Peter: A Novel of Which He is Not the HeroSmith, Francis Hopkinson
General
Peter: A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero
Smith, Francis Hopkinson
Bank tellers -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Wall Street (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction
The gaining of this church building--the largest and most important
given the young architect since he had left Morris's protection and
guidance--decided Garry to give up at once his expensive quarters in
New York and move to Corklesville. So far as any help from the house
of Breen was concerned, all hope had ended with the expensive and
much-advertised wedding (a shrewd financial move, really, for a firm
selling shady securities). Corinne had cooed, wept, and then succumbed
into an illness, but Breen had only replied: “No, let 'em paddle their
own canoe.”
This is why the sign “To Let,” on one of the new houses built by the Elm
Crest Land and Improvement Company--old Tom Corkle who owned the market
garden farms that gave the village of Corklesville its name, would have
laughed himself sore had he been alive--was ripped off and various teams
loaded with all sorts of furniture, some very expensive and showy and
some quite the contrary--especially that belonging to the servants'
rooms--were backed up to the newly finished porch with its second coat
of paint still wet, and their contents duly distributed upstairs and
downstairs and in my lady Corinne's chamber.
“Got to put on the brakes, old man,” Garry had said one day to Jack. The
boy had heard of the expected change in the architect's finances before
the villa was rented, and so Garry's confidential communication was not
news to him.
“Been up to look at one of those new houses. Regular bird cage, but we
can get along. Besides, this town is going to grow and I'm going to help
it along. They are all dead out here--embalmed, some of them--but dead.”
Here he opened the pamphlet of the company--“See this house--an hour
from New York; high ground; view of the harbor--(all a lie, Jack, but it
goes all the same); sewers, running water, gas (lot of the last,--most
of it in the prospectus) It's called Elm Crest--beautiful, isn't
it,--and not a stump within half a mile.”
Jack always remembered the interview. That Garry should help along
anything that he took an interest in was quite in the line of his
ambition and ability. Minott was as “smart as a steel trap,” Holker
Morris had always said of him, “and a wonderful fellow among the men.
He can get anything out of them; he would really make a good politician.
His handling of the Corn Exchange showed that.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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