Here crumbled the last relics of many an ambitious enterprise,--great
ledgers, with their covers still fresh, lay like slabs, from which, if
you wiped away the dust, the gilded names of foundered companies would
flash as from gaudy tombstones; letter-books bursting with letters that
no eye would read again so long as the world lasted; yellow title-deeds
from which all the virtue had long since exhaled, and to which no
dangling of enormous seals could any longer lend a convincing air of
importance. Here everything was dead and dusty as an old shoe. The dry
bones in the valley of Askelon were as children skipping in the morning
sun compared with the dusty death that mouldered and mouldered in this
lonely locked-up room,--this catacomb of dead businesses.
It was seldom necessary to visit this room; but occasionally Henry
would find an excuse to loiter an hour there, for there was a certain
dreary romance about the place, and the almost choking smell of old
leather seemed to promise all sorts of buried secrets. It cannot be said
that the place ever adequately gratified the sense of mystery it
excited; but, after all, to excite the sense of mystery is perhaps
better than to gratify it, and, considering its poor material, this room
was quite a clever old mysteriarch.
Pages:
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91