oftener than once in a hundred and fifty times. Hawkins fitted out his

house with "store" furniture from St. Louis, and the fame of its

magnificence went abroad in the land. Even the parlor carpet was from

St. Louis--though the other rooms were clothed in the "rag" carpeting of

the country. Hawkins put up the first "paling" fence that had ever

adorned the village; and he did not stop there, but whitewashed it.

His oil-cloth window-curtains had noble pictures on them of castles such

as had never been seen anywhere in the world but on window-curtains.

Hawkins enjoyed the admiration these prodigies compelled, but he always

smiled to think how poor and, cheap they were, compared to what the

Hawkins mansion would display in a future day after the Tennessee Land

should have borne its minted fruit. Even Washington observed, once, that

when the Tennessee Land was sold he would have a "store" carpet in his

and Clay's room like the one in the parlor. This pleased Hawkins, but it

troubled his wife. It did not seem wise, to her, to put one's entire

earthly trust in the Tennessee Land and never think of doing any work.

Hawkins took a weekly Philadelphia newspaper and a semi-weekly St. Louis

journal--almost the only papers that came to the village, though Godey's

Lady's Book found a good market there and was regarded as the perfection

of polite literature by some of the ablest critics in the place. Perhaps

it is only fair to explain that we are writing of a by gone age--some

twenty or thirty years ago. In the two newspapers referred to lay the

secret of Hawkins's growing prosperity. They kept him informed of the

condition of the crops south and east, and thus he knew which articles

were likely to be in demand and which articles were likely to be

The Gilded Age