The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

and be now furnishing it for the occupancy of Ruth and himself. Instead

of this, with only a smattering of civil engineering, he is at his

mother’s house, fretting and fuming over his ill-luck, and the hardness

and, dishonesty of men, and thinking of nothing but how to get the coal

out of the Ilium hills.

If Senator Dilworthy had not made that visit to Hawkeye, the Hawkins

family and Col. Sellers would not now be dancing attendance upon

Congress, and endeavoring to tempt that immaculate body into one of those

appropriations, for the benefit of its members, which the members find it

so difficult to explain to their constituents; and Laura would not be

lying in the Tombs, awaiting her trial for murder, and doing her best,

by the help of able counsel, to corrupt the pure fountain of criminal

procedure in New York.

If Henry Brierly had been blown up on the first Mississippi steamboat he

set foot on, as the chances were that he would be, he and Col. Sellers

never would have gone into the Columbus Navigation scheme, and probably

never into the East Tennessee Land scheme, and he would not now be

detained in New York from very important business operations on the

Pacific coast, for the sole purpose of giving evidence to convict of

murder the only woman he ever loved half as much as he loves himself.

If Mr. Bolton had said the little word “no” to Mr. Bigler, Alice Montague

might now be spending the winter in Philadelphia, and Philip also

(waiting to resume his mining operations in the spring); and Ruth would

not be an assistant in a Philadelphia hospital, taxing her strength with

arduous routine duties, day by day, in order to lighten a little the

burdens that weigh upon her unfortunate family.

It is altogether a bad business. An honest historian, who had progressed

thus far, and traced everything to such a condition of disaster and

suspension, might well be justified in ending his narrative and writing–

“after this the deluge.” His only consolation would be in the reflection

that he was not responsible for either characters or events.

And the most annoying thought is that a little money, judiciously

applied, would relieve the burdens and anxieties of most of these people;

but affairs seem to be so arranged that money is most difficult to get

when people need it most.

A little of what Mr. Bolton has weakly given to unworthy people would now

establish his family in a sort of comfort, and relieve Ruth of the

excessive toil for which she inherited no adequate physical vigor.

A little money would make a prince of Col. Sellers; and a little more

would calm the anxiety of Washington Hawkins about Laura, for however the

trial ended, he could feel sure of extricating her in the end. And if

Philip had a little money he could unlock the stone door in the mountain

whence would issue a stream of shining riches. It needs a golden wand to

strike that rock. If the Knobs University bill could only go through,

what a change would be wrought in the condition of most of the persons in

this history. Even Philip himself would feel the good effects of it;

for Harry would have something and Col. Sellers would have something;

and have not both these cautious people expressed a determination to take

an interest in the Ilium mine when they catch their larks?

Philip could not resist the inclination to pay a visit to Fallkill. He

had not been at the Montague’s since the tune he saw Ruth there, and he

wanted to consult the Squire about an occupation. He was determined now

to waste no more time in waiting on Providence, but to go to work at

something, if it were nothing better, than teaching in the Fallkill

Seminary, or digging clams on Hingham beach. Perhaps he could read law

in Squire Montague’s office while earning his bread as a teacher in the

Seminary.

It was not altogether Philip’s fault, let us own, that he was in this

position. There are many young men like him in American society, of his

age, opportunities, education and abilities, who have really been

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