Part 20 (1/2)
”No indeed,” said the Unwiseman, sadly. ”Of course not. It isn't your fault if an Alp is a toboggan slide or a skating rink instead of a wild animal. It's all my own fault. I was very careless to come over here and waste my time to see a lot of snow that ain't any colder or wetter than the stuff we have delivered at our front doors at home in winter. I should ought to have found out what it was before I came.”
”It's very beautiful though as it is,” suggested Mollie.
”I suppose so,” said the Unwiseman. ”But I don't have to travel four thousand miles to see beautiful things while I have my kitchen-stove right there in my own kitchen. Besides I've spent a dollar and twenty cents on an air-gun, and sixty cents for a la.s.soo to hunt Alps with, when I might better have bought a snow shovel. _That's_ really what I'm mad at. If I'd bought a snow shovel and a pair of ear-tabs I could have made some money here offering to shovel the snow off that hill there so's somebody could get some pleasure out of it. It would be a lovely place to go and sit on a warm summer evening if it wasn't for that snow and very likely they'd have paid me two or three dollars for fixing it up for them.”
”I guess it would take you several hours to do it,” said Whistlebinkie.
”What if it took a week?” retorted the Unwiseman. ”As long as they were willing to pay for it. But what's the use of talking about it? I haven't got a shovel, and I can't shovel the snow off an Alp with an air-gun, so that's the end of it.”
And for the time being that _was_ the end of it. The Unwiseman very properly confined himself to the quiet of the carpet-bag until his wrath had entirely disappeared, and after luncheon he turned up cheerily in the office of the hotel.
”Let's hire a couple of sleds and go coasting,” he suggested to Mollie.
”That Mount Blank looks like a pretty good hill. Whistlebinkie and I can pull you up to the top and it will be a fine slide coming back.”
But inquiry at the office brought out the extraordinary fact that there were no sleds in the place and never had been.
”My goodness!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Unwiseman. ”I never knew such people. I don't wonder these Switzers ain't a great nation like us Americans. I don't believe any American hotel-keeper would have as much snow as that in his back-yard all summer long and not have a regular sled company to accommodate guests who wanted to go coasting on it. If they had an Alp like that over at Atlantic City they'd build a fence around it, and charge ten cents to get inside, where you could hire a colored gentleman to haul you up to the top of the hill and guide you down again on the return slide.”
”I guess they would,” said Whistlebinkie.
”Then they'd turn part of it into an ice quarry,” the Unwiseman went on, ”and sell great huge chunks of ice to people all the year round and put the regular ice men out of business. I've half a mind to write home to my burgular and tell him here's a chance to earn an honest living as an iceman. He could get up a company to come here and buy up that hill and just regularly go in for ice-mining. There never was such a chance. If people can make money out of coal mines and gold mines and copper mines, I don't see why they can't do the same thing with ice mines. Why don't you speak to your Papa about it, Mollie? He'd make his everlasting fortune.”
”I will,” said Mollie, very much interested in the idea.
”And all that snow up there going to waste too,” continued the Unwiseman growing enthusiastic over the prospect. ”Just think of the millions of people who can't get cool in summer over home. Your father could sell snow to people in midsummer for six-fifty a ton, and they could shovel it into their furnaces and cool off their homes ten or twenty degrees all summer long. My goodness--talk about your billionaires--here's a chance for squillions.”
The Unwiseman paced the floor excitedly. The vision of wealth that loomed up before his mind's eye was so vast that he could hardly contain himself in the face of it.
”Wouldn't it all melt before he could get it over to America?” asked Mollie.
”Why should it?” demanded the Unwiseman. ”If it don't melt here in summer time why should it melt anywhere else? I don't believe snow was ever disagreeable just for the pleasure of being so.”
”Wouldn't it cost a lot to take it over?” asked Whistlebinkie.
”Not if the Company owned its own s.h.i.+ps,” said the Unwiseman. ”If the Company owned its own s.h.i.+ps it could carry it over for nothing.”
The Unwiseman was so carried away with the possibilities of his plan that for several days he could talk of nothing else, and several times Mollie and Whistlebinkie found him working in the writing room of the hotel on what he called his Perspectus.
”I'm going to work out that idea of mine, Mollie,” he explained, ”so that you can show it to your father and maybe he'll take it up, and if he does--well, I'll have a man to exercise my umbrella, a pair of wings built on my house where I can put a music room and a library, and have my kitchen-stove nickel plated as it deserves to be for having served me so faithfully for so many years.”
An hour or two later, his face beaming with pleasure, the Unwiseman brought Mollie his completed ”Perspectus” with the request that she show it to her father. It read as follows:
THE SWITZER SNOW AND ICE CO.
THE UNWISEMAN, _President_.
MR. MOLLIE J. WHISTLEBINKIE, _Vice-President_.