I 
 ANNEX 
 
 S 
 066 
 
 358 
 
 FOR VIRGINIANS ONLY 
 
 WHAT I DID 
 
 T: IFTY MILLIONS, 
 
 MOSES ADAMS. 
 
 R(.)M "I UK POSTMU 
 
 CAESAR MAUK1CK. 
 
 WHIG 
 
 PH 1 L A I) E 1 
 
 J. B. LI I'l'l M < 
 1874.
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS, 
 
 TING 
 
 I Xj Xj I O 2ST S, 
 
 RESPECTING 
 
 JJ 
 
 AS IT APPEARED SERIALLY. 
 
 " THE WINGS OF RICHES. The first installment of Moses Adams's 
 new story, concerning which the world has already heard so many 
 tantalizing things that have made the world stand on tip-toe, appeared 
 in the daily Whig of Saturday, in which edition (as well as the 
 semi-weekly and weekly) the rest of the narrative will be told by 
 the ex-millionaire. 'Tis marked already by the satire, keen but 
 never cutting (it can cut, but it doesn't), the knowledge of human 
 nature, alike in its weakest and its most earnest, its most and least 
 genial aspects, the pathos, the riant and easy humor, that make Dr. 
 Bagby, in our critical judgment, another Elia of our era, with more 
 varied powers than Lamb, though none so well cultivated as those 
 of that essayist and occasional poet. 'What I Did with My Fifty 
 Millions,' recalls the Doctor's best work, ' Blue Eyes and Battlewick,' 
 published many years ago in the Southern Literary Messenger, and, 
 unfortunately, never put before the world in book-form. We shall 
 follow the career of that fortune with eyes of interest, especially as 
 we have an idea that some small part of it will be laid apart for us. 
 That is, if we survive until 1876, the year in which the story is cast ; 
 the pkice being Richmond, with temporary shuntings on the side- 
 traclorof Lynchburg and Kurdsville." Petersburg Index. 
 
 " ' FIFTY MILLIONS.' . . . The style of Doctor Bagby is fitted more 
 to the pages and character of the quarterlies and to the book publica- 
 tions of the day, than to the daily and weekly journals. Bagby is 
 the Mark Twain of Virginia, and we have no doubt that some of our 
 book publishers could subserve a public demand, and at the same 
 time promote very handsomely the business interests of their estab- 
 lishments, by furnishing it in book-form. ' What I Did with My 
 Fifty Millions' is quaint, original, and peculiarly Virginian, and its 
 style adds to the virtues of its great local interests, those features of 
 terse and trenchant style, which will cause it to be read in other 
 circles than where the cavaliers and their descendants have left their 
 footprints.' " Bristol News. 

 
 2 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 "' FIFTY MILLIONS.' Dr. Adams's great romance, 'What I Did 
 with My Fifty Million Dollars,' is concluded in the last number of 
 the Whig, in which the wonderful serial has been published. The 
 final installment is longer than those which preceded, and is crowded 
 with incidents and tableaux of abiding interest. In the last sad 
 scene, he beholds, as in a trance, all the comrades and companions 
 of his earlier years; and there troop in long procession through the 
 old man's breaking and wandering mind the figures, inter a/ios, of 
 "many Petersburgers Mr. Osborne, McCabe, Glass, 'the two Bar- 
 hams,' the two Venables, Cameron, the writer, and many others. 
 This vivid memory cheers the old man's heart, as his hold on earth 
 relaxes, and he falls asleep with the happy vision shining in his eyes. 
 We hope the story will be collected and printed in book-form for the 
 amusement and entertainment of the public. There is in it much 
 more than the humor which plays on its surface ; there is even more 
 in it than the pathos which often breaks through it with tears. There 
 is in the analysis of the vagaries and hallucinations which precede 
 death, the evidence of deep study and knowledge of physiology and 
 psychology too. But we will not discount the reader's enjoyment of 
 the ' Fifty Millions.' It ought by all means to appear in book- 
 form." Index-Appeal. 
 
 "WHAT I DID WITH MY FIFTY MILLIONS.' The series of 
 papers under this fantastic title is brought to a conclusion in the 
 issue of the Richmond Whig of May 1st. 
 
 " Dr. Bagby has made his fancy of great wealth the starting point 
 for excursions in every direction, sketching, as he alone of living 
 writers can do, the familiar Virginian life as it was before the war, 
 as it is now in its transition state, and as it can never again appear 
 under the new conditions that surround us. Untrammeled by any 
 fixed limits, he introduces into these separate pictures his own reflec- 
 tions on men and things reflections now profound, now playful, here 
 fantastic, there pathetic, but always tinged with his own humor, 
 always revealing something of his own self and thought. These 
 sketches are often personal, and the author has the rare boldacss to 
 talk of the men he means by their own names, but the persom^jiy is 
 but such as Charles Lamb indulged in when he wrote of the India 
 House, or when he so affectionately and yet so quizzically recorded 
 his memories of the Benchers of Gray's Inn. 
 
 " Dr. Bagby's genius is akin to Lamb's; he has the same keenness 
 of local observation, the same love for quaint nooks of space, for 
 quaint examples of mankind, for old fashions of thought and speech 
 and life. His humor, too, is of Elia's kind, a melancholy humor, 
 yet a jesting, a humor often sarcastic in form, always loving in fact. 
 He draws his pictures of Virginia as Lamb did of London, always 
 narrow in his theme, but always wide in its treatment, perfect in the 
 minute observations he loves to make, because his mind is practiced 
 in large views of men and things. 
 
 " Virginia has in truth produced, though Virginia hardly knows it,
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 3 
 
 a school of Virginian art, men devoted to portraying Virginian life, 
 and portraying it so well that, had they been Bostonians, with the 
 Old Colony for their subject, the country would have resounded with 
 their fame. Elder Woodward, Sheppard, and Fisher, with brush 
 and pencil; Valentine, Gait, andBarbee, with the chisel; in science, 
 Ruffin, Rogers, Maury, and Hotchkiss; in literature, Thompson, 
 Aylett, Cooke, Pollard, Marian Harland, and Geo. W. Bagby. 
 
 " Among these men of letters the last stands pre-eminent as the 
 essayist of Virginia, the pen-painter of Virginians, their life and 
 manners, their foibles and their virtues. It is a great pity that these 
 sketches of a time and people fast passing, almost wholly passed 
 away, should not be collected and put in enduring form. Shep- 
 pard's pencil has preserved in outline almost every phase of the 
 old-time negro life in Virginia. Elder's b'rush has recorded it to its 
 minutest detail, and Valentine has stamped it into marble, but the 
 essays of Dr. Bagby have in turn touched on every part of Virginia, 
 and touched each one to adorn and to preserve. The country vil- 
 lage, the court-house green, the plantation home, the editor, the 
 planter, the belle, the hard-worked country doctor, the pampered 
 house-servant, the traveling gambler, the court-house bully, the country 
 dandy, the hale old farmer, and the busy, much-worked and all-loving 
 matron and mother ; all these, as seen in Virginia, the Virginia as it 
 stood in 1850, and likewise the Virginia as in 1870 it was passing 
 away, his pictures keep alive for us and for the future. 
 
 " We hope, and hope earnestly, that the essayist will frame these 
 pictures in a book and so preserve them. Let the ' Fifty Millions' 
 lead and let the title be ' For Virginians only,' and our word for it, 
 Virginia will buy and read, and value, will laugh, and now and again 
 will shed a pleasing tear over that book." Norfolk Virginian. 
 
 "'FIFTY MILLIONS.' Doctor Bagby is a humorist of the finest 
 taste, and his productions are of native growth. Born of Virginia's 
 soil, suffused with a local coloring at once pure and brilliant, his pic- 
 tures of men and scenes have a charm about them which it is hard to 
 describe without incurring the charge of extravagance from those who 
 do not know his works. For us this provincialism is very attractive, 
 but, in addition, we find that he scatters wit, wisdom and learning 
 with a generous profusion through his pages, so that one rises from 
 his ' Fifty Millions' with a conviction that until this serial appeared 
 Bagby was unknown even to his own people and his familiar friends. 
 This performance is to be published in a volume, and on its appear- 
 ance we shall have a word to speak about it, until when we beg his 
 friends, our friends, and the friends of our native literature to interest 
 themselves in making the forthcoming volume a complete success." 
 Norfolk ( Va.} Landmark.
 
 FOR VIRGINIANS ONLY. 
 
 WHAT I DID 
 
 WITH MY 
 
 FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 BY 
 
 MOSES ADAMS. 
 
 EDITED FROM THE POSTHUMOUS MS. 
 
 BY 
 
 CJESAR MAURICE, ESQ., 
 
 OF THE RICHMOND (VA.) WHIG. 
 
 PHI LADELPH I A: 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
 
 1874.
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 
 
 G. W. BAGBY. 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
 
 PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. 
 
 IT seems that the old man ("Mozis")* did really be- 
 lieve that he possessed an enormous sum of money the 
 internal evidence leaves no doubt whatever on this point 
 and he must have passed many sleepless nights in 
 imagining what he did with it. He seems, too, to have 
 labored under the additional delusion that he had been 
 for a very long time "cooped up," as he expresses it, in 
 editorial sanctums and libraries, whereas it is well known 
 that his actual business was that of a hoop-pole splitter in 
 the barrel factory of the Columbian Mills. But this con- 
 finement appears to have disagreed with him, and may 
 have led to the mental torsion that gave birth to the 
 strange production now published. Hence the passionate 
 outburst of affection for his foster-mother, Nature, which 
 would be almost ludicrous did we not remember how the 
 simple old soul must have pined for the free life in the 
 woods, to which, as a mauler of rails for Col. Hubard, 
 of Buckingham, he had been accustomed from his very 
 boyhood. 
 
 The date "1890" in the first foot-note indicates that 
 the article, written at some uncertain period, was after- 
 wards revised and annotated at intervals, as the old man's 
 strength enabled him to indulge in literary occupations 
 probably after nightfall, his only leisure time. His pre- 
 
 * " Mozis Addums," whose " Letters to Billy Ivvins," published in the 
 Southern Literary Messenger, many years ago, produced such an excite- 
 ment in Virginia and throughout the South. Late in life, when Fifty Mil- 
 lions was written, he had learned to spell his name correctly and to write 
 not very bad English. 
 
 7 
 
 2073221
 
 8 PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. 
 
 cise age has always been a matter of conjecture, but had 
 he lived till 1890 he would have been not less than one 
 hundred and eleven years old. The records of the old 
 Masonic Lodge at Curdsville prove this. 
 
 Due allowance must be made for the discrepancies in 
 the annotated dates, for the interpolations of various 
 kinds, and for the garrulity incident to age. These and 
 the doting fondness of the old man for the Virginia cus- 
 toms, which he fancied he had placed upon everlasting 
 foundations, with the further fact that after much reflec- 
 tion he could not prevail upon himself to spend any of 
 his money outside of his native State, may well excuse his 
 wild fancies and incoherences. And our readers no doubt 
 will the more readily condone his faults in view of the 
 fact that, in his prime, the well-meaning creature gave 
 them many a hearty laugh which they have not yet for- 
 gotten. 
 
 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 People have been so delighted with the extravaganzas 
 of MOSES ADAMS that they have demanded the publication 
 of his lucubrations in an enduring book form. It seems 
 never to have occurred to them that in laughing at 
 MOSES'S follies they are laughing at their own. De te 
 fabula narrattir. Those who read between the lines (as 
 the French say) detect in all MOSES'S phantasies a lurking 
 satire on the disposition made by poor old Virginia of her 
 "fifty millions" on internal improvements. We hope, 
 when they read again, they will inwardly digest, and profit 
 by the operation. In the meantime, MOSES, no doubt, 
 chuckles in his sleeve, and is happy in contemplating the 
 hilarity of his dupes. C. M. 
 
 Whig Office, Riclimond, Va.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 FIRST INSTALLMENT. 
 
 PACK 
 
 Where the Money came from First Effect of Riches Yearning for 
 Ashcake and Buttermilk Overwhelming Sense of Poverty 
 Misery and Wrath A Morning Walk Accident Calvin Jones 
 and Tom Kirkpatrick 13 
 
 SECOND INSTALLMENT. 
 
 The Cat out of the Bag How People behaved Park and Reservoir 
 for Lynchburg Alarming Increase of Destitution W. E. Binford 
 and the Widow Bexley How to Help, whom to Help, and When 
 Rush of Editors, Photographers, etc. " Sky Surprises " . .19 
 
 THIRD INSTALLMENT. 
 
 Fits of Pride How cured A Sneaking Heart-Devil The Pleasure 
 of Giving Some Schoolmarms Ham. Chamberlayne Deacon 
 Handy "The Native Virginian" Numerous Widows Colonel 
 McDonald Billy Christian Trick on a Fat Doctor, etc. . . 25 
 
 FOURTH INSTALLMENT. 
 
 Laura Park Sneers at Jones and Adams The Great Reservoir 
 New Market-House Grand Celebration Arrival of Old Lynch- 
 burgers Ballard Kidd and Harriet Rouse Works at Curdsville, . 
 etc. Rage of a baffled Rich Man College for Old Virginia 
 Fiddlers, etc 33 
 
 FIFTH INSTALLMENT. 
 
 Blessings of the Fiddlers' College Dancing vs. Pure Hugging 
 Course on Fife and Tobacco-Horn Blind Billy Buckingham 
 Female Institute "Chermany' 1 and " Ant'ny Over" Lang- 
 horne's Tavern, a Ira, New Store, Raine's Tavern, etc. Spout 
 Spring, Red House, Pamplin's, Tarwallet, etc. College for Old 
 Virginia Cooks Hampden Sydney College Mosque and Shot- 
 Tower at Burkeville 40 
 
 A* 9
 
 I0 CONTENTS. 
 
 SIXTH INSTALLMENT. 
 
 Good Sidewalks in Richmond Council of Cobblers and Ostlers 
 New Capitol proposed Intense Rage of the Legislature Speeches 
 of Indignant Members Appearance of Capitol in 1910 Strangers 
 from Japan and North Carolina Deplorable Consequence of a 
 Bank, etc 47 
 
 .SEVENTH INSTALLMENT. 
 
 Railroad Depots in Richmond Improvements on Broad Street 
 Shields House Virginia Historical Society Building Colonel T. 
 H. Wynne and Dr. W. P. Palmer Automaton of Com. Porter 
 Brice Church Free- Pew Question settled Paganism of Adams 
 Pulpit Propriety and Duck Guns Rev. Dr. Broadus Varlets, 
 Cudgels, and Assassins Congregational Singing Church of 
 Spectroscope 52 
 
 EIGHTH INSTALLMENT. 
 
 Mr. Pigskin on Immigration Adams Hints at Empire Ten Thou- 
 sand Dollars each to Fifteen Hundred Girls Bad Consequences 
 of Good Intentions Excitement in Virginia Adams Hated 
 Regarded as an Active Intransitive Fool Gov. Kemper Ex- 
 pensive Joke on Wife A I^esson to Husbands Rev. Dr. Peterkin 
 Venom without Spondulics 60 
 
 NINTH INSTALLMENT. 
 
 Sad Results of an Explosion Drs. Cullen and McGuire Happy 
 Resection of a Steeple Burwell Music Hall Great Fiddling 
 Festival A Treat for Pretty Girls Happiest Time of Old 
 Adams's Life Gen. Richardson and Col. Sherwin McRae 
 Adams's Patent Lecture-Halls Judge Waller Stapler "Johnny 
 Reb." 69 
 
 TENTH INSTALLMENT. 
 
 Cremation of Piano Advertisers Wisdom of Roman Catholics 
 The Addie Deane House University of Virginia Judge William 
 Robertson, Dr. Maupin, etc. Editorial Academy Asylum for 
 Worthless Young Men Parke Park Richmond Boulevard 
 Matthews & Matthews Life's Appomattox Semi-Phalansterian 
 Squares, etc 76
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 ELEVENTH INSTALLMENT. 
 
 FAGB 
 
 Black Crook Club Monument Dr. Leigh Burton Nat. Stur-. 
 divant Terrace Hermann Garden Louis Euker Cornelia 
 Cathedral Worship Purely Musical Leo Wheat Major Burr 
 Noland Diseased Germans Midnight New Year Services Our 
 Saviour Mary Davidson General Mahone Elder, Fisher, and 
 Sheppard G. Watson James, etc 87 
 
 TWELFTH INSTALLMENT. 
 
 Tour with Artist-Friends Suggestive Summering Badly Apple- 
 Brandied Judge Crump John R. Thompson's Tomb Yankees 
 " The Last of Pea Time " Squirted out of Town Peter Mayo 
 and Alexander Cameron Valentine's Colossal Statue Dr. W. 
 Hand Browne Adams's " Folly," Eleven Hundred Feet High 
 Gala Day all around the Globe Excitement in Lynchburg Jack 
 Slaughter and Robin Terry Trash Green Death of Wife Badly 
 Kicked Home near Pamlin's Depot 97 
 
 THIRTEENTH INSTALLMENT. 
 
 A Lonely Old Age Dark and Bitter Thoughts Arrival of the 
 Commodore Throwing Mexican Dollars A Negro Killed A 
 Stormy Night Trouble of Life's Ending Misery of this World 
 Hallucinations In the Fodder-stack A Voice . . . 109 
 
 FOURTEENTH INSTALLMENT. 
 
 Aunt Polly Waddy Cavalry Comin' Ned Gregory, Barren Hope, 
 V. Dabney and others Slugs and Gulgers Col. T. F. Owens 
 An Old Virginia Breakfast The Commodore Breaks Loose^ 
 A Terrible Time Cremation Loose Again Earthquakes, Chol- 
 era, etc, Grand Dinner Royal Ashcake Toasts, Speeches, and 
 Perfect Bliss Asleep at His Own Table 116 
 
 FIFTEENTH INSTALLMENT. 
 
 In Gordonsville Grand Triangular Bob Sully Hotel Fried Chicken 
 and Hard-boiled Eggs in Effigy Vast Gongs Stofers, Frys, 
 Scotts, Chapmans, Kincheloes, etc. The Sphinx Adams a 
 Nuisance Sent to Poor-House Death Burial and Obituary 
 The End 125
 
 WHAT I DID 
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 FIRST INSTALLMENT. 
 
 Where the Money came from First Effect of Riches Yearning for 
 Ashcake and Buttermilk Overwhelming Sense of Poverty Misery 
 and Wrath A Morning Walk Accident Calvin Jones and Tom 
 Kirkpatrick. 
 
 FOR twenty years at least I had been in the habit of 
 putting myself to sleep by imagining what I would do 
 with the precise sum of fifty millions of dollars. An 
 excellent hypnotic I found it, with no morphine or 
 chloral after-effects. It may have unfitted me for the 
 hard grind of actual life, but no matter now. When it 
 came I was as tranquil as a May morning. The fact is, 
 the transfer was not completed until the close of the 
 month of May, 1876. Negotiations, etc., had been going 
 on for months beforehand, and it has always been a 
 matter of inordinate pride to me that I attended to my 
 regular duties and kept the whole thing a profound secret 
 from my family, friends, and, indeed, everybody in 
 America the money having come from Hindostan. It 
 required a deal of innocent lying to do this, but secrecy 
 was indispensable to the surprises I meditated, and a 
 surprise, you know, is the very cream of the delight as 
 well of giving as receiving. 
 
 One of the bankers, a Calcutta man, if I remember 
 rightly, had the good sense, on taking leave, to put into 
 my hands a small box filled with gold-pieces, so that I 
 might feel my wealth right away and have no doubts 
 about it. The party left on the nine o'clock Fredericksburg 
 
 * '3
 
 I4 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 train, and, after bidding them good-by at the hotel, I put 
 a handful of money in my pocket and walked out to get 
 a little fresh air. My wife always interprets this to mean 
 a glass of beer, but she was mistaken in this instance. 
 Besides, she was up the country at the time. 
 
 I went straight to Gerot's, ordered a nice little supper 
 to be sent, to a room up-stairs which I engaged for the 
 night, and with the supper a bottle of his best cham- 
 pagne, a bundle of his finest cigars (I found I did not 
 want a whole box), a quire of foolscap, pens, and ink. 
 Then I walked down to the telegraph-office. 
 
 On the way a number of acquaintances greeted me, 
 and I wondered to myself whether the tone of their voices 
 (they were not uncourteous at all) would have been dif- 
 ferent if they had known how much money I was worth. 
 A few months later my wonder was quieted. 
 
 The reason I went to the telegraph -office was this : 
 Years and years before, my friend, Calvin D. Jones, had 
 said to me, 
 
 "If I should ever become suddenly very rich, do you 
 know what I would do?" 
 
 "No," I replied. 
 
 "I should run as hard as I could stave and give away 
 every dollar I could persuade myself to. give, for if I 
 stopped one second to think about it I should never give 
 one cent." 
 
 By that I knew that Jones was a man of intellect. 
 
 He then lived in Rome, Georgia, and was drugging 
 people there. I telegraphed him to draw on me for 
 expenses, and meet me as early as possible in Lynchburg. 
 
 That done, I returned to Gerot's. 
 
 My supper, as nice a one as heart could wish, was all 
 ready for me in my room. How often and over again 
 my appetite had been whetted for that identical supper ! 
 and now there it was before me, the gold in my pocket, 
 the wine, the cigars, paper and pens, all as I had imagined 
 a thousand times. 
 
 And what think you was the result ? 
 
 A loss of appetite ? 
 
 Not that exactly, but an intense honing for ashcake 
 and buttermilk.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. ! 5 
 
 Gerot had neither, and it was too late to get them else- 
 where ; so I drank a glass or two of wine, and addressed 
 myself to the task of writing out minutely what I intended 
 to do with my money. The plan was in my head, com- 
 plete and clear, and, once written down, my purpose was 
 to carry it out to the very letter. 
 
 I had not finished the first page before I stopped sud- 
 denly, threw down the pen, and groaned aloud in such 
 anguish of spirit as I had never felt before ; for never 
 before had I felt so crushing a sense of poverty. 
 
 "My God!" I cried, "what can a man do with a 
 miserable pittance of fifty millions? I want to give 
 Virginia a perfect system of county roads, so that one 
 may get off at a station and go to the nearest country- 
 house without breaking his neck, and it would take five 
 hundred millions to do that. Then there is the capitol 
 to fix that and its surroundings as I would like to have 
 them fixed would consume the last dollar in my posses- 
 sion. Bah!" 
 
 That bah ! was intoned more like an oath than an 
 introit. I rose and paced the room for an hour or more 
 in mingled rage and misery. Then I drank the rest of 
 the wine (it would not keep, in fact, was flat already), put 
 a cigar in my pocket (" maybe Gerot will take the others 
 back a pipe is plenty good enough for me, suits my 
 weak digestion"*), and walked out. 
 
 Day was just faintly dawning. 
 
 Putting a chew of tobacco in my mouth and saving my 
 cigar for after breakfast, I strode furiously up the tow-path 
 of the canal, exclaiming aloud, as I went along, 
 
 "I must be rich ! I will be rich! I will pinch and 
 screw, and save and shave, and skin until I get some 
 money. I will go into Wall Street, join a railroad ring, 
 get elected to Congress do anything to make a fortune. 
 I will invest, I will buy town-lots in Manchester I must 
 make money. I want a hundred million, two hundred 
 million, as much as Astor, Vanderbilt, and Stewart com- 
 bined, and / will have it. Yes, a thousand, two thousand, 
 millions of dollars. I will flood the South with money. 
 
 * He refused positively to do it 1890.
 
 X 6 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 Set every industry humming, restock every plantation, 
 buy up every negro legislature, buy Congress, buy Grant 
 bodily; my people shall not, no, by the gods ! they shall 
 not suffer any longer." 
 
 A thought struck me like a blow from a catapult. 
 
 " Suppose you do all this, and in Persia and India tens 
 of thousands are perishing from starvation. The world is 
 too big for you. You cannot be God." 
 
 Miserable, yea, the miserablest of living men, I bowed 
 myself down where I stood and actually wept with wrath 
 and mortification. 
 
 Just then a sweet breeze sprang up, the waves began to 
 clap their hands, the song of the river, which I had not 
 heard before, mingled with the soft tones of the wind and 
 the orisons of the birds, the heavens above me flushed 
 with the love-light of expectation at the sun's coming, 
 and aloft and alow and around was the ineffable loveliness 
 and peace of morning in its prime. Suddenly there came 
 from thicket, or copse, or the distant forest, I could not 
 tell where, a "wood-note wild" of some bird I had not 
 heard for half a century nearly, and in an instant the 
 beauty, the mystery, the holiness of nature came back to 
 me just as it came in childhood when sometimes my play- 
 mates left me alone in the great orchard of my home in 
 Cumberland. 
 
 From cursing and moaning I fell to adoring. My soul, 
 full of gratitude, could find only the simplest expression. 
 
 "Thank God ! I can do some good ; and I will." 
 
 My short but deep thanksgiving ended, I gave myself 
 up wholly to the dewy beauty and freshness around me, 
 and cried out, in rapture, 
 
 "Oh, my mother, my mother, my mother! my foster- 
 mother ! the only mother I ever knew ! all these long, 
 long, long years have I been cooped up in sanctums, in 
 libraries, in all sorts of dens of houses, pining for you, 
 with your bright face in full view across the water or over 
 the hill yonder, but no chance to come to you except for 
 a moment only. And now, now, O Father of Earth, I 
 can come back to you that is one blessedness of riches. 
 Back, never, never, never more to be parted from you 
 till, sinner that I am, I go to heaven."
 
 MY FIPTY MILLIONS. 17 
 
 I trust there is no good business man within the reading 
 of my print who will not say with considerable emphasis 
 that I made a sufficient sentimental ass of myself. At any 
 rate, from that hour I have never hard any further trouble 
 with myself, never desired to be inordinately rich, but 
 have been perfectly content to struggle on with my pitiful 
 fifty millions and do the best I could. 
 
 It being now broad daylight, I turned homewards, and, 
 as I did so, my thoughts took another turn. 
 
 " Moses, old fellow," said I to myself, " you and I are 
 going to have a good time. The way we are going to 
 find some pretty stream in the depths of the woods, and 
 spend the livelong day by its side enjoying the clear, run- 
 ning water (just as we did in Princeton at Stony Brook, 
 before we ever dreamed of the protoxide of hydrogen), 
 and the blue heavens shining through the tall tree-tops, 
 before Old Probabilities, drot him ! was born, and we 
 ever knew anything or cared anything about atmospheric 
 waves, the nebula hypothesis, or any such foolishness, is 
 the way. Won't we consecrate a day, yea, many days, 
 every recurring season to the worship of nature, just as 
 you and I and William Christian* used to do ever so 
 many years ago in Lynchburg? I just tell you, my son, 
 we are going to have the finest, the tip-toppest-A-Number- 
 Onest kind of a time. Why, sir, we'll " 
 
 In a trance of delight at the pleasure in store for me, I 
 had wandered several feet below the level of the tow-path. 
 An enormous black bolide, as it seemed to me, fell upon 
 me from the skies, and consciousness left me. 
 
 When I came to myself I was lying on the deck of a 
 freight-boat, receiving such attention as the ignorant cap- 
 tain could give. The bolide proved to be only a mule, 
 which had broken a rotten tow-line and tumbled down 
 the canal-bank, stunning me as he passed. A fracture of 
 the shoulder-blade and a few severe bruises were soon 
 patched up by Dr. Coleman after my return to the city, 
 so that I took the ten o'clock train on the Danville road 
 as if nothing had happened. 
 
 * A friend of mine. His middle name was Henry Brown, but he 
 dropped the Brown 1884. 
 
 2*
 
 !8 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 Jones came promptly to Lynchburg, and refused flatly 
 to believe in my fifty millions, but being convinced, 
 mounted a horse and proceeded day after day to scour 
 the country around the town, to the bewilderment of the 
 citizens. Such was his zest, and so heartily did he enter 
 into my plans, that he kept me up every night till one or 
 two o'clock, suggesting, altering, and greatly improving 
 the hints I had originally given him. During the day- 
 time I had a trying experience. Forced to keep quiet, 
 while the money burned in my pocket, I was dreadfully 
 bored.* 
 
 At length Jones came back one night in triumph he 
 had found, not what he wanted exactly, but the best that 
 could be had. 
 
 " I can fix all the rest," said he, after having given me 
 a minute account of the topography. 
 
 Tom Kirkpatrickf was called in the very next morn- 
 ing, the lawyer's part of the business intrusted to him, 
 and having furnished these friends of my early manhood 
 with work that would occupy them a long time (Jones 
 particularly), and pay them well, I hurried back to Rich- 
 mond. Ad. Williams and J. L. Apperson| laughed in 
 my face at first, but in due time they became convinced, 
 as Jones had been, and promised me to make the neces- 
 sary purchases as adroitly and cheaply as under the cir- 
 cumstances was possible. And they were as good as their 
 word. They did their duty quickly, that is to say, within 
 a few months, and at much less cost than I had counted 
 upon. I had to be economical, and I will say here that 
 few if any of my agents "ever pleased me more than 
 Williams & Apperson. 
 
 It was half a year before Jones and Kirkpatrick com- 
 pleted their work, a peculiar obstacle intervening. Six 
 months of torture mingled with pleasure (knowing what 
 
 * Dr. Early pulled out my last tooth at this time, and the new set made 
 me miserable in spite of my money. 
 
 t Afterwards President of the Court of Appeals. 
 
 j Well known real estate men in Richmond fifty years ago. Very 
 correct in their dealings. 
 
 $ Everybody, even the country people, were alarmed lest the Old 
 Market-house should be disturbed.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. ! 9 
 
 wa^ to come) to me. My family and friends upbraided 
 me for my long-continued idleness, while everybody 
 wondered how I made buckle and tongue meet. I did 
 it though, and am proud I did not overdo the thing. 
 Money was a little, very little, bit more plentiful at my 
 house, and my wife, satisfied that I did not gamble,* 
 convinced herself that I had drawn a prize in the Louis- 
 ville Library Lottery. She had a notion, too, that I had 
 found a gold-mine. [A great calamity to a Buckingham 
 man.] What else could make me spend whole days by 
 my lone self in the woods ? She was certain of it. 
 
 SECOND INSTALLMENT. 
 
 The Cat out of the Bag How People behaved Park and Reservoir for 
 Lynchburg Alarming Increase of Destitution W. E. Binford and 
 the Widow Bexley How to Help, whom to Help, and When Rush 
 of Editors, Photographers, etc. " Sky Surprises." 
 
 BUT you should have seen her face that bright day (the 
 brightest of my life, I sometimes think), when I broke 
 the news of my good fortune to her, and proved it by 
 incontestable vouchers. It was worth fifty-one millions 
 of dollars at the very least, that face was. 
 
 The next day I was back in Lynchburg. 
 
 There is a pea-green edifice on Court Street, opposite 
 the court-house. I went there first. There is a smaller 
 edifice a little way down the hill, behind the pea-green 
 house. I went there next. There is a brick house near 
 the reservoir, and about a square from West Street. I 
 went there, smiling openly [W. R. M. and self got 
 arrested there one night for serenading a tree-box], as 
 I slowly walked along the wall of the reservoir. Then I 
 went to a house on Federal Hill, which has a large garden 
 attached to it. And then I went up to Liberty. 
 
 * It is true I used to play teetotum for June apples when a boy, but 
 that oughtn't to count.
 
 20 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 What happened in consequence of these visits is, so 
 far as I am aware, none of your business ; but if I had 
 given my friends in Lynchburg and at Avenel the whole 
 world, I would have done for them no more than they 
 deserved. To them I owed many, a great many, of the 
 happiest hours of my life. " Owed," did I say? There 
 was no debt, no sense of obligation, on my part ; no- 
 thing of the kind. I would have been a dog, the biggest 
 and most villainous of dogs, if I had not gone straight to 
 them. I simply could not have been happy if they had 
 not shared largely of my happiness. 
 
