostly tread, the floor of that dark old counting-room. They were ever a mystery and a terror to me; but they never creaked so harshly, or cried so wildly, as on a bleak November night, not many years ago, when I turned my steps, for the last time, up the trembling old stairway.
It was just after nightfall. A single gas-burner threw a dim, uncertain light over the old desk, and lit up the figure of a tall, gray-headed man, who was bending over it. He had round, stooping shoulders, and long, spindling limbs. One of his large feet, encased in a thick, square-toed shoe, rested on the round of the desk, the other, which was planted squarely on the floor, upheld his spare, gaunt frame. His face was thin and long, and two deep, black lines under his eyes contrasted strangely with the pallid whiteness of his features. His clothes were of the fashion of some years ago, and had, no doubt, served long as his 'Sunday best,' before being degraded to daily duty. They were of plain black, and though not shabby, were worn and threadbare, and of decidedly economical appearance. Every thing about him, indeed, wore an economical look. His scant coat-tails, narrow pants, and short waistcoat, showed that the cost of each inch of material had been counted, while his thin hair, brushed carefully over his bald head, had not a lock to spare; and even his large, sharp bones were covered with only just enough flesh to hold them comfortably together. He had stood there till his eye was dim and his step feeble, and though he had, for twenty years—when handing in his semi-annual trial-balances to the head of the house—declared that each one was his last, every body said he would continue to stand there till his own trial-balance was struck, and his earthly accounts were closed forever.
As I entered, he turned his mild blue eye upon me, and taking my hand warmly in his, exclaimed:
'My dear boy'—I was nearly forty—'I am glad to see you.'
'I am glad to see you, David.'