The thought of it saddened me all the way home: and the talk of the real estate man as he went made me feel still worse.
He showed me a church that I could have bought for a hundred thousand and sold now at half a million for a motor garage. If I had started buying churches instead of working on a newspaper, I"d have been rich to-day.
There was a skating rink I could have bought, and a theatre and a fruit store, a beautiful little one-story wooden fruit store, right on a corner, with the darlingest Italian in it that you ever saw. There was the cutest little pet of a cow-stable that I could have turned into an apartment store at a profit of a million,--at the time when I was studying Greek and forgetting it. Oh! the wasted opportunities of life!
And that evening when I got back to the club and talked about it at dinner to my business friends, I found that I had only heard a small part of it.
Real estate! That"s nothing! Why they told me that fifteen years ago I could have had all sorts of things,--trunk line railways, sugar refineries, silver mines,--any of them for a song. When I heard it I was half glad I hadn"t sung for the land. They told me that there was a time when I could have bought out the Federal Steel Co. for twenty million dollars! And I let it go.
[Ill.u.s.tration: He showed me a church that I could have bought for a hundred thousand.]
The whole Canadian Pacific Railway, they said, was thrown on the market for fifty millions. I left it there writhing, and didn"t pick it up.
Sheer lack of confidence! I see now why these men get rich. It"s their fine, glorious confidence, that enables them to write out a cheque for fifty million dollars and think nothing of it.
If I wrote a cheque like that, I"d be afraid of going to Sing Sing. But they aren"t, and so they get what they deserve.
Forty-five years ago,--a man at the club told me this with almost a sob in his voice,--either Rockefeller or Carnegie could have been bought clean up for a thousand dollars!
Think of it!
Why didn"t my father buy them for me, as pets, for my birthday and let me keep them till I grew up?
If I had my life over again, no school or education for me! Not with all this beautiful mud and these tar-paper shacks and corner lot fruit stores lying round! I"d buy out the whole United States and take a chance, a sporting chance, on the rise in values.
_IV.--My Unknown Friend_
HE STEPPED into the smoking compartment of the Pullman, where I was sitting alone.
He had on a long fur-lined coat, and he carried a fifty-dollar suit case that he put down on the seat.
Then he saw me.
"Well! well!" he said, and recognition broke out all over his face like morning sunlight.
"Well! well!" I repeated.
"By Jove!" he said, shaking hands vigorously, "who would have thought of seeing you?"
"Who, indeed," I thought to myself.
He looked at me more closely.
"You haven"t changed a bit," he said.
"Neither have you," said I heartily.
"You may be a _little_ stouter," he went on critically.
"Yes," I said, "a little; but you"re stouter yourself."
This of course would help to explain away any undue stoutness on my part.
"No," I continued boldly and firmly, "you look just about the same as ever."
And all the time I was wondering who he was. I didn"t know him from Adam; I couldn"t recall him a bit. I don"t mean that my memory is weak.
On the contrary, it is singularly tenacious. True, I find it very hard to remember people"s _names_; very often, too, it is hard for me to recall a _face_, and frequently I fail to recall a person"s appearance, and of course clothes are a thing one doesn"t notice. But apart from these details I never forget anybody, and I am proud of it. But when it does happen that a name or face escapes me I never lose my presence of mind. I know just how to deal with the situation. It only needs coolness and intellect, and it all comes right.
My friend sat down.
"It"s a long time since we met," he said.
"A long time," I repeated with something of a note of sadness. I wanted him to feel that I, too, had suffered from it.
"But it has gone very quickly."
"Like a flash," I a.s.sented cheerfully.
"Strange," he said, "how life goes on and we lose track of people, and things alter. I often think about it. I sometimes wonder," he continued, "where all the old gang are gone to."
"So do I," I said. In fact I was wondering about it at the very moment.
I always find in circ.u.mstances like these that a man begins sooner or later to talk of the "old gang" or "the boys" or "the crowd." That"s where the opportunity comes in to gather who he is.
"Do you ever go back to the old place?" he asked.
"Never," I said, firmly and flatly. This had to be absolute. I felt that once and for all the "old place" must be ruled out of the discussion till I could discover where it was.
"No," he went on, "I suppose you"d hardly care to."
"Not now," I said very gently.
"I understand. I beg your pardon," he said, and there was silence for a few moments.
So far I had scored the first point. There was evidently an old place somewhere to which I would hardly care to go. That was something to build on.
Presently he began again.
"Yes," he said, "I sometimes meet some of the old boys and they begin to talk of you and wonder what you"re doing."
"Poor things," I thought, but I didn"t say it.
I knew it was time now to make a bold stroke; so I used the method that I always employ. I struck in with great animation.
"Say!" I said, "where"s Billy? Do you ever hear anything of Billy now?"
This is really a very safe line. Every old gang has a Billy in it.