Old Ebenezer. Opie Percival Read
the money. I've known his paper to be stuck in the throat of the press, and all for the want of fifty cents. I'm glad you let him have it. He's not a bad fellow. He lives in the air. Every time he touches the earth he gets into trouble."
"So do we all," Lyman replied, "and nearly always on account of money. I wish there wasn't a penny in the world."
"Sometimes there isn't, so far as I am concerned," Caruthers said. "No, sir," he added, "they keep money out of my way. And I want to tell you that I'm not a bad business man, either. But I'm close to forty and haven't laid up a cent, and nothing that I can ever say in praise of myself can overcome that fact. I don't see, however, why you should be a failure. You have generations of money makers behind you."
"Yes, hundreds of years behind me," said Lyman. "And the vein was worked out long before I came on. There is no failure more complete than the one that comes along in the wake of success. But I am not going to remain a failure. I'll strike it after awhile."
"I think you have struck it now," replied Caruthers. "Business will liven up in a day or two. When a thing touches bottom it can't go any further down, but it may rise."
"Yes," said Lyman, "unless it continues to lie there."
"But we must stir it up," Caruthers declared. "We've got the enterprise all right—we've got the will, and now all that's needed is something for us to take hold of."
"That's about so," Lyman agreed. "Unless a man has something to lift, he can never find out how strong he is."
And thus they talked until after the midnight hour, until Caruthers, his feet on a table, his head thrown back, his pipe between the fingers of his limp hand, fell asleep. Lyman sat there, more thoughtful, now that he felt alone. At the threshold of a new venture, we look back upon the hopes that led us into other undertakings, and upon many a failure we bestow a look of tender but half reproachful forgiveness. The trials and the final success of other men make us strong. And with his mild eyes set in review, Lyman thought that never before had he found himself so well seasoned, so well prepared to do something. He listened to the grinding of the press, to the midnight noises about the public square, the town muttering in its sleep. "I am advancing" he mused, looking about him. "I was not content to skimp along in New England, nor to buy cross-ties, nor to singe the pin feathers off a chicken at night, nor to worry with the feeble machinery of a dull schoolboy's head. And I will not be content merely to sit here and wait for clients that may never come. I am going to do something."
CHAPTER III.
Top
The Timely Oracle.
A year passed by. Caruthers dozed with his cob pipe between the fingers of his limp hand, waiting for clients whose step was not heard upon the stairs. But the office had not been wholly without business. Once a man called to seek advice, which was given, free, as an advertisement for more work from his neighborhood, and once Lyman had defended a man charged with the theft of a sheep. The mutton was found in the fellow's closet and the hide of the animal was discovered under his bed; and with such evidence against him it was not expected that a lawyer could do much, so, when the prisoner was sentenced to the penitentiary, Caruthers congratulated his partner with the remark: "That was all right. We can't expect to win every time. But we were not so badly defeated; you got him off with one year, and he deserved two. To cut a thief's sentence in two ought to help us."
"Among the other thieves," Lyman suggested.
"Oh, yes," Caruthers spoke up cheerfully. "A lawyer's success depends largely upon his reputation among thieves."
"Or at least among the men who intend to stretch the law. Let me see; we have been in business together just one year, and our books balance with a most graceful precision. We are systematic, anyway."
"Yes," Caruthers replied, letting his pipe fall to the floor, "system is my motto. No business, properly systematized, is often better than some business in a tangle."
Warren, the editor, appeared at the door. "Are you busy?" he asked.
"Well, we are not in what you might call a rush," Lyman answered. "Are you busy?" he inquired, with a twinkle in his eye.
Before answering, Warren stepped into the room and sat down with a distressful sigh. "I am more than that," he said, dejectedly. "I am in hot water, trying to swim with one hand."
"What's the trouble?"
"Oh, a sort of summer, fall, spring and winter complaint." He took out a note book, turned over the leaves, returned it to his pocket and said: "I lack just sixty-five, this time."
"Dollars?" Lyman asked.
Warren gave him a quick, reproachful look. "Now, Judge, what airs have I ever put on to cause you to size me up that way? Have I ever shown any tax receipts? Have I ever given any swell dinners? Sixty-five cents is the amount I am short, Judge, and where I am to get it, the Lord only knows. My paper is lying over yonder in the express office, doing no good to anybody, but they won't let me take it out and stamp intelligence upon it. The town sits gaping for the news, with a bad eye on me; but what can I do with a great corporation arrayed against me? For sixty-five cents I could get the paper out, and it's full of bright things. The account of your defense of the sheep thief is about as amusing a thing as I ever read, and it will be copied all over the country; it would put a nation in a good humor irrespective of party affiliations, but sixty-five millions of people are to be cheated, and all on account of sixty-five cents, one cent to the million."
"Things are down to a low mark when you have to make your estimates on that basis. One cent to the million," said Lyman with a quiet laugh.
"Distressful," Warren replied. "The country was never in such a fix before. Why, last year about this time I raised eighty cents without any trouble at all."
"Yes," said Lyman, "you raised it of me."
"That's a fact," Warren admitted. "But do you think the country is as well off now as it was then?"
"Not financially, but it may be wiser."
"Now, look here, Judge, am I to accept this as an insinuation?"
"How so?" Lyman asked, looking up, his eyes full of mischief.
"Why, speaking of being wiser. I don't know but you meant—well, that you were too wise to help me out again. You can't deny that the notice of the partnership was all right."
"We have no complaint to enter on that ground," Caruthers drawled.
"Pardon me, Chancellor, but it wasn't your put-in," Warren replied. "Your suggestions are worth money and you ought not to throw them away. But the question is, can I get sixty-five cents out of this firm?"
"Warren," said Lyman, "I am in sympathy with your cheerful distress."
"But are you willing to shoulder the debt of sixty-five millions of people? Are you in a position to do that?"
"No," Caruthers drawled, leaning over with a strain and picking up his pipe from the floor.
"Chancellor," said the editor, "as wise as you are, your example is sometimes pernicious and your counsel implies evil."
"Oh, I am simply speaking for the firm," Caruthers replied. "As an individual Lyman can do as he pleases with his capital. Come in, sir."
Some one was tapping at the door, and Lyman, looking around, recognized the short and wheezing bulk of Uncle Buckley Lightfoot, the oracle. He almost tumbled out his chair to grasp the old fellow by the hand; and then, smoothing his conduct, he introduced him, with impressive ceremony.
"Yes, sir," said the old man, sitting down and looking about, "he got away from us a little the rise of a year ago, and I don't think Fox Grove has been the same since then; and it is a generally accepted fact that the children