The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863

I do not write Hallet. You may give him as much or as little of this letter as you think will be good for him.

Kate sends love to you and to Alice; and dear David, with all the love I felt for you when I wore a short jacket, and sat on the old stool,

    I am your devoted friend.

It was a dingy old sign. It had hung there in sun and rain till its letters were faint and its face was furrowed. It had looked down on a generation that had passed away, and seen those who placed it there go out of that doorway never to return; still it clung to that dingy old warehouse, and still Russell, Rollins & Co. was signed in the dingy old counting room at the head of the stairway. It was known the world over. It was heard of on the cotton fields of Texas, in the canebrakes of Cuba, and amid the rice swamps of Carolina. The Chinaman spoke of it as he sipped his tea and plied his chopsticks in the streets of Canton, and the half-naked negro rattled its gold as he gathered palm oil and the copal gum on the western coast of Africa. Its plain initials, painted in black on a white ground, waved from tall masts over many seas, and its simple 'promise to pay,' scrawled in a bad hand on a narrow strip of paper, unlocked the vaults of the best bankers in Europe. And yet it was a dingy old sign! Men looked up to it as they passed by, and wondered that a cracked, weather-beaten board, that would not sell for a dollar, should be counted 'good for a million.'

It was a dingy old warehouse, with narrow, dark, cobwebbed windows, and wide, rusty iron shutters, which, as the bleak October wind swept up old Long Wharf, swung slowly on their hinges with a sharp, grating creak. I heard them in my boyhood. Perched on a tall stool at that old desk, I used to listen, in the long winter nights, to those strange, wild cries, till I fancied they were voices of the uneasy dead, come back to take the vacant seats beside me, and to pace again, with ghostly tread, the floor of that dark old counting room. They were a mystery and a terror to me; but they never creaked so harshly, or cried so wildly, as on that October night, when for the first time in nine years I turned my steps up the trembling old stairway.

It was just after nightfall. A single gas burner threw a dim, uncertain light over the old desk, and lit up the figure of a tall, gray-haired man, who was bending over it. He had round, stooping shoulders, and long, spindling limbs. One of his large feet, encased in a thick, square-toed shoe, rested on the round of the desk; the other, planted squarely on the floor, upheld his spare, gaunt frame. His face was thin and long, and two deep, black lines under his eyes contrasted strangely with the pallid whiteness of his features. His clothes were of the fashion of those good people called 'Friends,' and had served long as his 'Sunday best' before being degraded to daily duty. They were of plain brown, and, though not shabby, were worn and threadbare, and of decidedly economical appearance. Everything about him, indeed, wore an economical look. His scant coat tails, narrow pants, and short waistcoat showed that the cost of each inch of material had been counted, while his thin hair, brushed carefully over his bald head, had not a lock to spare; and even his large, sharp bones were covered with only just enough flesh to hold them comfortably together. He had stood there till his eye was dim and his step feeble, and though he had, for twenty years—when handing in each semiannual trial balance to the head of the house—declared that was his last, everybody said he would continue to stand there till his own trial balance was struck, and his earthly accounts were closed forever.

As I entered, he turned his mild blue eye upon me, and, taking my hand warmly in his, exclaimed:

'My dear boy, I am glad to see thee!'

'I am glad to see you, David. Is Alice well?'

'Very well. And Kate, and thy babies?'

'All well,' I replied.

'Thee has come to see John?'

'Yes. How is he?'

'Oh, better; he got out several days ago. He's inside now,' and opening the door of an inner office, separated from the outer one by a glass partition, he said, 'John, Edmund is here.'

A tall, dark man came to the door, and, with a slightly flurried and embarrassed manner, said:

'Ah, Mr. Kirke! I'm glad to see you. Please step in.'

As he tendered me a chair, a shorter and younger gentleman, who was writing at another desk, sprang from his seat, and slapping me familiarly on the back, exclaimed:

'My dear fellow, how are you?'

'Very well, Cragin; how are you?' I replied, returning his cordial greeting.

