say a hundred and fifty dollars–then the money would begin to flow in.
The second year, sales would reach 200,000 bottles–clear profit, say,
$75,000–and in the meantime the great factory would be building in St.
Louis, to cost, say, $100,000. The third year we could, easily sell
1,000,000 bottles in the United States and—-”
“O, splendid!” said Washington. “Let’s commence right away–let’s—-”
“—-1,000,000 bottles in the United States–profit at least $350,000–
and then it would begin to be time to turn our attention toward the real
idea of the business.”
“The real idea of it! Ain’t $350,000 a year a pretty real—-”
“Stuff! Why what an infant you are, Washington–what a guileless, short-
sighted, easily-contented innocent you, are, my poor little country-bred
know-nothing! Would I go to all that trouble and bother for the poor
crumbs a body might pick up in this country? Now do I look like a man
who—- does my history suggest that I am a man who deals in trifles,
contents himself with the narrow horizon that hems in the common herd,
sees no further than the end of his nose? Now you know that that is not
me–couldn’t be me. You ought to know that if I throw my time and
abilities into a patent medicine, it’s a patent medicine whose field of
operations is the solid earth! its clients the swarming nations that
inhabit it! Why what is the republic of America for an eye-water
country? Lord bless you, it is nothing but a barren highway that you’ve
got to cross to get to the true eye-water market! Why, Washington, in
the Oriental countries people swarm like the sands of the desert; every
square mile of ground upholds its thousands upon thousands of struggling
human creatures–and every separate and individual devil of them’s got
the ophthalmia! It’s as natural to them as noses are–and sin. It’s
born with them, it stays with them, it’s all that some of them have left
when they die. Three years of introductory trade in the orient and what
will be the result? Why, our headquarters would be in Constantinople and
our hindquarters in Further India! Factories and warehouses in Cairo,
Ispahan, Bagdad, Damascus, Jerusalem, Yedo, Peking, Bangkok, Delhi,
Bombay–and Calcutta! Annual income–well, God only knows how many
millions and millions apiece!”
Washington was so dazed, so bewildered–his heart and his eyes had
wandered so far away among the strange lands beyond the seas, and such
avalanches of coin and currency had fluttered and jingled confusedly down
before him, that he was now as one who has been whirling round and round
for a time, and, stopping all at once, finds his surroundings still
whirling and all objects a dancing chaos. However, little by little the
Sellers family cooled down and crystalized into shape, and the poor room
lost its glitter and resumed its poverty. Then the youth found his voice
and begged Sellers to drop everything and hurry up the eye-water; and he
got his eighteen dollars and tried to force it upon the Colonel–pleaded
with him to take it–implored him to do it. But the Colonel would not;
said he would not need the capital (in his native magnificent way he
called that eighteen dollars Capital) till the eye-water was an
accomplished fact. He made Washington easy in his mind, though, by
promising that he would call for it just as soon as the invention was
finished, and he added the glad tidings that nobody but just they two
should be admitted to a share in the speculation.
When Washington left the breakfast table he could have worshiped that
man. Washington was one of that kind of people whose hopes are in the
very, clouds one day and in the gutter the next. He walked on air, now.
The Colonel was ready to take him around and introduce him to the
employment he had found for him, but Washington begged for a few moments
in which to write home; with his kind of people, to ride to-day’s new
interest to death and put off yesterday’s till another time, is nature
itself. He ran up stairs and wrote glowingly, enthusiastically, to his
mother about the hogs and the corn, the banks and the eye-water–and