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Page 60
Those words are to be cut on my seal-ring, if I ever have one, and if
Dr. Anthon or Professor Webster will put them into short enough Latin
for me. That is the motto of the "Children of the Public."
John Myers died before that term was out. And my more than mother,
Betsy, went back to her friends in Maine. After the funeral I never saw
them more. How I lived from that moment to what Fausta and I call the
Crisis is nobody's concern. I worked in the shop at the school, or on
the farm. Afterwards I taught school in neighboring districts. I never
bought a ticket in a lottery or a raffle. But whenever there was a
chance to do an honest stroke of work, I did it. I have walked fifteen
miles at night to carry an election return to the _Tribune's_ agent at
Gouverneur. I have turned out in the snow to break open the road when
the supervisor could not find another man in the township.
When Sartain started his magazine, I wrote an essay in competition for
his premiums, and the essay earned its hundred dollars. When the
managers of the "Orphan Home," in Baltimore, offered their prizes for
papers on bad boys, I wrote for one of them, and that helped me on four
hard months. There was no luck in those things. I needed the money, and
I put my hook into the pork-barrel,--that is, I trusted the Public. I
never had but one stroke of luck in my life. I wanted a new pair of
boots badly. I was going to walk to Albany, to work in the State library
on the history of the Six Nations, which had an interest for me. I did
not have a dollar. Just then there passed Congress the bill dividing the
surplus revenue. The State of New York received two or three millions,
and divided it among the counties. The county of St. Lawrence divided it
among the townships, and the township of Roscius divided it among the
voters. Two dollars and sixty cents of Uncle Sam's money came to me, and
with that money on my feet I walked to Albany. That I call luck! How
many fools had to assent in an absurdity before I could study the
history of the Six Nations!
But one instance told in detail is better than a thousand told in
general, for the illustration of a principle. So I will detain you no
longer from the history of what Fausta and I call
THE CRISIS.
CHAPTER IV.
THE CRISIS.
I was at work as a veneerer in a piano-forte factory at Attica, when
some tariff or other was passed or repealed; there came a great
financial explosion, and our boss, among the rest, failed. He owed us
all six months' wages, and we were all very poor and very blue. Jonathan
Whittemore--a real good fellow, who used to cover the hammers with
leather--came to me the day the shop was closed, and told me he was
going to take the chance to go to Europe. He was going to the Musical
Conservatory at Leipsic, if he could. He would work his passage out as a
stoker. He would wash himself for three or four days at Bremen, and then
get work, if he could, with Voightlander or Von Hammer till he could
enter the Conservatory. By way of preparation for this he wanted me to
sell him my Adler's German Dictionary.
"I've nothing to give you for it, Felix, but this foolish thing,--it is
one of Burrham's tickets,--which I bought in a frolic the night of our
sleigh-ride. I'll transfer it to you."
I told Jonathan he might have the dictionary and welcome. He was doing a
sensible thing, and he would use it twenty times as much as I should. As
for the ticket, he had better keep it. I did not want it. But I saw he
would feel better if I took it,--so he indorsed it to me.
Now the reader must know that this Burrham was a man who had got hold of
one corner of the idea of what the Public could do for its children. He
had found out that there were a thousand people who would be glad to
make the tour of the mountains and the lakes every summer if they could
do it for half-price. He found out that the railroad companies were glad
enough to put the price down if they could be sure of the thousand
people. He mediated between the two, and so "cheap excursions" came into
being. They are one of the gifts the Public gives its children. Rising
from step to step, Burrham had, just before the great financial crisis,
conceived the idea of a great cheap combination, in which everybody was
to receive a magazine for a year and a cyclop�dia, both at half-price;
and not only so, but the money that was gained in the combination was to
be given by lot to two ticket-holders, one a man and one a woman, for
their dowry in marriage. I dare say the reader remembers the prospectus.
It savors too much of the modern "Gift Enterprise" to be reprinted in
full; but it had this honest element, that everybody got more than he
could get for his money in retail. I have my magazine, the old _Boston
Miscellany_, to this day, and I just now looked out Levasseur's name in
my cyclop�dia; and, as you will see, I have reason to know that all the
other subscribers got theirs.
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