Three million dollars! In round numbers, three million dollars, after the legacies to individuals and the bequests to charitable institutions had been paid!
Three million dollars! Suggestive of mighty air-castles, of untold grandeur, of matchless liberality to the poor and needy! Suggestive, also, of long and weary years of patient seeking after worldly wealth, of painful struggles with adverse circumstances, and of parsimonious self-denial extending even to the very necessities of life.
There had been three great epochs in the life of John Hungerford, the Baltimore millionnaire, at each of which he had annexed a zero to the number indicating his worldly wealth; and it must also be said that he was continually adding zeros to the sum total of his moral and spiritual possessions. When he commenced his business career, he had three thousand dollars. Operating with care and prudence, it required twenty years to annex the first zero, and he was forty-one when the first financial cycle was completed. Another twenty years of care and toil annexed the second zero, and John Hungerford was more than threescore. Then fortune, always constant, became lavish, and the very skies seemed to rain down wealth. His real estate doubled, tripled, and quadrupled, and ten years placed the third and last zero against the accumulations of his lifetime. Then, having passed his threescore years and ten, he retired from active business with fear and trembling for the stupendous fortune he had made. Only three years more of life were vouchsafed to him; but one with his simple habits could not spend a tithe of his income, and another half million was added, almost in spite of himself.
Wherefore had John Hungerford struggled so patiently with the tide of fortune? Wherefore had he neglected his body and his soul for fifty long years? Wherefore had he lived in a mean house, upon the coarsest fare, with never a horse, and hardly a servant to ease his toilsome but successful march up to the pinnacle of his worldly ambition? He had not a child to inherit his hard-earned gains. He had no friends but those who had been constant to him in business relations, and they never crossed the threshold of his homely dwelling. Nothing but the love of wealth could have sustained him in his fierce struggles for the mammon of the world.
Yet John Hungerford was not a bad man. He had cheated no one; had never wronged the widow and the fatherless. He had no friends, because he wanted none; his blood relations had long ago ceased to darken his doors, feeling that they were not welcome guests. They were few in number, including only the son and daughter of his only brother, for the Baltimore millionnaire could boast of no long line of ancestors, and the family tree, so far as his knowledge extended, had its root in the preceding generation.
John Hungerford, senior, had never known a father or a mother. He was, at his earliest recollection, an inmate of an English workhouse, and he had at a tender age been bound out to a farmer. From this humble beginning he had bettered his condition until he was able to save a few pounds, when he married. Prosperity smiled upon him in a small way, and about the year 1790 he had emigrated to America, bringing with him his wife and his four children, the oldest of whom, John, junior, was nineteen years of age, while the youngest, James, was twelve.
The whole family went to work in good earnest, and for a year were prosperous and happy; but the angel of death swept through the contented household during the following year. A malignant fever carried off first the mother, then the two daughters, and finally the father, leaving only John and James to mourn the wreck which death had made in their home. The old man, who had learned industry and thrift in an English workhouse, left six thousand dollars.
John was now twenty-one years of age, and, besides receiving the portion that fell to him, he was appointed the guardian of his younger brother. Then he commenced the career of which we have given the result at the beginning of this chapter. James worked in a store till he was of age; and then, with his three thousand dollars, which John promptly paid to him, with interest, he went farther north, where he invested his little capital in a cotton-mill, and obtained the situation of overseer in the factory.
James Hungerford had none of the genius for money getting which distinguished his brother. He was content with his position in the cotton-mill, and hardly doubled his capital in twenty years. At the age of thirty-four he married a lady of twenty; but it was ten years later when his first child, Eugene, was born, who was followed, four years after, by a daughter, Julia.
When the patient, plodding father died at the age of fifty-four, he left only the small cottage in which he lived, and the three thousand dollars in mill stock, which had paid him dividends for over thirty years. Mrs. Hungerford was a prudent and skilful woman, and she contrived to live very comfortably with her little family on the income of the stock, still occupying the small cottage which her husband had left. At this time John Hungerford had added the second zero to the number which indicated his wealth. For many years there had been no regular communication between the families of John and James. Mrs. Hungerford had written to her brother-in-law, whom she had never seen, the particulars of the death of her husband. A prompt reply had been returned, in which the man of money deplored the loss of the husband and father, and even intimated that, if any assistance were required, it would be rendered. The widow was too high-spirited and self-reliant to make any demands upon the wealthy brother, and she replied that her family was in comfortable circumstances, and had no occasion to trespass upon his liberality.
