animals here how to discern the gold mine that’s glaring under their
noses. Now all that is necessary to hold this land and keep it in the
family is to pay the trifling taxes on it yearly–five or ten dollars–
the whole tract would not sell for over a third of a cent an acre now,
but some day people wild be glad to get it for twenty dollars, fifty
dollars, a hundred dollars an acre! What should you say to” [here he
dropped his voice to a whisper and looked anxiously around to see that
there were no eavesdroppers,] “a thousand dollars an acre!
“Well you may open your eyes and stare! But it’s so. You and I may not
see the day, but they’ll see it. Mind I tell you; they’ll see it.
Nancy, you’ve heard of steamboats, and maybe you believed in them–of
course you did. You’ve heard these cattle here scoff at them and call
them lies and humbugs,–but they’re not lies and humbugs, they’re a
reality and they’re going to be a more wonderful thing some day than they
are now. They’re going to make a revolution in this world’s affairs that
will make men dizzy to contemplate. I’ve been watching–I’ve been
watching while some people slept, and I know what’s coming.
“Even you and I will see the day that steamboats will come up that little
Turkey river to within twenty miles of this land of ours–and in high
water they’ll come right to it! And this is not all, Nancy–it isn’t
even half! There’s a bigger wonder–the railroad! These worms here have
never even heard of it–and when they do they’ll not believe in it.
But it’s 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 main’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