Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 277, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1913 — JOHN RAWN PROMINIENT CITIZEN [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

JOHN RAWN PROMINIENT CITIZEN

PROMINENT CITIZEN

'&/ emerson Hough

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t . SYNOPSIS. John Rawn is born in Texas. Early In life he shows signs of masterfulness and Inordinate selfishness. He marries Laura Johnson. He is a clerk in a St. Louis railway office when his daughter Grace Js born, years later he hears Grace’s lover, a young engineer named Charles Halsey, speak of a scheme to utilize the lost current of electricity. CHAPTER ll.— Continued. “Charles,” said John Rawn one evening, “I have been thinking over some scientific problems." “In my belief,” went on Rawn, “I am upon the eve of a great success. Charles.” “What sort of success, Mr. Rawn?” Inquired Halsey. Rawn smiled largely. "You will hardly credit me when I tell you, almost all sorts of success! To make It short, I have formed a power company—a concern for the cheap generation and general transmission of power. In the course of a few’months we'll proceed in the manufacture of electrical' transmitters and receivers for what I call the lost current of electricity." \ Halsey stood Cold for a moment, and looked at him in amazement. You don’t mean tp say—why, that’s precisely what I’ve been thinking of (or 60 long.” 'I don’t doubt many have been thinking of it,” rejoined Rawn. “It lia<l to come. These things seem to ha!>pen in cycles. “Moreover, I’ve got the company formed.” “You, Mr. Rawn? How did you manage that? I didn’t know that you—” Halsey at last spoke. “A great many haven’t known about • great many things,” said Rawn, walking up and his hands In his pockets, his air gloomily dignified. “Is it a big company?” queried Halsey wearily. “Twenty-five million dollars,” answered Jonn Rawn calmly. 0 “We are going to dam the Mississippi river, a couple of hundred miles above here at the ledges. For the time, that will be our central power plant. We will contract for a million and a half dollars’ worth of power each year in St Louis alone. That comes down by regular wire transmission. That is nothing, it’s only a drop in the bucket Our big killing is going to be with the other scheme—the second current —the same idea you’ve been trifling with. We’ll go east wjth that.” Young Halsey’s little capital of five hundred dollars was as impQrtant as young Halsey’s original idea; which latter Mr. Rawn had also appropriated.

manager; so that now they made four in company. Very little was said, but after a time young Halsey nervously removed the newspaper from his little machine, and displayed it uncovered on the table, a ribbed and coiled and toothed little model, showipg file marks here and there, and resembling nothing in particular in the world. Young Halsey, tacitly elected spokesman by Rawn, cleared his throat as he addressed the president of the road, for whom he still felt naught but awe. “We have put our receiver in tune with the dynamo in the basement of this building, Mr. Btandley,” began he, finally. * “And now you can see right here, on the table before you, about all the rest of it that we have. It isn’t attached to anything at all. There is no wired connection of any sort whatever. Now if we can run that electric fan over there with ‘juice’ that we can take right out of the air—with the second, current wfyich we take out of the motor in the basement —Just as wsll as the primary current wired to the fan will run it, why, then, it looks to me aB though our receiver here ought to be accepted as a working device.” The room was silent now. They sat looking a£ him. He resumed: “Besides, this receiver is more powerful than you think. I suppose I could burst that Tan wide open with it, by just wiring the two, after disconnecting the original wiring of the fan to the house dynamo.” Hqlsey spoke very calmly, yet the hands of the president of the road,, resting on the edge of the table, trem--bled slightly. The fighting red had disappeared from the face of the G. T. M. He was bluish gray, as though deathly ill. He was, however, the

So now these two brought very i considerable bundles of copper wire and other things, and made several machines of this and the other shape, and tried divers experiments. In all this work young Halsey’s manual skill and technical training continually was in quest, John Rawn for the most part standing by and frowning heavily, watching Jacob labor for the earning of Rasb«l: for Halsey knew this surrender of his idea was the price -of Grace. Halsey had little hope of ultimate success in his appliances. Not so Rawn. He had something akin to a feeling of certainty. Differing thus—yet who shall say they w-ere not partners, after all, since all these things were true regarding them? —they at last emerged from the woodshed in Kelly Row, after many long weeks. They carried into the front room of the Rawn house in Kelly Row a small machine, which presently was to do large things. This novel and mysterious little machine, with a glass jar underneath, mapy coils and wheels within, and an od&, toothed crest of little upreaching metal fingers, had been produced only at great cost, great sacrifice. It had seemed wholly right and reasonable thet all of young Halsey's five hunt dred dollars should disappear little by little, and it had done so, long ago. i; seemed proper that the small savings wfncfl cirace had deposited in a ♦in baking-powder can—for she was like her mother, part ground-squirrel, and secretive —should also disappear little by little, and they also bad gone. In some way, only the women knew how, they all had had enough to eat, qg far as that meant actually necessary food; but. the entire Rawn family were a gaunt and haggard, as well as a wearied and anxious quartette, when flnully they gathered about the little machine out of the woodshed. Their play was on one card and the card wa| turned. What was It? v *

