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His
FATHER'S
SON
S BY
BRANDER
MATTHEWS


- THL 2440, T.14
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Harvard College Library
FROM
Mi88. Penelope...B.....No:yes












[Page 35
"THEY SPED ALONG, SIDE BY SIDE"


HIS FATHER'S SON
A NOVEL OF NEW YORK
BY
BRANDER MATTHEWS
ILLUSTRATED BY T. DE THULSTRUP

ΛΑΜΠΑΔΙΑ
ΧΟΝΤΕΣ
ΑΔΩΣΟΤΣΑΝ
ΑΛΛΗΛΟΙΣ
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1896


AL 2443.4.14
ruf
BOOKS BY BRANDER MATTHEWS.
THE THEATRES OF PARIS.
FRENCH DRAMATISTS OF THE 19TH CENTURY.
THE LAST MEETING, a Story
A SECRET OF THE SEA, and Other Stories.
PEN AND INK: Essays on Subjects of More or Less Importance.
A FAMILY TREE, and Other Stories.
WITH MY FRIENDS: Tales Told in Partnership.
A TALE OF TWENTY-FIVE HOURS.
TOM PAULDING, a Story for Boys.
IN THE VESTIBULE LIMITED, a Story.
AMERICANISMS AND BRITICISMS, with Other Essays on Other Isms.
THE STORY OF A STORY, and Other Stories.
THE DECISION OF THE COURT, a Comedy.
STUDIES OF THE STAGE.
THIS PICTURE AND THAT, a Comedy.
VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN.
THE ROYAL MARINE, an Idyl of Narragansett.
BOOK-BINDINGS, Old and New: Notes of a Book-Lover.
HIS FATHER'S SON, a Novel of New York.
A BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS.
Copyright, 1895, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
HARVAR AN rights reserved.
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
JU: 21 1954


ILLUSTRATIONS
94
“THEY SPED ALONG, SIDE BY SIDE” . . . . . Frontispiece
“ I AM GLAD TO SEE YOU, MISS ROMEYN?”... Facing page 34
“PERHAPS THEY WOULD FIND EZRA PIERCE IN THE
SAME CHAIR".
" 62
"YOU DON'T OBJECT TO MY MAKING MONEY?!”.
"WHY NOT?' HE ASKED; 'IT WON'T HURT you’”
108
“HE BOUGHT HER COSTLY JEWELRY". . . . .
116
“WINSLOW FOUND HIMSELF STANDING FACE TO FACE
WITH SAM SARGENT” . . . . . . . .
142
“'HELLO, FATHER,' HE SAID, AS HE CAME FORWARD
UNSTEADILY” . . . . . . . . . . .
162
“THE YOUNG WIFE STOOD STILL, WITH HER HAND
ON THE DOOR" . . . . . . . . . . .
184
"DO YOU KNOW WHAT I'VE DONE ?'” ....
190
“WHAT'S THE MATTER, MASTER WINSLOW?!"..
206
"YOU WOULDN'T SEND THE BOY TO SING SING,
WOULD YOU ?'” . . . . . . . . . .
228
“HIS WIFE CAME TO THE Door with him”... “ 240





HIS FATHER'S SON
THERE was a double stroke on one of the bells
in the lofty steeple of Trinity Church, and the
hands on the dial of the clock showed that this
ambiguous signal was intended to declare the
hour as half-past one. Down below on the plain
of Broadway, and in the narrow canyon of Wall
Street hollowed out straight away from the church-
door, men and boys were darting hither and thith-
er; and an observer used to the ways of the Street
would have remarked an unusual haste in their
movements, and would have known that a pitched
battle of some sort was then raging in the Stock
Exchange on Broad Street, just around the cor-
ner.
It was a clear bright day in the first week of
December, and the westering sun warmed the
three windows of an office on the second floor of
a building almost in front of the Stock Exchange.
Two of these windows belonged to the larger room,
where the clerks sat, and where the furniture was
plain and dingy; here a hard-coal fire glowed in


the grate, and the door opening into the hall had
painted on it, in full black letters, the name of
Ezra Pierce. The third window was that of a
smaller room opening from the first, and used by
Ezra Pierce as his own private office.
When the single stroke of the bell dropped
from Trinity steeple that limpid afternoon in
December the door between the two rooms was
closed, for Ezra Pierce was closeted with a vis-
itor in the smaller of the two. In the outer of.
fice the old book-keeper, Mr. Arrowsmith, was
making out an account; and the other clerk, a
younger man and better dressed, Farebrother by
name, was standing between the windows watch-
ing the tape as it was spasmodically reeled off by
the ticker.
“I guess the old man's pretty happy to-day-
he's got Sam Sargent in a hole this time, sure,”
he said. “Transcontinental has gone off two
points since I came in from lunch. I'm glad I
backed the old man's luck. I've made enough
already to pay for my Christmas presents.” Then
he released the long ribbon of paper and crossed
to the fire. "I say, Arrowsmith,” he continued,
“why don't you ever take a flier ?”
The old book-keeper finished adding a column
of figures and then answered, gravely, “I have
taken too many fliers, as you call them, in other
days — and that is why I am now keeping Mr.
Pierce's books instead of employing you to keep
mine.”


“Not to-day. And he didn't go out yesterday,
either,” the clerk responded. “Fact is, half the
time he doesn't eat any luncheon, not even a
roll; you'll find that out for yourself when you've
been here long enough."
“And mother told me to see that father had
some soup, or something regularly at half-past
twelve,” said the son. “I don't see how I ever
forgot it.”
“Your father doesn't need any lunch to-day,”
Farebrother declared, laughing. “Sam Sargent
is his pudding to-day.”
“But I thought that father didn't approve of
Mr. Sargent ?” began Winslow.
“He doesn't,” the clerk interrupted, crossing
over to the ticker once more ; "and that's why
he's knocking the stuffing out of Transconti-
nental.” Farebrother glanced at the tape again.
“He's hammered it down another point already!
And he takes it as easy as if Sam Sargent wasn't
one of the hardest fighters in the Street. What
do you suppose your father is doing now?”
“I'm sure I don't know," the son answered.
“He's in that office talking with Doctor Thurs-
ton,” said Farebrother, “and I guess the dom-
inie is striking him for a donation.”
“Doctor Thurston says that father gives more
liberally than any other man in the church,” the
son returned, not without a touch of pride.
“It isn't his giving the money that's so won-
derful,” Farebrother declared. “It's his finding


time to talk to a minister on one of the liveliest
days the Street has seen for a long while.”
“Do you suppose they know that it's father
who is selling Transcontinental ?” Winslow Pierce
asked, pulling at his mustache again and trying
to curl it.
“They must know it, of course," Farebrother
answered. “But the old man-I mean, your fa-
ther-has kept so quiet about it that guessing is
all they've got to go on.”.
Just then there came from the private office the
sharp clang of a call-bell. Winslow went to the
door, opened it, and disappeared in the other
room.
“Say, Arrowsmith,” remarked Farebrother,
when the door had closed behind Ezra Pierce's
son, “I wonder what they do teach 'em at those
up-country colleges ?”
In a minute Winslow came back, shutting the
door again, and going straight to the book-keep-
er's desk. “Mr. Arrowsmith," he said, “ father
wants a check for a thousand dollars to the order
of Doctor Thurston, and charge it to Foreign Mis-
sions.”
“Certainly,” answered the old book - keeper,
opening the square check-book.
“I don't see how he can be so calm," commented
Farebrother. “If it was me, I'd be hanging over
the ticker instead of hobnobbing with dominies.
I'll bet that Sam Sargent isn't wasting his breath
on any minister just now.”


Mr. Arrowsmith had written the check, and,
taking his brass-edged ruler, he tore it from
the book. “Foreign Missions ?” he queried, as
he handed the slip of paper to his employer's
son.
“Foreign Missions,” the son repeated, walking
over to the private office, into which he disap-
peared again.
“It's the old man's check, of course,” said Fare-
brother, going back to the fireplace,“ but it's Sam
Sargent who's going to make the deposit to meet
it. I guess it's the first time he ever chipped up
for the heathen."
Suddenly his manner changed. The door into
the hall had opened, and a tall full-bodied man
had entered. He was rather handsome, with a
florid complexion and a heavy blond mustache
streaked with gray. He was perhaps fifty years
old. His manner was easy and masterful. His
step was quick and vigorous. He pushed open
the gate in the low railing which partitioned off
an outer space in the office. Farebrother stepped
forward to meet him.
“Is Mr. Pierce in ?" asked the new-comer.
“He is engaged just now,” responded the clerk,
respectfully, “but I've no doubt he will see you,
Mr. Sargent.”
“All right, then-tell him I'm here," Sargent
answered, taking in every detail of the office in a
single swift glance of his clear blue eyes.
Farebrother tapped at the door of the private


office. A strong, hard voice called, “Come in !"
The clerk obeyed.
Sargent walked forward to the window in front
of him, and stood there silently, with his right
hand in his trousers - pocket. He siniled as he
looked down on the crowd of men and boys, now
pressing up to the door of the Stock Exchange,
and now scattering in all directions away from it.
The old book-keeper came out of his cage, and
pretended to poke the fire, so as to get a better
view of the man against whom his employer had
been waging so bitter a fight for the last year or
two.
The door of the private office opened abruptly,
and Winslow Pierce stepped aside to let the min-
ister pass before him.
Doctor Thurston had his hat in one hand, the
check in the other, and his overcoat on his arm.
As Winslow took the overcoat to assist the
minister in putting it on, Sam Sargent faced
round. “Ah, doctor,” he cried, “is that you ?
I haven't seen you for a long while."
Doctor Thurston smiled a little bitterly. “You
can always find me where you used to find me,"
he answered.
Before the speculator could reply, Farebrother
came out of the private office and said to him,
“Mr. Pierce will see you now, Mr. Sargent.”
Sargent nodded to the minister, taking in Wins-
low with another of his swift glances, and stepped
inside the private office.


He was heard to say : “Mr. Pierce, you are
probably surprised to see me here, but I've called
to find out if we can't settle this thing between
ourselves.”
“There isn't anything to settle that I see,” said
the strong voice of Ezra Pierce.
“That's what I've come to talk over,” returned
Sargent. “Do you object to my smoking? I find
now that I can always talk better when I've a
cigar in my fingers."
“Certainly—smoke, if you wish;" and then the
voice of Ezra Pierce was raised, and there was a
hint of harshness in it as it said, “Mr. Farebroth-
er, please close that door.”
By this time Winslow had assisted Doctor
Thurston into his overcoat. The minister folded
the check carefully and put it in an inner pocket.
Then he buttoned up his overcoat, and twisted a
knitted comforter about his neck.
“I would not have obtruded myself upon your
father if I had known that he was so busy to-day,"
the minister said. “Fortunately, I had concluded
my little chat with him before we were inter-
rupted.”
“I was ever so surprised to see Mr. Sargent
here,” Winslow Pierce declared, “but I was al-
most as surprised to see that he knew you.”
“He used to have a pew in my church,” ex-
plained Doctor Thurston, a little stiffly; “but that
was before his daughter married an Episcopalian;
and I am bound to admit that he was never assid-


uous in his attendance. By-the-way, Winslow, I
hope to see you at the Friday evening meeting
this week.”
“I shall try to be there, sir,” said the young
man, as he followed the minister to the outer
door.
“I do not think that you will need to exercise
great resolution to accomplish so simple a duty,”
Doctor Thurston remarked.
When young Pierce had accompanied the min-
ister out into the ball to escort him to the eleva-
tor, Farebrother took up his old position before
the fire.
“I say, Arrowsmith,” he asked, “what does
this visit of Sam Sargent mean? Do you sup-
pose he wants to beg off ?”
The old book-keeper shrugged his shoulders
doubtfully, but made no other response.
A minute later Winslow Pierce returned.
“I don't know when I've been so surprised,” he
said to Farebrother. “I didn't suppose that ei-
ther father or Doctor Thurston knew Mr. Sargent
--a man of that character.”
“Why, what's the matter with Sam Sargent's
character ?” asked the clerk, in honest surprise.
“Father says that he is an evil-liver, a profli-
gate, and not to be trusted,” was the answer.
“Not to be trusted ?” echoed Farebrother.
“That's news to me. I never heard of his going
back on his bank or doing anything crooked. Of
course, the old man-I mean your father-doesn't


10
like him, and he's squeezing him to-day; and I
suppose that's why Sam has just come here. I
guess he's trying to coax your father to let up on
him.”
“How is father hurting him ?" asked the son.
“He's driving down Transcontinental Tele-
graph point by point,” the clerk declared—“that's
what your father is doing; and if he can keep
it up long enough, he'll break Sam Sargent before
he gets through."
Winslow Pierce was biting his nails as he besi-
tated, and then spoke again: “I do wish father
would take me more into his confidence. I've
been here two months and more now, and I don't
seem to be any use yet. The work was all ar-
ranged long before I came ; and you and Mr. Ar-
rowsmith do it all. I am only a fifth wheel-
that's what I am.”
“Don't you be in a hurry," returned Fare-
brother ; "the old man will make you useful
yet. He'll put you into more than one board be-
fore the winter's over, and by this time next year
you'll be a director in a dozen big things.”
“Do you think so ?” asked the young fellow-
“really?”
“Sure,” was Farebrother's answer.
“I hope you are right,” said the son. “I'd like
to be of some use in the world."
Then the door of the inner office opened, and
Sam Sargent appeared again.
“That's your last word, is it?” he said, looking


12
The owner of the office took up the tape of the
ticker, which had begun again insistently to re-
cord the movements of the Stock Exchange across
the street.
He smiled as he read the latest figures jerkily
printed on the white ribbon. “Come here, Wins-
low,” he said.
When his son stood beside him he read aloud,
but in a rasping whisper, the telegraphic word
of his attack:—“100, 153—200, 1–100, 4500,
1,4-200, 15.”
“You are hammering it down,” the son de-
clared, with admiration.
“Well,” the father returned, “I don't know as
it is a bad day's work, and we can do better to-
morrow, I think.”
“If you do that,” his son commented, “Trans-
continental won't be worth anything at all,
hardly."
“I don't see why it isn't worthless now as long
as that man Sargent has control,” said Ezra
Pierce.
The outer door opened, and a small boy with a
face of precocious shrewdness entered, holding an
envelope in his hand. He looked at the men in
the office, and then went up to the old man and
asked, “Is this Mr. Pierce ?”
“Yes," was the answer. “Is that letter for me?”
The boy handed him the envelope and said, “Mr.
Silvige said I was to deliver it to Mr. Pierce him-
self?”


14
ing for Sam Sargent, is he? He's ready to put
in that two millions to-morrow where it will do
the most good.”
The old book-keeper shrugged his shoulders
silently and went on with his work. Presently
he laid down his pen and turned around.
“If you want my advice, Mr. Farebrother,” he
said, “I'll give it to you. It's this : close out
your flier to-day-since you have made enough to
pay for your Christmas presents. Take your
profit now, for you don't know what may happen
to-morrow.”
“That's so," responded Farebrother. “Maybe
you're right. Sam Sargent is as smart as they
make 'em ; and he's bound to get back at the old
man, sooner or later.”


II
AFTER a protracted conference with Silvige &
Cusachs, his chief brokers, Ezra Pierce and his
son returned to his own office for a few minutes.
Then they set out to walk home together, as they
always did when the weather was fine.
It was on the stroke of four by Trinity clock as
they crossed Wall Street and passed before the
steep decline of the Sub-Treasury steps. At the
corner of Nassau Street they were checked by a
temporary blockade of cabs and carts, but in a
minute or more the vehicles were skilfully disen-
tangled. The last carriage to get out of their
way was a brougham, through the open window
of which father and son caught sight of the good-
natured, sensual face of Sam Sargent, with a seri-
ous expression on it at first, giving place to an
ironic smile as soon as his eyes fell on Ezra
Pierce.
“Father,” said Winslow, “ weren't you sur-
prised to find that Doctor Thurston knew Mr.
Sargent ?”
“Did he know him ?” his father answered. “I
wasn't aware of it. But it is the doctor's business
to know all sorts of people. And it would do Sar-


16
gent good if he knew more men like Doctor Thurs-
ton. But he is a man of low character himself,
and he prefers low associates.”
“Is he as bad as that ?" the son asked.
“I don't mean that Sargent has friends in the
criminal classes, of course not. He knows some
of the best men in New York, and they seem to
tolerate him, for some reason. But he is a fellow
of common tastes ; he likes fast horses, for in-
stance, and other fast things, I've no doubt. I
distrust him, too. He is a mere speculator, with no
real understanding of the needs of the country. I
I don't see as he's any better than a gambler."
“I remember hearing a sermon when I was a
freshman, I think," said the son,“ in which every-
body in Wall Street was called a gambler.”
“That preacher did not know what he was
talking about," answered Ezra Pierce, as they
turned into Broadway and faced northward.
“There are gamblers in the Street no doubt,
there's Sam Sargent, as I've said—there are the
fellows who watch the ticker foolishly day in and
day out-the kind of men who believe in luck!"
There was an infinitude of scorn in the harsh
voice of the father as he spoke this last word.
“Don't you think there is anything at all in
luck ?” asked Winslow, doubtfully.
“Nothing at all,” the father responded, forci-
bly. “Luck is a fool's word. It is the excuse of
the incompetent. There's really no such thing as
luck—and there can't be. There are opportuni-


17
ties every day for every man, but only the man of
sense and determination knows how to avail him-
self of them. These poor wretches who spend
their lives trying to guess whether Transconti-
nental is going up or going down, they believe
in luck; but when a man is putting Transcon-
tinental down, he knows better—he has made sure
that there isn't any luck one way or the other.”
"I see the difference, I think,” the son said.
“The men who merely take chances are gamblers,
and the men who make chance do as they please,
they are—”
“They are the most useful men in the commu-
nity,” interrupted his father. “They are the real
power in Wall Street-not the mere speculator,
who is of very little account. And bear this in
mind always, Winslow—the men who rule Wall
Street are the greatest benefactors of humanity
the world has ever seen. They are the men who
are developing this mighty country of ours, who
are opening up new States to the oppressed mill-
ions of Europe, who are building the great rail-
roads and bridging the great rivers and establish-
ing the water-works of great cities through all
the mighty West. I see speeches made in Con-
gress sometimes by Western men denouncing
Wall Street. They are as ignorant as your clergy-
man was—and there's less excuse for them, for
they ought to know, if anybody does, that it is
Wall Street that has made the West. Without
the millions that the Street has been pouring out


18
for years the West wouldn't be better than a bar-
ren waste to-day. I've done my share of the good
work, too, and I'm proud of it, of course, but I'm
too old to expect gratitude for it from anybody.
Yet I do get angry when I hear people abuse
Wall Street just because they choose to be blind
to the great good the Street has done to the whole
country.”
“The preacher I heard," said Winslow Pierce,
“ didn't take that view of it. I wish I'd known
then what your opinion was, and I half think I'd
have gone up after the sermon and told him where
he was wrong."
“He has this excuse,” Ezra Pierce admitted,
" that he judged the Street as if there wasn't any-
body in it that wasn't like Sargent. Well, there is.
Sargent represents the worst side of Wall Street,
not the best. It's men like him who delay improve-
ments—who stand across the path of progress.
That's one reason why I want to get rid of him.”
“I don't see how a man of his character can be
really in your way, father,” remarked the son.
“He has powerful friends,” the elder man de-
clared, “and somehow he seems to have a knack
of talking them into helping him. Two or three
times he has interfered with schemes of mine.
But after to-morrow I don't know as he will ever
want to oppose me again. That will be a lesson
to others, too !”
“I suppose that's the reason you refused his
offer of settlement ?” the young man inquired.


