Finally a
man who took contracts to move brick buildings agreed to move it up town
on shares, and during the summer the most of it was got up there and
corded up on some vacant lots. If all the cast iron in it came out of one
mine it must have been an immense mine. People would look at it and weep.
Every alderman swore he voted against buying it. Occasionally some one in
the council would suggest that the stone crusher be taken out to the
bluffs, a couple of miles, and set to work, when another one would move,
to amend by inserting a clause that the bluffs be moved into the city to
be crushed, as it would save expense. Then the matter would drop. For
three years that stone crusher stood there, and it never crushed a pebble.
New mayors and aldermen were elected, and every day they passed that
crusher, but they never spoke to it. Finally a job was put up to get rid
of it. There was a man there who owned a stone quarry, and it occurred to
somebody to sell it to him. He was a truly good man, and did not believe
there were any bad men in the world, who would kanoodle him with a stone
crusher. A committee was appointed to sell it to him. The committee was
composed of men who had traded horses, sold lightning rods, and been
insurance agents, and when they told the poor man that the city had
noticed that he was a deserving man, that they had decided to
help him along, and would sell him that stone crusher, and he could pay
for it in crushed stone, and the city would pay him in cash half a dollar
more than the stone was worth, he said he would take it.
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