Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich

id President Boomer as they passed throu

ng?" said

to a loud, explosive laugh, while his spectacles irradiated that peculiar form of glee derived from a Latin quotation by those

tly. They kept their hands off him, but they watched him sideways through their spectacles. At the least sign of restlessness they doused him with Latin. The Wizard of Fi

"The Excavation of Mitylene" as a sort of writ. Tomlinson and his wife had looked at the pictures of the ruins, and from the appearance of them

was now being taken to look at the university. Dr. Boomer knew by exper

he same way, at Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown's Dante luncheons, he generally talked of the Italian cinquecentisti and whether Gian Gobbo della Scala had left a greater name than Can Grande della Spiggiola. But such talk as that was naturally only for women. Businessmen are much too shrewd for that kind of thing; in fact, so shrewd are they, as President Boome

ht them e

itating tone as he looked at the smooth grass o

ield sports," said the pres

other side added, like a c

o-called elision of the final "m" was more properly a dropping of the vowel with a repercussion of the two last consonants. He supported this by quoting Ammianus,

ration of Tomlinson was wonderful, and that it was excellent to see how Boyster tried in vain to draw him; and Boyster said afterwards that the wa

went in at the iron gates and up th

utoria Avenue, and with its largest buildings, those of the facultie

re are students going in and out in overall suits, people have often mistaken the university, or this newer part of it, for a factory. A foreign visitor once said that the students looked like plumbers, and President Boomer was so proud of it that he put the phrase into his next Commencement address

ake it for a factory. This, indeed, was once the whole university, and had stood there since colonial days under the name Concordia College. It had been fi

ollege of the by-gone type to a university in the true modern sense. At Plutoria they now taught everything. Concordia College, for example, had no teaching of religi

machines on the top of it that measured the speed of the wind, and deep in its basements it measured earthquakes with a seismograph; it held classes on forestry and dentistry and palmistry; it sent life classes into the slums, and death classes to the city morgue. It offe

one of its faculties was now a facultas in the real acceptance of the word, and its studies properly and truly studia; indeed, if the businessmen woul

ith college books, and female students with winged-victory hats, and professors wi

in a sympathetic voice as one of the shivering

him?" said the Wi

president quietly and sad

ffic

omer, can you put your hand for me on a first-class botanist?' I'd say, 'Take Withers.' I'd say it in a minute." This was true

ted Tomlinson, "I suppose he ain't q

rasset, as no doubt you are thinking to yourself. The fact is that Withers, though an excellent fellow, can't mana

eh?" said

is. I can't dismiss him. I can't

is walk and looked sideways at the prospec

al figure passed th

s another case of inefficiency-Professor

with him?" ask

ent. "With large classes he is really excellent,

irst year, but were powerless with the second; others who were all right with the second but broke down with the third, while others could handle the third but collapsed with the fourth. There were professors who were all right in their own subject, but

verybody but himself and Dr. Boyster. The latter stood in a class all by himself. He had known the president for forty-five years, ever si

ssing the professors was only part of the tr

tation Greek portico of the old Concordia College building, "is our

same at the time when its students had trooped off in a flock to join the army of the Potomac, and much the same, indeed, three generations before that, when the

ilding down and to build on its site a real f

"Professor Withers will not meet his classes this week," and another, "Owing to illness, Professor Shottat will not lecture this month," while still another announced, "Owing to the indisposition of Professor Podge, all botanical classes are suspended, but Professor Podge hopes to be able to join in the Bota

bronze busts of men with Roman faces and bare neck

of the faculty," answered the president, and at this the hopes of Tomlinson sank in his heart. For

made a great fortune in the produce business and wishing to mark his gratitude to the community he erected the anemometer, the wind-measure, on the roof of the building, attaching to it no other condition than that his name should be printed in the weekly rep

ter his name?"

