Aunt Jane's Nieces
So I started west, working my
way from town to town, until I got to Portland, Oregon.
"There was work in plenty there, making the tin cans in which salmon
and other fish is packed, and as I was industrious I soon had a shop
of my own, and supplied cans to the packers. The shop grew to be
a great factory, employing hundreds of men. Then I bought up the
factories of my competitors, so as to control the market, and as I
used so much tin-plate I became interested in the manufacture of this
product, and invested a good deal of money in the production and
perfection of American tin. My factories were now scattered all along
the coast, even to California, where I made the cans for the great
quantities of canned fruits they ship from that section every year.
Of course the business made me rich, and I bought real estate with my
extra money, and doubled my fortune again and again.
"I never married, for all my heart was in the business, and I thought
of nothing else. But a while ago a big consolidation of the canning
industries was effected, and the active management I resigned to other
hands, because I had grown old, and had too much money already.
"It was then that I remembered the family, and went back quietly to
the village where I was born. They were all dead or scattered,
I found; but because Jane had inherited a fortune in some way I
discovered where she lived and went to see her. I suppose it was
because my clothes were old and shabby that Jane concluded I was a
poor man and needed assistance; and I didn't take the trouble to
undeceive her.
"I also found my three nieces at Elmhurst, and it struck me it would
be a good time to study their characters; for like Jane I had a
fortune to leave behind me, and I was curious to find out which girl
was the most deserving. No one suspected my disguise. I don't usually
wear such poor clothes, you know; but I have grown to be careless of
dress in the west, and finding that I was supposed to be a poor man I
clung to that old suit like grim death to a grasshopper.
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In a village there lived two men who had the self-same name. Both were named Claus. But one of them owned four horses, and the other owned only one horse; so to distinguish between them people called the man who had four horses Big Claus, and the man who had only one horse Little Claus. Now I'll tell you what happened to these two, for this is a true story.
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