Nick Corrado 2023-04-24 21:11:46 -04:00 committed by Alex Cabal
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<p>There are yet tales of the Spanish Main. That grim coast washed by the tempestuous Caribbean, and presenting to the sea a formidable border of tropical jungle topped by the overweening Cordilleras, is still begirt by mystery and romance.</p>
<p>Buccaneers and revolutionists have roused the echoes of its cliffs, and the condor has wheeled perpetually above where, in the dark green jungles, they made food for him with their pikes and cutlasses. Taken and retaken by pirates, by adverse powers, and by sudden uprising of rebellious factions, the old towns along the historic 300 miles of adventurous coast have scarcely known for hundreds of years whom rightly to call their master. Pizarro, Balboa, Sir Francis Drake, and Bolivar did what they could to make it a port of Christendom. Sir John Morgan, Lafitte, and other eminent sea-rovers, bombarded and pounded it in the name of Abaddon.</p>
<p>The game still goes on. The tintype man, the enlarged photograph brigand, and the kodaking tourist have found it out. The hucksters of Germany, France, and Syria bag its small change across their counters. The gentleman adventurer throngs the waiting-rooms of its rulers with propositions for railways and concessions. The little, opera bouffe nations play at government and intrigue until some day a big, silent gunboat glides into the offing and warns them not to break their toys. It was in these latter days that Johnny Atwood added his handiwork to the list of casualties along the Spanish Main by his famous manipulation of the shoe market, and his unparalleled feat of elevating that despised and useless weed product, the cockleburr, from its obscurity to be a valuable product in international commerce.</p>
<p>The trouble began, as trouble often begins instead of ending, with a romance. There was a man names Hemstetter, who came to the little Southern town where Johnny lived, to open a general store. His family consisted of one daughter called Rosine, a name that atoned much for “Hemstetter.” This young woman was possessed of sufficient pulchritude to agitate the young men of the community. Johnny, who was among the more violently agitated, was the son of Judge Atwood, who lived in the colonial mansion near the edge of Dalesburg. Being a young man of address and spirit, as well as scion of one of the oldest families in the State, it would seem that the desirable Rosine should have been pleased to return his affection, and be received into the stately but rather empty colonial mansion. But no. There was a cloud on the horizon in the shape of a lively and shrewd young farmer in the neighborhood who dared to enter the lists as a rival to the highborn Atwood.</p>
<p>The trouble began, as trouble often begins instead of ending, with a romance. There was a man named Hemstetter, who came to the little Southern town where Johnny lived, to open a general store. His family consisted of one daughter called Rosine, a name that atoned much for “Hemstetter.” This young woman was possessed of sufficient pulchritude to agitate the young men of the community. Johnny, who was among the more violently agitated, was the son of Judge Atwood, who lived in the colonial mansion near the edge of Dalesburg. Being a young man of address and spirit, as well as scion of one of the oldest families in the State, it would seem that the desirable Rosine should have been pleased to return his affection, and be received into the stately but rather empty colonial mansion. But no. There was a cloud on the horizon in the shape of a lively and shrewd young farmer in the neighborhood who dared to enter the lists as a rival to the highborn Atwood.</p>
<p>One night Johnny propounded to Rosine a question that is considered of great importance by the young. The accessories were all there—moonlight, oleanders, magnolias, and the mock-birds song. Whether or no the shadow of Pinkney Dawson, the prosperous young farmer, came between them, is not known; but Johnny was declined. Hesitatingly, blushingly, flutteringly, it is true—but declined. Could the blood of an Atwood brook declination? Johnny bowed to the ground and went away with head high, but mortified and bruised in his pedigree and heart. A Hemstetter refuse an Atwood!</p>
<p>Among other accidents of that year was a Democratic President. Judge Atwood was a warhorse of Democracy. Johnny set the wheels moving. He would go away—away! Rosine should never look upon his face again. Perhaps in years to come she would look back with regret upon the pure and faithful love that<abbr>etc.</abbr>, <abbr class="eoc">etc.</abbr></p>
<p>The wheels of politics revolved, and John De Graffenreid Atwood was appointed United States Consul at Vibora. Just before leaving he dropped in at Hemstetters to say goodbye. Pink Dawson was there, of course, talking about his 80-acre field, and the 3-mile meadow, and the 200-acre pasture, and the 40-acre hill-tract. Johnny shook hands with Rosine as cooly as if he were only going to run up to Vicksburg for a week.</p>