Volume I Part 15 (1/2)
”Your faithful esquires were rewarded, no doubt, by the gallantry of the deed itself, Miss Taylor,” said Harry.
”Of course; but we nevertheless gave them, besides, full permission to say and do just what they pleased, all that day--and you can't think how much nonsense we talked. Each gentleman took the advertis.e.m.e.nt of the lady he had escorted, and pinned it over his heart. There were several foreigners there, and you can't think how they enjoyed it; they had never had such a frolic with young ladies before, and they thought it delightful; though, to be sure, they got at last to be rather too free; and then we had to put a stop to it.”
Elinor looked at Jane, to see if she seemed to sympathize in Adeline's story; but her cousin's beautiful face was still bright with the glow of pleasure from meeting her friend; no other thought or feeling was to be traced there.
”I don't believe they have any such fun in Paris, Mr.
Hazlehurst.”
”Not exactly.--They have a pleasantry of their own, however, which is quite agreeable.”
”I don't think I should like it. They say, a young lady dares not speak to gentlemen, nor walk with them, nor have the least bit of a flirtation. How stupid it must be!”
”But the French girls do talk to gentlemen, I a.s.sure you,”
replied Jane, ”only they are not intimate with everybody. The young men are very attentive, too; they treat young girls with much more respect, Louisa says, than in America.”
”Who cares for respect! I want to laugh and amuse myself, and have my own way,” exclaimed Adeline.
”It is growing quite warm here--you will find it pleasanter in the drawing-room, Miss Taylor;” said Elinor, not caring to listen any longer to Jane's giddy friend.
”Well, if you please, I'll run up to Jane s room, and look at the fas.h.i.+ons--I am dying to see some of her capes and collars.
By-the-bye, I had forgotten two very important things. Here is a note for your aunt, Miss Elinor; some private communication from Ma; the coachman will take the answer. And then, I came over to ask you all to drink tea with us, this evening, very sociably; n.o.body but your own family and three or four friends!”
The invitation was accepted, as a matter of course.
”Good morning, Mr. Hazlehurst; I expect to be shut up with Jane, for three hours to come; I have really talked myself out of breath; but that is always the way, with me, as you know, of old.” And the two girls, hand-in-hand, ran lightly up stairs, where Elinor, making an excuse of Mrs. Taylor's note, left them to a confidential tete-a-tete.
CHAPTER XI.
”A soldier may be anything, if brave; So may a merchant if not quite a knave.”
COWPER.
”Trade his delight and hope; and, if alive, Doubt I have none, that Barnaby will thrive.”
CRABBE.
{William Cowper (English poet, 1731-1800), ”Hope” lines 201-210.
George Crabbe (English poet, 1754-1832), ”Posthumous Tales: VIII Barnaby; the Shopman” lines II.3-4}
WE have really been very remiss in omitting so long to notice the rapid strides with which Mr. Pompey Taylor had advanced on the road to fame and fortune, during the two years in which we have lost sight of him. He might have addressed, to the reader, the remark that the Emperor Napoleon applied to his secretary, after the conquest of Prussia and Austria: ”J'ai fait des progres immenses depuis que Bourienne {sic} m'a quitte!”
{”J'ai fait des...” = I have made immense progress since Bourienne left me! Louis-Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne (1769-1834) was a French diplomat who served as Napoleon's private secretary during his invasion of Egypt}
It is a rule, in composition, it was so, at least, when people wrote by rule, to compare the little with the great. If we were to follow the direction, it would be easy to prove that these two individuals, the conqueror, Napoleon, and the speculator, Taylor, were not too widely separated for many points of resemblance to be traced between them. Ambition was the ruling pa.s.sion of both; and both were alike insatiable. Bonaparte added kingdom to kingdom; Taylor, house to house; the emperor might believe himself equal to ruling half the world; the merchant felt capable of owning the other half. The one raised army after army; the other fitted out vessel after vessel. The energies of both were inexhaustible, and both aimed at an ever-receding goal; while each, in his own way, soon reached a height never dreamed of by the mothers who rocked their cradles. Nor would it be justice to Mr. Taylor, to suppose, that the love of money, alone, was the main-spring of his actions; he, too, was spurred on by the love of glory; dollars and cents were not the end, with him; he looked upon his thousands, in gold and paper, as Napoleon did upon his thousands in flesh and blood--they were but the instruments which were to open the road to fame. The man of commerce, and the man of war, were alike lavish of their treasures, when the object of their lives was in view. If one was the boldest of generals, the other was the most enterprising of merchants; and Fortune favoured the daring of both. In short, Mr. Taylor was no common, plodding trader, content with moderate gains and safe investments, and fixing his hopes on probabilities--he pursued traffic with the pa.s.sion of a gambler, united to the close calculation of a miser; and yet, he spent freely what he had acquired easily.
