Speaker 1: This is section fifteen of The Gilded Age. This LibriVox
Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. The Gilded Age, A
Speaker 1: Tale of to Day by Mark Twain and C. D. Warner,
Speaker 1: Chapter fifteen. Eli Bolton and his wife talked over Ruth's case,
Speaker 1: as they had often done before, with no little anxiety.
Speaker 1: Alone of all their children. She was impatient of the
Speaker 1: restraints and monotony of the friend's society, and wholly indisposed
Speaker 1: to accept the inner light as a guide into a
Speaker 1: life of acceptance and inaction. When Margaret told her husband
Speaker 1: of Ruth's newest project, he did not exhibit so much
Speaker 1: surprise as she hoped for. In fact, he said that
Speaker 1: he did not see why a woman should not enter
Speaker 1: the medical profession if she felt a call to it.
Speaker 1: But said, Margaret, consider her total inexperience of the world
Speaker 1: and her frail health. Can such a slight little body
Speaker 1: endure the ordeal of the preparation for or the strain
Speaker 1: of the practice of the profession? Did THEE ever think, Margaret,
Speaker 1: whether she can endure being thwarted in an object on
Speaker 1: which she has so set her heart as she has
Speaker 1: on this THEE has trained her thyself at home in
Speaker 1: her enfeebled childhood, and THEE knows how strong her will
Speaker 1: is and what she has been able to accomplish in
Speaker 1: self culture by the simple force of her determination. She
Speaker 1: never will be satisfied until she has tried her own strength.
Speaker 1: I wish, said Margaret, with an in consequence that is
Speaker 1: not exclusively feminine, that she were in the way to
Speaker 1: fall in love and marry by and by. I think
Speaker 1: that would cure her of some of her notions. I
Speaker 1: am not sure, but if she went away to some
Speaker 1: distant school into an entirely new life, her thoughts would
Speaker 1: be diverted. Eli Bolton almost laughed as he regarded his
Speaker 1: wife with eyes that never looked at her except fondly,
Speaker 1: and replied, perhaps THEE remembers that THEE had notions also
Speaker 1: before we were married, and before THEE became a men
Speaker 1: of meeting. I think Ruth comes honestly by certain tendencies
Speaker 1: which THEE has hidden under the friend's dress. Margaret could
Speaker 1: not say no to this, and while she paused, it
Speaker 1: was evident that memory was busy with suggestions to shake
Speaker 1: her present opinions. Why not let Ruth try the study
Speaker 1: for a time, suggested Eli. There is a fair beginning
Speaker 1: of a woman's medical college in the city. Quite likely
Speaker 1: she will soon find that she needs first a more
Speaker 1: general culture, and fall in with thy wish that she
Speaker 1: should see more of the world at some large school.
Speaker 1: There really seemed to be nothing else to be done,
Speaker 1: and Margaret consented at length without approving, and it was
Speaker 1: agreed that Ruth, in order to spare her fatigue, should
Speaker 1: take lodgings with friends near the college and make a
Speaker 1: trial in the pursuit of that science to which we
Speaker 1: all owe our lives. And sometimes, as by a miracle
Speaker 1: of escape, that day, mister Bolton brought home a stranger
Speaker 1: to dinner, mister Bigler, of the great firm of Pennybacker,
Speaker 1: Bigler and Small railroad contractors. He was always bringing home
Speaker 1: somebody who had a scheme to build a road, or
Speaker 1: open a mine, or plant a swamp with cane to
Speaker 1: grow paper stock, or found a hospital, or invest in
Speaker 1: a patent shadbone separator, or start a college somewhere on
Speaker 1: the frontier contiguous to a land speculation. The Bolton House
Speaker 1: was a sort of hotel for this kind of people.
Speaker 1: They were always coming. Ruth had known them from childhood,
Speaker 1: and she used to say that her father attracted them
Speaker 1: as naturally as a sugar hogshead does flies. Ruth had
Speaker 1: an idea that a large portion of the world lived
Speaker 1: by getting the rest of the world into schemes. Mister
Speaker 1: Bolton never could say no to any of them, not
Speaker 1: even said Ruth again to the Society for stamping oyster
Speaker 1: shells with scripture texts before they were sold at retail.
