One spring day, after the sober home-coming of Colonel Carvel from the Democratic Convention at Charleston, Ephum accosted his master as he came into the store of a morning.  Ephum’s face was working with excitement.

“What’s the matter with you, Ephum?” asked the Colonel, kindly.  “You haven’t been yourself lately.”

“No, Marsa, I ain’t ’zactly.”

Ephum put down the duster, peered out of the door of the private office, and closed it softly.

“Marse Comyn?”

“Yes?”

“Marse Comyn, I ain’t got no use fo’ dat Misteh Hoppa’, Ise kinder sup’stitious ’bout him, Marsa.”

The Colonel put down his newspaper.

“Has he treated you badly, Ephum?” he asked quietly.

The faithful negro saw another question in his master’s face.  He well knew that Colonel Carvel would not descend to ask an inferior concerning the conduct of a superior.

“Oh no, suh.  And I ain’t sayin’ nuthin’ gin his honesty.  He straight, but he powerful sharp, Marse Comyn.  An’ he jus’ mussiless down to a cent.”

The Colonel sighed.  He realized that which was beyond the grasp of the negro’s mind.  New and thriftier methods of trade from New England were fast replacing the old open-handedness of the large houses.  Competition had begun, and competition is cruel.  Edwards, James, & Company had taken a Yankee into the firm.  They were now Edwards, James, & Doddington, and Mr. Edwards’s coolness towards the Colonel was manifest since the rise of Eliphalet.  They were rivals now instead of friends.  But Colonel Carvel did not know until after years that Mr. Hopper had been offered the place which Mr. Doddington filled later.

As for Mr. Hopper, increase of salary had not changed him.  He still lived in the same humble way, in a single room in Miss Crane’s boarding-house, and he paid very little more for his board than he had that first week in which he swept out Colonel Carvel’s store.  He was superintendent, now, of Mr. Davitt’s Sunday School, and a church officer.  At night, when he came home from business, he would read the widow’s evening paper, and the Colonel’s morning paper at the office.  Of true Puritan abstemiousness, his only indulgence was chewing tobacco.  It was as early as 1859 that the teller of the Boatman’s Bank began to point out Mr. Hopper’s back to casual customers, and he was more than once seen to enter the president’s room, which had carpet on the floor.

Eliphalet’s suavity with certain delinquent customers from the Southwest was A wording to Scripture.  When they were profane, and invited him into the street, he reminded them that the city had a police force and a jail.  While still a young man, he had a manner of folding his hands and smiling which is peculiar to capitalists, and he knew the laws concerning mortgages in several different states.