Robert Heinlein - To Sail Beyond The Sunset

‘Eighteen ninety-three... Let me see. I was nine and just beginning to notice that girls are different. Uh, you and Uncle Ira went to the Chicago Fair. When you got back I noticed that you smelled good. But it took another five years to get you to notice me, and I had to slide a pie under you to manage it?

‘You always were a bad boy. Never mind my folly in ‘98; what happened in ‘93?'

‘Hmm... Mr Cleveland started his second term. Then banks started to fail and everybody blamed it on him. Seems a bit unfair to me - it was too soon after he was sworn in. The Panic of'93, they called it'

‘So they did and my father did not lose anything in it, for reasons he described as pure dumb luck.'

‘Nor did my mother, because she always did her banking in a teapot on the top shelf.'

‘Father accidentally did something like that. He left Mother a four-month allowance, in cash, in four sealed envelopes, each with a date. He took with him cash, in gold, in a money belt. And he left money behind - whatever it was beyond what we needed - in a lockbox, again in gold.

‘Nelson, he told me later that he had not guessed that banks were about to fail; he did it just to annoy Deacon Houlihan - Deacon Hooligan, Father called him. Do you remember him? President of Buder State Bank.'

‘No, I guess he died without my permission.'

‘Father told me that the Deacon had remonstrated with him for drawing out cash. The Deacon said it was poor business practice. Just leave instructions to pay Mrs Smith - Mother I mean - so much each month. Father should leave his money where it was and use cheques - the modern way to do business.

‘Father got balky - he's good at that - and consequently the bank failures never touched him. Nelson, I don't think Father did business with any bank after that. He just kept cash in a lockbox in his surgery. I think. Although with Father one is never sure.'

We had a conference about it when we got home, Brian, me, Nelson, Betty Lou. Nelson told them what had happened. ‘Getting money out of that bank was like pulling teeth. This boiled shirt certainly did not want to part with Mo's money. I don't think he would have done so if I had not made a loud, obnoxious nuisance of myself. But that is only partly the point. Mo, tell ‘em about Uncle Ira and a similar case.'

I did so. ‘Dears, I don't claim to know anything about finance. I'm so stupid that I have never understood how a bank can print paper money and claim that it is just the same as real money. But today felt like 1893 to me... because it is just the sort of thing that happened to Father just before the banks started to fail. He didn't get caught by bank failures because he was balky and stopped using banks. I don't know, I just don't know... but I felt uneasy and decided not to put my egg money back into a bank. Brian, will you keep it for me?'

‘Here in the house it could be stolen.'

Nelson said, ‘And if it's in a bank, the bank can fail.'

‘Are you getting jumpy, Nel?'

‘Maybe. Betty Lou, what do you think?'

‘I think I'm going to draw out my thirty-five cents and find a Mason jar and bury it in the back yard.' She paused. ‘And then I'm going to write to my father and tell him what I've done and why. He won't listen - he's a Harvard man. But I'll sleep better if I tell him.'

Brian said, ‘Some others also we must tell.'

‘Who?' said Nelson.

‘Judge Sperling. And my own folks.'

‘We don't want to shout it from the house tops. That could start a run.'

‘Nel, it's our money. If the banking system can't afford to let us draw out our own money and sit on it, then maybe there is something wrong with the banking system.'

‘Tsk, tsk. You some kind of an anarchist or something? Well, let's get busy. The first ones in line always get the biggest pieces.'

Brian was so serious about it that he made a trip back to Ohio, expensive though it was for him to travel without a client to pay for it. There he talked to Judge Sperling and to his parents. I do not know details... but neither the Foundation nor Brian's parents were hurt by the Panic of 1907. Later on we all saw the United States Treasury saved by the intervention of J.P. Morgan... who was vilified for it.

In the meantime the assets of Brian Smith Associates were not buried in the back yard... but were locked up in the house, and we started keeping guns.

Correction: so far as I know, that was when we started keeping guns. I may be mistaken.

While Brian went to Ohio, Nelson and I tried a project: articles for trade journals such as Mining Journal, Modern Mining, and Gold and Silver. Brian Smith Associates ran small display advertisements in each issue. Nelson had pointed out to Brian that we could get major advertising free by Brian writing articles for these journals - each of them carried about the same number of pages of articles and editorials as it did of advertisements. So instead of a little bitty one-column three-inch display card-no, not instead of but in addition to - in addition to advertising Brian should write articles. ‘Lord knows that the stuff they print is dull as ditch water; it can't be hard to write.' So said Nelson.

So Brian tried and the result was dull as ditch water.

Nelson said, ‘Brian old man, you are my revered senior partner... Do you mind if I take a swing at this?'

‘Help yourself. I didn't want to do it, anyhow.'

‘I have the advantage of not knowing anything about mining. You supply the facts - you have; I have them in my hand - and I will slide in some mustard.'

Nelson rewrote Brian's sober factual articles about what a mining consultant's survey could accomplish in a highly irreverent style... and I drew little pictures, cartoons, styled after Bill Nye, to illustrate them. Me an artist? No. But I had taken Professor Huxley's advice (A Liberal Education) seriously and had learned to draw. I was not an artist but I was a competent draughtsman, and I stole details and tricks from Mr Nye and other professionals without a qualm without realising that I was stealing.

Nelson's first attempt retitled Brian's rewritten article as ‘How to Save Money by Skimping' and featured all sorts of grisly mining accidents - which I illustrated.

The Mining Journal not only accepted it; they actually paid for it, five dollars, which none of us had expected.

Nelson eventually worked it into a deal in which Brian's by-line (ghosted by Nelson) appeared in every issue, and a quarter-page display for Brian Smith Associates appeared in a good spot.

At a later time a twin of that article appeared in the Country Gentleman (the Saturday Evening Post's country cousin) telling how to break your neck, lose a leg, or kill your worthless son-in-law on a farm. But the Curtis Publishing Company refused to dicker. They paid for the article; Brian Smith Associates paid for their display cards.

In January 1910 a great comet appeared and soon it dominated the evening sky in the west. Many people mistook it for Halley's Comet, due that year. But it was not; Halley's Comet came later.

In March 1910 Betty Lou and Nelson set up their own household - two adults, two babies - and Random Numbers had a bad time trying to decide where he lived, at The Only House, or with his slave, Betty Lou. For a while he shuttled between the two households, riding any automobile going his way.

In April 1910 the real Halley's Comet began to be prominent in the night sky. In another month it dominated the sky, its head as bright as Venus and its tail half again as long as the Great Dipper. Then it got too close to the Sun to be seen. When it reappeared in the morning sky in May it was still more magnificent. On is May Nelson drove us out to Meyer Boulevard before dawn so that we could see the eastern horizon. The comet's great tail filled the sky, slanting up from the east to the south, pointing down at the Sun below the horizon, an incredible sight.