Mary Minds Her Business | Page 2

both socially and industrially until New Bethel
bade fair to become one of the leading cities in the state. He developed
the water power by building a great dam above the factory and forming
a lake nearly ten miles long. He also developed an artillery wheel
which has probably rolled along every important road in the civilized
world.
Indeed he was so engaged in these enterprises that he didn't marry until
he was well past forty-five. Then one spring, going to Charlestown to
buy his season's supply of pine, he came back with a bride from one of
the oldest, one of the most famous families in all America.
There were three children to this marriage--one son and two daughters.

I will tell you about the daughters in my first chapter--two delightful
old maids who later had a baby between them--but first I must tell you
about the seventh and last Josiah.
In his youth he was wild.
This may have been partly due to that irreducible minimum of Original
Sin which (they say) is in all of us--and partly due to his cousin
Stanley.
Now I don't mean to say for a moment that Stanley Woodward was a
natural born villain. I don't think people are born that way at all. At first
the idea probably struck him as a sort of a joke. "If anything happens to
young Josiah," I can imagine him thinking to himself with a grin, "I
may own this place myself some day.... Who knows?"
And from that day forward, he unconsciously borrowed from the
spiders--if you can imagine a smiling spider--and began to spin.
Did young Josiah want to leave the office early? Stanley smilingly did
his work for him.
Was young Josiah late the next morning? Stanley smilingly hid his
absence.
Did young Josiah yearn for life and adventure? Stanley spun a few
more webs and they met that night in Brigg's livery stable.
It didn't take much of this--unexpectedly little in fact--the last of the
Spencers resembling one of those giant firecrackers of bygone
days--the bigger the cracker, the shorter the fuse. Some say he married
an actress, which was one of the things which were generally
whispered when I was a boy. A Russian they said she was--which never
failed to bring another gasp. Others say she was a beautiful bare-back
rider in a circus and wore tights--which was another of the things which
used to be whispered when I was a boy, and not even then unless the
children had first been sent from the room and only bosom friends were
present.
Whatever she was, young Josiah disappeared with her, and no one saw
him again until his mother died in the mansion on the hill. Some say
she died of a broken heart, but I never believed in that, for if sorrow
could break the human heart I doubt if many of us would be alive to
smile at next year's joys. However that may be, I do believe that young
Josiah thought that he was partly responsible for his mother's death. He
turned up at the funeral with a boy seven years old; and bit by bit we

learned that he was separated from his wife and that the court had given
him custody of their only child.
As you have probably noticed, there are few who can walk so straight
as those who have once been saved from the crooked path. There are
few so intolerant of fire as those poor, charred brands who have once
been snatched from the burning.
After his mother's funeral young Spencer settled down to a life of
atonement and toil, till first his father and then even his cousin Stanley
were convinced of the change which had taken place in the one-time
black sheep of the family.
By that time the patents on the artillery wheel had expired and a
competition had set in which was cutting down the profits to zero.
Young Josiah began experimenting on a new design which finally
resulted in a patent upon a combination ball and roller bearing. This
was such an improvement upon everything which had gone before, that
gradually Spencer & Son withdrew from the manufacture of wagons
and wheels and re-designed their whole factory to make bearings.
This wasn't done in a month or two, nor even in a year or two. Indeed
the returned prodigal grew middle aged in the process. He also saw the
possibilities of harnessing the water power above the factory to make
electric current. This current was sold so cheaply that more and more
factories were drawn to New Bethel until the fame of the city's products
were known wherever the language of commerce was spoken.
At the height of his son's success, old Josiah died, joining those silent