first to recover. "Well, why don’t you burst it, then?” he exclaimed savagely, mopping at his forehead. Every man present sprang back from the little instrument on the table. There came a slowly increasing purr of the motor, a series of intense blue sparks showing at the toothed points of reception. The blades of the fan began to revolve faster and faster; so fast that at length both eye and ear ceased to record their doings. Then, after sight and sound had failed to serve, thire came a crashJ —L_ There was no fan on the shelf where it had stood. Fragments of metal were buried in the woodwork, in the wall. John Rawn wiped the blood from a cut on his cheek. No one said anything. It was quite commonplace, after all. “You wished to see what it would do,” said Halsey grimly. “The power seems to be there. Any time you like, any amount you like. And you saw that it didn’t come in here by wire—it -was only transmitted from the received, not to it. The fan is broken, but the receiver is just the way we left it. Well, it looks as though we had settled a few questions, doesn’t it?" Standley turned an agitated eye upon John Rawn. “Mr. Rawn,” said he, “referring to the tenor of our earlier conversation, I desire to Bay that we are not in the habit of giving the lion’s share to anybody—” “Suit yourself," said John Rawn, smiling. “But in this case.'pp I said to you at first, there's so mjfch in this if anything at all, that there’s no use splitting hajrsj over it.” He receded rapidly from the position he coveted but saw be could not hold. “We ought to begin work at once. Er —Mr. Rawn, do you happen to have any present need for any money—personally?” “No,’ answered John Rawn calmly, “I am In no need of funds. When the organization is completed, and I begin my work as president of the power company, I shall be glfcC to gp on the pay-roll, of course. I shcMd add now that I erpect Mr. Halsey l*> be my general manager in the mechanical department." "in regard to salaries," said the

In the most commonplace way In the world, and quite as though he had always done this very thing, Mr. Henry Warfield Standley, president of the I. & D, A. Railway Co., warned In advance by Mr. Rawn’s telephone, came to the door himself. Presently the three, Rawu, Halsey and the president of the company for which both so long had worked, sat at the long-glasscov-eted table, where lay many papers. The president pushed a button and ordered the attendance"bf Mr. Theodosius Ackerman, the general traffic

president, hesitating, “we might rough* ly -sketch out something—” “My own salary will he a hundred thousand dollars a year,’* said Mri Rawn quietly. “I don’t think we should ask Mr. 1 Halsey to work for less thgn five thousand. Do you. gentlemen?” “There shall be no haggling^gentiemen, no haggling,” said the president blandly. “It shall be as Mr. Rawn suggests.” “That’s the talk!” drawled Ackerman. “I’ll tell you, Rawn, come in to-morrow. We’ll get the patent lawyers and our corporation counsel, and begin work on this thing.” That was all there was about it, the proceedings being wholly prosaic and commonplace. Mr. Halsey found again his newspaper, again wrapped up his machine therein, took it under his arm, and hesitatingly turned toward the door, the palest now, and mpst unhappy of them all. He had denied his own first-born. . / M

CHAPTER 111. The New Mr. Rawn. It was a w’holly different John Rawn who, at forty-eight, found himself seated at the vast and shining desk of the president of the International Power Company, in the city of Chicago. The past was so far behind him that he could not with the utmost striving reconstruct the picture of it. He was a wholly new, distinct and different man. He had not as yet ever worked at a desk blessed with a row of push buttons, and was ignorant as yet, and very naturally, in regard to the particular function of each of these several buttons whose mother of pearl faces now confronted him. Resolving to take them seriatim, he pushed the one farthest to the right; which, as it chanced, was the one arranged to call to him his personal stenographer. The door opened silently: John Rawn looked up and saw standing befor him a young woman whom he had never seen before. “I beg pardon, Madam,” said he, half rising. “I didn’t know you were there. How did —is there anything I can do for you?” “t am the stenographer assigned for your work, Mr. Rawn, until you* shall have concluded your own arrangements in the office,” answered the young woman. She was almost tall, certainly and wholly shapely; young, but fully and adequately feminine; womanly indeed m every well curved line. Her hands and feet, her arms—the latter now disclosed by half sleeves —all were of good modeling. Her hair, piled up in rather high Grecian coiffure and confined by a bandeau of gold-brocaded ribbon, was perhaps just in the least startling, Virginia Delaware, Mr. Rawn’s personal stenographer, was born the daughter of a St. Louis baker. She had, however, passed through that epoch of her development and by some means best known to herself and her family, had attained a good education, ended by three years in a young ladies’ finishing school in the east.- j. :—ZA—-

