"If it hadn't been for her," resumed Lapham, "the paint wouldn't have come to anything. I used to tell her it wa'n't the seventy-five per cent. of purr-ox-eyed of iron in the ORE that made that paint go; it was the seventy-five per cent. of purr-ox-eyed of iron in HER.""Good!" cried Bartley. "I'll tell Marcia that.""In less'n six months there wa'n't a board-fence, nor a bridge-girder, nor a dead wall, nor a barn, nor a face of rock in that whole region that didn't have 'Lapham's Mineral Paint--Specimen' on it in the three colours we begun by making." Bartley had taken his seat on the window-sill, and Lapham, standing before him, now put up his huge foot close to Bartley's thigh; neither of them minded that.
"I've heard a good deal of talk about that S.T.--1860--X. man, and the stove-blacking man, and the kidney-cure man, because they advertised in that way; and I've read articles about it in the papers; but I don't see where the joke comes in, exactly. So long as the people that own the barns and fences don't object, I don't see what the public has got to do with it. And I never saw anything so very sacred about a big rock, along a river or in a pasture, that it wouldn't do to put mineral paint on it in three colours.
I wish some of the people that talk about the landscape, and WRITE about it, had to bu'st one of them rocks OUTof the landscape with powder, or dig a hole to bury it in, as we used to have to do up on the farm; I guess they'd sing a little different tune about the profanation of scenery. There ain't any man enjoys a sightly bit of nature--a smooth piece of interval with half a dozen good-sized wine-glass elms in it--more than I do.
But I ain't a-going to stand up for every big ugly rock I come across, as if we were all a set of dumn Druids.
I say the landscape was made for man, and not man for the landscape.""Yes," said Bartley carelessly; "it was made for the stove-polish man and the kidney-cure man.""It was made for any man that knows how to use it,"Lapham returned, insensible to Bartley's irony.
"Let 'em go and live with nature in the WINTER, up there along the Canada line, and I guess they'll get enough of her for one while. Well--where was I?""Decorating the landscape," said Bartley.
"Yes, sir; I started right there at Lumberville, and it give the place a start too. You won't find it on the map now; and you won't find it in the gazetteer.
I give a pretty good lump of money to build a town-hall, about five years back, and the first meeting they held in it they voted to change the name,--Lumberville WA'N'Ta name,--and it's Lapham now."
"Isn't it somewhere up in that region that they get the old Brandon red?" asked Bartley.
"We're about ninety miles from Brandon. The Brandon's a good paint," said Lapham conscientiously. "Like to show you round up at our place some odd time, if you get off.""Thanks. I should like it first-rate. WORKS there?""Yes; works there. Well, sir, just about the time Igot started, the war broke out; and it knocked my paint higher than a kite. The thing dropped perfectly dead.
I presume that if I'd had any sort of influence, I might have got it into Government hands, for gun-carriages and army wagons, and may be on board Government vessels.
But I hadn't, and we had to face the music. I was about broken-hearted, but m'wife she looked at it another way.
'I guess it's a providence,' says she. 'Silas, I guess you've got a country that's worth fighting for. Any rate, you better go out and give it a chance.' Well, sir, I went.
I knew she meant business. It might kill her to have me go, but it would kill her sure if I stayed.
She was one of that kind. I went. Her last words was, 'I'll look after the paint, Si.' We hadn't but just one little girl then,--boy'd died,--and Mis' Lapham's mother was livin' with us; and I knew if times DID anyways come up again, m'wife'd know just what to do. So I went.
I got through; and you can call me Colonel, if you want to.
Feel there!" Lapham took Bartley's thumb and forefinger and put them on a bunch in his leg, just above the knee.
"Anything hard?"
"Ball?"
Lapham nodded. "Gettysburg. That's my thermometer.
If it wa'n't for that, I shouldn't know enough to come in when it rains."Bartley laughed at a joke which betrayed some evidences of wear. "And when you came back, you took hold of the paint and rushed it.""1 took hold of the paint and rushed it--all I could,"said Lapham, with less satisfaction than he had hitherto shown in his autobiography. "But I found that I had got back to another world. The day of small things was past, and I don't suppose it will ever come again in this country.
My wife was at me all the time to take a partner--somebody with capital; but I couldn't seem to bear the idea.
That paint was like my own blood to me. To have anybody else concerned in it was like--well, I don't know what.
I saw it was the thing to do; but I tried to fight it off, and I tried to joke it off. I used to say, 'Why didn't you take a partner yourself, Persis, while I was away?'
And she'd say, 'Well, if you hadn't come back, I should, Si.' Always DID like a joke about as well as any woman Iever saw. Well, I had to come to it. I took a partner."Lapham dropped the bold blue eyes with which he had been till now staring into Bartley's face, and the reporter knew that here was a place for asterisks in his interview, if interviews were faithful. "He had money enough,"continued Lapham, with a suppressed sigh; "but he didn't know anything about paint. We hung on together for a year or two.
And then we quit."
"And he had the experience," suggested Bartley, with companionable ease.
"I had some of the experience too," said Lapham, with a scowl; and Bartley divined, through the freemasonry of all who have sore places in their memories, that this was a point which he must not touch again.
"And since that, I suppose, you've played it alone.""I've played it alone."
"You must ship some of this paint of yours to foreign countries, Colonel?" suggested Bartley, putting on a professional air.
