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VII.
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XIV.
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XVI.
XVII.
XVIII.
XIX.
XX.
XXI.
XXII.
XXIII.
XXIV.
XXV.
XXVI.
XXVII.
I.
WHEN
Bartley Hubbard went to interview Silas Lapham for the "Solid
Men of Boston" series, which he undertook to finish up in The
Events, after he replaced their original projector on that
newspaper,
Lapham received him in his private office by previous
appointment."Walk
right in!" he called out to the journalist, whom he caught sight
of through the door of the counting-room.He
did not rise from the desk at which he was writing, but he gave
Bartley his left hand for welcome, and he rolled his large head in
the direction of a vacant chair. "Sit down! I'll be with you in
just half a minute.""Take
your time," said Bartley, with the ease he instantly felt. "I'm
in no hurry." He took a note-book from his pocket, laid it on
his knee, and began to sharpen a pencil."There!"
Lapham pounded with his great hairy fist on the envelope he had
been
addressing."William!"
he called out, and he handed the letter to a boy who came to get
it.
"I want that to go right away. Well, sir," he continued,
wheeling round in his leather-cushioned swivel-chair, and facing
Bartley, seated so near that their knees almost touched, "so you
want my life, death, and Christian sufferings, do you, young
man?""That's
what I'm after," said Bartley. "Your money or your life.""I
guess you wouldn't want my life without the money," said Lapham,
as if he were willing to prolong these moments of
preparation."Take
'em both," Bartley suggested. "Don't want your money
without your life, if you come to that. But you're just one million
times more interesting to the public than if you hadn't a dollar;
and
you know that as well as I do, Mr. Lapham. There's no use beating
about the bush.""No,"
said Lapham, somewhat absently. He put out his huge foot and pushed
the ground-glass door shut between his little den and the
book-keepers, in their larger den outside."In
personal appearance," wrote Bartley in the sketch for which he
now studied his subject, while he waited patiently for him to
continue, "Silas Lapham is a fine type of the successful
American. He has a square, bold chin, only partially concealed by
the
short reddish-grey beard, growing to the edges of his firmly
closing
lips. His nose is short and straight; his forehead good, but broad
rather than high; his eyes blue, and with a light in them that is
kindly or sharp according to his mood. He is of medium height, and
fills an average arm-chair with a solid bulk, which on the day of
our
interview was unpretentiously clad in a business suit of blue
serge.
His head droops somewhat from a short neck, which does not trouble
itself to rise far from a pair of massive shoulders.""I
don't know as I know just where you want me to begin," said
Lapham."Might
begin with your birth; that's where most of us begin," replied
Bartley.A
gleam of humorous appreciation shot into Lapham's blue eyes."I
didn't know whether you wanted me to go quite so far back as that,"
he said. "But there's no disgrace in having been born, and I was
born in the State of Vermont, pretty well up under the Canada
line--so well up, in fact, that I came very near being an adoptive
citizen; for I was bound to be an American of SOME sort, from the
word Go! That was about--well, let me see!--pretty near sixty years
ago: this is '75, and that was '20. Well, say I'm fifty-five years
old; and I've LIVED 'em, too; not an hour of waste time about ME,
anywheres! I was born on a farm, and----""Worked
in the fields summers and went to school winters: regulation
thing?"
Bartley cut in."Regulation
thing," said Lapham, accepting this irreverent version of his
history somewhat dryly."Parents
poor, of course," suggested the journalist. "Any barefoot
business? Early deprivations of any kind, that would encourage the
youthful reader to go and do likewise? Orphan myself, you know,"
said Bartley, with a smile of cynical good-comradery.Lapham
looked at him silently, and then said with quiet self-respect, "I
guess if you see these things as a joke, my life won't interest
you.""Oh
yes, it will," returned Bartley, unabashed. "You'll see;
it'll come out all right." And in fact it did so, in the
interview which Bartley printed."Mr.
Lapham," he wrote, "passed rapidly over the story of his
early life, its poverty and its hardships, sweetened, however, by
the
recollections of a devoted mother, and a father who, if somewhat
her
inferior in education, was no less ambitious for the advancement of
his children. They were quiet, unpretentious people, religious,
after
the fashion of that time, and of sterling morality, and they taught
their children the simple virtues of the Old Testament and Poor
Richard's Almanac."Bartley
could not deny himself this gibe; but he trusted to Lapham's
unliterary habit of mind for his security in making it, and most
other people would consider it sincere reporter's rhetoric."You
know," he explained to Lapham, "that we have to look at all
these facts as material, and we get the habit of classifying them.
