The Romance and Tragedy of a Widely Known Business Man of New York Part 6

We were offered a very prettily furnished, nicely located house, a few blocks from my mother's, for the summer at a very low rent.

We decided to take it and not look up a permanent home until fall.

Our housekeeping that summer was a delightful experience and we knew we should never again be satisfied to board. We were fortunate in getting a good maid, the boy kept well, we had a cool summer, business was fairly good and we had soon forgotten the hard times of the previous winter.

Of course, we were prudent in our expenditures, but we lived well and did a little entertaining.

In October we rented and furnished tastefully but inexpensively a three-story and bas.e.m.e.nt house, one of a new row in a pleasant street, not far from the residence of Mr. Sherman.

While we did not own the house, the fact that the contents belonged to us gave us a sense of proprietors.h.i.+p that we had not felt in the house we had recently vacated.

We had enjoyed greatly our shopping for the furnis.h.i.+ngs and felt very happy in our new home amidst our household G.o.ds.

Our efficient maid was devoted to our boy and to her mistress. The housekeeping ran smoothly, and although we already began to talk of the day when we should own our home and of what that home should be, we were entirely contented and happy.

As the winter approached I began to suffer, slightly at first, with muscular rheumatism. Not since the days of childhood, when I had gone through the usual category of children's diseases, had I been really ill. I always had suffered to some extent with neuralgic headaches, inherited no doubt from my mother, who was a great sufferer, and with the advent of the rheumatism these headaches became more frequent and severe.

I did not regard the trouble seriously and I so enjoyed the fond nursing and petting of my wife that the pain brought its own recompense. It soon became evident, however, that I required medical attention.

First one and then another physician was called upon without getting relief, the attack recurring at shorter intervals and each time seemingly more severe. I stood it through the winter, though suffering greatly, and with the warmer weather my health improved.

CHAPTER VIII

THE NEW PARTNER.

Tom Allis, my new partner, was one of the most peculiar men I have ever met. In social life he was affable and self-possessed, but in his business intercourse exhibited confusion and a shyness that was simply amazing.

Actually and in appearance he was about my age, while in his manner he was a bashful boy of seventeen. It was impossible for him to talk without blus.h.i.+ng and appearing extremely embarra.s.sed.

As I had only met him socially, this phase was a revelation to me.

I tried to get him out amongst the trade, thinking that after he had become well acquainted his embarra.s.sment would be overcome, or at least partially so. My efforts in this direction failed and he settled down to a routine office-man, and while he looked after that end of the business satisfactorily, I could easily have found a clerk at fifteen dollars per week to do as well.

This was disappointing, but I hoped that as he gained experience his services would be of greater value to the firm. Meanwhile, I let him relieve me entirely of the office work.

Tom had been with me only a few months when he came to me for advice in a matter in which he felt he had become involved.

It appeared he had been calling regularly on a young lady, a pretty little French girl. I had met her but once and then was impressed with the idea that she had a temper which it would be unpleasant to arouse, though I may have done her an injustice.

At all events, Tom said he thought the girl was in love with him; that probably he had given her reason to believe his attentions were serious, and he saw no honorable way out except to ask her to be his wife.

I saw that the boy, so he seemed to me, was really very much disturbed. I told him before I could offer any advice I must know every detail, and after learning that not one word of love had ever pa.s.sed between them, that their intercourse was really nothing more than that of intimate friends, and he a.s.suring me that he had not a particle of love for the girl, I advised him strongly to give up any idea of offering her marriage and to gently but firmly break off the intimacy.

He accepted the advice gratefully and acted on it.

A few years later he married the girl, and I presume that he told her of my share in this matter. She probably held me responsible and no doubt influenced him to some extent in a course of action, referred to farther on in this narrative, that I have always regarded with regret.

It is a thankless task to advise one in such matters, even though the one be your friend.

Business continued to improve slowly, but at the end of the year my partner had drawn as his share of the profits, for the eight months he had been with me, twenty-two hundred dollars.

He was more than satisfied, and well he might be.

During the winter of 1874 and '75 I had another and more trying siege of rheumatism. As in the previous spring, with the advent of warmer weather I found relief, but I knew the disease had become chronic and it worried me.

This worry, however, I soon dismissed from my mind to make room for one more formidable and pressing.

Hard times were coming again and there were two now to divide the profits.

The furnis.h.i.+ng of our home had absorbed a good portion of the three thousand dollars I had received from my partner, and my living expenses together with what it was necessary for me to do toward the support of my parents and sisters exhausted my income.

My always-cheerful and devoted wife, and my boy, just arriving at an interesting age, made home so attractive that I was able to forget business when away from the office.

Each morning with the parting caress came words of loving encouragement that did much to support me through the day, and at night on my return home, my greeting from wife and boy always dispelled the clouds hanging over me.

I was happy, infinitely so, despite the business worry.

My physicians had advised my leaving Brooklyn for a dryer atmosphere.

We had a lease of our house until the spring of 1876, but had decided that then we would try country life.

Many hours were pa.s.sed pleasantly in discussing the plan and its probable results. My wife's fertile brain would paint to me in pleasing colors what the country home should be--the cottage and its coziness, the garden, the lawn and flowers, my health restored, the benefit of country life to the boy, and the relief to my mind through largely reduced living expenses.

We were eager for the time to come to make the change.

On the twelfth of December our second child was born. My first boy had a brother, and again my wife, n.o.ble woman, gave testimony of her great love.

No trials that came to her prevented the outpouring of that love to me.

She knew how I needed her fond encouragement, particularly at that period, and she gave it to me daily, always with the same sweet smile and tender caress.

That winter will never be forgotten by me for the torture which I suffered from the almost nightly attacks of that awful rheumatism.

Medicine did not seem of any use.

Night after night until long past midnight my devoted wife, with ceaseless energy, would apply every few moments hot applications to relieve the cruel pains, until finally I would fall asleep for a few hours' rest.

I lost flesh rapidly, and when spring came was hardly more than a semblance of my former self.

It was indeed time that I should shake the dust of Brooklyn from my feet.

Before the winter was over we had commenced to scan the advertising columns of the daily papers for "country places to rent." We wanted if possible to get a place in the mountainous section of New Jersey.

I wanted to get away from air off the salt water and this section of the country seemed the best.

It must be healthy and at a low rent. For the rest we must take what we could get at the price we could pay.