The Iron Rule: Tyranny in the Household

From the shock of his son’s failure, Mr. Howland did not recover.  In arranging with his own creditors, he had arranged to do too much, and consequently his reduced business went on under pressure of serious embarrassment.  He had sold his house, and two other pieces of property, and was living at a very moderate expense; but all this did not avail, and he saw the steady approaches of total ruin.

One day, at a time when this conviction was pressing most heavily upon him, one of the creditors of Edward, who had lost a good deal by the young man, came into the store, and asked if he had heard lately from his son.

Mr. Howland replied he had not.

“He’s in Mobile, I understand?” said the gentleman.

“I believe he is,” returned Mr. Howland.

“A correspondent of mine writes that he is in business there, and seems to have plenty of money.”

“It is only seeming, I presume,” remarked Mr. Howland.

“He says that he has purchased a handsome piece of property there.”

“It cannot be possible!” was ejaculated.

“I presume that my information is true.  Now, my reason for communicating this fact to you is, that you may write to him, and demand, if he have money to invest, that he refund to you a portion of what you have paid for him, and thus save you from the greater difficulties that I too plainly see gathering around you, and out of which I do not think it is possible for you to come unaided.”

“No, sir,” was the reply of Mr. Howland, as he slowly shook his head.  “If he have money, it is ill-gotten, and I cannot share it.  He owes you, write to him, and demand a payment of the debt.”

“I am willing to yield my right in your favor, Mr. Howland.  In your present extremity, you can make an appeal that it will be impossible for him to withstand.  He may not dream of the position in which you are placed; and it is due to him that you inform him thereof.  It will give him an opportunity to act above an evil and selfish spirit, and this action may be in him the beginning of a better state.”

But the father shook his head again.

“Mr. Howland,” said the other “you owe it to your son to put it in his power to act from a better principle than the one that now appears to govern him.  Let him know of your great extremity, and he may compel himself to act against the selfish cupidities by which he is too plainly governed.  Such action, done in violence of evil affections, may be to him the beginning of a better life.  All things originate in small beginnings.  There must first be a point of influx for good, as well as for bad principles.  Sow this seed in your son’s mind, and it may germinate, and grow into a plant of honesty.”

Mr. Howland heaved a deep sigh, as he answered—­

“This is presenting the subject in a new light; I will think about it.”

“May you think about it to good purpose,” replied the friend, earnestly.

This communication disturbed Mr. Howland greatly.  He had too many good reasons for doubting his son’s integrity of character; but he was not prepared to hear of such deliberate and cruel dishonesty as this.  It was but another name for robbery—­a robbery, even to the ruin of his own father.

“I will demand restitution!” said the old man, impatiently, as his mind dwelt longer and longer on the subject, and his feelings grew more and more indignant.  From the thought of any appeal on the ground of humanity, he revolted.  It was something entirely out of keeping with his peculiar character.  He could not bend to this.

So Mr. Howland wrote a pretty strong letter to his son, in which he set forth in terse language the facts he had heard, and demanded as a right, that restitution be at once made.

Weeks passed and no answer to this demand was received.  In the meantime, another crisis in the affairs of Mr. Howland was rapidly approaching.  Unless aid were received from some quarter, he must sink utterly prostrate under the pressure that was upon him, and again fail to meet the honorable engagements that he had made.  When that crisis came, he would fall to rise no more.

Ten days only remained, and then there would come a succession of payments, amounting in all to over five thousand dollars.  To meet these payments unaided, would be impossible; and there was no one now to aid the reduced and sinking merchant.  There was not a friend to whom he could go for aid so substantial as was now required, for most of his business friends had already suffered to some extent by his failure, and were not in the least inclined to risk anything farther on one whose position was known to be extremely doubtful.

The nearer this second crisis came, and the more distinctly Mr. Howland was able to see its painful features, the more did his heart shrink from encountering a disaster that would involve all his worldly affairs in hopeless ruin.

In this strait, the mind of Mr. Howland kept turning, involuntarily, toward his son Edward, as toward the only resource left him on the earth; but ever as it turned thus, something in him revolted at the idea, and he strove to push it from his thoughts.  He could not do this, however, for it was the straw on the surface of the waters in which he felt himself sinking.