There are merchants, who, by their education, their integrity, their talents and their liberality, are an honour to the profession; but Mr. Pompey Taylor was not of the number. We have all heard the anecdote of the young man addicted to the sin of swearing, whose conversation, during dinner, was taken down in short-hand, and, when read afterwards, shocked the individual himself. Could the thoughts and words of Mr. Taylor, during a single day, have been as fairly registered, perhaps he himself would have been astonished to find how very large a portion of them were given to gain and speculation, in some shape or other.
At social meetings, whether dinners or evening parties, he seldom talked long on any other subject: he has been known to utter the word 'stocks,' just as he entered a church, on Sunday; while a question about certain lots was the first sentence which pa.s.sed his lips, as he crossed the threshold on his way out. Eating his meals under his own roof; walking down Broadway to Wall-Street, every morning, at nine o'clock, and back again every afternoon at three; still the echo of Mr. Taylor's thoughts and words was 'dollars,' 'stocks,' and 'lots'--' lots,' 'stocks,' and 'dollars.' He had a value for everything in dollars--his jokes turned upon stocks--and his dreams were filled with lots. Let it not be supposed, however, that Mr. Pompey Taylor was born with the phrenological organ of the love of money more strongly developed than other human beings. By no means. He was endowed by nature with faculties and feelings as varied as other men. But, from the time he could first walk and talk, precept and example had gradually turned all his faculties in one direction; for, such had been the opinions and views of his father and elder brothers; and there was no other impulse in his nature or education, sufficiently strong to give a different bent to his energies. Under other circ.u.mstances, Pompey Taylor might have been a quick-witted lawyer, a supple politician, a daring soldier, or, with a different moral training, he might have been something far superior to either; but the field of commerce was the only one that opened to him, at his entrance into life; and it was too well adapted to the man, such as nature and education had made him, to be neglected. He found full scope, in such a sphere, for all his energies of body and mind--he delighted in its labours and its rewards.
{”phrenological” = from the pseudo-science of phrenology, which interpreted character by feeling the bulges on the human head}
Mr. Taylor had forgotten, if he had ever known the fact, that the best pleasures of this world even, are those which money cannot purchase, the severest wants those which it cannot supply. He had no conception of any consideration equal to that which riches give. Beauty unadorned was no beauty in his eyes; and he chiefly valued talent as a means of making good investments and wily speculations. He looked upon Science as the hand-maiden of Commerce; Armies and Navies existed only to defend a nation's wealth, not its liberties, or its honour. The seat of his patriotism was in his pocket; and the only internal improvement in which he was interested, was that which opened new facilities for acquiring money. It is surprising how totally such a mind becomes unfitted to enjoy and admire any great or n.o.ble quality in the abstract; in spite of a quick wit and keen organs, such men become the most one-sided beings, perhaps, in the whole human family. To moral beauty Mr. Taylor seemed quite blind; his mental vision resembled the physical sight of those individuals whose eyes, though perfect in every other respect, are incapable of receiving any impression of an object tinged with blue--the colour of the heavens. Even the few ideas he had upon religious subjects partook of the character of loss and gain; the simple spirit of true piety could never enter into a mind in the state of his. And yet, Mr. Taylor was looked upon as a happy man.
Fortunate he certainly was, for wealth and luxury had risen around him almost as readily as if possessed of Aladdin's lamp.