19
“Partly,” his father answered. “You heard
what I told Silvige & Cusachs. But my real rea-
son was that I can get all he offered me to-day
without paying him for it.”
“ Can you ?” Winslow began, admiringly. “I
wish I could see how, but—".
“I'll show you how,” the old man interrupted.
“He offered to make a pool and let me control it,
and put Transcontinental up again to fifty.”
“And he was willing to resign the presidency
in your favor, and—” Winslow suggested.
Ezra Pierce's voice was nearly always loud. It
was rarely moderated even indoors. Now it over-
bore the milder notes of his son.
“The presidency ? He's offering what he
hasn't got-or won't have long. If Transconti-
nental goes down to four or five to-morrow morn-
ing—and it is bound to-Sargent will not be able
to borrow the money to pay the January coupons
on the bonds. The company hasn't cash enough
in the treasury to do it. Sargent is trying to ar-
range for a loan. He thinks he knows where he can
get it; but it is one of my friends he is negotiat-
ing with, and when the time comes he will find
that the money is not to be had. Then we shall
foreclose. The stock is mostly in the hands of
small holders, and they won't give us much trou-
ble. My man will be appointed receiver. We
shall reorganize after a while ; and when the
new company is formed I intend to put you in as
first vice-president."


20
“Oh, father,” cried the son, pleased at the pros-
pect of his future distinction.
“So far as possible I always keep off boards—it
frees me from responsibility,” Ezra Pierce declared.
“But I must have some one there to represent me.
So I shall put you in. And it will be a good thing
for you-you will see how a great enterprise can
be set on it legs again and made profitable.”
“Do you think I am competent, father ?" was
the young man's next question. “I've had no
experience, and—”
“I have the experience, haven't I ?” the father
said. “I guess I've experience enough for two.
And remember the advantages you've had. Why,
Winslow, if I had the education you've had, I
should be the richest man in New York to-day !
And even if I'm not, you shall be some day!”
“I don't know how my education will help me
to be the vice-president of a great concern like
the Transcontinental Telegraph Company,” the
son returned. “I didn't pay much attention to
electricity, and—”
“It's a pretty poor education you've had if it
does not fit you to be at the head of anything,"
declared the father. “At your age I was-Wins-
low, do you know what I was doing at your age ?”
“No, sir," responded the son, “at least, not
exactly. I know you began as a boy in a country
store.”
“At your age,” his father continued, when he was
able to make himself heard after they had crossed


21
the broad space in front of the Post-Office, “I was
a tin peddler in Vermont. I was only just twenty-
one when I had saved enough money and made
enough to buy my horse and wagon. The stock
I managed to get on credit.”
“No,” his son said, “I didn't know you had
ever been a peddler.”
“I wasn't a peddler long,” Ezra Pierce asserted.
“Within two years I had a chance to buy into a
clothing store in Burlington—and I was senior
partner in five years. And when I'd made thirty
thousand dollars I sold out and took my money to
Boston.”
“ That was where you first met mother, wasn't
it?” his son inquired eagerly, wondering whether
he might not now find an opportunity to tell his
father about his own love-story.
“Yes," said Ezra Pierce; “it was in Boston,
right after the first battle of Bull Run. She had
come down from the old place in Maine to meet
your uncle Gideon, who had been shot through
the body just at the end of the fight. I'd done
business with Gideon, off and on, for four or five
years, and I looked him up, and I found your
mother taking care of him. And when he died,
that fall, from the wound, I got her to agree to
take care of me.”
“So it was Uncle Gideon's wound in the service
of his country that brought you and mother to-
gether ?” the son commented. “How strangely
Providence brings good out of evil!"


22
“Your uncle Gideon had a good business
head,” Ezra Pierce asserted. “He was making
money even then. If he hadn't been a violent
Abolitionist, and gone off to the war on the first
call for troops, I don't know as he mightn't have
been living to-day. And if he was alive now, I'm
sure he'd be one of the richest men in Boston.”
“Mother clings to his memory even now,” said
Winslow.
“I've wished he was alive more than once,” Ezra
Pierce continued,"for your mother's sake. That
was when I was down myself, for I haven't al-
ways been rich since we were married, Winslow.
Twice I got caught by a twist in the market, and
found myself with worse than nothing. I hadn't
a dollar, and I owed thousands. But as nobody
knew what my losses were, my credit was as
good as ever. So I was able to go in again and
make another fortune before any one found out
that the one I had had was gone. You see, there
is always money to be made by a man who knows
how. Sometimes the chance is bigger than it is
at other times, but there's always a chance for a
man with his eyes open. And the bigger the
place the bigger the chances, and the more of
them. That's why I came to New York the year
you were born.”
“October 23d, 1869," responded Winslow.
“I'm twenty-two now, and I've never regretted
being born here."
“Twenty-two ? So you are,” said Ezra Pierce,


23
“and I am fifty-seven. Well, I have given you
a better start than I had—and you must do what
I sha'n't have time to do, I'm afraid. I may die
before I can finish.”
“I shall try to do whatever you set before me,”
the son said.
“I know that, my boy,” the father answered.
“And what I propose for you won't be hard. I
want you to take a foremost place in this great
city of ours. I mean you to be very rich, of
course, and I expect you to take the position
your wealth and your education entitle you to.
It will be easier for you than for me. Neither
your mother nor I ever cared for the frivolities
of fashion ; we have never made a bid for soci-
ety. I have been too busy, too absorbed in more
important matters, and your mother found her
interest in the church. Perhaps we have made a
mistake—but I don't know as we have. Perhaps
we have been negligent of your interests. But
you are young, and you haven't any enemies."
“Have you any enemies, father ?” asked Wins-
low in surprise.
“Every successful man must have enemies,"
said Ezra Pierce. “And I have been more suc-
cessful than most men. The people I have passed
in the struggle do not love me for leaving them
behind. And I have no patience with fools
either; I know what is best, and I say what I
think frankly. Perhaps I have been too intoler-
ant sometimes, as your mother says I am ; but, at


24
any rate, I have never been mean enough to seek
popularity — there has never been any necessity
for that.”
“But I wasn't very popular either in college,”
his son returned. “And how can I gain popular-
ity here, if you haven't it ?”
“The world is not as small as a college in a lit-
tle town of New England,” the old man answered,
“and men of the world are not governed by the
same motives as college-boys. You needn't be
scared. When I'm ready to put you forward,
you will have all the popularity you need. All
in good time. You are very young yet. You
must stick to business for a while still. Work
hard, and learn how money is made before you
learn how to spend it freely."
“I'm ready to work, father," the son said, “and
anxious, too. But there seems really to be noth-
ing for me to do in the office, and—”.
“I shall find work enough for you soon,” the
father interrupted. “There is not only the vice-
presidency of the Transcontinental before you,
but many other positions of importance where
you can be useful to me.”
“I will do my best,” Winslow promised.
“And I shall be satisfied only with your best,"
his father retorted.
They had walked swiftly, as they always did.
This return home on foot every fine day was all
the exercise Ezra Pierce could find time for, and
he did this as rapidly as he did everything else.


25
His thin figure was a little bent, but his stride
was still vigorous. His son's step was younger,
of course, and it had more spring ; but it was not
as strong as the father's : it did not suggest the
same reserve of vitality.
That afternoon there was just enough chill in
the air to make walking a delight. So interested
were the father and the son in their discussion, as
they sped along side by side, the elder man with
his arm thrust into the younger's, that neither
noted the descent of the early twilight of winter,
and neither remarked the opaline sky in the west,
fading into a delicate blue-gray, against which
waved the curving plumes of steam from the tall
buildings on the other side of the great highway.
So briskly had they walked that they reached
the bend in Broadway just as the bells in the
steeple of Grace Church began to chime forth the
summons to evening prayer.
It seemed to Winslow Pierce as though the
time had come when he had best tell his father
what he knew had to be told before they arrived
home. The hour was propitious, since his father
had been speaking to him with unusual affection.
Ezra Pierce was profoundly fond of his only son,
but it was rare for him to reveal any feeling.
Winslow was moved also by the sudden knowl-
edge of his father's splendid plans for his future.
It seemed to impose on him an obligation not to
keep his father any longer in the dark as to his
own projects.


The young fellow hesitated, and the color left
his lips; but he was finally able to answer, “Yes.”
“Who is she ?" was the father's next inquiry.
“She is Miss Mary Romeyn,” responded Wins-
low.
“Romeyn ?” echoed Ezra Pierce. “I have heard
that name somewhere. Oh! he was the president
of your college, wasn't he ? He died last winter,
didn't he ?"
“That's the one, sir,” Winslow answered.
“Mary was his only child.” Then, with an ef-
fort, he continued, “She-she is not rich.”
“What does that matter ?” his father returned,
sharply. “I can give you enough to support
your wife, I trust. If the girl is a fit person for
you to marry, it is of no importance how poor she
is.”
Again they walked on without speaking for
perhaps a minute. Then Ezra Pierce thrust an-
other quick question at his son, “Does your mo-
ther know her ?”
“Yes, sir,” the young man answered. “Mother
approves of it.”
“So you told your mother before you consulted
me ?” was the father's natural inquiry.
Winslow felt the blood rush into his face and
then leave it. He 'never knew quite how his
father would take an apparent slight of this kind.
He hesitated half a minute before he was able to
collect his wits sufficiently to stammer forth,
“M-m-mother found out for herself, and—and


28
she guessed. So I determined to tell you as soon
as I could-and this is the first chance I've had
really, it is. Last night, you know, you had Mr.
Cusachs to dinner, and this morning—”.
“So Miss Romeyn is in New York now ?” his
father broke in.
“Yes, sir,” the son answered. “She is visit-
ing friends in Seventy-second Street. Mother-
mother understood that I was to tell you about it
this afternoon, and so she-she has invited Mary
to dinner to-night so that you can see her. And.
you will be kind to her, father, won't you ?”
“I hope I am never unkind to any one,” Ezra
Pierce responded, gravely. “And I hope, my
son, that you have chosen wisely.”
“Oh, I know you will like her !” the lover de-
clared. “I don't see how you can help liking
her."
“I don't know as I shall try to help it,” his
father returned.
They had now come to Fourteenth Street, and
they continued on their way with little further con-
versation. Ezra Pierce still leaned lightly on his
son's arm, but he said nothing; and Winslow did
not venture to break into his father's train of
thought. They walked through Union Square
and went on up Broadway, past the shops dis-
playing brilliantly lighted arrays of Christmas
presents.
At Madison Square they swerved to the east-
ward, and crossed the open space diagonally.


Two minutes later they mounted the stoop of
Ezra Pierce's house, where the mother and the
promised wife of the son were awaiting them.


III
Ezra PIERCE's house stood on a corner of Madi-
son Square. It was a large, solid, heavy building
of brown-stone; it was wholly without preten-
sion to architectural beauty, except in so far as
that might be conferred by its simple' massive-
ness. It reflected the absence of taste of its for-
mer owner, from whom Pierce had purchased it,
fully furnished, half a dozen years earlier. It was
not inviting externally, and internally the decora-
tions were stiff and frigid.
While the father and the son were walking
across Madison Square, two women were stand-
ing in the broad hall of the house, which was in-
sufficiently illuminated by a single jet of gas in
the lamp held aloft by the bronze figure which
topped the black - walnut newel-post. One of
these women was the girl Winslow Pierce had
asked to marry him ; the other was his mother.
Mrs. Pierce was just coming down-stairs as
Sanchez, the negro butler, had admitted Miss
Romeyn. Mrs. Pierce was a thin, fragile woman,
perhaps fifty years of age, with a few gray threads
in her light brown hair. Although there was now
a touch of color in her cheeks, a stranger would


31
probably have taken her for a chronic invalid.
Just then she seemed even frailer than she was;
slighter and at the same time taller, by contrast
with the girl at whom she was looking with real
affection in her pale blue eyes. She was holding
Mary Romeyn's plump little hand in her own
long delicate fingers, and she would have petted
it had such an endearment been in accord with
her traditions.
“I am very glad to see you, my dear," she
began.
“ Thank you for saying that, Mrs. Pierce,” the
girl answered, not yet knowing quite how to re-
ceive the evident good-will of her future hus-
band's mother.
Mary Romeyn was a pretty little woman, with
dark eyes, black hair, and a neat figure. She
had also a frank open glance, a broad brow, a
firm nose, and a sturdy chin. She looked per-
fectly healthy and wholesome, and as though she
had a sound appetite. At times she had a self-
reliant manner, which suggested that she might
have a will of her own.
There was a moment of embarrassed silence;
and then the girl asked, with an unconscious
blush, “Has Winslow come yet?” ,
“Not yet,” answered his mother, “but I ex-
pect them every minute now.”
Then she led the girl into the large, long par-
lor with its four tall windows—two on the square
and two on the side street—and with its wide fire-


place, wherein there blazed a gas imitation of a
crackling log.
As the two women were about to take their
seats on a rigid sofa which was placed flat against
the wall, and over which hung a heavily framed
engraving of “ The Prodigal Son” in three stages
of his romantic career, there was a sharp ring of
the door-bell.
“That's Mr. Pierce now," said the elderly lady,
with an obvious start of nervousness.
“I wish Winslow had come first,” the girl con-
fessed with a tremor at the ordeal before her.
“You know, his father has never seen me, and—”
Then she broke off, as Sanchez passed the parlor-
door.
“I wonder whether Winslow has told him ?”
Mrs. Pierce said.
“Of course he has,” Mary returned, swiftly.
“Didn't he say he would tell him on the walk
here ?”
Mrs. Pierce shook her head as she answered,
“ Yes; but sometimes Winslow puts things off.”
Then the door opened and closed with a clang
behind the father and the son. Mary heard the
rough voice of Ezra Pierce in the vestibule giving
orders to Sanchez. She found herself wondering
how she would like him, rather than how this
overbearing man would like her.
As Winslow drew near to the parlor-door Mrs.
Pierce whispered, “Does he know? Did you tell
him ?”


33
“ Yes, mother," the young fellow answered;
“I told him not five minutes ago.”
“What did he say ?” was the mother's anxious
question.
“Nothing," the son responded. “He didn't
say anything, hardly. I don't quite know what
to make of it. Is Mary here ?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Pierce answered. “She's waiting
for you in the parlor.”
Winslow threw his hat and overcoat on a chair,
and slipped into the room where Mary Romeyn
stood a little behind his mother. He kissed her
suddenly, taking her by surprise.
“Oh, Winslow,” she cried,“before your mother,
too !”
“I hope mother will see me kiss you a great
many times,” he returned.
As Ezra Pierce came into the parlor, his son
brought Mary forward and presented her.
“Father," he said, “this is Mary.”
Ezra Pierce held out his large hand and the
girl laid hers in it, receiving a hearty grasp.
“I'm glad to see you, Miss Romeyn,” he said,
looking her full in the face.
Then he drew back with his eyes still fixed
upon her. She stood the close scrutiny without
flinching, though the bright color left her cheeks
slowly.
“So this is the little girl my boy wants to
marry ?” the old man continued.
“He says so,” Mary declared, glancing at Wins-



"I AM GLAD TO SEE YOU, MISS ROMEYN'





35
ther. If he is as good as you are, I shall be satis-
fied.”
“If he doesn't carry on what I have begun
further than I can hope to carry it,” Ezra Pierce
declared, “I shall not be satisfied. Mary, I rely
on you to see that Winslow makes the best use
of his advantages and his opportunities.”
Before Mary could answer the negro Sanchez ap-
peared at the door of the parlor and made a very
low bow, and said, “Dinner is served, madam.”
“Winslow," commanded Ezra Pierce, “take
your mother in to dinner; I will escort your future
wife.”
They walked into the dining-room, which was
cold and bare-looking, with its huge black-walnut
sideboard, opposite to the huge black - walnut
mantel-piece, both of an ungainly ugliness.
They stood reverently behind their chairs while
Ezra Pierce invoked a formal blessing upon their
repast.
“Mother,” said Ezra Pierce, as they took their
seats, “I saw Doctor Thurston to-day—"
“Did you?” interrupted Mrs. Pierce, eagerly;
“and how is he? Last Sunday I thought he had
a cold ?"
“He didn't seem to have anything the matter
with him,” her husband answered. “I have asked
him to dine with us to-morrow ”
“Then I must tell Katie to make him a chicken-
pie,” declared Mrs. Pierce. “You know how fond
he is of her chicken-pies.”


36
“He came to see me about our collection for
Foreign Missions,” her husband continued. “As
usual, he wants ours should be the largest in the
city.”
“I'm sure it ought to be," said Winslow.
“Why, I've heard Doctor Thurston say himself
that he preached to more millions than any other
minister in New York.”
“You gave him a check, of course ?” Mrs. Pierce
declared.
“Of course,” responded her husband. “I gave
him a check for a thousand dollars. And I told
him I'd make it four thousand if he could get
Cyrus Poole to do as much; and I shouldn't won-
der if I should have to give him the other three
thousand—though Cyrus Poole does hate to part
with his money. But the doctor will get it out
of him, if anybody can."
“That's what Mr. Farebrother said in the of-
fice the other day,” Winslow remarked. “He
said that Doctor Thurston had a business head,
and that he could have made a big fortune
if he had gone into the Street when he was
young."
“Mr. Farebrother would do well not to make
remarks about Doctor Thurston,” returned Ezra
Pierce. “The doctor is a good man, and I don't
know as Mr. Farebrother would be any worse for
following in his footsteps.”.
Mary Romeyn sat silently eating what was
placed before her, and listening eagerly that she


37
might understand the surroundings in which she
was to pass the rest of her life.
After a while Ezra Pierce happened to catch
her gaze fixed upon him, as though she was trying
to make out what manner of man he might be. By
that time the brief, simple dinner was half over.
“Winslow,” he called, “how long has this thing
been going on, without my knowing anything
about it—this love-making of yours ?”
“It's been going on ever since I first went to
college,” his son answered, “ as far as I am con-
cerned. I think I fell in love with Mary the first
time I dined at the president's—but I never
thought she cared for me until two weeks ago.”
“I didn't know you were thinking about me at
all,” Mary declared,“ though I believe I did have
a suspicion last summer.”
“Last summer?” Ezra Pierce queried.
“Yes, sir,” his son explained. “Don't you re-
member, I went up to the Adirondacks and
camped out for three weeks? Well, I wanted to
go because I knew Mary was likely to be up there,
staying with a friend, whose cottage was only
half a mile from where we were going to camp.
I meant to ask her to marry me there, if I'd had
a chance, but something always prevented. Still,
I found out she was coming to New York to pay
a visit this winter, and I said to myself that it
had to be done then. She arrived two weeks ago;
and the very first night I asked her, and she ac-
cepted me.”


