She almost
feared to broach the subject, knowing that an old sore is ever the most
sensitive, and being too direct and frank to insinuate or practise any
arts upon him.
She was embroidering an evening-cap of velvet for him one day when Mrs.
Tilghman sent a hat-box, and in it was a fine new hat of the current
style. He answered her letter politely, and put the new hat upon the
rack of Teackle Hall, and never touched it again.
Next, Rhoda Holland, his niece, procuring, from some country beau, a
beaver-skin--and beavers were growing scarce and dear in that
peninsula--had him an elegant cap made of it for the cold weather now
coming; but he only kissed her and put it on the rack, and there it
tempted the moth.
His chills and fever continued at broken times, but more regular became
the dislike and opposition of the old class of society as he undertook
to become the promoter of his region. They regarded it as audacity worse
than crime: he had outstripped them in wealth, and now was undermining
their importance. Many avowed that they would never ride on a railroad
built by such a man; others hoped it would break him; some took open
ground against his work, and wrote letters to Annapolis to prejudice him
with the Legislature, where the Baltimore interest was already crying
loudly that an Eastern Shore railroad meant to take Maryland trade and
money to Philadelphia. Meshach fiercely responded that, unless the
railway took the line of the Maryland counties, Delaware state would
build it and carry it off to Newcastle instead of to Elkton, where
Meshach meant to unite with a projected Baltimore system.
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