In the mean time John himself, at the age of fifty-three, had married a widow who was the mother of a boy four years of age. Mrs. Lynch, who became Mrs. Hungerford by this arrangement, was an ambitious woman, who knew something of the extent of her husband’s possessions; but she found that John had an iron will. He would not even move from the mean dwelling he occupied to one better adapted to a man of his wealth. Few and slight were the changes adopted in the household; indeed, they were little more than the substitution of a wife for a housekeeper. The widow was disappointed and indignant; but John was growing old, and she temporized with the present that the future might yield a golden harvest.
The man of wealth, as before hinted, was not a bad nor a hard-hearted man, and though Tom Lynch, his wife’s son, was not the most promising youth in the world, John Hungerford derived a solid pleasure from his company, and favors which the mother could not obtain were readily won by the son. Mrs. Hungerford was delighted with these indications, and hoped and expected that her boy would be the fortunate heir of the rich man. She kept the peace, and submitted to her disappointments in the most exemplary manner, believing that the day of her triumph was not far distant.
Tom Lynch, in due time, was sent to a Pennsylvania college by his indulgent step-father, who had thus far obstinately refused to die, as his loving wife wished; and when John Hungerford had closed up his warehouses, and nominally retired from business, Tom had been graduated, and was studying a profession in Philadelphia.
When his wife’s son had completed his collegiate course, a bright thought entered the brain of the millionnaire. As sending Tom to college had not ruined him, it occurred to him that he might make another venture of the same kind. Having more time on his hands than ever before, having, in fact, so closed up his business that he had little to do but collect and invest his income, he had bestowed a thought upon the family of his brother James. In six lines of a letter, penned with difficulty, he had informed the widow Hungerford that he was tolerably well, and wished to know something about her family. The answer assured him that all were well and happy; that the children were growing finely, and in due time would doubtless ripen into an excellent young man and an excellent young woman. Eugene, she wrote, had particularly distinguished himself as a scholar, and a minister of Poppleton had intimated that the young man ought to be sent to college; but, the widow added, her means were utterly insufficient to enable her to carry out such a magnificent project, though her son would be rejoiced to continue his studies. She declared that Eugene was a noble boy, and submitted without a murmur to his disappointment. In a few weeks he would go into a store.
Whether the statement was intended as a hint or not, the uncle promptly sent her a draft for two thousand dollars, which he thought would take the boy through college handsomely. The letter of thanks in which this gift was acknowledged was so warm and earnest, that the old man’s heart was kindled to finer issues than he had ever before known. He wrote again, insisting that Mrs. Hungerford and her two children should visit him in Baltimore without delay. He was too old and feeble to go to them, and they must come to him. Of course the widow could raise no objections to a project so reasonable, and she immediately announced her intention to accept the invitation. Though she was an independent and high-minded woman, who would not thrust herself or her children upon the notice of her wealthy brother-in-law, very likely she felt that it would be trifling with Providence to neglect this opportunity to improve the relations subsisting between them and the childless millionnaire.
John Hungerford told his wife what he had done, and announced the visit of his relatives. She turned pale, and trembled for the future of her son. She would have rebelled, if policy had not suggested a milder course, and she only declared that the house was in no condition to receive guests. The only practical result of the lady’s protest was, a few hundred dollars were spent in “tidying” up the establishment.
Mrs. Hungerford and her children came. They were kindly welcomed by the old man, and prudentially welcomed by the old man’s wife. It is true the visitors were astonished to find that the man of millions dwelt in a mean, poorly furnished house, without the slightest pretension to luxury or style; but they made no comments. Uncle John was kind and attentive to them; and this was all they could expect of him. Eugene was a fine, manly youth of seventeen, gentle and winning in all his ways; and the fond mother could hardly conceal her satisfaction, when, at the expiration of a week, she realized that her boy was a decided favorite of the old man. The boy was too artless to be mercenary; so he resorted to no tricks to win the regards of his uncle.
