had finished their tour of the works. It was always his custom to
leave his business early and to retire to the library in his home,
where daily he devoted two hours to adding to the manuscript of The
Philosophical Biography of Marquis Lafayette. This work was
ultimately to appear in several severe volumes and was being written,
not so much to enlighten the world upon the details of the career of
the marquis as it was to utilize the marquis as a clotheshorse to be
dressed in Bonbright Foote VI's mature reflections on men, events,
and humanity at large.

Bonbright VII sat at his desk motionless, studying his career as it
lay circumscribed before him. He did not study it rebelliously, for
as yet rebellion had not occurred to him. The idea that he might
assert his individuality and depart from the family pattern had not
ventured to show its face. For too many years had his ancestors been
impressing him with his duty to the family traditions. He merely
studied it, as one who has no fancy for geometry will study geometry,
because it cannot be helped. The path was there, carefully staked out
and bordered; to-day his feet had been placed on it, and now he must
walk. As he sat he looked ahead for bypaths--none were visible.

The shutting-down whistle aroused him. He walked out through the
rapidly emptying office to the street, and there he stood, interested
by the spectacle of the army that poured out of the employees'
entrances. It was an inundation of men, flooding street from sidewalk
to sidewalk. It jostled and joked and scuffled, sweating, grimy, each
unit of it eager to board waiting, overcrowded street cars, where
acute discomfort would be suffered until distant destinations were
reached. Somehow the sight of that surging, tossing stream of
humanity impressed Bonbright with the magnitude of Bonbright Foote,