 But the cat was out of the bag. 
 
 Everybody knew (it ran like lightning over the whole 
 State and to the very ends of the earth, I believe) that 
 Moses was what they called "immensely rich," and that 
 he intended Lynchburg should have a magnificent park 
 and a reservoir, the like of which had not been seen since 
 the days of the Romans, nor even then. Other things, it 
 was whispered, were to come. 
 
 I wish very much I could say that the change in my 
 circumstances produced no change in myself, or in others. 
 But it was not so. Success had never greatly elated me 
 or made me conceited, nor did it now. But one of the 
 annoyances of pecuniary success is that it parts one from 
 his friends, and this from no fault of either the rich or 
 the poor man. The former cannot make his friend as 
 rich as himself, while the latter, if a man of spirit, is not 
 content to be on unequal terms with any one, even in the 
 matter of money. Affiliation of rich with rich, and poor 
 with poor, is inevitable. So it would have been with me, 
 had I not been too old to form intimacies of any kind, 
 save with womenfolks, to whom I had belonged for many 
 years, and continued to belong. But men of wealth, 
 gravitating towards me naturally, became my associates 
 to such an extent that one day I suddenly waked up to 
 the fact that those who had not succeeded, had no money 
 nor the art of making it, no longer interested me. How 
 often I had decried this and sneered at it in some of my 
 acquaintances who had gone ahead of me ! And now I 
 caught myself saying testily of this or that man who had 
 once been tolerably dear to me, "He is down on his
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 21 
 
 luck." As if it were the man's fault, when I knew he 
 was doing his utmost to rise. But such knowledge does 
 not better the matter nor soften the heart. For the 
 innate weakness of not being able to get along in the 
 world there is no remedy ; it is the least curable of dis- 
 eases. Pity for the weakling is of no avail. All of this 
 is very natural. The traveler ascending a river in a 
 powerful steamer cannot long concern himself about the 
 poor creature who is drifting downward in a canoe, and 
 is soon lost to sight. Sympathy for him is a waste of 
 energy, which had better be preserved until it can do 
 some good. 
 
 This, I believe, is the ordinary course of reasoning in 
 the minds of men who rise above their fellows, and fancy 
 they are the engine in the steamboat, and not the cwt and 
 a half of humanity on the deck. It was in my own case, 
 despite the fact that my money had come to me as it were 
 out of heaven. And whence comes every good and 
 perfect gift but from heaven ? 
 
 You made your money, you say. But, my friend, who 
 
 I am persuaded that there will be plenty of conceit in 
 this world, pride of riches, of talent, station, what not, 
 so long as the delusion about free-will* lasts. But what 
 has that to do with my fifty millions ? Find out, if you 
 can, my friend. 
 
 A very few experiments satisfied me that there was 
 scarcely one of the "poor devils who could not get along 
 in the world" who did not crawl, and that quite rapidly 
 in some instances, where the proper remedy was applied, 
 when help was given in time, and thoughtfully .\ [I am 
 more doubtful about helping than I was ten years ago 
 1892.] 
 
 " Fortunately, it was in your power to render just that 
 kind of aid." 
 
 Yes, I am aware of the fact. I am also aware of the 
 fact that there never was a thoughtful rich man before my 
 time. 
 
 * Jimber-jawed men will never concede this. 
 
 f The habit is to help only when men are at the last gasp.
 
 22 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 The change in other people towards myself was at first 
 not what I had anticipated ; nor did I ever receive the 
 worship [I sometimes regret this] .which some of my 
 readers may suppose I redeived. Here and there turned 
 up a wretch who would have eaten my shoes if I had 
 permitted him; now and then a great man, failing, 
 clutched at me with a desperation that excited my pro- 
 found pity; sometimes I was amused, and sometimes 
 disgusted, at the obsequious fawning of certain parties, 
 whose names I am tempted to mention ; but in the main 
 people were manly enough, and soon gave me to know 
 that in their eyes I was no better than I had been before. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is very certain that I became in no 
 time a most respectable person, and received a deal of 
 attention. The courtesy of life-insurance and sewing- 
 machine agents was marked. Circulars of every descrip- 
 tion made waste-paper a drug in my house. Editors 
 kindly chronicled my every movement. Photographers 
 seemed to have a high opinion of my face. Biographies 
 of Adams became the order of the day. Mr. Smyth 
 haunted me, and my likeness appeared in Frank Leslie 
 within a week after my wealth was heralded to the world. 
 Bank presidents sometimes bowed to me. Mr. Z., of the 
 Big Concern, suddenly ceased to forget that he had been 
 repeatedly introduced to me ; and it was intimated to me 
 that an article from- my pen would be acceptable to any 
 country paper in Virginia. 
 
 Opportunities to invest, to take stock, to go into part- 
 nership, and to promote the most meritorious business 
 enterprises, were frequent. A hint about starting a liter- 
 ary paper in Richmond was boldly thrown at me. I 
 neither invested nor took stock, my money being already 
 well placed, so as to yield me an income of four and a half 
 millions. 
 
 A person whom I had good reason to consider the 
 most consummate [something erased here Ed. Whig}, 
 and yet a good sort of a fellow, too, who had professed 
 warm friendship for me, and had a thousand opportunities 
 to give me a lift, but deserted me when I was down, 
 played his game with his wonted smartness. Meeting me 
 on the street, he shook my hand, said warmly enough,
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 23 
 
 but not a shade too warmly, " Congratulate you, Moses," 
 and walked on. It was not in the least overdone, one 
 way or the other. For weeks I did not lay eyes' on him. 
 But I knew my man. In due time he came, not in 
 person, but through his agents (men he fancied had 
 influence with me, and flattered them by so telling them), 
 with the most cunning and insidious propositions, seem- 
 ingly in my own interest, to all of which I replied, 
 calmly, 
 
 " Tell Ben Brown I can do nothing for him now." 
 But when he went down into the deepest depths, then 
 I came to him and lifted him up as high as it was possible 
 ever again to lift him. For all along I had well remem- 
 bered how kind he had been to me before good fortune 
 had hardened him into adamant. Moreover, I had long 
 known that, in society as in the forest, there are beasts 
 of prey who delight to lap the blood of the gazelles and 
 springboks. Rather than give up their nuts and wine for 
 a single day, these human tigers would crunch the bones 
 of their best friends, yes, of their own fathers. It is their 
 nature. They cannot help it. And yet tigers are very 
 beautiful.* 
 
 The increase of general destitution around me in the 
 State, and indeed over the whole land, after I became 
 rich, was something alarming. I was beset for charity on 
 all sides. For this I had provided years before when put- 
 ting myself to sleep with waking dreams of what I would 
 do with my fifty millions. Accordingly I selected Mr. 
 Wm. E. Binford [a worthy, good man, still living. A 
 useful citizen, too. There are now said to be more Bin- 
 fords than Smiths in Virginia 1901] as my almoner for 
 the males, and for the females, after patient inquiry and 
 research, I chose a powerful widow of Culpeper.f My 
 selections were well made. Both possessed the physical 
 
 
 * The older I get the more toleration I have for healthy rascals but a 
 sickly rogue I hate. 1879. 
 
 f Mrs. Elizabeth Bexley, relict of the late Shiflett Bexley, an able- 
 bodied and excellent woman. She died, much to my regret, in August 
 last, and was succeeded by Miss Parthenope Shanks, a raw-boned and 
 athletic spinster, who I fear is using my money to buy up some feeble 
 widower for a husband. But this I would not say openly, for I have 
 learned to fear all women. 1883.
 
 24 W&AT I DID WITH 
 
 strength, the natural benevolence, the equable tempera- 
 ment, and the discretion indispensable to their trying 
 offices. -By saving me a world of annoyance they earned 
 my lasting gratitude, and so well and wisely did they dis- 
 charge their duties that they became the best-loved people 
 in Virginia. All minor charities were referred to them. 
 Special cases, and they were not a few, I reserved for my- 
 self. 
 
 [Wealth acquaints one with a world of poverty which 
 otherwise would never have been known. Worse still, 
 they seem to be poor who once appeared in easy circum- 
 stances. It is very sad. And yet I love to be sad. I was 
 always sad, very sad. 1888.] 
 
 My immediate kin, whether by blood or marriage, were 
 amply provided for, perhaps too amply. Little or no 
 harm befell those of mature age, but in the second and 
 third generations I had much cause to repent my benevo- 
 lence. Call it that, in the sense of well-wishing, because 
 I am not benevolent otherwise. Some of the girls became 
 the prey of fortune-hunters, and not a few of the boys 
 went heels-over-head to the devil. Anticipating this, I 
 was well steeled against their "troubles when they came, 
 but confess that the repeated applications for assistance 
 from the ne'er-do-weels fretted me so that I almost longed 
 to regain the quietude of poverty. Yet, what could I do? 
 Upon occasion I could shut the purse-strings as tight as 
 any man, but if I didn't help them their parents or grand- 
 parents would ; and, as I was so much more able to bear 
 the burden than they were, I signed many a check with 
 more of a snort than a sigh. Truly, " if riches increase, 
 so do they that consume them," as the Psalmist saith. 
 My bed was not all of roses by any means. The world 
 went not as I would fain have made it go with my millions. 
 
 That my own children did not share the fate of so many 
 of their kinsfolk was due to the good sense, the patient 
 watchfulness and determination of their excellent mother. 
 No credit is due me, for the simple reason that my mind 
 was so occupied with other matters that household cares 
 were left perforce to the dear, capable hands which had 
 always controlled them. My children were good children. 
 When they reached manhood and womanhood my affairs
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 25 
 
 had assumed such"%. shape, and my schemes were in a state 
 of such forwardness, that I could devote myself, in a great 
 measure, to the heavenliest of delights the doing of good 
 where it was needed in a way that made it appear to come 
 suddenly from the skies. In this my children and their 
 mother aided me signally, each vying with the other in 
 displaying tact, delicacy, and wisdom. One of my grand- 
 daughters discovered unquestionable genius for these 
 "sky-surprises," as we called them, and so extraordinary 
 were her inventions, and so discreet her gifts, that I think 
 it not immodest in me to say that during her lifetime, 
 which was all too brief, more good was done in a more 
 delighting and oftentimes enrapturing manner than in all 
 the other years of my life put together. 
 
 THIRD INSTALLMENT. 
 
 Fits of Pride How cured A Sneaking Heart-Devil The Pleasure of 
 Giving Some Schoolmarms Ham. Chamberlayne Deacon Handy 
 " The Native Virginian" Numerous Widows Colonel McDonald 
 Billy Christian Trick on a Fat Doctor, etc. 
 
 FITS of pride, more from the consciousness of power 
 than the conceit of riches, attacked me from time to time. 
 These I could cure with the greatest ease and certainty by 
 promptly shutting up my business office and going out into 
 the woods. If the weather were not too bitter, I would 
 go even in midwinter. -What comes out of the speech- 
 less trees, up from the bubbling waters, and down from 
 the deep heaven, I cannot tell ; how the sweet influences 
 of nature operate upon the vanity-swollen spirit I cannot 
 tell. But I do know, and it is all I can tell about it, that 
 on my return from the forest I was no more humble than 
 a tree is humble, and no more proud ; simple, natural, 
 healthful, and you may add helpful, as a tree is helpful to 
 give shade to the fawn or shelter to the birds ; that I was, 
 and that is all I was. Try the forest for an hour or two, 
 my opulent friend.
 
 26 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 Something very much more crafty, creeping, and villain- 
 ous than the ordinary vanity of wealth assailed me over 
 and again. It was what the theologians, if I do not mis- 
 understand them, call spiritual pride Pharisaism. Going 
 along the street I would have to haul myself short up, for 
 while my heart would be floating in a delicious warm-bath 
 of self-love my heart would be saying, "You certainly 
 are one of the best men that ever lived in this world !" 
 
 I wonder, as my pen traces this very word "world," if 
 my readers will believe me when I tell them that in my 
 dream about riches I had foreseen and provided for this 
 cunningest and vilest of all the devils that sneak into the 
 human soul ? It was even so, whether they believe it or 
 not. 
 
 " But why do you tell it but to make out that you are 
 the best man in the world?" 
 
 Partly to show that the imagination, by carefully going 
 over for years and years the possibilities of a given situa- 
 tion, may realize even its most unpleasant details, but 
 more to remind you, my friend, that in a small way you 
 have yourself been plagued by this identical devil. Own 
 up, now. Haven't you? 
 
 Lest it be inferred, in spite of my disclaimer, that I was 
 a "mighty good man," let me hasten to say that I was 
 not one of those unpardonably excellent worthies who do 
 not permit their right hand to know what their left hand 
 doeth. No, indeed ! Charles Lamb thought that the 
 greatest pleasure in life was to do good by stealth, and 
 have it found out by accident. Well, there is something 
 in that, provided the party to whom the good is done is 
 comparatively a stranger to you. "But in the case of friends, 
 I always took care that they found out (not always by ac- 
 cident either) that I was the fellow who had done the good 
 deed. Not for the world would I have missed the pleasure 
 of seeing their pleasure, and of knowing that they knew I 
 knew the source from which their pleasure came. I wanted 
 to see it in their eyes, and feel it come back straight and 
 warm into my own eyes and heart. In a word, I wanted 
 to be loved, and, above all, I wanted to be loved by those 
 I loved best. That was life in its fullness ; that was the 
 charm of wealth.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 2 7 
 
 To know that riches enabled my children to escape the 
 myriad pangs that beset my own clouded and poverty- 
 stricken boyhood and early manhood, when one is most 
 capable of enjoying and giving enjoyment, was a great 
 deal to me. But more, far more, was it to know that they 
 could feel the warmth and brilliancy of their sunlit morn- 
 ing reflected back from the faces of those whom they had 
 befriended and made even happier than themselves; that 
 is, if it be true that it is better to give than to receive, 
 which I much doubt, because the giver can never surprise 
 himself in giving, and the "sky-surprise," as I have 
 already intimated, is as near as can be the coming down 
 from heaven of something direct from God. And what 
 can be better than that? Don't think me impious if I 
 sometimes question myself as to how it may be with Him 
 who can never be surprised by receiving what He longed 
 to get, but never dreamed He would obtain, and to whom 
 nothing, literally nothing, can ever be given ; since from 
 the infinite wearisome beginning He hath had all things. 
 
 I have now, I believe, finished all my twaddle about 
 matters purely personal, and, after narrating a few specific 
 donations which gave me unusual pleasure, will proceed at 
 once to detail those public benefactions which I may rea- 
 sonably presume to be of general interest. 
 
 During our entire married life Mrs. Adams had mani- 
 fested a strong fondness for a half-dozen or so of Virginia 
 schoolmarms. My yielding and obedient disposition made 
 me a meek participator in this fondness, and the conse- 
 quence was a serious injury to the youth of Virginia by 
 robbing them of their teachers. But, to atone for the 
 loss, a number of middle-aged men, who had not hith- 
 erto been able to perceive how closely their happiness 
 was bound up with the aforesaid marms, became the most 
 radiant and bounding of husbands, bestowing on me 
 whenever I chanced to meet them a cataract of gratitude 
 which made the back streets more than ever desirable as 
 a route to my office. On the part of the marms, truth 
 compels me to say there was not quite so copious a down- 
 pour of thankfulness. One of these went so far as to tell 
 me frankly that she wished I had kept my plaguey dollars 
 to myself, so that she might have opened a boarding-
 
 2 8 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 house as soon as she got old and ugly enough, and so 
 have been free as the wild gazelle on Judah's hills. [I 
 do not believe that boarding-house keepers enjoy any 
 large freedom.] But when I remembered how jaded the 
 poor souls had looked at the close of their sessions, and 
 the evident pleasure they took in new bonnets and in the 
 coat-tailed thing, all their own, that dangled behind them 
 as they entered church, I could not repent me of the evil 
 I had done. 
 
 Hampden Chamberlayne having a fondness, and not a 
 little fitness, for the editorial calling, I thought to sur- 
 prise and please him by presenting him with a couple of 
 newspaper toys in New York (the Times and World, if I 
 remember aright, which I hoped he would consolidate 
 under the name of the Worldly Times}, but he surprised 
 and enraged me by promptly selling them out, and estab- 
 lishing a semi-weekly in Richmond, his State and its 
 capital being very dear to him. So successful was he, 
 that some time early in the 8o's he was sent to the United 
 States Senate, where, against my earnest advice, he dis- 
 tinguished himself by his efforts against centralization, 
 already too far gone to admit of hopeful opposition. 
 
 [A worthy, good man, talented beyond question. The 
 War of the German Uprising in '88 was no sooner begun 
 than he joined the army at St. Louis, rose rapidly to the 
 rank of General of Division, was captured after the sack- 
 ing of Philadelphia, and instead of being shot, as a brave 
 soldier should have been, was guillotined in front of 
 the Imperial Palace, and immediately under the eye of 
 Ulysses II.* A serious loss, not only to the army, but 
 to the cause of liberty. 1895.] [My mind is now being 
 made up that the friends of-liberty should have no heads.] 
 
 No amount of money could keep me from scribbling, 
 and no amount of money could insure me against the 
 rejection of my articles by editors who presumed to 
 know better than myself the style of articles best suited 
 to their papers, and so being obliged to have a scape-pipe 
 for my foolishness, I, with extreme difficulty, persuaded 
 
 * The true name of this person was Frederick Dent Grant. A Vir- 
 ginian named M. was his Minister of War.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 29 
 
 Stofer and Scott to part with the Piedmont Virginian 
 and the Gordonsville Gazette. Stofer did not consent 
 until I bargained to pay him one thousand dollars a year 
 for his services, and agreed that he should sleep at Orange 
 Court-House every night, which he did, purchasing a neat 
 horse and buggy for that purpose. Consolidating the two 
 journals under the name of the Native Virginian, at Gor- 
 donsville (which had increased to four thousand souls 
 under the stimulus of the Chester Gap Railroad, and the 
 unremitting immigration exertion of Digges), Stofer and 
 I published the paper there for a good long time, afford- 
 ing snack-buyers an abundance of cheap, but not very 
 clean, wrapping-paper, and annoying the editors through- 
 out the State by incessant personalities and political in- 
 consistencies. Charging nothing for subscription, or for 
 advertisements, except in the case of patent medicines 
 and circuses, we gradually ran up our list to three hun- 
 dred and fifty, including exchanges and copies given to 
 friends on the cars. 
 
 The hearts of numerous widows, ay ! and married 
 women, and maids too, sang with joy after I got my 
 money. I went all the way to Kansas to find a widow 
 of whom I had long lost sight, but never for an instant 
 forgotten. And lo ! she was married, and so were two of 
 her daughters. But that circumstance did not daunt me 
 a bit. I hadn't come all that way to return with my 
 finger in my mouth, I tell you. Help I would, and did. 
 There, too, I encountered a person named Christian, 
 grizzled and furrowed by plenteous hard knocks, but 
 warm and true as of yore. In vain I tried to win him 
 and his back to old Virginia, so that we twain might 
 roam once more the wooded hills above the James, as 
 in the halcyon days agone. " No ; he had outlived that 
 life. He could not bear to see the change in his dear 
 native State. Please God, he would teach his boys that 
 a man could die clean-handed and upright-hearted in the 
 midst of roughs, villains, thieves, and dogs." There, 
 then, after a charming two-months' visit, I left him with 
 greenbacks enough to brighten his old age and give his 
 children a good go-off in life ; and I saw him no more. 
 
 Deacon Moses P. Handy, being the son of a most 
 3*
 
 3 
 
 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 worthy Patriarch and Presbyterian preacher, and having 
 done me many a good turn, I did something in return 
 for him. 
 
 [NOTE. For the matter of turn, all the editors and 
 reporters in* Virginia and Maryland, and a good many in 
 Tennessee, and others in other States (take them "by 
 and large," they are the best class of people in the 
 world), had been kind to me, and I remembered every 
 one of them to the extent of one thousand dollars in 
 gold, a house and lot, a barrel of whisky, a box of 
 cigars, a set of open-back shirts, by Spence, * and a 
 basket of champagne for their wives, apiece.] 
 
 Deacon Handy being enough of an old and new school 
 Presbyterian, and also enough of a Baptist and Metho- 
 dist, for the purpose, I attempted to gather unto him all 
 the religious papers of Richmond, satisfied that he would 
 so combine them as to make out of them a colossal for- 
 tune. Sectarian influences easily thwarted me and my 
 money, and consequently the good deacon had to scuffle 
 along with the combined evening papers as best he could. 
 Summoning Chesterman to his aid, he made so good thing 
 of it that he was able Jo bring all the boys under cover, 
 including even wild Moral Donater.f 
 
 Colonel James McDonald for twenty years had exhib- 
 ited so persistent a purpose to help me on to the full 
 measure of his ability that I was bound by natural law 
 to hate him. I did not give him one single cent. But, 
 on going to the bank one day, Mr. Davenport said to 
 him, 
 
 " Colonel, interest has been piling up here for three 
 or four years. Are you going to let it run on indefi- 
 nitely?" 
 
 ' ' Interest ! What interest ?' ' 
 
 Then for the first time he discovered that his three 
 
 * Haberdasher of the period. Worthy good man. Remarkable man. 
 At the age of seventy-two he could turn a double-back somersault, shears 
 in hand, and cut out a swallow-tail coat before he lit upon the ground. 
 Saw him do it with my own eye two times hand-running immediately 
 after dinner. 
 
 ( Geo. Wilde, a model reporter of the period, most astonishing and 
 indescribable partly human being living at that time.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 31 
 
 children had to their credit rather more money than was 
 good for them. They pulled through, though, thanks to 
 their excellent training, enjoying life, and making citi- 
 zens of whom ( the community, and especially the poor 
 people, might well be proud.* 
 
 There was an old doctor in Middleburg whose name 
 and face were associated with some of the most sorrowful 
 and sacred memories of my life. Thirty or forty years 
 of arduous country practice had obtained for him the 
 unbounded esteem and affection of scores of people, who 
 were too poor to compensate him, if, indeed, monetary 
 compensation could have repaid him for all he had done 
 for them. Him I placed upon his pins so firmly that there 
 was no danger of his ever being shaken, demanding only 
 that he and his dear wife should make us a real old Vir- 
 ginia visit once a year. This they unfailingly did, and 
 the way in which I used to beat the old man at backgam- 
 mon was something for him to brood over in a mildly 
 vengeful fashion during the remaining eleven months of 
 the year. 
 
 There was another doctor, not quite so old as my 
 Middleburg friend, but much more rotund. He had 
 placed me under such obligations that for a long time I 
 had not been able to look him straight in the face. It 
 was imperatively incumbent upon me to proceed for him, 
 and for him I proceeded in my own style. One winter 
 evening, just as he had seated himself at his table, on 
 which a superb dinner was served, and had paved the 
 way to a firsf-rate talk with the particular friends around 
 him, the door-bell rang. 
 
 ' Man want to see you." 
 
 'Tell him I'm at dinner." 
 
 ' Say he 'bleest to see you." 
 
 ' Let him wait, then." 
 
 ' Say he 'bleest to see you right now." 
 
 'Tell him I am at dinner!" thundered the doctor. 
 
 *The family removed to France in '84, and one of the sons, or grand- 
 sons, named Dudley, I think, made such reputation in the horrible war 
 of French Vengeance, as it was very properly called, that he was ele- 
 vated to the rank of Marshal (recalling Macdonald of Wagram) and 
 Due de Berlin.
 
 3 2 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 " Say he don' keer if you is ; he got a wheelbarrer 
 full o' silver and gold out dar, and it a rainin' ; he bound 
 to see you." 
 
 "Burbage, hand me that stick !" 
 
 His son having handed him the cane, the doctor was 
 about to bring it down with all the force of his massive 
 frame upon his servant, when the guests, rising with one 
 accord, restrained him. 
 
 "Fo' Gawd, sir, de man do say de money ar dar; / 
 ain't a lyin', sir, ef /foar." 
 
 To shorten the story, the money was "dar," sure 
 enough. Night had fallen; it was raining; the" banks 
 were closed, and so were the brokers' offices. 
 
 The doctor was furious; dinner getting cold, and no- 
 where to put all that money. For a moment his brain, 
 large as it was, was utterly at fault for a moment o'nly. 
 
 "Here, boy, dump that stuff upon the floor of my 
 office. My son, run and hire a section of artillery to 
 stay up all night and take care of it. Give them what- 
 ever they ask; hang me if I'll miss my dinner for forty 
 thousand wheelbarrows full of silver ! ' ' 
 
 It took half a decanter of the best sherry to quiet him 
 down, but then he forgave me (there was no mistaking 
 the source of the annoying present), and his guests say 
 he never talked more charmingly in his whole life.* 
 
 * There was not much money after all, the amount by actual count, 
 as I was told, being only twenty-six thousand four hundred and twelve 
 dollars. An odd accident occurred. Just before day the fire-bell on 
 Third Street rang, and the men in charge of the cannon becoming 
 alarmed, fired their pieces, breaking all the panes of glass for several 
 squares around. Of course I settled the bill ; the second time I had to 
 pay for window-panes, the first being in Prince Edward in 1841-2, or 
 thereabouts.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 33 
 
 FOURTH INSTALLMENT. 
 
 Laura Park Sneers at Jones and Adams The Great Reservoir New 
 Market-House Grand Celebration Arrival of Old Lynchburgers 
 Ballard Kidd and Harriet Rouse Works at Curdsville, etc. Rage of 
 a baffled Rich Man College for Old Virginia Fiddlers, etc. 
 
 HAVING finished the outline of matters of a personal 
 nature, I now proceed to detail at some length the larger 
 works of a public character in which myself and my 
 agents were engaged for so many years. And first for 
 Lynchburg. 
 
 " The object of Calvin Jones's repeated horseback rides 
 was to obtain a site for a park. This, after much nego- 
 tiation and not a little finesse, he secured in the vicinity 
 of the low range of mountains called Candler's, at a dis- 
 tance of several miles from town. How many acres were 
 embraced in the original purchase I do not now recall, 
 but with the additions made to it in after-years Laura 
 Park* (so I named it) contains, as is well known, within 
 a fraction of four thousand acres. Everybody cried out 
 that the distance from town was an insuperable obstacle ; 
 that poor people could never enjoy it ; that only the 
 owners of horses and carriages would ever go there ; om- 
 nibuses and other hired vehicles would impose too great 
 a tax; that Adams always was a fool, Jones was a fool, 
 and that the whole thing was a notable exhibition of the 
 absurdities into which well-meaning men were sure to fall 
 whenever they undertook to execute work that required 
 practical sense. Jones went serenely on, year after year, 
 clearing, grading, grottoing, water-falling, laking, bridg- 
 ing, and beautifying generally, until people were amazed 
 and almost ready to hang him because he did not formally 
 open the park to the public. Crowds went out on foot, 
 on horseback, in buggies, hacks, etc., to look at and ad- 
 mire the work as it progressed. Li very -stable men reaped 
 
 * Named for Miss Laura N. D. Christian my sweetheart. 
 B*
 
 34 
 
 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 a rich harvest, and looked forward to a harvest still richer 
 when the park should be completed. Something was 
 whispered about the right of way which Jones had bought 
 for a road of his own from town to the park, and endless 
 were the sneers and innuendoes. 
 
 " Nice man, that Jones ! Oh, he's sharp. He ought 
 to be satisfied with his salary, his commissions on con- 
 tracts, his jobs of all kinds; but that ain't Jones, you 
 know. He wants a snug income of his own after all his 
 jobs are played out. He's a keener, Jones is !" 
 
 All of a sudden Jones, having made sufficient headway 
 in the park, put several thousand men at work, and in an 
 incredibly short time a quadruple-track road, with foot- 
 ways and perfectly macadamized drives on either side of 
 the railways and between the double tracks, with elms and 
 other shade-trees planted at suitable intervals, was finished, 
 and the announcement made in the daily papers that cars 
 drawn by dummy-engines and driven by compressed air 
 would run every ten minutes to the park free of charge. 
 
 There was a change of tune instantly. 
 
 " Don't you remember my telling you when Jones was 
 a clerk in Robinson Stabler's drug-store, and Adams was 
 loafing around there doing nothing, that both of them 
 were remarkable men ? Why, yes you do ! I can tell 
 you the very place where we were standing when I told 
 you. It just shows, though, how different men of genius 
 are from ordinary people. They never do things in the 
 way you and I would do them. But haven't we got a mag- 
 nificent park? It beats Central Park all hollow. I just 
 tell you old Lynchburg has got something to be proud of." 
 
 "Yes, the park will do very well as it is, and it will be 
 a great deal better when Jones has completed his improve- 
 ments on the sides and tops of the mountains ; but that 
 reservoir business strikes me as the craziest notion that 
 ever entered Moses Adams's head ; and what he has 
 bought all the land in and around Scuffletown for, I can't 
 imagine." 
 
 I (or rather Jones for me) had bought the whole of 
 Reservoir Square, and a large force in addition to that 
 employed at the park was engaged in laying a massive 
 granite foundation all around from Dr. Payne's corner to
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 35 
 
 Mrs. Turner's, the Methodist church and the dwelling- 
 houses having been already demolished. Leaving the old 
 reservoir intact, Jones ran up his granite wall to the 
 height of one hundred feet, forming a grand structure of 
 five stories, counting the floor of the original reservoir as 
 one, each story supported by arched masonry of the most 
 solid and perfect workmanship, and each floor being in 
 fact an additional reservoir ten feet in depth, extending, 
 as did that at the bottom, over the entire square, with the 
 exception of some forty or fifty feet between the outer 
 and inner walls, which were filled in all the way to the 
 top with arches, upon which the stone flooring of the col- 
 onnades was placed. There were transverse walls and 
 arches wherever needed to give strength to the mighty 
 structure. My knowledge of architecture is far too lim- 
 ited to enable me to describe technically this reservoir, or 
 collection of reservoirs elevated one above the other, but 
 from what has been said the reader may form some idea 
 of its appearance. By flights of steps the successive floors 
 were easily reached, each ascension giving a broader view 
 of the picturesque scenery around Lynchburg, until the 
 battlemented summit was attained, from which the pano- 
 rama was as fine as well could be. Under the colonnades 
 the townspeople, and especially the lads and lasses and 
 the children, found a charming promenade in good and 
 even bad weather, except when the wind drove the rain 
 far under the arches. To strangers and visitors the reser- 
 voir constituted the chief attraction of the growing city, 
 dividing honors with the park, and generally eclipsing it, 
 owing to its being within the corporate limits and so ac- 
 cessible. The much more powerful machinery needed at 
 the pump-house was made under a special contract in 
 Lynchburg, the house containing it was enlarged and 
 beautified, and the two made another attraction to the 
 city. 
 
 For a time after the water was pumped into the higher 
 reservoirs (enough being always kept in them to furnish 
 an ample supply for the houses in the highest parts of the 
 city), the bad boys, who had not then ceased to abound 
 in Lynchburg, amused themselves by throwing sticks, 
 stones, etc., into the water, and by sailing miniature boats
 
 36 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 thereon, but this was speedily ended by a couple of police- 
 men, detailed to guard the place; after which it became, 
 and has ever since remained, a delightful resort. Much has 
 been said about the Roman baths, aqueducts, and amphi- 
 theatres, but I doubt if the world contains better masonry 
 than this same reservoir, the proportions of which are as 
 graceful as its workmanship is solid and enduring. Jones 
 prided himself upon the park, but for my part I shall always 
 consider the reservoir as the true monument of his taste 
 and genius. 
 
