Octave Thanet

“ Thekla took a seat by his side and sat silent as he. Slowly the natural pallor returned to the high forehead and sharp features. They were delicate features and there was an air of refinement, of thought, about Lieders's whole person, as different as possible from the robust comeliness of his wife. With its keen sensitive-ness and its undefined melancholy it was a dreamer's face. One meets such faces, sometimes, in incongruous places and wonders what they mean. In fact, Kurt Lieders, head cabinet maker in the furniture factory of Lossing & Co., was an artist. ”

“ He expected, he counted on the mayor's refusing his proffers. He hoped that Esther would feel the sympathy which women give, without question generally, to the business plans of those near and dear to them, taking it for granted that the plans are right because they will advantage those so near and dear. That was the beautiful and proper way that Jenny had always reasoned; why should Jenny's daughter do otherwise? When Harry Lossing should oppose her father and refuse to please him and to win her, mustn't any high-spirited woman feel hurt? ”

“ Margaret and her mother were high-minded women. It was the gallant knight of her party and her political faith that the girl admired, the valiant fight, not the triumph! No mere soldier of fortune, no matter how successful or how brilliant, could win her; if Tommy were the mercenary, not the knight, no worldly glory could compensate his wife.
Wherefore, after a bad quarter of an hour reflecting on these things, Mrs. Carriswood went to the Capitol, resolved to take her goddaughter away. ”

“ Carriswood; “do you know, Grace, I can see Tommy's future; he will grow to be a boss, a political boss. He will become rich by keeping your streets always being cleaned—which means never clean—and giving you the worst fire department and police to be obtained for money; and, by and by, a grateful machine will make him mayor, or send him to the Legislature, very likely to Congress, where he will misrepresent the honest State of Iowa. Then he will bloom out in a social way, and marry a gentlewoman, and they will snub the old people who are so proud of him.” ”

“ Nelson had hoped all his life. He hoped for himself, he hoped for the whole human race. He served the abstraction that he called “PROgress” with unflinching and unquestioning loyalty. Every new scheme of increasing happiness by force found a helper, a fighter, and a giver in him; by turns he had been an Abolitionist, a Fourierist, a Socialist, a Greenbacker, a Farmers' Alliance man. Disappointment always was followed hard on its heels by a brand-new confidence. Progress ruled his farm as well as his politics ”

“ Lossing, a little dubiously, but looking fondly at Harry's handsome face; “you know, somehow, all our dogs, no matter how properly they start in a kennel, end by being so hurt if we keep them there that they come into the house. And they are so large, it is like having a pet lion about.” ”

“ They saw Alexandria in a conscientious fashion, for the benefit of the guest of the day. He was a modest young fellow with a nose rather too large for his face, a long upper lip, and frank blue eyes. He made himself agreeable to one of the Cabinet girls, on the front seat, while Tommy, just behind him, had Miss Van Harlem and bliss for his portion.
The old streets, the toppling roofs, the musty warehouses, the uneven pavement, all pleased the young creatures out in the sunshine. They made merry over the ancient ball-room, where Washington had asked a far-away ancestress of Beatoun to dance ”

“ Young Lossing had learned the business practically. He was taught the details by his father's best workman; and a mighty hard and strict master the best workman proved! Lossing did not dream that the crabbed old tyrant who rarely praised him, who made him go over, for the twentieth time, any imperfect piece of work, who exacted all the artisan virtues to the last inch, was secretly proud of him. Yet, in fact, the thread of romance in Lieders's prosaic life was his idolatry of the Lossing Manufacturing Co. ”

“ Look here, Meg, I'll tell you, I want to see if this young fellow has ANY sense! We have an ordinance that we want passed. If he will get his council to pass it, that will show he can put his grand theories into his pockets sometimes; and I will give him a show with Esther. If he doesn't care enough for my girl to oblige her father, even if he doesn't please a lot of carping roosters that want the earth for their town and would like a street railway to be run to accommodate them and lose money for the stockholders, well, then, you can't blame me if I don't want him! ”

