IRON LOOKS UP.

The truth of the old saying regarding the reluctance of watched pots to boil is proved as well in business as elsewhere, as Edgar Tramlay and a number of other men in the iron trade had for some time been learning to their sorrow. Few of them were making any money; most of them were losing on interest account, closed mills, or stock on hand that could not find purchasers. To know this was uncomfortable; to know that the remainder of the business world knew it also was worse: there is a sense of humiliation in merely holding one’s own for a long period which is infinitely more provoking and depressing to a business-man than an absolute failure or assignment.

How closely every one in Tramlay’s business circle watched the iron-market! There was not an industry in the world in the least degree dependent upon iron which they did not also watch closely and deduce apparent probabilities which they exchanged with one another. The proceedings of Congress, the results of elections, the political movements abroad that tended to either peace or war, became interesting solely through their possible influence upon the iron trade. Again and again they were sure that the{110} active and upward movement was to begin at once; the opening of a long-closed mill to execute a small order, even a longer interval than usual between the closings of mills, was enough to lift up their collective hearts for a while. Then all would become faint-hearted again when they realized that they, like Hosea Biglow’s chanticleer, had been
“Mistakin’ moonrise for the break o’ day.”

But suddenly, through causes that no one had foreseen, or which all had discounted so often that they had feared to consider them again, iron began to look up; some small orders, of a long-absent kind, began to creep into the market, prices improved a little as stock depleted, several mills made haste to open, and prudent dealers, who had been keeping down expenses for months and years, now began to talk hopefully of what they expected to do in the line of private expenditures.

Good news flies fast; the upward tendency of iron was soon talked of in New York’s thousands of down-town offices, where, to an outside observer, talk seems the principal industry. Men in other businesses that were depressed began to consult iron-men who had weathered the storms and endured the still more destructive calms of the long period of depression. Bankers began to greet iron-men with more cordiality than of late. Announcements of large orders for iron given by certain railroads and accepted by certain mills began to appear on the tapes of the thousands of stock-indicators throughout the city.

It naturally followed that Mr. Marge, to whom the{111} aforesaid “tape” seemed the breath of life, began to wonder whether, in the language of Wall Street, he had not a “privilege” upon which he might “realize.” If the upward movement of iron was to continue and become general, Tramlay would undoubtedly be among those who would benefit by it. Would the result be immediate, or would Tramlay first have to go into liquidation, after the manner of many merchants who through a long depression keep up an appearance of business which is destroyed by the first opportunity for actual transactions? Marge had long before, for business purposes, made some acquaintances in the bank with which Tramlay did business, but he did not dare to inquire too pointedly about his friend’s balance and discounts. Besides, Marge had learned, through the published schedules of liabilities of numerous insolvents, that some business-men have a way of borrowing privately and largely from relatives and friends.

He would risk nothing, at any rate, by a gentle and graceful increase of attention to Lucia. He flattered himself that he was quite competent to avoid direct proposal until such time as might entirely suit him. As for Lucia, she was too fond of the pleasures of the season just about to open to hold him to account were he to offer her some of them. The suggestion that his plans had a mercenary aspect did not escape him, for even a slave of the stock-tape may have considerable conscience and self-respect. He explained to himself that he did not esteem Lucia solely for her possible expectations; she was good, pretty, vivacious, ornamental, quite intelligent—for{112} a girl, and he had an honest tenderness for her as the daughter of a woman he had really loved many years before, and might have won had he not been too deliberate. But his income was not large enough to support the establishment he would want as a married man, so he would have to depend to a certain extent upon his wife, or upon her father. It was solely with this view, he explained to himself, that he had made careful reconnoissances in other directions: if some ladies who would have been acceptable—Miss Agnes Dinon, for instance—had not been able to estimate him rightly as a matrimonial candidate, he was sure that they as well as he had been losers through their lack of perception. As matters now stood, Lucia was his only apparent chance in the circle where he belonged and preferred to remain. His purpose to advance his suit was quickened, within a very few days, by the announcement on the tape that a rolling-mill in which he knew Tramlay was largely interested had received a very large order for railroad-iron and would open at once.

But indications that iron was looking up were not restricted to the business-portion of the city. Tramlay, who, like many another hard-headed business-man, lived solely for his family, had delighted his wife and daughters by announcing that they might have a long ru............