 In my youth, when engaged as local editor of the 
 Lynchburg Virginian, I had exerted my entire battery of 
 derision against the market-house,* a hideous affair, which 
 would long since have passed out of the memory of men 
 but for the large and very perfect photographs of it in its 
 different aspects, each more horrible, if possible, than the 
 other, which I had taken, and which remain to this day in 
 the new market, as unimpeachable evidence of the crude 
 architecture of the early age of Lynchburg. The new 
 market, in the form of a cross, extends under Court-house 
 Hill from Church Street to the foot of the hill on which 
 many years ago stood the residence of Mr. Charles L. 
 Mosby, and from what used to be called Tan-yard Alley 
 to a point about a square beyond West or Cocke Street. 
 Its width is fifty feet, height twenty feet, except in the 
 centre, where the dome or rotunda rises to the height of 
 sixty feet. Excavated throughout from the naked rock, 
 arched and cemented so admirably that not. a drop of 
 water ever percolates the vaulted roof; not whitewashed, 
 but painted from end to end with the best quality of white 
 zinc, and paneled in simple but elegant designs, brilliantly 
 illuminated day and night with gas, of an equable tem- 
 perature nearly the year round, it is at once the most 
 commodious, convenient, comfortable, and useful market- 
 house in America. Large as the city became after the 
 great iron-factories were established, its size, its central 
 location, and the fact of its not being in the way of any 
 above-ground improvements, gained for it such esteem 
 
 * The old man seems to have been wholly ignorant that a lovely new 
 market-house was erected as early as 1873. Ed. Whig.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 37 
 
 among all classes, that no other public market has been 
 thought of, and but few green-groceries or private markets 
 have been started even upon the outskirts of the city. 
 
 [The inauguration of the New and the destruction of 
 the Old Market-house was made the occasion of a grand 
 celebration. A vast procession of former residents of 
 Lynchburg, headed by Mr. Frank Morrison, in a big over- 
 coat, lantern, umbrella, and boots, who bore a large square 
 banner, with the gilt device, "WE COME!" arrived in a 
 special train and marched in solid phalanx up Bridge 
 Street. Conspicuous among them were Colonels Shields, 
 McDonald, and R. F. Walker, of Richmond ; Mr. Daniel 
 H. London, of New York; Mr. W. H. Ryan, of Balti- 
 more; Mr. S. V. Reid, of Cincinnati; Judge D. A. Wil- 
 son, of New Orleans; Mr. J. William Royall, of St. Louis; 
 Mr. Mike Connell, of Memphis; and Senators Withers, 
 Thurman, and Allen, of Washington. President Grant 
 was indisposed, and could not come. At the head of 
 Bridge Street the procession was met by Dr. H. Grey 
 Latham, clad in a complete suit of armor. Behind him 
 were the clergy, the Knights Templar, the schools, public 
 and private, the fire companies, and the whole populace. 
 Dr. L.'s address of welcome was delivered in such tones 
 of thunder that it frightened the inhabitants of Amherst 
 Court-House, who immediately dispatched a company 
 of volunteers to the city, thinking the Confederacy had 
 broken out again. Salvos of artillery pealed aloud, and 
 several large sand-blasts were set off. Mr. A. McDonald 
 then read a beautiful poem written for the occasion by a 
 distinguished literary lady of the city. The proceedings 
 closed with a memorial oration by myself. When I 
 recalled the touching circumstance that those revered citi- 
 zens, B. Kidd and R. Jones, had derived the greater part 
 of their sustenance from the Old Market-house, and that 
 the maiden, Rouse, had drawn almost her entire stock of 
 haslets throughout a pure and prolonged life from the 
 butcher-blocks of that same market-house, the vast con- 
 course was flooded with tears. At night the city was illu- 
 minated, there were balls, fire-works, etc., etc., but no 
 whisky or profane language. A full account of everything 
 appeared in the papers of the next morning, and was sub-
 
 3 g ' WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 sequently printed in pamphlet form, copies of which were 
 eagerly bought up by the New England Historical Socie- 
 ties, who had agents on the spot. Cuthbert, of the New 
 York Herald, made an intensely interesting report of the 
 affair. Copies of the pamphlet are now exceedingly rare 
 and valuable. I know of but one in Virginia, and that is 
 in the hands of Mr. Thomas H. Wynne. The Virginia 
 Historical Society has offered five hundred dollars for a 
 duplicate, and an eminent Virginian archaeologist has de- 
 cided to print two hundred fac-simile copies for exchange. 
 Market-House Memorial Day has been for many years a 
 legal holiday in Lynchburg. 1900.] 
 
 Simultaneously with the constructions in and near 
 Lynchburg, other works were carried on in Curdsville, at 
 the Buckingham Female Institute, in Farmville, Rich- 
 mond, and elsewhere. To my lasting regret, Jones could 
 not or would not take charge of the more important of 
 these works. I begged him to do so, but he said, not 
 without truth, that I had given him as much as he could 
 properly attend to for many years, and that, while he 
 cared little for reputation as an architect, engineer, and 
 landscape gardener, he did desire it to be said after his 
 death that what he had undertaken to do he had done 
 really well. It is a pity that others in my employ did 
 not share Jones's conscientiousness. I do not intend to 
 call names, nor is it necessary for me to do so (the works 
 speak for themselves), but I cannot refrain from saying 
 that the pain I often experienced in the failure of my^ 
 schemes to insure the happiness of individuals was hardly 
 ever so great as that I continually felt when looking at 
 some of the public edifices which I shall shortly mention.* 
 Added to the mortification I could but feel in thinking 
 over the folly of my selection of this or that man as my 
 agent, and to the rage which I never ceased to experience 
 whenever I was cheated or deceived, was the intolerable 
 sense of impotency at being balked in my plans in spite 
 of all my millions. Though I had counted upon all this, 
 and though I had steeled myself against it as best I could 
 
 * I have concluded not to mention. Why hurt feelings when the hurt- 
 ing does not tend in the least to remove the eye-sores alluded to ?
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 39 
 
 (saying to myself, when I lay dreaming in bed about 
 being rich, "Why, even Omnipotence does not prevent 
 the world from going incessantly awry ; and what can 
 you do with your little driblets of money?"), I felt it 
 much the same. Oftentimes I was so incensed and out- 
 raged that I determined to abandon all my works just as 
 they stood, or to leave enough money to complete them 
 after a fashion, and go away where I could never see them 
 more, but could live quietly and selfishly all to myself. 
 But, somehow, millions do not make a man free ; he 
 continues a slave to his thought, his dream, his scheme, 
 whatever it may be, hoping in spite of his better sense for 
 better things, and having put his hand to the plow goes 
 trudging along, miserably enough. 
 
 At Curdsville I bought Baldwin's big brick house with 
 the farm attached to it, and, moving the house away from 
 the allurements of the main, plain road, set going one of 
 the sincerest and longest-cherished desires of my heart, 
 to wit : a college for the education of Old Virginia fid- 
 dlers. None but negroes and mulattoes were admitted as 
 students. At first, owing to the rapid decay of material 
 after the abolition of slavery, there was a good deal of 
 difficulty in finding a suitable president and professors, 
 men who had never been contaminated by indulging in 
 operatic airs, but who understood thoroughly and enjoyed 
 only the real Old Virginia jigs, reels, breakdowns, and 
 the like men who could play them as they ought to be 
 played, with fervor, with spirit, and the proper accentua- 
 tion in fine, men, nigger men, who could and habitually 
 did sling, as we say, a nasty bow. And by nasty I do not 
 mean nasty, but every Virginian knows what I mean. 
 George Walker was the first president, and under him 
 were three professors whose names entirely escape me. 
 Not that there was any real need for so many teachers 
 where all taught the same thing, but that, in case of sick- 
 ness or death or the calling away of any of the faculty to a 
 big dance or frolic, the course of instruction might not be 
 interrupted. Thenumber of studentswas limited to twenty; 
 everything, including food and clothing, was free, and no 
 diploma was granted until the student had completed his 
 three-years' curriculum. The scholastic year ended on
 
 40 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 Christmas Eve, and the commencement exercises (which 
 wound up with a grand ball given to the young white 
 people) gave rise to the liveliest excitement in all the 
 adjacent counties ; tickets were sought for with the 
 greatest avidity, and the written accounts of the proceed- 
 ings, published exclusively in the Richmond Whig, were 
 looked forward to with the most intense anxiety, and read 
 with profound interest not only in Virginia but through- 
 out the South and West. Ten thousand extra copies of 
 the paper were always struck off on such occasions, and 
 often failed to meet the demand. ' 
 
 FIFTH INSTALLMENT. 
 
 Blessings of the Fiddlers' College Dancing vs. Pure Hugging Course 
 on Fife and Tobacco-Horn Blind Billy Buckingham Female In- 
 stitute "Chennany'' and " Ant'ny Over" Langhorne's Tavern, 
 Ca Ira, New Store, Raine's Tavern, etc. Spout Spring, Red House, 
 Pamplin's, Tarwallet, etc. College for Old Virginia Cooks Hamp- 
 den Sydney College Mosque and Shot-Tower at Burkeville. 
 
 THE benefit to be derived from a college of Virginia 
 fiddlers was at the outset the subject of not a little fun. 
 
 "Adams," it was said, "has got so much money he 
 don't know what to do with it. The thing will soon 
 play out and be forgotten, or remembered only as an- 
 other instance of the foolishness of rich men. The money 
 is his own, though, and if he chooses to throw it away in 
 that manner it is his own lookout. Pity he hasn't sense 
 enough to devote it to some charitable object." 
 
 What is commonly known as charity found little favor 
 in my eyes, and as for the objections made by the wise 
 men of that day, they had been foreseen and provided 
 for long before the college was- founded. 
 
 Unbelievers were cured in this way : 
 
 After the college had been in operation for a sufficient 
 time to perfect the professors, as well as the students, in 
 the true Virginia sling of the bow, I caused tickets of invi- 
 tation to the commencement exercises to be sent to a
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 4 ! 
 
 number of Northern belles, who never in their lives had 
 danced anything but the so-called round dances, waltzes, 
 polkas, mazourkas, etc. They attended (their expenses 
 being paid, indeed, every outlay incident to the com- 
 mencement was defrayed out of the ample endowment), 
 the novelty of the affair attracting them ; but before they 
 returned home the fire, the life, the inspiration imparted 
 to them by real dancing, and by such fiddling as they 
 had never dreamed of, carried them completely away 
 with enthusiasm, so much so that they went back to their 
 Northern homes only to order Virginia fiddlers whenever 
 they could get them, and to introduce Virginia dancing 
 in all of the great cities. How popular that dancing and 
 the fiddling which inspires it, and without which it could 
 not exist, has become throughout the Empire, no one 
 need now be told. True, the lovers of pure hugging still 
 insist upon having their persons grappled and tousled by 
 any two-legged animal in trousers they can find, but the 
 better classes, who can be merry and at the same time 
 decent, much prefer the style disseminated by the Curds- 
 ville College. And this I consider a great and permanent 
 blessing to mankind. 
 
 Subsidiary to the regular Curdsville curriculum was a 
 course on the fife, the proper playing of which I vainly 
 sought to revive. Never was there a more complete 
 failure. After a few years of earnest toil, fife-playing 
 was dropped and never resumed. The truth is, the art 
 of performing on the fife died with Blind Billy. I never 
 knew a man but Billy who could do justice to the fife a 
 glorious instrument (not for military, but for terpsi- 
 chorean purposes) in the hands of a man of genius. Such 
 a man was Billy. I wish I knew his history. 
 
 If I failed signally in the matter of the fife, my success 
 in the course which I substituted in place of it was equally 
 signal. So early as 1870, the old original tune played on 
 the long tin-horn previous to the tobacco breaks in 
 Lynchburg had become garbled. It could readily be 
 recognized as a sickly and adumbrated simulacrum of its 
 grand original (tobacco men never failing to respond to 
 its summons), but it had lost much of that wild, weird, 
 and deadly unearthliness which characterized it from
 
 42 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 1820 to 1830, and even later than that. It is, in my 
 deliberate judgment, the most ghastly and appalling 
 chant that ever emanated from the musical imagination. 
 The name of its composer is lost in the night of oblivion. 
 My opinion is that it is not the work of any one man, 
 not a single composition struck off in the heat of inspi- 
 ration, but is more likely a growth and the product of 
 many minds. Be that as it may, in 1870, the decadence 
 of Ethiopian life and art, which followed the liberation 
 of our Virginia slaves, was most painfully marked in the 
 change that had taken place in this astonishing old tune. 
 Previous to his departure for Georgia, Jones had often 
 lamented with me over this sad change, and he had often 
 promised to write out for me, in full, the notes of the 
 tune as it was blown in its prime.* The establishment of 
 the Curdsville Fiddlers' College enabled Jones and my- 
 self to rescue this tune (far more peculiar and saddening 
 in its effects than the famous Miserere of the Sistine 
 Chapel), and to restore it to its pristine completeness. 
 Jones not only wrote out the music, but, leaving his work 
 on the park and reservoir, came down in person to Curds- 
 ville, bringing with him a tobacco-horn blower from 
 Planter's or Martin's warehouse, and stayed with him 
 until he was thoroughly enough versed in the tune to 
 teach it. His class was small. Few cared to devote 
 themselves assiduously to the study of the horn. Hearing 
 of this, I immediately instituted a Horn Prize of one 
 hundred dollars in gold, which soon brought an ample 
 supply of aspirants, and I have now the satisfaction of 
 knowing that so long as the world stands and tobacco is 
 sold in Lynchburg, it will be sold to the sound of the 
 most mournful and remarkable combination of notes ever 
 framed by the human mind. 
 
 My object in buying the Buckingham Female Institute 
 was not merely to save it from the utter destruction which 
 seemed to await it, but to establish there another Fiddlers' 
 College for white men exclusively. But remembering that 
 
 * Kroitner also promised to do the same thing, but never fulfilled his 
 promise. Germans settling in Virginia soon get to be Virginians, even in 
 the matter of promises and procrastination.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 43 
 
 the practice of Virginia fiddling, beneficial and, indeed, 
 ennobling to the black man, has a tendency to encourage 
 dissipation in the white man, I abandoned the original 
 plan and consecrated the Institute wholly to the instruc- 
 tion of able-bodied young men in the ancient and manly 
 games of " Chermany" and "Ant'ny Over." The ety- 
 mology of the former game is obscure. It may have been 
 "Germany," though I have never known a Dutchman to 
 play it or even to be aware of its rules and regulations. 
 My aim was to supplant the vile pastimes of base-ball and 
 billiards which befell the Commonwealth as a part of the 
 loathsome legacy bequeathed us by the war. I could not, 
 indeed, believe that these debilitating and abnormal sports 
 would perpetually exclude the time-honored and patriotic 
 games to which Virginians had been accustomed, but my 
 fear was that after the base-ball business the awful thing 
 called cricket might follow, and that I could not have 
 borne. Those silly wickets and those absurd bats are to 
 my mind execrable, inexcusable, and unfounded upon 
 reason and common sense. 
 
 I am happy to say that the wholesome streams poured 
 forth from the pellucid fountain of Virginian sports at the 
 Buckingham Institute permeated and percolated the Com- 
 monwealth until base-ball disappeared entirely, and bil- 
 liards were relegated to the largest cities, where they will 
 forever divide the honors with bagatelle, which I take to 
 be the last resource of manikins. 
 
 My feelings toward Farmville and the whole region 
 thence along the old stage road, and the railroad too, up 
 to Lynchburg, were of the warmest character. A portion 
 of Cumberland also was dear to me. There was nothing 
 I would not have done for Cartersville, for Oak Grove 
 (formerly called Walton's Store when I went to school 
 there, some seventy-odd years ago, to Mr. Burns), for 
 Tarwallet Church, Cumberland Court-House, for Lang- 
 horne's Tavern, Qa Ira, Hard Bargain (Mr. Page taught 
 me, and I had the itch there), for Raine's Tavern, the 
 New Store, the wild region once called Algiers, for 
 Walker's Store (my father and I once stayed all night 
 there with old Mr. McDearmon), for Prince Edward 
 Court-House (to turn back a little, where Mr. Ballantyne
 
 44 
 
 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 taught me, and I learned to shoot the horse-pistol), for 
 Appomattox Church, near which I spent in boyhood many 
 happy days at Dr. Merritt Allen's, for Pamplin's Depot, 
 for the other Raine's Tavern, which subsequently became 
 Appomattox Court-House, for the Spout Spring, for Con- 
 cord, and every foot of the way thence to Lynchburg, 
 There was nothing, I say, that I would not have done for 
 these places and others I could name, for example, the 
 Red House Tavern, in Charlotte. Indeed, I wanted to 
 do something for the first lock below Lynchburg, for Bent 
 Creek and Warminster, so affectionate was my remem- 
 brance of them all, but many were past doing for, and 
 others needed little of my assistance ; as, for instance, 
 Farmville, which prospered greatly after the lunatic asylum 
 and the Mercury were started there. All I could do for 
 Farmville was to buy the place called Mountain View, 
 which my uncle, Mr. James Evans, rented for a number 
 of years, and erect upon it a foundation for the everlast- 
 ing education of real old Virginia cooks, so that as long 
 as the human jaw continued to work in the Virginia 
 countenance, ash-cake, good loaf-bread, fried chicken, 
 and a thousand other delicacies known only to Virginians 
 should exist for said jaw to play upon. It furnishes me 
 infinite happiness to be able to state what is well known 
 to all the enlightened natives, that the Evans foundation 
 secured forever to Virginians the cooking and the food 
 without which they would long since have ceased to exist; 
 and not only that, but that from this invaluable institution 
 (which I designed as a nursery for Virginia cooks, partly 
 of both sexes, but mostly fat females) there went forth so 
 large a supply of cooks that I was enabled within twenty 
 years to establish in all the principal cities of the world 
 Virginia taverns, where a man could eat an old-fashioned 
 dinner of every variety of Virginia meat, vegetables, and 
 dessert, including pan-cakes and fritters, and afterwards 
 retire to a real old Virginia room with an open fire of 
 hickory or pine, as he might prefer (or with fennel in the 
 fire-place in summer-time), and smoke Virginia .tobacco 
 in a Virginia pipe as he leaned back in a split-bottom 
 chair and cocked his feet on an Old Virgina mantel-piece, 
 duly ornamented with an oblong gilt mirror, divided into
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 45 
 
 three compartments, flanked by tall silver candlesticks (a 
 candle-stand being in readiness for them when desired), 
 and surmounted with a picture of General Washington 
 crossing the Delaware, or commanding at Monmouth. 
 
 I do believe that these Virginia taverns have done the 
 world a great deal of good. An archaeological interest 
 attaches to them. They carry forward into the new times 
 the very life and custom of a remote and glorious past, 
 for they present in addition to the furniture of a former era 
 (for which those who are the least curious about the cus- 
 toms of their ancestors have always the liveliest fondness) 
 the actual food and the manner of cooking it which ob- 
 tained in the days long gone by, and in that way they 
 afford the historian precisely that information which in 
 regard to ages still more remote, fancifully called pre- 
 historic or stone ages, is left almost entirely to conjecture. 
 Nor must I omit to notice the remarkable circumstance 
 that, notwithstanding the changes which are continually 
 taking place in the human constitution, unfitting it in 
 general for the diet of previous times, the Virginia eating 
 has proved, after long trial, to be suited to all times and 
 to all modifications of the system. It is now admitted 
 by the best physiologists that Virginia ash-cake, streaked 
 middling, etc., will probably be as welcome and as whole- 
 some to the last men who inhabit this planet as it was to 
 Buck Farrar, of Farmville, in 1811. 
 
 [It was an immense relief to me when I learned that 
 Hampden Sydney College had raised three hundred thou- 
 sand dollars, and that a sum still larger had been obtained 
 for the Union Theological Seminary. Long experience 
 had taught me that only very rich Yankee men can do much 
 for colleges (Southern men being fine promisers but poor 
 payers), and I had so much to do and so little to do it with. 
 I thought it hard, too, that I had to build the perfect Mac- 
 Adam road (the only one in the State) from Farmville to 
 the college, with shade-trees and sidewalks all the way 
 hard, because I believed that the professors on College Hill 
 maintained a bad dirt-road because they did not want out- 
 siders to obtrude into that delightful little Republic of 
 Letters. But I built the road for my own sake, and cannot 
 say I am sorry I did build it, though I now think it ought
 
 46 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 to have been a plank-road, for the benefit of Evans's saw- 
 mill and other saw-mills that needed employment. 
 
 Everybody said I ought to have built a narrow-gauge 
 railroad instead of a MacAdam road. I could not so think. 
 At that day there was a mania on the subject of narrow-, 
 as at an earlier day there had been a mania about broad- 
 gauge roads, but nowuno one doubts that many even of 
 the latter ought not to have been built until the country 
 became more thickly settled. The same amount of money 
 spent in first-class turnpikes would have been productive 
 of much more good, and given much more comfort to 
 country people. As soon as Virginia became an integral 
 part of the Empire, a moiety only of the former taxation 
 being applied to the improvement of country roads made 
 the land habitable, and then, for the first time, immigrants 
 ceased to alight for a moment and depart the next, like so 
 many wild pigeons.] 
 
 I might, if space permitted, dwell at some length on 
 this important subject, but must hurry on to Richmond, 
 saying only in passing that little favors, such as drinking- 
 fountains, equestrian statues, etc., were distributed freely 
 to Warminster, and other places heretofore named, the 
 particulars of which I do not recall, my memory being at 
 fault, not so much because of age as on account of the 
 multitude of things done in various hamlets and cross- 
 roads which were dear to me. 
 
 [Here it will be in place to say that the drinking-foun- 
 tains were not whisky-fountains. This is a specimen 
 slander of the thousands gotten up against me by the 
 newspapers. The thing is absurd on its very face; for I 
 suppose there is not a man in the world, a man rich 
 enough, to furnish free whisky to the places named above 
 even if they had desired it, which they did not, the love 
 of it having departed from them. 
 
 As to the accusation that my taste presided over that 
 parody of the Bunker Hill monument, at Burkeville, that, 
 too, is a vile slander. I did furnish the money to build 
 there a shot-tower two hundred feet high, and requested 
 its shape should be that of the Eddystone light-house. 
 But the contractor, a violent Southern man, would make 
 it like the monument in question, painted it black and
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 47 
 
 varnished it. As a shot-tower it was not a success, though 
 Mr. Hennipinkle, a worthy German, managed it econom- 
 ically. I had a suit about it with the contractor, but was, 
 of course, cast on account of my supposed wealth. 
 
 It was cut up into stories of ten feet each, the first of 
 which was a bar-room, the second a tank, the third a job 
 office, the fourth an editor's room, the fifth a sumac mill, 
 and the rest were rented out as lodging-rooms for artists 
 and poets who came to spend the summer and study the 
 scenery. In that way it paid very well. On the top was 
 a huge lantern, illuminated by calcium lights, which 
 proved useful to the railroads at night, especially after the 
 tracks were doubled. The great black tower looming up 
 two hundred feet in air, and flaming like a small sun, 
 made the night. approach to Burkeville singularly fine and 
 novel. 
 
 The superb mosque built by me not far from the town 
 as a dancing-hall for the good people of the vicinage, was 
 much admired, but was burnt by a fanatical dervish, who 
 came through the James River and Kanawha Canal on the 
 first packet-boat that traversed its waters after its comple- 
 tion to the Ohio a sad end to so pretty and enjoyable 
 an edifice. I could not rebuild it, being in reduced cir- 
 cumstances.] 
 
 SIXTH INSTALLMENT. 
 
 Good Sidewalks in Richmond Council of Cobblers and Ostlers New 
 Capitol proposed Intense Rage of the Legislature Speeches of In- 
 dignant Members Appearance of Capitol in 1910 Strangers from 
 Japan and North Carolina Deplorable Consequence of a Bank, etc. 
 
 I CANNOT say that I loved Richmond as much as I did 
 Lynchburg and Curdsville, but it was the capital of my 
 State, needed, I may say nearly everything, contained 
 males and females whom I liked far more than they liked 
 me, and was a good field for expenditures and experi- 
 ments. Therefore, I spent money right freely for it. 
 
 In the firsfplace, it was in 1878, when I commenced
 
 48 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 active operations, the worst-paved city, as to sidewalks, 
 in the civilized world, and, large as it was, it did not 
 contain one of several kinds of edifices much needed. 
 The Great Moral Donator told me that a man who could 
 donate himself a hack-ride every hour in the day need 
 not be concerned about sidewalks or railroad stations; 
 one good theatre would, in his opinion, be of more use 
 and comfort than anything else. But I had corns, many 
 and grievous corns, and loved "to walk sometimes, much 
 as it pleased me at other times to look down from my 
 
 own carriage at Jack , but I will 'not call his name. 
 
 So I paved the better part of the city, and thus made it a 
 pleasure, not a pain, to walk the streets. 
 
 [I have just been informed that, for many years, the 
 common council consisted wholly of ostlers, who were in 
 league with the cordwainers, cobblers, and boot and 
 shoe men of every description. The town of Lynn, I am 
 assured, contributed annually ten thousand dollars towards 
 the maintenance of a perfect system of detestable side- 
 walks. To the best of my recollection those sidewalks 
 were not touched from 1860 to 1878, say eighteen years; 
 meanwhile, the streets were kept in good condition, many 
 of them being repaved, and many new and long streets 
 built. Thus the ostlers had the happiness of seeing their 
 horses properly considered, while the shoe men enjoyed 
 an immense business obtained at a most trying expense to 
 the pockets and toes of the most patient and uncomplain- 
 ing public in the world. 1892.] 
 
 What I wanted to do, above all things, was to clear 
 away every building, except St. Paul's Church, from the 
 Exchange Hotel to Eighth Street, and from Main to Broad, 
 so as to give me room enough for my new State Capitol. 
 But this, like many other projects dear to my heart, had 
 to be given up. In my earlier dreamings I had always 
 intended to complete, on an improved design, the Wash- 
 ington Monument, in Washington, and to erect on the 
 vacant lot, between that monument and the Smithsonian 
 Institute, an Academy of Art (painting and sculpture) 
 which should be without an equal in the world. That 
 idea had, of course, been long abandoned. The little 
 money I owned wasn't a hundredth panbf what was
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 49 
 
 needed in Virginia. But it was hard to give up the 
 design of that enlarged and splendid square in Rich- 
 mond, with its stately capitol, modeled upon the original, 
 but far loftier, more capacious, and imposing. How often 
 I had seen and gloated over them in fancy ! My princi- 
 pal was untouched, but much was to be done, and the 
 best I could do (in fact, it was all I could do to that 
 particular end) was to offer the State a gift of one million 
 of dollars on condition it would issue its bonds for a like 
 amount, the total of two millions to be devoted to the 
 building of a capitol worthy of Virginia and its history. 
 
 Although' I offered to take all the bonds myself, the 
 proposition produced an uproar in the legislature, and 
 brought down upon me a shower of abuse. 
 
 "This bloated capitalist, Adams," said the member 
 from Zedville Court-House, " offers a gross indignity to 
 the Commonwealth. Sir, the State of Virginia is not a 
 pauper. She wants no capitol, and when she does, she'll 
 build it herself out of the surplus arising from the sale of 
 the West Virginia certificates. In my humble judgment 
 this insidious capitalist has designs upon the virtue, integ- 
 rity, and manhood of this Commonwealth." 
 
 " My learned and honorable friend," said the delegate 
 from Xton Xroads, "does not put the case too strongly. 
 I, sir, consider that the great and mighty State of Vir- 
 ginia is bound to uphold this building, and to cherish it 
 forever as an immortal, priceless legacy bequeathed from 
 the fathers. This, sir, is a high hill. From here down 
 to the river is a matter of sixty or eighty feet, and if we 
 want more room, why, sir, we can dig down to any 
 extent, and have as many basements as we please. If 
 we strike water we can pump it out, and if cement is 
 needed, as good cement, sir, can be had at Belcony Falls 
 as thar is in this world pure Old Virginyar cement, 
 sir. What does the bloated Adams say to that, sir ?' ' 
 
 "They tell me, sir," exclaimed the senator from 
 Bullaningunsopolis, "that the building is rotten. True, 
 sir, for I myself have punched a hole in its heaviest tim- 
 bers with my little finger. But, sir, we can bind the 
 dear edifice together with competent hoop-iron, or better 
 still, with resolute and unyielding grape-vines from our
 
 S o WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 native hills, and so, sir, fondle, sir, and encourage it, 
 sir, that, sir, it will not fall till it crumbles into small, 
 sacred dust. True, sir, that many have been killed in 
 this loved mansion .of the mighty, departed dead. But, 
 sir, what is human life compared to this blessed and ven- 
 erated old building? It is as the infinitesimal droplet 
 of the ordinary aqueous fluid in the bounding and bound- 
 less ocean of unfathomability. Besides, sir, we need not 
 assemble in these ancient old halls. Temporary and cheap 
 sheds should be erected for our accommodation against 
 the railings of the Squarr, to be used during the brief 
 but economical session, and then took apart, sir, for 
 future reference. Once a day we could, in joint body, 
 emerge from our sheds, and, with locked hands, gaze in 
 speechless joy, awe, and adoration upon this ancient, old, 
 and uninhabited (except by a few officials) contraption." 
 
 I left my offer standing for a year or two, and then, by 
 the advice of my friends, withdrew it. 
 
 [The capitol as it now appears with its grape-vines and 
 bands of hoop-iron is considered a curiosity. Many 
 strangers from Japan and North Carolina come every day 
 to look at it. The four hundred large pine-trees, care- 
 fully whitewashed, with which it is propped on every 
 side, are specially admired. A collection of long iron 
 rods running through and through the building, and 
 secured to the tail of the horse of the equestrian statue 
 of General George Washington, also attracts attention. 
 1910.*] 
 
 [No antiquarian can fail to applaud the large public 
 spirit which incased the Bell-house in massivff walls of 
 French plate-glass, so that it can readily be seen with the 
 naked eye, and, at the same time, be secure from the 
 profane punching of people whose business in life is to 
 job things with walking-sticks. And while I cordially 
 indorsed the importation from Lynchburg of the old 
 market-house and its re-erection in the square as a unique 
 monument of the past, I must be allowed to say, with 
 
 * Virginia did not build a New Capitol at that time, nor in any after- 
 time, simply because a capitol was not needed in a petty Province that 
 had ceased to be a State.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. ^ 
 
 due humility, that it is not, perhaps, the fittest place for 
 the storing of public documents. 1912.] 
 
 Considering the two millions refused by the State as so 
 much clear gain, I could no longer refuse my assent to a 
 proposition of a practical turn which had been urged 
 upon me with great force by some of my business ac- 
 quaintances. My opinion had always been, and still is, 
 that Richmond, before the war, was plenty large enough 
 and very nearly rich enough. It seemed to me then, as 
 it does now, that there is no more need for monstrous 
 cities than for monstrous individuals. But in this no 
 Richmond person agreed with me, the universal opinion 
 being that the bigger the city became, the better off 
 everybody would be. So I gave my consent to the estab- 
 lishment of a bank, which should not be a side-show to 
 some big shaving-shop in New York, but should be con- 
 ducted solely in the interest of Richmond merchants, 
 millers, manufacturers, and mechanics. The result was 
 astonishing even to me, with my astute and capacious 
 business mind. New industries in iron, cotton, pork, 
 canned fruits and oysters, and a hundred other products 
 sprang up like magic, and each reacting upon the other 
 caused so sudden and so vast an increase of prosperity as 
 to alarm calm men and to sadden me to the uttermost, 
 for to me the growing city meant growing wealth to the 
 comparatively few (no matter what their number might 
 be), and growing poverty to the many, with accompany- 
 ing vice and crime. But the force had been put in 
 motion, and the work went on with ever-accelerated 
 speed. Within five years we had wrested our coffee 
 trade from Baltimore and New Orleans, established a 
 Birmingham reputation for our wares in steel, started a 
 fair rivalry with Lowell in cotton goods, and what is of 
 more importance than all of these put together, we had 
 gained enough of common sense to know that our flour 
 ships could bring from Brazil not only coffee but hides as 
 well. Boston became scared, as indeed she could not 
 help being, at our shoe and leather business, which out- 
 stripped all our other businesses. Money fairly rolled into 
 Richmond. 
 