38
“And neither I nor your mother knew any-
thing about it till now?” said his father, with a
heightened harshness in his voice.
“Mary didn't want me to tell any one till she
had met mother,” Winslow explained. “So I got
her to go to Doctor Thurston's last Sunday—the
day Mr. Cusachs kept you at home all the morn-
ing, don't you remember, sir ?”
“Yes, I remember,” his father answered.
“Well,” Winslow proceeded, “I arranged that
she should meet mother then quite by accident,
and mother liked her and she liked mother. So
yesterday I told mother about the engagement,
and then I told you as soon as I could.”.
“And when do you want to be married ?” asked
his father. “Have you fixed the day ?”
“Not yet, sir," the son responded. “That’s for
Mary to choose, of course—but the earlier the day
the more I shall like it !” and he looked across
the table at his bride, who met his eyes and
blushed prettily. “You see, she's an orphan, and
hasn't anybody to consult but herself.”
There was a brief silence; and then Ezra Pierce
said, “If you are going to be married, the sooner
the better. I suppose you will want to go off on
a wedding-trip somewhere? Well, I shall need
you later in the winter-so you had best get it
over as quick as you can.”
“You must not hurry Mary so, father,” begged
Mrs. Pierce, plaintively.
Mary Romeyn said nothing. After one swift


39
glance at Winslow, she lowered her eyes and kept
silent.
“You have known me for four years now,
Mary,” Winslow began, “and you have found
out all my faults, I hope. There is no need of a
long engagement, to give you a chance to change
your mind, is there ?”
“I shall never change my mind, Winslow,” the
girl declared, raising her eyes. If you want me,
I am ready to marry you."
“If I want you ?” echoed Winslow, “why—"
But the rasping voice of his father interrupted.
“If there's no reason for delay, why don't you
get married next month ?”
“Oh, Mr. Pierce,” said Mary, “that is very
short notice. Oh, I couldn't really! There are
so many things to do.”
“She could not get her clothes made in three
weeks, father-you did not think of that,” said
Mrs. Pierce.
“I'd marry you to - morrow, Mary,” Winslow
declared, “if you would have me, but I don't
want to press you. There is really no reason to
put it off long, is there ?”
“I must have a little time,” the girl responded.
“It's all so sudden! As it is, 1_”
“ Well, if it can't be next month,” Wins-
low urged, “why not February? Why not
Valentine's day? That will give you eight
weeks. You could be ready then, couldn't you,
Mary?”


40
“I suppose I could,” yielded Mary, blushing
again.
“ Then that's settled,” Ezra Pierce asserted.
“ February will do very well. You won't want
to be gone more than a month, will you? I sup-
pose you can go to Florida, or to Southern Cali-
fornia ?”
“A month will do, sir,” Winslow answered.
“That's all right, then, so long as you are here
before the first of April. I shall have something
for you to do then; of course you will live with
us here. There's plenty of room for you; this is
a big house, enough for two families. You can
have the whole third floor.”
Mary Romeyn looked at Winslow to see what
response he would make to this summary disposi-
tion of their future. But he said nothing, as usual
accepting the finality of whatever his father might
propose.
“ Yes, the third floor can be fixed up for
you,” the old man went on. “Mother, that
will give you something to do. Take Mary
with you and go out and order what you want
-furniture and anything else you like. I will
give it to Mary as my first Christmas present to
her.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Pierce admitted, “ the third floor
could be made comfortable for them, I think-
though I shall have to move my linen-closet and
my store-room. But I shall be very glad to have
Mary here in the house with me all the time-if


41
she can put up with the ways of a simple, old
woman like me ?”
Mary bent across the table and took up Mrs.
Pierce's long, thin hand and kissed it, and an-
swered, “I only hope I can help you in some way,
Mrs. Pierce; 1_”
“Call me mother, my dear, can't you ?” asked
the elder woman.
“Mother's very good, too, when you know her,”
said Winslow; “and often she isn't well, and she'll
be very glad to have you with her, Mary, she will,
indeed!”
The girl looked from her lover to his mother.
Then she raised the thin fingers again to her lips
and said, “I will try to be a good daughter to
you."
By this time the short dinner was at an end.
Ezra Pierce had finished his small cube of cheese
with his second wedge of apple-pie. He emptied
his glass of ice - water, and rose to his feet at
once.
“Well,” he said, "you can buy anything you
and Mary want for the third floor. Mother, get
good things, too. Never mind the money; I'll
pay for them.”
Mary and Winslow drew back Mrs. Pierce's
chair and helped her to her feet. Then they went
with her into the parlor again.
Ezra Pierce had settled himself in a large arm-
chair by the fire, and he was already absorbed by
the evening journal, becoming absolutely imper-


43
Winslow thought she looked bewitchingly pretty.
He put his arm about her, while she raised her lips
to his kiss.
Then they went back into the parlor for Mary
to take leave of Ezra Pierce, who was looking at
the flickering fire with a paper clinched in his
bony hand. He paid little attention to them,
merely saying “good-night, good-night,” two or
three times, with his mind obviously otherwise
occupied. So they left him, and went out into
the sharp night air, with their hearts high with
hope.
Ezra Pierce sat still, and even the loud closing
of the street-door did not rouse him from his deep
revery. But in time he took up the paper again,
and again read an article marked in red ink. The
paper was not the one he had been reading after
dinner; it was The Stock Exchange Standard, an
insignificant little sheet, struggling hard for exist-
ence. He was not in the habit of reading it-in-
deed, he did not remember ever having seen a
copy before. The one in his hand he had found
on his table under a circular; it had come by the
latest delivery, and probably Sanchez had brought
it in during dinner. The article marked in red
ink was headed “The Bandit of Broad Street.” It
was a violent personal attack on Ezra Pierce, as the
leader of the bear raid on stocks. It gave a high-
ly colored history of his life. It denounced his
methods of making money, and it declared that
his whole fortune was the result of maneuvres


44
which richly deserved imprisonment for life at
hard labor in Sing Sing. It gave the inside his-
tory of the deal whereby Ezra Pierce and Cyrus
Poole had captured and reorganized the Niobrara
Central, robbing the widow and the orphan who
had money invested in that dividend - paying
stock.
Ezra Pierce wondered who had sent him this
marked copy, and more than one name came to
his mind.
When Winslow returned home about ten o'clock
and rang the door-bell, his father hastily crumpled
up the little newspaper and flung it into the fire-
place, where it caught fire from the gas-jet that
flickered here and there above the imitation log,
being reduced to a crackling blackness before the
son entered the parlor to bid his father good-night.


IV
DURING the next two months, as it happened,
the name of Ezra Pierce was printed very often
in the newspapers of New York, and under widely
differing circumstances—at first in consequence
of his own doings in Wall Street, and afterwards
on account of his son's marriage.
The morning after he had been made ac-
quainted with Mary Romeyn, Ezra Pierce counted
confidently on his ability to drive the stock of the
Transcontinental Telegraph Company still lower.
Knowing that the company had not earned money
enough to pay the coupons due on its bonds on the
1st of January, he believed in its inability to bor-
row the funds which would be needed for this
purpose. To make sure, however, he had in-
duced Cyrus Poole, his ally in the control of the
Niobrara Central Railroad Company, to protract
the negotiations Sam Sargent had opened for bor-
rowing the desired money, instructing Poole to
hold out hopes to the President of Transconti-
nental, and to keep him expectant, and to decline
suddenly to lend the cash, only when it would be
too late for the company to get it elsewhere.
But when the Stock Exchange opened for busi-


46
ness the morning after Sam Sargent had paid his
visit to Ezra Pierce, Mr. Cusachs found prompt
buyers for all the Transcontinental shares he of-
fered. Mr. Moritz, a broker known to be very
closely related to Cyrus Poole, bid Transconti-
nental up, point by point, from 5 to 15. Then
Cusachs sold it down to 13, to the joy of the
bears. But the bulls rallied under the leadership
of Moritz, and forced the price up again to 15, to
18, to 20.
All the morning the Street was full of the
wildest rumors. Towards noon these crystallized
into a single fact. The managers of Transconti-
nental Telegraph had been able to negotiate a
loan to meet the maturing coupons. They would
thus be able to postpone any proceedings to fore-
close any mortgage. Later in the day it was an-
nounced formally that the money the company
needed to borrow would be supplied by Cyrus
Poole. Then the Street knew that the alliance
of Ezra Pierce and Cyrus Poole had been dis-
solved, and that Poole had joined forces with Sam
Sargent. The bulls were jubilant. Transconti-
nental jumped five points in five minutes, and
when the board adjourned the closing price was
311-higher than it had been for several months.
Other stocks advanced at the same time. The
smaller bears were frightened, and covered their
shorts as best they could. Farebrother, standing
by the window of Ezra Pierce's office and letting
the tape of the ticker slip from his hands, was


48
worse, of the men then managing the affairs of
the corporation.
Although Ezra Pierce did not appear in either
of these legal proceedings, everybody knew that
both of them had been suggested by his shrewd-
ness, and were paid for by his money. His por-
trait and the portrait of Sam Sargent—neither of
them identifiable, except by an act of faith-ap-
peared in the same column of the Gotham Ga-
zette, accompanied by picturesque descriptions of
the personal appearance of the two men, and by a
summary of their contrasting careers and charac-
ters. The space-writer to whom this work had
been assigned evidently derived most of his ma-
terial from a source more friendly to Sargeut than
to Pierce ; and this was not to be wondered at,
perhaps, as the former was one of the most popu-
lar men in the Street, and the latter one of the
least liked. So it was that the ill-looking portrait
of Sam Sargent was accompanied by an anecdotal
biography, very vague and sketchy, no doubt, but
producing the impression on the reader's mind
that the president of Transcontinental was a kind-
hearted man, a good fellow,“ one of the boys";
while the equally ill-looking portrait of Ezra
Pierce was followed by an account of his life and
manners distinctly unfavorable, and dwelling with
some insistence on the piquancy of the contrast
between the primness and austerity of his house-
hold in Madison Square and the predatory and buc-
caneering freedom of his methods in Wall Street.


49
When Winslow Pierce read this he was dis-
gusted that anybody should think of comparing
his father and a man like Sargent. He showed
the paper to Mary Romeyn, and she was fierily
indignant, and denounced the editor of the
Gotham Gazette, and wondered why they didn't
horsewhip him. She asked her lover how his
father felt.
“Father ?” repeated Winslow. “He doesn't
seem to mind it half as much as I do. He told
me to keep the paper out of the house so mother
wouldn't see it—and that's all he said. I never
saw anybody bear an attack with the Christian
fortitude father has shown. Do you know, Mary,
sometimes I almost think he doesn't really care ?
What he is thinking of all the time isn't what
these papers say about him — no; it's how he is
going to turn Sargent out of the control of the
Transcontinental; and keep him from ruining the
company. You know, I told you that when
Transcontinental is reorganized I'm to be vice-
president ? I suppose I shall be the youngest
vice-president of an important company in all the
United States. If we were in Germany, now,
Mary, in two months people would call you Mrs.
Vice-President Pierce. How would you like
that ?"
· The answer of Mary Romeyn to this ques-
tion is not material. It is of importance, how-
ever, to record that Winslow Pierce did not be-
come vice-president of the Transcontinental


50
Telegraph Company. There was no reorganiza-
tion of the corporation, for the directors borrowed
the money needed to pay the January coupons,
and the judge finally denied the application for a
receiver. For once Ezra Pierce was beaten. It
was owing to the treachery of Cyrus Poole, per-
haps; but he was beaten, none the less. For a
while he kept up the fight in the courts unavail-
ingly, and then suffered the suits to be dismissed
one by one. Sam Sargent was left in control of
Transcontinental, and Cyrus Poole in undisputed
possession of Niobrara Central.
Experts in the Street calculated that the experi-
ence had cost Ezra Pierce more than a million of
dollars. What he had really lost no one ever knew.
He said nothing. Only once did his son ever hear
him allude to it in any way. On the first Sunday
in January Doctor Thurston took as the subject
of his sermon, “The Duty of Giving and the Duty
of Gratitude”; and on their way home from
church Ezra Pierce said to Winslow: “The doc-
tor is right to talk about gratitude—but I don't
know as there's much of it to be found anywhere
nowadays. I could tell him that—and prove it
too.” The son remembered having heard his
father say long before that it was he who had
given Cyrus Poole a first start in Wall Street, and
he understood the bitterness of his father's tone.
Scarcely had the fight over Transcontinental
ceased to be a topic for daily talk when the Pierce
family was again made a subject for newspaper


51
discussion. Doctor Thurston's sermon on “Giving
and Gratitude” having excited much comment, the
editor of the Sunday issue of the Gotham Gazette
sent to the church one of the most enterprising
young men on the staff of that most enterprising
newspaper, to write up a brisk and breezy story
on“ A Congregation of Millionaires in Church.-
How Rich Men Pray.-Preaching to One Hun-
dred Millions of Dollars every Sunday.--Doctor
Thurston does it.—How some of the Wealthiest
Men in America behave in the Sacred Edifice.”
On the morning when the brisk and breezy
story appeared with these appropriate scare-heads
an enterprising reporter of another enterprising
newspaper, the Daily Dial, was reading it in a
barber-shop while waiting to be shaved. When
his turn came, the barber talked to him about the
article, and happened to mention that the beauti-
ful young lady, who was declared to be sitting in
the pew with the Pierces, was Miss Romeyn.
“ The piece in the paper doesn't say so,” the
barber asserted, taking the traditional pleasure of
his craft in being able to complete a bit of gossip,
“but I know that she is engaged to be married
to Mr. Winslow Pierce.”
The lather was dangerously near the reporter's
eyes, and the razor was at his throat, but he did
not hesitate to ask, “How do you know ?”
“Oh, I know all that goes on at Ezra Pierce's,"
the barber returned. “You see, my sister, she
sews for Mrs. Pierce. Why, she's sometimes all


52
alone in Mrs. Pierce's best bedroom for hours and
hours at a time.”
When he was shaved the young reporter sud-
denly declared his intention of having his hair
cut also, although the necessity for this was not
obvious. During the process he had a chance to
ask the barber many leading questions, all of
which were freely answered. When he had no
further excuse for lingering, the young reporter
walked down to Madison Square, and prepared
himself to write a description of Ezra Pierce's
house. Then he took a train on the elevated road,
and went straight to the office of the Daily Dial.
He spoke at once to the city editor, who happened
to be in just then.
“I've got a beat," he said, “a clean scoop.
Nobody else is on to it, I'm dead sure. It's the
engagement of Winslow Pierce, son of old Ezra
Pierce, who's said to be worth ten millions.”
“Good !” the editor cried. “How did you get
it ?”
The reporter explained briefly, and asked, “How
much do you want ?”
“I guess it will stand two columns, won't it?"
“Easy,” the reporter assented.
And the next morning the Daily Dial on its
first page announced that Winslow Pierce, the
only son and sole heir of Ezra Pierce, was en-
gaged to Mary Romeyn, daughter of the late col-
lege president Charles Clayton Romeyn, LL.D.
It declared that an attempt had been made to


53
keep the engagement a secret, but an enterprising
newspaper like the Daily Dial knew its duty to
the public too well to permit this. It announced
that the young couple were to be married by
Doctor Thurston in the middle of February,
when they would start at once to spend their
honey-moon in southern California. It stated
further that it was understood that Mrs. Pierce
had now withdrawn her opposition to the match,
but that at first she did not approve at all of her
son's marrying a New England girl, having in-
tended to choose a bride for him herself among
the fair daughters of the Four Hundred who
formed the most exclusive circles of New York
society. This article was set off by an outline
portrait of Ezra Pierce, by another outline por-
trait purporting to represent Winslow Pierce,
and by sketches of the outsides of Ezra Pierce's
house in Madison Square and of Doctor Thurs-
ton's church in Fifth Avenue.
The next morning, when this appeared, the
Gotham Gazette sent a reporter down at once to
Broad Street to interview Ezra Pierce, with a
hope that he would deny the report, thus permit-
ting the Gazette virtuously to denounce the Dial
for its “fake journalism.” But Ezra Pierce re-
fused to see any reporters, and he ordered Wins-
low not to talk to them. He asked Farebrother
to go out to them with the statement that Mr.
Winslow Pierce and Miss Mary Romeyn were
engaged to be married, and that the wedding


54
would take place at Doctor Thurston's church on
the 14th of February, then barely two weeks
distant.
Therefore the Gotham Gazette reluctantly re-
printed the announcement of the engagement,
and gave its own outline portraits of father and
son. The next day the Daily Dial, delighted at
its“ beat," and having discovered that the future
bride was staying with friends in Seventy-second
Street, published a sketch of the outside of the
bouse where she was living. Not content with
this evidence of his enterprise, the editor of the
Dial sent his original female reporter, “Pettie
Pert,” disguised as a book - agent, to try and get
into both houses to take detective-camera photo-
graphs of the interiors, as well as portraits of Mrs.
Pierce and Miss Romeyn. These personal pic-
tures were utilized to decorate an article in the
next Sunday issue on “Rich Men's Wives.-Faces
never seen before in print.” And this was but
one of many articles similar in conception and
in execution which appeared in most of the morn-
ing newspapers of New York.
When Mary Romeyn chanced to glance at one of
these she was shocked, and she blushed as though
she had been rudely addressed in the open street.
Winslow Pierce did not like the tone and the
allusions of many of the articles, but he was
secretly pleased to find himself of so much im-
portance. Mrs. Pierce did not bappen to see
more than one or two of them; and her chief


regret was that the alleged portrait of Mary did
not do the girl justice. Ezra Pierce may have
read many of the columns upon columns written
about his son's wedding, but he said nothing about
them; he was busy with matters of more impor-
tance.
Early in February he was able to give the
market another twist most unexpectedly, and he
very nearly caught the president of Transconti-
nental napping. As Farebrother said to Arrow-
smith, standing before the fire, and toasting his
spine as usual : “The old man isn't going to do
things by halves, he isn't. He's bound to make
the bride a big present, of course—and he means
to let Sam Sargent pay for it, if he can. There's
nothing mean about him, is there ?”
Old Arrowsmith shrugged his shoulders as
usual, and said nothing.
On the morning of the wedding-day Ezra Pierce
handed Mary Romeyn an envelope, saying, “I
meant to get you something handsome, but I
haven't had time. Take that, and when you
come back you can get something to suit your-
self.”
Inside of the envelope was a check to her order
for fifty thousand dollars.
“Oh, father,” said Winslow, "you are so gen-
erous !" And Mary Romeyn thanked him also,
wondering whether there could be happiness for
her in a family where there was such immense
wealth, with all its attendant responsibilities.