“ I don't care for his family; and as to his being moral and all that, I know several young fellows that could skin him alive in a bargain that are moral as you please. I have been a moral man, myself. But the trouble with this Lossing (I told Esther I didn't know anything about him, but I do) , the trouble with him is that he is chock full of all kinds of principles! Just as father was. Don't you remember how he lost parish after parish because he couldn't smooth over the big men in them? Lossing is every bit as pig-headed. I am not going to have my daughter lead the kind of life my mother did. ”

“ All day, if not all night, the crooked pole slips up and down the trolley wire, as the yellow cars rattle, and flash, and clang a spiteful little bell, that sounds like a soprano bark, over the crossings.
It is customary in the Lossing Building to say, “We are so handy to the cars.” The street is a handsome street, not free from dingy old brick boxes of stores below the railway, but fast replacing them with fairer structures. The Lossing Building has the wide arches, the recessed doors, the balconies and the colonnades of modern business architecture. ”

“ Just dying is the matter with me, Thekla. If I can't die one way I kin another. Now Thekla, I want you to quit crying and listen. After I'm gone you go to the boss, young Mr. Lossing—but I always called him Harry because he learned his trade of me, Thekla, but he don't think of that now—and you tell him old Lieders that worked for him thirty years is dead, but he didn't hold no hard feelings, he knowed he done wrong 'bout that mantel. ”

“ Lossing, presently, “is beginning to take himself seriously. He has been told so often that he is a young lion of reform, that he begins to study the role in dead earnest. I don't talk this way to Harry, who believes in him and is training him for the representative for our district. What harm? Verily, his is the faith that will move mountains. Besides, Tommy is now rich; he must be worth a hundred thousand dollars, which makes a man of wealth in these parts. It is time for him to be respectable.” ”

“ Armorer ran his sharp eye over the buildings of the Lossing Art Furniture Manufacturing Company, from the ugly square brick box that was the nucleus—the egg, so to speak—from which the great concern had been hatched, to the handsome new structures with their great arched windows and red mortar. “Pretty property, very pretty property,” thought Armorer; “wonder if that story Marston tells is true!” ”

“ I don't concern myself with any other laboring men.”
Just then a murmur of exclamations came from Mrs. Ellis and Esther, whom the superintendent was piloting through the shops. “Oh, no, it is too heavy; oh, don't do it, Mr. Cardigan!” “Oh, we can see it perfectly well from here! PLEASE don't, you will break yourself somewhere!” Mrs. Ellis shrieked this; but the shrieks turned to a murmur of admiration as a huge carved sideboard came bobbing and wobbling, like an intoxicated piece of furniture in a haunted house, toward the two gentlewomen. ”

“ The old workman had packed up his tools, the pet tools that no one was ever permitted to touch, and crammed his arms into his coat and walked out of the place where he had worked so long, not a man saying a word. Lieders didn't reflect that they knew nothing of the quarrel. He glowered at them and went away sore at heart. We make a great mistake when we suppose that it is only the affectionate that desire affection; sulky and ill-conditioned souls often have a passionate longing for the very feelings that they repel. ”

“ He doesn't know what it is to suffer, he has only vegetated! Doubtless, in a prosaic way, he loves his wife and children; but can a fellow who talks like him have any delicate sympathies or any romance about him? He looks honest; I think he is a right good fellow and works like a soldier; but to be so stupid as he is, ought to HURT!”
Harry felt a whimsical moving of sympathy towards the preacher. ”

“ At the shops he kept his eye on the young man. Harry seemed to know most of his workmen, and had a nod or a word for all the older men. He stopped several moments to talk with one old German who complained of everything, but looked after Harry with a smile, nodding his head. “That man, Lieders, is our best workman; you can't get any better work in the country,” said he. “I want you to see an armoire that he has carved, it is up in our exhibition room.”
Armorer said, “You seem to get on very well with your working people, Mr. Lossing.” ”

“ As the business has grown, so has the number of turkeys, until it is now well up in the hundreds, and requires a special contract. Harry, one Christmas, some two years ago, bought the turkeys at so good a bargain that he felt the natural reaction in an impulse to extravagance. In the very flood-tide of the money-spending yearnings, he chanced to pass Deacon Hurst's stables and to see two Saint Bernard puppies, of elephantine size but of the tenderest age, gambolling on the sidewalk before the office. ”

