



Produced by John Hamm.  HTML version by Al Haines









THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM


by

William Dean Howells


JTABLE 5 27 1



I.


WHEN Bartley Hubbard went to interview Silas Lapham for the "Solid Men
of Boston" series, which he undertook to finish up in The Events, after
he replaced their original projector on that newspaper, Lapham received
him in his private office by previous appointment.

"Walk right in!" he called out to the journalist, whom he caught sight
of through the door of the counting-room.

He did not rise from the desk at which he was writing, but he gave
Bartley his left hand for welcome, and he rolled his large head in the
direction of a vacant chair.  "Sit down! I'll be with you in just half
a minute."

"Take your time," said Bartley, with the ease he instantly felt.  "I'm
in no hurry." He took a note-book from his pocket, laid it on his knee,
and began to sharpen a pencil.

"There!" Lapham pounded with his great hairy fist on the envelope he
had been addressing.

"William!" he called out, and he handed the letter to a boy who came to
get it.  "I want that to go right away.  Well, sir," he continued,
wheeling round in his leather-cushioned swivel-chair, and facing
Bartley, seated so near that their knees almost touched, "so you want
my life, death, and Christian sufferings, do you, young man?"

"That's what I'm after," said Bartley.  "Your money or your life."

"I guess you wouldn't want my life without the money," said Lapham, as
if he were willing to prolong these moments of preparation.

"Take 'em both," Bartley suggested.  "Don't want your money without
your life, if you come to that.  But you're just one million times more
interesting to the public than if you hadn't a dollar; and you know
that as well as I do, Mr. Lapham.  There's no use beating about the
bush."

"No," said Lapham, somewhat absently.  He put out his huge foot and
pushed the ground-glass door shut between his little den and the
book-keepers, in their larger den outside.

"In personal appearance," wrote Bartley in the sketch for which he now
studied his subject, while he waited patiently for him to continue,
"Silas Lapham is a fine type of the successful American.  He has a
square, bold chin, only partially concealed by the short reddish-grey
beard, growing to the edges of his firmly closing lips.  His nose is
short and straight; his forehead good, but broad rather than high; his
eyes blue, and with a light in them that is kindly or sharp according
to his mood.  He is of medium height, and fills an average arm-chair
with a solid bulk, which on the day of our interview was
unpretentiously clad in a business suit of blue serge.  His head droops
somewhat from a short neck, which does not trouble itself to rise far
from a pair of massive shoulders."

"I don't know as I know just where you want me to begin," said Lapham.

"Might begin with your birth; that's where most of us begin," replied
Bartley.

A gleam of humorous appreciation shot into Lapham's blue eyes.

"I didn't know whether you wanted me to go quite so far back as that,"
he said.  "But there's no disgrace in having been born, and I was born
in the State of Vermont, pretty well up under the Canada line--so well
up, in fact, that I came very near being an adoptive citizen; for I was
bound to be an American of SOME sort, from the word Go! That was
about--well, let me see!--pretty near sixty years ago: this is '75, and
that was '20. Well, say I'm fifty-five years old; and I've LIVED 'em,
too; not an hour of waste time about ME, anywheres! I was born on a
farm, and----"

"Worked in the fields summers and went to school winters: regulation
thing?" Bartley cut in.

"Regulation thing," said Lapham, accepting this irreverent version of
his history somewhat dryly.

"Parents poor, of course," suggested the journalist.  "Any barefoot
business? Early deprivations of any kind, that would encourage the
youthful reader to go and do