another fact. Coaches that fly over the ground twenty miles an hour — heavens and earth, think of that, Nancy! Twenty miles an hour. It makes a man’s brain whirl. Some day, when you and I are in our graves, there’ll be a railroad stretching hundreds of miles — all the way down from the cities of the Northern States to New Orleans — and its got to run within thirty miles of this land — may be even touch a corner of it. Well, do you know, they’ve quit burning wood in some places in the Eastern States? And what do you suppose they burn? Coal!” [He bent over and whispered again:] “There’s world — worlds of it on this land! You know that black stuff that crops out of the bank of the branch? — well, that’s it. You’ve taken it for rocks; so has every body here; and they’ve built little dams and such things with it. One man was going to build a chimney out of it. Nancy I expect I turned as white as a sheet! Why, it might have caught fire and told everything. I showed him it was too crumbly. Then he was going to build it of copper ore — splendid yellow forty-per-cent. ore! There’s fortunes upon fortunes of copper ore on our land! It scared me to death, the idea of this fool starting a smelting furnace in his house without knowing it, and getting his dull eyes opened. And then he was going to build it of iron ore! There’s mountains of iron ore here, Nancy — whole mountains of it. I wouldn’t take any chances. I just stuck by him — I haunted him — I never let him alone till he built it of mud and sticks like all the rest of the chimneys in this dismal country. Pine forests, wheat land, corn land, iron, copper, coal — wait till the railroads come, and the steamboats! We’ll never see the day, Nancy — never in the world — never, never, never, child. We’ve got to drag along, drag along, and eat crusts in toil and poverty, all hopeless and forlorn — but they’ll ride in coaches, Nancy! They’ll live like the princes of the earth; they’ll be courted and worshiped; their names will be known from ocean to ocean! Ah, well-a-day! Will they ever come back here, on the railroad and the steamboat, and say, ‘This one little spot shall not be touched — this hovel shall be sacred — for here our father and our mother suffered for us, thought for us, laid the foundations of our future as solid as the hills!’“
“You are a great, good, noble soul, Si Hawkins, and I am an honored woman to be the wife of such a man” — and the tears stood in her eyes when she said it. “We will go to Missouri. You are out of your place, here, among these groping dumb creatures. We will find a higher place, where you can walk with your own kind, and be understood when you speak — not stared at as if you were talking some foreign tongue. I would go anywhere, anywhere in the wide world with you. I would rather my body would starve and die than your mind should hunger and wither away in this lonely land.”
“Spoken like yourself, my child! But we’ll not starve, Nancy. Far from it. I have a letter from Beriah Sellers — just came this day. A letter that — I’ll read you a line from it!”
He flew out of the room. A shadow blurred the sunlight in Nancy’s face — there was uneasiness in it, and disappointment. A procession of disturbing thoughts began to troop through her mind. Saying nothing aloud, she sat with her hands in her lap; now and then she clasped them, then unclasped them, then tapped the ends of the fingers together; sighed, nodded, smiled — occasionally paused, shook her head. This pantomime was the elocutionary expression of an unspoken soliloquy which had something of this shape:
“I was afraid of it — was afraid of it. Trying to make our fortune in Virginia, Beriah Sellers nearly ruined us and we had to settle in Kentucky and start over again. Trying to make our fortune in Kentucky he crippled us again and we had to move here. Trying to make our fortune here, he brought us clear down to the ground, nearly. He’s an honest soul, and means the very best in the world, but I’m afraid, I’m afraid he’s too flighty. He has splendid ideas, and he’ll divide his chances with his friends with a free hand, the good generous soul, but something does seem to always interfere and spoil everything. I never did think he was right well balanced. But I don’t blame my husband, for I do think that when that man gets his head full of a new notion, he can outtalk a machine. He’ll make anybody believe in that notion that’ll listen to him ten minutes — why I do believe he would make a deaf and dumb man believe in it and get beside himself, if you only set him where he could see his eyes tally and watch his hands explain. What a head he has got! When he got up that idea there in Virginia of buying up whole loads of negroes in Delaware and Virginia and Tennessee, very quiet, having papers drawn to have them delivered at a place in Alabama and take them and pay for them, away yonder at a certain time, and then in the meantime get a law made stopping everybody from selling negroes to the south after a certain day — it was somehow that way — mercy how the man would have made money! Negroes would have gone up to four prices. But after he’d spent money and worked hard, and traveled hard, and had heaps of negroes all contracted for, and everything going along just right, he couldn’t get the laws passed and down the whole thing tumbled. And there in Kentucky, when he raked up that old numskull that had been inventing away at a perpetual motion machine for twenty-two years, and Beriah Sellers saw at a glance where just one more little cog-wheel would settle the business, why I could see it as plain as day when he came in wild at midnight and hammered us out of bed and told the whole thing in a whisper with the doors bolted and the candle in an empty barrel.
Oceans of money in it — anybody could see that. But it did cost a deal to buy the old numskull out — and then when they put the new cog wheel in they’d overlooked something somewhere and it wasn’t any use — the troublesome thing wouldn’t go. That notion he got up here did look as handy as anything in the world; and how him and Si did sit up nights working at it with the curtains down and me watching to see if any neighbors were about. The man did honestly believe there was a fortune in that black gummy oil that stews out of the bank Si says is coal; and he refined it himself till it was like water, nearly, and it did burn, there’s no two ways about that; and I reckon he’d have been all right in Cincinnati with his lamp that he got made, that time he got a house full of rich speculators to see him exhibit only in the middle of his speech it let go and almost blew the heads off the whole crowd.
I haven’t got over grieving for the money that cost yet. I am sorry enough Beriah Sellers is in Missouri, now, but I was glad when he went. I wonder what his letter says. But of course it’s cheerful; he’s never downhearted — never had any trouble in his life — didn’t know it if he had. It’s always sunrise with that man, and fine and blazing, at that — never gets noon, though — leaves off and rises again. Nobody can help liking the creature, he means so well — but I do dread to come across him again; he’s bound to set us all crazy, of course. Well, there goes old widow Hopkins — it always takes her a week to buy a spool of thread and trade a hank of yarn. Maybe Si can come with the letter, now.”
And he did:
“Widow Hopkins kept me — I haven’t any patience with such tedious people. Now listen, Nancy — just listen at this:
“‘Come right along to Missouri! Don’t wait and worry about a good price but sell out for whatever you can get, and come along, or you might be too late. Throw away your traps, if necessary, and come empty-handed. You’ll never regret it. It’s the grandest country — the loveliest land — the purest atmosphere — I can’t describe it; no pen can do it justice. And it’s filling up, every day — people coming from everywhere. I’ve got the biggest scheme on earth — and I’ll take you in; I’ll take in every friend I’ve got that’s ever stood by me, for there’s enough for all, and to spare. Mum’s the word — don’t whisper — keep yourself to yourself. You’ll see! Come! — rush! — hurry! — don’t wait for anything!’
“It’s the same old boy, Nancy, jest the same old boy — ain’t he?”
“Yes, I think there’s a little of the old sound about his voice yet. I suppose you — you’ll still go, Si?”
“Go! Well, I should think so, Nancy. It’s all a chance, of course, and, chances haven’t been kind to us, I’ll admit — but whatever comes, old wife,
