"Nearly as much as ran away and was lost when the Ile was struck," said Mr. Beck. "Hardly worth while to work for five-and-twenty years in order to save what Nature spent in three days, is it?"
What, says the proverb, is easily got is lightly regarded. This man made money so easily that he despised the slow, gradual building up of an immense fortune.
"There is nothing beyond the reach of a man with twelve millions," Mr. Cassilis went on. "He may rule the world, so long as there are poor states with vast armies who want to borrow. Why, at the present moment a man with twelve millions at his command could undertake a loan with Russia, Austria, Turkey, Italy, or Egypt. He could absolutely govern the share market; he could rule the bank rate——"
Mr. Beck interrupted, quite unmoved by these visions of greatness:
"Wal, sir, I am not ambitious, and I leave Providence to manage the nations her own way. I might meddle and muss till I busted up the whole concern; play, after all, into the hands of the devil, and have the people praying to get back to their old original Providence."
"Or suppose," Mr. Cassilis went on, his imagination fired with the contemplation of possibilities so far beyond his own reach—"suppose you were to buy up land—to buy all that comes into the market. Suppose you were to hand down to your sons a traditional policy of buying land with the established principle of primogeniture. In twenty years you might have great estates in twenty counties——"
"I could have half a state," said Mr. Beck, "if I went out West."
"In your own lifetime you could control an election, make yourself President, carry your own principles, force your opinions on the country, and become the greatest man in it."
"The greatest country in the world is the United States of America—that is a fact," said Mr. Beck, laughing; "so the greatest man in it must be the greatest man in the world. I calculate that's a bitter reflection for Prince Bismarck when he goes to bed at night; also for the Emperor of all the Russias. And perhaps your Mr. Gladstone would like to feel himself on the same level with General Ulysses Grant."
"Mr. Beck," cried Mr. Cassilis, rising to his feet in an irrepressible burst of genuine enthusiasm, and working his right hand round exactly as if he was really Father Time, whom he so much resembled—"Mr. Beck, I consider you the most fortunate man in the world. We slowly amass money—for our sons to dissipate. Save when a title or an ancient name entails a conservative tradition which keeps the property together, the process in this country and in yours is always the same. The strong men climb, and the weak men fall. And even to great houses like the Grosvenors, which have been carried upwards by a steady tide of fortune, there will surely one day come a fool, and then the tide will turn. But for you and yours, Mr. Beck, Nature pours out her inexhaustible treasures——"