United States or Greenland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Come to the bottom of your little garden, Father Fischer," said the important man. "You are hearty?" he went on, sitting down under a vine arbor and scanning the old man from head to foot, as a dealer in human flesh scans a substitute for the conscription. "Ay, hearty enough for a tontine," said the lean little old man; his sinews were wiry, and his eye bright. "Does heat disagree with you?"
His few days in Glasgow are recorded in a graphic sketch of the bald-headed merchants at the Tontine, and an account of his introduction to Dr. Chalmers, to whom he refers always with admiration and a respect but slightly modified. The critic's praise of British contemporaries, other than relatives, is so rare that the following sentences are worth transcribing:
Next day our prospectus appeared in the newspapers. It was read, canvassed, and generally approved of. During the afternoon I took an opportunity of looking into the Tontine, and, while under shelter of the Glasgow "Herald," my ears were solaced with such ejaculations as the following: "I say, Jimsy, hae ye seen this grand new prospectus for a railway tae Glenmutchkin?" "Ay. It looks no that ill.
'It's simply a readjustment, Michael explained. 'I take up Uncle Joseph's liabilities; and if he gets the tontine, it's to be mine; if my father gets it, it's mine anyway, you see. So that I'm rather advantageously placed. 'Morris, my unconverted friend, you've got left, was John's comment.
Following the clues supplied by the members of the Tontine group a number of the papers and the important press services had followed the dim traces of one Amos Brown, the last surviving member of the batch of prisoners who had been numbered '14' in Libby Prison far back in 1864.
In view of the to do about prohibition and bootlegging in this country, it would be swell to have a feature story about bootlegging in Canada. Run up to Quebec and Montreal and stop at places between and give us a story will you. That Tontine story was a nice story, Jimmy, g'by." Hite had talked fast in jerky sentences. All Jimmy had said was, "Hello." The wire was dead.
It's because Masterman's dead, and he's keeping it dark. 'Golly! cried the impressionable John. 'But what's the use? Why does he do it, anyway? 'To defraud us of the tontine, said his brother. 'He couldn't; you have to have a doctor's certificate, objected John. 'Did you never hear of venal doctors? enquired Morris.
Among them was Lorenzo Tonti, direct descendant of the Tonti, of insurance fame. The youngster had been brought to the United States by one of the followers of Garibaldi, the Italian liberator, who spent a few years in New York City about 1852. "This youngster explained to his comrades the Tontine insurance plan. To boys of that age, fresh from war, this species of gambling seemed very attractive.
He must have some of that eight hundred left; if he has I'll force him to go shares; and even if he hasn't, I'll tell him the tontine affair, and with a desperate man like Pitman at my back, it'll be strange if I don't succeed. Well and good. But how to lay hands upon Bent Pitman, except by advertisement, was not so clear. And even so, in what terms to ask a meeting? on what grounds? and where?
'It only contained specimens. And he walked hastily away. Ensconced once more in a hansom, he proceeded to reconsider his position. He should lose the tontine, and with that the last hope of his seven thousand eight hundred pounds.
Word Of The Day