 But I cannot dwell upon these practical matters. To
 
 5 2 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 recall them, brings nothing but pain. What earthly right 
 had a humorist to meddle with such things ? Here is 
 this great city [numbering now fully half a million of 
 souls, 1911], and here are all the evils that belong to all 
 such cities. One cannot go to see his friends without 
 traveling from two to ten miles on the street railways. 
 [Rich as people say I am, it is out of the question to 
 consume an hour in my private carriage when the cars, 
 drawn by dummyTengines, will carry me the same distance 
 in a few minutes, and at a cost of only a penny.] 
 
 [Just here it is due to myself to say that the suggestion 
 about hides, with its dreadful results in the increase of 
 business, wealth, and population, was not my own. I 
 disclaim it utterly, and am in no way whatsoever respon- 
 sible for its origin. The suggestion was made to me as far 
 back as 1873, ^7 Hon. James McDonald, and he alone 
 is to blame for all the deplorable consequences. For if 
 my money enabled Richmond men to carry it out, they 
 could not have carried it out had no such suggestion ever 
 been made. I wash my hands of the whole business, 
 which I regard as deplorable in the highest degree. 
 
 SEVENTH INSTALLMENT. 
 
 Railroad Depots in Richmond Improvements on Broad Street Shields 
 House Virginia Historical Society Building Colonel T. H. Wynne 
 and Dr. W. P. Palmer Automaton of Com. Porter Brice Church 
 Free- Pew Question settled Paganism of Adams Pulpit Propriety and 
 Duck Guns Rev. Dr. Broadus Varlets, Cudgels, and Assassins 
 Congregational Singing Church of Spectroscope. 
 
 IT is as natural for a rich man to build as for a beaver 
 or a bird. I was pressed almost beyond endurance to do 
 something for Richmond in the way of public edifices 
 which should in some faint measure approximate the only 
 really grand, substantial, and tasteful structures of which 
 the city could boast during the last quarter of the nine- 
 teenth century. I mean the railroad depots. But this
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 53 
 
 was clearly impossible. Profuse as these depots were in 
 number, each was much more unique, stately, and wonder- 
 ful than all the rest, including itself. The reproduction 
 on Broad Street, between Eighth and Ninth, of the Poe- 
 cile Stoa, simple, pure, chaste, and lovely, was not more 
 thoroughly Greek and agreeable to the highly cultivated 
 eye than the colossal Aztec, Assyrian, Etruscan, and 
 Congo constructions on Byrd, Pearl, and the bottom of 
 Broad Street, near the old market. Nor must the pre- 
 historic kjokkenmodding of the York River road be non- 
 enumerated. 
 
 [On a little scrap of paper attached to the outside of 
 the bundle of the Adams MS. were found the remarks 
 below, from which it would appear that the old man 
 meditated great things for Broad Street, but whether 
 before or after he became satirical it is impossible to 
 decide, there being no date to the scrap. Ed. Whig.'} 
 
 [One of my first investments in Richmond was the 
 purchase of the Fredericksburg depot property on Broad 
 Street. Finding that the removal of the railroad track 
 had given a wonderful impetus to business, and that 
 various palatial stores had displaced the shanties and 
 shackly houses which formerly flanked that street, I de- 
 termined to build a splendid hotel on my property, for- 
 merly the site of the depot. The hotel was finished in 
 1 88 1, and was named the "Shields House."* It was the 
 
 * Colonel John C. Shields, a warm-hearted, worthy man, after whom 
 the hotel was called. His real name, Lieutenant-Governor Oilman assures 
 me, was Porter, and he was the only son of Commodore Porter by his 
 twelfth wife. When his father got married a thirteenth and fourteenth 
 time, young Porter became indignant and assumed the name of his 
 mother's family. 
 
 Commodore Porter's death, at a great age, left such avoid in the com- 
 munity that I engaged an ingenious mechanic to make for me an exact 
 facsimile of him in wood. A more perfect automaton was never con- 
 structed ; it walked all about the city, collected accounts, talked, and 
 smoked, and could not be told from the original commodore except by 
 the closest inspection. It was touching to see it going along, with its 
 venerable beard and pipe. The bad boys would sometimes tie him to a 
 post, and the machinery being still at work, his legs kept moving in the 
 oddest manner, and he exhibited all the signs of violent rage. At last 
 they got to lighting their cigars by scratching matches on his nose, and 
 
 5*
 
 54 
 
 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 most magnificent hotel outside of Chicago. Ballard was 
 the first lessee, and he seldom had a vacant room, so great 
 was the rush of visitors. As a grateful tribute to the 
 "Broad Street Association," I appropriated one-half of the 
 first year's rent of the hotel to the purchase and erection 
 of a bronze statue of James Lyons, the president of the 
 association. I always regretted that I did not buy several 
 hundred acres of land beyond the western confines of 
 Richmond, for as soon as the Court of Appeals decided 
 that the ordinance prohibiting the use of locomotives on 
 Broad Street was valid, the owners of the street railway 
 extended their tracks to the fair-grounds, property in the 
 vicinity of Richmond College jumped up one hundred 
 per cent., and such was the activity in building opera- 
 tions that the contractors of Richmond had to bring at 
 least five thousand mechanics here.] 
 
 As I had not the means to cope with these prodigies 
 of architecture, I contented myself with the purchase of 
 the three squares lying between Capitol and Broad and 
 extending from Ninth to what was called in old times 
 Governor Street. After sweeping away all the buildings 
 which had not particularly adorned this space, I erected 
 on the square, between Ninth and Tenth, a proper build- 
 ing for the Virginia Historical Society. I say "I erected," 
 meaning by that only the money part of the matter. The 
 selection of the design, details, etc., etc., was left to the 
 executive committee, who intrusted the execution to Col- 
 onel Thomas H. Wynne.* 
 
 [So great was the revival of trade and the increase of 
 wealth in New Orleans after '75 that the Southern His- 
 torical Society was carried back by acclamation and en- 
 
 sending him around with profane and indelicate verses written on his 
 forehead. Out of all patience at this, I gave him to Henry Eustace, who 
 made a large fortune by exhibiting him through the country. It is said 
 that when General Richardson felt him and found that he really was 
 wooden, and not the genuine commodore in propria persons, he just 
 laughed himself to death. 
 
 * A most extraordinary man. The only thoroughly practical and at 
 the same time excessively antiquarian man I ever knew good dinner- 
 giver.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 55 
 
 dowed with a million of dollars at the very first meeting 
 held in that city.] 
 
 Who the architect was that Wynne engaged I do not 
 now recollect, nor do I know how much of the interior 
 arrangement is due to him and how much to the architect, 
 but the building as a whole excites general approbation 
 for its beauty, simplicity, and durability. The interior 
 could not be improved. I should myself have liked a 
 more elevated structure, but the limits of the lot forbade 
 anything loftier. It is a pleasant resort for the student 
 and the lover of Virginia in the past. It is not a museum 
 for noisy boys and men, for giggling girls, or for open- 
 mouthed curiosity-mongers. For a great number of years 
 it has been in charge of Dr. William P. Palmer, who 
 devotes his whole time to it, and each succeeding year 
 becomes more and more absorbed in devotion to the in- 
 terests which the society was designed to subserve. The 
 fund, ample for all purposes, provides for what many 
 consider very expensive annual meetings, which have 
 become, in fact, historical festivals, lasting several days. 
 These are looked forward to by our best people in every 
 part of the State not with interest merely, but with 
 eagerness. 
 
 Openly, and by indirection, I was made aware of the 
 fact that Church This and Church That would receive me 
 as a member, and without too rigid an examination. The 
 hope was held out to me that my means were sufficient to 
 justify me in the indulgence of the expectation that I might 
 one day anticipate becoming an elder or vestryman, and 
 might possibly at some time be allowed to hand around 
 the basket if I dressed becomingly and paid enough atten- 
 tion to my hair. But whilst in one sense I was a Christian 
 (an imperfect one, it is true), I was also a pagan and 
 worshiper of Pan, loving the woods and waters, and 
 preferring to go to them (when my heart was stirred 
 thereto by that mysterious power which, as I conceive, 
 cares little for worship made statedly and to order on 
 certain recurring calendar days) rather than to most of 
 the brick and mortar pens that are supposed to hold in 
 some way that which the visible universe no more contains 
 than the works of his hands contain the sculptor who
 
 5 6 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 makes them ; for I take it that the glittering show revealed 
 by the mightiest telescope, or by the hope mightier even 
 than the imagination of the highest mind, is but as a par- 
 cel of motes shining in a single, thin beam of the great 
 sun unseen and hidden behind shutters never to be wide 
 opened. Howbeit, I do dearly love good preaching by 
 an umble, not hum-ble, man, who has thought and felt ; 
 and this tempted me to buy the Rev. John A. Broadus 
 for my own use and behoof. But that good man declined 
 the proposition, and an enthusiastic Baptist threatened to 
 cane me for daring to make it. (I was not afraid of the 
 man, but business called me out of town that very day !) 
 I was forced, therefore, to build my own church and hire 
 my own preachers. It was placed on the lot next to 
 Governor Street, was circular in form, seated comfortably 
 a very large congregation, and the pews rising one above 
 the other in amphitheatre form, gave great satisfaction to 
 people who distressed themselves very much on the free- 
 pew question. The poor people chose the lower seats 
 nearest the preacher, whilst the rich, though but little far- 
 ther off from the pulpit, enjoyed looking down upon their 
 neighbors. In this way all were gratified. For myself, 
 having plenty of money, pews gave me no trouble, and as 
 for sects, my Panness (not theism) enabled me to discern 
 much that was admirable in all sects and creeds from the 
 Jew down (or up, as you will) to the Catholic and Pres- 
 byterian. Dogma is to me a mere gustatory matter of the 
 triflingest moment, but freedom, the very essence and at- 
 mosphere of intellect (this does not consist with the 
 previously expressed views of Adams about the will, but 
 that is the old man's lookout and not ours. Ed. Whig} 
 is the all-important matter. To an all-embracing mind 
 like my own, dogma of any kind is the baldest absurdity. 
 For every thread,* however minute, in the Web of Things 
 
 * Of course there is no thread and no web. A thread which at every 
 point of its extension should meet and intertwine with threads coming 
 simultaneously from all points of an infinite sphere, would be a better 
 figure, but still a clumsy one. No image can at all portray the complex- 
 ity and coherence of things material with things spiritual. Yet theolo- 
 gians and scientists squabble about intrusion into their several domains, 
 as if co-existencies and inter-existencies (to coin a word intended to ex-
 
 MY FIFTY MILLION'S. 
 
 57 
 
 (the capitals "W" and "T" are important here) runs 
 back and forth to infinity, and until you have grasped the 
 two endless ends you cannot possibly tell, or so much as 
 guess, the connections and meaning of any one fibre of 
 thought or fact* And revelation, be it what you claim for 
 it, like all things else, must have all the lights of the 
 eternal past and the eternal future thrown full upon it be- 
 fore it is interpretable in terms of the whole truth, less 
 than which can never satisfy human craving or explain 
 human action. Nevertheless, if your tooth incline you to 
 mustard of the best with Methodism, go and be merry 
 therewith, only do not grow hot against me because my 
 palate leads me inevitably to Episcopacy and the mild oil 
 of the olive. 
 
 (My pastor, the Rev. Dr. Asterisk, has not induced me 
 materially to modify my views, though I find with ad- 
 vancing years that fixedness of opinion is less objectionable 
 to me than it was aforetime. 1897.) 
 
 By no means did I engage to attend regularly my own 
 church. There was too much disposition to make room 
 for me, and to give me a seat, although my ear-trumpet 
 was a fine instrument, and the acoustics of the building 
 were perfect. The sum set apart for the minister five 
 hundred dollars a Sunday (and we had a new preacher 
 every week) generally secured an excellent sermon and a 
 very large attendance. Collections were never taken up, 
 nor were boxes placed at the door so that persons might 
 deposit their offerings without interrupting the services. 
 Clergymen were engaged of all denominations, care being 
 
 press life within life) could by possibility be dissociated. It is child's 
 play. " These toys are mine and you sha'n't touch "em." "These are 
 mine and you sha'n't touch 'em either." What folly! It is the ever-re- 
 curring and ever-beneficent struggle between conservation and develop- 
 ment. " Yet you say, what ' folly' and ' child's play.' " I do. Folly has 
 its uses, and child's play is beneficial. The war between science and re- 
 ligion must go on forever. Reconciliation is simply impossible. That 
 proposed by Herbert Spencer is in effect an absolute surrender on the 
 part of theology. Let the Titans continue their unending wrestle, satis- 
 fied that whichever falls will not long remain down, but, Antaeus-like, rise 
 strengthened by his fall. For this universe is a large concern, and the 
 finding out of even the edge of it will occupy some considerable time. 
 Meanwhile the fight of "hold fast" and "go ahead" must continue and 
 ought to continue. 
 c*
 
 5 8 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 taken to get the best of each, and but a single restriction 
 was placed upon them. Under no pretext or disguise 
 whatsoever was pulpit profanity for one instant allowed. 
 Familiarity and intimate personal acquaintance with Deity, 
 His thoughts, His ways, His dealings, and even His in- 
 tentions (more shocking to me than any bar-room pro- 
 fanity), were sternly kept down by a man in the organ-loft 
 armed with a heavily-charged duck-gun, and instructed to 
 shoot down the offender without remorse the moment he 
 offended. [Since my removal from Richmond, the killing 
 of one or two pulpit criminals (I am tempted, and mean 
 nothing profane by it, to call them boon companions of 
 the Almighty, for that is what they would have the people 
 believe) has been reported to me, but the reporter being 
 an editor I place not over-much confidence in his report.] 
 Better, far better, it always seemed to me, was the awe and 
 trembling of the Hebrew who dared not pronounce the 
 name of the Holy One, or who did it prone with his 
 mouth in the dust. Reverence without humility, there 
 can be none ; ajnd, if the preacher be not reverent and 
 humble from the very inmost of his soul, never can he 
 hope to make his congregation so. When he assumes to 
 know, as if by recent personal colloquial interview or chat, 
 the views and purposes of the Almighty, he forthwith and 
 of necessity adopts a dictatorial, vicegerential tone that 
 is offensive and shocking in the last extreme. The duck- 
 gun, in connection with the congregational singing,* 
 which was encouraged in every conceivable way, and until 
 the people learned to join in it heart and soul, did good. 
 I do not regret the round sum laid out in this way, though 
 it was altogether inconsonant with my original intention, 
 which was to give my money to deserving individuals, 
 and not to edifices or institutions of any kind. But he 
 
 * There can never be thorough, hearty, and joyous congregational 
 singing where the attendance is large, as was the case in my church, 
 which did not bear my name, however (God forbid!), until competent 
 leaders, male and female, are distributed at proper and sufficiently nu- 
 merous points in the body of the church. This was done in Brice 
 Church (named for Miss Nancy Brice, of Lynchburg, one of the sweetest 
 and purest old ladies that ever drew the breath of life), and the effect was 
 everything that could possibly be desired. The plan has since been 
 almost universally adopted.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 59 
 
 who undertakes to live two centuries and a half ahead of 
 his time, is much like a tadpole who tries to play hum- 
 ming-bird. He simply don't do it. 
 
 [Having reached a ripe old age, and seen much of the 
 world, I am inclined to doubt the value of free preaching. 
 It was when the Gospel was heard at the risk of life and 
 limb that it was rightly appreciated. I begin seriously to 
 think that if a stout varlet provided with an oaken cudgel 
 were stationed at the door of each of the churches, and 
 instructed not to admit any one who refused to pay half a 
 dollar on the spot and submit also to a sound drubbing, 
 there would be a much fuller attendance, and never any 
 occasion to send round the hat, or to make appeals for 
 home or foreign missions. But here it is not only fitting 
 but indispensable for me to disclaim the charge recently 
 made in/ the Bedford Sentinel that it was through my in- 
 strumentality and my money that the band of two hundred 
 Italian and Spanish brigands who last year passed through 
 the country parts of Virginia, assassinating every member, 
 young and old, of every congregation whose minister had 
 not been paid up in full, was brought to this State. I 
 solemnly declare that I did not do it had no lot or part 
 in it. At the same time I am delighted that it was done. 
 The places of the assassinated have been filled mostly by 
 devout, industrious, thrifty Scotchmen, and Virginia, in 
 its rural aspect, is a different and better thing. Presby- 
 terianism, however, is alarmingly on the increase. But I 
 suppose we must put up with that. 1900.] 
 
 [I have this day refused peremptorily to subscribe to- 
 ward the completion of the Church of the Spectroscope 
 (on Foushee Street), with the Vibratory worship of the 
 Great First Cause (a sort of scientific Shaking Quakerism), 
 and its sacred readings from Hindu Vedas, Norse Sagas, 
 Scandinavian Eddas, Emerson, and George Sand, by a son 
 of Moncure D. Conway. No ; from the Vibratory stand- 
 point I don't see that there is any more occasion for a Great 
 First Cause than for a Last Great Effect. I much prefer 
 to worship the Father who pitieth his children and remem- 
 bereth their infirmities. But very much more do I prefer 
 to say that it is no human being's business what, whom, 
 when, where, how, or what for I worship, or whether I
 
 60 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 worship at all. Whether I have the right or not I leave 
 it to Dr. Blank to determine ; but I do most certainly 
 exercise the right (call it faculty, if you will) of being 
 just as skeptical as I please, and just as superstitious as I 
 please, at one and the same time. Impossible ! For you, 
 yes ; for me, nothing more natural,, and indeed, unavoid- 
 able. I do'n't know, can't know, everything; and, as to 
 rights, I think the greatest of wrongs in this world is to 
 dam up the thinking apparatus, or rather to close the 
 shutters, leaving open only a little chink, and to say, 
 " Now I've got all the light in the world, at least all that 
 is good for me, and if I let in any more it will damn my 
 soul to all eternity."] 
 
 It may be that my lowly birth and my early association 
 with uncultured folk incline me to sing by my lone self 
 "How firm a foundation" rather than join young Mr. 
 Conway when he plays from the pulpit on a silver sax- 
 horn what he calls the "Holy Galop," (composed ex- 
 pressly for Mr. C. by Gungl, or Bungl, or Dungl, or some 
 other vibratory Dutchman) ; at all events, I do sing it 
 with my whole heart, whenever I feel like it, and intend 
 to keep on singing it whenever I feel like it, in spite of 
 all the Conways and Spectroscopes in existence. 
 
 EIGHTH INSTALLMENT. 
 
 Mr. Pigskin on Immigration Adams Hints at Empire Ten Thousand 
 Dollars each to Fifteen Hundred Girls Bad Consequences of Good 
 Intentions Excitement in Virginia Adams Hated Regarded as an 
 Active Intransitive Fool Gov. Kemper Expensive Joke on Wife 
 A Lesson to Husbands Rev. Dr. Peterkin Venom without Spon- 
 dulics. 
 
 ABOUT this time I think it was about this time (my 
 memory is not failing me, but I am much occupied of late, 
 and besides, the chronological order of my benefactions 
 or non-benefactions is not so important after all) I was 
 approached by a large delegation composed of some of
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 6l 
 
 the leading men of Richmond and, indeed, of the whole 
 State. I could see by the way they took off their hats 
 that they wanted money. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said I, testily, without waiting for the 
 spokesman to open his mouth, "Gentlemen, you cannot 
 be ignorant of the fact that Mr. Binford is the proper per- 
 son to apply to. My time is val " 
 
 "Strike, but hear us," pompously interrupted Mr. Felix 
 Pigskin, principal citizen of the period. 
 
 "Say on," was my submissive answer, as I settled my- 
 self back in my arm-chair and adjusted my trumpet. 
 
 "You desire to do good to Virginia?" inquired Mr. P. 
 I nodded assent. 
 
 "And have been uniformly thankful for suggestions 
 looking to that end. Your patience and humility- " 
 
 "Come to the point without compliment, Mr. P." 
 
 "Well, then, sir, being for the time being the honored 
 voice of Virginia, I am requested, and in fact instructed, 
 to say, that in no manner whatever can you so well 
 serve the State whose soil your birth has hon " 
 
 "Oh, pish!" 
 
 " ored, as by aiding and abetting with your ample 
 
 means the cause of immigration." 
 
 "And that is the object of your visit?" 
 
 "It is." 
 
 "Then, gentlemen, let me say, in all kindness and 
 frankness, that your mission is a vain one. If Mr. Bin- 
 ford has a few thousands to spare, you are most heartily 
 welcome to them, but the matter rests absolutely with him, 
 not with me. Anxious as I have proved myself to be to 
 serve the State indeed, I have little else to live for I 
 am still constrained to think that money will be wasted in 
 the attempt to transplant full-grown trees or men to worn- 
 out soil." 
 
 " But the deep plowing of stalwart Yankee-British arms 
 will bring up new soil." 
 
 "True, quite true; but perfect candor compels me to 
 say that the real Virginian, being a product of slave society, 
 and of slave society only, cannot be reproduced under any 
 other conditions whatsoever, and it is not my desire, how- 
 ever much it may be to the interest of land-owners, to see 
 
 6
 
 62 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 the few remaining Virginians supplanted any quicker than 
 they would be and ought to be by the natural course of 
 events. That another and a very different race (perhaps 
 very much better race, but not better to me) will in time 
 reclaim our lapsed lands, and that the day will come when 
 the shores of our American Mediterranean, the Chesapeake 
 Bay, will teem with cities and population I make no doubt, 
 but the first indispensable step to that result is the removal 
 from the settler of an incubus that weighs down to the 
 earth every inhabitant, native or foreign-born, of Virginia. 
 I mean the State debt. Get that paid by the central gov- 
 ernment, accept the fact of empire with all its unpleasant 
 consequences to us of this generation, and then, but not 
 till then, will it be worth your while to incite immigration 
 by solicitation not the best way any way. If you have 
 so very good a thing in this climate, soil, latitude, prox- 
 imity to the sea, etc., the world, I should think, would 
 not be slow to find it out. In this day of telegraphs, light 
 cannot be hid under a bushel. But until the debt is as- 
 sumed by the true debtor, and the only one able to pay 
 it, money spent for immigration purposes will be money 
 thrown away. Good-morning, gentlemen." 
 
 They withdrew, not in the best of humors. 
 
 Binford, if I can be certain of the fact, gave them a 
 trifle of ten or twenty thousand dollars, but no one has 
 yet told me that much good came of it. 
 
 " Conceited old ass, he thinks because he's got money 
 that he's got more sense than all the world put together. 
 By George ! don't I remember the day, here in Richmond, 
 when, by universal acknowledgment, he was regarded as 
 the most active, intransitive fool in Virginia!" 
 
 So said one of the delegates as they left my office; and 
 his opinion, I had too much reason to know, was for a long 
 time the general opinion in the State. Men, feeling the 
 weight of my wealth, did not give open expression to their 
 opinions, but I could see it in their eyes ; the newspapers 
 had got after me, too, and I suffered. Living, and desiring 
 only to live in order to give pleasure to my brother- Vir- 
 ginians, I could not bear their ill will, even when I knew 
 that they were wrong and I was right. 
 
 But the delegate was not wrong in his assertion. I was
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 63 
 
 conceited, and ray money had made me so in spite of 
 myself. General deference to my opinions and the power 
 of carrying out my views at times elevated my self-esteem 
 to an inordinate degree, I doubt not. Very often I could 
 not dispossess myself of the belief that I had made my fifty 
 millions with my own hands or by my own sagacity; at 
 any rate I felt that I deserved them, being such a good 
 man, and that uplifted me mightily in my own eyes. It 
 took visit after visit to the woods to cure and humble me. 
 The measureless and inexhaustible force of nature, its utter 
 indifference (in the midst of great love) to what we call 
 great or small, finally brought me back again all safe, sim- 
 ple, and unconceited. 
 
 [I now think I ought to have given a couple of hundred 
 thousand towards immigration ; funds were getting low, 
 considering what remained to be done, but I could have 
 better stood the loss of ten times that amount than the 
 averted look of one unfriendly eye. I care too much for 
 public opinion.] 
 
 As when the State declined to accept my proposition to 
 build a new capitol, so now, when I felt constrained to 
 decline giving money to promote immigration, I con- 
 sidered that I had added just that much more to my prin- 
 cipal, and accordingly proceeded to spend it with a good 
 deal of glee, as a poor fellow often does when a windfall 
 of a few dollars comes to him. The scheme was not 
 wholly my own, but was suggested to me by one of my 
 most trusted and sensible agents. It was, in a few words, 
 to give in fee simple ten thousand dollars cash to each of 
 fifteen hundred girls (so many to each county, city, and 
 town) on the day they got married to some strong, healthy, 
 handsome, sensible, good-natured, sober, industrious 
 young man, who had proved himself to be a good son and 
 brother the girls to be just as healthy, sweet, well formed, 
 pretty, modest, and dutiful as the boys. The proposition, 
 as soon as its sincerity became known beyond all cavil, 
 produced an excitement the like of which was never, as I 
 honestly believe, witnessed in any part of the civilized 
 world no, not even in time of war. Words quite fail 
 me to describe it. "What is healthy?" "Who is 
 pretty?" " What does he call good-natured ?" "Who
 
 64 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 is to decide about being well formed?" etc., etc., etc., 
 etc. 
 
 In vain I protested that I had nothing on earth to do 
 with defining or deciding anything. The State was in an 
 inconceivable ferment. I was bedeviled almost to death, 
 and finally had to run away to Canada to get rid of the 
 clamor ; and even there I was beset. " Let the girls in 
 each county call a convention, and leave it to the county 
 judge, a board of physicians, the overseers of the poor, 
 the county surveyor, anybody, anybody, Lord, for the 
 sake of peace." 
 
 No, they wouldn't hear to that they wouldn't hear to 
 anything, until at length Governor Kemper,f being ap- 
 pealed to, decided that there was but one way to settle it, 
 and that was by lottery in each county, etc. But then 
 the money was not to be paid till the day of marriage 
 how about that? It was even so that was in the bond. 
 
 Well, such a demand for young men, such attention to 
 even decently respectable young men, on the part of im- 
 pecunious parents, such beautiful eyes cast at young men, 
 such running away to distant States of young men who 
 didn't want to marry anybody, such indignation and 
 drawing back of young ladies who wanted neither money 
 nor husbands, but wanted to do just as they pleased and 
 marry just when it suited them, such fun, excitement, 
 bickerings, jealousies, fights, and family quarrels when 
 the marriages did take place, were never seen, heard, or 
 dreamed of. Virginia was a most unhappy State until 
 the thing played out and the money set apart was ex- 
 pended to the very last dollar. It was a sad ending of 
 what I thought a good scheme. Old people sometimes 
 allude to it as the run-mad scheme, but it has been gene- 
 rally forgotten. 
 
 I am glad, though, .that I tried it. It satisfied me that 
 the plan I had been practicing, from the time I got my 
 fifty millions, of helping deserving young couples in the 
 quietest possible manner, was the best, indeed the only 
 practical plan. But some of the wilder young fellows did 
 
 fA good, honest, solid, upright, black-bearded, badly-by-Yankees- 
 wounded, Madison county man of the period.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 6$ 
 
 have what they called a high old time, and certainly if 
 there is fun in excitement there was excitement enqugh in 
 Virginia for about two and a half years. 
 
 [The State hasn't yet recovered from the furious family 
 feuds occasioned by my well-meant, but ill-judged, action 
 in this matter, and never will in my day. The worst- 
 hated man in Virginia, by fully two- thirds of the people, 
 is myself.] 
 
 But to return to my building. 
 
 My wife, the most sensible woman I ever knew (my 
 acquaintance is limited), soon after my good fortune came 
 from heaven, said to me, 
 
 "Moses, because we are rich that's no reason we should 
 be fools." 
 
 "W-e-11, I don't know about that." 
 
 " Come, don't try to be sarcastic, or I'll say some- 
 thing presently that'll make you wish you had never 
 married " 
 
 "I often wish that." 
 
 "a woman that isn't quite as big a ninny as you are. 
 But what I mean is this : that there is no sense in our 
 building a huge brick advertisement of the fact that we 
 have money. Every rich man does that. My idea is to 
 have two spare chambers for our friends I suspect we'll 
 have a good many now and that's all. Of course the 
 house will be as well furnished, tasteful, and comfortable 
 as possible. A small, perfectly equipped house, that's 
 what we want. The more house the more servants and 
 trouble about cleaning and keeping clean don't you 
 think so?" 
 
 "Yes'm," said I, meekly. 
 
 "You are such a goose ! But I certainly no, Virginia 
 says 'certainly' all the time I do really like you as much 
 as much as much as you liked me the day cousin Susan 
 Brown sent me fifty dollars." 
 
 The upshot of it was that we bought the house that 
 Rev. Dr. Minnegerode lived in in 1874 on Clay Street, 
 I rather think (but the fact is, my memory for names, 
 dates, places, and things never was good), modernized 
 and mansarded it (Mrs. Johnson Jackson assured me that 
 no respectable person from the upper ends of Franklin 
 
 6*
 
 66 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 and Grace would ever visit me if I did not mansard it), 
 and made it snug in every way. It became a pleasant 
 place to visit about dinner-time. I insisted on buying 
 this particular house, because I had often picked it out in 
 my days of poverty as perhaps the only place in which a 
 man could find a home and at the same time repose from 
 the women and children. This I got by building a two- 
 story office at the lower end of the garden, where I could 
 be out of the reach of feminine and juvenile jargon and 
 intrusion, and where I could have at any time what Dr. 
 Howland (a scientific lecturer of the period) would call 
 " a general view of the valley" the vale of Butchertown, 
 to wit. 
 
 We did have a good deal of company. People seemed, 
 for some reason or other, to be fond of us. Often, a little 
 too often I thought, my wife and myself were forced to 
 ascend to the mansard and swelter there, which made 
 me bless the mansard and wish I could have my family to ' 
 myself as in the days when, perhaps owing to my poverty, 
 people were not so fond of us. However, it was a great 
 delight to have those we really loved (my wife had a pro- 
 digious width as well as depth of affection) with us, to 
 make them as comfortable as kings and queens, and to 
 give them dinners that were fit for something a great deal 
 better than gods. Jupiter never ate a good dinner in his 
 life, the truth being that J. was not born in Lynchburg. 
 The dinners were so delightful that I look back to them 
 as the happiest hours of my life. Happiest ! no ; I will 
 tell you ere long what hours were really the happiest of 
 all. To be sure, I could retreat to my office at night, 
 when the house was full, and enjoy the moonlit valley 
 aforenamed to the full. But this was not being at home. 
 Finally, my wife bought a couple of houses in the neigh- 
 borhood and placed them at the service of surplus and 
 not agreeable company. This was all very well ; it relieved 
 the pressure without touching too deeply on my privy 
 purse (Binford, his female coadjutor, and my public 
 enterprises having cut me down to less than half a million 
 a year for individual and household expenses), but when, 
 day after day, I came home only to find my house a 
 livery-stable, as it were, or hack-stand, my wife having
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 67 
 
 ordered, in addition to our private vehicles, from six to 
 eight others daily, to be sent hither and thither for the 
 use of this or that sick friend, or for some friend who was 
 
 not sick, but would "enjoy a ride so" . When I saw 
 
 this I got mad, as husbands will do, and determined to 
 make her sick of the carriage business. Accordingly, I 
 bolted off in hot haste, fully bent on buying every carriage, 
 hack, buggy, and thing of the kind in town ; but as I 
 walked on I cooled down a little and contented myself 
 with the purchase of one hundred and seven hacks, carry- 
 alls, rockaways, phaetons, coupes, drags, buggies, gigs, 
 single-chairs, drays, tumbril carts, etc., etc., including 
 sixteen omnibuses, four furniture-wagons, a milk-cart, 
 and two wheelbarrows, with horses and mules to match, 
 goats also for the wheelbarrows, and ordered them all to 
 assemble simultaneously at my front door the next day at 
 twelve o'clock. 
 
