The Spenders: A Tale of the Third Generation. Harry Leon Wilson

CHAPTER XI. How Uncle Peter Bines Once Cut Loose

       CHAPTER XII. Plans for the Journey East

       CHAPTER XIII. The Argonauts Return to the Rising Sun

       CHAPTER XIV. Mr. Higbee Communicates Some Valuable Information

       CHAPTER XV. Some Light With a Few Side-lights

       CHAPTER XVI. With the Barbaric Hosts

       CHAPTER XVII. The Patricians Entertain

       CHAPTER XVIII. The Course of True Love at a House Party

       CHAPTER XIX. An Afternoon Stroll and an Evening Catastrophe

       CHAPTER XX. Doctor Von Herzlich Expounds the Hightower Hotel and Certain Allied Phenomena

       CHAPTER XXI. The Diversions of a Young Multi-millionaire

       CHAPTER XXII. The Distressing Adventure of Mrs. Bines

       CHAPTER XXIII. The Summer Campaign Is Planned

       CHAPTER XXIV. The Sight of a New Beauty, and Some Advice from Higbee

       CHAPTER XXV. Horace Milbrey Upholds the Dignity of His House

       CHAPTER XXVI. A Hot Day in New York, with News of an Interesting Marriage

       CHAPTER XXVII. A Sensational Turn in the Milbrey Fortunes

       CHAPTER XXVIII. Uncle Peter Bines Comes to Town With His Man

       CHAPTER XXIX. Uncle Peter Bines Threatens to Raise Something

       CHAPTER XXX. Uncle Peter Inspires His Grandson to Worthy Ambitions

       CHAPTER XXXI. Concerning Consolidated Copper and Peter Bines as Matchmakers

       CHAPTER XXXII. Devotion to Business and a Chance Meeting

       CHAPTER XXXIII. The Amateur Napoleon of Wall Street

       CHAPTER XXXIV. How the Chinook Came to Wall Street

       CHAPTER XXXV. The News Broken, Whereupon an Engagement is Broken

       CHAPTER XXXVI. The God in the Machine

       CHAPTER XXXVII. The Departure of Uncle Peter—And Some German Philosophy

       CHAPTER XXXVIII. Some Phenomena Peculiar to Spring

       CHAPTER XXXIX. An Unusual Plan of Action Is Matured

       CHAPTER XL. Some Rude Behaviour, of Which Only a Western Man Could Be Guilty

       CHAPTER XLI. The New Argonauts

ILLUSTRATIONS

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      "The fair and sometimes uncertain daughter of the house of Milbrey"

      "'Well, Billy Brue,--what's doin'?'"

      "The spell was broken"

      "'Why, you'd be Lady Casselthorpe, with dukes and counts takin' off their crowns to you'"

      "'Remember that saying of your pa's, "it takes all kinds of fools to make a world"'"

      "'Say it that way--" Miss Milbrey is engaged with Mr. Bines, and can't see you"'"

THE SPENDERS

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CHAPTER I.

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The Second Generation is Removed

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      When Daniel J. Bines died of apoplexy in his private car at Kaslo Junction no one knew just where to reach either his old father or his young son with the news of his death. Somewhere up the eastern slope of the Sierras the old man would be leading, as he had long chosen to lead each summer, the lonely life of a prospector. The young man, two years out of Harvard, and but recently back from an extended European tour, was at some point on the North Atlantic coast, beginning the season's pursuit of happiness as he listed.

      Only in a land so young that almost the present dwellers therein have made it might we find individualities which so decisively failed to blend. So little congruous was the family of Bines in root, branch, and blossom, that it might, indeed, be taken to picture an epic of Western life as the romancer would tell it. First of the line stands the figure of Peter Bines, the pioneer, contemporary with the stirring days of Frémont, of Kit Carson, of Harney, and Bridger; the fearless strivers toward an ever-receding West, fascinating for its untried dangers as for its fabled wealth—the sturdy, grave men who fought and toiled and hoped, and realised in varying measure, but who led in sober truth a life such as the colours of no taleteller shall ever be high enough to reproduce.

      Next came Daniel J. Bines, a type of the builder and organiser who followed the trail blazed by the earlier pioneer; the genius who, finding the magic realm opened, forthwith became its exploiter to its vast renown and his own large profit, coining its wealth of minerals, lumber, cattle, and grain, and adventurously building the railroads that must always be had to drain a new land of savagery.

      Nor would there be wanting a third—a figure of this present day, containing, in potency at least, the stanch qualities of his two rugged forbears—the venturesome spirit that set his restless grandsire to roving westward, the power to group and coordinate, to "think three moves ahead" which had made his father a man of affairs; and, further, he had something modern of his own that neither of the others possessed, and yet which came as the just fruit of the parent vine: a disposition perhaps a bit less strenuous, turning back to the risen rather than forward to the setting sun; a tendency to rest a little from the toil and tumult; to cultivate some graces subtler than those of adventure and commercialism; to make the most of what had been done rather than strain to the doing of needless more; to live, in short, like a philosopher and a gentleman who has more golden dollars a year than either philosophers or gentlemen are wont to enjoy.

      And now the central figure had gone suddenly at the age of fifty-two, after the way of certain men who are quick, ardent, and generous in their living. From his luxurious private car, lying on the side-track at the dreary little station, Toler, private secretary to the millionaire, had telegraphed to the headquarters of one important railway company the death of its president, and to various mining, milling, and lumbering companies the death of their president, vice-president, or managing director as the case might be. For the widow and only daughter word of the calamity had gone to a mountain resort not far from the family home at Montana City.

      There promised to be delay in reaching the other two. The son would early read the news, Toler decided, unless perchance he were off at sea, since the death of a figure like Bines would be told by every daily newspaper in the country. He telegraphed, however, to the young man's New York apartments and to a Newport address, on the chance of finding him.

      Locating old Peter Bines at this season of the year was a feat never lightly to be undertaken, nor for any trivial end. It being