56
There had recently been founded a new weekly
review of society, fashion, and sport called the
Upper Ten, and supposed to be written wholly
by those having a right of admission to the most
exclusive houses in New York. It was a preten-
tious paper, and it had its chief circulation in the
smaller towns of the West, where there were
readers glad to accept its tales of “club men”
and its anecdotes of “society ladies” as authen-
tic information about the innermost circles of
metropolitan fashion. In the first number of this
journal to appear after the wedding of Winslow
Pierce and Mary Romeyn there was a lofty para-
graph referring to the ceremony at Doctor Thurs-
ton's church, and asking why the morning papers
had made such a fuss over it. “Who is this man
Ezra Pierce?” it went on. “He may be rich, for all
we know ; he may be worth half a dozen millions,
more or less ; what of it ? Nobody ever heard of
him before. He is unknown in Society, absolutely
unknown. Certainly the man has never been
seen at the Patriarchs, and probably would not
know how to behave if he got there by accident.
As for the son, he seemed from the portraits in
the papers to be an insignificant little fellow, try-
ing to raise a mustache under glass. No doubt
he was a worthy specimen of the lower orders,
but why should the mating of such people receive
any attention at all? Of course there was no-
body at the ceremony that anybody knew.”
Winslow had taken his bride down to Florida;


57
and it was when he returned to the hotel with
her one evening, after a stroll in the mellow
moonlight, that he saw a new number of the
Upper Ten on the news-stand. He bought it
eagerly to see what it said about the wedding,
and he read the paragraph with a sharp pang.
He tore the paper up, so that Mary should not
see it, but the memory of it embittered the next
few days. And during these days he received
by mail no less than five copies of the Upper Ten,
directed to him in different handwritings, and
having the offensive paragraph marked so that he
could not fail to discover it.
It need not be said Ezra Pierce was not in the
habit of reading publications like the Upper Ten,
and even if he had chanced to see this number he
would not have cared. He never doubted that
when he or his son chose to knock at the portals
of Society, Society would make baste to throw the
doors wide open.


Towards the middle of March, Mr. and Mrs.
Winslow Pierce returned from their wedding-
trip, and took possession of a floor of the house
on Madison Square. Winslow's mother wished
to make Mary welcome, and she had refitted and
refurnished the rooms her daughter-in-law was to
occupy ; her taste was simple, if uncultivated;
and the parlor on the corner, and the large sunny
bedroom adjoining, and the dressing-room be-
yond, with its simple bath-tub, were comfortable,
if a little bare. The bareness Mary did not object
to, for it left her free to complete the installation
according to her own ideas.
And within a fortnight after the young couple
had settled themselves the rooms had taken on a
most home-like appearance, as though they had
been lived in for years. The parlor especially,
with its many wide windows and with its spa-
cious easy-chairs, inviting a sitter to toast his
feet at the cheerful hickory fire while looking out
of the window into the golden-and-brown sunset
far across the river—the parlor especially was
restful and cosey. Mrs. Pierce was scrupulous in
respecting her daughter-in-law's privacy, and she


89
never intruded ; but she gladly accepted every
invitation to go up-stairs and have a chat. In
the society of the bright and healthy girl the
old woman discovered how lonely they had
been before their son's wife came to live with
them, and she wondered aloud how it was that
they had ever been able to get along without
Mary.
On her part, the young woman was equally
tactful. She became very much attached to her
mother-in-law, and delighted in coaxing the elder
lady to mount the stairs and to take possession of
the tufted rocking-chair in a corner of the parlor
near two of the windows. Mary never inter-
fered in the house-keeping, but when Mrs. Pierce
consulted her she did not refrain from sugges-
tions, which were always accepted eagerly and
gratefully. Thus it soon became an established
custom for Mrs. Pierce to climb up to her son's
apartment every afternoon a little before five for
a cup of tea.
* This institution of five - o'clock tea, rather ab-
surd in a house where dinner was served punctu-
ally at six, was greatly approved by Sanchez,
the negro butler. He brought up the toasted
crackers and the cream every afternoon with a
feeling that the household was becoming more
fashionable; and he set them down on the little
low tea-table with the subdued swagger which
was characteristic of him whenever he was on his
best behavior. Towards the bride of “Master


60
Winslow”-as he still called the son of the
house—the butler was most deferential always.
Sanchez was a Baltimore negro, now nearly
fifty, who had been with the Pierces ever since
he had waited on them satisfactorily at a hotel in
Long Branch nearly twenty years before. He was
fully aware that he had a very good place. He
had a high temper, and occasionally he lost con-
trol of it, but otherwise he was a model attend-
ant. Two years after he came to New York he
had joined Doctor Thurston's church. Ezra
Pierce was particular in “not permitting lies to
be told in the house," as he phrased it ; and
when he denied himself to visitors Sanchez never
had to say “not at home," but was allowed to
declare frankly that the master of the house was
“engaged.”
On Sundays only Sanchez did not bring the
cream and the crackers up to Mrs. Winslow
Pierce's parlor precisely as the clock struck five,
for on Sundays the family had tea together in
the dining-room at six. The Sunday dinner was
at one, and it was composed chiefly of cold things,
that the cook might be spared labor on the Sab-
bath day. Even Mary, the daughter of the pres-
ident of a New England college, could not but
feel a certain narrowness and rigidity in the Sab-
bath routine in Ezra Pierce's house. They went
to church together in the morning of course, all
four of them; and again in the evening. In the
afternoon Ezra Pierce, by some strange twist of


61
his code, permitted himself to read the news-
papers, and to make abundant notes and calcula-
tions in the long note-book he carried in the left
breast pocket of his ill-fitting coat. So absorbed
would he be in this ciphering that he did not
always hear the young people come into the
parlor to tell him that they were going for a
walk.
Those long walks with her young husband on
Sunday afternoon were the pleasantest memories
that remained in later years to Mary Pierce of
her first winter in New York. No matter what
the weather might be, in a belated March snow-
storm or in a blustering April shower, the young
couple would start out about three o'clock and
walk up to Central Park, and part way around
it, talking about themselves, discussing their past
and their future, and making projects for happi.
ness to be attained the next year and the years
after. Sometimes they came back soaked through;
and Winslow's mother would be afraid they
might catch their death of cold. But they
would change their clothes and come down to
the Sunday tea-table in almost indecorously good
spirits.
Perhaps they would find Ezra Pierce in the same
chair they had left him in, with the newspapers scat-
tered about him and still making calculations in
the note-book. Or perhaps they would discover
him deep in thought, gazing steadfastly into the
fire, with a pencil tight in his fingers and with a


62
knot in his forehead. Mary thought that he
worked too hard, and with too steady a tension.
She ventured to suggest his reading a novel now
and then as a relief to the strain of business.
But he had no time for reading except on Sun-
day, and he would not take up a work of fiction
on the Sabbath day. Besides, he cared little for
any stories except those of Dickens. He liked
to see the sunny side of life presented in novels,
he said : there were enough sad things in reality
without going to books for them; he did not
find any pleasure in reading Thackeray, who was
too cynical, and who took too mean a view of hu-
manity; he thought “ Vanity Fair” an immoral
book.
It was at the tea-table one Sunday evening,
early in May that Ezra Pierce expressed these
views, in response to Mary's questions.
She did not answer him. From her residence
in a college-town she had absorbed such a taste
for literature as to give her a distaste for what
seemed to her the cheap caricature and the
tawdry pathos of Dickens. But she knew there
was no use in presenting her opinions to Ezra
Pierce. Already she had learned to understand
some of his peculiarities; when he had once
fixed an opinion, argument and discussion were
useless.
It was Mrs. Pierce who spoke next. “I do not
see how you can like Dickens, father,” she said;
“all his books are so coarse. And then there's



"PERHAPS THEY WOULD FIND EZRA PIERCE IN THE SAME CHAIR
THEY HAD LEFT HIM IN "





63
that Mr. Stiggins, in—in the ‘Pickwick Papers,'
isn't it? It seems to me very contemptible to
put a man in a book like that, I mean that sort
of a man.”
“That Stiggins is a disgusting fellow,” Wins-
low remarked, “but it's very funny where they
all drink so much tea, isn't it? Besides there are
very few ministers like him, I hope.”
“Did you know, Mary,” Mrs. Pierce continued,
" that I wanted Winslow should be a minister ?”.
“No ?” Mary returned, reproachfully. “He
never told me that."
“Well,” Winslow explained, “it was ever so
long ago, wasn't it, mother ?”
“It was when he went to college, Mrs. Pierce
went on. “That was what I hoped, at least, for
I won't say as father was ever as anxious for it as
I was."
“No,” said Ezra Pierce, gravely. “I thought
that if Winslow had any head for business he'd
do better for the church by staying outside of it
and making money and giving freely. My mother
would have liked me to be a minister too, when I
was a little boy—but we were too poor then.
And I guess I've done better by the church than
if I'd studied for the ministry. It takes one kind
of man to do the preaching in the pulpit, and it
takes a different kind of man to manage the busi-
ness, and to supply the money, and to build new
churches, and to pay for missionaries. Now, I
don't believe I should have been very good at the


65
ing of one thing I had heard only last week-a
clever thing, too, I suppose, but really mean.”
“What was it ?” his mother demanded.
“Well,” the son responded, “I heard a man say
that Sam Sargent said that if Doctor Thurston
would only preach restitution instead of repent-
ance, he would empty his church in a month.”
Mary was about to speak; but she looked at
Ezra Pierce, and then changed her mind and said
nothing
Mrs. Pierce was indignant. “I don't see how
you can repeat such a thing, Winslow ! I'm real-
ly surprised at you !"
“But, mother,” her son apologized, “I was only
telling you what I had heard that man Sargent
had said.”
“I know," she admitted. “But you shouldn't
do that even. And as for Mr. Sargent, if all I
hear about him is true, it would do him good to
sit under Doctor Thurston's preaching-not for
one month only, but for the rest of bis life.”
Ezra Pierce had moved impatiently at the men-
tion of Sargent's name. Now he broke into the
conversation again.
“That kind of man isn't going to prosper long,"
he said. “We need not put ourselves out about
him! Some day he will get sorely punished
and it will serve him right too !".
His son's wife was watching him as he said
these words, and she thought she had never seen
a more masterful look on his face. It grieved


66
her also to think that she also detected more
than a suggestion of vindictiveness in his ex-
pression. She saw him take up his cup and gulp
down his tea as though to quench an inward
fire.
After their light repast was over, and when
they were all standing in the hall, ready to start
for the evening sermon, the door-bell rang, and
Sanchez admitted Mr. Silvige.
The visitor apologized for coming at such an
inopportune moment, but he wanted a few words
with Mr. Pierce before the Stock Exchange opened
the next morning.
“Certainly,” said Ezra Pierce, eagerly. “I've
been wondering whether you wouldn't be in this
evening. Go into the parlor, and I'll be with you
in a moment.”
As Mr. Silvige passed into the parlor Ezra
Pierce said to his wife, “Now, mother, you go
right along to church without me. I—"
“But, Ezra—” she began.
“I've got to talk to Mr. Silvige now," he in-
terrupted, with his harsh voice. “It's important
-very important. You go to church without
me, now. I'll come if I can-later."
Mrs. Pierce made no further protest. Indeed,
Ezra Pierce had left her at once and joined Mr.
Silvige in the parlor.
As Mrs. Pierce went down the steps with Wins-
low and Mary she sighed.
“I do wish father had come with us to-night,”


69
proaching herself inwardly for a vague doubt as
to the absolute sincerity of the preacher.
When they were leaving the church Mrs. Pierce
sighed again.
“I do wish father could have come to-night,”
she said. “I do so bate to have him miss a ser-
mon like that. It would have interested him and
done him good, too — for he'd have known that
he'd done bis full duty in giving away money."
But even when they returned to the house the
conference with Mr. Silvige was not yet ended ;
and Ezra Pierce came out into the hall and bade
them all good-night somewhat hastily, returning
at once to the parlor, where the stockbroker
awaited him.


VI
The next morning father and son arrived in
Broad Street a little earlier than usual. On the
desk in the private office was a pile of letters
waiting to be opened. Ezra Pierce took his seat
before the desk and tore open the envelopes one
after the other, throwing rapidly into the waste-
basket the printed circulars of one kind or another
which filled half of them. He never allowed a
clerk to interfere with his correspondence, and
most of the letters he received were filed away
without being read by any one else. He always
wrote the answers himself, not having adopted
the more modern devices of the stenographer and
the typewriter.
That Monday morning in May, before he had
opened all his letters, he called to his son.
“Winslow, go round to Hitchcock & Van Ren-
sellaer's and tell Mr. Van Rensellaer I want to
see him to-day. Perhaps he can come here this
morning.”
As Winslow left the office to go to the lawyers
Ezra Pierce adjusted on his large nose the gold
spectacles he had to use for reading, and he
turned again to his correspondence.


“Mr. Farebrother,” he called a minute later.
“Yes, sir," said the clerk, stepping to the door
of the private office.
“If Mr. Silvige comes any time to-day let me
know at once,” commanded Ezra Pierce. “No
matter who it is I'm talking to, I want to see
him. And shut that door now, will you ?”
Farebrother closed the door, secluding Ezra
Pierce in the private office. Then he went back
to his desk.
“The old man's up to some new scheme,” he
said as he took his seat. “He isn't sending for
Silvige and consulting Van Rensellaer for noth-
ing. I wonder what sort of a thing it's going to
be this time ?”
He gave an interrogative inflection to his de-
livery of this last remark, but it elicited no com-
ment from the book-keeper, who did not even
raise his head.
“What's our balance this morning ?” Fare-
brother asked. “Under a million, isn't it?”
“Under half a million,” Arrowsmith answered,
without turning
“As low as that, is it ?” Farebrother returned.
“We're getting pretty poor, ain't we? I guess
that raid on Transcontinental and Niobrara Cen-
tral cost the old man more’n he likes to think
about. I know I shouldn't want to lose such a
pile of money, if I had it. Why, if I had the old
man's balance in bank this morning, do you know
what I'd do ?”


172
“Yes,” the old book-keeper responded, looking
at him for the first time. “You would lose it in
a month."
“Now that's where you're wrong,” his fellow-
clerk returned, calmly. “If I had half a million,
I'd quit the Street, pretty darn quick I would. I
wouldn't have a ticker in the house. No; I'd
keep my money tight - let it out on bond and
mortgage, maybe-improved property, of course.
Then I'd go in for Society. I'd make the other
three hundred and ninety-nine find room for me
somewhere.”
The outer door of the office opened, and Mr.
Silvige entered briskly.
“Mr. Pierce in ?” he asked.
“Yes,” Farebrother answered, crossing to the
door of the private office and knocking. “And
he said he wanted to see you as soon as you
came."
“Come !" called the resonant voice of Ezra
Pierce.
Farebrother opened the door, and Mr. Silvige
disappeared into the private office.
“I cabled last night after I left you,” he was
heard to say, “and I've just got the answer. The
London market is very dull just now, but they
think they could handle bonds for a hundred
thousand pounds."
“ That will do,” Ezra Pierce declared. “That's
all I want."
And then Farebrother thought it best to close


73
the door of the private office, and to go back to
his own desk reluctantly.
The conference with Mr. Silvige lasted only a
few minutes, and he left Mr. Pierce just as Wins-
low returned.
The son went into the private office. “Mr.
Van Rensellaer will see you here or at his office
at three o'clock, if that will do,” he said.
“ Telephone him to come here to see me then,"
Ezra Pierce answered. “I've got all the papers
here I want to consult him about.”
Winslow sent this message, and then stood for
a minute idly watching the constant movement in
the street below in front of the Stock Exchange.
“Here, Winslow," called his father, "you an-
swer this letter for me."
The son entered the private office, and closed
the door behind him.
Ezra Pierce thrust a letter towards him, saying,
“The man's a fool. He says he's a minister, too.
I never heard of bim, and he wants me to advise
him how to speculate in Wall Street."
“Well, that is pretty cool,” Winslow remarked,
taking the letter and glancing over it. “What
shall I write him ?”
“Tell him not to speculate at all. Tell him I
never speculate myself,” said Ezra Pierce, forci-
bly. “It's fools mostly who speculate. You re-
member this always, Winslow : that it isn't by
taking chances you make money; it's by making
the chances for yourself.”


“Shall I tell this man that too !" asked Wins-
low."
“It wouldn't be any use,” his father answered.
“But you may tell him this, if you like-not to
speculate at all ; but if he has money, to invest
it in good securities. I don't know but what you
might as well say that these new industrial stocks
are good things to put money in; they are based
on the solid assets of manufacturing business.”
“All right,” answered the son. “I think I can
write him the sort of letter you want. And, you
know, writing letters for you now and then is all
I have to do down here yet.”
The father looked up at his son from under his
thick grizzled eyebrows. Then he took off his
spectacles, and swung around in his chair with
his back to the desk.
“Sit down, Winslow," he began, “and I'll tell
you something I didn't mean to tell you just yet
awhile."
The son took the chair opposite his father and
said, “I hope you've got something more for me
to do."
“That's just it,” his father answered. “I've
seen you haven't had much of a chance this win-
ter. I meant to give you a place as vice-presi-
dent, but I couldn't arrange that. Now I've got
something better for you.”
“Better than a vice-presidency ?” Winslow re-
sponded, as his father paused, seemingly to invite
his reply. “Then I guess it must be a presidency.”


75
“It's a presidency,” returned his father, “of a
company with a million dollars capital.”
“Oh, father!" was all that the young man was
capable of saying in his sudden joy.
“I don't know as I told you that I bought the
Ramapo potteries a few weeks ago, and I'm now
going to have them turned into a stock company,”
Ezra Pierce continued. “That's what Mr. Van
Rensellaer is at work on. It is to be called the
Ramapo Pottery Company. It will be capitalized
at a million, and I shall put you in as presi-
dent."
“But, father,” the son was able to say at last,
“ am I competent ? I don't know anything at all
about potteries, and—”
“That's no matter,” his father went on. “I
don't know as you need to know anything. Of
course we shall retain the man who is managing
it now-Wemyss, his name is. He'll see that the
works are kept up all right. That's his business,
that sort of thing. And they all tell me that this
Wemyss is a first-rate man.”
“Then what am I to do?” Winslow inquired.
“You're to represent me in the company to
look after my interest,” Ezra Pierce answered.
“I shall put Mr. Van Rensellaer on the board of
directors, and perhaps Mr. Farebrother. Mr. Sil-
vige has been arranging to place five hundred
thousand dollars of first mortgage bonds in Lon-
don, and I've no doubt it can be done. The million
stock I shall keep myself for the present."


