Joyces Investments | Page 6

as
"marsh lands." Had she named them a desert instead, though, she
would have been nearer correct, for is not a desert a "great sandy
plain?" So was the site of the great factories known as the Early Glass
Works. They seemed to have been set down with no thought but to
construct--a shelter for costly machinery; as to those who worked it, let
them manage anyhow. The buildings were massive and expensive
where used to protect senseless iron and steel; low, squalid, and flung
together in the cheapest way where used to house sentient human
beings.
In a certain spasm of reformation they had been purchased by James J.
Early after a venture in his gambling schemes so surpassingly

"lucky"--to quote himself--that he was almost shamed into decency by
its magnitude. He even felt a thrill of compunction--a very brief
thrill--for the manner in which two-score people, who had trusted him,
were left in the trough of ruin while he rode high on the wave of
success. Almost trembling between triumph and contrition, he had been
seized with the virtuous resolve to quit speculation for honest industry,
and his investment in these glass-works was the result. Through his
wildest plunging he had been shrewd enough never to risk his all in one
venture--in fact, he never took any great risks for himself, except so far
as his immortal soul was concerned--consequently when death
overtook him and he, perforce, laid down the only thing he valued, his
fortune, it had reached proportions of which figures could give but little
idea. His daughter Joyce, sole heir-at-law, was almost overwhelmed by
the burden of these millions, especially as she realized how dishonestly
they had been acquired. She thoroughly appreciated the methods taken
to possess them (one cannot say earn in this connection) and her
sensitive soul shrank in terror from benefiting only through others'
misfortunes. If she could not gather up and restore, she might at least
bestow wherever help seemed most needed, thus perhaps in time lifting
the curse she felt must rest on these ill-gotten gains. With James Early's
usual policy he had spent money at the Works only where it would
increase the value of the plant, and the working power of the machinery.
The idea of wasting a dollar in making the homes of his employees
more attractive, or in putting within their reach mental and moral helps,
had never even occurred to him. Treeless, arid, and flat, the country
stretched away on every side, only broken by one or two slight knolls
separating the Works from a small river that intersected the land at
some distance. In the midst of this plain stood the great buildings,
belching forth smoke from their tall chimneys, while, radiating from
this busy nucleus, were several rows of mere barracks, known as the
cottages of the workmen.
It should be the daughter's policy to make this district blossom as the
rose, and to make its people happy and contented.
You have doubtless noticed the seeming discrepancy between the
names borne by Joyce and her father, and this is its explanation. The

marriage of the scheming Yankee, James Early, into the then wealthy
and powerful family of Lavillotte, old-timers of Louisiana soil, was
considered the opposite of an honor by them, with the exception of the
young girl, educated in the north, who had been fascinated by his fine
looks and glib tongue. Therefore, when Joyce was born, an edict was
issued by its leading members--two patriarchal uncles who held control
of the property--that she should be cut off from her maternal rights in
the family estate unless allowed to take the family name. Now, the loss
of money was to J. J. Early the only loss worth mentioning, so he
reluctantly consented, with but one stipulation--that she should bear his
middle name, which was Joyce. Having assured themselves that Joyce
was a proper Christian cognomen, suitable to a woman, they yielded
the point, and Joyce Early was made Joyce Lavillotte by due process of
law before old enough to know, much less to speak, her name. That this
property was largely lost during the civil war, leaving the Earlys almost
destitute at the time that broken-spirited lady died, had never altered
this fact; nor was it changed when, later, after the death of both uncles,
the property in partially restored shape came to the girl, so bound
beneath legal restrictions, that she could never have the management of
anything but the income. In fact, so engrossed had Early become in his
own money-making, by this, that he had little thought to bestow upon a
daughter who could never sympathize in what made life's interest for
him. He had controlled her existence to his own purposes, knowing that
an acknowledged home and daughter somehow give