The Wrecker

ionary household, since I had sat there first, a young American freshman, bewildered among unfamiliar dainties, Finnan haddock, kippered salmon, baps and mutton h

re was that beautiful statue of the Genius of Something or other? “You haven’t it here? not here? Really?” asks the sprightliest of my cousins, shaking curls at me; as though it were likely I had brought it in a cab, or kept it concealed about my person like a birthday surprise. In the bosom of this family, un

Adam’s sorrow kindled into momentary irritation. Nothing, however, but the usual grim cordiality appeared upon the surface; and we all three passed ceremoniously to the adjoining library, a gloomy theatre for a depressing piece of business. My grandfather charged a clay pipe, and sat tremulously smoking in a corner of the fireless chimney; behind him, although the morning was both chill and dark, the window was part

I informed my relatives of my financial situation: the amount I owed Pinkerton; the hopelessness of any maintenance from sculpture; the ca

first,” said Uncle Adam. “I take the libe

ut you must bear in mind I was ignorant in

s ear, with more of temper than affection. “I could never forget you were my sister’s son. I regard this a

t else to do but m

ld firm there is a vacancy; they call themselves Italian Warehousemen now,” he continued, regarding me with a twinkl

am asking. I ask you to pay Pinkerton, who is a poor man. I ask you

se older and (whatever you may think of it) wiser than yourself. All these schemes of your friend (of whom I know nothing, by the by) and talk of openings in the West, I simply disregard. I have no idea whatever of your going troking acros

cried. “Why, my poor friend gav

now trying to repay?” observed my uncle, wit

said my g

Uncle Adam, swinging rather obsequiously towards the sto

epeated th

am listening,”

silence; and then, “Ye’re makin’ an a

ry you should think so,” said he, “and still mor

I’m no very carin’. See here, ma man,” he continued, addressing himself to me. “A’m your gr

am, “I would like one w

se t

savagely. “If Aadam has anything to say, let him say it. It’s m

wice challenged to “speak out and be done with it,” he twice sullenly declined; and

work; ye’ve been to France, where they tell me they’re grand at the stuccy. A splendid thing for ceilin’s, the stuccy! and it’s a vailyable disguise, too; A don’t believe there’s a builder in Scotland has used more stuccy than me. But as A was sayin’, if ye

I am sure Loudon feels it so. Very handsome, and as you say, very just; but wi

in flame. The stonemason turned upon his offspring, his long upper lip pulled down, for all t

ry visible. “He will be gone to

repeated my

be gone to his offi

takin’ his smoke,”

his feet with some alacrity, as upon a sudde

andfather. “Ye will sit th

et him?” my uncle broke forth

wer) grinned at his son with the malic

and if Mr. Gregg the lawyer is there (he generally sits under the red hawthorn)

e) the significance of my grandfather and the alarm of my poor uncle:

anted was a loan of (say) two hundred pounds. I can take care of myse

we waited the coming of the lawyer in a triple silence. He appeared at last

ther. “Just a question: What ha

uite understand,” sai

smiting with his fist upon the arm of his chair. “Is

of your children a certain sum was paid down and accepted in full of

out his words, “I can leave every doit I die possessed o

eplied Gregg, with

Aadam?” asked

ay I had no need to he

You and Jeannie’s yin can go for a

o him, sick at heart. “Uncle Adam,” I said, “you can understa

rdinary man. “You shouldn’t allow it to affect your mind though. He has sterling qualities, q

ould call in about an hour at the office of the lawyer, whom (as he left the library) Uncle Adam should waylay and inform of the arrangement. I suppose there was never a

el with street-corner statues of George IV. and William Pitt, improving my mind with the pictures in the window of a music-shop, and renewing my acquaintance with Edinburgh east wind. By the en

ery valuable to the practical builder, you must be careful not to lose originality. He tells you also not to be ‘hadde

marked that I su

ouses,” observed the lawyer; “and I was tempted

“you will be rather relieved to hear that

ing, I will furnish you with an excuse, if you please,” said he, “by asking you to a bachelor dinner with myself. But the luncheon and the walk are unavoidable. He is an old man, and, I believe, really fond of you

