Rensselaer Union, Volume 2, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 May 1870 — McFadden’s Masterstroke. [ARTICLE]

McFadden’s Masterstroke.

Samuil Mofaddbn was a watchman in a bank. He was poor, but honest, and his life was without reproach. The trouble with him was that he felt he waa not appreciated. His salary wasonly four dollars a week, and when he asked to have it raised, the President, and the Cashier and the Board of Directors glared at him through their spectacles, and -frowned on him, and told him to go out and stop his insolence, when he knew business was dull and the bank could not meet its expenses now, let alone recklessly lavishing one dollar a week more upon such a miserable worm as Samuel MaFadden. And then Samuel McFadden felt depressed and sad, and the haughty scorn of the President and Cashier cut him to the soul. He would often go out into the side-yard and bow his venerable twentyfour inch head, and weep gallons and gallons of tears over his insignificance, and pray that he might be made worthy of the Cashier’s ana the President’s polite attention.

One night a happy thought struck him ; a gleam of light burst upon his soul, and gazing down the dim vista of the years, with his eyesail blinded with the mist of joyous tears, he saw himself, rich, honored and respected. Bo Samuel McFadden fooled around and got a jimmy, and a monkey-wrench, and a crooss-cut saw, and a cold-chisel, and a drill, and about half a ton of gunpowder and nitro-glycerine, and all those things. Then in the dead of night he went to the fire-proof safe, and, after working at it for a while, burst the door and brick work into immortal smash, with such perfect success that there was not enough of that safe left to make a car-pet-tack. Mr. McFadden then proceeded to load up with coupons and greenbacks, and currency and specie, and to nail all the odd change that was lying around anywhere, so that he proceed out of the bank with over one millton dollars on him. He then retired to an unassuming residence out of town, and sent word to "the detectives where he was. 1 It was all serene and beautiftil for Samuel McFadden now He felt that it was all right at last, and that the dark night of sorrow had passed, and that the bright rays of the sun of prosperity at last illuminated his path- A detective called oif him next day with a soothing note from the Cashier. McFadden treated it with lofty scorn. Detectives called on him every day with humble notes from the President, and the Cashier, and the Board of Directors, and the clerks, and stockholders. At last the bank officers got up a magnificent private supper, to Which Mr. McFadden was invited. He came, a.<d, as the bank officers bowed down in the dust before him, he pondered over the bitter, bitter past, and his soul was filled with wild exultation. (It seems to me that that last sentence is symmetrical and poetic I It strikes me so, anyhow.) Before he drove away in his carriage that night, it was all fixed that Mr. McFadden was to keep half a million of that money, and to be unmolested if he returned the other half. He fulfilled bis contract like anhonest man; but refused, with haughty disdain, the offer of the Cashier to marry his (McFadden’s) daugh-

ter. i Mac is now honored and respected. He moves in the best society; he browses around in purple and fine linen and other good clothes, and enjoys himself first rate. And often now he takes his infant sonupon his knee ard tells him of his early life, and instils holy precepts into the child’s mind, and shows him how, by industry and perseverence, and frugality, and nitro glycerine, and monkey-wrench-es, and enterprise, and cross cut saws, and familiarity with the detective system, even the poor may rise to affluence and respectability. ■

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