Sometimes a leading question will draw out a whole line of facts
that
a man himself would never think of." He went on to put several
queries, and it was from Lapham's answers that he generalised the
history of his childhood. "Mr. Lapham, although he did not dwell
on his boyish trials and struggles, spoke of them with deep feeling
and an abiding sense of their reality." This was what he added
in the interview, and by the time he had got Lapham past the period
where risen Americans are all pathetically alike in their narrow
circumstances, their sufferings, and their aspirations, he had
beguiled him into forgetfulness of the check he had received, and
had
him talking again in perfect enjoyment of his autobiography."Yes,
sir," said Lapham, in a strain which Bartley was careful not to
interrupt again, "a man never sees all that his mother has been
to him till it's too late to let her know that he sees it. Why, my
mother--" he stopped. "It gives me a lump in the throat,"
he said apologetically, with an attempt at a laugh. Then he went
on:
"She was a little frail thing, not bigger than a good-sized
intermediate school-girl; but she did the whole work of a family of
boys, and boarded the hired men besides. She cooked, swept, washed,
ironed, made and mended from daylight till dark--and from dark till
daylight, I was going to say; for I don't know how she got any time
for sleep. But I suppose she did. She got time to go to church, and
to teach us to read the Bible, and to misunderstand it in the old
way. She was GOOD. But it ain't her on her knees in church that
comes
back to me so much like the sight of an angel as her on her knees
before me at night, washing my poor, dirty little feet, that I'd
run
bare in all day, and making me decent for bed. There were six of us
boys; it seems to me we were all of a size; and she was just so
careful with all of us. I can feel her hands on my feet yet!"
Bartley looked at Lapham's No. 10 boots, and softly whistled
through
his teeth. "We were patched all over; but we wa'n't ragged. I
don't know how she got through it. She didn't seem to think it was
anything; and I guess it was no more than my father expected of
her.
HE worked like a horse in doors and out--up at daylight, feeding
the
stock, and groaning round all day with his rheumatism, but not
stopping."Bartley
hid a yawn over his note-book, and probably, if he could have
spoken
his mind, he would have suggested to Lapham that he was not there
for
the purpose of interviewing his ancestry. But Bartley had learned
to
practise a patience with his victims which he did not always feel,
and to feign an interest in their digressions till he could bring
them up with a round turn."I
tell you," said Lapham, jabbing the point of his penknife into
the writing-pad on the desk before him, "when I hear women
complaining nowadays that their lives are stunted and empty, I want
to tell 'em about my MOTHER'S life. I could paint it out for
'em."Bartley
saw his opportunity at the word paint, and cut in. "And you say,
Mr. Lapham, that you discovered this mineral paint on the old farm
yourself?"Lapham
acquiesced in the return to business. "I didn't discover it,"
he said scrupulously. "My father found it one day, in a hole
made by a tree blowing down. There it was, lying loose in the pit,
and sticking to the roots that had pulled up a big, cake of dirt
with
'em. I don't know what give him the idea that there was money in
it,
but he did think so from the start. I guess, if they'd had the word
in those days, they'd considered him pretty much of a crank about
it.
He was trying as long as he lived to get that paint introduced; but
he couldn't make it go. The country was so poor they couldn't paint
their houses with anything; and father hadn't any facilities. It
got
to be a kind of joke with us; and I guess that paint-mine did as
much
as any one thing to make us boys clear out as soon as we got old
enough. All my brothers went West, and took up land; but I hung on
to
New England and I hung on to the old farm, not because the
paint-mine
was on it, but because the old house was--and the graves. Well,"
said Lapham, as if unwilling to give himself too much credit,
"there
wouldn't been any market for it, anyway. You can go through that
part
of the State and buy more farms than you can shake a stick at for
less money than it cost to build the barns on 'em. Of course, it's
turned out a good thing. I keep the old house up in good shape, and
we spend a month or so there every summer. M' wife kind of likes
it,
and the girls. Pretty place; sightly all round it. I've got a force
of men at work there the whole time, and I've got a man and his
wife
in the house. Had a family meeting there last year; the whole
connection from out West. There!" Lapham rose from his seat and
took down a large warped, unframed photograph from the top of his
desk, passing his hand over it, and then blowing vigorously upon
it,
to clear it of the dust. "There we are, ALL of us.""I
don't need to look twice at YOU," said Bartley, putting his
finger on one of the heads."Well,
that's Bill," said Lapham, with a gratified laugh. "He's
about as brainy as any of us, I guess. He's one of their leading
lawyers, out Dubuque way; been judge of the Common Pleas once or
twice. That's his son--just graduated at Yale--alongside of my
youngest girl. Good-looking chap, ain't he?""SHE'S
a good-looking chap," said Bartley, with prompt irreverence. He
hastened to add, at the frown which gathered between Lapham's eyes,
"What a beautiful creature she is! What a lovely, refined,
sensitive face! And she looks GOOD, too.""She
is good," said the father, relenting."And,
after all, that's about the best thing in a woman," said the
potential reprobate. "If my wife wasn't good enough to keep both
of us straight, I don't know what would become of me." "My
other daughter," said Lapham, indicating a girl with eyes that
showed large, and a face of singular gravity. "Mis' Lapham,"
he continued, touching his wife's effigy with his little finger.