Speaker 1: Mister Biggler's plan, this time about which he talked loudly
Speaker 1: with his mouthful all dinner time, was the building of
Speaker 1: the tunk Hannock, Rattlesnake and Young Woman'stown Railroad, which would
Speaker 1: not only be a great highway to the west, but
Speaker 1: would open to market inexhaustible cold fields and untold millions
Speaker 1: of lumber. The plan of operations was very simple. We'll
Speaker 1: buy the lands, explained he on long time, backed by
Speaker 1: the notes of good men, and then mortgage them for
Speaker 1: money enough to get the road well on. Then get
Speaker 1: the towns on the line to issue their bonds for stock,
Speaker 1: and sell their bonds for enough to complete the road
Speaker 1: and partly stock it. Especially if we mortgage each section
Speaker 1: as we complete it, we can then sell the rest
Speaker 1: of the stock on the prospect of the business of
Speaker 1: the road through an improved country, and also sell the
Speaker 1: lands at a big advance on the strength of the road.
Speaker 1: All we want, continued mister Biggler, in his frank manner,
Speaker 1: is a few thousand dollars to start the surveys and
Speaker 1: arrange things in the legislature. There is some parties we'll
Speaker 1: have to be seen who might make us trouble. It
Speaker 1: will take a good deal of money to start the enterprise,
Speaker 1: remarked mister Bolton, who knew very well what seeing a
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania legislature meant, but was too polite to tell mister
Speaker 1: Bigiler what he thought of him while he was his guest.
Speaker 1: What security would one have for it? Mister Bigler smiled
Speaker 1: a hard kind of smile and said, you'd be inside,
Speaker 1: mister Bolton, and you'd have the first chance in the deal.
Speaker 1: This was rather unintelligible to Ruth, who was nevertheless somewhat
Speaker 1: amused by the study of a type of character she
Speaker 1: had seen before. At length, she interrupted the conversation by asking,
Speaker 1: you'd sell the stock, I suppose, mister Bigler, to anybody
Speaker 1: who was attracted by the prospectus, Oh, certainly serve all alike,
Speaker 1: said mister Bigler, now noticing Ruth for the first time,
Speaker 1: and a little puzzled by the serene, intelligent face was
Speaker 1: turned towards him. Well, what would become of the poor
Speaker 1: people who had been led to put their little money
Speaker 1: into the speculation when you go out of it and
Speaker 1: left it half way? It would be no more true
Speaker 1: to say of mister Biggler that he was or could
Speaker 1: be embarrassed, than to say that a brass counterfeit dollar
Speaker 1: piece would change color when refused. The question annoyed him
Speaker 1: a little in mister Bolton's presence, Why yes, miss, of course,
Speaker 1: in a great enterprise for the benefit of the community,
Speaker 1: there will little things occur which which and of course
Speaker 1: the poor ought to be looked to. I tell my
Speaker 1: wife that the poor must be looked to if you
Speaker 1: can tell who are poor. There's so many impostors, and
Speaker 1: then there's so many poor in the legislature to be
Speaker 1: looked after, said the contractor with a sort of a chuckle.
Speaker 1: Isn't that so, mister Bolton. Eli Bolton replied that he
Speaker 1: never had much to do with the legislature. Yes, continued
Speaker 1: this public benefit an uncommon poor lot this year uncommon
Speaker 1: consequently an expensive lot. The fact is, mister Bolton, that
Speaker 1: the price is raised so high on the United States Senator,
Speaker 1: now that it affects the whole market. You can't get
Speaker 1: any public improvement through on reasonable terms. Simony is what
Speaker 1: I call it. Simony, repeated mister Biggler, as if he
Speaker 1: had said a good thing. Mister Biggiler went on and
Speaker 1: gave some very interesting details of the intimate connection between
Speaker 1: railroads and politics, and thoroughly entertained himself all dinner time,
Speaker 1: and as much disgusted Ruth, who asked no more questions,
Speaker 1: and her father, who replied in monosyllables. I wish, said
Speaker 1: Ruth to her father, after the guests had gone, that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't bring home any more such horrid men do
Speaker 1: all men who wear big diamond breastpins, flourish their knives
Speaker 1: at table and use bad grammar and cheat. Oh child,
Speaker 1: they mustn't be too observing. Mister Bigler is one of
Speaker 1: the most important men in the state. Nobody has more
Speaker 1: influence at Harrisburg. I don't like him any more than
Speaker 1: thee does, but I'd better lend him a little money
Speaker 1: than to have his ill will father I think thee'd
Speaker 1: better have his ill will than his company. Is it
Speaker 1: true that he gave money to help build the pretty
Speaker 1: little church of Saint James the less and that he
Speaker 1: is one of the vestrymen. Yes, he is not such
Speaker 1: a bad fellow. One of the men in Third Street
Speaker 1: asked him the other day whether his was a high
Speaker 1: church or a low church. Biggler said he didn't know.
