"Why don't they raise his salary?"

"Because that's all he's worth to them. He's a good steady honest clerk,
nothing more."

"He's very young--"

"If a man has initiative, ability, any sort of constructive power in his
brain he shows it by the time he is twenty-two--if he has been in that
forcing house for four or five years. That is the whole history of this
country. And employers are always on the look-out for those qualities
and only too anxious to find them and push a young man on and up. Many
a president of a great business started life as a clerk, or even office
boy--"

"That is what I have always known would happen to Morty. I am sure, sure,
that you are doing him a cruel injustice."

"I hope I am. But I am a failure myself and I know what a man needs in the
way of natural equipment to make a success of his life."

"But he is so energetic and industrious and honorable and likable and--"

"I was all that."

"Then--" Mrs. Dwight's voice trailed off; it sounded flat and old. "What do
you both lack?"

"Brains."