![]() ![]() ![]() I was going to open it, but he said no take it to my lodgings, and look it over carefully, and not be hasty or rash. Then one of them handed me an envelope, and said I would find the explanation inside. I said I was sincerely glad, and asked what it was. Finally they told me I would answer their purpose. They began to ask me questions about myself, and pretty soon they had my story. There was always a defect, until I came along but they agreed that I filled the bill all around so they elected me unanimously, and there I was now waiting to know why I was called in. They saw many honest faces go by that were not intelligent enough many that were intelligent, but not honest enough many that were both, but the possessors were not poor enough, or, if poor enough, were not strangers. Then he dictated a letter, which one of his clerks wrote out in a beautiful round hand, and then the two brothers sat at the window a whole day watching for the right man to give it to. Just like an Englishman, you see pluck to the backbone. Brother B went down to the Bank and bought that note. So they went on disputing till Brother B said he would bet twenty thousand pounds that the man would live thirty days, anyway, on that million, and keep out of jail, too. Brother A said he couldn't offer it at a bank or anywhere else, because he would be arrested on the spot. Brother A said he would starve to death Brother B said he wouldn't. Well, the brothers, chatting along, happened to get to wondering what might be the fate of a perfectly honest and intelligent stranger who should be turned adrift in London without a friend, and with no money but that million-pound bank-note, and no way to account for his being in possession of it. For some reason or other only one of these had been used and canceled the other still lay in the vaults of the Bank. You will remember that the Bank of England once issued two notes of a million pounds each, to be used for a special purpose connected with some public transaction with a foreign country. Those two old brothers had been having a pretty hot argument a couple of days before, and had ended by agreeing to decide it by a bet, which is the English way of settling everything. Now, something had been happening there a little before, which I did not know anything about until a good many days afterwards, but I will tell you about it now. I could hardly keep my wits together in the presence of that food, but as I was not asked to sample it, I had to bear my trouble as best I could. They had just finished their breakfast, and the sight of the remains of it almost overpowered me. They sent away the servant, and made me sit down. I was admitted by a gorgeous flunkey, and shown into a sumptuous room where a couple of elderly gentlemen were sitting. I was just getting desperate enough to brave all the shame, and to seize it, when a window behind me was raised, and a gentleman spoke out of it, saying: This same thing kept happening and happening, and I couldn't get the pear. But every time I made a move to get it some passing eye detected my purpose, and of course I straightened up then, and looked indifferent, and pretended that I hadn't been thinking about the pear at all. My mouth watered for it, my stomach craved it, my whole being begged for it. I stopped, of course, and fastened my desiring eye on that muddy treasure. During the next twenty-four I went without food and shelter.Ībout ten o'clock on the following morning, seedy and hungry, I was dragging myself along Portland Place, when a child that was passing, towed by a nurse-maid, tossed a luscious big pear - minus one bite - into the gutter. This money fed and sheltered me twenty-four hours. When I stepped ashore in London my clothes were ragged and shabby, and I had only a dollar in my pocket. It was a long and stormy voyage, and they made me work my passage without pay, as a common sailor. Just at nightfall, when hope was about gone, I was picked up by a small brig which was bound for London. One day I ventured too far, and was carried out to sea. My time was my own after the afternoon board, Saturdays, and I was accustomed to put it in on a little sail-boat on the bay. I was alone in the world, and had nothing to depend upon but my wits and a clean reputation but these were setting my feet in the road to eventual fortune, and I was content with the prospect. When I was twenty-seven years old, I was a mining-broker's clerk in San Francisco, and an expert in all the details of stock traffic. ![]()
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