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It should have its councils or village parliaments, where improvements and new ventures could be discussed. Such a community would soon generate a passionate devotion to its own ideals and interests among the members, who would feel how their fortunes rose with the fortunes of the associations of which they were all members.
As soon as it is erected in all its bland suggestiveness, no matter at what house, a small crowd of street-arabs and nursemaids collect to stare at it, and when tired of staring, pass and repass under it with peculiar satisfaction; the beggar, starving for a crust, lingers doubtfully near it, and ventures to inquire of the influenza-smitten crossing-sweeper whether it is a wedding or a party?
Stirling, who hitherto, like a wise man, had carefully avoided wild-cat mining schemes, and, indeed, ventures of any kind outside his own profession, had for once thrust his prudence into the background and done what he could to further Weston's project, for a reason which he would not have admitted to anybody else.
There he took up his domicile and laid the foundation of his fortune in small trading ventures to New Orleans and Santo Domingo. In 1791 he began to build a fleet of beautiful ships for the China and India trade, their names, Montesquieu, Helvetius, Voltaire, and Rousseau, revealing his ideas of religion and liberty.
Tom Pelton had always lived well, and during the past few years he had speculated in ventures far beyond his means. Losses had pursued him, and he had looked to the senatorship to recoup himself and to stand off the creditors pressing hard for payment. Instead he had been exposed, disgraced, and finally disbarred for attempted bribery.
Nor were these upright and pious Puritan magistrates and these gentlewomen of Boston and Salem the only colonists who displayed such sordid and mercenary bargaining and stipulating in matrimonial ventures: numberless letters and records throughout New England prove the unvarying spirit of calculation that pervaded fashionable courtship.
His treatment of these two women deserved the highest praise; he deprived himself of everything for them, but, although he possessed musical talents that would have enabled him to make a fortune, the immediate needs of those dependent on him, and an extreme reserve, had always led him to prefer an assured income to the uncertain chances of success in larger ventures.
He went home at the close of the session in a contented frame of mind so far as his political prospects were concerned, but he was not free to enjoy the congratulations accorded him for the reason that his business ventures were beginning to give him serious solicitude. The trend of the stock market was again downward.
But for the successful, though occasional ventures of some friendly vessel, that succeeded in running the blockade, bringing stores necessary for the comfort of a war-worn people, dire want might have reigned supreme in many a household, where wealth and luxury once dwelt. So much for the good accomplished by those bold adventurers of the sea.
As far as he could judge on a first inspection, the papers concerned a long series of risky transactions, financial gambling of the most pronounced sort, whereof the few gains had been long since buried deep in scandalous losses. The outrageous folly of some of the ventures and the magnitude of the sums involved made him curse inwardly.
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