John Hungerford was too keenly schooled in human nature to be deceived by a false show of attention. He read his nephew’s noble nature; he understood it perfectly; and day by day the old man’s wife became more troubled and anxious about the prospects of her son. The visit was terminated only when Eugene was obliged to return home to attend the examination for admission to Harvard College. The uncle expressed his desire that the visit should be repeated, and Mrs. Hungerford readily promised to come again.
Tom Lynch went home to spend his vacation a few months after the departure of the widow and her family. His mother imparted to him the appalling intelligence that he was in danger of being supplanted in the regards of her husband; but the young man was confident, and by every art and device which his ingenuity could suggest, he labored to make himself useful and agreeable to his step-father. His mother still dreaded the impending evil. John Hungerford, so far as she knew, had made no will. As the case now stood, the children of James Hungerford were his sole heirs. Nothing but a wife’s portion could come to her, and her son would be utterly excluded from the division. She did not dare to suggest the propriety of his making a will; but she commenced upon a series of hints, and a course of expedients, which were intended to effect her purpose. Thus months and years wore away, and Eugene Hungerford was graduated at Harvard; but the visit to Baltimore was not repeated.
Long and not very patiently had Mrs. Hungerford been waiting for the old man to die. He was aged and feeble, and he would be better off in heaven than upon the earth. It would be better for him to die, even though she obtained no more than her legal share of his estates. More must be obtained if possible, and while she was hinting and studying up expedients, which the superannuated millionnaire persistently refused to notice, she died herself: a violent attack of disease carried her off even before her son could arrive to close her eyes in death.
John Hungerford was alone in the world again. Perhaps his experience of wedded life had not been wholly satisfactory; at any rate, he bore his bereavement with much calmness and resignation, and meekly submitted to the necessity of supplying the place of the departed one by employing a housekeeper. If this sudden death in his little family had no other influence upon him, it forcibly reminded him of the uncertainty of life. For two whole years he labored upon his will, elaborating whole pages of details, freely consulting his business friends, before he instructed the lawyer to embody his intentions in legal forms. Strange as it may seem, he did not send for his brother’s family, as he had intimated he should, at least once a year. Mrs. Hungerford wrote to him occasionally, and with business-like promptness he answered her letters; but no invitation came for the family to repeat the visit. After the death of his wife, his sister-in-law had even proposed to move to Baltimore, and take care of him in his age and feebleness; but the old man, evading a direct reply, continued to study upon the details of his will, which document certainly promised to be the crowning work of his life. He wrote that he was so much occupied, the visit must be deferred; and he continued to postpone it, until one morning his housekeeper found him dead in his bed.
Three staid, dignified, elderly merchants had been John Hungerford’s most intimate friends--friends only in the worldly and business sense. They had been his advisers, and during those two years of patient toil over his will--the master-work of his career--they had been occasional visitors in the little back parlor where the millionnaire now spent most of his time. They had furnished him with all his information of the outer world, and assisted him, so far as they could, in performing the task on which all his remaining energies were concentrated. For two weeks the best lawyer in the city had been closeted with John Hungerford during a portion of each day; and the great deed which finally disposed of the old man’s immense property was completed only a few days before his death. Perhaps he felt that he had nothing more to live for; and permitting his energies to relax, this suspension of his wonted activity had hastened his death.
The housekeeper sent for John’s trio of business friends as soon as she discovered that the vital spark had fled. One after the other they came, and when all had arrived, a solemn and dignified conference was held. There were no friends to be sent for but the Hungerfords of Poppleton, and Tom Lynch, who was attempting to establish himself as a physician in an interior town of Ohio, though reports came to Baltimore that he was too unsteady to achieve a success. Telegraph messages were immediately sent to Mrs. Hungerford and Tom Lynch. The former, with her family, arrived in season to attend the funeral, but the despatch did not promptly reach the young physician, and he did not appear.
