The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

her hand, which Harry pressed with effusion–something in her manner told

him that he must be content with that favor.

It was always so. She excited his hopes and denied him, inflamed his

passion and restrained it, and wound him in her toils day by day. To

what purpose? It was keen delight to Laura to prove that she had power

over men.

Laura liked to hear about life at the east, and especially about the

luxurious society in which Mr. Brierly moved when he was at home. It

pleased her imagination to fancy herself a queen in it.

“You should be a winter in Washington,” Harry said.

“But I have no acquaintances there.”

“Don’t know any of the families of the congressmen? They like to have a

pretty woman staying with them.”

“Not one.”

“Suppose Col. Sellers should, have business there; say, about this

Columbus River appropriation?”

“Sellers!” and Laura laughed.

“You needn’t laugh. Queerer things have happened. Sellers knows

everybody from Missouri, and from the West, too, for that matter. He’d

introduce you to Washington life quick enough. It doesn’t need a crowbar

to break your way into society there as it does in Philadelphia. It’s

democratic, Washington is. Money or beauty will open any door. If I

were a handsome woman, I shouldn’t want any better place than the capital

to pick up a prince or a fortune.”

“Thank you,” replied Laura. “But I prefer the quiet of home, and the

love of those I know;” and her face wore a look of sweet contentment and

unworldliness that finished Mr. Harry Brierly for the day.

Nevertheless, the hint that Harry had dropped fell upon good ground, and

bore fruit an hundred fold; it worked in her mind until she had built up

a plan on it, and almost a career for herself. Why not, she said, why

shouldn’t I do as other women have done? She took the first opportunity

to see Col. Sellers, and to sound him about the Washington visit. How

was he getting on with his navigation scheme, would it be likely to take

him from home to Jefferson City; or to Washington, perhaps?

“Well, maybe. If the people of Napoleon want me to go to Washington, and

look after that matter, I might tear myself from my home. It’s been

suggested to me, but–not a word of it to Mrs. Sellers and the children.

Maybe they wouldn’t like to think of their father in Washington. But

Dilworthy, Senator Dilworthy, says to me, ‘Colonel, you are the man, you

could influence more votes than any one else on such a measure, an old

settler, a man of the people, you know the wants of Missouri; you’ve a

respect for religion too, says he, and know how the cause of the gospel

goes with improvements: Which is true enough, Miss Laura, and hasn’t been

enough thought of in connection with Napoleon. He’s an able man,

Dilworthy, and a good man. A man has got to be good to succeed as he

has. He’s only been in Congress a few years, and he must be worth a

million. First thing in the morning when he stayed with me he asked

about family prayers, whether we had ’em before or after breakfast.

I hated to disappoint the Senator, but I had to out with it, tell him we

didn’t have ’em, not steady. He said he understood, business

interruptions and all that, some men were well enough without, but as for

him he never neglected the ordinances of religion. He doubted if the

Columbus River appropriation would succeed if we did not invoke the

Divine Blessing on it.”

Perhaps it is unnecessary to say to the reader that Senator Dilworthy had

not stayed with Col. Sellers while he was in Hawkeye; this visit to his

house being only one of the Colonel’s hallucinations–one of those

instant creations of his fertile fancy, which were always flashing into

his brain and out of his mouth in the course of any conversation and

without interrupting the flow of it.

During the summer Philip rode across the country and made a short visit

in Hawkeye, giving Harry an opportunity to show him the progress that he