same thing happened. His face would grow grim, the seam-worn forehead
would corrugate, the muscles of his jaw throb nervously. His gray eyes
would flash--and the fist come down heavily on the mahogany desk.

When a man is nearly sixty and of a full-blooded physique, it is not
well for him to have these frequent pulsations of rage. But he had
always found it hard to control his temper. He sometimes remembered what
a schoolmaster had said to him at Cassel, forty-five years before: "He
who loses his temper will lose everything."

But he must be granted great provocation. He had always had difficulties
to contend with. His father was an invalid, and he himself was puny in
childhood; infantile paralysis withered his left arm when he was an
infant; but in spite of these handicaps he had made himself a vigorous
swimmer, rider, and yachtsman; he could shoot better with one arm than
most sportsmen with two. After leaving the university he served in the
army, but at his father's death the management of the vast family
business came into his hands. He was then twenty-eight.

No one can question the energy with which he set himself to carry on the
affairs of the firm. Generous, impetuous, indiscreet, stubborn,
pugnacious, his blend of qualities held many of the elements of a
successful man of business. His first act was to dismiss the
confidential and honoured assistant who had guided both his father and
grandfather in the difficult years of the firm's growth. But the new
executive was determined to run the business his own way. Disregarding
criticism, ridicule, or flattery, he declared it his mission to spread
the influence of the business to the ends of the earth. "We must have
our place in the sun," he said; and announced himself as the divine
instrument through whom this would be accomplished. He made it perfectly