Painfully, and with a sense of deep humiliation, did Mr. Howland at length bring himself up to the point of writing again to his son.  As everything depended on the effect of this second letter, he went down into a still lower deep of humiliation, and after representing in the most vivid colors the extremity to which he was reduced, begged him, if a spark of humanity remained in his bosom, to send him the aid he needed.

With a trembling hope did the father wait, day after day, for an answer to this letter.  Time passed on, and the ninth day since its transmission came and yet there was no reply.

Nervously anxious was Mr. Howland on the morning of the tenth day, for if no help came then, it was all over with him.  His note for fifteen hundred dollars fell due, and must be lifted ere the stroke of three, or the end with him had come.

A few mouthfuls of food were taken at breakfast, and then Mr. Howland hurried away to the Post Office, his heart fluttering with fear and expectation.  A few moments, and he would know his fate.  As he came in sight of the long row of boxes, his eyes glanced eagerly toward the one in which his letters were filed up.  There was something in it.  In a tone of forced composure, he called out the number of his box, and received from the clerk two letters.  He glanced at the post-mark of one, and read—­“New York,” and at the other, and saw—­“Boston.”  For a moment or two his breath was suspended, and his knees smote together.  Then he moved away, slowly, with such a pressure on his feelings that the weight was reproduced on his physical system, and he walked with difficulty.

The letters were from business correspondents, and in no way affected the position of extremity he occupied.  For a greater part of the morning Mr. Howland sat musing at his desk, in a kind of dreamy abstraction.  All effort was felt to be useless, and he made none.  At dinner time he went home, and sat at the table, silent and gloomy; but he scarcely tasted food.  After the meal, he returned to his store—­a faint hope springing up in his mind that Edward might have submitted the aid he had asked for so humbly by private hand, or through some broker in the city, and that it would yet arrive in time to save him.  Alas! this proved a vain hope.  Three o’clock came, and the unredeemed note still lay in bank.

“It is all over!” murmured the unhappy man, as like the strokes of a hammer upon his heart fell the three distinct chimes that rung the knell of his business life.

Taking up a newspaper, and affecting to read, Mr. Howland sat for nearly an hour awaiting the notorial visit, which seemed long delayed.  At last he saw a man enter and come walking back toward the desk at which he sat.  Not doubting but that it was the Notary, he was preparing to answer—­“I can’t take it, up,” when a well-dressed stranger, with a dark, sun-burnt, countenance that had in it many familiar lines, passed before him, and fixed his eyes with an earnest look upon his face.  For a few moments the two men regarded each other in silence, and then the stranger reached out his hand and uttered the single word—­

“Father!”

“Andrew!” responded Mr. Howland, catching eagerly hold of the offered hand.; “Andrew! my son! my son! are you yet alive?”

The great deep of the old man’s heart was suddenly broken up, and he was overwhelmed by the rising floods of emotion.  His lips quivered; there was a convulsive play of all the muscles of his face; and then large tears came slowly over his cheeks.  The man of iron will was melted down; he wept like a child, and his son wept with him.

Scarcely had the first strong emotions created by this meeting exhausted themselves, when another person entered the store, and advanced to where the father and son were standing.  He held a small slip of paper in his hand, and as he came up to Mr. Howland, he said, holding up the piece of paper—­

“Your note for fifteen hundred dollars remains unpaid.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t lift it,” replied Mr. Howland, in a low voice that he wished not to reach the ear of his son; but Andrew heard the answer distinctly, and instantly drawing a large pocket book from his pocket, took out a roll of bank bills which he reached to his father, saying, as he did so—­

“Take what you want.  How timely has been my arrival!”

“My heart blesses you, my son, for this generous tender of aid in a great extremity,” said Mr. Howland in a trembling voice, as he pushed back the roll of money.  “But a crisis in my affairs has just arrived, and the lifting of this note will not save me.”

“How much will save you?” asked Andrew.

“I must have five or six thousand dollars in as many days,” replied Mr. Howland.

“This package of money will serve you then, for it contains ten thousand dollars,” said Andrew.  “Take it.”

“I cannot rob you thus,” returned Mr. Howland, in a broken voice, as he still drew back.

“Let me have that note, my friend.”  Andrew now turned to the Notary, who did not hesitate to exchange the merchant’s promise to pay, for three five hundred dollar bills of a solvent bank.

A brief but earnest and affectionate interview then took place between Andrew and his father, which closed with a request from the former that he might be permitted to see his mother alone, and spend with her the few hours that remained until evening, before the latter joined them.