The Gilded Age


google search for The Gilded Age

Return to Master Book Index.

Page
87 88 89 90 91

Quick Jump
1 170 341 511 681

"
O, splendid!" said Washington. "Let's commence right away--let's----"  
----1,000,000 bottles in the United States--profit at least $350,000  
"
--and then it would begin to be time to turn our attention toward the real  
idea of the business."  
"
"
The real idea of it! Ain't $350,000 a year a pretty real----"  
Stuff! Why what an infant you are, Washington--what a guileless,  
short-sighted, easily-contented innocent you, are, my poor little  
country-bred know-nothing! Would I go to all that trouble and bother for  
the poor crumbs a body might pick up in this country? Now do I look like  
a man who----does my history suggest that I am a man who deals in  
trifles, contents himself with the narrow horizon that hems in the common  
herd, sees no further than the end of his nose? Now you know that that  
is not me--couldn't be me. You ought to know that if I throw my time and  
abilities into a patent medicine, it's a patent medicine whose field of  
operations is the solid earth! its clients the swarming nations that  
inhabit it! Why what is the republic of America for an eye-water  
country? Lord bless you, it is nothing but a barren highway that you've  
got to cross to get to the true eye-water market! Why, Washington, in  
the Oriental countries people swarm like the sands of the desert; every  
square mile of ground upholds its thousands upon thousands of struggling  
human creatures--and every separate and individual devil of them's got  
the ophthalmia! It's as natural to them as noses are--and sin. It's  
8
9


Page
87 88 89 90 91

Quick Jump
1 170 341 511 681