insurance, and quit business last June vice-president of the largest
trust company in the world, making the climb at considerable speed,
but without much noise. He was the quietest man in Paris. He was
so quiet that he had to have a muffler cut-out on his own great
heart to keep it from drowning his voice! There is a soft lisp in
his speech which might fool strangers who do not know about the
steel of his nerves and the keenness of his eye. He sat in a roomy
office with a clean desk, toyed with a paper knife and made quick,
sure, accurate decisions in a low hesitant voice that never backed
track nor weakened before a disagreeable situation. He is the man
who more than anyone else has laid out the spending of the major
part of the first one hundred millions gathered in America by the
Red Cross drive last summer. He held his rank as Major in the United
States army, and wore his uniform as though it were his skin, clean,
unwrinkled and handsome, with that gorgeous quality of unconscious
pride that is, after all, the West Pointer's real grace.

As we sat in that noble room, looking out across the Place de
la Concorde, past the Obelisk to the House of Deputies beyond the
Seine, it was evident that Henry was thinking hard. The spectacle
of Major Murphy's young men in their habiliments of service, Red
Cross military uniforms that made them look like lilies of the
valley and bright and morning stars, gave us both something to
think about. The recollection of those $17.93 uniforms of ours in
the rooms at the Ritz was disquieting. We had service hats; these
young gods wore brown caps with leather visors and enameled Red
Crosses above the leather. We had cotton khaki tunics unadorned,
and of a vintage ten years old. They had khaki worsted of a cut
to conform to the newest general order. They had Sam Browne belts
of high potency, and we had no substitute even for that insignia