the London letter: I know very well that with the rest and worst of me, I repented bitterly of that precipitate act. On one point, however, my whole multiplex estate of man was unanimous: the letter being gone, there was no help but I must follow. The money wa

ld hands, but with an impulse both natural and pretty, to that more enduring home which he had chosen for his clay. It was in a cemetery, by some strange chance, immured within the bulwarks of a prison; standing, besides, on the margi

irns by her; — yours is the second, Mary Murray, Born 1819, Died 1850: that’s her — a fine, plain, decent sort of a creature, tak’ her athegether. Alexander Loudon, Bo

lled, with such a leap since my departure, that I must continually inquire my way; and the very cemetery was brand new. Death, however, had been active; the graves were already numerous, and I must pick my way in the rain, among the tawdry sepulchres of millionnaires, and past the plain black crosses of Hungarian labourers, till chance or instinct led me to the place that was my father’s. The stone had been erected (I knew already) “by admiring friends”; I could now judge their taste in monuments; their taste in literature, methought, I could imagine, and I refrained from drawing near enough to read the terms of the inscription. But the name was in larger letters and stared at me — JAME

welcome; and for mine the conversation rolled awhile with laborious effort on the virtues of the deceased. His former comrades dwelt, in my company, upon his business talents or his generosity for public purposes; when my back was turned, they remembered him no more. My father had loved m

nd found it was from Pinkerton: “What day do you arrive? Awfully important.” I sent him an answer giving day and hour, and at Ogden found a fresh despatch awaiting me: “That will do. Unspeakable relief. Meet you at Sacramento.” In Paris days I had a private name for Pinkerton: “The Irrepressible” was what I had called him in hours of bitterness, and t

panting, stretched itself upon the downward track — when I beheld that vast extent of prosperous country rolling seaward from the woods and the blue mountains, that illimitable spread of rippling corn, the trees growing and blowing in the merry weather, the country boys thronging aboard the train with figs and peaches, and th

y; you’re billed for a lecture to-morrow night: Student Life in Paris, Grave and Gay: twelve hundred places booked at the last stock! Tut, man, you’re lo

after my first plunge into this fiery flui

ton. “It’s real, copper-bottomed English; you see i

ranted Entirely different,” said I, “and applies

cases. By the way, I hope you won’t mind; I’ve got your portrait all over San Francisco for the lecture, enlarged from that carte de visite: H. Loudon Dod

ccasion to point it out as “rather a good phrase; gives the two sides at a glance: I wanted the lecture written up to that.” Even after we had reached San Francisco, and

and shows a great deal further. The only thing that pains me is the portrait: I own I thought that a success. I’m dreadfully and truly so

the essential. “But, Pinkerton,” I cried, “this lecture is the mad

business through. You’ll find it all type-written in my desk at home. I put the best

rying up his new acquaintances, and ever and again hungering to introduce me to some “whole-souled, gran

n to be committed in ignorance; even for that, when I saw how its extortion puzzled and depressed the Irrepressible, my soul repented me; and

I found he had enjoyed the benefit of my correspondence with Pinkerton: adventures of my own were here and there horridly misrepresented, sentiments of my own echoed and exaggerated till I blushed to recognise them. I will do Harry Miller justice: he must have had a kind of talent, almost of geni

uscript, would stumble on a richer vein of Harry Miller, and my heart would fail me, and I gabbled. The audience yawned, it stirred uneasily, it muttered, grumbled, and broke forth at last in articulate cries of “Speak up!” and “Nobody can hear!” I took to skipping, and being extremely ill-acquainted with the country, almost invariably cut in again in the unintelligible midst of some new topic. What struck me as extremely ominous, these misfortunes were allowed to pass without a laugh. Indeed, I was beginning to fear the worst, and even personal indignity, when all at once the humour of the thing broke upon me strongly. I could have laughed aloud; a

in his pocket-book. As he saw me enter, he sprang up

r forgive me. Never mind: I did it for the best. And how nobly you clu

en more honest if

eceipts were excellent — and being in a high state of nervous tension, kept the table in a roar. Indeed, I was never in my life so well inspired as when I described my vigil over Harry Miller’s literature or the series of my emotions as I faced the audience.

turned home that night, but the mise

When I saw you didn’t catch on to the idea of the lec