"My
brother Willard and his family--farm at Kankakee. Hazard Lapham and
his wife--Baptist preacher in Kansas. Jim and his three
girls--milling business at Minneapolis. Ben and his
family--practising medicine in Fort Wayne."The
figures were clustered in an irregular group in front of an old
farm-house, whose original ugliness had been smartened up with a
coat
of Lapham's own paint, and heightened with an incongruous piazza.
The
photographer had not been able to conceal the fact that they were
all
decent, honest-looking, sensible people, with a very fair share of
beauty among the young girls; some of these were extremely pretty,
in
fact. He had put them into awkward and constrained attitudes, of
course; and they all looked as if they had the instrument of
torture
which photographers call a head-rest under their occiputs. Here and
there an elderly lady's face was a mere blur; and some of the
younger
children had twitched themselves into wavering shadows, and might
have passed for spirit-photographs of their own little ghosts. It
was
the standard family-group photograph, in which most Americans have
figured at some time or other; and Lapham exhibited a just
satisfaction in it. "I presume," he mused aloud, as he put
it back on top of his desk, "that we sha'n't soon get together
again, all of us.""And
you say," suggested Bartley, "that you stayed right along
on the old place, when the rest cleared out West?""No
o-o-o," said Lapham, with a long, loud drawl; "I cleared
out West too, first off. Went to Texas. Texas was all the cry in
those days. But I got enough of the Lone Star in about three
months,
and I come back with the idea that Vermont was good enough for
me.""Fatted
calf business?" queried Bartley, with his pencil poised above
his note-book."I
presume they were glad to see me," said Lapham, with dignity.
"Mother," he added gently, "died that winter, and I
stayed on with father. I buried him in the spring; and then I came
down to a little place called Lumberville, and picked up what jobs
I
could get. I worked round at the saw-mills, and I was ostler a
while
at the hotel--I always DID like a good horse. Well, I WA'N'T
exactly
a college graduate, and I went to school odd times. I got to
driving
the stage after while, and by and by I BOUGHT the stage and run the
business myself. Then I hired the tavern-stand, and--well to make a
long story short, then I got married. Yes," said Lapham, with
pride, "I married the school-teacher. We did pretty well with
the hotel, and my wife she was always at me to paint up. Well, I
put
it off, and PUT it off, as a man will, till one day I give in, and
says I, 'Well, let's paint up. Why, Pert,'--m'wife's name's
Persis,--'I've got a whole paint-mine out on the farm. Let's go out
and look at it.' So we drove out. I'd let the place for
seventy-five
dollars a year to a shif'less kind of a Kanuck that had come down
that way; and I'd hated to see the house with him in it; but we
drove
out one Saturday afternoon, and we brought back about a bushel of
the
stuff in the buggy-seat, and I tried it crude, and I tried it
burnt;
and I liked it. M'wife she liked it too. There wa'n't any painter
by
trade in the village, and I mixed it myself. Well, sir, that
tavern's
got that coat of paint on it yet, and it hain't ever had any other,
and I don't know's it ever will. Well, you know, I felt as if it
was
a kind of harumscarum experiment, all the while; and I presume I
shouldn't have tried it but I kind of liked to do it because
father'd
always set so much store by his paint-mine. And when I'd got the
first coat on,"--Lapham called it CUT,--"I presume I must
have set as much as half an hour; looking at it and thinking how he
would have enjoyed it. I've had my share of luck in this world, and
I
ain't a-going to complain on my OWN account, but I've noticed that
most things get along too late for most people. It made me feel
bad,
and it took all the pride out my success with the paint, thinking
of
father. Seemed to me I might 'a taken more interest in it when he
was
by to see; but we've got to live and learn. Well, I called my wife
out,--I'd tried it on the back of the house, you know,--and she
left
her dishes,--I can remember she came out with her sleeves rolled up
and set down alongside of me on the trestle,--and says I, 'What do
you think, Persis?' And says she, 'Well, you hain't got a
paint-mine,
Silas Lapham; you've got a GOLD-mine.' She always was just so
enthusiastic about things. Well, it was just after two or three
boats
had burnt up out West, and a lot of lives lost, and there was a
great
cry about non-inflammable paint, and I guess that was what was in
her
mind. 'Well, I guess it ain't any gold-mine, Persis,' says I; 'but
I
guess it IS a paint-mine. I'm going to have it analysed, and if it
turns out what I think it is, I'm going to work it. And if father
hadn't had such a long name, I should call it the Nehemiah Lapham
Mineral Paint. But, any rate, every barrel of it, and every keg,
and
every bottle, and every package, big or little, has got to have the
initials and figures N.L.f. 1835, S.L.t. 1855, on it. Father found
it
in 1835, and I tried it in 1855.'""'S.T.--1860--X.'
