United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
As for Mr. Hopper, increase of salary had not changed him. He still
lived in the same humble way, in a single room in Miss Crane's
boarding-house, and he paid very little more for his board than he had
that first week in which he swept out Colonel Carvel's store. He
was superintendent, now, of Mr. Davitt's Sunday School, and a church
officer. At night, when he came home from business, he would read the
widow's evening paper, and the Colonel's morning paper at the office. Of
true Puritan abstemiousness, his only indulgence was chewing tobacco.
It was as early as 1859 that the teller of the Boatman's Bank began to
point out Mr. Hopper's back to casual customers, and he was more than
once seen to enter the president's room, which had carpet on the floor.
Eliphalet's suavity with certain delinquent customers from the Southwest
was A wording to Scripture. When they were profane, and invited him
into the street, he reminded them that the city had a police force and a
jail. While still a young man, he had a manner of folding his hands
and smiling which is peculiar to capitalists, and he knew the laws
concerning mortgages in several different states.
But Eliphalet was content still to remain in the sphere in which
Providence had placed him, and so to be an example for many of us.
He did not buy, or even hire, an evening suit. He was pleased to
superintend some of the details for a dance at Christmas-time before
Virginia left Monticello, but he sat as usual on the stair-landing.
There Mr. Jacob Cluyme (who had been that day in conversation with
the teller of the Boatman's Bank) chanced upon him. Mr. Cluyme was so
charmed at the facility with which Eliphalet recounted the rise and fall
of sugar and cotton and wheat that he invited Mr. Hopper to dinner. And
from this meal may be reckoned the first appearance of the family of
which Eliphalet Hopper was the head into polite society. If the Cluyme
household was not polite, it was nothing. Eliphalet sat next to Miss
Belle, and heard the private history of many old families, which he
cherished for future use. Mrs. Cluyme apologized for the dinner, which
(if the truth were told) needed an apology. All of which is significant,
but sordid and uninteresting. Jacob Cluyme usually bought stocks before
a rise.
There was only one person who really bothered Eliphalet as he rose into
prominence, and that person was Captain Elijah Brent. If, upon entering
the ground-glass office, he found Eliphalet without the Colonel,
Captain Lige would walk out again just as if the office were empty. The
inquiries he made were addressed always to Ephum. Once, when Mr. Hopper
had bidden him good morning and pushed a chair toward him, the honest
Captain had turned his back and marched straight to the house or Tenth
Street, where he found the Colonel alone at breakfast. The Captain sat
down opposite.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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