76
“Well, father,” said Winslow,“ if you think I'm
fit for so responsible a position, I'll do what I can.”
“Of course," his father continued, “I don't
know how long this will go on.”
“I see,” Winslow admitted ; “if I'm not satis-
factory I'm to be removed ?”
His father laughed grimly. “You'll be satis-
factory to me—and there isn't anybody else who
can say a word. I own all the stock, I told you."
"Well, then,” began the son, puzzled, “how—"
“You can keep the place,” Ezra Pierce de-
clared, “as long as there is any Ramapo Pottery
Company. How long that will be I don't know.
I'm working hard now to bring about a combina-
tion of all the leading potteries in the country.
If I succeed—and I'm pretty sure to-then the
Ramapo Pottery Company will be only a branch
of the General Ceramic Company."
“Do you mean that you are forming a trust ?”
the son asked.
“They don't call them trusts now,” his father
answered, “ because the courts interfere. But it's
the same thing, I suppose."
Winslow looked at his father wonderingly.
“But I thought trusts were very unpopular,
and—”
“And that's why we are not going to call this
one a trust. It's to be a company, as I told you.
It will absorb all the leading potteries of the
whole United States—and I know one in Canada
that may come in-but with the tariff we don't


77
mind about Canadian competition. It's to have a
capital of forty millions. I shall make you a di-
rector, of course; I shall need a representative on
the board.”
Winslow was still puzzled. He did not quite
see why his father was undertaking an enterprise
of this character.
“I didn't know that you approved of trusts,”
be ventured to suggest.
“But I do,” Ezra Pierce declared. “It is only
by combining that manufacturers can protect
their own interests. A corporation like the Gen-
eral Ceramic Company can make enormous econ-
omies. They can reduce the cost of doing busi-
ness by doing away with cut-throat competition.
They can get their raw material cheaper by hav-
ing only one buyer. They can afford to close the
unprofitable works, and save money that way.”
“ That would throw a lot of men out of work,
wouldn't it ?” Winslow asked.
“I suppose it would,” his father answered.
“But what of it? A good man is never long out
of a job here in America. I know that myself.
I never waited for a job to come to me; I went
out and found one for myself. And if there are
any men discharged, that's what they will have
to do too."
“But all men haven't your energy, father,”
Winslow responded, “and—”
“So much the worse for them then,” his father
interrupted. “I made my way in the world with-


78
out anybody's coddling me, and everybody else
had better do the same. I don't say but what
there'll be cases of hardship now and then-maybe
there will—but the chance of that ought not to
keep us from going ahead with an improvement.
Every great enterprise costs human lives; a doz-
en men died while they were building the Brook-
lyn Bridge; that's inevitable. It is a pity, but it
can't be helped. The only thing for a man to do
is to see that he is one of the men on shore direct-
ing things, and not down under the water risk-
ing his life. But somebody has got to take the
chances whenever any great work is to be done.”
“I suppose so," said Winslow, reluctantly.
“You are right, of course. Yet it does seem hard
on the men who have to be crushed under the
wheels of progress.”
“We must make it as easy for them as we can
when the time comes,” Ezra Pierce declared.
“But we can't let thinking about them hinder
the consolidation which has got to come, and
which will help everybody when it does come.”
“I suppose not,” admitted Winslow, doubt-
fully.
“In the mean time,” Ezra Pierce continued,
“you will be president of the Ramapo Pottery
Company. You will need an office, and- open
that door, Winslow, and call Mr. Farebrother.”
When the clerk came Ezra Pierce bade him go
and see if the room on the other side of the outer
office was still vacant; and if so, to take it at


79
once for a year in the name of the Ramapo Pot-
tery Company.
Farebrother departed on his errand, and Ezra
Pierce turned to his son again.
“That office next door will do very well for
you. There's a communicating door, too. You
won't need any clerk just now. All the business
will be done from the works by the manager; I
shall not bother with that. You know I have no
taste for details of that sort.”
“That's partly why I'm so surprised to find
you owning a pottery,” his son commented. “I
didn't know you ever had anything to do with
one."
“I didn't till last month,” his father explained ;
“then I heard that this one was for sale. In fact,
it was offered to me cheap, and I took it. Now-
I think I see my way to making some money out
of it ; and it will be a great help in getting up
the General Ceramic Company."
A few minutes later Mr. Farebrother returned
with the news that he had been able to lease the
adjoining office. The janitor was sent for at
once ; and the communicating door being un-
locked, Ezra Pierce and his son went in to see the
new head-quarters of the Ramapo Pottery Com-
pany. It was a small room, having but one win-
dow on Broad Street.
“This will do very well,” said Ezra Pierce.
“You can have the floor carpeted to - morrow.
Then you can move in your own desk. Buy three


80
or four chairs—three will do. Then there's that
tall bookcase you had in your room before you
were married, you remember, Winslow? Well,
you had better have that brought down here ; it
will do to hold papers.”
As they went back to the larger office Mr.
Farebrother asked what should be painted on the
glass of the outer door of the new office.
“I can have my name on it, can't I ?” asked
Winslow, with a faint blush.
“I don't know why you shouldn't,” answered
his father. “That's to be your office hereafter.”
Therefore within forty-eight hours after this
conversation the door of the new office received
this golden legend, “Ramapo Pottery Company.
Winslow Pierce, President." The office itself
was carpeted, the three chairs were bought, and
the desk was moved in.
It was in May that Winslow Pierce was elected
president of the new corporation; and in July the
organization of the General Ceramic Company was
completed, and about a third of the forty million
dollars of stock was offered to the public. The
rest of the shares had been taken by the owners
of the various potteries which had been absorbed
by the “Crockery Trust,” as the new corpora-
tion was promptly nicknamed in the street. Ezra
Pierce, for example, received a million dollars of
stock in the General Ceramic in return for the
million stock of the Ramapo Pottery Company.
In the course of the summer the stock of the


city with him for a day or two, in spite of Mrs.
Pierce's begging him to stay and take some rest.
In the month that the party remained in Sara-
toga, Ezra Pierce was there less than half the
time. It seemed as though resting was more
wearisome to him than the most active labor.
The heat of the city did not affect him—indeed,
he was generally unconscious of it.
During the last of Ezra Pierce's brief stays in
Saratoga, when Winslow had been making all
things ready for the return of the family to town,
the young man came back from his luncheon one
afternoon, having bought the latest number of
the Stock Exchange Standard, wbich had become
a lively and often libellous little sheet, and which
his father would not allow in the office.
In the absence of his father, Winslow permit-
ted himself the luxury of a cigarette after his
meals. He had just lighted one as he sat himself
down before his own desk, when he chanced to
read this paragraph in the column headed “Say-
ings of the Street":
“Old Ezra Pierce is not above turning an hon-
est penny. Of course he prefers a dishonest dol-
lar, but he does not scorn the penny for all that.
We all know that he put the Ramapo Pottery
Works into General Ceramic for a million. But
we don't all know that all of this million was clean
profit. He bought the works from a man named
Ehninger, who has just died in the Adirondacks,
and all he paid for them was half a million. He


83
organized the Ramapo Company, and capitalized
it at a million, and put in his son as president.
Then he had a brilliant idea. He issued a six-
per-cent first mortgage for a hundred thousand
pounds, and placed all the bonds in London. So
the million stock of the General Ceramic was just
so much found money for him. It is thus the
rich man manages to lay by for a rainy day; a
million-dollar umbrella won't be a bad thing to
have in the house when the storm breaks.”
That was all. Winslow read it through twice,
and a great dread fell upon him. With all his
respect for his father, he had a fear that this
might be true after all. He went over all his
father had said to him, and all he knew from
others about the purchase, and his doubts grew
almost into a certainty.
At last he mustered courage to go into the
larger office and ask a question from the old book-
keeper.
“Mr. Arrowsmith,” he began, and his voice
clung to his palate, “do you know what it was
father paid Ehninger for the Ramapo works ?”
“Yes,” Arrowsmith answered. “I made out
the check. It was for four hundred and eighty
thousand dollars.”
“ Thank you,” said Winslow, and he went back
to his own room sick at heart, as he had never
been before.


VII
For several days after he read the paragraph
in the Stock Exchange Standard, explaining how
Ezra Pierce had helped himself to a million dol-
lars of the stock of General Ceramic without ren-
dering any real equivalent for it, Winslow felt as
he had not felt since he had broken down in his
training just before the freshman race, in conse-
quence of which he had seen his classmates badly
beaten. It seemed to him now as though he had
lost something suddenly, something of great value
and not to be replaced. Although he could not
specify it to himself even, the precious thing now
irretrievably departed was his confidence in his
father. Hitherto he had seen Ezra Pierce solely
through his mother's eyes, looking upon him as
wise and good. He had been down - town long
enough to find out that the Street did not hold
Ezra Pierce in high honor; but the son set down
his father's ill - repute to the jealousy of many
rivals and to the meanness of more. In the face
of the knowledge he bad now acquired of one of
his father's operations, he almost doubted the hon-
esty of all the others. He knew no longer what
to think. He knew no longer where he stood.


The solid ground melted away under his feet, and
there was no branch for him to grasp.
Winslow had been brought up by his mother,
who had given him her own simple and narrow
notions of right and wrong, as sharply distinct as
white and black. She had taught him that only
bad men smoked or swore, amused themselves on
Sunday, gambled or drank. She had taught him
that only bad men stole—and to her stealing had
no narrow limitations ; to her it was stealing not
merely to rob another man, but also to take with-
out paying. To get something for nothing was
to be a thief. To sell that for a million dollars
which had cost the seller nothing whatever would
seem to Mrs. Pierce but little better than to snatch
the bag in which a man might be carrying a mill-
ion dollars. To take advantage of another man,
by force or by fraud, was to be a robber. In her
direct vision there was a hard- and - fast line be-
tween good and evil; and she had warned her
son against the casuistry which might seek to
confuse them ever so slightly. Honesty was one
thing, and it was a simple thing. Dishonesty
was something else, as different as night from
day, and as easily to be deteeted. There were
good men and there were bad men; and she had
brought up her son to be a good man, she hoped,
knowing clearly what was right and what was
wrong, and ready to do his duty whatever befell.
Unfortunately, Winslow's mother bad compli-
cated this teaching, and, as it turned out now, she


86
had neutralized it, by holding up before her son
the example of his father. Ezra Pierce had never
talked over his business affairs with his wife, and
she knew none of the details of the transactions
by which he had made his money. He had never
explained to her the code of moral procedure
which he had slowly elaborated for himself in
nearly forty years of commercial striving. In-
deed, he had never formulated it to himself; and
he might have rejected, had he heard them
phrased, some of the principles which guided his
actions every day.
In many of its clauses the code Ezra Pierce
accepted and the code which his wife had ex-
pounded to their son were alike; both acknowl-
edged the duty of living a clean life. Ezra
Pierce had never had the slightest desire to live
any other than a clean life. For him, absorbed
as he was in the lust of money - making, the
grosser vices of man were not temptations. He
did not play cards, or drink wine, or smoke to-
bacco; he had never wished to do any one of the
three ; he had never been tempted towards any
other sensual indulgence. Where Ezra Pierce's
code began to differ from his wife's was only
when it turned from a man's duty towards him-
self to lay down his duty towards his neighbor;
and yet even here his wife's code had once been
his own, and his had changed from hers so slowly
and insensibly, and by so many and so various
business opportunities, that he did not suspect


87
their divergence; he was wholly unconscious that
he did not always practise strictly and fully the
morality he heard his wife instil into his son.
Ezra Pierce would have been surprised—nay,
more, he would have been shocked-if he could
have been shown how his rule of conduct had
been bent and twisted and warped from its origi-
nal uprightness under the pressure of the life he
had led in Wall Street, where ruse and intrigue
had come to seem to him as legitimate as they
were in any other warfare. After many years of
intense devotion to money-making, not from
avarice but from sheer delight in the sport of the
Stock Exchange, he now acted on the theory that
everything was lawful that was not illegal. And
even as to what might or might not be illegal, Ezra
Pierce often took the advice of counsel before
acting, unwilling to run any risk of breaking the
law, but quite willing to bend it as near to the
breaking - point as might be safe. Whatever the
law did not expressly forbid, Ezra Pierce held
that he had a right to do without question.
Thinking of money-making, and thinking only
of that, Ezra Pierce had had little time to give to
his son, and until Winslow had left college and
entered bis father's office he had never associated
with his father. There had never been any real
intimacy between them, although the son was
proud of his father and of his father's success in
life, and although the father had his ambition for
the son's future. Even after the son had spent


nearly a year in the office, seeing his father at all
hours of the day, the young man knew the elder
but little better. He still saw his father through
the spectacles his mother had trained him to use.
Now, all at once, without warning, the son
found himself forced to form his own opinion of
his father's character. The exigency was pain-
ful, and he did not know how to meet it. He
confessed his own ignorance of the methods of
men of business, and he wondered if there were
not some simple explanation of the transaction
which bad shocked him — some explanation ob-
vious enough to the expert but not to be per-
ceived by a novice like himself. Once he was
upon the point of going to Mr. Arrowsmith and
of asking the old book-keeper to explain the mat-
ter to him. But he was deterred from this by
the dread that perhaps there was no possible ex-
planation. When he turned over in his mind, as
he kept doing, the facts of the case—the mort-
gaging of the pottery for more than it had cost,
and the exchanging of the million stock which
represented nothing for a million in shares of the
General Ceramic which were saleable at par and
above it—when he turned these things over, he
did not dare to go to any one to ask any question
at all.
Two questions he asked himself again and
again. Somebody had been cheated out of a
million of dollars ; who was it? Somebody had
pocketed a million of dollars unjustly ; who was


89
it? The first question he could not answer. The
second he was afraid to attempt to answer.
In the three days which intervened between
Winslow's unfortunate discovery and the arrival
in town of Ezra Pierce the son was restless and
nervous. At night he slept, for he was young,
but he had troubled dreams, and he awoke unre-
freshed. In the daytime he did the little work
he was called upon to do; and the rest of the time
he gave to self-torment, standing at the window
of the office of the Ramapo Pottery Company
and looking down at the hurrying crowds in
Broad Street below. He stood there by the
hour, twisting his slight mustache or biting his
nails fiercely, and wondering whether the morality
of business was different from the morality of
the family. He longed for his father to come to
town, that he might ask for an explanation.
Yet when Ezra Pierce did return to the city,
his son did not find it easy to have the confiden-
tial conversation he had been longing for. At
the house in Madison Square, Mrs. Pierce and
Mary were with the father and the son, and a
private talk was impossible. At the office, an un-
expected flurry in industrials, during which Gen-
eral Ceramic fell five points and then recovered
three, kept Ezra Pierce too busy to be approached
easily. :
Finally, on the third day after his father's re-
turn to town, Winslow found his opportunity.
A little after two that afternoon Ezra Pierce


92
property” the son went on, “how could you
mortgage it for a hundred thousand pounds ?”
“But I placed those bonds in England,” the
father explained. “They are satisfied with less
over there than we are here, and they don't know
as much about the securities they invest in."
Winslow looked at his father fixedly, but Ezra
Pierce remained perfectly calm under his son's
gaze. Apparently he did not understand it or
suspect the reason for it.
“Do you mean that the potteries are not worth
the mortgage ?” Winslow asked.
“Of course I don't,” Ezra Pierce returned, im-
patiently. “They are worth twice the mortgage
easily. I think they were worth the seven hun-
dred thousand dollars the former owner asked
me, and he could have got it if he hadn't been in
a hurry, and if I hadn't been able to offer him all
cash. And they are worth more now that there
has been a combination to cut off the cut-throat
competition which reacted on values. Besides,
the bonds are perfectly secure now any way,
şince the General Ceramic assumed all obliga-
tions when it absorbed the Ramapo Company.
You see that clearly, don't you, Winslow ?”
“Yes,” Winslow admitted, “I see that now.
I don't suppose the British bondholders are likely
to lose anything. But that isn't really what I
meant to ask you—or, at least, that's only part of
it. What I wanted to know was about the mill-
ion stock of the company."


93
“What do you want to know about that ?”
asked the father, as the son hesitated again just
as he was coming to the point.
“ Only this,” answered Winslow, after swallow-
ing with an effort. “The pottery was mortgaged
for what you had paid for it, wasn't it? Then
what did the million stock represent ?”
“I don't see why you should ask about that
now,” Ezra Pierce responded, “after I've ex-
changed all those shares for shares in the General
Ceramic."
“But I'd like to see if I can't understand it
better,” Winslow persisted, surprised that his
father did not see the transaction from his point
of view. “What were those shares really worth ?”
“What are any shares really worth ?” his father
repeated. “They are worth just what you can get
for them—and for those I got as good as par."
Winslow made another attempt to express him-
self more clearly.
“But when you first issued those shares,” he
said, “when you first formed the company, and
sold the bonds in London, and issued the shares
here, what did that million dollars of stock really
represent ?”
“What does it matter what they represented
then ?" asked his father, with a suggestion of ir.
ritation at Winslow's stupidity in persisting.
“ It's of no consequence what they represented
then since I've been able to place them at par.”
“But if the pottery was mortgaged for all it





95
“I know," the son answered, hesitating again;
“ but you got something for nothing, didn't you ?”
“Well ?” asked Ezra Pierce.
“Well,” Winslow explained, “mother always
told me that it was wrong to take anything with-
out giving an equivalent.”
Ezra Pierce looked at his son for a full minute
without replying.
Then at last he said : “Your mother is a very
good woman, Winslow, a very good woman-but
she knows nothing at all about business. I never
talk to her at all about my affairs. She wouldn't
understand anything. Women never do see
things clearly-you will learn that as you grow
older. Your mother is the best woman in the
world, but she has had no business experience.
She has no head for figures. If she has given you
any such ideas as that, you had better get rid of
them as soon as you can if you expect to make
your way in the world. Down here in the Street
every man has to take care of himself. You look
out of that window and see the crowd in Wall
Street and Broad Street and Exchange Place-
every man in that crowd is trying to do the best
he can for himself. You know, of course, that I
wouldn't injure any man. There was water in
that million stock, lots of it, I know that, and
the mortgage represented all I had paid for the
property. But what of it now ? Nobody is in-
jured by my profit. Nobody is out a dollar be-
cause I've made a million. The bondholders are


was almost trembling under the strain of the ex-
planation he had had. Ezra Pierce had spoken
plainly, and yet the son did not at once perceive
the full meaning of what his father had said.
For the moment Winslow did not really know
what to think. He saw that his father's point of
view and his mother's were almost diametrically
opposed each to the other, and that what his moth-
er would denounce as wrong his father would ac-
cept unhesitatingly. According to his mother's
code, what his father had done was doubtfully
honest at best. Yet it was obvious that his father
was conscious of no wrong-doing. Indeed, Wins-
low saw plainly that his father held the transac-
tion by which the profit of a million dollars had
been made to be perfectly reputable, not to say
praiseworthy.


99
hers when she married. She told him that she
did not need the things, that she had plenty, that
it was foolish to buy them ; but when he insisted,
she wore them with the frank enjoyment of youth.
The first walk they took together on Sunday af-
ternoon up Fifth Avenue after they had received
their new clothes was delightful to both alike, al-
though Mary's pleasure was a little marred by
the doubt whether it was not wrong to think so
much of mere apparel.
“It is nice to be rich, isn't it?” asked Winslow,
pressing his wife's arm closer to his side as they
passed one of the splendid new hotels, and saw
two men who were lunching in a window lean
forward to look at them.
“I suppose so," Mary answered. “But I don't
believe it can be right to spend so much on clothes
when there are poor people hungry.”
“You gave work to the poor people making
that handsome dress you have on, didn't you ?”
he returned. “And doing good that way has
brought you luck. I've never seen you look pret-
tier, Mary, than you do in those clothes.”
“Oh, Winslow !” she said, flushing with pleasure.
“I don't wonder,” he went on, “that those
men in the restaurant turned round to look at
you. I know I'd do it if you weren't my wife.”
“If I wasn't your wife,” she retorted, “I hope
you wouldn't look at me that way. It would be
horrid.”
“I tell you what, Mary,” he said, suddenly,


100
“we must go and dine at a restaurant some
night. You've never been to Delmonico's, have
you ?”
“Never,” she answered. “And I'd love to."
“Well,” he responded, “the first time father
and mother dine out—but, then, they hardly ever
do dine out, except with Doctor Thurston. Still
he's sure to ask them some time this fall, and then
we'll go on a spree.”
Mary did not quite like this way of putting the
proposed dinner, but she said nothing.
“I go to the Delmonico's, near our office, for
lunch every day now,” her husband continued.
“I meet lots of nice fellows there. One of them
used to be in college with me—Ryder. Do you
remember Ryder? He was an '89 man.”
Mary thought she did remember him vaguely.
“There isn't much for me to do at the office
yet,” said Winslow, “and I don't know when
there ever will be either, for father doesn't con-
sult me or have me help him really, you know;
and he has both the clerks he had before I came
down, so I have lots of spare time, and I've seen
a good deal of Ryder lately. I haven't told father
about him because he's in Mr. Poole's office, and
father bates Mr. Poole.”
“I don't believe your father really hates any-
body,” Ezra Pierce's daughter-in-law declared.
“Yes, he does,” her husband replied. “He
hates Sargent, and he hates Poole, too. I guess
he hates Sargent most. But because an old col.