business," said Bartley."Yes,"
said Lapham, "but I hadn't heard of Plantation Bitters then, and
I hadn't seen any of the fellow's labels. I set to work and I got a
man down from Boston; and I carried him out to the farm, and he
analysed it--made a regular Job of it. Well, sir, we built a kiln,
and we kept a lot of that paint-ore red-hot for forty-eight hours;
kept the Kanuck and his family up, firing. The presence of iron in
the ore showed with the magnet from the start; and when he came to
test it, he found out that it contained about seventy-five per
cent.
of the peroxide of iron."Lapham
pronounced the scientific phrases with a sort of reverent
satisfaction, as if awed through his pride by a little lingering
uncertainty as to what peroxide was. He accented it as if it were
purr-ox-EYED; and Bartley had to get him to spell it."Well,
and what then?" he asked, when he had made a note of the
percentage."What
then?" echoed Lapham. "Well, then, the fellow set down and
told me, 'You've got a paint here,' says he, 'that's going to drive
every other mineral paint out of the market. Why' says he, 'it'll
drive 'em right into the Back Bay!' Of course, I didn't know what
the
Back Bay was then, but I begun to open my eyes; thought I'd had 'em
open before, but I guess I hadn't. Says he, 'That paint has got
hydraulic cement in it, and it can stand fire and water and acids;'
he named over a lot of things. Says he, 'It'll mix easily with
linseed oil, whether you want to use it boiled or raw; and it ain't
a-going to crack nor fade any; and it ain't a-going to scale. When
you've got your arrangements for burning it properly, you're going
to
have a paint that will stand like the everlasting hills, in every
climate under the sun.' Then he went into a lot of particulars, and
I
begun to think he was drawing a long-bow, and meant to make his
bill
accordingly. So I kept pretty cool; but the fellow's bill didn't
amount to anything hardly--said I might pay him after I got going;
young chap, and pretty easy; but every word he said was gospel.
Well,
I ain't a-going to brag up my paint; I don't suppose you came here
to
hear me blow.""Oh
yes, I did," said Bartley. "That's what I want. Tell all
there is to tell, and I can boil it down afterward. A man can't
make
a greater mistake with a reporter than to hold back anything out of
modesty. It may be the very thing we want to know. What we want is
the whole truth; and more; we've got so much modesty of our own
that
we can temper almost any statement."Lapham
looked as if he did not quite like this tone, and he resumed a
little
more quietly. "Oh, there isn't really very much more to say
about the paint itself. But you can use it for almost anything
where
a paint is wanted, inside or out. It'll prevent decay, and it'll
stop
it, after it's begun, in tin or iron. You can paint the inside of a
cistern or a bath-tub with it, and water won't hurt it; and you can
paint a steam-boiler with it, and heat won't. You can cover a brick
wall with it, or a railroad car, or the deck of a steamboat, and
you
can't do a better thing for either.""Never
tried it on the human conscience, I suppose," suggested
Bartley."No,
sir," replied Lapham gravely. "I guess you want to keep
that as free from paint as you can, if you want much use of it. I
never cared to try any of it on mine." Lapham suddenly lifted
his bulk up out of his swivel-chair, and led the way out into the
wareroom beyond the office partitions, where rows and ranks of
casks,
barrels, and kegs stretched dimly back to the rear of the building,
and diffused an honest, clean, wholesome smell of oil and paint.
They
were labelled and branded as containing each so many pounds of
Lapham's Mineral Paint, and each bore the mystic devices, N.L.f.
1835--S.L.t. 1855. "There!" said Lapham, kicking one of the
largest casks with the toe of his boot, "that's about our
biggest package; and here," he added, laying his hand
affectionately on the head of a very small keg, as if it were the
head of a child, which it resembled in size, "this is the
smallest. We used to put the paint on the market dry, but now we
grind every ounce of it in oil--very best quality of linseed
oil--and
warrant it. We find it gives more satisfaction. Now, come back to
the
office, and I'll show you our fancy brands."It
was very cool and pleasant in that dim wareroom, with the rafters
showing overhead in a cloudy perspective, and darkening away into
the
perpetual twilight at the rear of the building; and Bartley had
found
an agreeable seat on the head of a half-barrel of the paint, which
he
was reluctant to leave. But he rose and followed the vigorous lead
of
Lapham back to the office, where the sun of a long summer afternoon
was just beginning to glare in at the window. On shelves opposite
Lapham's desk were tin cans of various sizes, arranged in tapering
cylinders, and showing, in a pattern diminishing toward the top,
the
same label borne by the casks and barrels in the wareroom. Lapham
merely waved his hand toward these; but when Bartley, after a
comprehensive glance at them, gave his whole attention to a row of
clean, smooth jars, where different tints of the paint showed
through
flawless glass, Lapham smiled, and waited in pleased
expectation."Hello!"
