next was a twelve-repeater in Tennessee, which he got cheap, so to speak,
because it was out of repair, a portion of the crag which reflected it
having tumbled down. He believed he could repair it at a cost of a few
thousand dollars, and, by increasing the elevation with masonry, treble
the repeating capacity; but the architect who undertook the job had never
built an echo before, and so he utterly spoiled this one. Before he
meddled with it, it used to talk back like a mother-in-law, but now it
was only fit for the deaf-and-dumb asylum. Well, next he bought a lot of
cheap little double-barreled echoes, scattered around over various states
and territories; he got them at twenty per cent. off by taking the lot.
Next he bought a perfect Gatling-gun of an echo in Oregon, and it cost a
fortune, I can tell you. You may know, sir, that in the echo market the
scale of prices is cumulative, like the carat-scale in diamonds; in fact,
the same phraseology is used. A single-carat echo is worth but ten
dollars over and above the value of the land it is on; a two-carat or
double-barreled echo is worth thirty dollars; a five-carat is worth nine
hundred and fifty; a ten-carat is worth thirteen thousand. My uncle’s
Oregon-echo, which he called the Great Pitt Echo, was a twenty-two carat
gem, and cost two hundred and sixteen thousand dollars–they threw the
land in, for it was four hundred miles from a settlement.
Well, in the mean time my path was a path of roses. I was the accepted
suitor of the only and lovely daughter of an English earl, and was
beloved to distraction. In that dear presence I swam in seas of bliss.
The family were content, for it was known that I was sole heir to an
uncle held to be worth five millions of dollars. However, none of us
knew that my uncle had become a collector, at least in anything more than
a small way, for esthetic amusement.
Now gathered the clouds above my unconscious head. That divine echo,
since known throughout the world as the Great Koh-i-noor, or Mountain of
Repetitions, was discovered. It was a sixty-five carat gem. You could
utter a word and it would talk back at you for fifteen minutes, when the
day was otherwise quiet. But behold, another fact came to light at the
same time: another echo-collector was in the field. The two rushed to
make the peerless purchase. The property consisted of a couple of small
hills with a shallow swale between, out yonder among the back settlements
of New York State. Both men arrived on the ground at the same time, and
neither knew the other was there. The echo was not all owned by one man;
a person by the name of Williamson Bolivar Jarvis owned the east hill,
and a person by the name of Harbison J. Bledso owned the west hill; the
swale between was the dividing-line. So while my uncle was buying
Jarvis’s hill for three million two hundred and eighty-five thousand
dollars, the other party was buying Bledso’s hill for a shade over three
million.
Now, do you perceive the natural result? Why, the noblest collection of
echoes on earth was forever and ever incomplete, since it possessed but
the one-half of the king echo of the universe. Neither man was content
with this divided ownership, yet neither would sell to the other. There
were jawings, bickerings, heart-burnings. And at last that other
collector, with a malignity which only a collector can ever feel toward a
man and a brother, proceeded to cut down his hill!
You see, as long as he could not have the echo, he was resolved that
nobody should have it. He would remove his hill, and then there would be
nothing to reflect my uncle’s echo. My uncle remonstrated with him, but
the man said, “I own one end of this echo; I choose to kill my end; you
must take care of your own end yourself.”
Well, my uncle got an injunction put an him. The other man appealed and
fought it in a higher court. They carried it on up, clear to the Supreme