The Tacoma times. [volume] (Tacoma, Wash.) 1903-1949, 1910-02-22
CHAPTER III.
CarsOn's Landing.

1t has always been a point of
genealogical dispute as to whether
or not Theodore Carsons father
was kin to the founder of the old
Carson place up Fish River. 1t
was one of those controversies in
which one side is supposed to be
trying to climb, the other to be
oblivious of the climbing, and
both are in a position of peculiar
delicacy from the fact that they
are all Americans, and disbeliev-
ers in anything like inherited
rank.
General Carson, in his lean
years, used to sell turpentine to
his namesake at the dingy ship
chandlery on the on the wharf
near the Eslava Street oyster dock
On these commercial occasions,
the general, when mellowed by
juleps, with his foot on the brass
rail and his elbows on the bar,
used to call ire - ship-chandler
cousin" At other times, how
ever, he made no bones of his
opinion that the Mobile Carsonses
we're damned common people, and
branded as impudent any fool
claim of kinship between the
humble tradesman and the Car
senses of Marengo County. The
ship-chandler was too proud to
make any claim, but privately be-
lieved in the kinship theory; and
when the general died, having lost
his Marengo estates in trying to
breed the one-fifty trotter, 1t was
discovered that he owed the ship
chandler on mortgage more than
the value of the Fish River plan
tation, which passed to the reject
ed branch of the Carsonses. Theo-
dore's father, delighted to have
come into what he felt to be his
own, rode to the horses name and
feeling like a rightful heir rein
stated; and accepting the obliga-
ton to restore the glories of the
family, he embarked so unreserv-
eddy and unskillfully upon the de-
velopment of a cotton plantation
according to the generals plans,
that Theodore fell heir, at his
fathers death, to nothing but this
waste of second-growth pine,
scarcely self-sustaining, and a pol
icy of life insurance, which he in
vested in such education as he
most desired, combination of
electrical engineering and me-
chanics. He was little bitter
sometimes as he recalled the phan-
toms, the. pursuit of which had
ruined two successive owners OF
the estate: the generals breeding
|maggot, and his fathers curious
pride in mere name. Whereupon
|he gave chase to phantom Of his
Town, with what success we shall
Isee, and followed what his friends
called a rainbow, with such true
Carson enthusiasm, that when he
left Virginia Suarez on the docb
at Strong's Bayou, on that sandy
deliciously dreamy, southern
shore of Mobile Bay, he steered
through the night for a house very
nearly dismantied, on an estate
growing up to persimmon thickets
dewberry beds and palmetto slash
les, the very title to which wat
about to pass to his creditors
His ignis fatuus was In the cabin
among the Gulf Beach dunes; but
neither that, nor the precarious
state OF his fortunes could account
for his alternate Joy and gloom as
he Jared north in the night. The
|slky-maiden was the thing that
really mattered.
A gray dawn was broadening In
to morning as he approached his
own landing; and the chill was
one to make the wanderer long
for warm blankets and a w.sp Of
flame in the CRATE; but Theodore