Old Ebenezer. Opie Percival Read

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СКАЧАТЬ cents. It's about as good a notice as I ever read, and it's a pity to let it lie there and rust. Of course I wouldn't ask either of you for the money: That wouldn't look very well. Eighty cents, two forties. I could go to some of the advertisers, but an advertiser loses respect for a paper that needs eighty cents."

      "Warren," said Caruthers, "I'd like to see your paper come out, for I want to read my roast on the last legislature, but I haven't eighty cents."

      Lyman sat looking about with a dozing laugh on his lips: "Are you sure you'll not need eighty cents every week?" he asked.

      The editor's eyes danced a jig of delight. "I may never need it again," he declared.

      "Well, but how often are you going to print a notice of the firm?"

      "I don't know. Why?"

      "Well, I didn't know but your paper might get stuck in the express office every time you have something about us. It's likely to go that way, you know. I've got a few dollars—"

      The editor grabbed his hand: "I want to welcome you to our town," he cried. "You come here with energy and new life. Now, Caruthers, what the deuce are you laughing at? You know that no one appreciates a man of force and ideas more than I do. Just let me have the eighty, Mr. Lyman, for I've got a nigger ready to turn the press. Now, I'm ten thousand times obliged to you," he effusively added as Lyman gave him the money.

      He hastened out and Caruthers leaned back with a lazy laugh. "He told the truth about needing the money. I've known his paper to be stuck in the throat of the press, and all for the want of fifty cents. I'm glad you let him have it. He's not a bad fellow. He lives in the air. Every time he touches the earth he gets into trouble."

      "So do we all," Lyman replied, "and nearly always on account of money. I wish there wasn't a penny in the world."

      "Sometimes there isn't, so far as I am concerned," Caruthers said. "No, sir," he added, "they keep money out of my way. And I want to tell you that I'm not a bad business man, either. But I'm close to forty and haven't laid up a cent, and nothing that I can ever say in praise of myself can overcome that fact. I don't see, however, why you should be a failure. You have generations of money makers behind you."

      "Yes, hundreds of years behind me," said Lyman. "And the vein was worked out long before I came on. There is no failure more complete than the one that comes along in the wake of success. But I am not going to remain a failure. I'll strike it after awhile."

      "I think you have struck it now," replied Caruthers. "Business will liven up in a day or two. When a thing touches bottom it can't go any further down, but it may rise."

      "Yes," said Lyman, "unless it continues to lie there."

      "But we must stir it up," Caruthers declared. "We've got the enterprise all right—we've got the will, and now all that's needed is something for us to take hold of."

      "That's about so," Lyman agreed. "Unless a man has something to lift, he can never find out how strong he is."

      And thus they talked until after the midnight hour, until Caruthers, his feet on a table, his head thrown back, his pipe between the fingers of his limp hand, fell asleep. Lyman sat there, more thoughtful, now that he felt alone. At the threshold of a new venture, we look back upon the hopes that led us into other undertakings, and upon many a failure we bestow a look of tender but half reproachful forgiveness. The trials and the final success of other men make us strong. And with his mild eyes set in review, Lyman thought that never before had he found himself so well seasoned, so well prepared to do something. He listened to the grinding of the press, to the midnight noises about the public square, the town muttering in its sleep. "I am advancing" he mused, looking about him. "I was not content to skimp along in New England, nor to buy cross-ties, nor to singe the pin feathers off a chicken at night, nor to worry with the feeble machinery of a dull schoolboy's head. And I will not be content merely to sit here and wait for clients that may never come. I am going to do something."

CHAPTER III.

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      The Timely Oracle.

      A year passed by. Caruthers dozed with his cob pipe between the fingers of his limp hand, waiting for clients whose step was not heard upon the stairs. But the office had not been wholly without business. Once a man called to seek advice, which was given, free, as an advertisement for more work from his neighborhood, and once Lyman had defended a man charged with the theft of a sheep. The mutton was found in the fellow's closet and the hide of the animal was discovered under his bed; and with such evidence against him it was not expected that a lawyer could do much, so, when the prisoner was sentenced to the penitentiary, Caruthers congratulated his partner with the remark: "That was all right. We can't expect to win every time. But we were not so badly defeated; you got him off with one year, and he deserved two. To cut a thief's sentence in two ought to help us."

      "Among the other thieves," Lyman suggested.

      "Oh, yes," Caruthers spoke up cheerfully. "A lawyer's success depends largely upon his reputation among thieves."

      "Or at least among the men who intend to stretch the law. Let me see; we have been in business together just one year, and our books balance with a most graceful precision. We are systematic, anyway."

      "Yes," Caruthers replied, letting his pipe fall to the floor, "system is my motto. No business, properly systematized, is often better than some business in a tangle."

      Warren, the editor, appeared at the door. "Are you busy?" he asked.

      "Well, we are not in what you might call a rush," Lyman answered. "Are you busy?" he inquired, with a twinkle in his eye.

      Before answering, Warren stepped into the room and sat down with a distressful sigh. "I am more than that," he said, dejectedly. "I am in hot water, trying to swim with one hand."

      "What's the trouble?"

      "Oh, a sort of summer, fall, spring and winter complaint." He took out a note book, turned over the leaves, returned it to his pocket and said: "I lack just sixty-five, this time."

      "Dollars?" Lyman asked.

      Warren gave him a quick, reproachful look. "Now, Judge, what airs have I ever put on to cause you to size me up that way? Have I ever shown any tax receipts? Have I ever given any swell dinners? Sixty-five cents is the amount I am short, Judge, and where I am to get it, the Lord only knows. My paper is lying over yonder in the express office, doing no good to anybody, but they won't let me take it out and stamp intelligence upon it. The town sits gaping for the news, with a bad eye on me; but what can I do with a great corporation arrayed against me? For sixty-five cents I could get the paper out, and it's full of bright things. The account of your defense of the sheep thief is about as amusing a thing as I ever read, and it will be copied all over the country; it would put a nation in a good humor irrespective of party affiliations, but sixty-five millions of people are to be cheated, and all on account of sixty-five cents, one cent to the million."

      "Things are down to a low mark when you have to make your estimates on that basis. One cent to the million," said Lyman with a quiet laugh.

      "Distressful," Warren replied. "The country was never СКАЧАТЬ