Part 27 (2/2)

I might make this letter much longer, but I suspect by the time you will have read this much, you will think it long enough.

Believe me none of you can think meaner of me than I do of myself.

JOE MILLER.

After the reading of the letter, Wright was the first to find his voice.

Said he: ”It is too bad. I knew Miller was reckless, but I believed his recklessness never could go beyond his own affairs. I had implicit faith in him.”

”Had he only told us,” said Ashley, ”that he wanted to use the money, he could have had five times the sum.”

”What I hate about it, is the want of courage and the lack of faith in the rist of us,” said Corrigan. ”Why did he not come loike a mon and say, 'Boys, I have lost a trifle of your money in the malstroom of stocks; be patient and I will work out?'”

”It is a pitiable business,” said Carlin. ”The money--that is the loss of it--does not hurt at all. But it was Miller who proposed the forming of this Club, and he is the one who first betrays us, and then lacks the sand to tell us about it frankly. But no matter. Jesus Christ failed to secure twelve men who were all true. What do you think of it, Brewster?”

”What Miller has done,” said Brewster, ”is but a natural result when a working man goes down into the pit of stock gambling. The hope in that business is to obtain money without earning it. It is a kind of lunacy.

In a few months, men so engaged lose everything like a steady poise to their minds. They take on all the attributes which distinguish the gambler. Their ideas are either up in the clouds or down in the depths.

Worst of all, they forget that a dollar means so many blows, so many drops of sweat, that a dollar, when we see it, means that sometime, somewhere, to produce that dollar, an honest dollar's worth of work was performed, that when that dollar is transferred to another, another dollar's worth of work in some form must be given in return, or the eternal balance of Justice will be disarranged. Miller reached the point where he did not prize his own dollars at their true value. It ought not to be expected that he would be more careful of ours.”

”Colonel, what is your judgment about the business?” Carlin asked.

”It seems to me,” was the reply, ”that when he went away Miller insulted all of you--all of us, for that matter. His conduct a.s.sumes that we are all p.a.w.nbrokers who would go into mourning over a few dollars lost.”

”Oh, no, I think not,” said Strong. ”Miller is a sensitive, high-strung man. He has been in all sorts of dangers and difficulties and has never faltered. At last he found himself in a place where, for the first time, he felt his honor wounded, and his courage failed him. He is not running away from us, he is trying to run away from himself.”

”What is your judgment, Professor?” asked Carlin.

”As they say out here, Miller got off wrong,” said the Professor; ”and he seems blinded by the mistake so much that he cannot see his best way back.”

”Harding, why are you so still?” asked Carlin.

”I am sorry for Miller,” said Harding. ”He is the best-hearted man in the world.”

”It is a most unpleasant business. What shall we do about it?” asked Carlin. ”I wish all would express an opinion.”

”What ought to be done, Carlin?” asked Wright.

Carlin answered: ”The business way would be to formally expel him from the Club, and to write him that, without waiving any legal rights, we will give him the time he requires in which to settle.”

”That would no doubt be just,” said Wright.

”There would be no injustice in it, from a business standpoint,” said Ashley.

”He certainly,” said Brewster, ”would have no right to complain of such treatment.”

Said Corrigan: ”The verdict of the worreld would be that we had acted fairly.”

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