Love and Skates/Chapter I
- Chapter I. A Knot and a Man to Cut It.
Consternation! Consternation in the back office of Benjamin Brummage, Esq., banker in Wall Street.
Yesterday down came Mr. Superintendent Whiffler, from Dunderbunk, up the North River, to say, that, “unless something be done, at once, the Dunderbunk Foundry and Iron-Works must wind up.” President Brummage forthwith convoked his Directors. And here they sat around the green table, forlorn as the guests at a Barmecide feast.
Well they might be forlorn! It was the rosy summer solstice, the longest and fairest day of all the year. But rose-color and sunshine had fled from Wall Street. Noisy Crisis towing black Panic, as a puffing steam-tug drags a three-decker cocked and primed for destruction, had suddenly sailed in upon Credit.
As all the green inch-worms vanish on the tenth of every June, so on the tenth of that June all the money in America had buried itself and was as if it were not. Everybody and everything was ready to fail. If the hindmost brick went, down would go the whole file.
There were ten Directors of the Dunderbunk Foundry.
Now, not seldom, of a Board of ten Directors, five are wise and five are foolish: five wise, who bag all the Company’s funds in salaries and commissions for indorsing its paper; five foolish, who get no salaries, no commissions, no dividends, — nothing, indeed, but abuse from the stock-holders, and the reputation of thieves. That is to say, five of the ten are pickpockets; the other five, pockets to be picked.
It happened that the Dunderbunk Directors were all honest and foolish but one. He, John Churm, honest and wise, was off at the West, with his Herculean shoulders at the wheels of a deadlocked railroad. These honest fellows did not wish Dunderbunk to fail for several reasons. First, it was not pleasant to lose their investment. Second, one important failure might betray Credit to Crisis with Panic at its heels, whereupon every investment would be in danger. Third, what would become of their Directorial reputations? From President Brummage down, each of these gentlemen was one of the pockets to be picked in a great many companies. Each was of the first Wall-Street fashion, invited to lend his name and take stock in every new enterprise. Any one of them might have walked down town in a long patchwork toga made of the newspaper advertisements of boards in which his name proudly figured. If Dunderbunk failed, the toga was torn, and might presently go to rags beyond repair. The first rent would inaugurate universal rupture. How to avoid this disaster? — that was the question. “State the case, Mr. Superintendent Whiffler,” said President Brummage, in his pompous manner, with its pomp a little collapsed, pro tempore.
Inefficient Whiffler whimpered out his story.
The confessions of an impotent executive are sorry stuff to read. Whiffler’s long, dismal complaint shall not be repeated. He had taken a prosperous concern, had carried on things in his own way, and now failure was inevitable. He had bought raw material lavishly, and worked it badly into half-ripe material, which nobody wanted to buy. He was in arrears to his hands. He had tried to bully them, when they asked for their money. They had insulted him, and threatened to knock off work, unless they were paid at once. “A set of horrid ruffians,” Whiffler said, — “and his life wouldn’t be safe many days among them.”
“Withdraw, if you please, Mr. Superintendent,” President Brummage requested. “The Board will discuss measures of relief.”
The more they discussed, the more consternation. Nobody said anything to the purpose, except Mr. Sam Gwelp, his late father’s lubberly son and successor.
“Blast!” said he; “we shall have to let it slide!”
Into this assembly of imbeciles unexpectedly entered Mr. John Churm. He had set his Western railroad trains rolling, and was just returned to town. Now he was ready to put those Herculean shoulders at any other bemired and rickety no-go-cart.
Mr. Churm was not accustomed to be a Director in feeble companies. He came into Dunderbunk recently as executor of his friend Damer, a year ago bored to death by a silly wife.
Churm’s bristly aspect and incisive manner made him a sharp contrast to Brummage. The latter personage was flabby in flesh, and the oppressively civil counter-jumper style of his youth had grown naturally into a deportment of most imposing pomposity.
The Tenth Director listened to the President’s recitative of their difficulties, chorused by the Board.
“Gentlemen,” said Director Churm, “you want two things. The first is Money!”
He pronounced this cabalistic word with such magic power, that all the air seemed instantly filled with a cheerful flight of gold American eagles, each carrying a double eagle on its back and a silver dollar in its claws; and all the soil of America seemed to sprout with coin, as after a shower a meadow sprouts with the yellow buds of the dandelion.
“Money! yes, Money!” murmured the Directors.
It seemed a word of good omen, now.
“The second thing,” resumed the new-comer, “is a Man!”
The Directors looked at each other and did not see such a being.
“The actual Superintendent of Dunderbunk is a dunderhead,” said Churm.
“Pun!” cried Sam Gwelp, waking up from a snooze.
Several of the Directors, thus instructed, started a complimentary laugh.
“Order, gentlemen! Orrderr!” said the President, severely, rapping with a paper-cutter.
“We must have a Man, not a Whiffler!” Churm continued. “And I have one in my eye.”
Everybody examined his eye.
“Would you be so good as to name him?” said Old Brummage, timidly.
He wanted to see a Man, but feared the strange creature might be dangerous.
“Richard Wade,” says Churm.
They did not know him. The name sounded forcible.
“He has been in California,” the nominator said.
A shudder ran around the green table. They seemed to see a frowzy desperado, shaggy as a bison, in a red shirt, and jackboots, hung about the waist with an assortment of six-shooters and bowie-knives, and standing against a background of mustangs, monte-banks, and lynch-law.
“We must get Wade,” Churm says, with authority. “He knows Iron by heart. He can handle Men. I will back him with my blank check, to any amount, to his order.”
Here a murmur of applause, swelling to a cheer, burst from the Directors.
Everybody knew that the Geological Bank deemed Churm’s deposits the fundamental stratum of its wealth. They lay there in the vaults, like underlying granite. When hot times came, they boiled up in a mountain to buttress the world.
Churm’s blank check seemed to wave in the air like an oriflamme of victory. Its payee might come from Botany Bay; he might wear his beard to his knees, and his belt stuck fall of howitzers and boomerangs; he might have been repeatedly hung by Vigilance Committees, and as often cut down and revived by galvanism; but brandishing that check, good for anything less than a million, every Director in Wall Street was his slave, his friend, and his brother.
“Let us vote Mr. Wade in by acclamation,” cried the Directors.
“But, gentlemen,” Churm interposed, “if I give him my blank check, he must have carte blanche, and no one to interfere in his management.”
Every Director, from President Brummage down, drew a long face at this condition.
It was one of their great privileges to potter in the Dunderbunk affairs and propose ludicrous impossibilities.
“Just as you please,” Churm continued. “I name a competent man, a gentleman and fine fellow. I back him with all the cash he wants. But he must have his own way. Now take him, or leave him!”
Such despotic talk had never been heard before in that Directors’ Room. They relucted a moment. But they thought of their togas of advertisements in danger. The blank check shook its blandishments before their eyes.
“We take him,” they said, and Richard Wade was the new Superintendent unanimously.
“He shall be at Dunderbunk to take hold to-morrow morning,” said Churm, and went off to notify him.
Upon this. Consternation sailed out of the hearts of Brummage and associates.
They lunched with good appetites over the green table, and the President confidently remarked, —
“I don’t believe there is going to be much of a crisis, after all.”