It will be seen that I am interested in this chapter of Ancient History: and in truth, I myself occasionally ornament the nail-kegs. I claim it was neither Providence nor astute planning that mapped this man's course, but Providence, Planning and Luck; and I silence the adversary, for the time, by citing these facts:
Very shortly after Providence and the Sheriff of Erie County--whose name, by the way, was Grover Cleveland--had disposed of the East Aurora grocery, our friend met a man in Buffalo who had a sweeping scar on his chin, a wonderful secret, and nothing else worth mentioning.
This man secured his assets in Germany; he got them while attending the University of Jena. The secret was gotten by an understanding with a professor; the scar was received through a misunderstanding with a student. The secret was a plan by which you could make glucose from corn. In Germany it was only a laboratory experiment, because there was no corn in Europe to speak of.
Here we had corn to burn, since in that very year the farmers of Iowa were using corn for their fuel. Glucose is the active saccharine principle in maize, but it does not become active until the corn is treated chemically in a certain way, just as honey is not honey until a bee puts it through his Maeterlinck laboratory.
Glucose is a food; it can be used for all purposes where sugar is used--in degree, at least.
And every living person on earth uses sugar as food every day! Our ex-grocer knew all about Hambletonian Ten and Dexter; but dextrine, dextrose and glucose were out of his class. Yet he realized that if sugar could be made from corn, there was a fortune in it for somebody. Opportunity, we are told, knocks once at each man's door. Our David Harum was forty, past, and he had often thought Opportunity was tapping, but when he opened wide the door, darkness there, and nothing more! Opportunity had knocked, but was too timid to stay. This time, he heard the knock, and when he opened up the door, Opportunity made a rush for him, grabbed him by the collar--catch-as-catch-can--in a grip he could not shake off.
Mr. Harum examined as best he could the glucose the German student had made, and then he watched the whole experiment worked out over again. What the particular ingredients were, was still a secret. The man would not sell out; he wanted to organize a manufactory and take a certain per cent of the profits. David had saved a thousand dollars out of the wreck at East Aurora; but he knew if he could show certain men that the scheme was genuine, he would be able to raise more.