WHEREIN IS ONE OF THE MANY PRIVATE PANICS WHICH FOLLOWED THE BURSTING OF
THE BUBBLE OF SPECULATION.
Samson and Harry saw the bursting of the great bubble of '37. Late that
night Disaster, loathsome and thousand legged, crept into the little
city. It came on a steamer from the East and hastened from home to home,
from tavern to tavern. It bit as it traveled. Great banks had suspended
payment; New York had suffered a panic; many large business enterprises
in the East had failed; certain agents for the bonds of Illinois had
absconded with the state's money; in the big cities there had been an
ominous closing of doors and turning of locks; a great army of men were
out of employment. Those of sound judgment in Chicago knew that all the
grand schemes of the statesmen and speculators of Illinois were as the
visions of an ended dream. The local banks did not open their doors next
day. The little city was in a frenzy of excitement. The streets were
filled with a shouting, half crazed throng. New fortunes had shrunk to
nothing and less than nothing in a night. Lots in the city were offered
for a tithe of what their market value had been. Davis had known that the
storm would arrive with the first steamer and in the slang of business
had put on a life-preserver. Samson knew that the time to buy was when
every one wanted to sell. He wore a belt with some two thousand dollars
of gold coin tucked away in its pockets. He bought two corner lots for
himself in the city and two acres for Mrs. Lukins on the prairie half a
mile from town. They got their deeds and went to the Kelsos to bid them
good-by.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" Samson asked.
"Just give us a friendly thought now and then," said Kelso.
"You can have my horse or my wallet or the strength of my two hands."
"I have heard you called a damned Yankee but I can think of no greater
blessing than to be damned in a like manner," Kelso answered. "Keep your
largess for those who need it more, good friend."
After these hearty farewells Samson and Harry set out for their home.
They were not again to see the gentle face and hear the pleasant talk of
Jack Kelso. He had once said, in the presence of the writer, that it is
well to remember, always, that things can not go on with us as they are.
Changes come--slowly and quite according to our calculations or so
swiftly and Unexpectedly that they fill us with confusion. Learned and
wise in the weighty problems of humanity he had little prudence in
regulating the affairs of his own family.
Kelso had put every dollar he had and some that he hoped to have into
land. Bim, who had been teaching in one of the schools, had invested all
her savings in a dream city on the shore of an unconstructed canal.
Like many who had had no experience with such phenomena they
underestimated the seriousness of the panic. They thought that, in a week
or so, its effect would pass and that Illinois would then resume its
triumphal march toward its high destiny. Not even Samson Traylor had
a correct notion of the slowness of Time.
The effect of the panic paralyzed the city. Men whose "red dog money"
was in every one's pocket closed their shops and ran away. The wild
adventurers cleared out. Their character may be judged by the words of
one of them reported by the editor of _The Democrat_.
"I failed for a hundred thousand dollars and could have failed for a
million if Jackson had kept his hands off."
Hard times hung like a cloud over the city. Its population suffered some
diminishment in the next two years in spite of its position on the main
highway of trade. Dream cities, canals and railroads built without hands
became a part of the poetry of American commerce. Indeed they had come of
the prophetic vision and were therefore entitled to respect in spite of
the fact that they had been smirched and polluted by speculators.
That autumn men and women who had come to Mrs. Kinzie's party in jewels
and in purple and fine linen had left or turned their hands to hard
labor. The Kelsos suffered real distress, the schools being closed and
the head of the house having taken to his bed with illness. Bim went to
work as a seamstress and with the help of Mrs. Kinzie and Mrs. Hubbard
was able to keep the family from want. The nursing and the care of the
baby soon broke the health of Mrs. Kelso, never a strong woman. Bim came
home from her work one evening and found her mother ill.
"Cheer up, my daughter," said Jack. "An old friend of ours has returned
to the city. He is a rich man--an oasis in the desert of poverty. He has
loaned me a hundred dollars in good coin."
"Who has done this?" Bim asked.
"Mr. Lionel Davis. He has just come from New Orleans. He is a successful
speculator in grain."
"We must not take his money," said Bim.
"I had a long talk with him," Kelso went on. "He has explained that
unfortunate incident of the horse. It was a bit of offhand folly born of
an anxious moment."
"But the man wants to marry me."
"He said nothing of such a purpose."
"He will be in no hurry about that," said Bim. "He is a shrewd operator.
Every one hates him. They say that he knew what was coming when he sold
out."
That evening Bim wrote a long letter to Samson Traylor telling of the
evil days which had come to them. This letter, now in the possession of a
great grandson of Samson and Sarah Traylor, had a singular history. It
reached the man to whom it was addressed in the summer of 1844. It was
found with many others that summer in Tazewell County under a barn which
its owner was removing. It brought to mind the robbery of the stage from
Chicago, south of the sycamore woods, in the autumn of '37, by a man who
had ridden with the driver from Chicago and who, it was thought, had been
in collusion with him. A curious feature of the robbery had been revealed
by the discovery of the mail sack. It was unopened, its contents
undisturbed, its rusty padlock still in place. The perpetrator of the
crime had not soiled his person with any visible evidence of guilt and so
was never apprehended.
Then for a time Bim entered upon great trials. Jack Kelso weakened.
Burning with fever, his mind wandered in the pleasant paths he loved and
saw in its fancy the deeds of Ajax and Achilles and the topless towers of
Illium and came not back again to the vulgar and prosaic details of life.