Speaker 1: He'd been in it once, and he could touch the
Speaker 1: ceiling in the side aisle with his hand. I think
Speaker 1: he's just horrid, was Ruth's final summary of him, after
Speaker 1: the manner of the swift judgment of women, with no
Speaker 1: consideration of the extenuating circumstances, mister Bigler had no idea
Speaker 1: that he had not made a good impression on the
Speaker 1: whole family. He certainly intended to be agreeable. Margaret agreed
Speaker 1: with her daughter, and though she never said anything to
Speaker 1: such people, she was grateful to Ruth for sticking at
Speaker 1: least one pin into him. Such was the serenity of
Speaker 1: the Bolton household that a stranger in it would never
Speaker 1: have suspected there was any opposition to Ruth's going to
Speaker 1: the medical school, and she went quietly to take her
Speaker 1: residence in town, and began her attendance of the lectures
Speaker 1: as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Speaker 1: She did not heed if she heard the busy and
Speaker 1: wondering gossip of relations and acquaintances, gossip that has no
Speaker 1: less currency among the friends than elsewhere, because it is
Speaker 1: whispered slyly and creeps about in an undertone. Ruth was
Speaker 1: absorbed and for the first time in her life, thoroughly happy,
Speaker 1: happy in the freedom of her life and in the
Speaker 1: keen enjoyment of the investigation that broadened its field day
Speaker 1: by day. She was in high spirits when she came
Speaker 1: home to spend first days. The house was full of
Speaker 1: her gaiety and her merry laugh, and the children wished
Speaker 1: that Ruth would never go away again. But her mother
Speaker 1: noticed with a little anxiety the sometimes flushed face, and
Speaker 1: the sign of an eager spirit in the kindling eyes,
Speaker 1: and as well the serious air of determination and endurance
Speaker 1: in her face at unguarded moments. The college was a
Speaker 1: small one, and it sustained itself not without difficulty. In
Speaker 1: this city which is so conservative and as yet the
Speaker 1: origin of so many radical movements. There were not more
Speaker 1: than a dozen attendants on the lectures altogether, so that
Speaker 1: the enterprise had the air of an experiment and the
Speaker 1: fascination of pioneering for those engaged in it. There was
Speaker 1: one woman physician driving about town in her carriage, attacking
Speaker 1: the most violent diseases in all quarters, with persistent courage,
Speaker 1: like a modern Bologna in her war chariot, who was
Speaker 1: popularly supposed to gather in fees to the amount ten
Speaker 1: to twenty thousand dollars a year. Perhaps some of these
Speaker 1: students looked forward to the near day when they would
Speaker 1: support such a practice and a husband besides, But it
Speaker 1: is unknown that any of them ever went further than
Speaker 1: practice in hospitals and in their own nurseries, and it
Speaker 1: is feared that some of them were quite as ready
Speaker 1: as their sisters in emergencies to call a man. If
Speaker 1: Ruth had any exaggerated expectations of a professional life, she
Speaker 1: kept them to herself and was known to her fellows
Speaker 1: of the class simply as a cheerful, sincere student, eager
Speaker 1: in her investigations, and never impatient at anything except an
Speaker 1: insinuation that women had not as much mental capacity for
Speaker 1: science as men. They really say, said one young Quaker
Speaker 1: sprig to another youth of his age that Ruth Bolton
Speaker 1: is really going to be a sawbones, attends lectures, cuts
Speaker 1: up bodies, and all that she's cool enough for a
Speaker 1: surgeon anyway. He spoke feelingly, for he had very likely
Speaker 1: been weighed in Ruth's calm eyes sometime and thoroughly scared
Speaker 1: by the little laugh that accompanied a puzzling reply to
Speaker 1: one of his conversational nothings. Such young gentlemen at this
Speaker 1: time did not come very distinctly into Ruth's horizon, except
Speaker 1: as amusing circumstances. About the details of her student life.
Speaker 1: Ruth said very little to her friends, but they had
Speaker 1: reason to know afterwards that it required all her nerve
Speaker 1: and the almost complete exhaustion of her physical strength to
Speaker 1: carry her through. She began her anatomical practice upon detached
Speaker 1: portions of the human frame, which were brought into the
Speaker 1: demonstrating room, dissecting the eye, the ear, and a small
Speaker 1: tangle of muscles and nerves, an occupation which had not
Speaker 1: much more savor of death in it than the analysis
Speaker 1: of a portion of a plant out of which the
Speaker 1: life went when it was plucked up by the roots.
Speaker 1: Custom inures the most sensitive persons to that which is
Speaker 1: at first most repellent, And in the late war we
Speaker 1: saw the most delicate women, who could not at home
Speaker 1: endure the sight of blood, become so used to scenes
Speaker 1: of carnage that they walked the hospitals and the margins
Speaker 1: of battlefields amid the poor remnants of torn humanity, with
Speaker 1: as perfect self possession as if they were strolling in
Speaker 1: a flower garden. It happened that Ruth was one evening
Speaker 1: deep in a line of investigation which she could not
Speaker 1: finish or understand without demonstration, and so eager was she
Speaker 1: in it that it seemed as if she could not
Speaker 1: wait till the next day. She therefore persuaded a fellow
Speaker 1: student who was reading that evening with her, to go
Speaker 1: down to the dissecting room of the college and ascertain
Speaker 1: what they wanted to know by an hour's work. There.