said Bartley. "That's pretty!""Yes,"
assented Lapham, "it is rather nice. It's our latest thing, and
we find it takes with customers first-rate. Look here!" he said,
taking down one of the jars, and pointing to the first line of the
label.Bartley
read, "THE PERSIS BRAND," and then he looked at Lapham and
smiled."After
HER, of course," said Lapham. "Got it up and put the first
of it on the market her last birthday. She was pleased.""I
should think she might have been," said Bartley, while he made a
note of the appearance of the jars."I
don't know about your mentioning it in your interview," said
Lapham dubiously."That's
going into the interview, Mr. Lapham, if nothing else does. Got a
wife myself, and I know just how you feel." It was in the dawn
of Bartley's prosperity on the Boston Events, before his troubles
with Marcia had seriously begun."Is
that so?" said Lapham, recognising with a smile another of the
vast majority of married Americans; a few underrate their wives,
but
the rest think them supernal in intelligence and capability.
"Well,"
he added, "we must see about that. Where'd you say you
lived?""We
don't live; we board. Mrs. Nash, 13 Canary Place.""Well,
we've all got to commence that way," suggested Lapham
consolingly."Yes;
but we've about got to the end of our string. I expect to be under
a
roof of my own on Clover Street before long. I suppose," said
Bartley, returning to business, "that you didn't let the grass
grow under your feet much after you found out what was in your
paint-mine?""No,
sir," answered Lapham, withdrawing his eyes from a long stare at
Bartley, in which he had been seeing himself a young man again, in
the first days of his married life. "I went right back to
Lumberville and sold out everything, and put all I could rake and
scrape together into paint. And Mis' Lapham was with me every time.
No hang back about HER. I tell you she was a WOMAN!"Bartley
laughed. "That's the sort most of us marry.""No,
we don't," said Lapham. "Most of us marry silly little
girls grown up to LOOK like women.""Well,
I guess that's about so," assented Bartley, as if upon second
thought."If
it hadn't been for her," resumed Lapham, "the paint
wouldn't have come to anything. I used to tell her it wa'n't the
seventy-five per cent. of purr-ox-eyed of iron in the ORE that made
that paint go; it was the seventy-five per cent. of purr-ox-eyed of
iron in HER.""Good!"
cried Bartley. "I'll tell Marcia that.""In
less'n six months there wa'n't a board-fence, nor a bridge-girder,
nor a dead wall, nor a barn, nor a face of rock in that whole
region
that didn't have 'Lapham's Mineral Paint--Specimen' on it in the
three colours we begun by making." Bartley had taken his seat on
the window-sill, and Lapham, standing before him, now put up his
huge
foot close to Bartley's thigh; neither of them minded that."I've
heard a good deal of talk about that S.T.--1860--X. man, and the
stove-blacking man, and the kidney-cure man, because they
advertised
in that way; and I've read articles about it in the papers; but I
don't see where the joke comes in, exactly. So long as the people
that own the barns and fences don't object, I don't see what the
public has got to do with it. And I never saw anything so very
sacred
about a big rock, along a river or in a pasture, that it wouldn't
do
to put mineral paint on it in three colours. I wish some of the
people that talk about the landscape, and WRITE about it, had to
bu'st one of them rocks OUT of the landscape with powder, or dig a
hole to bury it in, as we used to have to do up on the farm; I
guess
they'd sing a little different tune about the profanation of
scenery.
There ain't any man enjoys a sightly bit of nature--a smooth piece
of
interval with half a dozen good-sized wine-glass elms in it--more
than I do. But I ain't a-going to stand up for every big ugly rock
I
come across, as if we were all a set of dumn Druids. I say the
landscape was made for man, and not man for the landscape.""Yes,"
said Bartley carelessly; "it was made for the stove-polish man
and the kidney-cure man.""It
was made for any man that knows how to use it," Lapham returned,
insensible to Bartley's irony. "Let 'em go and live with nature
in the WINTER, up there along the Canada line, and I guess they'll
get enough of her for one while. Well--where was I?""Decorating
the landscape," said Bartley."Yes,
sir; I started right there at Lumberville, and it give the place a
start too. You won't find it on the map now; and you won't find it
in
the gazetteer. I give a pretty good lump of money to build a
town-hall, about five years back, and the first meeting they held
in
it they voted to change the name,--Lumberville WA'N'T a name,--and
it's Lapham now.""Isn't
it somewhere up in that region that they get the old Brandon red?"
asked Bartley."We're
about ninety miles from Brandon. The Brandon's a good paint,"
said Lapham conscientiously. "Like to show you round up at our
place some odd time, if you get off.""Thanks.
