CHAPTER XVI
MORE ROMANCING
I
Nathan was in love again!
The winter of 1906-1907 contributed two incidents of far-reaching importance to this account of hectic romance.
Johnathan Forge bought the local box-shop.
Miss Carol Gardner came to Paris from Ohio—pronounced “A-higher”—and when the boy met her, “to his eye there was but one beloved face on earth and that was shining on him.”
It developed that for a considerable time, unsuspected by his family, Johnathan had been “looking around for some good business”, professedly of a manufacturing nature where the labor of others might accrue to his benefit in more sizable portions than the cobbling business allowed. Henry Campbell died suddenly in November. The executors offered his property for sale. The first inkling Paris received that the town cobbler had aspirations toward capitalism came via the Telegraph one February evening. A deal had gone through that day with Johnathan Forge for the box-shop. The cobbler was assuming management at once.
Mrs. Anna Forge heard the news via the Telegraph also, by the way.
The Campbell Press-Board Company, as the firm had been listed in town directory and telephone book, made pasteboard boxes. In them were packed the products of the larger industries of Paris, the Thorne Knitting Mills, the Stevens Hard-Rubber Process Works. The business was considered profitable, in a modest way, if expenses were held to a minimum. Johnathan felt himself especially born to that business. If there was one thing he emphatically knew how to do, in business or family, it was holding expenses to a minimum. To his wife’s stupefaction, he drew eighteen hundred dollars from the Paris Savings Bank and gave notes aggregating thirty-two hundred in addition. Thus Johnathan became a “manufacturer.”