“ Armorer,” said he, “I am frank with you. I want to please you, because I want to ask you to let me marry your daughter. But I CAN'T please you, because I am mayor of this town, and I don't dare to let you dismiss the conductors. I don't DARE, that's the point. We have had four children killed on this road since electricity was put in.”
“We have had forty killed on one street railway I know; what of it? Do you want to give up electricity because it kills children?” ”

“ For one thing, we haven't much organization to fight, and for another thing, the individual workman has a better chance to rise. That man Lieders, whom you saw, is worth a good many thousand dollars; my father invested his savings for him.”
“You are one of the philanthropists, aren't you, Mr. Lossing, who are trying to elevate the laboring classes?”
“Not a bit of it, sir. I shall never try to elevate the laboring classes; it is too big a contract. But I try as hard as I know how to have every man who has worked for Harry Lossing the better for it. ”

“ Olsen, a little bright tinted woman with a nose too small for her big blue eyes and chubby cheeks, quivered with indignant sympathy.
“Well, I did nefer hear of sooch a mean acting man!” seemed to her the most natural expression; but the wife fired, at once.
“No, he is not a mean man,” she cried, “no, Freda Olsen, he is not a mean man at all! There aint nowhere a better man than my man; and Carl Olsen, he knows that. Kurt, he always buys a whole ham and a whole barrel of flour, and never less than a dollar of sugar at a time! ”

“ She had seen a great deal of Harry while he was East at school, and he remained her first favorite, while Margaret was as good as she was pretty, and had half a million of dollars in her own right. They had seen Harry, and he was showing them through the different buildings or “shops,” when a man entered who greeted him cordially, and whom he presented to Mrs. Carriswood. It was Tommy Fitzmaurice, grown into a handsome young man. He brought his heels together and made the ladies a solemn bow. “Pleased to meet you, ladies; how do you like the West?” said Tommy. ”

“ The man who roused him was an acquaintance, and he stood smiling in the attitude of a man about to ask a favor, while the expectant half-smile of the lady on his arm hinted at the nature of the favor. Would Mr. Forrest be so kind?—there seemed to be no more seats. Before Mr. Forrest could be kind Tim had yielded his own chair and was off, wriggling among the crowd in search of another place.
“Smart boy, that youngster of yours,” said the man; “he'll make his way in the world, he can push. Well, Miss Alma, let me make you acquainted with Mr. Forrest. ”

“ To counterbalance, she knew more than anyone alive what a good son and brother Horatio had always been. But she could not restrain a smile at the picture of the partnership.
“Precisely, you see yourself,” said Armorer. “Meg”—hesitating—“you don't suppose it would be any use to offer Esther a cool hundred thousand to promise to bounce this young fellow?”
“Horatio, NO!” cried Mrs. Ellis, tossing her pretty gray head indignantly; “you'd insult her!”
“Take it the same way, eh? Well, perhaps; Essie has high-toned notions. That's all right, it is the thing for women. Mother had them too. ”

“ Of course I knew he'd have to come and see you Saturday nights, and take you buggy riding, and take you to the theatre, and all such things—first. But I thought we could sorter fix it up between ourselves. I've taken care of him ever since Aunt Lizzie died, and I did my best he shouldn't lend that money, but I couldn't help it; and I did keep him from marrying a widow woman with eight children, who kept telling him how much her poor fatherless children needed a man; and I never did see anybody I was willing—before—and it's—it's so lonesome without Aunt Lizzie! ”

“ Lossing is a very clever young man, very,” said Armorer, gravely, as he went out to smoke his cigar after luncheon. He wished he had stayed, however, when he returned to find that a visitor had called, and that this visitor was the mother of the little boy that Harry Lossing had saved from the car. The two women gave him the accident in full, and were lavish of harrowing detail, including the mother's feelings. “So you see, 'Raish,” urged Mrs. Ellis, timidly, “there is some reason for opposition to the ordinance.”
Esther's cheeks were red and her eyes shone, but she had not spoken. ”