文档介绍：Vera, The Medium
Vera, The Medium
Richard Harding Davis
1
Vera, The Medium
Part I
Happy in the hope that the news was "exclusive", the Despatch had
thrown the name of Stephen Hallowell, his portrait, a picture of his house,
and the words, "At Point of Death!" across three columns. The
announcement was heavy, lachrymose, bristling with the melancholy self-
importance of the man who "saw the deceased, just two minutes before the
train hit him."
But the effect of the news fell short of the effort. Save that city editors
were irritated that the presidents of certain railroads figured hastily on
slips of paper, the fact that an old man and his millions would soon be
parted, left New York undisturbed.
In the early 80's this would not have been so. Then, in the uplifting of
the far West, Stephen Hallowell was a national figure, in the manoeuvres
of the Eastern stock market an active, alert power. In those days, when a
man with a few millions was still listed as rich, his fortune was considered
colossal.
A patent coupling-pin, the invention of his brother-in-law, had given
him his start, and, in introducing it, and in his efforts to force it upon the
new railroads of the West, he had obtained a knowledge of their affairs.
From that knowledge came his wealth. That was twenty years ago. Since
then giants had arisen in the land; men whose wealth made the fortune of
Stephen Hallowell appear petence, his schemes and
stratagems, which, in their day, had bewildered Wall Street, as simple as
the trading across the counter of a cross-roads store. For years he had been
out of it. He had lost count. Disuse and ill health had rendered his mind
feeble, made him at times suspicious, at times childishly credulous.
Without friends, along with his physician and the butler, who was also his
nurse, he lived in the house that in 76, in a burst of vanity, he had built on
Fifth Avenue. Then the house was a "mansion," and its front of brown
sandstone the o