John Hungerford went to his grave in greater state than he had ever moved in the flesh, for the three eminent merchants who managed the affair had a high regard for the proprieties of the solemn occasion. A long procession of carriages, occupied by men and women who were willing to join the brilliant funeral cortége for the gloomy excitement of the scene, though they had no interest in, and only a few had any acquaintance with, the deceased, followed the plumed hearse to the cemetery, and the tomb closed upon all that was mortal of the Baltimore millionnaire.
After the old man’s dust had been solemnly disposed of, there was an intense curiosity to ascertain what disposition he had made of his princely fortune. This was really the most interesting question connected with the life or death of the departed. Few, if any, asked what he was; all, what he had. Hardly one wanted to know what pleasant memories he had left behind him; all, the sum total of his worldly possessions. None but fanatics asked where the old man had gone; but every one, where his fortune was to go.
What John Hungerford had been doing in the little back parlor for the last two years was to be made manifest. It had cost the old man fifty years of severe struggles to get his three and a half millions; it had cost him two years of diligent thought, and what struggles none could know,--it had cost him two years of hard labor, more trying, perhaps, in his age and feebleness, than the half century of toil in the vigor of his healthy life,--to give it away. The will was read. There were present at the reading only the three eminent merchants, the Hungerford family from Poppleton, and the housekeeper.
Mrs. Hungerford was quiet and self-possessed. The neglect to send for her, as had been arranged with her brother-in-law, to pay the proposed annual visits, had prepared her to expect nothing more than a simple remembrance. Her son, Eugene, was calm and dignified, but there was something in the expression of his manly face which indicated his dislike of the proceedings. Like his mother, he was independent and self-reliant; and, very likely, he felt that the position of the family before the lawyer and the merchants was an exceedingly unpleasant one. They were to be regarded as expectants, if not supplicants, before the still closed coffers of the dead man; but Eugene repudiated the position. He asked nothing, expected nothing. He was deeply grateful to his uncle for the means of obtaining his education, and he was prepared to be entirely satisfied if this proved to be the total of his indebtedness to the deceased.
Julia Hungerford was nineteen, and she was so fair to look upon that even the dignified merchants stole frequent glances at her, as she sat annoyed and embarrassed, like her brother and her mother, by the awkwardness of the situation.
The lawyer read, and two mortal hours were consumed in the reading; and more of John Hungerford’s life and thought was revealed than the world had ever known before. No one had ever suspected the millionnaire of any family ambition, or of any special affection for the name he bore; but this posthumous document convinced the listeners that the old man regarded the word “Hungerford” as the apple of his eye. The two years of hard reflection had been employed in devising schemes to prevent the name of Hungerford from being forgotten. He had labored to honor it and to perpetuate it.
The great disappointment of John Hungerford’s life, as the truth was educed from the will, was, that no son had blessed his lot--no son to be called John Hungerford, to live like a prince, and to keep the name alive. The testator, however, was not to be wholly balked. He was strenuous for the whole name of John Hungerford; and in spite of his disappointment, he determined to have a representative in the future who should be known and called as he had been known and called. It appeared that he had intended at one time to make Tom Lynch change his name, and become the fortunate owner of the appellation; but the young man had shown a disposition to follow after strange gods, and was not therefore a suitable person to support the honor and dignity of the Hungerford name, and the plan was discarded for the one which was now shadowed forth in the will. But even this might fail, and the old man, in this event, had finally resolved to satisfy himself by rendering immortal and glorious the single name of Hungerford, though his hopes and expectations still coupled it with the dearly beloved John.
To the end that his intentions might be clearly understood, the deceased had compelled the unwilling lawyer to preface the will with the matter from which the information we have given is derived; and it was estimated that the word “Whereas” occurred two hundred and some odd number of times in the folios devoted to this preliminary statement. But this story, in spite of the legal verbiage with which it was encumbered, proved to be of the deepest interest to all present, even including the eminent merchants, whose ideas were generally expressed by figures.
