This, however, Tom resolutely refused; he
was bad enough, in all conscience; but the devil himself could not
tempt him to turn slave dealer.
Finding Tom so squeamish on this point, he did not insist upon it, but
proposed instead that he should turn usurer; the devil being extremely
anxious for the increase of usurers, looking upon them as his peculiar
people.
To this no objections were made, for it was just to Tom's taste.
"You shall open a broker's shop in Boston next month," said the black
man.
"I'll do it to-morrow, if you wish," said Tom Walker.
"You shall lend money at two per cent a month."
"Egad, I'll charge four!" replied Tom Walker.
"You shall extort bonds, foreclose mortgages, drive the merchant to
bankruptcy - "
"I'll drive him to the d - -l," cried Tom Walker, eagerly.
"You are the usurer for my money!" said the black legs, with delight.
"When will you want the rhino?"
"This very night."
"Done!" said the devil.
"Done!" said Tom Walker. - So they shook hands and struck a bargain.
A few days' time saw Tom Walker seated behind his desk in a counting
house in Boston. His reputation for a ready-moneyed man, who would lend
money out for a good consideration, soon spread abroad. Every body
remembers the days of Governor Belcher, when money was particularly
scarce. It was a time of paper credit. The country had been deluged
with government bills; the famous Land Bank had been established; there
had been a rage for speculating; the people had run mad with schemes
for new settlements; for building cities in the wilderness; land
jobbers went about with maps of grants, and townships, and Eldorados,
lying nobody knew where, but which every body was ready to purchase. In
a word, the great speculating fever which breaks out every now and then
in the country, had raged to an alarming degree, and body was dreaming
of making sudden fortunes from nothing. As usual, the fever had
subsided; the dream had gone off, and the imaginary fortunes with it;
the patients were left in doleful plight, and the whole country
resounded with the consequent cry of "hard times."
At this propitious time of public distress did Tom Walker set up as a
usurer in Boston. His door was soon thronged by customers. The needy
and the adventurous; the gambling speculator; the dreaming land jobber;
the thriftless tradesman; the merchant with cracked credit; in short,
every one driven to raise money by desperate means and desperate
sacrifices, hurried to Tom Walker.
Thus Tom was the universal friend of the needy, and he acted like a
"friend in need;" that is to say, he always exacted good pay and good
security. In proportion to the distress of the applicant was the
hardness of his terms. He accumulated bonds and mortgages; gradually
squeezed his customers closer and closer; and sent them, at length, dry
as a sponge from his door.
In this way he made money hand over hand; became a rich and mighty man,
and exalted his cocked hat upon 'change. He built himself, as usual, a
vast house, out of ostentation; but left the greater part of it
unfinished and unfurnished out of parsimony. He even set up a carriage
in the fullness of his vain-glory, though he nearly starved the horses
which drew it; and as the ungreased wheels groaned and screeched on the
axle trees, you would have thought you heard the souls of the poor
debtors he was squeezing.
As Tom waxed old, however, he grew thoughtful. Having secured the good
things of this world, he began to feel anxious about those of the next.
He thought with regret on the bargain he had made with his black
friend, and set his wits to work to cheat him out of the conditions. He
became, therefore, all of a sudden, a violent church-goer. He prayed
loudly and strenuously as if heaven were to be taken by force of lungs.
Indeed, one might always tell when he had sinned most during the week,
by the clamor of his Sunday devotion. The quiet Christians who had been
modestly and steadfastly travelling Zion-ward, were struck with
self-reproach at seeing themselves so suddenly outstripped in their
career by this new-made convert. Tom was as rigid in religious, as in
money matters; he was a stern supervisor and censurer of his neighbors,
and seemed to think every sin entered up to their account became a
credit on his own side of the page. He even talked of the expediency of
reviving the persecution of quakers and anabaptists. In a word, Tom's
zeal became as notorious as his riches.
Still, in spite of all this strenuous attention to forms, Tom had a
Lurking dread that the devil, after all, would have his due. That he
might not be taken unawares, therefore, it is said he always carried a
small Bible in his coat pocket. He had also a great folio Bible on his
counting-house desk, and would frequently be found reading it when
people called on business; on such occasions he would lay his green
spectacles on the book, to mark the place, while he turned round to
drive some usurious bargain.
Some say that Tom grew a little crack-brained in his old days, and that
fancying his end approaching, he had his horse new shod, saddled and
bridled, and buried with his feet uppermost; because he supposed that
at the last day the world would be turned upside down; in which case he
should find his horse standing ready for mounting, and he was
determined at the worst to give his old friend a run for it. This,
however, is probably a mere old wives' fable.
