The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today

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moil an hour after the explosion, a little black-eyed girl of five years, frightened and crying bitterly, was struggling through the throng in the Boreas' saloon calling her mother and father, but no one answered. Something in the face of Mr. Hawkins attracted her and she came and looked up at him

e they had just arrived in a vessel from Cuba; that they looked like people from the Atlantic States; that the family name was Van Brunt and the child's name Laura. This was all. Th

about their necks and found no solace but in their kind eyes and comforting words: There was a question in both their hearts-a question that rose up and asserted itself with more and more pertinacity as the hours wore on-but both hesitated to give it voice-both kept silence-and-waited. But a time came at last when the matter would bear delay no longer. The boat had landed, and the dead and the wounded were being conveyed t

e and beyond them rose the domes and steeples and general architectural confusion of a city-a city with an imposing umbrella of black smoke spread over it. This was St. Louis. The children of the H

ll the trouble t

and mo

ldn't sell one of them

the money in

are not rich-but still you are not sorry--you

d will

ouldn't even part w

e as I love my own: They pet me and spoil me even more t

never see the day, but these little chaps will. Indeed they will. One of these days it will be the rich Miss Emily Hawkins-and the wealthy Miss Laura Van Brunt Hawkins-and the Hon. George Washington Hawkins, millionaire-and Gov.

ing, for the moment, and draw

you do when you get to be one o

ks; and sometimes I think I'll have ever so many weathercocks and water-wheels; or have a machine like that one you and Colonel Sel

ed about things.-And what will you do when you get

ch expecting to get rich, and then I wouldn't be disappointed if I didn't get rich. And so I reckon it's bett

one of these days. Wise old head! weighty old head! Go on, now, and play-all

dred and thirty miles still higher up the Mississippi, and landed them at a little

rior through almost roadless and uninhabited forest solitudes. And when for the last time they

tory high-the store; clustered in the neighborhood

ent positions, hands in pockets and resting on one leg; and thus anchored they proceeded to look and enjoy. Vagrant dogs came wagging around and making inquiries of Hawkins's dog, which were not satisfactory and they made war on him in concert. This would have interested the citizens but it was too many on one to amount to anything as a fight, and so they commanded the peace and the foreign dog coiled his tail and took sanctuary under the wagon. Slatternly negro girls and women slouched along with pails deftly balanc

, 'Colonel'-she will call me Colonel spite of everything I can do-she says 'Colonel, something tells me somebody's coming!' and sure enough here you are, the last people on earth a body could have expected. Why she'll think she's a prophetess-and hanged if I don't think so too-and you know there ain't any country but what a prophet's an honor to, as the proverb says. Lord bless me and here's the children, too! Washington, Emily, don't you know me? Come, give us a kiss. Won't I fix you, though!-ponies, cows, dogs, everything you can think of that'll delight a child's heart-and-Why how's this? Little strangers? Well you won't be any strangers here, I can tell you. Bless your souls

the newly-inspired and very grateful immigrants picked up their

eded, and to have it, it had to be cooked. This apartment was the family bedroom, parlor, library and kitchen, all in one. The matronly little wife of the Col

and for a moment throttled it down to the orthodox pitch for a blessing, and then instantly burst forth again as from a parenthesis and clattered on with might and main till every stomach in

ill a body can't help liking him if they would-and what is more, th

ender young humanity devoted itself for eight or ten hours a day to learning incomprehensible rubbish by heart out of books and reciting it by rote, like parrots; so that a finished education consisted simply of a permanen

and really it promised very well. The young stock cost but a trifle, the rearing but another trifle, and so Hawkins was easily

furniture from St. Louis, and the fame of its magnificence went abroad in the land. Even the parlor carpet was from St. Louis-though the other rooms were clothed in the "rag" carpeting of the country. Hawkins put up the first "paling" fence that had ever adorned the village; and he did not stop there, but whitewashed it. His oil-cloth window-curtains had noble pictures on them of castles such as had never been seen anywhere in the world but on window-curtains. Hawkins enjoyed the admiration these prodigies com

haps it is only fair to explain that we are writing of a by gone age-some twenty or thirty years ago. In the two newspapers referred to lay the secret of Hawkins's growing prosperity. They kept him informed of the condition of the crops south and east, and thus he knew which articles w

t title, by imperceptible stages, grew up into "Judge;" indeed it bade fair to swell into "General" bye and bye. All

and their virtuous ways commanded respect. Their patriotism was strong, their pride in the flag was of the old fashioned pattern, their love of country amounted to idolatry. Who