 "Now, old lady," thinks I, "if you don't get your 
 digestive apparatus full of wheeled vehicles for poor folks, 
 then I'll agree to eat all the omnibuses, and half the 
 goats." 
 
 The scene next day was a refreshing one. For several 
 squares the street was blocked up with carriages and 
 things, and an immense crowd of wondering people 
 gathered immediately to see what the matter was. 
 
 "It can't be a funeral," said the people, "for there 
 is the milk-cart. Whoever heard of a milk-cart at a 
 funeral?" 
 
 As driver after driver came up, knocked, and an- 
 nounced that his vehicle had been bought and paid for, 
 and ordered to come at twelve o'clock for Mrs. Adams's 
 commands (I poked my head out of a mansard ' room, 
 where I had hid myself, and watched the whole affair), 
 the state of that good woman's mind may be imagined. 
 She sent for twenty policemen to disperse the vehicles 
 and the mob, but the policemen, finding that there had 
 been a bona fide purchase of the vehicles, and that the 
 drivers had actually received orders to assemble, could 
 do nothing. Mrs. A. was in despair. She sent for the 
 Mayor, but he too was powerless. Made desperate by 
 the frightful aspect of affairs, for the mob had now in-
 
 68 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 creased to many thousands, she said to the Mayor, " If 
 these drivers have been directed to obey my commands, 
 will you see that my commands are executed to the 
 letter?" 
 
 "Most assuredly, madam." 
 
 " Then I command these drivers to drive their vehicles 
 to the nearest auction store, and there sell the vehicles, 
 horses, etc., immediately to the highest bidder, and you, 
 Mr. Keiley, are to receive the proceeds of the sale, and 
 turn them over in full to Dr. Peterkin's* fair, now being 
 held at No. , Main street." 
 
 It was done, and I never got mad with my wife any 
 more at least not to that tune. I think she told me 
 that the church realized' some eleven thousand dollars 
 from the sale. 
 
 Of all the vehicles, she reserved but one a choice 
 dray, thirty feet long, and drawn by seven tomato-catsup- 
 colored mules ; so convenient, she said, for moving at 
 one haul all the furniture of any poor friend who wanted 
 to move. 
 
 And a shave-tail mule, from that day to this, gives me 
 facial neuralgia, accompanied by symptoms of trichina 
 spiralis. 
 
 [Other men have confessed to me that they, too, have 
 often wished to pile bonnets, boas, redingotes, or other 
 special weaknesses of their wives, upon their heads until 
 they were suffocated, or nearly so. But being men of 
 feeble feelings and little money, they could not vent 
 such rage as mine with the pecuniary violence exhibited 
 above. They have the venom, but not the spondulics. 
 Perhags it is well.] 
 
 * Rev. Joshua Peterkin a true Christian a man of God, if ever I 
 knew one. (The joke is, that Dr. P. never countenanced fairs. Ed. 
 Whig.)
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS, 69 
 
 NINTH INSTALLMENT. 
 
 Sad Results of an Explosion Drs. Cullen and McGuire Happy Re- 
 section of a Steeple Burwell Music Hall Great Fiddling Festival A 
 Treat for Pretty Girls Happiest Time of Old Adams's Life Gen. 
 Richardson and Col. Sherwin McRae Adams's Patent Lecture-Halls 
 Judge Waller Stapler "Johnny Reb." 
 
 [FROM this point onward the old man's style, rough at 
 best, gets more and more incoherent ; he repeats himself, 
 and is utterly regardless of the rules of construction his 
 interpolations and foot-notes increase in number, and be- 
 come almost vexatious, indicating the inevitable decay 
 of the powers of mind and body. Ed. Whig.~\ 
 
 It was a well-timed thing in me to buy the City Hall, 
 Dr. Preston's Church, etc., just when I did. The people 
 had entertained much unamiable emotion in regard to 
 the edifice first named, which had been reported to be 
 unsafe. Judge Guigon* they said was inclined to be, 
 not severe that would be too strong a word but a little 
 brash ; the Common Council exhibited the usual, but 
 not more than the usual, defectiveness of common sense, 
 and an odor approximating the job-stench pervaded the 
 atmosphere. 
 
 When I attempted to pull down the walls of the said- 
 to-be-unsound City Hall, nitro-glycerine had to be used, 
 and with most disastrous results. The Broad Street Meth- 
 odist Church steeple was completely skinned of its slate 
 scales, and so badly cracked that it was carried at a right- 
 shoulder shift for nearly eighteen months. Architects 
 having given it up as a hopeless case, Drs. Cullen and 
 McGuire were called in, and after a vain attempt to re- 
 duce the luxation, flooded the body of the building with 
 chloroform, and performed the operation of resection 
 with the happiest results. The explosion also produced 
 a violent irritation of the neck of the pool or baptistery 
 
 * His first name was Alexander a worthy, good man of the period, 
 endowed with a stout judicial spine. He wore a standing collar and 
 a large black silk cravat of the Ridgway pattern to the very last.
 
 jo WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 of Dr. Burrows's church, which caused it to leak un- 
 healthily until sugar-of-lead pipes were introduced. A 
 cure soon followed. Thereupon everybody admired his 
 own wisdom, and said, "Didn't I tell you so didn't I? 
 I knew what I was talking about ; and I always said that 
 five thousand dollars would make the City Hall bran 
 new, and strong enough to last a thousand years." 
 
 But as everybody had said that, nobody, not even the 
 councilmen, felt badly. 
 
 It will be recollected that in the Valentine House 
 Square the Virginia Historical Society building stood, 
 and Ford's Hotel Square was occupied by Brice Church, 
 enough space being left in both squares for green sward 
 and a number of graceful trees. In the Central Square, 
 after the City Hall was blown down, and the other build- 
 ings removed, rose the massive and beautiful Music Hall, 
 also with its green sward and trees. I did not call it an 
 Academy of Music, because it was not, and was never in- 
 tended to be an academy. Music was not taught there, 
 nor had the building any connection near or remote 
 with Academus, after whom so many Northern musical 
 shebangs were in my day strangely and unwittingly mis- 
 named a fact which wholly escaped the notice of the 
 Richmond Dispatch. There was simply what its name 
 implied, a hall for popular concerts of vocal and instru- 
 mental music. In planning the hall, I was greatly aided 
 by Mr. N. B. Clapp, and a few other gentlemen of taste ; 
 in truth, after giving them an outline of my ideas, I left 
 the matter wholly in their charge. The public and my- 
 self were well pleased with their work. The room is 
 noble in the best sense of the term lofty, airy, frescoed 
 with exquisite taste, ornamented with busts and statues 
 of the greatest composers, placed at appropriate intervals 
 in niches, with abundant light by day, and glorious at 
 night with jets and chandeliers. No handsomer build- 
 ing, until my cathedral was finished, ornamented the 
 city. It was named Burwell Hall, in honor of my 
 friend, Miss Kate Burwell,* a charming musician. 
 
 * Married a country doctor of the period, and I regard most country 
 doctors so far superior to the average preacher that there is no use o' 
 talking.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 7 ! 
 
 While the hall was in process of construction, I entered 
 into negotiations with Theodore Thomas with the view 
 of engaging him and his orchestra to reside permanently 
 in Richmond, but this could not be done, the field being 
 too small for him. Nor would he agree to come more 
 than twice during the winter, that is to say, the first week 
 in December and the last in February, and even then he 
 would not consent to remain more than three days each 
 time, although I was willing to pay him any sum within 
 reason for doing so. But before the hall was completed, 
 arrangements had been made by which concerts, and oc- 
 casionally operas, of the first order of merit, should be 
 given every fortnight during the winter, all the expenses 
 of which were paid out of the endowment. I made but 
 one stipulation with the management, and that was that 
 the programmes should invariably be so arranged as to 
 please the audiences and gradually to elevate their musi- 
 cal taste the rule theretofore being to make out the pro- 
 grammes in New York, with selections adapted to a very 
 few well-educated musical people, while the mass were 
 compelled to sit by and pretend to enjoy what they could 
 not possibly comprehend. The sight of these anxious 
 fools (of whom I was one) looking into the faces of 
 educated musicians to find when the time came to be 
 in raptures, had so often made me sick that I was deter- 
 mined to do away with it forever, at Burwell Hall, any- 
 how. 
 
 [I recall now with grim delight the fury into which the 
 virtuosi were thrown when the hall was inaugurated with a 
 real old-fashioned Virginia fiddling jubilee not intended 
 as any reflection upon the Peace (accurately peace) Jubilee 
 in Boston which lasted five days. Curdsville College 
 came down in a body, President George Walker at the 
 head; all the famous white and black fiddlers in the State 
 attended and made exhibition of their skill; and such a 
 riproarious time was had as was never had in Richmond 
 before or since. The people got. blind drunk with jigs 
 and reels and whisky. Many marriages occurred soon 
 afterwards. The solos by Mr. James A. Cowardin, Mr. 
 Henry Lubbock, and Mr. Arthur Gooch, were pronounced 
 not inferior to the best Curdsville performances; and the
 
 72 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 memorial ode to Ruffin's band, recited by Mr. Henry 
 Hudnall, set to music by Madison Chamberlayne, was 
 sung throughout the State for years afterwards. The in- 
 augural address was made by Mayor Keiley.*] 
 
 Music being heaven itself, or the nearest thing to it, 
 except, perhaps, a sweetheart's first kiss, I always intended 
 that the concerts at Burwell Hall should be as free as 
 heaven's air. But this I soon found would never do. 
 The vulgus had to be kept out. The price of admission, 
 therefore, was fixed at a sum sufficient to effect that end 
 say seventy-five cents and the money thus obtained was 
 devoted to the education of poor youth of both sexes who 
 showed decided musical talent. But whenever there was 
 a pretty, sweet girl, or a girl that was sweet and not pretty, 
 who wanted to go to the concerts, and didn't have the 
 seventy-five cents, you may be sure she not only went but 
 got one of the best seats in the house. And inasmuch as 
 girls (until they get married, after which they are apt to 
 be a shade stingy to everybody but their husbands and 
 children) are naturally generous and do not like to be re- 
 ceiving all the time, even from their beaux and fathers, I 
 provided that they should always select their own escorts, 
 who went in free of charge also. The trouble was to dis- 
 tribute the tickets so as not to give offense. Remembering 
 the dowry business, and unwilling to incur any more 
 odium than I already endured, I intrusted the distribution 
 to two excellent old gentlemen, in whose generosity and 
 discretion I had all confidence, and whose uniform courtesy 
 and uprightness (brought down from a better age) I had 
 long secretly but greatly admired I mean General W. H. 
 Richardson and Col. Sherwin McRae. As it was a ticklish 
 business, I paid them largely for it. They did their duty 
 faithfully and thoroughly well, avoiding the breakers on 
 which I had been wrecked in the matter of dowries. How 
 the young girls did love them ! Unwilling to limit their 
 tickets to the City of Richmond, they requested permis- 
 sion to send them to the country, and that the editors of 
 
 * A worthy good man of the period, partly Irish, except as to his eye- 
 glasses. First name Anthony, afterwards called Ant'ny Over, or N'over, 
 for short, because he was elected mayor over and over again.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 73 
 
 the country papers should be the medium through which 
 the tickets should go. I readily accepted so sensible a 
 proposition. An increase in the circulation of country 
 papers was soon observable, and we had at the concerts 
 some such girls as grow in no other part of this world but 
 in old Virginia dear, gentle, sweet, pure lily-buds and 
 blush-roses of life, sinless as children or angels. Ah, my 
 God ! how they enjoyed the music. Sitting at my place 
 in the parquette, I would look up into their faces glorified 
 with delight, and yes, these were the happiest hours of 
 my life. General R. and Colonel McR. never allowed 
 one of them or their lovers or attendants, whoever they 
 might be, in coming to, staying in, or going from the 
 city, to pay a cent ; everything was paid for them. Most 
 of the editors sent down delightful girls. But Sandy 
 Garber, from time to time, by way of variety, transmitted 
 some mountain specimens that were were I be dog if I 
 know how to tell what they were. It was a treat, though, 
 to the rest of the audience to behold them and watch 
 their bewilderment. 
 
 The pleasure which General Richardson and Colonel 
 McRae* derived from their new occupation prolonged 
 their lives to an indefinite period. My memory is a little 
 treacherous, and my books of reference not accessible, 
 and so I will not undertake to say precisely how long they 
 lived. Never before in the history of the world, I dare 
 be sworn, were ticket agents so universally beloved. 
 
 About this time Judge Staples, f of the Court of Appeals, 
 came to me and said, 
 
 "Moses, it does seem hard that with all your money 
 
 * Colonel McRae never did die. As time went on he became quite 
 unhefty, and while attempting to reach the Capitol one March morning 
 encountered a northwest wind that blew him over into the wilderness of 
 Manchester, which made the pursuit and recovery of him unavailing. 
 Transient gleams of him are reported to have been seen as he shot 
 through Isle of Wight, and afterwards went out to sea off Currituck 
 Sound, and it is believed by many that he is still thistling it around the 
 globe in a short cloak and gum shoes, with a small dusty package of 
 State papers in his hand. 
 
 f First name Waller. A fine, sensible, strong-faced Montgomery man 
 of the period very dear to me because he had given me during the war 
 some of the best apple brandy that ever entered the mouth of man. 
 
 D
 
 74 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 and your lavish generosity, you have never thought of 
 doing anything for the Court of Appeals." 
 
 "Judge," said I, "you are out of your reckoning. I 
 have thought about the Court of Appeals, thought a great 
 deal thought so much that I am inclined to say outright 
 that the court ought to have the whole capitol to itself." 
 
 " What !" exclaimed the judge, opening his eyes wide, 
 "what do you mean by that?" 
 
 "I'll tell you fifty years hence." [His opinion seems 
 to have been that the legislature should be abolished, and 
 the affairs of the State intrusted solely to the courts 
 all legislation for Virginia and the other States, especially 
 of the South, being transferred to Washington. Ed. 
 Whig.~\ "All I can now say is that, much as the legislature 
 has abused me for offering to build a new capitol, there 
 are too many good and sensible fellows in that body to 
 refuse to put at no distant day you, the Circuit Court, and 
 the two libraries in the enlarged, mansarded, fire-proof, 
 and glass-domed governor's house." 
 
 "Ah, my dear boy," said the judge, with a sigh, "that 
 is a long time off, I fear. Come, plank down twenty or 
 twenty-five thousand." 
 
 " No, judge ; I've literally not one dollar to spare, nor 
 has Binford. But you'll get your new court-room sooner 
 than you fancy." 
 
 [So it turned out. Before the fall of 1877, on the site 
 of the old executive mansion, there was a very admirable 
 edifice containing the Supreme and Circuit Courts, the 
 law and literary libraries, a room for the Virginia Histori- 
 cal Society, etc. , etc. , which was a comfort and convenience 
 to everybody in and out of the General Assembly, and 
 a most elegant addition to the architectural beauties of the 
 Capitol Square.] 
 
 Underneath Burwell Hall was another hall nearly as 
 large, which I devoted to the use of wandering lecturers 
 and- readers who had neither the means of paying rent nor 
 the reputation to insure paying audiences. Although 
 there were not many of these creatures left (a fortunate 
 thing for the human race), I regarded them as a greatly 
 afflicted and afflicting set, and peculiarly in need of my 
 care. Therefore I caused to be made a most ingenious
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 75 
 
 series of screens, which, being touched with a spring, 
 moved swiftly and silently up to and around the audience, 
 so that no matter how small it might be, even if it con- 
 sisted of only two people, the house should appear to be 
 crowded to suffocation. This proved to be a great com- 
 fort to me and my fellow-lecturers and readers. Letters 
 of thanks poured in upon me from all parts of the civilized 
 world, Richmond was never without a lecture or a read- 
 ing even in midsummer, and I felt that I had done a good 
 thing. 
 
 So excellent was the screen scheme that I caused similar 
 lecture-halls to be erected in all the cities, towns, and 
 county court-houses, and places where there seemed to be 
 any apprehension of a lecture or like infliction. These 
 halls were built mostly for the benefit of Johnny Reb* 
 and myself, particularly of the latter, who had gradually 
 played himself out to the finest dead-head point. By not 
 charging anything for admission, not having anything to 
 pay for rent, lights, or fuel, and by allowing ourselves 
 (out of a fund for that purpose) fifty cents a head for every 
 fellow who could be induced or bullied into coming in, 
 Johnny and I, and others managed to make lecturing pay 
 fairly well. [I remember to have cleared four dollars and 
 a half on one occasion in the village of Izzardville, but 
 that great success was due in part to the fact that the 
 lecture was for a charitable or religious purpose.] 
 
 f Real name Farrar Fernando R. Farrar county judge of the period ; 
 full of fun as Jim Cowardin, if not fuller; played well on fiddle; Amelia 
 man ; good, sharp, smart fellow, in short.
 
 76 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 TENTH INSTALLMENT. 
 
 Cremation of Piano Advertisers Wisdom of Roman Catholics The 
 Addie Deane House University of Virginia Judge William Robertson, 
 Dr. Maupin, etc. Editorial Academy Asylum for Worthless Young 
 Men Parke Park Richmond Boulevard Matthews & Matthews 
 Life's Appomattox Semi-Phalansterian Squares, etc. 
 
 [A scrap of paper which was overlooked when the last 
 installment was printed contained the following regulation 
 in regard to the management of Burwell Music Hall. It 
 is out of place here, but ought not to be omitted. Ed. 
 Whig.] 
 
 When concert troupes insisted upon having their own 
 pianos, and displaying the name of the piano-maker in 
 large letters, as (fitoickerittfl, jftdttWtg, gtoato, etc., no 
 opposition whatever was made or even meditated, but as 
 soon as the performer had hitched up his stool, adjusted 
 his coat-tail, twiddled his preparatory twiddle, and banged 
 his preliminary bang, a tall man in a black visor walked 
 quietly out from behind the scenes with a sledge-hammer, 
 brained the performer, smashed the piano, threw the 
 pieces out of the window, and burnt player and pieces up 
 together; and the performance went on without further 
 interruption. 
 
 [What these people will do when they get to a world 
 where there is no chance, and will not be through all 
 eternity, of advertising themselves and their wares, I do 
 not know. It distresses me, but I don't know, and am 
 afraid I never will know.] 
 
 It should be borne in mind that the appearance of Rich- 
 mond in the vicinity of the Capitol Square was pretty 
 much this: a dilapidated Capitol, bound together with 
 grapevines and hoop-iron, and propped by long, North 
 Carolina whitewashed pine-trees. But on the three squares 
 extending from Ninth to Twelfth, that is to say from Bob 
 ScammeH's oyster saloon to Judge Crump's, on what was 
 once called Governor Street, was first, on the Valentine 
 Square, the Virginia Historical Society building, a noble
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 77 
 
 structure ; next, on the City Hall Square, Burwell Music 
 Hall, a superb edifice (far finer, architecturally, than any 
 academy of music in the country), with its flexible screen 
 lecture-room beneath ; and third, on Ford's Hotel Square, 
 the massive and imposing, though not beautiful, circular 
 walls of Brice Church. 
 
 The environment of these noble buildings was not in 
 keeping more money, of course more money every- 
 where and all the time. And yet I was not so loath to 
 spend as you might suppose. Old Dodson,* when I was 
 sick in 1872 at the Monumental Hotel, had been kind to 
 me (indeed, the poor man had no better sense than to be 
 kind to everybody), and accordingly I determined to do 
 something for Dodson, and for somebody I liked even 
 better than Dodson ; I mean myself. Fact is, I tried to 
 please myself generally, almost alwaysly ; it gave me much 
 pleasure to please myself. 
 
 Not to digress a bit. 
 
 The Catholics are a wise people. Their priests I like 
 prodigiously, their tenets I don't. But for all that, they 
 are wise enough, I tell you; i.e., when they have got a 
 good thing they know it just about as well as you or any 
 other man knows it. What is more, they find out the 
 good thing, get hold of it and keep it, long before you, 
 with your weak, Protestant mind, have any idea of it. 
 
 Monumental Hotel Square was the place for a hotel 
 better^ much better, I thought, than the site of the Shields 
 House, admirable as that undoubtedly was. But the 
 Catholics wouldn't sell their church, their bishop's house, 
 or the Virginia House which was mean of them, in my 
 humble opinion. So I did the best I could. On all the 
 space I could purchase, from Grace to Broad, including 
 Blair' sf drug store on the latter street, I built the most 
 
 * Hotel-keeper of the period ; good-hearted soul ; fed better for the 
 money than any of his contemporaries, and had twins at an advanced 
 time of life. 
 
 f Presbyterian pill-maker of the period ; first name Hugh honest, 
 good man. Sensible folk loved to gather in his back shop) Major Smith, 
 Dr. Rawlings, Colonel Bell, etc., and a practical plumber (did you ever 
 see or hear of an unpractical plumber?) named O'Donnell. Had a 
 spectacled clerk of the name of Nat. Sheppard, and a handsome brother 
 named Jim Blair. 
 
 7*
 
 7 8 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 magnificent granite hotel, ten stories high, that is in this 
 world. I challenge all comparison. A minute description 
 of the house will be found in the twenty-fifth thousand of 
 Graeme's* Handbook of Richmond. Outside and inside 
 it is as near perfection as one could expect. Some of its 
 peculiar features will be given in my forthcoming work on 
 the American Hotel. Dodson has been keeping it for 
 the last ten years, and keeping it well, although people 
 said Dodson couldn't keep a house as big as that. It is a 
 superb ornament to the city, and makes St. Paul's Church 
 look rather small-potatoish. I doubt if there is on the 
 globe a pleasanter home for the traveler than Deane f 
 House. 
 
 "Doctor" 
 
 In my time the Southern people had a ridiculous habit 
 of putting a handle to everybody's name clerks were 
 colonels or majors, and corn-cutters professors. This 
 habit, silly as it was, was due, I think, to the innate hatred 
 of the Southern people for the word "Mister," which is 
 abominable, in spite of Mrs. Browning's effort to make it 
 otherwise. Of course a man of my wealth could not re- 
 main a plain Mister, and inasmuch as an academy in East 
 Tennessee had conferred upon me the title of LL.D. (in 
 return for which I endowed the institution with a postal 
 order for ten dollars), I was generally called Doctor, and 
 got to feel badly if everybody didn't call me Doctor. 
 
 "Doctor," said Judge Robertson, t "your money is 
 going fast. Have you forgotten the University of Vir- 
 ginia?" 
 
 "Why, Judge, what am I to do? The whole world 
 wants me to do something for everything. Here is John 
 Tinsley contending that I ought to do something to com- 
 memorate Mann Page, Mont. Miller, Lyttleton Tazewell, 
 and all the bright fellows that boarded at Mrs. Mosby's, 
 
 * A tall. Scottish sort of gray-haired Whig-QSux person of the period. 
 Best statistician in the city at the time. 
 
 f Named for Miss Addie Deane, the splendid daughter of that most 
 excellent man, Dr. Francis D. Deane. The hotel belonged to her. 
 
 J Judge William of that name. Had the finest and youngest black 
 eye of his day. In general I don't like black, but I literally feed on a 
 true blue eye in man or woman. Judge R. married the belle of Virginia 
 (she deserved to be) when Virginia was Virginia.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 79 
 
 corner qf Ninth and Franklin, before the war; my Acad- 
 emy for Editors, my Asylum for Worthless Young Men, 
 my Cathedral, my Richmond Park, my semi-Phalansterian 
 Square, etc., haven't even been begun just put yourself 
 in my place, Judge." 
 
 "Well, well," said the judge, "I give up; I let you 
 off." 
 
 " Strikes me, Judge, that the Miller fund ought to have 
 gone to the University." 
 
 " Too late, now; too late. That's long past ; we look 
 to the present and the future have to look to them." 
 
 "Yes; but did it never occur to you that if the people 
 of the South and of Virginia really did want to build up 
 the University they would be sure to find a way ; would 
 go earnestly to work about it, as Washington and Lee has 
 done, and that if they do not ardently desire to build it 
 up, it ought not to be built up?" 
 
 "Right enough; but have you forgotten Dr. Maupin ?" 
 
 " No," said I warmly, " and never will or can. Neither 
 have I forgotten Stephen Southall (how I enjoyed his edi- 
 torials in the Whig in Ridgway's time !), nor Prof. Gilder- 
 sleeve (of the Bema), nor Prof. Minor, nor any of them." 
 
 The allusion to Dr. Maupin overcame me. I handed 
 the judge a check for half a million, and away he went. 
 
 My Academy for Editors was established at Stanards- 
 ville, in the county of Greene. Its main object was to 
 teach editors to kneel down and pray for some sense, 
 some diminution of self-sufficiency, some ability to see 
 both sides of a subject ; in a word, some wisdom from on 
 high, before they wrote their editorials. Particulars will 
 be found in the paper marked Z. [No such paper is dis- 
 cerned in the bundle of MSS. Ed. Whig.~\ 
 
 My Asylum for Wuthless Yung Menn was built on a 
 beautiful plot of ground of five acres, about half-way be- 
 tween Richmond and Ashland. Its object was to rescue 
 society from the Wuthless Yung Mann, and no one was 
 sent there who was not an incurably Wuthless* Yung 
 
 * [Observe the value, in integers of contempt, of this spelling. Put " o" 
 into " worth" and it becomes " u" inevitably, but the terminal consonants 
 " rt" in " worth" give the word something of the venomous strength of
 
 go WHAT I DID WITH. 
 
 Mann a person much more deserving of protection and 
 tender isolation from the vain world than the worthless- 
 old man. (Particulars will be found in the paper marked 
 ZZ.) [Greatly to our regret, this paper is also missing. 
 Ed. Whig.-} 
 
 A suggestion thrown out in the Dispatch some time in 
 1873 materially modified my views about a park for Rich- 
 mond. My first idea was to buy ten thousand acres of 
 land on both sides of the river, above the city, and to 
 have a park surpassing Laura Park in Lynchburg. This 
 was done in part only, as will be told. 
 
 As a rule, parks are built on this or that side of a city, 
 accessible enough to some, but out of the reach of the 
 bulk of the population, except at a cost either of time or 
 money, or both, which few, if any, of the poorer classes 
 can afford. Why not have a park accessible to every- 
 body? This was that great work which my agents, Wil- 
 liams & Apperson (Grubbs having retired on a huge for- 
 tune), accomplished for me within six months, the most 
 signal real-estate triumph ever achieved. 
 
 They bought for me a strip of ground varying from an 
 eighth to a quarter, and in some places half a mile in 
 width, and extending entirely around the city, including 
 Manchester, which had been consolidated with Richmond. 
 At the upper end of the city, above the reservoir, it 
 swelled out into a park proper, presenting in bird's-eye 
 view the appearance of an irregular ring with a large set 
 on the southwestern side. A good broad street ran 
 through the centre of the ring, and at suitable intervals, 
 not too close together, a few public and private houses, 
 with gardens attached, were allowed to be built. From 
 the Capitol to the Boulevard, as it was called, the distance 
 varied from a mile to a mile and a half, or two miles the 
 city extending a goodly distance beyond the Boulevard. 
 This arrangement secured to the children of all classes 
 easy access at any time to fresh air, grass, flowers, trees, 
 fountains, birds, squirrels, deer (these last protected from 
 
 the serpent ; whereas the " th" in " wuth" impart a lisping littleness to it. 
 There is more sense in bad spelling and pronouncing than gerund-guiders 
 dream of. Ed.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. S T 
 
 dogs by reason of the growing common sense of the peo- 
 ple, who ordered all dogs not properly trained, to be shot 
 by policemen), and a thousand other pleasures (aquaria 
 here and there and the like) and health-insurements for 
 the little people, ay, and for the big ones, too. 
 
 The loss of so much good building-ground was a terrific 
 blow to land-owners. When they saw the city progress- 
 ing square after square beyond the Boulevard, and re- 
 membered the comparatively trifling price they had re- 
 ceived for their property, they cursed Apperson, and 
 Williams, and myself till we would have been black in 
 the face if we had only heard them. Suit after suit was 
 instituted to set aside, recover, what not. No use. My 
 agents were not slouches by a long ways. They knew 
 their business. The infernal gods alone know the amount 
 of litigation that ensued, and has been kept up to this day. 
 My attorneys, Matthews & Matthews,* who have been 
 worked nearly to death, tell me they see no end to the 
 trouble. As it doesn't trouble me, and gives them some 
 fifty thousand dollars each a year, I don't care how long 
 the suits continue. 
 
 The park proper is called Parkef Park. It contains 
 only three thousand acres, but is as highly and beautifully 
 ornamented as it is possible for landscape gardening to 
 go. With the islet-studded river, crossed by numbers of 
 elegant bridges, running through its midst, its scenic 
 surprises at almost every turn, its statues, \ its bowers, 
 
 * The elder Matthews, a worthy good man, married the only daughter 
 of an honest, pious old New School Presbyterian in Lynchburg. What 
 was the old gentleman's name? Surely my memory is not failing me? 
 Anyhow, that old gentleman was as kind to me as if he had been my own 
 father educated me to be a missionary, which I am. For his daughter, 
 an estimable woman with a nose, I had much respect. 
 
 f So called in honor of Miss Parke Chamberlayne, a friend of mine. 
 She married, greatly to my regret, a little black Bagby of the period, 
 after which I ceased to take much interest in her. But, as you will find 
 out when you wed, women never marry the man they ought to have 
 married. I retained the name, though, because she was the daughter of 
 that true gentleman and first-rate physician, Dr. Lewis W. Chamber- 
 layne. 
 
 J Prominent among them were two bronze groups representing Poca- 
 hontas, not on the club occasion, but on some other, and Captain John 
 Smith quelling insurrection; designs by W. P. Palmer, modeled by 
 D*
 
 82 WHAT I DTD WITH 
 
 kiosks, conservatories, etc., etc., many think it equal to 
 Chatsworth, and very much superior to Laura Park, in' 
 Lynchburg. I cannot think so. The little mountains 
 embraced in the latter park, and the admirable advantage 
 taken of them by Jones, who made every inch tell in art 
 effects, and, above all, the magnificent views obtainable 
 from the mountain roadways and towers, make it, in my 
 candid estimation, superior to any park in this country 
 or in Europe. Both are good enough and beautiful 
 enough, in all conscience. Their relative merits afford 
 a subject of continued amicable quarrels between the 
 Lynchburg and Richmond papers. 
 
 Life, as it is known to most of us, is like the upper 
 part of the Appomattox River, a narrow stream, muddy 
 more than half the time, full of snags, hammocks, and 
 sand-bars, with only here and there a good fishing-hole. 
 When the boys come back from the academic and col- 
 legiate ridges, provided, as they and their fond, foolish 
 parents (who, being in business, ought to have more 
 sense) fancy, with the best tackle in the world, they find 
 Tom, Dick, and Harry, who have been raised to the 
 work on the spot, and never quitted it, already squatted 
 down by the holes, with the plainest poles, and the 
 meanest-looking cymlins, and the merest fish, and with 
 no more idea of quitting "them holes" in favor of the 
 college boys till death do them dislodge, than they have 
 of going to heaven to cook the fish or spend the money 
 they acquire in this earthly vale. [By the way, I wish I 
 had told Judge Robertson that one good primary school, 
 based upon a proper knowledge of human nature and the 
 human mind, and in which the knowledge that is of most 
 immediate use to most people (there was not such a 
 school, nay, not the approach to it, in Virginia in my 
 time) should alone be taught, would, in my judgment, 
 outweigh all the universities on earth. How many 
 parents know and feel restive under this, and yet sit 
 quiet ! Poor parents ! But, after all, the practical 
 
 Valentine, and executed in Germany, a tardy recognition, so far as Smith 
 is concerned, on the part of Virginia of the greatest of all Virginians, 
 Washington, Lee, and Jackson, not excepted.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 83 
 
 school of the shop, the factory, the store, the printing- 
 office, etc., is and must long remain the best school. 
 How to make money honorably and to save it, in other 
 words, how to support yourself and family, that is the 
 best, the indispensable education (for how can you and 
 family so much as live if you do not acquire a knowledge 
 of self-maintenance?), to which even reading and writing 
 are secondary.] 
 
