PAGE 3
Had I Been Consulted
by
Six months in time, and a thousand dollars in money, over and above wages to his men, were spent in getting the mill into running order. Jordan had bought under the representation that it was all ready for starting. After he had got in possession, he learned that Barnaby had tried, but in vain, to get the mill to work.
In the mean time, the young man was extending his circle of acquaintance among the families of the place in most of which he was well received and well liked. Old Matthew Page had an only daughter, a beautiful young girl, who was the pride of the village. The first time she and Jordan met, they took a fancy to each other. But as Jordan was rather a modest young man, he did not make very bold advances toward the maiden, although he felt as if he should like to do so, were there any hope of his advances being met in a right spirit.
At the end of a year, all the young man’s money was gone, and his last note to Barnaby was due. There was a small pile of lumber by his mill–a couple of hundred dollars worth, perhaps–for which he had found no sale, as the place was fully supplied, and had been for years, by a small mill that was worked by the owner with great economy. The sending of his lumber down the river was rather a serious operation for him, and required a good deal more lumber than he had yet been able to procure from his mill, which had never yet run for twenty-four hours without something getting wrong. These two or three hundred dollars’ worth of lumber had cost him about fifteen hundred dollars in wages, etc. Still he was sanguine, and saw his way clear through the whole of it, if it were not for the fact that his capital were exhausted.
Matthew Page was looking on very coolly, and saying to himself, “If he had consulted me,” but not offering the young man a word of voluntary counsel.
To continue his operations and bring out the ultimate prosperous result, Jordan threw one-half of his land into market and forced the sale at five dollars an acre. The proceeds of this sale did not last him over six months. Then he got a raft afloat, containing about a thousand dollars’ worth of lumber, and sent it off under charge of his overseer, who sold it at Cincinnati, and absconded with the money.
In the mean time, Barnaby was pressing for the payment of the last note, which had been protested, and after threatening to sue, time after time, finally put his claim into the hands of an attorney, who had a writ served upon Jordan.
By this time, old Mr. Page began to think it best, even though not consulted, to volunteer a little advice to the young man. The reason of this may be inferred. Jordan was beginning to be rather particular in attention to Edith, his daughter; and apart from the fact that he had wasted his money in an unprofitable scheme, and had not been prudent enough to consult him, old Matthew Page had no particular objection to him as a son-in-law. His family stood high in the State, and his father, previous to his death, had been for many years in the State senate. The idea that Jordan would take a fancy to his daughter had not once crossed the mind of Mr. Page, or he would not have stood so firmly upon his dignity in the matter of being consulted.
Rather doubting as to the reception he should meet from the young man, he called upon him, one day, when the following conversation took place:
“I’m afraid, Mr. Jordan,” said Page, after some commonplace chitchat, “that your saw-mill business is not going to turn out as well as you expected.”
“It has not, so far, certainly,” replied Jordan, frankly. “But this is owing to the fact of my having been deceived in the mill, and in the integrity of my manager; not to the nature of the business itself. I am still sanguine of success.”