I should like it first-rate. WORKS there?""Yes;
works there. Well, sir, just about the time I got started, the war
broke out; and it knocked my paint higher than a kite. The thing
dropped perfectly dead. I presume that if I'd had any sort of
influence, I might have got it into Government hands, for
gun-carriages and army wagons, and may be on board Government
vessels. But I hadn't, and we had to face the music. I was about
broken-hearted, but m'wife she looked at it another way. 'I guess
it's a providence,' says she. 'Silas, I guess you've got a country
that's worth fighting for. Any rate, you better go out and give it
a
chance.' Well, sir, I went. I knew she meant business. It might
kill
her to have me go, but it would kill her sure if I stayed. She was
one of that kind. I went. Her last words was, 'I'll look after the
paint, Si.' We hadn't but just one little girl then,--boy'd
died,--and Mis' Lapham's mother was livin' with us; and I knew if
times DID anyways come up again, m'wife'd know just what to do. So
I
went. I got through; and you can call me Colonel, if you want to.
Feel there!" Lapham took Bartley's thumb and forefinger and put
them on a bunch in his leg, just above the knee. "Anything
hard?""Ball?"Lapham
nodded. "Gettysburg. That's my thermometer. If it wa'n't for
that, I shouldn't know enough to come in when it rains."Bartley
laughed at a joke which betrayed some evidences of wear. "And
when you came back, you took hold of the paint and rushed
it.""I
took hold of the paint and rushed it--all I could," said Lapham,
with less satisfaction than he had hitherto shown in his
autobiography. "But I found that I had got back to another
world. The day of small things was past, and I don't suppose it
will
ever come again in this country. My wife was at me all the time to
take a partner--somebody with capital; but I couldn't seem to bear
the idea. That paint was like my own blood to me. To have anybody
else concerned in it was like--well, I don't know what. I saw it
was
the thing to do; but I tried to fight it off, and I tried to joke
it
off. I used to say, 'Why didn't you take a partner yourself,
Persis,
while I was away?' And she'd say, 'Well, if you hadn't come back, I
should, Si.' Always DID like a joke about as well as any woman I
ever
saw. Well, I had to come to it. I took a partner." Lapham
dropped the bold blue eyes with which he had been till now staring
into Bartley's face, and the reporter knew that here was a place
for
asterisks in his interview, if interviews were faithful. "He had
money enough," continued Lapham, with a suppressed sigh; "but
he didn't know anything about paint. We hung on together for a year
or two. And then we quit.""And
he had the experience," suggested Bartley, with companionable
ease."I
had some of the experience too," said Lapham, with a scowl; and
Bartley divined, through the freemasonry of all who have sore
places
in their memories, that this was a point which he must not touch
again."And
since that, I suppose, you've played it alone.""I've
played it alone.""You
must ship some of this paint of yours to foreign countries,
Colonel?"
suggested Bartley, putting on a professional air."We
ship it to all parts of the world. It goes to South America, lots
of
it. It goes to Australia, and it goes to India, and it goes to
China,
and it goes to the Cape of Good Hope. It'll stand any climate. Of
course, we don't export these fancy brands much. They're for home
use. But we're introducing them elsewhere. Here." Lapham pulled
open a drawer, and showed Bartley a lot of labels in different
languages--Spanish, French, German, and Italian. "We expect to
do a good business in all those countries. We've got our agencies
in
Cadiz now, and in Paris, and in Hamburg, and in Leghorn. It's a
thing
that's bound to make its way. Yes, sir. Wherever a man has got a
ship, or a bridge, or a lock, or a house, or a car, or a fence, or
a
pig-pen anywhere in God's universe to paint, that's the paint for
him, and he's bound to find it out sooner or later. You pass a ton
of
that paint dry through a blast-furnace, and you'll get a quarter of
a
ton of pig-iron. I believe in my paint. I believe it's a blessing
to
the world. When folks come in, and kind of smell round, and ask me
what I mix it with, I always say, 'Well, in the first place, I mix
it
with FAITH, and after that I grind it up with the best quality of
boiled linseed oil that money will buy.'"Lapham
took out his watch and looked at it, and Bartley perceived that his
audience was drawing to a close. "'F you ever want to run down
and take a look at our works, pass you over the road,"--he
called it RUD--"and it sha'n't cost you a cent." "Well,
may be I shall, sometime," said Bartley. "Good afternoon,
Colonel.""Good
afternoon. Or--hold on! My horse down there yet, William?" he
called to the young man in the counting-room who had taken his
letter
at the beginning of the interview. "Oh! All right!" he
added, in response to something the young man said."Can't
I set you down somewhere, Mr. Hubbard? I've got my horse at the
door,
and I can drop you on my way home. I'm going to take Mis' Lapham to
look at a house I'm driving piles for, down on the New
Land.""Don't
care if I do," said Bartley.Lapham
put on a straw hat, gathered up some papers lying on his desk,
pulled
down its rolling cover, turned the key in it, and gave the papers
to
an extremely handsome young woman at one of the desks in the outer
office. She was stylishly dressed, as Bartley saw, and her smooth,
yellow hair was sculpturesquely waved over a low, white forehead.