rs, our honorary degree. We are always happy to gr

etly and steadily at the Wizard of Finance. To both their minds i

ou begin to realize our unhappy position. Money, money, money," he repeated half-musingl

could be bought if anyone, any man of large heart; would come to the university and say straight out, "Gentlemen, what can I do for you?" Better still, it appeared the whole museum which was hopelessly antiquated, being twenty-f

ounders and benefactors in long red robes, holding scrolls of paper, and others sitting hold

he university and say, "Gentlemen, what can I do for you?" On which the whole library, for

n sank lower and lower. The red robes

atus for which the university was unable to afford suitable premises, and in the chemical department there were vast premises for which the university was unable to buy apparatus, and so on. Indeed it was part of Dr. Boomer's method to get himself endowed f

izard of Finance. And this time his voice lost its hesita

ve a

huge ejaculation of surprise

ow, indeed, we have got you where we want you," and h

The president, on learning that Fred had put in four years in Cahoga County Section No. 3 School, and had been head of his class in ciphering, nodded his head gravely and said it would s

aring the painted inscription: Geological and Metallurgical Laboratories. Stuck in the door was a card with the words (they were

no doubt busy with his tests. We won't disturb him." The presi

he oaken door of the Department of Geology and Metallu

among his blue flames at a final test on which depended the fa

ing-table. It had been taken up from the creek along its whole length, at even spaces twenty yards apart, by an ex

em up after analysis in little white cardboard boxes, he marked eac

of last year's graduation class. It was he, in fa

stuff, anyw

's gold.' Martin Frobisher brought back four shiploads of it from Baffin Land thinking that he had discovered an Eldorado. There are large deposits of it in the mines of Cornwall, and it is just possible," here the professor measured his words as if speaking of something that he wouldn't promise, "that the Cassiterides of the Phoenicians contained deposits of the same sulphuret. Indeed, I def

d?" broke in t

in the slightest. Much less valuable than, let us say, ordin

oment, watching the blue

accept the very handsome fee which they had offered me for my services. But the main feature, the real point of interest in this matter remains. Here we have undoubtedly a sporadic deposit-what miners call a pocket-of pure gold in a Devonian formation of the post-tertiary period. This once estab

ooked at the professor w

I would if I we

lies in town and didn't need to. But he was a smart young man, dressed in the latest fashion with brown boots and a crosswise ti

said the

you see what

said G

bunch got interested and planned to float the com

?" repeated the pr

e and swopped them on you for the real thing, so as t

stablishing the theory that a sporadic outcropping of the sort might be found in a post-tertiary formation. I

ked at the professor

id, and he laughed

Boyster over to his house beside the campus, and there in his study had given him a cigar as big as a rope and taken an

; "wonderful penetration, and a man of very f

o," asserte

he means to give the m

said the

r studies in electrical science, and second that we grant him the de

of course; as to the degree, it's only a question of ge

e faculty that day bid fair to lose all vestige of decorum in the excitement of the moment. For, as Dean Elderberry Foible, the head of the faculty, said, the motion that they had before them amounted practically to a revolution. The proposal was nothing less than the permission of the use of lead-pencils instead of pen and ink in the sessional examinations of the university. Anyone conversant with the inner life of a college w

n the following Saturday morning. This revolutionary suggestion, involving work on Saturday, reduced the meeting to a mere turmoil, in the midst of which Elderberry Foible proposed that the whole question of the use of lead-pencils should be adjourned till that day six months, and that meantime a new special committee of seventeen professors, with power

said that there was no need to remind the faculty of Tomlinson's services to the nation; they knew them. Of the members of the faculty, indeed, some thought that he meant the Tomlinson who wrote the famous monologue on the Iota Subscript, while oth

erring on him far other titles. "Idiot," "Scoundrel," "Swindler," were the least of them. Every stock and share with which his name was kn

esty, but they went further and

asually, a perfectly simple business question. I said to him. 'T.C. Bonds have risen twenty-two and a half in a week. You know and I know that they are only collateral trust, and that the stock underneath never could a

eated the listener contemptuo

ahoga County in haying time with a thunderstorm threatening, unload with greater rapidity than did the major shareholders of the Auriferous. Mr. Lucullus Fyshe traded off a quarter of his stock to an unwary member of the Mausoleum Club at a drop of thirty per cent, and being too prudent t

mbeciles' Relief Society, and Mr. Furlong, senior, passed his

entire stock of the company bid fair to be in the hands of Idiots, Orphans, Protestants, Foundlings, Imbeciles, Missionaries, Chinese, and other unfinancial people, with Tomlinson the Wizard of Finance as the senior shareholder an

but in another part of the office a section of the firm were busily making their preparations against the expected actions for fraud and warrants of distraint and injunctions against disposal of

