boarders.




CHAPTER. II

THE MOLE

For some years, while Stephen A. Douglas and Franklin Pierce and other
gentlemen of prominence were playing at bowls on the United States of
America; while Kansas was furnishing excitement free of charge to any
citizen who loved sport, Mr. Eliphalet Hopper was at work like the
industrious mole, underground. It is safe to affirm that Colonel Carvel
forgot his new hand as soon as he had turned him over to Mr. Hood, the
manager. As for Mr. Hopper, he was content. We can ill afford to dissect
motives. Genius is willing to lay the foundations of her structure
unobserved.

At first it was Mr. Barbo alone who perceived Eliphalet's greatness,--Mr.
Barbo, whose opinions were so easily had that they counted for nothing.
The other clerks, to say the least, found the newcomer uncompanionable.
He had no time for skylarking, the heat of the day meant nothing to him,
and he was never sleepy. He learned the stock as if by intuition, and
such was his strict attention to business that Mr. Hood was heard is say,
privately, he did not like the looks of it. A young man should have other
interests. And then, although he would not hold it against him, he had
heard that Mr. Hopper was a teacher in Mr. Davitt's Sunday School.

Because he did not discuss his ambitions at dinner with the other clerks