'Good as new—never better in my life. It's good for one's health to see you here.'

'I have come at Mr. Hallet's invitation.'

'Yes, I know, Hallet has told me you've a smart boy you want us to take. Send him along. Boston's the place to train a youngster to business.'

The last speaker was not more than thirty, but a bald spot on the top of his head, and a slight falling-in of his mouth, caused by premature decay of the front teeth, made him seem several years older. He had marked but not regular features, and a restless, dark eye, that opened and shut with a peculiar wink, which kept time with the motion of his lips in speaking. His clothes were cut in a loose, jaunty style, and his manner, though brusque and abrupt, betokened, like his face, a free, frank, whole-souled character. He was several years the junior of the other, and as unlike him as one man can be unlike another.

The older gentleman, as I have said, was tall and dark. He had a high, bold forehead, a pale, sallow complexion, and wore heavy gray whiskers, trimmed with the utmost nicety, and meeting under a sharp, narrow chin. His face was large, his jaws wide, and his nose pointed and prominent, but his mouth was small and gathered in at the corners like a rat's; and, as if to add to the rat resemblance, its puny, white teeth seemed borrowed from that animal. There was a stately precision in his manner and a stealthy softness in his tread not often seen in combination, which might have impressed a close observer as indicative of a bold, pompous, and yet cunning character.

These two gentlemen—Mr. Hallet and Mr. Cragin—were the only surviving partners of the great house of Russell, Rollins & Co.

'Have you brought him with you?' asked Hallet, his voice trembling a little, and his pale face flushing slightly as he spoke.

'No, sir,' I replied; 'I thought I would confer with you first. I have not yet broached the subject to the lad.'

Some unimportant conversation followed, when Hallet, turning to Cragin, asked:

'Are all the letters written for tomorrow's steamers?'

'Yes,' said Cragin, rising; 'and I believe I'll leave you two together. As you've not spoken for ten years, you must have a good deal to say. Come, David,' he called out, as he drew on his outside coat, 'let's go.'

'No, don't take David,' I exclaimed; 'I want to talk with the old gentleman.'

'But you can see him to-morrow.'

'No, I return in the morning.'

'Well, David, I'll tell Alice you'll be home by nine.'

'Oh, that's it,' I said, laughing. 'It's Alice who makes you leave so early on steamer night.'

'Yes, sir; Alice that is, and Mrs. Augustus Cragin that is to be—when I get a new set of teeth. Good night,' and saying this, he took up his cane, and left the office.

When he was gone, Hallet said to me:

'Do you desire to have David a witness to our conversation?'

'I want him to be a party to it. We can come to no arrangement without his coöperation.'

Hallet asked the bookkeeper in. When he was seated, I said:

'Well, Mr. Hallet, what do you propose to do for your son?'

'To treat him as I do my other children. Do all but acknowledge him. That would injure him.'

'That is not important. But please be explicit as to what you will do.'

'David tells me that his inclinations tend to business, and that you have meant to take him into your office. I will take him into mine, and when he is twenty-one, if he has conducted himself properly, I will give him an interest.'

'I shall be satisfied with no contingent arrangement, sir. I know Frank will prove worthy of the position.'

'Very well; then I will agree definitely to make him a partner when he is of age.'

'Well, Mr. Hallet, if Frank will consent to come, I will agree to that with certain conditions. I told his mother, when she was dying, that I would consider him my own child; therefore I cannot give up the control of him. He must regard me and depend on me as he does now. Again, I cannot let him come here, and have no home whose influence shall protect him from the temptations which beset young men in a large city. David must take him into his family, and treat him as he treated me when I was a boy, and—this must be reduced to writing.'

Hallet showed some emotion when I spoke of Frank's mother, but his face soon assumed its usual expression, and he promptly replied:

'I will agree to all that, but I would suggest that the fact of his being my son should not be communicated to him; that it be confined to us three. I ask this, believe me, only for the sake of my family.

'I see no objection to that, sir, and I think, Frank, for his own sake, should not know what his prospects are.'