The Black Lion Inn. Alfred Henry Lewis

and the hour and I were all new together, and never have I felt more fervor of enterprise than came to me those earliest New York days. But still, I must plan and do some practical thing, for my dollars, like the hairs of my head, were numbered.

      It was my seventh New York morning. As I sat in the café of the Astor House, my eye was caught by a news paragraph. The Internal Revenue law, with its tax of forty cents a pound on tobacco, had gained a construction, and the department’s reading of the law at once claimed my hungriest interest. No tobacco grown prior to the crop of ’66 was to be affected by the tax; that was the decision.

      Aside from my saber-trade as a cavalryman, tobacco was that thing whereof I exhaustively knew. I was a tobacco adept from the hour when the seed went into the ground, down to the perfumed moment when the perfect leaf exhaled in smoke. Moreover, I was aware of a trade matter in the nature of a trade secret, which might be made of richest import.

      During those five red years of war, throughout the tobacco regions of the south, planting and harvesting, though crippled, had still gone forward. The fires of battle and the moving lines of troops had only streaked those regions; they never wholly covered or consumed them. And wherever peace prevailed, the growing of tobacco went on. The harvests had been stored; there was no market—no method of getting the tobacco out. To be brief, as I read the internal revenue decision above quoted, on that Astor House morning, I knew that scattered up and down Virginia and throughout the rest of the kindom of tobacco, the crops of full five years were lying housed, mouldy and mildewed, for the most part, and therefore cheap to whoever came with money in his hands. For an hour I sat over my coffee and made a plan.

      There was a gentleman, an old college friend of my father. He was rich, avoided business and cared only for books. I had made myself known to him on the day of my arrival; he had asked me, over a glass of wine, to let him hear from me as time and my destinies took unto themselves direction. For my tobacco plan I must have money; and I could think of no one save my father’s friend of the books.

      When I was shown into the old gentleman’s library, I found him deeply held with Moore’s Life of Byron. As he greeted me, he kept the volume in his left hand with finger shut in the page. Evidently he trusted that I would not remain long and that he might soon return to his reading.

      The situation chilled me; I began my story with slight belief that its end would be fortunate. I exposed my tobacco knowledge, laid bare my scheme of trade, and craved the loan of five thousand dollars on the personal security—not at all commercial—of an optimist of twenty-one, whose only employment had been certain boot-and-saddle efforts to overthrow the nation. I say, I had scant hope of obtaining the aid I quested. I suffered disappointment. I was dealing with a gentleman who, however much he might grudge me a few moments taken from Byron, was willing enough to help me with money. In truth, he seemed relieved when he had heard me through; and he at once signed a check with a fine flourish, and I came from his benevolent presence equipped for those tobacco experiments I contemplated.

      It is not required that I go with filmy detail into a re-count of my enterprise. I began safely and quietly; with my profits I extended myself; and at the end of eighteen months, I had so pushed affairs that I was on the highway to wealth and the firm station of a millionaire.

      I had personally and through my agents bought up those five entire war-crops of tobacco. Most of it was still in Virginia and the south, due to my order; much of it had been already brought to New York. By the simple process of steaming and vaporizing, I removed each trace of mould and mildew, and under my skillful methods that war tobacco emerged upon the market almost as sweet and hale as the best of our domestic stock; and what was vastly in its favor, its flavor was, if anything, a trifle mild.

      In that day of leaf tobacco, the commodity was marketed in one-hundred-pound bales. My bales were made with ninety-two pounds of war tobacco, sweated free of any touch of mildew; and eight pounds of new tobacco, the latter on the outside for the sake of color and looks. Thus you may glimpse somewhat the advantage I had. Where, at forty cents a pound, the others paid on each bale of tobacco a revenue charge of forty dollars, I, with only eight pounds of new tobacco, paid but three dollars and twenty cents. And I had cornered the exempted tobacco. Is it wonder I began to wax rich?

      Often I look over my account books of those brilliant eighteen months. When I read that news item on the Astor House morning I’ve indicated, I had carefully modeled existence to a supporting basis of ten dollars a week. When eighteen months later there came the crash, I was permitting unto my dainty self a rate of personal expenditure of over thirty thousand dollars a year. I had apartments up-town; I was a member of the best clubs; I was each afternoon in the park with my carriage; incidentally I was languidly looking about among the Vere de Veres of the old Knickerbockers for that lady who, because of her superlative beauty and wit and modesty coupled with youth and station, was worthy to be my wife. Also, I recall at this period how I was conceitedly content with myself; how I gave way to warmest self-regard; pitied others as dullards and thriftless blunderers; and privily commended myself as a very Caesar of Commerce and the one among millions. Alas! “Pride goeth”—you have read the rest!

      It was a bright October afternoon. My cometlike career had subsisted for something like a year and a half; and I, the comet, was growing in size and brilliancy as time fled by. My tobacco works proper were over towards the East River in a brick warehouse I had leased; to these, which were under the superintendence of a trusty and expert adherent whom I had brought north from Richmond, I seldom repaired. My offices—five rooms, fitted and furnished to the last limit of rosewood and Russia leather magnificence—were down-town.

      On this particular autumn afternoon, as I went forth to my brougham for a roll to my apartments, the accountant placed in my hands a statement which I’d asked for and which with particular exactitude set forth my business standing. I remember it exceeding well. As I trundled up-town that golden afternoon, I glanced at those additions and subtractions which told my opulent story. Briefly, my liabilities were ninety thousand dollars; and I was rich in assets to a money value of three hundred and twelve thousand dollars. The ninety thousand was or would be owing on my tobacco contracts south, and held those tons on tons of stored, mildewed war tobacco, solid to my command. As I read the totals and reviewed the items, I would not have paid a penny of premium to insure my future. There it was in black and white. I knew what I had done; I knew what I could do. I was master of the tobacco situation for the next three years to come. By that time, I would have worked up the entire fragrant stock of leaf exempt from the tax; also by that time, I would count my personal fortune at a shadow over three millions. There was nothing surer beneath the sun. At twenty-six I would retire from trade and its troubles; life would lie at my toe like a kick-ball, and I would own both the wealth and the supple youth to pursue it into every nook and corner of pleasurable experience. Thus ran my smug reflections as I rolled northward along Fifth avenue to dress for dinner on that bright October day.

      It was the next afternoon, and I had concluded a pleasant lunch in my private office when Mike, my personal and favorite henchman, announced a visitor. The caller desired to see me on a subject both important and urgent.

      “Show him in!” I said.

      There slouched into the room an awkward-seeming man of middle age; not poor, but roughly dressed. No one would have called him a fop; his clothes, far astern of the style, fitted vilely; while his head, never beautiful, was made uglier with a shock of rudely exuberant hair and a stubby beard like pig’s bristles. It was an hour when there still remained among us, savages who oiled their hair; this creature was one; and I remember how the collar of his rusty surtout shone like glass with the dripped grease.

      My ill-favored visitor accepted the chair Mike placed for him and perched uneasily on its edge. When we were alone, I brought him and his business to instant bay. I was anxious to free myself of his presence. His bear’s grease and jaded appearance bred a distaste of him.

      “What is it you want?” My tones were brittle and sharp.

      The uncouth caller leered at me with a fashion of rancid leer—I suppose even a leer may have a flavor. Then he opened with obscure craft—vaguely, foggily. He wanted to purchase half my business. He would take an account of stock; give me exact money for one-half