"Here," said Lapham, with the same prompt gruff kindness
that he had used in addressing the young man, "I want you should
put these in shape, and give me a type-writer copy
to-morrow.""What
an uncommonly pretty girl!" said Bartley, as they descended the
rough stairway and found their way out to the street, past the
dangling rope of a block and tackle wandering up into the cavernous
darkness overhead."She
does her work," said Lapham shortly.Bartley
mounted to the left side of the open buggy standing at the
curb-stone, and Lapham, gathering up the hitching-weight, slid it
under the buggy-seat and mounted beside him."No
chance to speed a horse here, of course," said Lapham, while the
horse with a spirited gentleness picked her way, with a high, long
action, over the pavement of the street. The streets were all
narrow,
and most of them crooked, in that quarter of the town; but at the
end
of one the spars of a vessel pencilled themselves delicately
against
the cool blue of the afternoon sky. The air was full of a smell
pleasantly compounded of oakum, of leather, and of oil. It was not
the busy season, and they met only two or three trucks heavily
straggling toward the wharf with their long string teams; but the
cobble-stones of the pavement were worn with the dint of ponderous
wheels, and discoloured with iron-rust from them; here and there,
in
wandering streaks over its surface, was the grey stain of the salt
water with which the street had been sprinkled.After
an interval of some minutes, which both men spent in looking round
the dash-board from opposite sides to watch the stride of the
horse,
Bartley said, with a light sigh, "I had a colt once down in
Maine that stepped just like that mare.""Well!"
said Lapham, sympathetically recognising the bond that this fact
created between them. "Well, now, I tell you what you do. You
let me come for you 'most any afternoon, now, and take you out over
the Milldam, and speed this mare a little. I'd like to show you
what
this mare can do. Yes, I would.""All
right," answered Bartley; "I'll let you know my first day
off.""Good,"
cried Lapham."Kentucky?"
queried Bartley."No,
sir. I don't ride behind anything but Vermont; never did. Touch of
Morgan, of course; but you can't have much Morgan in a horse if you
want speed. Hambletonian mostly. Where'd you say you wanted to get
out?""I
guess you may put me down at the Events Office, just round the
corner
here. I've got to write up this interview while it's fresh.""All
right," said Lapham, impersonally assenting to Bartley's use of
him as material.He
had not much to complain of in Bartley's treatment, unless it was
the
strain of extravagant compliment which it involved. But the
flattery
was mainly for the paint, whose virtues Lapham did not believe
could
be overstated, and himself and his history had been treated with as
much respect as Bartley was capable of showing any one. He made a
very picturesque thing of the discovery of the paint-mine. "Deep
in the heart of the virgin forests of Vermont, far up toward the
line
of the Canadian snows, on a desolate mountain-side, where an
autumnal
storm had done its wild work, and the great trees, strewn hither
and
thither, bore witness to its violence, Nehemiah Lapham discovered,
just forty years ago, the mineral which the alchemy of his son's
enterprise and energy has transmuted into solid ingots of the most
precious of metals. The colossal fortune of Colonel Silas Lapham
lay
at the bottom of a hole which an uprooted tree had dug for him, and
which for many years remained a paint-mine of no more appreciable
value than a soap-mine."Here
Bartley had not been able to forego another grin; but he
compensated
for it by the high reverence with which he spoke of Colonel
Lapham's
record during the war of the rebellion, and of the motives which
impelled him to turn aside from an enterprise in which his whole
heart was engaged, and take part in the struggle. "The Colonel
bears embedded in the muscle of his right leg a little memento of
the
period in the shape of a minie-ball, which he jocularly referred to
as his thermometer, and which relieves him from the necessity of
reading 'The Probabilities' in his morning paper. This saves him
just
so much time; and for a man who, as he said, has not a moment of
waste time on him anywhere, five minutes a day are something in the
course of a year. Simple, clear, bold, and straightforward in mind
and action, Colonel Silas Lapham, with a prompt comprehensiveness
and
a never-failing business sagacity, is, in the best sense of that
much-abused term, one of nature's noblemen, to the last inch of his
five eleven and a half. His life affords an example of
single-minded
application and unwavering perseverance which our young business
men
would do well to emulate. There is nothing showy or meretricious
