"Шервуд Андерсен. Белый бедняк (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

Ed Hall again put his arm about the girl's waist and walked away. He forgot
Hugh and thought of himself and of how he wanted to marry the girl whose
young body nestled close to his own--wanted her to be utterly his. For
a few hours he passed out of Hugh's growing sphere of influence on the
collective thought of the town, and lost himself in the immediate
deliciousness of kisses.

And as he passed out of Hugh's influence others came in. On Main Street in
the evening every one speculated on the Missourian's purpose in coming to
Bidwell. The forty dollars a month paid him by the Wheeling railroad could
not have tempted such a man. They were sure of that. Steve Hunter the
jeweler's son had returned to town from a course in a business college at
Buffalo, New York, and hearing the talk became interested. Steve had in him
the making of a live man of affairs, and he decided to investigate. It was
not, however, Steve's method to go at things directly, and he was impressed
by the notion, then abroad in Bidwell, that Hugh had been sent to town by
some one, perhaps by a group of capitalists who intended to start factories
there.

Steve thought he would go easy. In Buffalo, where he had gone to the
business college, he had met a girl whose father, E. P. Horn, owned a soap
factory; had become acquainted with her at church and had been introduced
to her father. The soap maker, an assertive positive man who manufactured
a product called Horn's Household Friend Soap, had his own notion of what
a young man should be and how he should make his way in the world, and had
taken pleasure in talking to Steve. He told the Bidwell jeweler's son of
how he had started his own factory with but little money and had succeeded
and gave Steve many practical hints on the organization of companies. He
talked a great deal of a thing called "control." "When you get ready to
start for yourself keep that in mind," he said. "You can sell stock and
borrow money at the bank, all you can get, but don't give up control. Hang
on to that. That's the way I made my success. I always kept the control."

Steve wanted to marry Ernestine Horn, but felt that he should show what he
could do as a business man before he attempted to thrust himself into so
wealthy and prominent a family. When he returned to his own town and heard
the talk regarding Hugh McVey and his inventive genius, he remembered the
soap maker's words regarding control, and repeated them to himself. One
evening he walked along Turner's Pike and stood in the darkness by the old
pickle factory. He saw Hugh at work under a lamp in the telegraph office
and was impressed. "I'll lay low and see what he's up to," he told himself.
"If he's got an invention, I'll get up a company. I'll get money in and
I'll start a factory. The people here'll tumble over each other to get into
a thing like that. I don't believe any one sent him here. I'll bet he's
just an inventor. That kind always are queer. I'll keep my mouth shut and
watch my chance. If there is anything starts, I'll start it and I'll get
into control, that's what I'll do, I'll get into control."

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