101
lege friend of mine is in the office of a man fa-
ther doesn't like, that's no reason I shouldn't speak
to him, is it, Mary?”
“I don't know,” she answered. “I suppose
your father knows best.”
“Well, I'm not going to tell him about Ryder,
anyway,” Winslow responded. “Ryder has been
very nice to me, and I don't want to give him up.
He's introduced me to a lot of good fellows; I
had five of them to lunch with me yesterday, at
Delmonico's. I knew father was going to be busy
with Wemyss all the afternoon.”
“And who is Wemyss ?” Mary asked.
“He's the man who was foreman or manager of
the Ramapo Potteries when I was president of the
company,” Winslow answered. “The directors
of General Ceramic have been cutting down their
expenses lately, and Wemyss was one of the men
who had to go. He's got some kind of a scheme
on hand, and father is letting him explain it all.
Perhaps we shall get up a new company soon, and
I shall be president of that too.”
“ If your father gets up companies, and makes
you president, and then sells out to some other
company, and you are not president any more,” said
Mary, “I don't really see what good it does you."
“Well,” her husband responded, “I suppose I
shall learn something every time. And I don't
know that this scheme of Wemyss's will come to
anything anyway. I think it was perhaps because
I was President of the Ramapo Company that


102
Ryder took notice of me first. We didn't know
each other at all well in college-why, I don't be-
lieve I spoke to him a dozen times. But here in
New York he has been very friendly. And he is
going to propose me for the Hoyle Club, and he
says he thinks I can be elected perhaps next
month. All the men I had at the lunch yesterday
are members, and they urged me to join. I've
promised to give them a dinner there within a
week after I get in.”
“But what is the Hoyle Club ?” his wife want-
ed to know.
“It used to be the Lexington Avenue Whist
Club,” Winslow explained, “but it was so suc-
cessful that they took a bigger house last year,
and they have their own restaurant now.”
“Do they play cards there ?” was Mary's im-
mediate inquiry.
“I believe so," her husband answered. “And
they've got a splendid big billiard-room; that's
what I shall like, for Ryder says I've got the mak-
ing of a good shot.”
“Why, I didn't know you ever played bill-
iards,” was the surprised comment of his wife.
“I never did, much,” he answered,“ till a month
or so ago, when I took a cue with Ryder one af-
ternoon. But I'm getting on first-rate already.
Last Tuesday I played Ryder for our lunch, and
I lost by only fourteen points."
“Oh, Winslow, isn't that gambling ?” Mary
asked, anxiously.


103
“Of course it isn't,” he returned, promptly ;
“it's gambling only when you go beyond your
means. When the stakes are so slight that you
don't care whether you win or lose, you can't call
it gambling."
“I don't believe your mother will approve of
it,” Mary remarked, dubiously.
“ Then there's no need to tell her anything
about it,” said Winslow, forcibly. “I'm out of
the nursery now, and I've got to go my own way.
You mustn't forget that I've a wife of my own.”
“But I don't like your doing anything your
mother mustn't be told about,” his wife replied.
“And I don't believe I like the idea of your play-
ing billiards either-much less for money."
“I don't really play for money,” he returned,
carelessly—“at least, none to speak of. I guess
I can afford to pay for a lunch better than Ryder
can.”
“I don't believe that you can afford to win
from a man who can't afford to lose,” she said.
"Then you needn't worry about me, Mary,"
Winslow retorted, laughing lightly. “I haven't
won enough to hurt him. He plays ever so much
better than I do.”
With this Mary had to be content perforce, and
she deemed it best to say nothing more for the
moment.
T'he subject was not again discussed between
the young couple until a fortnight later, when
Winslow came home with an air of satisfaction,


104
and told his wife that he had been elected to the
Hoyle Club.
“I've got to give Ryder and the other men the
dinner I promised them,” he said, “and I've been
puzzled to know how I was going to get out of
dining at home. But I've found a way: I'm going
to tell mother that I've been invited to dinner
with some old college friends."
“Oh, Winslow !" cried his wife," that would be
a story, wouldn't it? You are not invited-you
are inviting them.”
“That's all the same,” he answered. “I'm
dining with them, and it doesn't matter who is
paying for the dinner.”
“You are dining together, I suppose,” she ad-
mitted. “You could put it that way, if you
must."
“ The one thing I mustn't do,” Winslow went
on, accepting this point as disposed of finally, “is
to tell father that Ryder is going to be there,
because maybe he's heard that Ryder is in Mr.
Poole's office, and he wouldn't like me to know
anybody in that office.”
“Then hadn't you better give him up now ?”
asked Mary, eagerly.
“ After he's got me into the Hoyle Club ?”
Winslow returned. “That would be gratitude,
wouldn't it?”
“I suppose it wouldn't be just right to break
with him all at once,” she admitted,“ but you can
do it by degrees.”


105
“ What I'm going to do now is to give him and
the other men a dinner-as good a dinner as any-
body ever had in the Hoyle Club, too. Ryder is
going to speak to the steward for me, so that
he'll take particular pains about it. I've asked
them for Thursday, a week from yesterday.”
“You have asked them already ?” Mary que-
ried. “And you don't know what your father
will say ?”
“What can he say when I tell him that I'm
going to dine ? Well, I'll tell him that I'm going
to have dinner with some old college friends. I
don't see how he can possibly object to that,”
Winslow declared.
As it happened, Ezra Pierce did not object to
it at all when Winslow brought in the announce-
ment, adroitly, half an hour later, just after San-
chez had placed the turkey on the table.
“We are going to dine out ourselves, mother
and I,” he said, “ on Tuesday of next week.”
“Has Doctor Thurston asked you ?” Winslow
inquired.
“Yes,” his father responded. “Mrs. Thurston
is feeling better now, and they are going to begin
their dinners. We are invited to the first one.”
“ The Doctor has had us at the first dinner in
the fall every winter now for six years,” said Mrs.
Pierce. “He knows that father is his best friend
in the congregation. But I wish he had asked
you too, Mary. I don't like leaving you two to
dine here all alone.”


106
Mary looked over at her husband and smiled
as she answered, “ I'm not afraid of getting tired
of Winslow's society.”
“Of course not,” Mrs. Pierce responded. “I
didn't mean that; you know better. But I've
got so used to having you at dinner, my dear,
that it wouldn't seem dinner to me without you."
Winslow had remarked that his father was in
good-humor that evening, and having safely an-
nounced his own dinner out, he ventured again.
“That's so,” he suggested. “Dinner here
would be lonely without you and father. This
is a pretty big room for two people only. I
guess I'll take my wife out where we can see
folks. I say, Mary, suppose we go to Delmoni-
co's to dinner the night they go to Doctor Thurs-
ton's ?"
Mrs. Pierce looked at her son in some surprise,
and then she turned to her daughter-in-law.
Mary hesitated a little, and finally she said,
“ I've never been to Delmonico's, and I think I
should like to dine there once.”
Mrs. Pierce commented a little doubtfully. “I
have never been there either, but I do not believe
it is the kind of place I should care for. But I
suppose young folks have different views. I'm
sure I wish you to have everything you want, my
dear; and if you would like to go there, and father
sees no harm in it, why shouldu't you go ?”
“I don't like the cooking in those foreign
places,” Ezra Pierce declared, in response to this


107
appeal to him. If Winslow wants his wife
should see the place once, I have no objection.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Pierce, as the butler took
the turkey and left the room,“ if you two go out
the same night we do Sanchez can have an extra
evening out, as he has been getting very exact-
ing lately."
So it was that when Mr. and Mrs. Ezra Pierce
went to the first of Doctor Thurston's annual se-
ries of dinners to the leading members of his con-
gregation, Mr. and Mrs. Winslow Pierce walked
across Madison Square in the clear November
moonlight, and dined together at a little table
in a corner of the large room at Delmonico's.
Winslow was dressed with unusual care, and
he had a broad chrysanthemum in his button-
hole. He had insisted on Mary's wearing one
of her new gowns, with her most coquettish
bonnet; and she had allowed herself to be per-
suaded into it. When they had taken their seats
they soon discovered that their own unwonted
gorgeousness attracted no attention—to the re-
lief of Mary, and a little to the surprise of Wins-
low.
He ordered the dinner-a long dinner of little
delicacies, one or another of which he had had
for lunch down-town, so he told Mary ; Ryder
had given him advice about ordering a dinner
as well as about other things.
Mary was occupied in observation of the people
at the other tables—of the manners of the men


108
and of the clothes of the women; and she did
not listen to all that Winslow said to the waiter.
Therefore she was greatly surprised when the
glass beside her plate was filled with champagne.
Winslow was watching her face in expectation of
a protest.
“Oh, Winslow !” was all she said.
“ Why not?” he asked. “It won't hurt you.
I often have it for lunch.”
“But I never drank any before,” she exclaimed.
“You'll have to drink it now,” her husband
returned. “It's ordered, and it's in your glass-
you'll get to like it soon enough."
“I don't really know—” she began.
“I'll know for you,” he interrupted. “Taste
it! Didn't your father ever have champagne ?
He wasn't a temperance crank.”
“He didn't insist on total abstinence, if that's
what you mean,” she explained. “He believed
in every man's deciding for himself, I've heard
him say often ; and, as president of a college, he
thought it best for him to set a good exam-
ple.”
“Well, I'll set you a good example now,” her
husband said, with a caressing smile. “You be-
long to me now, and must do as I do," and with
that he emptied his glass.
When the dinner was over Mary had done
little more than taste her wine, and Winslow
had to finish the pint almost without her assist-
ance.



"WHY NOT ? HE ASKED ; 'IT WON'T HURT YOU'”





110
ner, haven't you? Well, then, you just trust to
me, and you'll enjoy the next surprise, too."
He guided her down Broadway and across
Union Square, and through Fifteenth Street to
Irving Place. Then he took out his two tickets
again, just as they walked up some steps under a
broad canopy.
The building they were entering was the
Academy of Music, and gaudy posters before
the door announced“ The Black Crook," and de-
clared that Miss Daisy Fostelle would appear as
Stalacta.
Mary caught sight of one of the pictures of
Stalacta with the name of the play above it, and
she shrank back.
“This is the surprise,” said Winslow, drawing
her on. “You've never seen. The Black Crook,'
have you? I told you I'd take you off on a
spree.”
Mary sat through the play with her brain
whirling, not knowing what to think, enjoying
the skilfully blended colors of the spectacle, and
shocked at some of the costumes. Winslow
laughed at Greppo and expressed open admira-
tion for Stalacta.
“She is handsome, isn't she ?” he cried. “She
doesn't hide her good looks either, does she?
Ryder knows her, and—”.
“I should think that your friend Mr. Ryder
has more than one undesirable acquaintance,"
interrupted Mary.


112
tion at all, or whether, in her youthful ignorance
of life, she failed to understand.
But when Winslow came home two nights
later at half - past one o'clock in the morning,
after his dinner at the Hoyle Club, with his step
unsteady and his utterance thick, and when he
sank down on the bed in his clothes and dropped
off instantly into a stupid slumber, it was no
longer possible for her to doubt. She spent the
night on the sofa ; and it was almost the late
winter dawn when at last she cried herself to
sleep.


IX
Although Winslow Pierce had bad more
money to spend than any of his classmates in
college, he had never associated with a fast set.
His mother's teaching had given him a liking for
order and decency, and a distaste for all vio-
lations of the conventions of propriety. What-
ever sprees he had been seduced into then had
never been protracted or extreme ; and they had
always been bitterly repented. After his talk
with his father, and after he had seen into the
hollowness of his father's profession of faith,
Winslow's attitude changed altogether. Stripped
suddenly of the narrow ethics of his youth, he was
left without any protection against his own luxu-
rious inclinations; and he found himself exposed
to attack from within and without before he had
time to devise a shield for himself.
Ezra Pierce was austere by temperament, and
did not need the shelter of the code he accepted;
but Winslow was younger and warmer blooded,
and he yielded more easily to the temptations of
the flesh. He had always smoked a little now
and then on the sly, and he speedily made it a
habit. He began to drink also, although it was


114
not often that he drank to excess, as on the
night of his first dinner at the Hoyle Club. In
general he was moderate and prudent, and he
paid his former beliefs the outward respect of
concealing his infraction of the rules of conduct
he had hitherto accepted as imperative. Becom-
ing a hypocrite himself, he almost suspected his
father of hypocrisy also. In his discovery of the
wide divergence between the code which his fa-
ther preached and the code which permitted his
father's practices, he was inclined not to credit
his father with a sincere acceptance of any code
at all.
Ezra Pierce, on the other hand, not knowing
anything of the untoward effect produced on his
son by his explanation of his own transactions
and operations, had no suspicion that Winslow
was other than the father and the mother wished
him to be. The salary of the president of
the Ramapo Pottery Company had been fixed
at ten thousand dollars a year; and after that
company had been absorbed Ezra Pierce con-
tinued himself to pay the same sum to his son.
When his wife called his attention to it, he no-
ticed the new clothes of Winslow and of Mary ;
and he was vaguely conscious that there was an
improvement in the style of these over those the
young people had worn before. The father at-
tached no significance to the fact that Winslow
was often away from the office for two hours at
lunch-time, or that he returned with an Egyptian


115
cigarette in his mouth ; and as Winslow was in-
genious in finding excuses, his father did not notice
that he spent the evenings out more and more
frequently. His mother remarked this change in
her son's habits ; but as she accepted his varied
explanations, she made it of no importance.
Only Mary, his wife, began slowly to have a
vague suspicion of the truth, and it was many
months before even she had any idea of the real
state of the case; for a young man can run down-
hill very fast—so fast, indeed, that he may reach
the foot before the slower observers see that he
has done more than make a start. There is al-
ways a clear track and a down-grade on the rail-
road to ruin, and the engineer never whistles
back to put on the brakes.
And all that winter Mary was looking forward
to her own ordeal, when the blessing of maternity
should be hers. In the main she had no cause to
complain of the attentions of her husband, for he
was kind and devoted to her when he was at
home. He did not let her see him again under
the influence of liquor; he had explained to her
that his condition even on that occasion was an
accident, due to the fact that he had rashly re-
fused to abide by Ryder's advice and stick to a
single wine. At Christmas, and again on St. Val-
entine's Day, he took her to Tiffany's and bought
costly jewelry – the first time a large diamond
pin, and the second time a pair of diamond ear-
rings.



ADD
“HE BOUGHT HER COSTLY JEWELRY


had o
and t
ful a
had
that
hous
lost
in c
was
the
the
ex


120
“It's just as well for us that they thought so,"
his father went on," but they made a mistake, for
all that. Wemyss was the man who had built
up the Ramapo pottery ; he had developed its
specialties and made a market for them, and
the trade liked him. He says the former owner
had promised him a partnership, but of course he
didn't get that when the works were sold to me.
But I made his acquaintance then, and I saw he
was a competent man ; so when they gave him
notice, and he came to me with a scheme, I
listened to him. We have formed a stock com-
pany with a capital of two millions, and we have
bought—very cheap, too-almost for nothing-
two small potteries, one on the Bronx and the
other at Haverstraw. Wemyss found them, and
he has improved them; and at one or the other
he is now making the two or three kinds of
things for which there is most demand. He
knows the business thoroughly, of course, and he
is underselling the product of the General Ce-
ramic in all this region here, up the Hudson, and
along the Sound. He's been at it only since
December, but they have found it out, and it
cuts into them severely. They will feel it worse
when our potteries are enlarged.”
“Oh,” cried Winslow, “ then you are behind
the Haverstraw and Bronx Consolidated, about
which we had a discussion at the January meet-
ing of the board, and you never told me about
it ?”


121
“I thought it best not to tell you,” said the
father ; “in fact, nobody, hardly, knows that I
have anything to do with the new company. I
tell you now, because I shall need your help at
the April meeting of the board. We are cutting
into the profits of the General Ceramic here, and
there are other concerns doing the same in
Chicago and New Orleans. The total capitaliza-
tion of these new companies, mine and the others
West and South, is just five millions; and a propo-
sition will be made at the next meeting of the
board of the General Ceramic to absorb the new
Haverstraw and Bronx Consolidated and the
Chicago Ceramic and the Mississippi United
potteries, giving us share for share.”
“I see,” said Winslow, by this time perfectly
prepared for any scheme of his father's, and hav-
ing no longer any desire to dispute or even to
discuss it. “But if the Haverstraw works are ab-
sorbed, Wemyss will be out of a job again, won't
he ?"
“Probably,” Ezra Pierce answered, indifferent-
ly. “Of course he doesn't know anything about
our plans. He is working hard to develop the
future of the Haverstraw and Bronx works. But
he is a competent man, and no doubt he can get
a place somewhere. And of course he will make
something out of the shares I have given him in
the Haverstraw and Bronx Consolidated.”
“If the General Ceramic people knew what
was best for them,” said Winslow, "they'd keep


122
Wemyss this time—they wouldn't let him go off
again to work up another opposition company."
“Yes,” his father responded," I should advise
them to retain Wemyss for the future—although
there is no chance for another combination after
this, I think. This arrangement will be made at
the meeting next month, I expect; and after that
I don't believe General Ceramic will stand any
further extension.”
“Of course you will sell out the new stock
you'll get for the Haverstraw and Bronx Con-
solidated just as soon as you can after it comes
into your hands ?” Winslow inquired.
“I don't know as there'll be any advantage in
holding it long,” his father answered. “The tariff
can't be altered against us till next fall, and Gen-
eral Ceramic ought to rise on the announcement
of the absorption of the minor competing com-
panies. How long the rise will last I don't know,
but I shall sell all I can before the market breaks
again."
Winslow was standing by the window, looking
at the portico of the Stock Exchange. There
arose before him a swift possibility of making
money enough to pay all his debts and to give
him some cash in hand. He was idly tapping on
the glass, wholly unconscious of the men and boys
in the street below him scurrying away to shelter
as a March rain - storm broke unexpectedly and
swept fiercely across the city.
“So you think that General Ceramic will rise


123
sharply after the meeting of our board next
month ?” he asked, not venturing to look his
father in the face as he sought the information.
“I'm sure of it,” Ezra Pierce answered. “We
are making the competition of the Haverstraw
and Bronx as severe as we can—I've told Wemyss
to sell some of our product at less than cost all
this month. You see, he feels hot against the
General Ceramic for the way he was treated, and
he likes to cut under them when he can. If there's
any talk of consolidation — I don't think there
will be, for we shall hold our tongues about it,
but if there is any, and they ask Wemyss about
it, he'll deny it, of course.”
“I see,” said Winslow, who was now sitting on
the sill of the window. “He doesn't suspect that
the real owners intend to sell him out. So he
can deny it truthfully.”
“Exactly,” his father responded.
“I suppose it is a good plan,” the son con-
tinued, “when one wants lies told to have them
told by a man who thinks he is telling the truth
all the time. It's ever so much more convinc-
ing."
Ezra Pierce swung around in his chair and
looked at his son in amazement.
. “Why, Winslow !” he said, “I am shocked
at you! You know that I never lie myself, and
I never allow any one else to make a false state-
ment for me. If this combination were certain
to be accepted, I do not know as it would not


125
the suggestion as to the buying out of the opposi-
tion companies will come from them.”
“And you think General Ceramic will go up
as soon as the announcement is made that the
competing works have been taken in ?” asked
Winslow, turning again to the window so that
his father need not see his face.
“Yes, I feel convinced of it,” his father an-
swered. “Mr. Cusachs tells me there are already
rumors of a bull pool in General Ceramic. The
small speculators will be likely to believe in that,
and so will the owners of the Chicago and the
New Orleans works, too, probably.”
“ And you don't mean to help put it up ?”
Winslow inquired, gazing intently at the Stock
Exchange.
“No,” his father responded; “or, at least, only
enough to start the movement; and it's generally
easy enough to bull the market here if you choose
the right time, for most of the outside purchasers
are buyers on a rise. This country is so prosper-
ous, and it has such a future before it, that most
Americans are bulls naturally and all the time.”
“You are not a bull generally, are you, father?”
his son asked, facing about.
“I'm not a speculator at all, as I've often told
you,” Ezra Pierce responded, gravely. “But a
large part of my success in the Street has been
due to my willingness to sell out of an invest-
ment at lower prices than other people thought
it was worth.”


