Three millions! : $b or, The way of the world

In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. Copyright, 1894, by William T. Adams THE WAY OF THE WORLD CONTENTS. I. Three Millions. 7 II. Mr. Eliot Buckstone. 21 III. The Hungerford Family. 33 IV. Off the Great Bell. 45 V. The Kingman Family. 58 VI. A Strange Story. 71 VII. Poor Mary! 83 VIII. To Europe and Back. 96 IX. Healing the Wounds. 109 X. Ross Kingman. 122 XI. Doctor Bilks. 135 XII. Dick Birch. 144 XIII. Dick under a Shadow. 161 XIV. In the Library. 174 XV. Dr. Bilks on the Stand. 188 XVI. Dr. Bilks’s Baby. 203 XVII. The Settlement. 217 XVIII. Evidence Wanted. 231 XIX. The Rope and the Weight. 244 XX. The Shadow at Pine Hill. 256 XXI. The Demigod of Pine Hill. 269 XXII. Dick Birch’s Suggestion. 282 XXIII. Julia Hungerford. 296 XXIV. Poppleton Gospel. 309 XXV. Doctor Lynch. 321 XXVI. The Penitent Demigod. 335 XXVII. The Verdict. 349 XXVIII. The Doctor Himself again. 362 XXIX. Forgive and Forget. 374 XXX. The Rustic Bridge. 387 XXXI. A Homœopathic Dose. 400 XXXII. Criminal Carelessness. 412 XXXIII. Dick Birch and Lady. 425 XXXIV. Thirty Years Old. 438 XXXV. The Last of the Three Millions. 450 THE WAY OF THE WORLD. THREE MILLIONS. THREE million dollars! In round numbers, three million dollars, after the legacies to individuals and the bequests to charitable institutions had been paid! Three million dollars! Suggestive of mighty air-castles, of untold grandeur, of matchless liberality to the poor and needy! Suggestive, also, of long and weary years of patient seeking after worldly wealth, of painful struggles with adverse circumstances, and of parsimonious self-denial extending even to the very necessities of life. There had been three great epochs in the life of John Hungerford, the Baltimore millionnaire , at each of which he had annexed a zero to the number indicating his worldly wealth; and it must also be said that he was continually adding zeros to the sum total of his moral and spiritual possessions. When he commenced his business career, he had three thousand dollars. Operating with care and prudence, it required twenty years to annex the first zero, and he was forty-one when the first financial cycle was completed. Another twenty years of care and toil annexed the second zero, and John Hungerford was more than threescore. Then fortune, always constant, became lavish, and the very…