 A consequence of this false system of education is that 
 as civilization advances there is a continuous increase of 
 educated men and women with refined tastes who do not 
 know how to get along, or, if they do, find all the fishing- 
 holes in life's Appomattox full, Rob and Tom having 
 learned how to make money while Edward and Fitzhugh 
 were grubbing up Greek roots. This being the case, the 
 educated men and women sink into clerkships and second- 
 ary places, with salaries of from five hundred to two 
 thousand dollars there being a limit and a decennially 
 lessening limit to the relative numbers of doctors, lawyers, 
 and preachers. No provision is made for these clerks 
 and minus quantities in the sum of social life. They ought 
 to be content to live as cheaply as mechanics who earn 
 double their salary, but they are not. They cannot be ; 
 the education which ought never to have been given to 
 nine-tenths of them has unfitted them for cheap living. 
 Little builders, grog-shop and corner-grocery sharks, 
 whose greed for money is ravenous and cruel as the 
 grave, build for the multitude who are content to live 
 anyhow, and the big builders build for the rich mer- 
 chants, eminent doctors, great lawyers, and fashionable 
 preachers. The educated, cultivated incapable no human 
 being considers. 
 
 I, being better than a human being, and having no de- 
 sire to "git my rent," did consider him, and built in the 
 upper part of the city a dozen or two squares of houses 
 for him and his kind. They were built with every con- 
 ceivable labor-saving convenience, required little fuel to 
 heat them, were inexpensively lighted, and needed scarcely 
 any furniture, wardrobes, bureaus, presses, etc., being 
 in the very structure of the houses themselves. (I was 
 sick unto death of seeing my wife's thirty-feet dray run-
 
 84 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 ning like mad from end to end of the city.) The rent 
 for each house covered the taxes (they were high taxes 
 are always high) and repaired the annual wear and tear 
 that was all. Mr. R. D. Ward* attended faithfully to 
 this business for me. The houses were not crammed 
 down upon the ground as close as they could set, but 
 were separated by a space of twelve to fifteen feet, and 
 in the middle of each side of each square was a house 
 built expressly for the accommodation of young men and 
 bachelors, my object being to give them better quarters 
 than they got in the down-town dens, and to have them 
 so close to the neighboring families as to offer them every 
 incentive to visit tne ladies, brighten up the evening (so 
 often so dull for the want of young company), fall in love 
 with the girls, marry early, help the minus-quantity 
 fathers, and so help society onward. I also encouraged 
 many polished gentlemen to remain bachelors, but at the 
 same time to be true to their social duties, and to make 
 themselves (what they can do, and the worn -down hus- 
 bands, too often cannot) the very life and charm of the 
 households that are happy enough to call them friends. 
 
 I doubt if I ever did a better or a wiser thing than the 
 building of these same squares. They were not all 
 lumped together in a single district of the city, but were 
 interspersed among other squares, and gave to the to\vn 
 a tone which otherwise it could never have had. The 
 houses were eagerly rented by clerks, accountants, editors, 
 and insurance agents, and the rooms in the bachelors' 
 homes were just as eagerly sought by unmarried men. 
 To be sure there were certain young men who preferred 
 to remain down-town, as near as possible to their beloved 
 bar-rooms and bagnios, but this could not be helped. 
 No one, not even their own mothers, could wish such 
 beasts turned loose in a decent man's family. A snug 
 
 * Noble, red-haired tipstaff of the time, who, for ninety years or more, 
 carried a vestal fire upon his worthy head. Richmond gas being bad, 
 this invaluable man did yeoman service by lighting people home from 
 balls, parties, and the like. To avert a glare he wore a ground-glass hat 
 that came well down over his brows and around the back of his neck, 
 and if the eyes of his customers still pained them he reversed the ordi- 
 nary process, and diminished the illumination by trimming the wick 
 that is, by cutting his hair.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 85 
 
 wing-room in each of the bachelor's homesvwas set apart 
 for the matron, a sort of concierge who kept the house in 
 order and attended to the sewing of the young men, or 
 matron ized the young ladies of the vicinity whenever the 
 former gave a party, dancing or other, to the latter. 
 From time to time some one or other of these old widows 
 or maids destroyed the peace of mind of some of their 
 old bachelor tenants, an infliction which, however de- 
 served, would soon have driven the bachelors away but 
 for the timely interference of the married ladies of the 
 neighborhood. After all, things regulated themselves 
 pretty well, without the aid of police. A great point 
 was gained in giving numerous old ladies the occupation 
 they most delight in keeping house, their own house, as 
 it were, and in ministering exclusively to male tenants ; 
 and another great point was the putting of bachelors old 
 and young in close proximity to the ladies. You may 
 love all the ladies in the world with the maddest devo- 
 tion, but if they live so far away from you that you can 
 never lay eyes on them or have their pretty palms in 
 yours, the chances are that you will marry very few of 
 them at one time. Proximity is the great thing; -it is 
 next to certainty in matters of the matrimonial kind. I 
 forgot to say that little by little the bachelors learned 
 that nothing sweetened and enlivened their parties half 
 so much as a fine sprinkling of married ladies. Occa- 
 sionally the bachelors took breakfast and tea at home, but 
 they were so often invited out to these meals that the 
 matrons seldom had the opportunity of turning an addi- 
 tional honest penny by feeding them, which made them 
 indignant quite frequently. Women past the marrying 
 point, and without daughters or female pets of their own, 
 soon take a proprietary interest in their masculine tenants, 
 and object to their marrying anybody. It is hard, but I 
 have found that there is no way of making everybody 
 happy all the time, not even old bachelors, old widows, 
 or old maids.* 
 
 * No mention is made of widowers in connection with the bachelors' 
 homes, because they flit into marriage so quickly that you can't count 
 them. They are evanescenses, ghosts of a transitory and incomputable 
 condition.
 
 86 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 Auxiliary to the family squares were the semi-phalan- 
 sterian squares, based upon Chas. Fourier's excellent but 
 excessively-carried-out idea, and designed to rescue decent 
 people from the fangs of ruthless cooks, maids, and other 
 domestic servants, black or white, who had long ruled the 
 roast in a savagely tyrannical manner. They were built 
 precisely like the family square, the houses twelve to thir- 
 teen feet apart, with a bachelor's home in the middle of 
 each side of the square, only the lots were not so deep, 
 leaving a large quadrangle in the centre of the square, on 
 which was erected a large building containing all the 
 appliances for cooking, washing, ironing, etc., for all the 
 families residing in that square ; also servants' rooms in 
 abundance. Except in case of sickness, or when there 
 were very young children, servants were wholly dispensed 
 with ; kitchens and laundries were unknown ; marketing 
 was unknown, groceries even were supplied by the man 
 in charge of the central hall, who, getting things by 
 wholesale, and having but one fire to keep up, fed his 
 customers more cheaply than they could have fed them- 
 selves, hired servants and furnished them just when they 
 were needed and no longer, and in fine carried out the 
 idea of the Fourierite phalanstery in such a way that the 
 families who patronized him were enabled to live hotel- 
 fashion in their private houses an admirable good thing, 
 I promise you. I built twelve dozen of these squares in 
 various parts of Richmond, and now the Semi-Phalanstery 
 is the rule rather than the exception in all the great cities 
 of Christendom, and in many small ones also.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. gy 
 
 ELEVENTH INSTALLMENT. 
 
 Black Crook Club Monument Dr. Leigh Burton Nat. Sturdivant 
 Terrace Hermann Garden Louis Euker Cornelia Cathedral 
 Worship Purely Musical Leo Wheat Major Burr Noland Diseased 
 Germans Midnight New Year Services Our Saviour Mary David- 
 sonGeneral Mahone Elder, Fisher, and Sheppard G. Watson 
 James, etc. 
 
 IN order to quiet the public mind and to relieve the 
 city from a task too onerous for its weak exchequer, I 
 swept away all the houses from Gamble's Hill and con- 
 verted it into one of the prettiest little terraced parks 
 imaginable. Near the centre of the grounds, a little to 
 the west of the former site of Pratt' s Castle, and on the 
 highest point of the hill, arose an immense monument to 
 the Black Crook Club : Jonah White, in the costume of a 
 Roman Senator, on top, and beneath and around him all 
 the members of the club, life-size and accurate likenesses 
 every one, grouped together, hand in hand, with their 
 mouths wide open and singing at the full pitch of their 
 voices, 
 
 " We will do thee no harm, 
 We will do thee no harm ; 
 Says the rag man 
 To the bag man, 
 We will do thee no harm." 
 
 At a little distance from the main group (the figures 
 were carefully cast of hematite iron at Tanner's foundry) 
 stood my friend Dr. W. Leigh Burton,* attired as Or- 
 pheus, with a fiddle in one hand and a forceps in the 
 other, leading the chorus. The little park, known as Nat. 
 Sturdivant Terrace, was a great place of resort for strangers 
 and for nurses with babies in baby-carriages. Strangers 
 always burst into roars of laughter, and complained that 
 looking at the monument made them thirsty. 
 
 * Skillful dentist of the day and date. Could pull any named tooth in 
 a circular saw while in full buzz. Handy man on elephants and sharks.
 
 88 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 This reminds me of a fact which I had entirely over- 
 looked, viz., the completion of the Hermann Garden by 
 Louis Euker* and myse'f simultaneously with the com- 
 pletion of the Shields House. The square between Seventh 
 and Eighth on Broad was equally divided between the 
 hotel and the garden. The latter was beautifully laid out, 
 the fine holly-tree on Dr. Trent's lot being religiously 
 preserved, other trees, shrubs, vines, etc., being added, 
 together with two fountains as graceful in design as any I 
 ever saw; indeed, the whole place was made as attractive 
 as possible. My object in establishing the garden was to 
 prepare the way for that excellent European custom of 
 associating the sexes in all enjoyments whatsoever, even 
 in conviviality. Why male human animals cannot get 
 ^long without drinking I simply do not know, but the 
 majority of them either cannot or will not ; at all events 
 they do not, and the only method yet discovered of ton- 
 ing them down, of stopping them from 'swill ing, boozing, 
 and guzzling to excess is to associate the female animal 
 with them, so that even in their cups her benign influ- 
 ence is exerted over them. "But this lowers the female 
 animal." I don't know about that. In Holland, Germany, 
 France, and Italy the plan seems to have worked well, 
 made races eminently temperate and healthy as compared 
 with the English and American, and substituted mild for 
 strong drinks the entering wedge to no drinks at all, if 
 that time is ever to come. I am told that the plan suc- 
 ceeded so well at Hermann Garden that in the course of 
 a few years cold tea in summer and hot coffee in the 
 winter became the favorite drinks. "But surely the ladies 
 did not go there in winter?" Yes, they did. By a sim- 
 ple arrangement of iron columns, ribs, etc., which could 
 be quickly put up and taken down, Louis converted his 
 garden about the first of December into a crystal palace, 
 more attractive in some respects than it had been during 
 the summer. 
 
 * Gentlemanly beer man of the period. Can't say that he was a better 
 fellow than Otto Morgenstern or old man Manly, but the land was con- 
 venient to his establishment, and that was why I helped him and not the 
 others.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 89 
 
 No sooner had I announced my intention of building 
 my Cathedral on the southeast corner of Fifth and Main 
 Streets, than there was a general outcry, 
 
 "Why, man, you might as well build the house down 
 at Rocketts; if you want a really appropriate site for it, 
 Union Hill is the place; that's where the city ought to 
 have been built originally, anyway, and would have been 
 built but for the folly of some old curmudgeon or other, 
 whose name has gone into merited oblivion. Don't you 
 see that the city has extended already a mile beyond Mon- 
 roe Park? There's no telling where it will go in that 
 direction. Come, reconsider the matter." 
 
 "Too late, my friends; the purchase money has been 
 paid, the deed signed and delivered. Besides, I know 
 what I'm about." 
 
 There is no more perfect specimen of Gothic architect- 
 ure on earth than Cornelia* Cathedral. Interior and ex- 
 terior alike are as near perfection as it is in the power of 
 human hands to make a house for the worship of God. 
 It is large enough, but not too large; it is dim enough, 
 without being too dim; the elevation of nave and transept 
 lifts the soul, but does not crush it into insignificance, as 
 in St. Peter's, and there is about the inner atmosphere a 
 hush and a charm peculiar to this house. At least I fancy 
 so. There is no pulpit, nor will there ever be one. No 
 voice of preacher or of public prayer will ever be heard 
 there. The service is wholly musical an organ of great 
 power and sweetness, and a choir trained thoroughly to 
 render devotional music in a manner truly and unaffect- 
 edly devotional. As a rule, the organ is the only instru- 
 ment used, but at fit times and seasons every instrument 
 that can increase and intensify religious emotion is intro- 
 duced. The choir of men, women and boys, is paid by 
 the year, and sufficiently well paid to devote their whole 
 time to the service of the Cathedral. There are three 
 services daily, an hour each in length, at morning, noon, 
 and evening, the matins, nones, and vespers of the 
 
 * Frances Cornelia Chaplin the first, sweetest, dearest friend I had on 
 earth. 
 
 8*
 
 9 o 
 
 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 Catholics* a little altered. In the summer the matin ser- 
 vice occurs while it is yet cool, but in winter not until ten 
 o'clock, after people have had their breakfasts. Worship, 
 on an empty stomach does not suit civilization and dys- 
 pepsia. Nones in winter are at three P.M., as the bulk of 
 the better classes (six o'clock dinners are still the excep- 
 tion in Richmond) are on their way to dine, and vespers 
 at eight or half-past eight, after tea has been comfortably 
 taken. 
 
 The backs of the pews are very high no temptation to 
 peep at bonnets and pretty faces being possible and most 
 of them are provided with keys,' so that the worshiper 
 may lock himself in. All the pews for one person, of 
 which there are a great number, are under lock and key. 
 The organ-loft at the rear of the church, where the pulpit 
 usually is, may be looked into, but a screen of bronze 
 open-work hides organistf and choir from the public 
 gaze. Absolute silence is demanded of every one who 
 enters, and is rigidly enforced. Locked in his pew, the 
 worshiper listens and adores. His soul goes to heaven 
 on the wings of music. Doctrine, dogma, creed of any 
 kind, vain babbling of always fallible interpretations of the 
 Uninterpretable, of Him whose ways are past finding out, 
 there is none to disturb him. "My son, give me thine 
 heart." And his heart cries out, and up, and on to his 
 Father, "I know not what to believe I do not believe 
 I love. Slay me if Thou wilt for my want of faith, but 
 this love, this joy beyond all words, all thoughts, shall 
 lift me into life again. I adore so much I cannot fear!" 
 And if with streaming eyes and bent knees he wishes to 
 give way to his emotion, and to stretch appealing hands 
 to Him that heareth prayer, he is alone in his locked 
 pew, let him do what he will. 
 
 * The Roman Catholics are very wise. I do not wonder that in Europe 
 they reconquered so much that Protestantism once owned, and that, under 
 the guise of Ritualism, they are gaining ground so rapidly in England and 
 America. Their rites and services are based not merely upon human but 
 upon universal nature. Birds have not only their matins and vespers, 
 but their mid-da? sen-ice as well. At noon, or a little thereafter, the deep 
 stillness of the forest is broken by a choral service, brief but intensely 
 sweet and mournful. 
 
 f Mr. Leo P. Wheat, a'man of genius and a master of his instrument.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 91 
 
 Tell me nothing about the debilitations of music. I 
 know its power and I know its perversions. But, my 
 good friend, subtract from religious exercises the element 
 of music, and what have you left? Only the intellect, 
 argument, reason for- the faith, etc. Ah! that is what 
 those wretched scientists demand, and little else but that. 
 
 One stern exaction was enforced upon the organist and 
 every member of the choir, viz., that under no circum- 
 stances whatever should there be the least approach to 
 trapeze-work, ground and lofty tumbling upon the key- 
 boards, wild hullaballooing and cattle-stampeding along 
 the octaves, alternations of peacock-screamings and sick- 
 kitten sorrowings, pounding the chords in the mortar of 
 self-conceit and fancying it inspiration in a word, no 
 showing off, no exhibition of purely personal skill in in- 
 strumentation or vocalization. Immediate and hopeless 
 loss of situation followed every violation of this rule. To 
 present the compositions really worthy to be called sacred 
 of the best German* masters, and of the earlier and in 
 some respects still better Italian school (Palestrina and 
 Allegri, for example), when profound faith and profound 
 feeling went hand in hand, and to present them in the 
 spirit as nearly as possible in which they were first de- 
 livered by the inspired composers, that was the duty of 
 the choir, and that was their whole duty. Nor were the 
 hymns and psalms to which the mass of hea'rers had been 
 accustomed from childhood by any means neglected. A 
 standing reward of five thousand dollars for a first-rate 
 devotional composition failed, after ten years' trial, to 
 produce anything worthy of the name, the committee 
 withholding the reward all that time, after which it was 
 withdrawn. I suppose the scientific spirit had killed the 
 sacred spirit [Some contradiction here of views before 
 given. But between diction and contradiction somewhere 
 lies the truth most likely], or else that mankind in gen- 
 eral, out-evolving the musicians, got so far ahead that the 
 
 * I like these Germans. They are a fearfully diseased people, hut 
 still I like them. Their disease is an incurable honesty. Now, there is 
 Mr. Lisfeldt. I regard Mr. Lisfeldt as the best man in the world, except 
 Maj. Burr P. Noland.
 
 92 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 latter could never catch up, so that even the " music of 
 the future" failed to satisfy the cravings of the people of 
 the present, who thereupon fell back perforce upon the 
 good old music of the past. 
 
 - At first there was a large attendance of the curious; 
 afterwards the excellence of the music drew crowds of 
 women and children, and music-lovers of the male sex; 
 but by degrees the men of business who contemned Cor- 
 nelia Cathedral and the mode of its worship, dropped in 
 on their way to or from their offices and shops to rest 
 awhile, and "just to look, you know." It was so cool 
 within the thick stone walls in summer and so comfortable 
 in winter. Then the high vaulted roof yes, the whole 
 interior was so beautiful, and the solemn stillness so re- 
 freshing after the bustle and worry of work, after the 
 dirty, soul-dirtying work of making money. And ere 
 long these men of business contrived to get to the Cathe- 
 dral in time to hear a little music. Bashful enough in the 
 beginning, ashamed indeed to be caught, they slipped in 
 slyly; but a year had not passed before they went in 
 boldly, in couples often, and in groups. They found it 
 to be a good thing to go down-town with some motet, 
 fugue, or anthem warming their hearts, or to return home 
 after a voiceless prayer in the Cathedral. 
 
 My point was gained. My object in building so low 
 down in the city and so close to its business haunts was 
 fully explained, and, in the eyes of all but the bigots, jus- 
 tified. 
 
 The Cathedral was never closed day or night the whole 
 year round. It was not a refuge, though, for vagrants 
 and tramps, or for fashionable loungers of either sex. 
 The tramps were kindly turned away to some place where 
 needed assistance could be had ; the fops and their giggling 
 females were simply not admitted at all. The organist 
 and his best pupils were permitted to play whenever the 
 spirit moved them a privilege seldom abused, but much 
 coveted by the more gifted and spiritual scholars, who 
 desired to breathe out their deepest and most devout 
 thoughts; and so it often happened that business and 
 professional men and strangers, dropping in at odd hours, 
 heard the best music. Far into the night, sometimes, the
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 93 
 
 belated worker or the reveler, passing the Cathedral and 
 feeling the pavement trembling under his feet, would go 
 in and have his heart lifted unto God by the mighty organ, 
 touched by the hand of one who could not find sleep until 
 his inspired thought had found expression. The vergers 
 and watchmen told me that the men who came in most 
 frequently late at night and who appeared to be most 
 moved to penitence, were journalists and artists recover- 
 ing from some bout at drinking. The overwhelming ef- 
 fect of the music upon their sin-stricken souls, when they 
 thought no one observed them, was said to be affecting in 
 the extreme. That a thorough reformation from their 
 unfortunate habits was ever accomplished may be doubted, 
 because the outward intoxication by which they occa- 
 sionally disgrace themselves is but the reflex of that in- 
 ward intoxication, more or less habitual Avith men of their 
 temperament, which has in it something almost divine. 
 I have been told, moreover, that drinking men never get 
 really penitent until they get sick of liquor, that what ap- 
 pears to be remorse is only nausea, and that penitence 
 darts away as soon as the tone 'of the stomach and nerves 
 is restored. I don't think this is altogether true; on the 
 contrary, I think somewhat of the penitence lingers and 
 abides, is remembered in the soberest intervals, provokes a 
 shudder of horror at past sin, and many a heartfelt prayer 
 against a relapse. For all that, I can readily believe that 
 a man with an absolutely gin-proof stomach might keep 
 on a continuous spree during the whole of his lifetime. 
 
 The midnight services on the days set apart for the cele- 
 bration of the birth of our Saviour* and the incoming of 
 
 * Our Saviour? Yes, a thousand times yes. The most besotted skeptic 
 and scientist who counts his unbelief as righteousness (which it might be, 
 but not too often is) must admit that millions have been saved in this life 
 by faith in the Nazarene and if in this life, in the next as well, we may 
 be sure. Nevertheless, let me say boldly that I have a good deal of hope 
 for honest unbelievers. Hell, I take it, is a sparsely-settled country 
 much like that between Richmond and Tappahannock, or between 
 Barksdale depot and Milton, N. C., in 1874. Here and there will be 
 found a worldly-minded preacher sitting apart on a tussock of broom- 
 straw, feeling a little chilly and lonesome, thinking himself an ill-used 
 person, and wondering where the devil Darwin is. But the bulk of the 
 inhabitants is made up of ingrained hypocrites, sellers of mean liquor, 
 and the beaters of wives and other dumb beasts.
 
 94 
 
 WHAT I DID IVITH 
 
 the New Year were as sublime as the art at my command 
 enabled me to make them. If I should say that the crush 
 on these occasions equaled that at St. Peter's when the 
 Miserere is sung during Holy Week, I would be accused 
 of exaggeration; therefore I will simply say that it' was 
 very great, and that many persons came from distant 
 States, and some from over the sea, to enjoy the music. 
 I do wish that I knew thorough bass from counterpoint, 
 etc., sufficiently well to enable me to describe the soul- 
 moving harmonies of the great composers as rendered by 
 the Cornelia Cathedral choir. [I had laid away a news- 
 paper scrap, in which the description is finely and techni- 
 cally done by a critic of the highest order, a Jewish gen- 
 tleman of Hamburg as I was told ; but like many other 
 things it is laid away so carefully that it might as well 
 have been laid in the grave. If any one finds it after I 
 am gone he will do me a great favor by inserting it just 
 here. If not found the reader must trust to his imagina- 
 tion, or better still go to the Cathedral and hear for him- 
 self.] 
 
 In '98 or thereabouts, my granddaughter, Mary David- 
 son, was born, in the county of Rockbridge, and in her 
 eighteenth year appeared as the leading soprano singer in 
 our choir. She was as beautitul a woman as ever lived, 
 fair, blue-eyed and golden-haired, as pure as light itself, 
 and sweet as charity. A Sabbath peace and sanctity 
 ("the Sabbaths of eternity, one Sabbath deep and wide") 
 seemed to have passed into her being at birth, and her 
 whole life was in accord with that holiness. No nun was 
 ever more devoutly or wholly religious. Her piety an.d her 
 existence were one. God was with her, in her, and about 
 her ever; she was in this world and above it in some 
 supernatural way, of which every one who saw her became 
 instantly conscious. Her voice was literally the voice of 
 a seraph clear and sweet, but infinitely more than that 
 so thrilling and penetrating that all who heard it were at 
 once awed as by a sound coming immediately from the 
 heavens. She sang sacred music as it ought to be sung. 
 She gave all its meaning, all its power, all its pathos, 
 without that constant tremor (tremolo} which from Tam- 
 berlik's day to the present has been so overdone as to dis-
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. g5 
 
 figure and impair the effect of church-music everywhere. 
 Some of her sustained notes, pure and unbroken as a sun- 
 ray, went to the heart and soul with a force that tran- 
 scends language.. One felt as if touched by the wing of 
 the angel of death as if the other world was to be opened 
 on the instant, and the whole nature and being shuddered 
 and gasped to take in the larger life. that was coming. 
 But why attempt to tell about it ? They who listened re- 
 member and know all about it; those who did not can 
 never know. 
 
 By unanimous request the choir screen was taken down, 
 so that all might see this beautiful woman while she was 
 singing the holiest music. She did not object. A true 
 woman, she loved to be loved and admired, but no man 
 dared ever to address her. Her life was far beyond and 
 above that. For two years she sang twice a day and 
 sometimes oftener at the Cathedral; the intervals between 
 the choir services were spent in good works. She it was 
 who so aided me in the "sky-surprises" heretofore alluded 
 to. She died without sickness and without pain, and the 
 mightiest concourse that ever went to Hollywood accom- 
 panied her to her grave. Such passionate grief I never 
 saw exhibited by a whole people as was exhibited then. 
 Her tomb, by far the most beautiful in Hollywood, attests 
 the love the people bore her. For myself, I was glad that 
 she died. My own end was near, my work was drawing 
 to a close, and I did not wish to be long parted from her. 
 
 Not the least of Mahone's* many titles to distinction 
 was the fact that in my time he was almost the only man in 
 Virginia, so far as my large acquaintance went, who really 
 cared to patronize (no, not patronize, but to encourage) 
 Virginia artists. Virginia was then passing through that 
 phase of folly, long before sneered out of Great Britain 
 and the North, which is marked by the purchase of copies 
 of so-called " old masters," wretched in conception and 
 
 * His first name was William. I am informed that he took some part 
 in some war or other at some time or other, but what war, and at what 
 time, I have been unable to ascertain. It is said that long years ago 
 there were railroad wars, but what railroad wars are, no newspaper- 
 reporter, lawyer, or member of the legislature, can now tell, although 
 I have offered money for the information.
 
 96 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 execution, and the utter neglect of works of merit done 
 at home by native artists. I employed Elder, Fisher, and 
 Sheppard, at twenty thousand dollars per aijnum each 
 (and would have employed Myers at the same, had he 
 not gone to a better land), to work exclusively for me. 
 The scenes, the life, public and private, of the blacks 
 and whites of Virginia as it was in the days of slavery, 
 at least all that was left of that rapidly-disappearing life, 
 I had put upon canvas. Woodward painted for me a 
 dozen or so of charming landscapes, but was so sought 
 after by Northern publishers^ that I could seldom get 
 him to work for me. In addition to the genre pictures, 
 executed for me by the artists named above, there were a 
 number of historical paintings by the same, which I pre- 
 sented to the Virginia Historical Society. Nearly every 
 one of these pictures commanded the approval of Mr. G. 
 Watson James,* but other critics, including myself, were 
 not so lenient. I soon found that fixed work, done to 
 order, however highly paid for, trammeled the free spirit 
 of art, and palsied the genius of my friends. What comes 
 unprompted into their own heads and hearts, what is 
 given them from the mysterious original font of power, 
 that is what artists want, and at which they can work 
 best. So when my friends got tired, and could paint no 
 more, I let them off, pensioned them on ten thousand 
 dollars a year, and allowed them to paint exactly what 
 they pleased. They did better then. And meeting them 
 one day in Jack's studio, I said to them, 
 
 * Art-critic of the period, the only man connected with the Richmond 
 press who could be induced to take any real interest in the works of our 
 Virginia artists. This bold and, indeed, desperate young man, fell at 
 the head of his command as Captain of Hussars in the ill-starred attack 
 upon the imperial city. I opposed the assault at the time as a piece of 
 the most consummate folly ; but it was fitting that the rebellion should 
 have ended just when and where it did.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 TWELFTH INSTALLMENT. 
 
 Tour with Artist-Friends Suggestive Summering Badly Apple-Bran- 
 died Judge Crump John R.Thompson's Tomb Yankees "The 
 Last of Pea Time" Squirted out of Town Peter Mayo and Alex- 
 ander Cameron Valentine's Colossal Statue Dr. W. Hand Browne 
 Adams's " Folly," Eleven Hundred Feet High Gala Day all around 
 the Globe Excitement in Lynchburg Jack Slaughter and Robin 
 Terry Trash Green Death of Wife Badly Kicked Home near 
 Pamlin's Depot. 
 
 " BOYS, now that we are all pretty well off, suppose 
 we teach these rich people that there are other ways of 
 summering than by going to mountain-resorts, seasides, 
 Saratogas, Europes and things." 
 
 " Good !" said they ; " what shall we do?" ' 
 
 We took our wives and children (Fisher's family was 
 immense, and Elder's little smaller), plenty of large, 
 clean, well-made tents, cooks, ostlers, washerwomen, 
 nurses, and other servants, with dead loads of cooking 
 utensils, fowling-pieces, fishing-rods, etc., and no end of 
 all sorts of the best provisions and the finest wines, and 
 leisurely made our way up through the Southside coun- 
 ties, encamping at night, or on rainy days, in the most 
 charming nooks, dells, glades, and forest places we could 
 find, and we found them in abundance, and more beau- 
 tiful than we dreamed could be found. The children 
 were wild with joy at this free life; the boys and girls 
 who were nearly grown found a fascination in this 
 nomadic existence that quite enraptured them, and the 
 elders upon my soul, I believe they enjoyed it even 
 more than the young people ! 
 
 We intended originally to "do" the mountains of 
 Southwest Virginia, but concluded to go for a while into 
 Patrick and Henry, a field little known to artists and 
 tourists, and which we enjoyed very much. Then turn- 
 ing, we traveled by easy stages through Pittsylvania, 
 Halifax, Mecklenburg, Lunenburg, Brunswick, Greenes- 
 ville, Southampton, etc., keeping as far from railroads 
 E 9
 
 gS WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 as possible, and saw the last, the very last, of Old Vir- 
 ginia life. The pictures of negroes, old and young ; of 
 dilapidated farms and farm-houses of every kind ; the 
 interiors of homesteads, humble and proud (once proud), 
 which had not been touched by war, and but little by 
 time, and the descriptions accompanying them, done by 
 my own hand, are (I make bold to say it) by odds the 
 best that ever were done by anybody, and, taken as a 
 whole, make an invaluable compendium for the historian 
 and antiquary.* 
 
 Reaching home about the last of October, delighted, 
 without ague, although we had been badly apple-brandied 
 at points, our account of our travels so ravished our 
 friends that for many years afterwards tent-life in South- 
 side Virginia became extremely fashionable, and, with 
 various modifications, has been more or less adopted in 
 all parts of the United States especially by the wealthier 
 classes, and by hardy young men who despise the foolery 
 of springs and seasides. Judge W. W. Crump took the 
 lead in this wholesome reform. f 
 
 Soon after my return, I walked out one day to Holly- 
 wood. There, to my excessive mortification, I found that 
 a Northern admirer of John R. Thompson had erected a 
 handsome tomb over the poet a gentle soul, that loved 
 above all things to do a kind deed for foes as well as 
 friends. Although I had predicted that Virginians would 
 no more build a monument to Thompson than Ameri- 
 cans to Washington, and that the work in Hollywood, 
 if done at all, would be done by a Yankee,^ I was morti- 
 fied none the less. I had plenty of money there was 
 
 * It was published in folio under the title of " The Last of Pea Time." 
 A few " large-paper" copies are now in the hands of Dr. Barney, and 
 Randolph and English. 
 
 f Prominent. Roman-nosed lawyer of the period. Hospitable man 
 champagned thirteen Seventh New York Regiment men to death. 
 Treated me to breakfast on the Great Eastern, and I never forgot him 
 for it. His son, Edward, was also good to me in North Carolina, and I 
 never forgot him either. 
 
