Arcadian Adventures With the Idle Rich

Arcadian Adventures With the Idle Rich by Stephen Leacock

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Authors: Stephen Leacock
Tags: Humour
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since any of the members of the Exchange or the Mausoleum Club had wandered into such places as Cahoga County that they did not know that there was nothing strange in what Tomlinson said. His father was buried there, on the farm itself, in a grave overgrown with raspberry bushes, and with a wooden headstone encompassed by a square of cedar rails, and slept as many another pioneer of Cahoga is sleeping.
    “Devilish smart idea!” they said; and forthwith half the financial men of the city buried their fathers, or professed to have done so, in likely places – along the prospective right-of-way of a suburban railway, for example; in fact, in any place that marked them out for the joyous resurrection of an expropriation purchase.
    Thus the astounding shrewdness of Tomlinson rapidly became a legend, the more so as he turned everything he touched to gold.
    They narrated little stories of him in the whiskey-and-soda corners of the Mausoleum Club.
    “I put it to him in a casual way,” related, for example, Mr. Lucullus Fyshe, “casually, but quite frankly. I said, ‘See here, this is just a bagatelle to you, no doubt, but to me it might be of some use. T.C. bonds,’ I said, ‘have risen twenty-two and a half in a week. You know as well as I do that they are only collateral trust, and that the stock underneath nevercould and never can earn a par dividend. Now,’ I said, ‘Mr. Tomlinson, tell me what all that means?’ Would you believe it, the fellow looked me right in the face in that queer way he has and he said, ‘I don’t know!’”
    “He said he didn’t know!” repeated the listener, in a tone of amazement and respect. “By Jove! eh? he said he didn’t know! The man’s a wizard!”
    “And he looked as if he didn’t!” went on Mr. Fyshe. “That’s the deuce of it. That man when he wants to can put on a look, sir, that simply means nothing, absolutely nothing.”
    In this way Tomlinson had earned his name of the Wizard of American Finance.
    And meantime Tomlinson and his wife, within their suite at the Grand Palaver, had long since reached their decision. For there was one aspect and only one in which Tomlinson was really and truly a wizard. He saw clearly that for himself and his wife the vast fortune that had fallen to them was of no manner of use. What did it bring them? The noise and roar of the City in place of the silence of the farm and the racket of the great rotunda to drown the remembered murmur of the waters of the creek.
    So Tomlinson had decided to rid himself of his new wealth, save only such as might be needed to make his son a different kind of man from himself.
    “For Fred, of course,” he said, “it’s different. But out of such a lot as that it’ll be easy to keep enough for him. It’ll be a grand thing for Fred, this money. He won’t have to grow up like you and me. He’ll have opportunities we never got.”
    He was getting them already. The opportunity to wear seven-dollar patent leather shoes and a bell-shaped overcoat with a silk collar, to lounge into moving picture shows and eat chocolates and smoke cigarettes – all these opportunities hewas gathering immediately. Presently, when he learned his way round a little, he would get still bigger ones.
    “He’s improving fast,” said mother. She was thinking of his patent leather shoes.
    “He’s popular,” said his father. “I notice it downstairs. He sasses any of them just as he likes; and no matter how busy they are, as soon as they see it’s Fred they’re all ready to have a laugh with him.”
    Certainly they were, as any hotel clerk with plastered hair is ready to laugh with the son of a multimillionaire. It’s a certain sense of humour that they develop.
    “But for us, mother,” said the Wizard, “we’ll be rid of it. The gold is there. It’s not right to keep it back. But we’ll just find a way to pass it on to folks that need it worse than we do.”
    For a time they had thought of giving away the fortune.

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