leave these innocents in, their cradles, where they belonged.
Second, and chiefly, the world of trav- ellers saw that the Crichton, the Ama- dis, the perfect chevalier of the future, had arisen, a railroad manager caring for the comfort of his passengers !
The first week the number of the C. and O.'s passengers was doubled : in a week or two more, freight began to come in, in driblets, on the line which its owners had gone over. As soon as the shops could turn them out, some cars were put on, with arms on which travellers could rest their elbows, with head-rests where they could take naps if they were weary. These excited so much curiosity that one was exhibited in the museum at Cattawissa and anoth- er at Opelousas. It may not be gen- erally known that the received car of the American roads was devised to se- cure a premium offered by the Paw- tucket and Podunk Company. Their receipts were growing so large that they feared they should forfeit their charter. They advertised therefore for a car in which no man could sleep at night or rest by day, in which the backs should be straight, the heads of passen- gers unsupported, the feet entangled in a vice, the elbows always knocked by the passing conductor. The pattern was produced which immediately came into use on all the American roads. But on the Cattawissa and Opelousas this time-honored pattern was set aside.
Of course you see the result. Men went hundreds of miles out of their way to ride on the C. and O. The third mortgage was paid off; a reserve fund was piled up for the second ; the trustees of the first lived in dread of being paid ; and George's stock, which he bought at 3j, rose to 147 before two years had gone by ! So was it that, as we sat together in the snuggery, George was worth wellnigh three hun- dred thousand dollars. Some of his eggs were in the basket where they were laid ; some he had taken out and placed in other baskets ; some in nests where various hens were brooding over them. Sound eggs they were, wherever placed ; and such was the victory of which George had come to tell.
One of us had made money!
On his way he had seen Brannan. Brannan, the pure-minded,right-minded,. shifty man of tact, man of brain, man of heart, and man of word, who held New Altona in the hollow of his hand. Brannan had made no money. Not he, nor ever will. But Brannan could do much what he pleased in this world, without money. For whenever Bran- nan studied the rights and the wrongs of any enterprise, all men knew that what Brannan decided about it was- wellnigh the eternal truth ; and there- fore all men of sense were accustomed to place great confidence in his prophe- cies. But, more than this, and better,. Brannan was an unconscious dog, who believed in the people. So, when he knew what was the right and what was the wrong, he could stand up be- fore two or three thousand people and tell them what was right and what was wrong, and tell them with the same simplicity and freshness with which he would talk to little Horace on his knee. Of the thousands who heard him there would not be one in a hundred who knew that this was eloquence. They were fain to say, as they sat in their shops, talking, that Brannan was not eloquent. Nay, they went so far as to regret that Brannan was not eloquent ! If lie were only as eloquent as Carker was or as Barker was, how excellent he would be ! But when, a month after, it was necessary for them to do any- thing about the thing he had been speaking of, they did what Brannan had told them to do ; forgetting, most likely, that he had ever told them, and fancying that these were their own ideas, which, in fact, had, from his liquid, ponderous, transparent, and invisible common sense, distilled unconsciously into their being. I wonder whether Brannan ever knew that he was elo- quent. What I knew, and what dear George knew, was, that he was one of the leaders of men!
Courage, my friends, we are steadily advancing: to the Brick Moon!