Speaker 1: Perhaps also Ruth wanted to test her own nerve, and
Speaker 1: to see whether the power of association was stronger in
Speaker 1: her mind than her own will. The janitor of the
Speaker 1: shabby and comfortless old building admitted the girls not without suspicion,
Speaker 1: and gave them lighted candles which they would need without
Speaker 1: other remark than there's a new one, miss. As the
Speaker 1: girls went up the broad stairs, they climbed to the
Speaker 1: third story and paused before a door, which they unlocked,
Speaker 1: and which admitted them into a long apartment with a
Speaker 1: row of windows on one side and one at the end.
Speaker 1: The room was without light, save from the stars and
Speaker 1: the candles the girls carried, which revealed to them dimly
Speaker 1: two long and several small tables, a few benches and chairs,
Speaker 1: a couple of skeletons hanging on the wall, a sink,
Speaker 1: and cloth covered heaps of something upon the tables. Here
Speaker 1: and there the windows were open, and the cool night
Speaker 1: wind came in, strong enough to flutter a white covering
Speaker 1: now and then, and to shake the loose casements. But
Speaker 1: all the sweet odors of the night could not take
Speaker 1: from the room a faint suggestion of mortality. The young
Speaker 1: ladies paused a moment. The room itself was familiar enough,
Speaker 1: but night makes almost any chamber eerie, and especially such
Speaker 1: a room of detention as this, where the mortal parts
Speaker 1: of the unburied might almost be supposed to be visited
Speaker 1: on the sighing night winds by the wandering spirits of
Speaker 1: their late tenants opposite, and at some distance across the
Speaker 1: roofs of lower buildings, the girls saw a tall edifice,
Speaker 1: the long upper story of which seemed to be a
Speaker 1: dancing hall. The windows of that were also open, and
Speaker 1: through them they heard the scream of the jiggered and
Speaker 1: tortured violin, and the pump pump of the oboe, and
Speaker 1: saw the moving shapes of men and women in quick transition,
Speaker 1: and heard the prompter's drawl. I wonder, said Ruth, what
Speaker 1: the girls dancing there would think if they saw us,
Speaker 1: or knew there was such a room as this so
Speaker 1: near them. She did not speak very loud, and perhaps unconsciously,
Speaker 1: the girls drew near to each other. As they approached
Speaker 1: the long table in the center of the room, A
Speaker 1: straight object lay upon it, covered with a sheet. This
Speaker 1: was doubtless the new one of which the janitor spoke.
Speaker 1: Ruth advanced and with a not very steady hand, and
Speaker 1: lifted the white covering from the upper part of the
Speaker 1: figure and turned it down. Both girls started. It was
Speaker 1: a negro. The black face seemed to defy the pallor
Speaker 1: of death and asserted an ugly life likeness that was
Speaker 1: frightful Ruth was as pale as the white sheet, and
Speaker 1: her comrade whispered, come away, Ruth, it is awful. Perhaps
Speaker 1: it was the wavering light of the candles, perhaps it
Speaker 1: was only the agony from a death of pain. But
Speaker 1: the repulsive black face seemed to wear a scowl that said,
Speaker 1: haven't you yet done with the outcast, persecuted black man?
Speaker 1: But you must now haul him from his grave and
Speaker 1: send even your women to dismember his body. Who is
Speaker 1: this dead man one of thousands who died yesterday and
Speaker 1: will be dust anon to protest that science shall not
Speaker 1: turn his worthless Carcas to some account, Ruth could have
Speaker 1: had no such thought, for with a pity in her
Speaker 1: sweet face that for the moment overcame fear and disgust,
Speaker 1: she reverently replaced the covering and went away to her
Speaker 1: own table, as her companion did to hers, And there
Speaker 1: for an hour they worked at their several problems, without speaking,
Speaker 1: but not without an awe of the presence there the
Speaker 1: new one, and not without an awful sense of life itself,
Speaker 1: as they heard the pulsations of the music and the
Speaker 1: light laughter from the dancing hall. When at length they
Speaker 1: went away and locked the dreadful room behind them, and
Speaker 1: came out into the street where people were passing. They
Speaker 1: for the first time realized, in the relief they felt,
Speaker 1: what a nervous strain they had been under. End of
Speaker 1: Chapter fifteen.