office of the Financial Undertone the type was set f

LL

RIE CONS

THE MAN

D THIS

ors and sub-editors and reporters and compositors the news went seething forth in a flood that the Erie Auriferous Consolidated was going to shatter into fragments like the bursting of a dynamite bomb. It rushed with a thousand whispering tongues from street to street till it filled the corridors of the law courts and the lobbies of the offices, and till every honest man that h

attering type there came a knock at the door, hesitant and uncertain, and before the eyes of the astound

nson wanted than he dashed across the outer office to his p

biggest thing in America. For sheer calmness and nerve I never hea

" said

his entire fortune

s looked at one another, lost in admiration of

happened wa

e fortune, to put Dr. Boomer in a position to practically destroy the whole place. But, like many a modest man, he lacked the assurance to speak out. He felt t

to get a thing done you can always find people to do it for you if you pay them. Why not go to thos

turned up at the door of th

n the ink, "a perfectly simple matter. I can draw up a draft of convey

hat I can pocket a fee of five hundred dollars righ

tinued, "let us se

to put it that I give all my stock

Skinyer, with a qu

mlinson; "just write down that I

"I, so-and-so, and so-and-so, of the county of s

the Wizard, "I

c., which I hold in the etc., etc., all, several and whatever-you will observe, Mr. Tomlinson, I am expressing myself with as great brevity as

t special objects or purpose

s to include a Demolition Fund for the removal of buildings, a Retirement Fund for the removal of professors, an Apparatus

I could, for Mr. Boomer himself, j

dly keep his face straight. "Give him a ch

Tomlinson; "h

ly," said

nd Tomlinson, filled with joy, was wringing the hands of S

meant t

id Beatem to Skinyer, after the Wiz

But I very much doubt if they can arrest him. Mind you, the fellow is devilish shrewd. You know, and I know that he planned this whole flotation with a full knowledge of the fraud. You and I know it-very good-but

he do now?"

and be out of the state, and if they want to get him they'll have to extradite. I t

haps, there w

with Skinyer and Beatem, his face irradiated with simple joy, "it's done. I've put the college

ood," sai

e good that could be done with all that money if a man put his heart into it. They can start in as soon as they lik

That night they slept in an Aladdin

first descent to the rotunda it broke. The whole great space seemed filled with the bulletins and the broadside sheets of the morning pa

LL

ERIE AU

AT GOLD

THE MAN

D THIS

ering in his hand, his eyes fixed, while about him a thousand e

s stricken face, aged as it seemed all in a moment, the boy's soul woke within him. What had happened he coul

THE MAN

e said, and took him by the arm

f the industrial faculty of Plutoria University could have taught him in a decade. Adversity laid its hand upon him, and at its touch his adolescent heart turned to finer stuff than th

, and his lip trembled as he spoke. He h

You never swindled them. I tell you, if they try to arrest you, I'll-" and

ney and I'll go and pay them and we'll get out of this and go

nmolested, save for the prying eyes

ed down from their thousand-dollar suite into the corridor, their hands burdened with their satchels. A waiter, with somethi

ore suit in which he had come from Cahoga County, and there was a dangerou

dered, through corridor and rotunda to

th a uniform and a round hat. He was called by the authorities a chasseu

s face flushed for a moment, wi

gan to murmur, "h

red, as he shouldered past the ma

e Wizard and his son passed from

ents of the Financial Undertone, the "man Tomlinson" was not arrested, neither as he left the Grand Palaver

e Deaf-mutes they resolved themselves into the most beautiful and complete cipher conceivable. The salted gold about paid for the cost of the incorporation certificate: the development capital had disappeared, and those who lost most preferred to say the least about it; and as for Tomlinson, if one added

as the golden palace seen in the mirage of a desert sunset may

Letters in absentia. A university must keep its word, and Dean Elderberry Foible, who was honesty itself, had stubbornly maintaine

e gown, read out after the ancient custom of the college the Latin statement of the award of the degree of Doctor of Letters

a hole in the dam with pickaxe and crowbar, and day by day the angry water carried down the vestiges of the embankment till all were gone. The cedar poles of the electric lights had been cut into fence-rails; the wooden shanties of the Italian gang of Auriferous workers

but the land sloping to the lake and the creek murmuring again to the wi