Part 1 (1/2)
The Harris-Ingram Experiment.
by Charles E. Bolton.
INTRODUCTION
This volume was ready for publication when my husband died, October 23, 1901. In it, in connection with a love story and some foreign travel, he strove to show how necessary capital and labor are to each other. He had always been a friend to labor, and there were no more sincere mourners at his funeral than the persons he employed. He believed capital should be conciliatory and helpful, and co-operate with labor in the most friendly manner, without either party being arrogant or indifferent.
Mr. Bolton took the deepest interest in all civic problems, and it is a comfort to those who loved him that his book, ”A Model Village and Other Papers,” came from the press a few days before his death. He had hoped after finis.h.i.+ng a book of travel, having crossed the ocean many times and been in many lands, and doing some other active work in public life, to take a trip around the world and rest, but rest came in another way.
Sarah K. Bolton
Cleveland, Ohio.
PREFACE
Mr. W.D. Howells, in reply to a literary society in Ashtabula County, Ohio, said that most people had within their personal experience one book.
I have often quoted Howells's words to my best friend, who has written a score of books, and the answer as frequently comes, ”Why not write a book yourself?” Encouraged by Howells's belief, and stimulated by the accepted challenge of my friend, to whom I promised a completed book in twelve months, I found time during a very busy year to pencil the chapters that follow. Most of the book was written while waiting at stations, or on the cars, and in hotels, using the spare moments of an eight-months' lecture season, and the four months at home occupied by business.
I am aware that some critics decry a novel written with a purpose. Permit me therefore in advance to admit that this book has a double purpose: To test the truth of Howells's words as applied to myself; and to describe a journey, both at home and abroad, which may possibly be enjoyed by the reader, the inconveniences of travel being lessened by incidentally tracing a love story to a strange but perhaps satisfactory conclusion; the whole leading to the evolution of a successful experiment, which in fragments is being tried in various parts of the civilized world.
THE HARRIS-INGRAM EXPERIMENT
CHAPTER I
THE HARRISES IN NEW YORK
It was five o'clock in the afternoon, when a bright little messenger boy in blue touched the electric b.u.t.ton of Room No. ---- in Carnegie Studio, New York City. At once the door flew open and a handsome young artist received a Western Union telegram, and quickly signed his name, ”Alfonso H. Harris” in the boy's book.
”Here, my boy, is twenty-five cents,” he said, and tore open the message, which read as follows:--
Harrisville,--.
_Alfonso H. Harris, Carnegie Studio, New York._
We reach Grand Central Depot at 7:10 o'clock tomorrow evening in our new private car Alfonso. Family greetings; all well.
Reuben Harris.
Alfonso put the telegram in his pocket, completed packing his steamer trunk, wrote a letter to his landlord, enclosing a check for the last quarter's rent, and ran downstairs and over to the storage company, to leave an order to call for two big trunks of artist's belongings, not needed in Europe.
A hansom-cab took him to the Windsor Hotel, where he almost forgot to pay his barber for a shave, such was his excitement. A little dry toast, two soft boiled eggs, and a cup of coffee were quite sufficient, since his appet.i.te, usually very good, somehow had failed him.
It was now fifteen minutes to seven o'clock. In less than half an hour Alfonso was to meet his father, mother, and sisters, and after a few days in the metropolis, join them in an extended journey over the British Isles, and possibly through portions of Europe.
Alfonso was the only son of Reuben Harris, a rich manufacturer of iron and steel. His father, a man naturally of very firm will, had earnestly longed that his only son might succeed him in business, and so increase and perpetuate a fortune already colossal. It was a terrible struggle for Harris senior to yield to his son's strong inclination to study art, but once the father had been won over, no doubt in part by the mother's strong love for her only boy, he a.s.sured Alfonso that he would be loyal to him, so long as his son was loyal to his profession. This had given the boy courage, and he had improved every opportunity while in New York to acquaint himself with art, and his application to study had been such that he was not only popular with his fellow artists, but they recognized that he possessed great capacity for painstaking work.