born with them, it stays with them, it's all that some of them have left

when they die. Three years of introductory trade in the orient and what

will be the result? Why, our headquarters would be in Constantinople and

our hindquarters in Further India! Factories and warehouses in Cairo,

Ispahan, Bagdad, Damascus, Jerusalem, Yedo, Peking, Bangkok, Delhi,

Bombay--and Calcutta! Annual income--well, God only knows how many

millions and millions apiece!"

Washington was so dazed, so bewildered--his heart and his eyes had

wandered so far away among the strange lands beyond the seas, and such

avalanches of coin and currency had fluttered and jingled confusedly down

before him, that he was now as one who has been whirling round and round

for a time, and, stopping all at once, finds his surroundings still

whirling and all objects a dancing chaos. However, little by little the

Sellers family cooled down and crystalized into shape, and the poor room

lost its glitter and resumed its poverty. Then the youth found his voice

and begged Sellers to drop everything and hurry up the eye-water; and he

got his eighteen dollars and tried to force it upon the Colonel--pleaded

with him to take it--implored him to do it. But the Colonel would not;

said he would not need the capital (in his native magnificent way he

called that eighteen dollars Capital) till the eye-water was an

accomplished fact. He made Washington easy in his mind, though, by

promising that he would call for it just as soon as the invention was

finished, and he added the glad tidings that nobody but just they two

should be admitted to a share in the speculation.

The Gilded Age