w for
calmness and solitude, I can tell you--though there's no money in that,
of course. No money, but a man wants rest, a man wants peace--a man
don't want to rip and tear around all the time. And here we go, now,
just as straight as a string for Hallelujah--it's a beautiful angle
--handsome up grade all the way --and then away you go to Corruptionville,
the gaudiest country for early carrots and cauliflowers that ever--good
missionary field, too. There ain't such another missionary field outside
the jungles of Central Africa. And patriotic?--why they named it after
Congress itself. Oh, I warn you, my dear, there's a good time coming,
and it'll be right along before you know what you're about, too. That
railroad's fetching it. You see what it is as far as I've got, and if I
had enough bottles and soap and boot-jacks and such things to carry it
along to where it joins onto the Union Pacific, fourteen hundred miles
from here, I should exhibit to you in that little internal improvement a
spectacle of inconceivable sublimity. So, don't you see? We've got the
rail road to fall back on; and in the meantime, what are we worrying
about that $200,000 appropriation for? That's all right. I'd be willing
to bet anything that the very next letter that comes from Harry will--"

The eldest boy entered just in the nick of time and brought a letter,
warm from the post-office.

"Things do look bright, after all, Beriah. I'm sorry I was blue, but it
did seem as if everything had been going against us for whole ages. Open
the letter--open it quick, and let's know all about it before we stir out
of our places. I am all in a fidget to know what it says."

The letter was opened, without any unnecessary delay.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Whatever may have been the language of Harry's letter to the Colonel,
the information it conveyed was condensed or expanded, one or the other,
from the following episode of his visit to New York:

He called, with official importance in his mien, at No.-- Wall street,
where a great gilt sign betokened the presence of the head-quarters of
the "Columbus River Slack-Water Navigation Company." He entered and
gave a dressy porter his card, and was requested to wait a moment in a
sort of ante-room. The porter returned in a minute; and asked whom he
would like to see?

"The president of the company, of course."

"He is busy with some gentlemen, sir; says he will be done with them
directly."

Tha