The reader turned the folios for an hour before he came to the pith and cream of the document, the masterpiece of John Hungerford’s labors. “Imprimis” gave to John Lester, Edward Baker, and Loring Greene, the eminent merchants, each the sum of fifty thousand dollars. These gentlemen were John’s best friends, and he made them his executors and trustees for the disposal of his property as “hereinafter mentioned.” To the widow of his late brother James he gave twenty thousand dollars. To Julia Hungerford and Thomas Lynch he gave a like sum. Then were mentioned twenty-eight literary, scientific, and charitable associations, to each of which the testator gave the sum of ten thousand dollars. John Hungerford must have been terribly puzzled to find all these names, and without the assistance of the eminent merchants he would certainly have neglected many of them. He was impartial in his bequests, for without regard to the objects or the magnitude of the enterprises to which he contributed, he gave to each the same sum.
These bequests, with an allowance of ten thousand dollars for present expenses of probate--there were no stamps then--used up only the half million, which was but a kind of flourish on the end of John Hungerford’s fortune, and which had accumulated since he retired from active pursuits. The grand army of zeros, marshalled by its significant three, was yet in the field, and the three eminent merchants actually gasped with anxiety to hear the name of the residuary legatee. And now came John Hungerford’s dying crotchet; now came the notable scheme by which John Hungerford, dead and in his grave, was to be represented in the coming generation by a John Hungerford, alive and glorious in the possession of a princely fortune; or, failing the “John,” by which the name of Hungerford, simply, was to be honorably sent down to remote ages.
The whole three millions was to be placed in the hands of the eminent merchants, as trustees, who for their valuable services were to receive a fixed sum per annum, the whole income of which, after deducting the expenses, was to be paid to his “beloved nephew,” Eugene Hungerford.
Eugene did not faint when he heard that he was to be the recipient of one hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year, but his mother absolutely gasped for breath.
The lawyer proceeded. The eminent trustees were to retain possession of the three millions, all safely and profitably invested at the present time, until the before-mentioned beloved nephew, Eugene Hungerford, had attained the age of thirty years; at which time, if the said Eugene was legally married, and was the legal father of a legal son, then the said eminent trustees should pay over to the said beloved nephew, Eugene Hungerford, the said legal father of the said legal son, absolutely and irrevocably the said three millions, now invested as aforesaid: provided that the name of John Hungerford shall be unchangeably given by the said legal father to the said legal son.
Eugene twisted uneasily in his chair. Mrs. Hungerford looked very complacent, as though the conditions of the will, in her estimation, were not very difficult to be complied with. Julia wanted to laugh, but the eminent merchants, who continued to glance at her occasionally, were too solemn and dignified to permit her to indulge in any levity.
The reading was not finished. If the said beloved nephew was not married when he attained the said age of thirty; or, if married, and being the legal father of a legal daughter or daughters only, and not being the said legal father of a said legal son; or if the said son was called by any other than the said name of “John Hungerford,”--then the three millions was to be shattered and divided into six equal parts of half a million each; one part to be paid to the said beloved nephew, Eugene Hungerford; one part to the before-mentioned beloved niece, Julia Hungerford; one part to the son of his late wife, Thomas Lynch; one part to the Hungerford Orphan Asylum; one part to the Hungerford Institute for Aged Women; and one part to the Hungerford Home for Aged Men.
Every provision of the will was carefully set forth, and nicely protected from any possible misconstruction. John made things strong. It was duly signed and sealed, and was witnessed by the twelve proprietors of the twelve nearest stores; for though the testator knew that three witnesses were enough, he insisted upon having an army of them, at least one half of whom should not be over thirty years of age; so that if any trouble came, some of them could be found, and not all of them would have died of old age.
The reading of the will was completed. The eminent merchants and the sharp lawyer congratulated Eugene, his mother, and especially his sister. They were astonishingly polite to the whole family. Eugene tried to be good natured, but, with his peculiar temperament, he found it even more difficult than if he had been cut off with a shilling. As Eugene is the hero of the story, we will not attempt to use him up in the first chapter, or even to indicate his views of the magnificent position to which he had suddenly been elevated.
Tom Lynch had not yet been heard from, and Eugene, after listening to all the trustees had to say, started for Poppleton with his mother and sister.