about the man. He believes in mineral paint, and he puts his heart
and soul into it. He makes it a religion; though we would not imply
that it IS his religion. Colonel Lapham is a regular attendant at
the
Rev. Dr. Langworthy's church. He subscribes liberally to the
Associated Charities, and no good object or worthy public
enterprise
fails to receive his support. He is not now actively in politics,
and
his paint is not partisan; but it is an open secret that he is, and
always has been, a staunch Republican. Without violating the
sanctities of private life, we cannot speak fully of various
details
which came out in the free and unembarrassed interview which
Colonel
Lapham accorded our representative. But we may say that the success
of which he is justly proud he is also proud to attribute in great
measure to the sympathy and energy of his wife--one of those women
who, in whatever walk of life, seem born to honour the name of
American Woman, and to redeem it from the national reproach of
Daisy
Millerism. Of Colonel Lapham's family, we will simply add that it
consists of two young lady daughters."The
subject of this very inadequate sketch is building a house on the
water side of Beacon Street, after designs by one of our leading
architectural firms, which, when complete, will be one of the
finest
ornaments of that exclusive avenue. It will, we believe, be ready
for
the occupancy of the family sometime in the spring."When
Bartley had finished his article, which he did with a good deal of
inward derision, he went home to Marcia, still smiling over the
thought of Lapham, whose burly simplicity had peculiarly amused
him.
"He regularly turned himself inside out to me," he said, as
he sat describing his interview to Marcia."Then
I know you could make something nice out of it," said his wife;
"and that will please Mr. Witherby.""Oh
yes, I've done pretty well; but I couldn't let myself loose on him
the way I wanted to. Confound the limitations of decency, anyway! I
should like to have told just what Colonel Lapham thought of
landscape advertising in Colonel Lapham's own words. I'll tell you
one thing, Marsh: he had a girl there at one of the desks that you
wouldn't let ME have within gunshot of MY office. Pretty? It ain't
any name for it!" Marcia's eyes began to blaze, and Bartley
broke out into a laugh, in which he arrested himself at sight of a
formidable parcel in the corner of the room."Hello!
What's that?""Why,
I don't know what it is," replied Marcia tremulously. "A
man brought it just before you came in, and I didn't like to open
it.""Think
it was some kind of infernal machine?" asked Bartley, getting
down on his knees to examine the package. "MRS. B. Hubbard,
heigh?" He cut the heavy hemp string with his penknife. "We
must look into this thing. I should like to know who's sending
packages to Mrs. Hubbard in my absence." He unfolded the
wrappings of paper, growing softer and finer inward, and presently
pulled out a handsome square glass jar, through which a crimson
mass
showed richly. "The Persis Brand!" he yelled. "I knew
it!""Oh,
what is it, Bartley?" quavered Marcia. Then, courageously
drawing a little nearer: "Is it some kind of jam?" she
implored. "Jam? No!" roared Bartley. "It's PAINT! It's
mineral paint--Lapham's paint!""Paint?"
echoed Marcia, as she stood over him while he stripped their
wrappings from the jars which showed the dark blue, dark green,
light
brown, dark brown, and black, with the dark crimson, forming the
gamut of colour of the Lapham paint. "Don't TELL me it's paint
that I can use, Bartley!""Well,
I shouldn't advise you to use much of it--all at once," replied
her husband. "But it's paint that you can use in
moderation."Marcia
cast her arms round his neck and kissed him. "O Bartley, I think
I'm the happiest girl in the world! I was just wondering what I
should do. There are places in that Clover Street house that need
touching up so dreadfully. I shall be very careful. You needn't be
afraid I shall overdo. But, this just saves my life. Did you BUY
it,
Bartley? You know we couldn't afford it, and you oughtn't to have
done it! And what does the Persis Brand mean?""Buy
it?" cried Bartley. "No! The old fool's sent it to you as a
present. You'd better wait for the facts before you pitch into me
for
extravagance, Marcia. Persis is the name of his wife; and he named
it
after her because it's his finest brand. You'll see it in my
interview. Put it on the market her last birthday for a surprise to
her.""What
old fool?" faltered Marcia."Why,
Lapham--the mineral paint man.""Oh,
what a good man!" sighed Marcia from the bottom of her soul.
"Bartley! you WON'T make fun of him as you do of some of those
people? WILL you?""Nothing
that HE'LL ever find out," said Bartley, getting up and brushing
off the carpet-lint from his knees.