he was ready to mount the platform at the shortest possible notice, even
in private life. He loved exposition. He loved periods. His critics--for
what public man is without these, their strictures naturally inspired by
envy?--had been known to add that he also loved platitudes. Be this as it
may, certain it is that he loved an audience--even of one. He had been
considerably ruffled this morning by communications made to him by his
good-looking and somewhat scapegrace youngest son. Those who fail to rule
their own households often find solace in attempting to rule the
households of others. Speech and patronage consequently tended to the
restoration of self-complacency.

"No doubt this expansion, these modern methods, constitute a tax upon
your capacity, my good friend, you having acquired your training under a
less exacting system. I am not surprised. I confess"--he leaned back in
his chair, with an indulgent smile, as one who should say, "the gods
themselves do not wholly escape"--"I confess," he repeated, "it is
something of a tax upon the capacity of a veteran financier such as
myself. But then strain in some form or other, as I frequently remind
myself, is the very master-note of our modern existence. We all
experience it in our degree. And there are those men, such as myself, for
instance, who from their position, their vast interests and heavy
responsibilities, from the almost incalculable issues dependent on their
judgment and their action, are called upon to endure this strain in its
most exhausting manifestations, who are compelled to subordinate personal
case, even health itself, to public obligation. In the end they pay,
incontestable they pay, for their self-abnegation, for their unswerving
obedience to the trumpet-call of public duty."

He paused and mused a while, his head raised, his right hand resting--it
was noticeably podgy and squat--on the highly polished surface of the