The Complete Works of Mark Twain. Mark Twain
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the use of talking about it — any man can see that there’s whole Atlantic oceans of cash in it, gulfs and bays thrown in. But there’s a bigger thing than that, yes bigger — — ”
“Why Colonel, you can’t want anything bigger!” said Washington, his eyes blazing. “Oh, I wish I could go into either of those speculations — I only wish I had money — I wish I wasn’t cramped and kept down and fettered with poverty, and such prodigious chances lying right here in sight! Oh, it is a fearful thing to be poor. But don’t throw away those things — they are so splendid and I can see how sure they are. Don’t throw them away for something still better and maybe fail in it! I wouldn’t, Colonel. I would stick to these. I wish father were here and were his old self again — Oh, he never in his life had such chances as these are. Colonel; you can’t improve on these — no man can improve on them!”
A sweet, compassionate smile played about the Colonel’s features, and he leaned over the table with the air of a man who is “going to show you” and do it without the least trouble:
“Why Washington, my boy, these things are nothing. They look large of course — they look large to a novice, but to a man who has been all his life accustomed to large operations — shaw! They’re well enough to while away an idle hour with, or furnish a bit of employment that will give a trifle of idle capital a chance to earn its bread while it is waiting for something to do, but — now just listen a moment — just let me give you an idea of what we old veterans of commerce call ‘business.’ Here’s the Rothschild’s proposition — this is between you and me, you understand — — ”
Washington nodded three or four times impatiently, and his glowing eyes said, “Yes, yes — hurry — I understand — — ”
— — ”for I wouldn’t have it get out for a fortune. They want me to go in with them on the sly — agent was here two weeks ago about it — go in on the sly” [voice down to an impressive whisper, now,] “and buy up a hundred and thirteen wild cat banks in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri — notes of these banks are at all sorts of discount now — average discount of the hundred and thirteen is forty-four per cent — buy them all up, you see, and then all of a sudden let the cat out of the bag! Whiz! the stock of every one of those wildcats would spin up to a tremendous premium before you could turn a handspring — profit on the speculation not a dollar less than forty millions!” [An eloquent pause, while the marvelous vision settled into W.’s focus.] “Where’s your hogs now? Why my dear innocent boy, we would just sit down on the front doorsteps and peddle banks like lucifer matches!”
Washington finally got his breath and said:
“Oh, it is perfectly wonderful! Why couldn’t these things have happened in father’s day? And I — it’s of no use — they simply lie before my face and mock me. There is nothing for me but to stand helpless and see other people reap the astonishing harvest.”
“Never mind, Washington, don’t you worry. I’ll fix you. There’s plenty of chances. How much money have you got?”
In the presence of so many millions, Washington could not keep from blushing when he had to confess that he had but eighteen dollars in the world.
“Well, all right — don’t despair. Other people have been obliged to begin with less. I have a small idea that may develop into something for us both, all in good time. Keep your money close and add to it. I’ll make it breed. I’ve been experimenting (to pass away the time), on a little preparation for curing sore eyes — a kind of decoction nine-tenths water and the other tenth drugs that don’t cost more than a dollar a barrel; I’m still experimenting; there’s one ingredient wanted yet to perfect the thing, and somehow I can’t just manage to hit upon the thing that’s necessary, and I don’t dare talk with a chemist, of course. But I’m progressing, and before many weeks I wager the country will ring with the fame of Beriah Sellers’ Infallible Imperial Oriental Optic Liniment and Salvation for Sore Eyes — the Medical Wonder of the Age! Small bottles fifty cents, large ones a dollar. Average cost, five and seven cents for the two sizes.
“The first year sell, say, ten thousand bottles in Missouri, seven thousand in Iowa, three thousand in Arkansas, four thousand in Kentucky, six thousand in Illinois, and say twenty-five thousand in the rest of the country. Total, fifty five thousand bottles; profit clear of all expenses, twenty thousand dollars at the very lowest calculation. All the capital needed is to manufacture the first two thousand bottles — say a hundred and fifty dollars — then the money would begin to flow in. The second year, sales would reach 200,000 bottles — clear profit, say, $75,000 — and in the meantime the great factory would be building in St. Louis, to cost, say, $100,000. The third year we could easily sell 1,000,000 bottles in the United States and — — ”
“O, splendid!” said Washington. “Let’s commence right away — let’s — — ”
“ — — 1,000,000 bottles in the United States — profit at least $350,000 — and then it would begin to be time to turn our attention toward the real idea of the business.”
“The real idea of it! Ain’t $350,000 a year a pretty real — — ”
“Stuff! Why what an infant you are, Washington — what a guileless, short-sighted, easily-contented innocent you are, my poor little country-bred know-nothing! Would I go to all that trouble and bother for the poor crumbs a body might pick up in this country? Now do I look like a man who — — does my history suggest that I am a man who deals in trifles, contents himself with the narrow horizon that hems in the common herd, sees no further than the end of his nose? Now you know that that is not me — couldn’t be me. You ought to know that if I throw my time and abilities into a patent medicine, it’s a patent medicine whose field of operations is the solid earth! its clients the swarming nations that inhabit it! Why what is the republic of America for an eye-water country? Lord bless you, it is nothing but a barren highway that you’ve got to cross to get to the true eye-water market! Why, Washington, in the Oriental countries people swarm like the sands of the desert; every square mile of ground upholds its thousands upon thousands of struggling human creatures — and every separate and individual devil of them’s got the ophthalmia! It’s as natural to them as noses are — and sin. It’s born with them, it stays with them, it’s all that some of them have left when they die. Three years of introductory trade in the orient and what will be the result? Why, our headquarters would be in Constantinople and our hindquarters in Further India! Factories and warehouses in Cairo, Ispahan, Bagdad, Damascus, Jerusalem, Yedo, Peking, Bangkok, Delhi, Bombay — and Calcutta! Annual income — well, God only knows how many millions and millions apiece!”
Washington was so dazed, so bewildered — his heart and his eyes had wandered so far away among the strange lands beyond the seas, and such avalanches of coin and currency had fluttered and jingled confusedly down before him, that he was now as one who has been whirling round and round for a time, and, stopping all at once, finds his surroundings still whirling and all objects a dancing chaos. However, little by little the Sellers family cooled down and crystalized into shape, and the poor room lost its glitter and resumed its poverty. Then the youth found his voice and begged Sellers to drop everything and hurry up the eye-water; and he got his eighteen dollars and tried to force it upon the Colonel — pleaded with him to take it — implored him to do it. But the Colonel would not; said he would not need the capital (in his native magnificent way he called that eighteen dollars Capital) till the eye-water was an accomplished fact. He made Washington easy in his mind, though, by promising that he would call for it just as soon as the invention was finished, and he added the glad tidings that nobody but just they two should be admitted to a share in the speculation.
When Washington left the breakfast table he could have worshiped that man. Washington was one of that kind of people whose hopes are in the very clouds one day and in the gutter the next. He walked on air now. The Colonel was ready to take him around and introduce him to the employment he had found for him, but Washington begged for a few moments in which to write home; with his kind of people, to ride to-day’s new interest to death and put off yesterday’s till another time, is nature itself. He ran up