The Shuttle | Page 4

heavy rollings and all
such discomforts as small craft can afford. Their staterooms and decks
were not crowded with people to whom the voyage was a mere
incident--in many cases a yearly one. "A crossing" in those days was an
event. It was planned seriously, long thought of, discussed and re-
discussed, with and among the various members of the family to which
the voyager belonged. A certain boldness, bordering on recklessness,
was almost to be presupposed in the individual who, turning his back
upon New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and like cities, turned his face
towards "Europe." In those days when the Shuttle wove at leisure, a
man did not lightly run over to London, or Paris, or Berlin, he gravely
went to "Europe."
The journey being likely to be made once in a lifetime, the traveller's
intention was to see as much as possible, to visit as many cities
cathedrals, ruins, galleries, as his time and purse would allow. People
who could speak with any degree of familiarity of Hyde Park, the

Champs Elysees, the Pincio, had gained a certain dignity. The ability to
touch with an intimate bearing upon such localities was a raison de plus
for being asked out to tea or to dinner. To possess photographs and
relics was to be of interest, to have seen European celebrities even at a
distance, to have wandered about the outside of poets' gardens and
philosophers' houses, was to be entitled to respect. The period was a far
cry from the time when the Shuttle, having shot to and fro, faster and
faster, week by week, month by month, weaving new threads into its
web each year, has woven warp and woof until they bind far shore to
shore.
It was in comparatively early days that the first thread we follow was
woven into the web. Many such have been woven since and have added
greater strength than any others, twining the cord of sex and
home-building and race-founding. But this was a slight and weak one,
being only the thread of the life of one of Reuben Vanderpoel's
daughters--the pretty little simple one whose name was Rosalie.
They were--the Vanderpoels--of the Americans whose fortunes were a
portion of the history of their country. The building of these fortunes
had been a part of, or had created epochs and crises. Their millions
could scarcely be regarded as private property. Newspapers bandied
them about, so to speak, employing them as factors in argument, using
them as figures of speech, incorporating them into methods of
calculation. Literature touched upon them, moral systems considered
them, stories for the young treated them gravely as illustrative.
The first Reuben Vanderpoel, who in early days of danger had traded
with savages for the pelts of wild animals, was the lauded hero of
stories of thrift and enterprise. Throughout his hard-working life he had
been irresistibly impelled to action by an absolute genius of commerce,
expressing itself at the outset by the exhibition of courage in mere
exchange and barter. An alert power to perceive the potential value of
things and the possible malleability of men and circumstances, had
stood him in marvellous good stead. He had bought at low prices things
which in the eyes of the less discerning were worthless, but, having
obtained possession of such things, the less discerning had almost

invariably awakened to the fact that, in his hands, values increased, and
methods of remunerative disposition, being sought, were found.
Nothing remained unutilisable. The practical, sordid, uneducated little
man developed the power to create demand for his own supplies. If he
was betrayed into an error, he quickly retrieved it. He could live upon
nothing and consequently could travel anywhere in search of such
things as he desired. He could barely read and write, and could not spell,
but he was daring and astute. His untaught brain was that of a financier,
his blood burned with the fever of but one desire--the desire to
accumulate. Money expressed to his nature, not expenditure, but
investment in such small or large properties as could be resold at profit
in the near or far future. The future held fascinations for him. He
bought nothing for his own pleasure or comfort, nothing which could
not be sold or bartered again. He married a woman who was a trader's
daughter and shared his passion for gain. She was of North of England
blood, her father having been a hard-fisted small tradesman in an
unimportant town, who had been daring enough to emigrate when
emigration meant the facing of unknown dangers in a half-savage land.
She had excited Reuben Vanderpoel's admiration by taking off her
petticoat one bitter winter's day to sell it to a squaw in exchange for an
ornament for which she chanced to know another squaw would