Quotation from: Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard

Written by: Joseph Conrad


To be told repeatedly that one's future is blighted because of the
possession of a silver mine is not, at the age of fourteen, a matter
of prime importance as to its main statement; but in its form it is
calculated to excite a certain amount of wonder and attention. In course
of time the boy, at first only puzzled by the angry jeremiads, but
rather sorry for his dad, began to turn the matter over in his mind in
such moments as he could spare from play and study. In about a year he
had evolved from the lecture of the letters a definite conviction
that there was a silver mine in the Sulaco province of the Republic of
Costaguana, where poor Uncle Harry had been shot by soldiers a great
many years before. There was also connected closely with that mine a
thing called the "iniquitous Gould Concession," apparently written on
a paper which his father desired ardently to "tear and fling into the
faces" of presidents, members of judicature, and ministers of State.
And this desire persisted, though the names of these people, he noticed,
seldom remained the same for a whole year together. This desire (since
the thing was iniquitous) seemed quite natural to the boy, though why
the affair was iniquitous he did not know. Afterwards, with advancing
wisdom, he managed to clear the plain truth of the business from the
fantastic intrusions of the Old Man of the Sea, vampires, and ghouls,
which had lent to his father's correspondence the flavour of a gruesome
Arabian Nights tale. In the end, the growing youth attained to as
close an intimacy with the San Tome mine as the old man who wrote these
plaintive and enraged letters on the other side of the sea. He had been
made several times already to pay heavy fines for neglecting to work the
mine, he reported, besides other sums extracted from him on account
of future royalties, on the ground that a man with such a valuable
concession in his pocket could not refuse his financial assistance to
the Government of the Republic. The last of his fortune was passing away
from him against worthless receipts, he wrote, in a rage, whilst he was
being pointed out as an individual who had known how to secure enormous
advantages from the necessities of his country. And the young man in
Europe grew more and more interested in that thing which could provoke
such a tumult of words and passion.

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