The girl knew not what to do. A funeral was a costly thing. She had no
money. The Kinzies had gone on a hunting trip in Wisconsin. Mrs. Hubbard
was ill and the Kelsos already much in her debt. Mr. Lionel Davis came.
He was a good-looking young man of twenty-nine, those days, rather stout
and of middle stature with dark hair and eyes. He was dressed in the
height of fashion. He used to boast that he had only one vice--diamonds.
But he had ceased to display them on his shirt-front or his fingers. He
carried them in his pockets and showed them by the glittering handful
to his friends. They had come to him through trading in land where they
were the accepted symbol of success and money was none too plentiful. He
had melted their settings and turned them into coin. The stones he kept
as a kind of surplus--a half hidden evidence of wealth and of superiority
to the temptation to vulgar display. Mr. Davis was a calculating,
masterful, keen-minded man, with a rather heavy jaw. In his presence Bim
was afraid for her soul that night. He was gentle and sympathetic. He
offered to lend her any amount she needed. She made no answer but sat
trying to think what she would best do. The Traylors had paid no
attention to her letter although a month had passed since it was written.
In a moment she rose and gave him her hand.
"It is very kind of you," said she. "If you can spare me five hundred
dollars for an indefinite time I will take it."
"Let me lend you a thousand," he urged. "I can do it without a bit of
inconvenience."
"I think that five hundred will be enough," she said.
It carried her through that trouble and into others of which her woman's
heart had found abundant signs in the attitude of Mr. Davis. He gave the
most assiduous attention to the comfort of Bim and her mother. He had had
a celebrated physician come down from Milwaukee to see Mrs. Kelso and had
paid the bill in advance. He bought a new and wonderful swinging crib of
burnished steel for the baby.
"I can not let you be doing these things for us," Bim said one evening
when he had called to see them.
"And I can not help loving you and doing the little I can to express it,"
he answered. "There is no use in my trying to keep it from you when I
find myself lying awake nights planning for your comfort. I would like to
make every dollar I have tell you in some way that I love you. That's how
I feel and you might as well know it."
"You have been kind to us," Bim answered. "We feel it very deeply but I
can not let you talk to me like that. I am a married woman."
"We can fix that all right. It will be easy for you to get a divorce."
"But I do not love you, Mr. Davis."
"Let me try to make you love me," he pleaded. "Is there any reason why I
shouldn't?"
"Yes. If there were no other reason, I love a young soldier who is
fighting in the Seminole War in Florida under Colonel Taylor."
"Well, at least, you can let me take the place of your father and shield
you from trouble when I can."
"You are a most generous and kindly man!" Bim exclaimed with tears in her
eyes.
So he seemed to be, but he was one of those men who weave a spell like
that of an able actor. He excited temporary convictions that began to
change as soon as the curtain fell. He was in fact a performer. That
little midnight scene at the City Hotel had sounded the keynote of his
character. He was no reckless villain of romance. If he instigated the
robbery of the south-bound mail wagon, of which the writer of this little
history has no shadow of doubt, he was so careful about it that no
evidence which would satisfy a jury has been discovered to this day.
On account of the continued illness of her mother Bim was unable to
resume her work in the academy. She took what sewing she could do at home
and earned enough to solve the problems of each day. But the payment
coming due on the house in December loomed ahead of them. It was natural,
in the circumstances, that Mrs. Kelso should like Mr. Davis and favor his
aims. Now and then he came and sat with her of an evening while Bim went
out to the shops--an act of accommodation which various neighbor women
were ever ready to perform.
Mrs. Kelso's health had improved slowly so that she was able then to
spend most of each day in her chair.
One evening when Davis sat alone with her, she told him the story of Bim
and Harry Needles--a bit of knowledge he was glad to have. Their talk was
interrupted by the return of Bim. She was in a cheerful mood. When Mr.
Davis had gone she said to her mother:
"I think our luck has turned. Here's a letter from John T. Stuart. The
divorce has been granted."
"Thank the Lord," Mrs. Kelso exclaimed. "Long ago I knew bad luck was
coming; since the day your father carried an axe through the house."
"Pshaw! I don't believe in that kind of nonsense."
"My father would sooner break his leg than carry an edged tool through
the house," Mrs. Kelso affirmed. "Three times I have known it to bring
sickness. I hope a change has come."
"No. Bad luck comes when you carry all your money through the house and
spend it for land. I am going to write to Harry and tell him to hurry
home and marry me if he wants to. Don't say a word about the divorce to
our friend Davis. I want to make him keep his distance. It is hard enough
now."
Before she went to bed that night she wrote a long letter to Harry and
one to Abe Lincoln thanking him for his part in the matter and telling
him of her father's death, of the payment coming due and of the hard
times they were suffering. Two weeks passed and brought no answer from
Mr. Lincoln.
The day before the payment came due in December, a historic letter from
Tampa, Fla., was published in _The Democrat_. It was signed "Robert
Deming, private, Tenth Cavalry." It gave many details of the campaign in
the Everglades in which the famous scout Harry Needles and seven of his
comrades had been surrounded and slain. When Mr. Davis called at the
little home in La Salle Street that evening he found Bim in great
distress.
"I throw up my hands," she said. "I can not stand any more. We shall be
homeless to-morrow."
"No, not that--so long as I live," he answered. "I have bought the claim.
You can pay me when you get ready."
He was very tender and sympathetic.
When he had left them Bim said to her mother: "Our old friends do not
seem to care what becomes of us. I have no thought now save for you and
the baby. I'll do whatever you think best for you two. I don't care for
myself. My heart is as dead as Harry's."