126
“Then you are a bear?” Winslow urged.
“No,” said his father, emphatically; “I never
speculate, I say. I make investments, that's all;
and when I'm dissatisfied with the prospects of
that investment I sell out and buy something else.
If a thing isn't as good as I thought it, I get out
at once; and even when it is good, I'm never
greedy-I take a fair profit and close the trans-
action. That's the real secret of success down
here, Winslow, and you can't get it by heart
too soon. Limit your losses ! There are two
things to be remembered always: learn to say
'no,' and limit your losses !”
“If most people here are bulls,” Winslow
asked, scarcely listening to his father's advice,
“how is it the bear side holds its own so
well ?”
“It takes very little money to be a bear,” Ezra
Pierce explained, “and brokers will carry a bear
account willingly. And yet the first year I was
in the Street, when I did a brokerage business,
we paid all our office expenses out of the bear
accounts in our firm.”
“As far as General Ceramic is concerned, you
are a bull and a bear both?” asserted Winslow,
interrogatively.
“I think the new shares will be issued,” his
father replied. “Soon the stock will go up, and
under cover of the rise I shall sell out. Probably
the throwing of two million dollars' worth of
shares on the market will depress the stock again,


127
But if I can get par for my new shares, I shall
be satisfied with my investment.”
“Yes,” Winslow returned — “yes, I suppose
you will.”
As it happened, Ezra Pierce had been able to
foretell the course of events with remarkable ac-
curacy. The sharp competition of the rival pot-
teries was the subject of much correspondence;
and late in March, Wemyss, as general manager
of the Haverstraw and Bronx Consolidated Pot-
teries, denied indignantly that there was any
thought of amalgamation with the General Ce-
ramic. Yet at the April meeting of the board of
directors of the General Ceramic an issue of five
millions of dollars of new stock was authorized
to be exchanged for the stock of the Haverstraw
and Bronx Consolidated, and for the stock of the
other potteries in Chicago and New Orleans. On
the announcement that the new shares had been
authorized, and after insistent explanations in the
columns of Street gossip that the cutthroat rivalry
of the preceding months was to cease, the quota-
tions of General Ceramic rose at last to 107, and
there was much talk about a strong combination
to carry it up to 125. Then a few days later the
market developed weakness under the pressure of
constant sales, and General Ceramic slowly re-
ceded until finally it touched par again, where it
remained for a while.
Winslow Pierce had availed himself of his
father's forecast. He had full confidence in his


128
father's understanding of the probabilities of the
situation, and he had made his arrangements ac-
cordingly. As Ezra Pierce's son it was easy for
him to get credit at a broker's, and he gave
orders to buy one thousand shares for delivery
the day after the meeting of the directors of
General Ceramic. On the transaction he made
a profit of nearly seven thousand dollars, and
Ezra Pierce had no suspicion whatever that his
son had begun to speculate.


130
garden of pleasure ; it was rather the belief that
he had it in his power to replace the money in
the bank as fast as he should spend it, and in the
same way. Like many another young man, he
thought he had found the philosopher's stone, or
the purse of Fortunatus, or the goose that laid
the golden eggs ; and that whenever he should
go again to the Stock Exchange his second voy-
age would be as successful as the first, and he
would come home with another Golden Fleece.
Yet there is no place in the world where those
who go out to shear are as likely to come home
shorn as the Stock Exchange, and nowhere is
the wind less tempered to the shorn lamb. This
Winslow was to discover in due season, when he
should also awake to the fact that his having won
money at his first venture was really the greatest
misfortune which could befall him. Had he lost,
he would have been forced to go to his father,
and perhaps he might even then have been made
to see the foolishness of trying to make money
without labor and without guile. As he had won
he had no fear that he would not win always, and
he was ready to try a fall with Fortune whenever
occasion served.
A gamester in that frame of mind has never
any need to wait long before he has a chance to
try his luck again. Within a week after he had
paid his debts Winslow was tempted into giving
an order to the same broker he had dealt with be-
fore; and this was out of mere wantonness, for he


131
had still more than four thousand dollars in the
bank. It was Mr. Ryder who gave him the in-
formation on which he had acted, and it was Mr.
Ryder who had boldly borrowed a thousand dol-
lars on the strength of the information.
It happened that one of the clerks in the office
of the broker Winslow Pierce favored with his
orders was a friend of Mr. Farebrother, and it
happened that this clerk and Mr. Farebrother sat
on contiguous high stools as they ate their hasty
luncheons the day after Winslow bad made his
second important venture.
When Mr. Farebrother returned to the office in
Broad Street that afternoon he found nobody
there except Arrowsmith, who laid down his pen
at once, and climbed down from his high stool as
soon as he saw his fellow-clerk.
“Old man out ?” asked Farebrother, looking
about.
“Yes," answered Arrowsmith.
“Prince Imperial out, too ?” Farebrother. went
on. “Lunching at Del's, isn't he ?”
Arrowsmith said nothing in reply to this. He
took off his worn office jacket and put on his coat,
making ready to go out for his own luncheon.
“Heard the news ?” Farebrother continued, as
he went over to the fireplace and took his posi-
tion before it. “It's exclusive, too. The Prince
Imperial has taken another flier. He's got a
pointer about Transcontinental, and he's sold a
thousand shares at 251, seller ten.”


132
Arrowsmith looked up, and seemed about to
say something. But he changed his mind, and
silently took down his hat.
“Now, what I'd like to know," said Farebroth-
er, chewing a wooden toothpick, “is what this
Young Napoleon of ours means by tackling Trans-
continental. You'd think that the old man had
had enough of Transcontinental lately to last the
whole family for a little while, wouldn't you ?
I suppose the Prince Imperial has got inside in-
formation somehow—and he's backing it. Now
I've been in the Street long enough to know that
inside information is just about the most expen-
sive luxury a fellow can have. Where should I
have been, I'd like to know, if I'd backed the in-
side information we had last year that the old
man was going to lead a raid on Transcontinent-
al ?"
“You would have lost your money if I hadn't
kept you out of it,” declared the old book-keeper.
“Well, that's so,” Farebrother admitted. “And
I guess you had better give the same sort of ad-
vice to our Young Napoleon here. It isn't any of
my business.”
“No,” repeated Arrowsmith, going to the door,
“it isn't.”
“Well, I don't say it is," admitted Farebrother,
in no way abashed. “But did you see that arti-
cle in the Gazette yesterday about rich men's sons
-how they don't amount to much mostly. It said
that here in America there was only three generą-


133
tions from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves. That's a
good idea, isn't it ?”
The weary book-keeper shrugged his shoulders
and made no other response.
“The old man started in his shirt-sleeves, I
guess," Farebrother continued. “And the third
generation will be this baby they've been waiting
for so long. That baby will go back to shirt-
sleeves if the old man doesn't get on to what the
Prince Imperial is doing."
But Arrowsmith did not hear this. He had
taken his gold-headed cane from the corner, and
had gone forth to his luncheon-the cup of coffee
and the roll which had formed his mid-day meal
every week day since he had entered Ezra Pierce's
office nearly a score of years earlier, after the firm
in which he was a junior partner had failed, hope-
lessly in debt.
“He doesn't waste his breath talking, old Ar-
rowsmith doesn't,” said Farebrother to himself,
as he saw the door close behind the spare frame
of the book-keeper. “But he can talk sense when
he's a mind to, as I know well enough. I wonder
if his father began in his shirt-sleeves ? If it really
ran that way every three generations-rich man,
poor man, rich man-my turn ought to be money;
my father was poor enough, goodness knows."
A few minutes before Ezra Pierce's clerk thus
discussed the conditions of wealth-keeping here
in the United States the first and only child of
Winslow Pierce and of Mary Romeyn, his wife,


134
had been held by its nurse to its mother's lips for
its first kiss. This long-expected baby proved to
be a girl — to the great disappointment of its
grandfather, who had intended to have the boy
called Ezra Pierce, Jr. As it was, the girl was
named for her grandmother, Jane Winslow Pierce;
and her grandmother took the greatest delight in
the little pink midget.
The mother was very weak for many days, re-
covering her strength slowly. Spring came sharp-
ly, and the trees in the square below her window
were green again and thick with leaves before
Mary Pierce was able to do more than sit up in
bed. Winslow's mother hovered about her grand-
child and her daughter-in-law, full of mild sug-
gestions for the comfort of the one or the other.
Indeed, so often did the elderly lady run up the
stairs to the floor above her own that she almost
brought on a dangerous attack of the heart-dis-
ease which was ever lying in wait to take her un-
awares. At last the doctor forbade Mrs. Pierce
from climbing to the floor above more than twice
a day. So she went up in the morning a little
after breakfast, when she had given her orders for
the day, and she remained up there almost until
lunch-time; then she returned, and spent most of
the afternoon also. She was almost the only com-
panion the young mother had except the trained
nurse. Ezra Pierce came to see her and the baby
for a minute only, every three or four days. The
baby's father sat by the bedside for an hour every


136
Winslow was ingenious in devising new ex-
cuses for bis more frequent absences from the
family circle. He invented a special committee
of the alumni association of his college, of which
he made himself a member, and which dined to-
gether once a fortnight. He was fertile in ex-
pedients when he devoted himself to the task;
and he had an excellent memory, so that he
never involved himself in the meshes of self-con-
tradiction. To a clean conscience the real pun-
ishment for a lie is in the resulting necessity
of lying again and again, doubly indorsing the
first false statement; but Winslow Pierce soon
wore his conscience callous, so that he felt no
pricks and stings at his fabrications. Indeed, he
came almost to take pride in his own skill in men-
dacity.
He had a room to himself now, as the trained
nurse slept in Mary's bedroom; and there was no
one to ask questions as to the hour when he came
home. His one difficulty was to find a pretext
for going out; once out, he was free to come
home when he pleased. Of this freedom he
availed himself to the utmost, going to supper
after the theatre, or lingering over a game of
poker at the Hoyle Club until two or three
o'clock in the morning.
He did not suspect that his sick wife waited for
his footstep every night, and would not go to
sleep until she heard it. She was too proud to
complain, and she was too unselfish to wish to


137
curtail any amusement her husband might find
outside of the home, which she was then too
weak to make cheerful for him. But though she
said nothing, she waited for his return every
night, and became anxious as the hours passed
without his foot-fall on the stairs. Thus she did
not gain in strength.
One night, when he was unusually late, the
trained nurse, coming to give Mary a medicine to
be taken every three hours, found the young
mother in a faint. The doctor was sent for in
haste, and when Winslow appeared stealthily at
nearly four o'clock in the morning, after a pro-
longed supper at a doubtful French restaurant,
he found the household aroused, and he was told
that his wife was in great danger. For two days
Mary lingered between life and death; and then
her youth conquered, aided by the constitution
which was her wholesome inheritance from a
clean-lived ancestry. She began to mend again;
and although she was feeble all summer, she did
not have another relapse.
As she improved day by day Winslow was
more attentive to her, as though he reproached
himself for some neglect or injury. And he did
not like to remember that, as he had sat in the
room next to that in which she lay, not knowing
whether or not she would survive the night, he
had wondered whether he would marry again if
she were to die, and what manner of wife he
would choose the second time.


140
take and generally succeeded in. Winslow's buy-
ing and selling was wholly at random; it was not
governed by any principle whatever; it was the
purest gambling, and it produced upon him the
effect that the habit of gambling produces upon
natures like his. He became nervous, irritable,
extravagant in his expenditures, and avid of ex-
citement.
Before the family had been established in Noro-
ton a month Winslow bad devised more than one
excuse for remaining in town overnight, and he
was ingenious enough to make it seem that he
was detained not for his own pleasure but against
his will and at the call of duty.
One afternoon, in the middle of August, just as
Ezra Pierce was closing up his day's work, a mes-
senger-boy came into the office with this note:
“DEAR FATHER, I find I can't go out to Noro-
ton with you this evening, for I feel that I
ought to stay in town all night to take care of a
sick friend. It is Mr. Ryder—you have heard me
speak of him, I know-he was in college with me.
Well, he is quite sick—it is nothing dangerous, but
the doctor says be ought to have somebody with
him all night, and his brother has been away on
his vacation for a week now. And so I said I
would stay in to-night. Please explain to moth-
er and to Mary how sorry I am not to be able to
be out to-night. I had meant to have a long
walk by moonlight with Mary. But I think it is


142
table in the corner, where had been talking ear-
nestly to a single companion, looked up and said,
“Hello, that's Daisy Fostelle's voice.”
“Is it ?” returned his friend, negligently.
“I wonder who is with her down here to-night?"
said the first speaker, Sam Sargent.
“I don't," answered his companion, Mr. Cy-
rus J. Poole, a younger man by ten years at
least.
“Then you don't get as much fun out of life as
I do,” retorted Sargent.
Poole smiled grimly. “I get my fun in a dif-
ferent way, perhaps,” he responded.
“Let's go down to the water,” Sargent pro-
posed. “We can talk over this scheme of yours
just as well down there."
“All right,” Poole answered.
The two men rose and came towards the table
where Winslow Pierce and his friends were sit-
ting. As Ryder caught sight of Mr. Poole he
dropped his cigar, and had to go down on his
hands and knees under the table to get it again.
Winslow rose to proffer his assistance and found
himself standing face to face with Sam Sargent,
who had paused before the table.
“Oh, Mr. Sargent !" Winslow murmured.
“It's young Pierce, isn't it ?” Sargent respond-
ed, whereupon Poole looked the young man
through and through.
Winslow bore the scrutiny as best he could,
wondering why this dark and stern-faced man



“WINSLOW FOUND HIMSELF STANDING FACE TO FACE WITH SAM SARGENT”





143
should so stare at him. He preferred the toler-
ant smile of Sam Sargent.
The two men had paused in their walk only
for a moment as Winslow had involuntarily rec-
ognized Sam Sargent, and now they went on
again. As they passed the group of young peo-
ple Sargent looked back over his shoulder, and
smiled once more and inquired, “Sonny, does
your mother know you're out ?”
Then, as Ryder came out from under the table,
Winslow Pierce said, “That's Sam Sargent, the
great speculator.”
“Oh, I know him," Miss Daisy Fostelle re-
sponded.
“But who was that horrid-looking man with
him ?” asked the other young lady.
“That's Cyrus Poole,” Ryder replied. “That's
the man, Winslow, who went back on your father
in the raid on Transcontinental. Ever since then
he and Sam Sargent have been as thick as thieves."
“I don't see why he looked at me that way,”
said Winslow. “I've never done him any harm.”


As Ezra Pierce never went to the theatre he
wondered sometimes why it was that his morning
newspaper gave up as much space as it did to the
criticism of new plays and to the gossip of the
theatres. As he never read any of this criticism,
or any of this gossip, Ezra Pierce did not know
that the Daisy Fostelle Opera Comique Company
was organized during that summer, and that it
made its first appearance in New York early that
fall. As he was aware of no reason why he
should take any interest whatever in a company
formed for the production of semi- spectacular
light opera, Ezra Pierce was wholly unconscious
both of the flourish of trumpets which heralded
its first performances in New York and of the
flamboyant pictorial posters which set forth the
piquant charms of Miss Daisy Fostelle and the
expensive sumptuousness of the scenery and the
costumes.
What Ezra Pierce did read in his newspaper
regularly every morning was the Wall Street
column and the telegrams from Europe. He was
a student always of the complications of Euro-
pean politics, knowing the immediate influence of


145
wars and rumors of war upon the money market.
He studied also the shifting currents of Ameri-
can politics, that he might foresee the legislation
likely to influence not only the industrial stocks
in which he was interested, but also the fluctua-
tions of public credit. That summer, while the
family were at Noroton, Ezra Pierce sold out the
last share of General Ceramic he still owned; he
parted with it at a price far less than the stock
had been held at only a few months before. He
sold off other industrial stocks, throwing them
resolutely overboard in the face of a falling mar-
ket. Before the middle of the summer he had
got rid of every doubtful security he owned ; and
his balance at the bank was nearly a million dol-
lars, available at a moment's notice. The bulk
of his large fortune was invested in solidly es-
tablished dividend-paying stocks—certain to re-
cover ultimately even if they fell for a season
under the pressure of hard times. These stocks-
for he owned relatively very few bonds-were
kept in the large private vaults he rented in three
of the strongest safety deposit offices.
From these vaults he took the General Ceramic
and other certificates as he sold them. Winslow
went with him always when he opened one of
these huge safes; and in time the son came to
know their contents almost as well as the father.
Rich as he had supposed his father to be, Wins-
low was surprised at the evidences of wealth
which lay heaped before him in these vaults.