 \ If anybody has a more vitriolic feeling against bad Yankees than 
 I have, I pity him. But if a Yankee is a good Yankee (there are such), 
 I like him all the better for being a Yankee. It is like falling out with 
 a fellow at school, stopping speaking to him, and then making up again. 
 Few things are more pleasant.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 99 
 
 no earthly excuse for me; but, Virginian like, I kept 
 putting it off and off, and off. I am ashamed of myself. 
 
 Here I am reminded that I encouraged as much as 
 possible the erecting by wealthy and public-spirited citi- 
 zens of single figures and groups in bronze or marble, 
 commemorative of incidents and characters in Virginia 
 history, at various points along the boulevard that en- 
 circled Richmond, and in Parke Park allowed a few 
 beautiful tombs to be built in suitable situations. Amid 
 the beauties, natural and artificial, of the park, these 
 tombs fitted in admirably, serving, by contrast, and a 
 certain tenderness of suggestion, to impart an increased 
 and hallowing charm to the scenery much like the un- 
 dertone of sadness that one sometimes finds in the live- 
 liest music.* 
 
 In a moment of vanity I determined to reprint every- 
 thing I had ever written every editorial, magazine- 
 article, letter, communication, all the correspondence of 
 "Zed," "Hermes," "Malou," f etc., etc., all the squibs 
 of every kind contributed to the Lynchburg, Richmond, 
 Petersburg, Orange Court-House, Baltimore, New York, 
 Louisville, Nashville, Knoxville, and Gordonsville papers, 
 and to have every solitary thing down to the puns and 
 conundrums illustrated. This was the life-work of my 
 friend, that excellent man and accomplished draughtsman, 
 W. L. Sheppard. Willie got along finely until he got to 
 the loathsome and disgusting article on "Spit;"! in 
 attempting to illustrate that he was attacked with such 
 incessant retching and persistent nausea that he fled to 
 Italy for relief, and had to stay there and in the Alps for 
 three years before he was cured. For a time he was (Dr. 
 Brown-Sequard assured me) as badly off as Sumner had 
 
 * In childhood, when the sensibilities are keen, there is a foretelling of 
 the coming and inevitable sorrow and care of mature life in all music, 
 particularly in that of the piano. 
 
 f Letters to Richmond Dispatch, Charleston (S. C.) Mercury, and 
 New Orleans Crescent a great many of them ought to be among my 
 papers now. 
 
 J Maddened by this horrible article, the tobacconists of Richmond, led 
 by my quondam friends, Mr. Peter Mayo and Mr. Alexander Cameron, 
 filled a fire-engine with ambeer and actually squirted me out of town. I 
 never dared to return.
 
 I0 o WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 to have the moxa, actual cautery, Vienna paste, hypo- 
 dermics, etc., to spine but did eventually get well with- 
 out going to the United States Senate. 
 
 The remaining illustrations were done by Randolph 
 Mason, a rising young artist, and my books, " Adams's 
 Complete Works," in twenty-six volumes, octavo, were 
 finally published, had no sale except in odd volumes, 
 adorned the library of every friend to whom I presented 
 them, and afforded me during my declining years most 
 delicious reading. I can say with perfect truth that I 
 never enjoyed any author half so much, and for many 
 years never read any other. 
 
 In another moment of much more vanity I allowed my 
 friends to induce Valentine to persuade me to sit for my 
 statue. At first it was decided to have the statue of 
 bronze, quadruple life-size, in a sitting posture, under Mr. 
 Exall's lovely duomo, with Hart's sweet little Henry Clay 
 standing up in my lap, with my hands about his waist and 
 under his coat-tail, dandling him. But this, though neat 
 and suggestive, it was thought would be a reflection upon 
 the "Great American System," and to my regret was 
 abandoned. Then it was unanimously concluded best to 
 build me in the attitude of the Colossus of Rhodes, forty 
 feet high, straddling the City Springs,* in copperas-colored 
 pants, and long-tail, bob-tail coat, striped white and red 
 vest, oznaburg shirt with open collar, no cravat, and a 
 straw hat, playing upon a pumpkin-vine horn with both 
 hands, after the manner of the antique performer upon 
 the fistula or flute. It was so established, and the remains 
 of it remain to this day. The material used was an ap- 
 propriate clay from the county of Powhatan, the same 
 that the world-famous pipesf are made of. Naughty boys 
 soon "snow-balled the pumpkin-vine out of my hands, and 
 by dint of large pebbles obtained from the adjacent gullies 
 
 * A pretty little lot, or might have been if the city had had any sense, 
 between Seventh and Eighth Streets, back of the Mills property. In 1874 
 it was used for the storage of old bricks, which were tenderly sheltered 
 there by the leafless trees from the fierce rays of the midwinter sun. 
 
 f The largest factory of tobacco pipes in the world is mine in Powhatan 
 County. It is one thousand two hundred feet long and seven stories 
 high, with a capacity of four hundred thousand pipes per diem. They 
 are the best pipes in the world, and are superseding all others.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. IOI 
 
 were not long in ridding me of my entire head ; but the 
 magnificent torso still stands, and is much sought after 
 and admired by Hellenists from Heidelberg and Bonn. 
 Dr. William Hand Browne has devoted an entire "Green 
 Table" in the Southern Magazine to a discussion of its 
 great and growing merits. In revenge for this ill treat- 
 ment on the part of the boys, I directed Valentine to fill 
 me an order for seven hunflred busts of the finest and 
 prettiest women of my acquantance, which he did ; they 
 now adorn my house in Appomattox. 
 
 To the end that I might die with the reputation of 
 being the best loved man in Virginia, I had done a great 
 many good and wise deeds at least I thought so. But 
 before I started to do anything at all, I tried to impress 
 upon myself the fact which I had long known that there 
 is the other side to everything that existence, life itself, 
 is a balance of opposing qualities,* and that no wholly 
 and lastingly good thing can ever be done. Flowers rot, 
 beauty rots, religions rot, and the rottenness reappears in 
 beauty again forever and forever. Life rests on incessant 
 putrescence. Though these facts were ingrained in me, 
 I was not satisfied. I wanted to be honored of Virginia 
 men and to be hurrahed over. I would walk whole 
 squares in Richmond without having a hat lifted to me or 
 a small boy to follow me and to say, not without agita- 
 tion, "that's him." This would never do. 
 
 Therefore and because I had all along been intent upon 
 it, I builded my Folly, Adams's Folly. It stands in 
 Scuflfletown to this day, upon a hill carved around clean 
 down to its base to receive it and be its pedestal, to be 
 seen and to be seen a very great distance, of all men. It 
 is an octagonal mass of rough-hewn siennite that rises 
 some one thousand one hundred (counting from the river 
 level, one thousand three hundred and fifty) feet in air. 
 Upon its top there is a bell, compared to which the big 
 bell at Moscow is but an infant's thimble. This bell rings 
 of itself on stormy nights, and its mournful sound is heard 
 
 * So that if there be no hell there can be no heaven. The thing is as 
 long as it is broad. Annihilation is your only hope, Messrs. Skeptic and 
 Scientist. 
 
 9*
 
 102 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 in Philadelphia. [By the way, I had intended to stop 
 the Folly at the height of one thousand feet, but a Phila- 
 delphia centennial creature having built a tower that high, 
 I went one hundred feet higher, exclusive of the cliff on 
 which the Folly stands.] Houses in Richmond shake 
 under the vibrations of this bell, nobody sleeps in many 
 counties around Lynchburg, and all the Tobacco Row 
 mountain neighborhood goes to prayers at sundown and 
 ceases not till day breaks and the bell stops ringing. It 
 is a fearful thing, that bell lifted up upon that huge, 
 rough tower, above the clouds oftentimes. There are 
 steps inside, but everybody prefers to ride up in the steam 
 elevator at a charge of twenty-five cents. Myriads of 
 people come to see it. It is one of the wonders of the 
 world. The annual revenue from sight-seers is a quarter 
 of a million, which goes into the Lynchburg treasury for 
 the support of the poor and the improvement of street 
 grades. People have ceased to be bow-legged, sway- 
 backed, and knock-kneed in that city. A splendid 
 bridge for foot-passengers, carriages and railway trains runs 
 from the foot of the Folly tower to the adjacent hill-top 
 in Lynchburg, is much resorted to by industrious burghers 
 with long fishing-lines (to fish in the river for mud- 
 kittens two hundred and fifty feet below), and is of great 
 service to through travel on the Washington City, Vir- 
 ginia Midland, and Great Southern Railroad. I do not 
 remember what the thing cost. Mr. A. Y. Lee* was the 
 architect. I had speculated in West Virginia coal lands, 
 made one hundred millions in addition to my original 
 fifty millions, and didn't care what it cost. It was finished 
 quicker than the great pyramid. Five hundred thousand 
 men did the work within ten years. 
 
 Goodness knows I was honored enough when the Folly 
 was completed. I thought I would be. The inaugura- 
 tion day was a gala day all around the globe. Men 
 thought the tower of Babel theory was overthrown, as if 
 that were any comfort. I happened to be in New York 
 
 * An able man in his calling, but his resemblance to myself produced 
 in him a mental inquietude that ended in incurable dyspepsia ; which I 
 hope will be a wholesome warning to others not to look like me if they 
 can possibly avoid it.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 103 
 
 arranging with my publishers when I was telegraphed for 
 in hot haste. Many brass bands, Gesangveriens, photo 
 graphers, several yoke of strong-minded women, historical 
 societies, a herd of reporters, and three Schutzenfests 
 accompanied me. It was a triumphal march the whole 
 way. I was transported through Washington in a palan- 
 quin, toted by four members of the cabinet, the Emperor 
 in front and on foot, clearing the way with a black wagon- 
 whip with brass nails in the handle. The train, drawn 
 by six to ten locomotives, stretched from Alexandria to 
 Fairfax Station nearly. All Orange Court-House, Gor- 
 donsville, and Charlotteville fell down in the red dust 
 before me as the train went by. Not a living soul was 
 left in the Ragged Mountains. The keeper of the Miller 
 Orphan Asylum* set fire to the institution, and went 
 along with the rest on foot before day. I disembarked 
 on the Amherst side, descended the gulch into which the 
 old toll bridge leads, and in a linen duster commenced 
 the ascent of a grand staircase (hewn out of the living 
 rock) which begins precisely on the spot where old Aunt 
 Sally Taylorf used to live. All Virginia seemed to be 
 around me. Although the world claimed the Folly as a 
 boon to humanity, Virginia claimed it as her own. Now 
 this great State would be settled up ; now our unrivaled 
 natural resources would be developed, and now, beyond 
 all shadow or possibility of peradventure, Norfolk would 
 become the greatest seaport of the earth, and New York 
 and Baltimore would be nowhere. The big bell tolled. 
 The people (the landscape was black with them) hollered. 
 I detected the voice of Trash Green. J It was a great 
 time. 
 
 * Unfortunately, most of the orphans were too badly charred to be of 
 future use, but the enterprising negroes of Gordonsville got the remainder 
 (about two hundred and fifty), kept them on ice in Dr. Cadmus's wine- 
 cellar, and for eighteen months orphan sandwiches, called chicken breast 
 for short, were disposed of at great profit and much relished along with 
 Jim Scott's grapes. 
 
 | Kept a little tavern there. When John Brown, nephew of Boss 
 Cauthorn, lived at Dr. Seay's drug store, we used to go over there and 
 get breakfast on Sunday mornings good breakfasts they were, too. 
 
 J Lynchburg fishmonger of the period. Worthy, good temperance 
 man ; dressed nicely breastpin and gloves.
 
 104 
 
 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 At the head of the grand staircase, Mr. Robin Terry* 
 (in the attitude of Virginia or the Goddess of Liberty, in 
 a bell-crowned hat with curved brim, and trampling on 
 the prostrate form of Mr. Jack Slaughterf) received me. 
 Over their heads, Mr. Tom Stabler^ on the one side and 
 Mr. Bob Latham on the other held aloft the great motto 
 in golden letters, Sic Semper Tyrannis. Mr. Terry's 
 speech was a noble effort. When he let up, Jack Slaugh- 
 ter and the latter put off the robes of the tyrant, and 
 donned his own sack-coat, and proclaimed that the days 
 of the grinding oppression of poverty in Virginia were 
 ended, to return no more while time lasted, there went 
 up a shout that shook the hills, and made the Folly wab- 
 ble from base to summit. My reply to these admirable 
 addresses was a feeble one, I wanted to go to Peter 
 Wren's, and take a nip of plain whisky and water but 
 all the Lynchburg papers, all the Virginia papers, and all 
 the papers all over the world said it was a sublime effort. 
 I doubt it. Then the people went delirious with excite- 
 ment and delight, and I went to the Washington House 
 and went to bed. Scoville said he thought I was sick. 
 It was a great time. 
 
 Sated with human applause, and conscious that my 
 Folly, not my sense or my goodness, had won it, my 
 parks, banks, factories, churches, cathedrals, music-halls, 
 colleges, and lecture-rooms all running more or less suc- 
 cessfully, naught much [N. M. is respectfully submitted 
 to the Dispatch Ed. Whig] remained for me to do 
 time was for me to depart. We all do fade as a leaf. 
 Moreover, between the tens and twenties [of 1900, doubt- 
 less Whig], my dear, good wife went from me. What 
 she was to me her forbearance, her long-suffering, her 
 uncomplaining patience, her devotion to our children, 
 
 * New London academy pedagogue of the period. Good teacher and 
 fine fellow. 
 
 t Lynchburg double-barreled banker of the period. I liked Jack in 
 spite of his money. He and Bob Broadnax, myself, and somebody else, 
 used to play whist together, and have very good times. 
 
 J Husband of one of the finest women in Virginia. Early-rising tobacco 
 warehouse-man of the day and date above mentioned. Brother-in-law 
 of the best brothers and sisters-in-law going at that time, and for some 
 time previous and afterwards.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. IO5 
 
 and, above all, her clear understanding of the whimsies 
 incident to my peculiar temperament, and of those who 
 preceded me and gave me my temperament, why tell of 
 these, or who cares to hear them ? She it was who en- 
 noble womankind (always loveable before I knew her) 
 and humanity in my eyes. I cannot praise her as Stuart 
 Mill praised his wife, a woman no whit the superior of 
 mine in moral if in mental (which I doubt) nature, but 
 this I will say of her that a more thoroughly truthful 
 soul, a more loyal and steadfast friend, never dwelt on 
 this planet. The man or woman who had her friendship 
 (not that it was hard to get) had that which was above 
 price, and which only persistent crime, meanness, or 
 lying could take away. That I shall be worthy to 
 draw nigh unto her in the other life I very much question, 
 but this I hope that on some celestial morning two 
 bright sinless boys will take the poor newly-come sinner 
 between them and, leading him to her sweet presence, 
 say, 
 
 " Mother, receive him for our sake." 
 
 She died before she was seventy, in the prime of the 
 strength which came to her late in life, when the cares, 
 griefs, and toils of her clouded youth and early woman- 
 hood were ended ; and I mourned her truly, as a man 
 mourns who has no other friend this side the grave.* 
 Ah, me ! how many, many friends there are now on the 
 other side ! I hope they all are still my friends, for 
 often, and often,, and often my heart goes out how 
 warmly to them. I do not forget them. They are with 
 
 * This estimable woman came to her death in a singular and affecting 
 way. Her maiden name was Ellen F. Glennan, the daughter of a Pro- 
 testant Irish curate see letter from Washington City, 1858, or there- 
 abouts. From the time of our marriage she had a passion for second-hand 
 wooden presses, equalled only by S. Jackson's craze for Yankee baggage- 
 wagons. She preferred cheap green, but would take cheaper red presses 
 whenever she could find them, and never got enough of them. Late in 
 life she conceived the idea of a three-story much complicated pine press 
 in as many several sections, had it made to order, and while putting it 
 up herself (she would never let any one do for her what she herself could 
 do) the upper section toppled over upon her, mashed her flat as a 
 flounder, and the poor, tired, hard-working hands were at rest. Her 
 maiden name was Ellen F. Glennan, the daughter of, etc. [the poor old 
 gentleman forgets that he has already told us this. Ed. Whig] 
 E*
 
 I0 6 WHAT I DID WITh 
 
 me now more than are my living friends far more. I 
 feel their presence, their veritable existence. They live 
 in me. 
 
 No man knows, not even the widower himself, how much 
 he suffers. Cleave frail man smoothly from calvarium to 
 os coccygiss&<\&. it is but natural that he should desire to 
 find his lost if not better half, and not go single-legged 
 and with only one eye on the world all his days. It is 
 for this cause that widowers walk lop-sided and hip-shot, 
 and are so anxious to get married again. Not that they 
 want to marry for the mere sake of marrying well they 
 know that is not what it is cracked up to be but they 
 feel a-cold on one side, and yearn to pour out their grief 
 on some friendly and sympathetic bosom. Thus the early 
 courting of widowers, which is so much decried, is, if we 
 did but know it, a secret commingling of tears for the 
 loved and lost one ; and as the commingling is all done 
 and over by the time the new marriage comes off, it is but 
 fit and proper that the two grief-relieved souls should be a 
 trifle gay and cheerful. But they often cry together after- 
 wards especially the lady. 
 
 Being a lad of a little upwards of a century, and main- 
 taining, as widowers all do, that I was unfazed by time 
 and as good as ever stuck axe in a tree, which I was not 
 and never had been, it was natural and becoming that I 
 should want to get married again without indecorous and 
 heartless delay ; but that I should make such a poop and 
 rancid old ass of myself as to court a mischievous little 
 miss of six-and-twenty, or thereabouts, I could not have 
 believed. I did, though. There was a blue-eyed, red- 
 faced, yellow-haired girl at Ca Ira (I moved to the country 
 soon after my wife died), that wound me around her finger, 
 trotted me around, showed me off, made a laughing-stock 
 of me, and then kicked me into the infinite void* with 
 the full and unrelenting power of a very ponderous limb. 
 That woman lied to me in every conceivable way. She 
 lied with her eyes, she lied with her smiles, she lied with 
 
 f Lifted at the acute toe-point into The Inane, I found there a little 
 mud-god named Carlyle, in the arms of Frederick the Great, and Dr. 
 Francia standing by, feeding him with gobs of disjointed German text, 
 done up in oatmeal, out of a spoon.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 107 
 
 her gestures, with a thousand undulations of her graceful 
 body ; her life, for six months, was a continuous and un- 
 broken lie, only she did not tell me in actual words that 
 she loved me. And so, with a conscience void of offense, 
 she went off and married a Pikelin or some such creature. 
 But what a conscience ! A cambric thread of the finest 
 fibre would cover it like a counterpane. And yet nature, 
 in her ample indifference (/can't call it economy), has a 
 place for myriads of such immoral nits. The good of 
 them at any time, past, present, and to come, is not ap- 
 parent to me. To Pikelins and such they may be blessing, 
 possibly. But as for me, I am done with women. We all 
 do fade as a leaf. 
 
 When my mind was made up to move finally into the 
 country (my summers having heretofore been spent in 
 various rural retreats, so called, which I had purchased 
 from time to time), I did not set to work with my abundant 
 money to re-create the Domain of Arnheim on Poe's 
 plan, the cottage of Landor, a villa in the Italian style, or 
 anything of the kind. My highest ambition was to rebuild 
 Captain Grigg's house just as it was in the olden time, and 
 this I would certainly have done had not all or nearly all 
 the trees between there and the Knob been cut down. 
 The place was too open aTid exposed. I bought Evans's 
 mill and all the land I could get in the neighborhood, 
 divided it up into farms, with snug farm-houses, etc., and 
 portioned them out to the children of William Gannaway 
 and William Anderson, my cousins. For myself I found 
 no resting place for the sole of my foot until I got into 
 the wooded country near Parrrplin's Depot. There I built 
 an exact fac simile of Captain Grigg's a little dormer- 
 storied house, with a cool basement dining-room and 
 cellar adjoining, a front porch with saddle-closet cut off 
 from it, big outside chimneys (to encourage the friends of 
 <ny childhood toads), a covered brick passage for the 
 wind to blow through, the water-pail, and the wood ready 
 chopped for the fire, to set in, and then a tail of little 
 rooms on different levels run-ning down the hill so that 
 you had to step up or down to get into any room in the 
 house. I had a barn, stable, corn-house, kitchen, quarters, 
 dairy with F-like lattice-work under the eaves, a well, a
 
 I0 8 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 glorious well, with well-house over it, a carriage-house, 
 horse-block and rack, spring and spring-house fifty yards 
 or so from the dwelling, a damson tree or two, with some 
 greengage plums in the yard, oaks, aspens, and locusts, a 
 regular ley-hopper, big biscuit-block and great open fire- 
 place in the kitchen, hen-hovels, duck-troughs, meat- 
 house, weaving-room, loom, vast gobbler, an authoritative 
 rumpless rooster, devoted to the society of the ladies, and 
 a square-shouldered, deliberate drake, very affable to his 
 family, flax-hackles, reel, wool-cards, spinning-wheels, 
 everything, including peacock and chatty guinea chickens. 
 Other people might live as they pleased, I intended to live 
 like a Virginian. I had money and money "in a plenty;" 
 why not? In my garden were lilacs and hollyhocks, 
 gooseberries, raspberries, currants, etc., a fig bush or two, 
 some hazelnut bushes, artichokes and grass-nuts ; a patch 
 for broomcorn, and reeds for fishing-poles, gourds along 
 the fence and cymlins at intervals; I had besides, a nice 
 pond with abundant bullfrogs, a dam and mill-pond full 
 of chub and silver perch, and an old-fashioned saw-mill, 
 with a saw that worked up and down like a distracted man 
 in a jump-jacket. This for company when I felt lone- 
 some ; and as I took good care not to cultivate much of 
 my land, there was never wanting gullies and galls, with 
 a pretence of bresh and corn-stalks to cure them I 
 wouldn't have cured 'em for the world great store of 
 mulleins, hen-nest grass, sassafras, thorn-bushes, Chero- 
 kee plums in detached squads, isolated persimmon-trees, 
 brier patches, dewberry vines, old fields with and without 
 old field pines good for setting-turkeys and old hares 
 a right sharp chance of sour, sobby, crawfishy land, some 
 puffy land, some places where the water seeped out, some 
 old gray not quite dead cherry-trees, a lost and rather 
 bony Lombardy poplar or so, some huge high pines not 
 far from the house for the sake of woodpeckers, low- 
 grounds for kildees and watermelons, a good-sized creek 
 with three or four regularly baited fishing-places, a col- 
 lection of tall naked sycamores for buzzards to roost in, 
 four mules, three yoke of oxen, twelve caws to the pail, a 
 jinny and a hinny, an amiable sleepy-headed horse for my 
 own riding, and a milk and cider filly, with a side-saddle,
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 109 
 
 nankeen riding-skirt, and sun-bonnet for any lady who 
 might happen to pay me a visit. 
 
 I had also not quite a gross of hounds, beagles, point- 
 ers, setters, bulldogs, and bench-leg fice, all to keep com- 
 pany, and a sociable but exasperating cat, that would sit 
 and doze, and blink by the fire, and see a mouse run up 
 my breeches leg, and blink and doze and look up in my 
 face like an insensate, hairy, slit-eyed Chinese simpleton, 
 until I didn't know what I was ready to do to that cat if 
 I hadn't been superstitious and afraid. A cat like that is 
 a bad cat. I had me also a convenient wood-pile (nothing 
 but wood was burnt in my house), with plenty of oak and 
 hickory, plenty of pine too, and lots of chips and light- 
 wood knots, with a white-oak basket (not a big, new white 
 white-oak basket, but a little old black white-oak basket, 
 with a hole burnt in one side, jagged edges, and a swing- 
 ing handle, loose at one end), to hold my chips and corn 
 husses. 
 
 THIRTEENTH. INSTALLMENT. 
 
 A Lonely Old Age Dark and Bitter Thoughts Arrival of the Commo- 
 dore Throwing Mexican Dollars A Negro Killed A Stormy Night 
 Trouble of Life's Ending Misery of this World Hallucinations 
 In the Fodder-stack A Voice. 
 
 AND yet I was not happy.* For a time, indeed, all 
 went well. My negroes (the men dressed in nappy cot- 
 ton and the women in striped homespun) behaved very 
 well. People came to see me, dined with me, and talked 
 politics. My Curdsville fiddler was always ready to enter- 
 tain them, a negro boy was never wanting to fetch a pail 
 or can of fresh water (I had a cocoanut rimmed with silver 
 and a real, regular sweet old gourd to drink out of), or to 
 
 * In my time it was thought to be very funny to say " and yet I am not 
 happy." The oftener it was said the funnier it was thought to be. I 
 consider people as amongst the most curious human beings I ever saw. 
 Mules and members of the legislature come next. 
 
 16
 
 HO WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 bring a coal of fire between two chips from the kitchen in 
 summer-time to light our pipes with, or to get some mint 
 from the mint bed. In a word, I led the life of an old 
 Virginian with plenty of money, and enjoyed it. But 
 times changed ; settlers from all parts of the world began 
 to crowd up to and around my plantation ; no wages 
 could tempt the negroes from going to the negro districts 
 of the South ; people ceased to come to me except for 
 money (my Folly had left me but a few millions and I 
 got tired of everlasting giving) ; my Curdsville fiddler, 
 getting lonesome, left me never to return, and finally I 
 was left alone with an old negro cook (women stick to 
 men to the last), her grand-daughter, and one or two 
 great grand-sons. With them I got along after a fashion, 
 but it was a mournful fashion. The garden and a few 
 outside acres under cultivation supplied me with roasting 
 ears and turnip greens. I had generally a roast shoat in 
 season, sometimes a lamb, a full supply of chickens, and 
 you may be sure the negroes took good care not to let me 
 get out of hog meat. 
 
 I grew morbid. Fishing palled on me, jogging about 
 on my sway-back mare became tiresome, sitting under my 
 favorite pine and listening to its soughing brought recol- 
 lections no longer tender but only sad and full of vain 
 longing for the friends that had gone before me; trim- 
 ming the knots on a hickory stick brought no comfort, 
 my eyesight failed as my hearing had long before, appe- 
 tite failed, and even the reading of my books, when I 
 could read at all, and the wondering admiration of myself 
 in my better days* served but to irritate me. One of the 
 greatest of calamities a lonely old age had befallen me. 
 
 My thoughts grew dark and bitter, darker and more 
 bitter day by day, as the lonesome months went by. Oh 
 for the sight of the face of a single friend of my youth 
 and early manhood ! But they were gone my children 
 and grandchildren, the children and grandchildren of the 
 thousands I had befriended, were scattered and gone. I 
 was forgotten by the human race. Desire had failed, the 
 possibility of enjoyment was forever past. Aches and 
 
 * " My God, what genius I had then !" Swift in his dotage.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 Ill 
 
 pains were not lacking to fill up the measure of my misery. 
 I had outlived life the saddest of all the evil things of 
 which this sad, bad world is full. I could not think a 
 bright or cheering thought; no one wanted me now to 
 do a good deed. I was unremembered, yet alive and 
 suffering. All the low, vile, underhand, over-reaching, 
 treacherous, mean, and contemptible actions and trans- 
 actions of all the men I had ever known came back to me 
 with terrific force, and abode with me. I could not get 
 rid of them. Recalling all I had done for my State and 
 its people, seeing how neglected and steeped in solitary 
 woe and pain I was, I hated and despised my race with 
 the hatred and despite of a soured and impotent old age. 
 My soul was full of gall and desire to do harm. 
 
 I forgot the torrents of crime, wave after wave, world- 
 wide and high in volume (committed? no! only not com- 
 mitted for want of opportunity) that had passed through 
 me time and again, oh ! so often ; and I forgot (God 
 help me) the myriads of kindnesses that had been done 
 to me and mine ; to me by my uncle James, his family 
 and my other kin; to me by hundreds of newspaper men, 
 other men too ; to my dear wife during her long, long 
 sickness; to my dear old father by black and white in 
 Tappahannock. I forgot the love and the prayers, so 
 undeserved, the forgiving and forgetting that had followed 
 all through my life. I forgot these things. I remembered 
 only, thought only of the meanness, the misery and the 
 wickedness (there is plenty of all three) of this wretched 
 existence. 
 
 Fortunately for me I retained enough sense to know 
 that action, action is the only cure for the crime of over- 
 contemplation and brooding. It was but little I could 
 do, but that little I did with all my small remaining 
 strength. I plodded around my plantation, trying to 
 study animal and vegetable nature, and running the risk 
 daily of tumbling into some ditch, gully or branch, and 
 so drowning myself. I would have rather liked that. It 
 was of no use; still I trudged, and still I brooded over the 
 ills of life and the vileness of human nature. How long 
 this would have lasted it is useless to conjecture, but one 
 day as I was toiling slowly up a hill a strange, very strange
 
 1I2 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 apparition on the top attracted my attention. Amazed 
 and very much frightened, too, I stood still in my tracks, 
 and the thing, whatever it was, came on. I was unarmed 
 and greatly scared. 
 
 To my intense relief it proved to be the automaton 
 of Commodore Porter. Eustace, having made a fortune 
 out of him, had sold him to a subsidiary side-showman, 
 from whom the Commodore, indignant, had escaped in 
 the night. Wandering indefinitely about the country, 
 various Vandal malignants had evilly entreated him, and 
 he appeared before me in a calash, a cavalry sword and 
 boots, a hoop-skirt and bustle, no other clothes, and his 
 machinery inside working visibly and violently. One 
 hand was tied behind him, in the other he held the tall 
 staff of Terrill of Bath, that resembled an exaggerated 
 parasol-handle of the period, and his mind, or rather the 
 mechanism of it, was excited, for the evil entreaters had 
 broken off a part of his tongue, and strapped the rest of 
 it down, so that he could not make himself intelligible 
 at all. 
 
 "Commodore," said I, "they seem to have served 
 thee badly." 
 
 He made no reply gritted his teeth in wrath, and 
 glared at me. I could not laugh at so hapless a being, 
 but was both distressed and delighted to see him, and he 
 was so glad at last to meet a friend that he shed a few 
 kerosene tears (his eyes, his joints and journals were 
 greased with that excellent unguent) of relief, and we 
 went joyfully home together. In a day or two I had 
 him dressed nicely in a suit of my old clothes, a little 
 too short in the arms and legs for him, but comfortable ; 
 his tongue untied, his slides, hinges and wheels all freshly 
 oiled, and the whole man in elegant running order. He 
 was fine company for me for awhile, but, as old men will 
 do, we gradually grew morose, and longed for some ex- 
 citement. Action, action was what we wanted ; we were 
 tired of smoking. My faculty of invention had not alto- 
 gether deserted me, so I sent for several salt-sacks full of 
 silver Mexican dollars, and amused myself for days by 
 throwing them at the bodies and faces of poor men of 
 the vicinage, allowing them to take every dollar that hit
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. II3 
 
 them, the Commodore picking up the dollars that missed 
 and bringing them back to me, and relishing the sport 
 hugely. After a fellow had an eye, or two or three teeth 
 knocked out, he generally went home ; but one wretched 
 man, with the worst face I ever saw, allowed both eyes, 
 all of his upper and lower front teeth to be knocked out, 
 his nose mashed flat, and cut in two, and his forehead to 
 be completely skinned before he gave up. 
 
 "There, Commodore," said I, "that is the natural 
 human greed for money ; did you ever see the like of it; 
 would you, could you have believed it?" 
 
 The Commodore merely laughed. But when I learned 
 that the poor man had stood all this for the sake of an 
 afflicted wife and children, it nearly killed me, although 
 I gave him a sack of silver to ease my conscience.* 
 
 The Commodore had often begged me to let him try 
 his hand, but he was so powerful I was afraid ; one day, 
 however, I consented. He threw the first dollar smack 
 through a stalwart negro, back-bone and all, and it took 
 the rest of our silver to buy off judge and jury, and to 
 save ourselves from being hanged. This put an end to 
 our sport. 
 