“I was just about to say,” he went on, “that I intended to have the boy get my car ready. Would you tell him to have 'it at the door in fifteen minutes? Then come back. There are one or two little letters.” A few moments later the young woman was seated at a small table near the end of the desk. Without any nervousness she awaited his pleasure. «. Mr. Rawn’s long and shiny car was waiting for him when he stepped with stately dignity down the broad stair of the National Union Club. Threading its path through the crowded traffic of the side streets, the car presently turned up the long northbound artery of the great western city. Miles of cars carried hundreds of men to miles of mansions. In less than an hour, from town to home, John Rawn also pulled up at the entrance to his home. Speed limits are not for such as Mr. Rawn. This residence, yet another of these pretentious mansions, top-heavy on its inadequate delimitations, and done by one of the most ingenious architects to be found for money, was as new, as hideous, as barbarous as any that could be found in all that long assemblage of varied proofs of architectural aberrations. It was as new as Mr. Rawn himself. The brick walks were hardly yet firmly settled, the shrubs were not yet sure of root, the crocus rows in the borders still showed gaps. Large trees, transplants ed bodily, still were sick at heart in their new surroundings.

“I don’t see how I could stand anything bigger or grander than this.” It could not have been called a wholly happy family gathering, this at Graystone Hall. Indeed, it lacked perhaps three generations, possibly three aeons, of being happy.* <* With little more speech after the evening meal than they had had before, an hour, perhaps, was passed in the room which the architect called the library, Mrs. Rawn called the parlor, and Mr. Rawn called the gold room. Then Laura Rawn, as was her wont, p"assed silently up-stairs to her own apartments—or her bedroom, as she called' it—widely removed, in the architect’s plans, from those of her husband. One room, one couch, had served for both in Kelly Row. * * * • * * • In appearance Virginia Delaware might have won approval from a closer critic than John Rawn. Her face really was almost classical in its lines, her .poise and dignity now might have been that of some young, cleanlimbed wood-goddess of old. She always seemed unfit for humdrum duties. f “We have some letters this morning, Miss Delaware,” began Rawn. “You couldn’t quite take care of them all, eh?” “We handled all we could, Mr. Rawn. I have referred a large number to proper department heads, and answered quite a number. It seemed better to refer these for your own action.” ‘’’Business growing, eh?” said Rawn, turning around to his desk. The girl’s reply was just properly enthusiastic for the business: _ >

“It’s wonderful the mail we get Inquiries come from all over the country. Yes, indeed, it seems to grow.” “I was about to say, Miss Delaware,” *Rawn answered, "that I am, as you know, a very busy man.” “Yes, sir,” she said, evenly and impersonally. “I have so many things to do, you see, that I don’t get much time to attend to little things outside of my A man’s business is a millstone around his neck, Miss Delaware. We men of —ahem!—of affairs are little better than slaves.” “Yes, Mr. Rawn,” she said gently. “I can understand that.” “For instance, I don’t even know, as long as I have been here in Chicago, the names of the best firms of decorators, house furnishers, that sort of thing—” “Does Mrs. Rawn get about very much, sir?” “Mrs. Rawn unfortunately is not very well. Also she has the habit of delaying in such matters. Then, as I don’t myself have the time to take care of everything—why, you see—” Her eyebrows were a trifle raised by now. “ —So I was just wondering whether I couldn’t avail myself of your—your —very possible knowledge of these stores —shops, I mean.” “Of course, Mr. Rawn, I’d be willing to do anything I could,” she said. “I know the city pretty well, having lived here for some time. If you would rather have me use my time in that way, it would be a great pleasure. I like nice things myself, though of course I could never have them. Fve just had to flatten my nose against the window-pane! But what is the color scheme, Mr. Rawn?” “About everything the confounded builders and decorators could think of,” said Rawn frankly. “I think they Called it a gray-and-silver motive. I know there’s something in white, with dark red for the doors and facings.” Miss Delaware sat for a moment, a pencil against her lip, engaged in thought. “Certainly, Mr. Rawn, I’ll be very glad to do it, if I can be spared from the office.” “That’s all, Miss Delaware.” (TO BE CONTINUED.)

Rain’s dignity was such that he scarcely saw the man t?ho took his coat and hat, and who received no greeting from his master. Laura Rawn needed tA speak to him tie second time. “ “Well,” said he, turning and sighing, “how’s everything?” “Very well, John.” “Not so bad, eh?” He Jerked a thumb to indicate the lake. “It’s grand! ’’ said his wife, yet with no vast enthusiasm in her tone. i “I should say It Is grand! Anyhow, there’s nothing grander around Chicago. There’s not very much here in the way of scenery. Of course, in New York—” “Oh, don’t let us talk of New York, John.”

“I Am the Stenographer Assigned for Your Work.”