【生活常识教科书】Vera_,The_Medium(媒介维拉).pdfVIP

更多好书请点击 Vera, The Medium Vera, The Medium Richard Harding Davis 1 更多好书请点击 Vera, The Medium Part I Happy in the hope that the news was exclusive, the Despatch had thrown the name of Stephen Hallowell, his portrait, a picture of his house, and the words, At Point of Death! across three columns. The announcement was heavy, lachrymose, bristling with the melancholy self- importance of the man who saw the deceased, just two minutes before the train hit him. But the effect of the news fell short of the effort. Save that city editors were irritated that the presidents of certain railroads figured hastily on slips of paper, the fact that an old man and his millions would soon be parted, left New York undisturbed. In the early 80s this would not have been so. Then, in the uplifting of the far West, Stephen Hallowell was a national figure, in the manoeuvres of the Eastern stock market an active, alert power. In those days, when a man with a few millions was still listed as rich, his fortune was considered colossal. A patent coupling-pin, the invention of his brother-in-law, had given him his start, and, in introducing it, and in his efforts to force it upon the new railroads of the West, he had obtained a knowledge of their affairs. From that knowledge came his wealth. That was twenty years ago. Since then giants had arisen in the land; men whose wealth made the fortune of Stephen Hallowell appear a comfortable competence, his schemes and stratagems, which, in their day, had bewildered Wall Street, as simple as the trading across the counter of a cross-roads store. For years he had been out of it. He had lost count. Disuse a