Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/502

72 like a breath of life over the whole landscape. Uriah looked around him from the very place where he had sat on the stump in despair. It was bright and sunny. He heard a sound of an axe and a hammer. He looked, and saw a house, that had stood a mere skeleton, once more in progress. There were people passing to and for with a more active air. What is that? A cart of goods! A dray of building materials. There was life and motion again! The discovery of converting sheep and oxen into tallow had raised the value of stock. The shops and the merchants were once more in action. The man to whom he had sold the oxen came up smiling—

"Things mend, sir. We shall soon be all right. And that piece of land in the swamp, that you were so merry over, will you sell it? It lies near the wharves and is wanted for warehouses."

"Bravo!" cried Uriah, and they descended the hill together. Part of the land was sold; and soon substantial warehouses, of the native trapstone, were rising upon it. Uriah's old attachment to a merchant's life came over him. With the purchase-money he built a warehouse too. Labor was extremely low, and he built a large and commodious one.

Another year or two, and behold Uriah busy in his warehouse: his two boys clerking it gravely in the counting-house. Things grew rapidly better. Uriah and his family were once more handsomely clad, handsomely housed, and Uriah's Jolly humor was again in the ascendant. Every now and then Robinson came hurrying in, and moreover, mayor; and saying, "Well, Mrs. Tattenhall.. didn't I say it, eh? Is not this boy a colony on a fine sturdy pair of legs again? Not down? Not dead? Well, well, Tattenhall did me a kindness, then—by ready cash for my land—I don't forget it; but I don't know how I am to make him amends, unless I come and dine with him some day." And he was off again.

Another year or two, and that wonderful crisis, the gold discovery, came. Then, what a sensation—what a stir—what a revolution! what running, and buying and bidding for land, for prime business situations?—What rolling in of people—capital—goods. Heaven and earth! what a scene—what a place—what a people.