 We grew more and more melancholy and savage, 
 and I got more and more afraid of the Commodore. I 
 couldn't bear to let him run down completely, for that 
 would be depriving myself of all society ; but he became 
 so ill-natured and dangerous, that I had to keep him only 
 partially wound up which made him madder than ever. 
 He had a hole in his back, and a key, kept in a box 
 under his ribs, with which he was set going ; and, his 
 springs being tremendous, it took all my strength to 
 wind him thoroughly. Unluckily for me, he discovered 
 that by inserting a door-knob in the hole in his back 
 and by whirling himself around he could wind himself 
 up, which he did, and came down stairs to my room a 
 good many times, and whaled me very cruelly. The 
 wonder is that he didn't kill me. I wish he had, for 
 
 * He proved to be a tailor of the neighborhood an excellent, sensible, 
 good man, much like my old friend Benson, the grandfather of E. B. 
 Spence, of Richmond. Mr. B. had but one defect; he could not tell 
 cabbage from cribbage. 
 
 10*
 
 now life was but a constant terror. Finally, I hit upon 
 the plan of greasing the door-knobs (strange he never 
 found it out !), and that, and that alone, prolonged my 
 days. It was a frightful strain upon my failing memory 
 not to forget to grease my knobs, every one of them. 
 My cook and the other servants wouldn't have done it 
 for the world they had a mortal terror of the Commo- 
 dore, and ran for their lives at the very sight of him. 
 A sad, sad time I had. 
 
 There came a night well do I remember it a wild 
 night, towards the end of December, a night of tempest 
 and thick darkness. A lean and very aged man, full of 
 pain and troublous thoughts, lay in his bed. For him 
 there was but one sentience, and one sufferer in the uni- 
 verse. Outside, the fierce wind poured its flood, pausing 
 ever and anon only to gain added strength and fierceness. 
 What cared the wind for the aching and mind-tormented 
 centenarian ? The house shuddered from end to end ; 
 there were whisperings under doors and through key- 
 holes ; challenges and replies anear and afar, rustlings 
 and passings outside the shaking casements, noiseless 
 goings to and fro, and tellings of unknown things in in- 
 articulate tongues of those without to those within ; un- 
 usual and great business and bustle in ghostland. Terrors 
 were about and abroad strange work, God wot, to be 
 done. My poor friend, automaton as he was, came down 
 in abject affright, crouched close to my bedside beside 
 the hearth, almost emberless now, and said no word. 
 The trouble of life's ending was upon me. I could not 
 sleep. I arose, dressed myself, paid no heed to the out- 
 stretched supplicating wooden hand of the Commodore, 
 and, uncloaked and bareheaded, went out into the storm. 
 Brain and heart were afire ; I felt no cold. In a fodder- 
 stack near the stable I had made on the leeward side a 
 deep hole into which I would often go late at night to 
 watch the stars, and worry my poor limited mind, until 
 astronomy became a numbing pain. I laid down there 
 awhile and looked at the tree-arms tossing helplessly, 
 and the tall spectral tops of the pines in the distant 
 wood bowed in submission to the storm. I felt the piti- 
 lessness of the wind. I could see all the oceans with the
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. II5 
 
 waves tumbling horizon after horizon away, the world 
 round, and I felt the strength and the unmercifulness of 
 water. The force of volcanoes that know not that man- 
 kind inhabit the world ; the throes of earthquakes that 
 swallow cities of men, women and children, and do not 
 consider, but go on. I heard the rush of monstrous fish 
 under the waters, the crash of flesh-eating beasts through 
 jungles, the faint, slimy sound of venomous reptiles 
 crawling to their prey, the cracking of the crunched 
 bones of innocent victims, the yells and cries, never 
 heard by man, of the fighting saurians of the fore-world ; 
 I felt as with the hand the remorseless power of famines, 
 and listened with ears other than mine own to the march 
 of pestilences that look not back nor remember. Dis- 
 eases took shape, and in hideous personation came before 
 me cancer, carbuncle, fungus, abscess, deformities, in- 
 sanities, rheums, neuralgias, ulcers, pains unnamed and 
 innumerable a horrid throng. The dolors too terrible 
 to be told, of mind, body and heart, that pious men, 
 guileless women and sinless children suffer; the shame 
 and remorse of guilty men ; the hardness, worse than 
 shame or remorse, of those who feel neither all came 
 to me, all the misery and wickedness of this perplexing 
 world, all that was suffered in the endless past, and all 
 that is to be endured (and for what?) in the endless 
 future, one vast, wide, undivided, solid, black mass of 
 ever-enduring agony, pressed down and in upon me. 
 
 I rose up. This was too much. As I went out of the 
 stack, the thick, ragged clouds that had been hurrying all 
 night long to some rendezvous on the other side of the 
 globe fled clear away the crescent moon, white and cold, 
 and sharp and hard as a saddler's knife, came out and shed 
 a ghostly light on the scene. The wind died ; the trees 
 stood still ; a great frost set in. There was peace the 
 peace of frost that, too, was pitiless, and of death. I 
 walked to the horse-block, and sat down. Mine hour 
 was come. I felt it, knew it, and was glad. No one 
 ever came to ride my horses. The side-saddle and sun- 
 bonnet were unused, had never been used. I was de- 
 serted. The fair, fond face of woman had been blotted 
 wholly out of my life, almost out of my memory.
 
 U6 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 "So much motion awhile ago," said I, "and now so 
 much rest, blessed rest. What am I but motion, and 
 why not now cease, be not no more forever, and mingle 
 with the infinite sources of motion that lie among the 
 stars?" 
 
 On a sudden I felt the earth rise up out of its orbit. 
 The movement was swift, inconceivably so, but not hur- 
 ried. By a finer sense than sight I saw that the stars 
 were not falling, but that I was going up to them. Their 
 steely fires grew brighter momently, and presently I knew 
 that the splendor of countless flaming suns would fall 
 full upon me. A great awe and expectation came over 
 me.* Just then I heard a voice, 
 
 FOURTEENTH INSTALLMENT. 
 
 Aunt Polly Waddy Cavalry Comin' Ned Gregory, Barren Hope, V. 
 Dabney and others Slugs and Gulgers Col. T. F. Owens An Old 
 Virginia Breakfast The Commodore Breaks Loose A Terrible Time 
 Cremation Loose Again Earthquakes, Cholera, etc. Grand Din- 
 ner Royal Ashcake Toasts, Speeches, and Perfect Bliss Asleep at 
 His Own Table. 
 
 " LOOK h'yer, ole marster, ef you don't git off dat 
 hoss-block, you gwine freeze spang to it, and me and 
 little Billy will have to come and prize you off wid a crow- 
 bar." 
 
 It was the voice of my cook, Aunt Polly Waddy, the 
 
 * Awe is to the mind somewhat like gravity to the muscles, the weight 
 of the incomprehensible. The inability to hold, or to take up, oppresses, 
 and so does the inability to take in or understand. A ball of fire some 
 eight hundred thousand miles across, like the sun, might well impress the- 
 mind with a sense of awe, and yet it is but a ball of fire. Once under- 
 stood, it will appear what it really is, no more wonderful than the flame 
 of the commonest hydrocarbon that of a tallow dip, for example. 
 Curious ! that the human intellect, measuring, as it were, the universe, 
 regards solar and sidereal systems as but shining motes, and yet that 
 same intellect is awed and amazed by a tall mountain, a lofty interior, 
 or a high tower, like my Folly.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. U 7 
 
 last slave-born woman living in America. She had be- 
 longed to Colonel Bondurant. 
 
 "Go away, Aunt Polly," said I; "I am concerned 
 about higher matters than these material particles you call 
 my body go away." 
 
 "I won't budge a inch twell you git up from dar. I 
 don't want to hear none of yo' foolosophy 'bout potticals 
 git up from dar, ole marster; don't you hear me? 
 You's a pritty man so old dat yo' bones rattles in yo' 
 skin like cinders in a tin-pan to be settin' out here and 
 de frost gethrin' on you like dried rozum on a pine log 
 git up from dar, day's breakin' git up. Lemme heist you 
 down." 
 
 "Be it so, Aunt Polly," said I," mournfully, coming 
 back from the stars with great anguish. "But what have 
 I to do with life?" 
 
 "Monsus little," was her reply; "and darfo you mout 
 be mo' keerful." 
 
 " Heish !" she cried suddenly; "heish! kelvery 
 comin'." 
 
 Sure enough, the trampling of many hoofs was heard 
 in the distance. A squadron of imperial cuirassiers had 
 gone up some days before to suppress a disturbance at 
 Concord depot, and their return did not surprise me. 
 Presently the cavalcade halted under the gigantic oaks 
 that shaded the road in front of my house, and the offi- 
 cer in command saluted me in a strangely quavering voice. 
 
 "Give you good-morrow, fair sir," said he. 
 
 " Give it to me, then," I replied gruffly, for I was in no 
 humor to receive visitors; "give it to me and pass on- 
 this ain't no tavern." 
 
 "Fur de Lord's sake, ole marster, don't sen' um away. 
 We's had no comp'ny fur de longist, and my fingers farly 
 eeches to be doin' somethin'." 
 
 "Methinks, most ancient codger," said the officer, 
 "that your lingo is even more unclassical than inhos- 
 pitable." 
 
 "Ned Gregory," said I, "if you and Jim Hope and 
 the rest of you have nothing better to do at your time of 
 death (I knew they were all dead), you'd better go back 
 to the graves where you belong."
 
 IT g WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 No man, no living man, would or could have believed 
 it; but besides E. S. Gregory and James Barron Hope, 
 there were Alex. McDonald, Jim Booker, Ham Chamber- 
 layne,* V. Dabney, Gordon McCabe, Phil. Haxall, John 
 Reeve, Legh Page, Nathan Clapp, John Meredith and 
 Mel. Cardoza, and a good many more, some twenty in 
 number, all on horseback except Mel, who was mounted 
 upon a little lame Shetland pony with big black eyes. 
 All had beards, white as the driven snow, hanging down 
 to their waists, except Gordon McCabe, who looked to be 
 about seventeen years of age till you got close to him and 
 saw that there were at least ten thousand wrinkles in his 
 face. 
 
 " Have you got any cold sperrits?" they cried. 
 
 " Did y'all know Woody Latham?" said I. 
 
 And they answered and said they did. "We desire 
 some pizen," they added. 
 
 "Did y'all know Judge Semple?" said I. 
 
 They answered yes, and most of them lied. 
 
 "And did y'all know Jim McDonald and Bob Ridgway 
 and Chas. Irving and Marcellus Anderson and Philander 
 McCorkle and Gallatin Paxton and Bob Glass and Gray 
 and Bob Latham and Roger A. Pryor and Sam Paul and 
 Joe Mayo and A. D. Banks and Wm. E. Cameron and 
 George and Abe Venable and Chas. W. Button and Billy 
 Mosby and Nat Meade and Geo. Wedderburn and Nebu- 
 chadnezzar and Peter Francisco and Dr. Henry C. Alex- 
 ander and old Mr. Osborne of Petersburg and Melchisedek 
 and Mr. J. P. Cowardin and Capt. O'Bannon and Uncle 
 Alex. Moseley and Caesar and Maurice and Squire of the 
 Whig office and Heliogabalus and Bennett of the Enquirer 
 and Peter B. Prentis of Nansemond and Col. Walter 
 Taylor and the Dismal Swamp and the two Barhams of 
 Petersburg and Dr. Pleasants and the fourth book of 
 Euclid and Senator Ro. E. Withers?" 
 
 [In the original MS. the list embraces the names of 
 nearly half the population, male and female, of Lynch- 
 burg, Farmville, Richmond, Petersburg, and Norfolk, a 
 
 * [A clear case of resurrection. Chamberlayne was killed in battle in 
 the third or fourth installment. Ed. Whiff.}
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. H 9 
 
 large number of heathen gods, and old Virginia negroes 
 of good families.] 
 
 And they answered, and said they pintedly did which 
 for the most part was a falsity on their part. 
 
 Then, turning to my handmaiden, I inquired: 
 
 "Aunt Polly, can you cook up a little something for 
 these gentlemen?" 
 
 The old woman was a Virginian to the interior of her 
 backbone. Her eyes literally flashed 
 
 "Cook! Kin I cook? for dem few? I kin cook for 
 all creashun, ef you gimme de lard." 
 
 "Well," said I, "you've had the keys these ten years, 
 and I reckon you ought to know where the lard is." 
 
 The old woman hurried off, overjoyed. 
 
 I, too, was overjoyed. My eyes filled with tears of un- 
 speakable thankfulness for the gift of friendship and human 
 sympathy that had come to me so unexpectedly on the very 
 edge of life. I felt that I could live ever so much longer. 
 
 "'Light, 'light, you blessed, blessed, blessed old hell- 
 ions," I cried (no such relief for affection as an oath-edged 
 benediction), "and come in." 
 
 The old, half-frozen fellows scrabbled down from their 
 horses as quickly as they could, shook me warmly by the 
 hand, and we hurried into the house, for it was very cold. 
 
 It always made the Commodore mad for company to 
 come. Scared as he had been by the horror that was in 
 the air during the night, he was not half so scared as I was 
 lest he should intrude upon my guests; but, luckily for us 
 all, he retired in the sulks to his room and there remained. 
 A grand, old-fashioned fire was soon set going in the wide 
 hearth of the dining-room some of the logs were rammed 
 end-wise up the chimney and we began to warm our 
 shrivelled hands; but before we could get comfortable the 
 demand for antifogmatics became vociferous. 
 
 "Boys," said I (not one of them was a day under a 
 hundred), "boys, I've got here all the 'heimers, wassers, 
 cognacs, London docks, schnapps, rums, clarets, sherries, 
 madeiras, S. T. 1860 Xs, treble Xs, stouts, Bass's and 
 Bowler's pale ales, lagers, Kissingefls, etc., etc. ; also a 
 barrel or two of Ned Lafong's Clemmer and a few runlets 
 of Bob Burke's choice Hanger : what do you say?"
 
 120 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 "Whisky! Whisky!" unanimously. 
 
 We took about a dozen four-finger slugs apiece and at 
 least eight bald-face gulgers, plumb to the brim every pop. 
 We were none of your tender-gizzarded spring chickens ; 
 besides, the weather was deucedly cold. 
 
 By the time we were fairly warmed up inside and out, 
 Aunt Polly brought in breakfast. 
 
 We had in the first place a regular old-time Montrose 
 loaf, a high fellow, like a Martello tower. Gordon Mc- 
 Cabe got as mad as fire because he couldn't tip-toe and 
 shake his fist over it in the face of Phil Haxall the boys 
 were all a good deal excited. Then we had spare-ribs, 
 broiled ham and eggs, beefsteak and onions, corned shad, 
 and chitlins on toast. We had also some batter-bread, 
 some batter-cakes, some buckwheat cakes, some flannel- 
 cakes, some hominy, some turn-overs, some griddle-cakes, 
 some beat-biscuit, some muffins, and some heavenly waffles. 
 Last, but not least, we had some coffee, some open fire- 
 placed, trivet-hotted coffee, just such coffee as Mrs. Cham- 
 berlayne's Laura used to make coffee that goes to the 
 soul in a megatherial pot. 
 
 As we were about to sit down, in comes Col. Thomas 
 F. Owens,* who had been detained all night at Spout 
 Spring. He was received with a feu de joie, in decidedly 
 cracked accents, asked a Masonic blessing, and we all fell 
 to. When the Arabian elixir began to penetrate to their 
 remotest capillaries, and the gums (there wasn't the half 
 of a tooth in the whole crowd) of these old cocks began to 
 sink through the crisp, brown crust down into the very 
 marrow of the hot waffles, they sobbed aloud and with one 
 voice said, "This, this is Old Virginia!" 
 
 It did me good to hear them say so. I thought so my- 
 self. 
 
 Never did I see people eat so; never did I eat so in all 
 my life. It was eleven o'clock and after before breakfast 
 was over. 
 
 * A ruddy, clean, nicely-dressed, always good-natured, always cour- 
 teous, obliging, and "excellent well, I give you thanks'* Aid-de-Camp 
 to Governor Walker of the 1870-74 period. If Governor Walker had run 
 a horse-shoe magnet smoothly smack round the world, he could not have 
 attracted a better man for the 6ffice he filled.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. I2i 
 
 I had all sorts of all sorts of cigars in the known world ; I 
 had every named pipe, with reed, reed-root, fig, cherry, and 
 other stems, also some noble cobs, wrought by the genius 
 of Franklin Mosby and handed down to me by Alexander 
 Mosely, together with a lot of long //-// stems, sloped 
 off at the tip like the mouth-piece of a clarionet. We 
 were smoking like twenty old tar-kilns, when an ominous 
 rumbling and rattling was heard upon the staircase. My 
 worst fears were realized ; it was the Commodore, freshly 
 wound up and in a perfect frenzy at the intrusion of my 
 guests. In an instant I had locked and bolted the parlor 
 door. As well have opposed so much pasteboard to his 
 progress; he smashed the door down with a single blow, 
 leaped into the crowd and laid about him with the staff 
 of old Terrill, of Bath, in a most alarming and indeed 
 dangerous style. The rattling of that staff upon our old 
 skulls reminded me of a hogshead full of gourds rolling 
 down a rocky hill. It was an awful state of affairs. We 
 were twenty-one in all, but no match for that terrible au- 
 tomaton with his huge stick; black eyes, bloody noses, and 
 skinned sconces became the order of the day in less than 
 fifteen minutes. He soon cleared out the parlor, and such 
 a chase up-stairs and down- stairs ensued as was never seen 
 before. Of all the lively old men that ever were on this 
 planet we were the liveliest. I haven't a doubt that he 
 would have killed the last one of us if John Meredith, who 
 had learned the art in California, had not blinded him by 
 throwing a bed-quilt over his head, and then lassoed him ; 
 after which it was comparatively an easy matter (not such 
 an easy matter either, for he fought like a demon to the 
 last) to bind him hand and foot. What to do with him, 
 was then the question. A violent discussion followed. 
 "To destroy such a marvelous bit of mechanism would 
 be a sin and a shame," said some. "We will have no 
 peace of our lives he may get loose at any moment 
 until we put an end to him," said the others. After two 
 hours' talk, interspersed with numerous nips, it was put to 
 the vote and decided by a large majority to burn him. 
 Accordingly, he was doubled up, tied with plow-lines, his 
 feet to his head and his arms around his legs, and thrown 
 upon the great brass andirons of the dining-room fire-place,
 
 I2 2 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 the only one large enough to receive him. We ought to 
 have known better; but, what with the various gulgers, 
 slugs and nips that we had taken, we did not. No sooner 
 were the plow-lines burnt through, than the old man came 
 out of the fire-place with a demoniac bound and scream, 
 scattering the coals in all directions, setting the house on 
 fire in a dozen different places, smashing half my crockery 
 (the table was set for dinner) and playing hob generally. 
 A stampede followed, of course. Ham Chamberlayne 
 tripped him up, seized one leg, old Kelley, of the Fred- 
 ericksburg Herald, seized the other, and away they both 
 went out of different windows, carrying the sashes with 
 them and landing twenty feet out in the yard. The Com- 
 modore, leaping after them, gave chase to the first men 
 he saw, who chanced to be Bishop Gibbons and Dr. Eras- 
 mus Powell, the greatest pile-ointmenter of the age. Off 
 they sped through the well-house, the Commodore not two 
 feet behind them. Blind with rage, the Commodore 
 missed the gate (a happy circumstance), and smash went 
 the well-house, down went the Commodore, kicking and 
 fighting as he fell, knocking out the stones and destroy- 
 ing the well forever but entombing himself at the same 
 time. He kept kicking, though, and at last accounts was 
 gradually working his way through to the other side of 
 the earth, producing earthquakes, eclipses, tidal-waves, 
 and Asiatic cholera at various points as he went along.* 
 
 Order was soon restored, and dinner was served without 
 delay, for the sun was setting, and we were as hungry as 
 silkworms. As I entered the dining-room that capital 
 major-domo, Charley B. Oliver, came in with a big bowl 
 of superb egg-nog. John Dabney, through another door, 
 brought a bowl of apple-toddy (Tom Wynne's pattern), 
 and Gerot followed with some other delicious mixed 
 French something or other. In one corner Bishop Cum- 
 mings and Mr. Latane were discussing pedobaptism with 
 Innes Randolph and Jimmy Pegram (Jim was fat), while 
 in the other Mr. Sprigg and Dr. Staples were presenting 
 
 * The terrestrial eructations at Bald Mountain immediately after this 
 event were peculiarly severe, distilling ceased, and many Hard-shell, Tar- 
 heel souls were saved for a few days, and it is to be hoped permanently.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 12 $ 
 
 copies of the Bible to T. W. McMahon and Horace 
 Greeley. Just then Mosby, Wirt Harrison, Lorentz and 
 Kellam, of the Auditor's office, came in with four or five 
 scuttles (they were sweet and clean) of smoking Tom and 
 Jerry, Dr. Bastian, Huxley, and J. C. Southall, protested 
 that a cold protoplasmic smash was the thing, and Lub- 
 bock (Sir John), a little tipsy I thought, called vocifer- 
 ously for a prehistoric stone-fence, but their-roices were 
 lost in the general uproar of talk. People continued to 
 come ; some I knew intimately, others not so well, but all 
 were warmly welcomed. I could hear the clatter of the 
 swingletrees and the clink of the trace-chains of arriving 
 vehicles on all sides of the yard. 
 
 It was a dinner indeed such a dinner Aunt Polly's 
 supreme triumph. We had a Royal Bengal ashcake, as 
 big as the head of a flour-barrel, no collard leaf about it, 
 the print of the cook's fingers still there, and a few cin- 
 ders clinging to the crust in spite of careful washing. We 
 had a sublime turkey and a ham that quieted all longings 
 for immortality all present longings, I mean. We had 
 some pot-liquor with dumplings, a cotopaxic Brunswick 
 stew, vegetables of various degrees, 'coon cutlets, some 
 bread also forks some eggs, many numerous eggs and 
 knives some eggs, and a joint of conic sections gar- 
 nished with Greek roots, for the benefit of Harry Estell 
 and Tom Price and eggs, plenty of knives and gravy 
 with the fif -finest wuh, wuh, wuh-ine, wine (I said wine) 
 sent me from Oscar Jones's by Cha' Charles Cranz and 
 eggs. 
 
 A fine good elegant fuf ' fine dinner. 
 
 I sat at the foot of the table, with my cousin Billy 
 Twins (when did he come?) and George Eliot on my 
 right, and E. S. Gregory and Bill M. Thackeray on my 
 left. Herbert Spencer sat at the head, with Tarquin the 
 Proud on one side and George Dabney Woolen on the 
 other a supp'-lendid comp'ny. I could hear the swin- 
 gletrees of more a coming, and I was glad. I had plenty. 
 
 They toasted me. Everybody was kind, and toasted. 
 " Dear, good, generous old Moses we'll never leave you 
 we wo-won't go ho'." 
 
 My dry old heart was suffused with bliss. At last I had
 
 124 
 
 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 what I wanted love, affection, good fellowship, people 
 that really cared for me and enjoyed being with me. I 
 was very happy. 
 
 I stood up to reply. The last rays of the setting sun 
 shone through the windows (we had pasted foolscap over 
 the broken panes) and shed a glory over the scene. The 
 room was warm and rather close too much wood on the 
 fire. I stood up to respond. They were all dead men 
 they could not fool me and if there was one thing I 
 wanted to see in this world more than another it was a 
 dead man, and here they were by the score, and more 
 coming, kept coming. I could hear my big gate slam- 
 ming as they drove through. 
 
 And they all looked at me with the look I had seen in 
 the eyes of the friends of my childhood, and they had 
 promised to stay with me and look at me that way all the 
 time. It was great joy, exceeding great. I stood up to 
 second the to reply. I was in heaven, a lowly corner or 
 sub-cellar of heaven it was true, but delightful, and I 
 knew that when this foolishness was past, friends still 
 nearer and dearer, male and female, were close at hand 
 without, waiting to welcome me. I was so happy. 
 
 As I rose up to reply and looked into the beaming and 
 affectionate eyes of my friends, a rosy mist filled the 
 room, the table (Spiro Zetelle, sitting on a piano-stool in 
 the middle in place of the pyramid of candied oranges, 
 directed the feast with a silver-mounted baton borrowed 
 from Ambold) the table stretched out, Herbert Spencer 
 and Dabney Wooton receded in the dim sweet distance, 
 I could hear my muffled voice following them as they van- 
 ished and I pledge you my word (as William Waller 
 used to say in Lynchburg, with his coat sleeves pushed 
 back and showing his cuffs) I pledge you my word, I went 
 fast asleep standing up at my own table ! 
 
 [Poor old Moses ! Tight is not the word it is too 
 harsh much too harsh. Ed. Whig.'}
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 FIFTEENTH INSTALLMENT. 
 
 In Gordonsville Grand Triangular Bob Sully Hotel Fried Chicken 
 and Hard-boiled Eggs in Effigy Vast Gongs Stofers, Frys, Scotts, 
 Chapmans, Kincheloes, etc. The Sphynx Adams a Nuisance Sent 
 to Poor-House Death Burial and Obituary The End. 
 
 WHEN I came to myself I was in Gordonsville. How I 
 got there nobody would ever tell me. I had done a great 
 deal for that place. By paring down Smith's mountain I 
 managed to elevate the general level of the town, so that 
 a man could go down into his cellar to get his little frosted 
 turnip and his little withered carrot without wading up to 
 his neck in water. Whereupon the place grew wonder- 
 fully. I had the satisfaction of seeing the streets stretch 
 out almost to Mr. Haxall's, and a succession of palatial 
 stores with large pane windows and occupied by a relay 
 of solid firms of Brotherton, Bros. & Bro., Cousinton, 
 Cousins & Co., Nephewson, Nephews & No. (abb. for 
 nobody else), all disposing of full lines of goods, bads, 
 and indifferents to the people of Madison and Greene. 
 Also, there was a tobacco factory and a patent plow- 
 helve-handle studio. I fitted up the railroad junction or 
 Y, and erected thereupon a mighty triangular hotel, cover- 
 ing the whole space of the Y and twelve stories high, with 
 four mansard roofs, and surmounted by a tower higher 
 than that of the Tribune building, on the top of which 
 stood a prodigious figure of Mercury, like that on the 
 custom-house at Venice, resting on tip-toe, holding a 
 big hard-boiled egg in one hand and a huge fried chicken- 
 leg in the other. It was an interesting tower, and was 
 noticed *a good deal. People came up from the Pizen- 
 feels in ox-carts and on water barrels, in sledges drawn by 
 fiercely tail-twisted and pepper-podded yearlings, and 
 camped over against it to admire it. 
 
 From Green Springs, from far Cobham, from distant 
 Pittsylvania, and remote Fluvanna came wanderers, who 
 stayed till the indolentest flies built webs in their gaping
 
 I2 6 WHAT I DID WITH 
 
 mouths. In junks, dug-outs, and double canoes many 
 Chinese and Cannibals arrived to enjoy the grandeur and 
 repose of the Bob Sully hotel, as it was called. South 
 Americans sailed up from the tops of the Andes on the 
 backs of condors, fifteen feet from tip to tip. Pardigon 
 came up on a fresh bicycle or velocipede without drawing 
 rein or halting for water. It was so large a house that 
 the three sides had to be kept by three different people. 
 Tip Jennings kept one side, Snowden Yates kept the other, 
 and Colonel C. T. Crittenden kept the third. The 
 rivalry was so great that they had to be kept well, and 
 they were kept well, yea, splendidly. Lovers of good 
 eating and good drinking (Jimmy Keagy had three bar- 
 rooms on each side, or nine in all, and all large) rushed 
 from every car to get a meal there. The roar of trains 
 and the shriek of locomotives never ceased day or night. 
 Each landlord kept a gong twelve feet in diameter and 
 run by steam going all the time. This excited the atmos- 
 phere and refreshed the arriving passengers. Many of 
 the largest negroes amiably solicited your patronage and 
 praised his side of the triangle. Digges had forty odd 
 wheat fans which blew out his land circulars by the one 
 hundred thousand. Gordonsville was a lively place. A 
 great many people came there to get something good to 
 eat. The Sphynx got up out of the sand, flirted farewell 
 with her tail to the Pyramid of Cheops, crossed the seas, 
 landed at Only near Onancock, inquired for Henry A. 
 Wise, waded Chesapeake bay, cut her feet with oyster 
 shells, came up to Gordonsville by way of Centre-Cross 
 and Milford on four stilts, called for two dozen griddled 
 riddles, couldn't get them, died of inanition, died on the 
 platform near the ticket office, was quarried on the spot 
 and her remains turned into a poor-house. 
 
 I was absolutely penniless,* but a descendant of Fatty 
 
 * A great change had come to pass. The earth had passed through 
 the tail of Dill's comet (discovered by Mr. Joseph Dill, tobacco manu- 
 facturer and astronomer of Richmond), producing strange effects. Among 
 others, the appetite for stimulants and narcotics of every kind had been 
 absolutely destroyed men drank water only, and the need of most medi- 
 cines ceased. A terrible shrinkage in values followed, involving the finan- 
 cial world in the greatest disasters. My investments were in opium 
 plantations in India. Of course I was irretrievably ruined.
 
 MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 127 
 
 Dunn generously took care of me. From side to side of 
 the triangular hotel I pottered with my cane from early 
 dawn till dark, worrying everybody by telling what I had 
 done for Virginia, and especially for the County of Orange. 
 Being a small and very pretty county, I had, at not very 
 great cost, made throughout its length and breadth a per- 
 fect system of macadamized roads, so admirably built that 
 for very many years, indeed up to the time of my death, 
 they did not need one dollar's worth of repairs. Popula- 
 tion flowed in immediately, the major part of the new- 
 comers being men of wealth from England and the North, 
 who filled the whole county with most beautiful residences. 
 Every farm was a picture, every turn of the landscape a 
 delight. All of my friends joined Tom Wallace in land 
 speculation, and prospered immensely. Their families 
 increased. There were Burgesses on every hill-top, A. F. 
 Stofers in every valley, a profusion of Phil Frys and Phil 
 Barbours, a world of William Henry Chapmans, cords of 
 W. W. and Wick Scotts, Abe Houseworths in abundance, 
 Kincheloes in quantity, and Eckloffs without end ; say 
 nothing of all the other families, especially Dr. Grymes's 
 and Mrs. Bull's. And yet none of these people would 
 believe that I had ever lifted a finger for Virginia or 
 Orange County. They did not so much as know my 
 name had never heard of me. At last I became such a 
 nuisance on the platform, button-holed people so and 
 spluttered in their faces so that they sent me to the poor- 
 house, and put me in the care of a bad-tempered old 
 pauper woman, who abused me, and scratched me until 
 my face resembled the old American flag at half-mast in a 
 calm. And there one day I died of a surfeit of cornfield 
 peas. 
 
 The only notice made of me in the Gordonsville Gazette, 
 edited by Drinkard,* was this: 
 
 "Moses Adams, a pauper, died at the poor-house yes- 
 terday soon after dinner. He was very old said to be 
 upwards of one hundred and labored under the delusion 
 
 * Great grandson of W. F. Drinkard, a powerful and uncompassionate 
 etymological, meteorological Richmond Dispatchist of a long previous 
 period.
 
 J2 8 WHAT I DID WITH MY FIFTY MILLIONS. 
 
 that he had been enormously rich. His knowledge of 
 grammar was defective." 
 
 At my request they buried me in the middle of the road. 
 It was a good road, and I had the satisfaction of knowing 
 that every day some jolly party would pass over my head 
 on the way to a good eating-place the place they call 
 Phil Jones's. 
 
 THE END.
 
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