147
watched him when he was at home; and Winslow
soon remarked this scrutiny, and silently resented
it. He would get up from the table impatiently
and go out on the piazza, or take a walk to the
end of the Point. Then his mother would glance
over at his wife to see if the younger woman had
noticed anything; but she always found Mary's
face impassive, although it was not always easy
for Mary to keep it so. Mrs. Pierce would press
her hand to her heart after Winslow had left the
room, and sigh, and take up her sewing again
and say nothing
At last the summer drew to an end, and the
mellow fall came. The Pierces lingered later in
the country than they had ever done before. It
was the middle of September before they left the
house at Noroton Point, and settled themselves
again for the winter in the house in Madison
Square. The baby was then five months old,
and she was sturdy and vigorous. Mrs. Pierce
was not able to get up to the floor above as often
as she liked, for the stairs fatigued her more and
more, and she had to confess to herself that she
was feebler than she was when they went into the
country. Mary noticed this change in the elder
lady, and told Winslow about it, but he thought
it of no importance.
“Mother has always been delicate," he said.
“She never was strong."
“But there is something worrying her now,”
Mary urged,


148
“ Think so ?” Winslow returned. “I guess
not. What has she got to worry about ?”
“I don't know-at least, I'm not sure,” re-
sponded his wife. “But I am sure that she is
troubled about something."
“Oh, she'll be better now the cold weather is
coming,” Winslow declared. “And she'll be
glad to get back to the church again.”
Mary made ready to reply, but she changed
her mind and said nothing.
“By-the-way, Mary,” Winslow continued, "I'm
glad you are back in town again too. We can
go to the theatre some night.”
“I can't go just now, Winslow,” she answered.
“I wouldn't leave baby with that new nurse un-
til I know more about her.”
“I wanted to take you up to see—to see that
new spectacular opera," said her husband, “and
it isn't going to be here much longer. Still,
if you don't want to go—".
“Of course I should like to go,” Mary replied.
“But I don't think I ought to, somehow. I be-
lieve that nurse is trustworthy, but I don't really
know yet. Still, I don't want to keep you from
seeing it, if you would like to go.”
“Oh, I've seen it,” Winslow responded, care-
lessly.
Mary looked up sharply.
“I saw it during the summer,” he declared, in
answer to her swift glance. “I saw it one night
when I was kept in town. Oh, I told you about


151
“When I have got things as I want them, you
won't need anybody to help you, Winslow. You
will be as independent as any man in the world !
You can make men come to you then."
Mary had not spoken before, but now she
looked across the table at her husband, and asked,
“Shall you have to go often, Winslow ?”.
“ Only three or four times during the whole
winter, I think,” he answered ; “not more than
half a dozen times, anyhow. And, mostly, I shall
be gone only for a night or two—that's all—just
to be at the committee meeting, and the dinner,
and all that, you know.”
Mary made no response. Then Winslow hesi-
tated a little, and finally he continued, “ Would
you-would you like to go with me, Mary, in
December, when I have to go to Chicago ?”.
“Yes," answered his wife, “I should like to go
very much, but I couldn't leave baby yet.”
“I wish you could,” said Winslow, heartily.
“I believe a little trip out of town now and then
would do you good. But if you can't go, I sup-
pose I must go alone.”
The week after this conversation Winslow told
them that he should have to go to Boston the next
day, to attend a meeting of the local committee
of his alumni association. A month later he an-
nounced a meeting in Philadelphia, which he had
also to attend ; and a fortnight afterwards there
was yet another meeting in Baltimore, to which
he felt bound to go. In December, as he had de-


152
clared, he went as far as Chicago, and this time
he was gone for nearly a week. At first he apolo-
gized to his wife for leaving her, but at the last
he came to speak of his little trips out of town as
though they were inevitable and did not need to
be discussed. He came also to have a suggestion
of a swagger in his walk, and his conversation
was not as careful as it had been. His wife
seemed to pay little attention to these changes in
his deportment; she was very much taken up
with the baby, and it may be also that she did
not know that her husband's character was really
undergoing a rapid process of disintegration, think-
ing that he was merely revealing characteristics
she had not happened to detect earlier in their
comparatively brief acquaintance.
But the eyes of his mother were sharper, and
her knowledge of Winslow was longer and deep-
er. There was doubt in the gaze Mrs. Pierce
fixed on her son sometimes, doubt and fear also;
and, as it were, the vision of danger.
That Winslow was restless under his mother's
questioning eyes has already been recorded, but
he was restless nearly all the time now. He was
in a constant state of excitement. Although his
speculations were fairly successful, for he had op-
erated all the fall on the bear side of the market,
acting on his father's opinion that stocks would
go lower and lower before the end of the hard
times should be in sight, although he had made
money in most of his ventures, yet he was con-


153
stantly harassed by debts and by the necessity
for meeting unexpected claims. He smoked in-
cessantly when he was not under his father's eye,
and he drank more frequently and more reckless-
ly. And whenever he could make an excuse for
withdrawing from his father's house in the even- .
ing, he played cards at the Hoyle Club for as
high stakes as any one would put up.
The increasing feebleness of his mother made
it easier for him to slip away unobserved, ready
with some glib excuse afterwards, if his ab-
sence was commented upon. Mrs. Pierce was so
weak when the new year arrived that she did
not come down-stairs to her dinner, and therefore
Ezra Pierce spent his evenings in her sitting-
room up - stairs. Mary joined them often, and
Winslow was there sometimes. But if Mary were
in her own room with the baby, she did not know
whether Winslow was with his parents or not,
and they did not know whether he was with her
or not; and so it became easier for him to escape
from the oppressive gloom of the sick-room. He
was glad to get away from the haunting gaze of
his mother and from the increasing melancholy
of his wife, whose girlish brightness was swiftly
leaving her.
Although she had never formulated it to her-
self, Mary was vaguely conscious of a feeling of
disappointment with her husband. He was con-
siderate and kindly when he was with her, and
he was as affectionate as ever - sometimes, in-


154
deed, he seemed to be bent on proving to her
that he loved her devotedly. Except that he was
absent from her side very often, all day always,
half the evenings of the week generally, and now
and then going out of town for two or three days
at a time—except for this, she had little or noth-
ing to complain about, formally ; yet as the win-
ter wore on she came to wonder whether she had
not made a mistake, and to ask herself whether
Winslow really loved her now as much as he had
thought he did before they were married — as
much as he said he did now. She wondered,
also, whether her own affection was as full as it
had been. Her love for the baby was strong, in-
deed—that, of course, she never doubted ; but it
was in comparison with this devotion for her
child that her affection for her husband seemed
less than it had been. Sometimes she thought
that perhaps there was no real change—perhaps
it was only that she had now a stricter standard
of comparison than ever before.
Whatever void there might be in Mary's mar-
ried life not filled by her child her mother-in-law
tried to disguise by her own affection. For Wins-
low's mother Mary came to have an abiding fond-
ness and an increasing respect. The younger
woman had early seen that the elder, although
narrow in her views and rigid in her ideas, was
gentle herself and good ; and more intimate com-
panionship served only to bring out the finer fra-
grance of Mrs. Pierce's simple character. In time


155
Winslow's mother leaned on Winslow's wife, and
found strength in her sympathetic companionship.
“My dear,” Mrs. Pierce said to Mary more than
once that long winter, "you are very good to a
poor old woman.”
“Who could help being good to you ?” Mary
would answer. “Besides, much as I'd like to do
something for you, I haven't had a chance to yet.”
“I don't know what I should have done with-
out you."
Mrs. Pierce was confined to her room during
the whole of January, and her case puzzled the
family physician not a little; he could not dis-
cover what was the matter with her, and he saw
no reason why she should not be as well as she
had been the preceding winter. She was fragile,
that he knew well enough, and she never made
any determined effort to get better. She lay
quietly in bed, or on the sofa, patiently waiting
for her strength to return. Even the church-
work, to which she had devoted herself in former
winters, failed to interest her now that she was no
longer strong enough to go out to take part in it
herself. Members of the various committees and
societies on which she served came to see her fre-
quently, and occasionally she had them shown up
to her sitting-room; but after such visits she al-
ways found herself more fatigued. Doctor Thurs-
ton came several times during December and
January; and his direct talk always stimulated
her while he was present, and after he had gone


156
she still had a sense of fresh contact with the
world outside. Mary was her only companion,
as she was her daughter-in-law's sole associate.
The friends in Seventy-second Street, whom Mary
had visited before her marriage, and who were
almost her only acquaintances in New York, had
moved to Chicago a few months before the birth
of the baby. Had it not been for her child Mary
would have found the house in Madison Square
desperately lonely.


XII
ONE evening early in February, when the frozen
snow lay thin over Madison Square, white under the
cold beams of a full moon, Doctor Thurston came
to call on Mr. and Mrs. Pierce. As it happened,
Mary was in her own apartment up-stairs, a little
worried because the baby had been coughing that
afternoon, and because the cough had sounded in
her anxious maternal ear as though it might de-
velop into croup. Mary had left Winslow in a
rocking-chair by his mother's side, talking to her
about the efforts to relieve the distresses of the
unemployed. Five minutes after Mary had gone
back to her own rooms Winslow had slipped out
of his mother's sitting-room, and had got off to the
Hoyle Club. When Doctor Thurston came he was
asked up-stairs at once, and he found Ezra Pierce
just finishing the evening paper, and Mrs. Pierce,
frail and whitened, lying on a sofa before the
dull red hard-coal fire.
Doctor Thurston's chief topic of conversation
that evening was the appalling destitution then
prevailing among the very poor, and of the or-
ganized efforts to relieve it without encouraging
the worthless idle and without increasing pauper-


, 158
--
-- -
-
-
--
-
ism. The minister discussed the various schemes
proposed, with a wide knowledge of the subject
in all its bearings, and with the shrewd business
sense which was not the least valuable of his
qualifications for the high office he filled. · He
told Mr. and Mrs. Pierce what their own church
had done, and what it proposed to do, and how it
wished to take the lead in helping to solve the
problem of temporary poverty. He did not ask
Ezra Pierce for money; he knew that a formal
request would not be necessary; he set forth the
needs of the situation; and he suggested that it
would be well if the church could raise a hundred
thousand dollars.
“A hundred thousand dollars," said Ezra
Pierce, and his harsh voice was raised almost to
sbrillness. “That's a good deal of money in these
hard times.”
“I know it is, Mr. Pierce," Doctor Thurston
returned, “but it is these hard times that have
made needful the raising of so much money."
“Oh, I don't say you oughtn’t to have it,” Ezra
Pierce responded. “I don't know but what you
can get it, too. How much do you want me to
give ?”
“I think I should prefer to have you fix the
amount of your own subscription yourself,” the
minister answered. “I have every confidence in
your generosity, as indeed I have every reason to
have.”
“ I tell you what I'll do, if you like,” said Ezra
-- -
---


159
Pierce; “I'll give you ten thousand dollars, if you
can raise the rest of fifty this week; and I'll make
it fifteen thousand if you can get eighty-five thou-
sand out of the other members of the church.”
“Oh, father,” said Mrs. Pierce, “if other peo-
ple were only as generous as you are there would
not be any more poverty to relieve.”
“Mr. Pierce,” Doctor Thurston declared, “I
have been made aware of your liberality on many
former occasions, but I trust that you will permit
me to say that at the present crisis you have gone
beyond my highest expectation. With your noble
subscription standing as a lordly incentive at the
head of the list, I believe that it will be possible
for us to secure the rest of the hundred thousand
dollars at the specified time.”
“I hope you can,” said Ezra Pierce; “I hope
you can. But you won't find every member of
the congregation with his ready-money in the
bank where he can put his hand on it.”
“Nor shall I find every member of the congre-
gation ready to put his hand in his pocket to re-
lieve suffering," Doctor Thurston returned; “I
am well aware of that. But what you have done
will greatly lighten my labor.”
Doctor Thurston had arrived at the Pierce's later
than was his habit when he paid an evening call,
and the interest of the subject they were discuss-
ing had led him to prolong bis stay far beyond
his accustomed hour. Then when Ezra Pierce
had made his substantial contribution to the fund


160
the minister desired to collect, Doctor Thurston
could not take his leave immediately. When at
last he did rise to go it was long past eleven o'clock.
Ezra Pierce accompanied the minister down to
the hall, talking all the way down about the other
members of the congregation from whom contri-
butions might be expected. At the foot of the
stairs be asked Doctor Thurston into the parlor to
go over the full roll of the church, and to estimate
roughly the highest amount which could be ex-
tracted from each.
“Yes,” said Ezra Pierce at last, when they had
completed a list of names with sums of money
set off against every one of them, “I shouldn't
wonder if you could do it. But it will take hard
work, Doctor. Some of those men will hold tight
to every dollar they've got.”
“I trust that I am not afraid of hard work in a
good cause,” the Doctor returned, with a touch of
pride, as they walked out into the ball towards
the vestibule.
While Ezra Pierce was helping Doctor Thurs-
ton on with his coat, the clock on the mantel-piece
in the parlor struck twelve.
“I had no idea that it was so very late,” said
the minister. “Really, Mr. Pierce, I feel that I
owe you an apology for detaining you so long
when I make no doubt you were ready to retire.”
Before Ezra Pierce could answer the outer door
of the house was opened, and closed cautiously a
moment later. Then the latch-key was applied to


162
At last he found words, and his voice was rasp-
ing and violent.
“ Winslow !” he cried, “go into the parlor! I
want to speak to you.”
“Go into the parlor? What for? Too late to
go into the parlor now," Winslow answered,
dropping limply into the chair on which he had
thrown his overcoat. “I'm goin' bed. Ain't you
goin' bed, Doctor ?”
“ Mr. Pierce,” said Doctor Thurston, who had
not hitherto spoken, “I can see that this is a
most painful situation for you, and you have
my Christian sympathy. I beg that you will
permit me to depart now, for I feel that my
presence here increases the awkwardness of the
circumstances for us all.”
“ That's right, Doctor—that's right,” Winslow
intervened, rising cautiously and advancing to
open the door for the clergyman. “You go
home, go bed. Don't think minister ought to
be out all night.”
“ Winslow !" called his father again. “Go
into the parlor.”
“All right," the son answered, “I heard you
before. I'd rather go bed, but I'll go parlor if
you say so."
And the young man guided himself unsteadily
across the hall into the parlor, where he dropped
into an arm-chair.
“Doctor,” said Ezra Pierce—and his voice
trembled — “I don't know what to say to



"HELLO, FATHER,' HE SAID, AS HE CAME FORWARD UNSTEADILY"





164
For a minute at least the two men said nothing.
Winslow tugged helplessly at his sparse mustache.
His father towered over him, tall, thin, with his
eyes blazing above his high cheek-bones.
At last Ezra Pierce had sufficient control of
himself to speak again.
“Where have you been ?” he asked.
“I've been to the club," was his son's answer,
and the young man's speech was already less
broken and not so thick; apparently he was re-
covering his wits.
“What have you been doing ?” was the father's
next question.
“I've been playing poker,” Winslow responded;
“ that's what I've been doing, and I've won sev-
enty-five dollars.”
“ Gambling !" cried Ezra Pierce, in horror.
“ You are drunk, and you have been gambling !
I never thought that a son of mine would ever be
a gambler !”
“Why shouldn't a son of yours be a gambler ?”
Winslow retorted. “What's the difference be-
tween gambling at a club and speculating on the
Street ? I don't see any difference—except that
we have a square game at the club. I suppose
it is gambling, as you call it, but we play fair any-
way—and that's more than you do on the Street.”
Ezra Pierce drew back, shocked. “Winslow,"
he began, “I could forgive you for being intoxi-
cated, but that's no excuse for you accusing me
of the sin you have been guilty of.”


165
“I don't suppose you're any worse than the
rest of them,” said the son. “What's the use of
talking? You have your fun one way and I have
mine another. You get your excitement down
town; and that suits you, and it's enough for
you. Well, it isn't enough for me. I'm young-
er than you are, of course, and I mean to have
a good time while I can. I'm going to open
a bottle of wine now and then when I like, and
I'm going to play cards for money when I want
to. You can call it gambling if you like; I don't
care."
Ezra Pierce stood before his son in silent as-
tonishment. How could the boy talk in this fash-
ion? Where had he picked up these wicked
thoughts? The father felt as though a fiery gulf
had suddenly opened before him. He was as-
tounded, and he could not find words adequate
to his emotions.
He looked at Winslow, and all he found to say
was, “Is this your gratitude for all I have done
for you ?”
“What have you done for me?” Winslow
answered, rousing himself once more. “You
give me ten thousand dollars a year. Well, what's
ten thousand dollars a year to you. There'll be
a lot more than that coming to me some day,
won't there? I've been to the safe-deposit vaults
with you, and I know what you are worth; don't
forget that! I know you have millions and mill-
ions - and I'll have them some day, won't I ?


166
Then what's a paltry ten thousand dollars a year
to me when I'm going to have millions ?”.
Ezra Pierce took a long breath and said, slowly,
“Do not be too sure of my money, Winslow! I
may alter my will !” Then he added, fiercely,
“and I'll do it too if I see you in this condition
again, or if I ever hear of your gambling."
“You haven't anybody to leave your money to
but me,” was his son's calm reply, “excepting
you give it to Doctor Thurston for charity, and
nonsense of that sort. Charity begins at home, I
say, and I'm your only son. I'm the best charity
for you, and I'll break the will if you try to give
away my money to anybody else !"
Ezra Pierce listened impatiently, and now he
broke in.
“You are very much mistaken,” he cried, and
his voice was even more rasping than usual, “if
you think I'm going to let you squander the
money I've made by hard work.”
“Hard work !" returned Winslow, scornfully.
“Don't talk to me about your hard work! I
know better. I know that no man can start with
nothing and make a million dollars by hard work.
Anybody who has more than a million dollars
made it out of somebody else !"
This was more than Ezra Pierce was prepared
to stand.
“Winslow !” he shouted, advancing towards
his son with uplifted hand and clinched fist,
“14”


XIII
The next morning Mrs. Pierce was much fee-
bler than she had been. She was far too weak to
get up. When Mary entered her mother-in-law's
bedroom sbe was shocked at the change for the
worse in the appearance of the elder lady. She
asked Mrs. Pierce if she had been ill during the
night, and Mrs. Pierce shook her head wearily.
Then she gave Mary a faint smile, and admitted
that she did not feel as strong as usual.
“Where is Winslow ?” she inquired, looking
fixedly at her daughter-in-law as though to dis-
cover whether the younger woman had or had
not any knowledge of the painful scene of the
previous midnight.
“He is lazy this morning,” Mary answered. “I
think he did not sleep well last night, and I don't
believe he is dressed yet. I went down all alone
to have breakfast with father.”
“Then Winslow hasn't seen father this morn-
ing ?” Mrs. Pierce asked, anxiously.
“No,” responded Mary. “Does father want
to see him now ?”
“I don't know," the mother answered. “I
hope not-I mean, I suppose not.”


169
Mary looked at the elder lady in surprise. She
noted how thin Mrs. Pierce was and how wan.
The gray streaks in the elder woman's light
brown hair were broadening and turning white
very fast, and the lines on the placid face were
deepening. Mrs. Pierce's life had been calm and
uneventful hitherto; and now it seemed to Mary
as though there was something weighing on her
mother-in-law's mind, something saddening, some-
thing foreboding greater suffering in the future.
Mary leaned over the bed and took her mother-
in-law's hand, and kissed the elder lady on the
forehead. The hand was cold and the head was
hot.
Mary made no remark, but excused herself for
a moment, and went up to her own rooms, where
her husband was trying to control the shakiness
of his hand so that he might shave himself.
“Winslow,” she said, “as soon as you are
dressed you must go for the doctor."
“Father isn't sick, is he?" asked her husband,
laying down the razor.
“No; it's mother,” answered Mary. “She is
much worse than she was yesterday. She looks
as though something had happened in the night.
She has fever. I'm sure she ought to see the
doctor this morning.”
“All right,” Winslow answered, resuming his
shaving. “I suppose father has finished his break-
fast by this time, so I can get a cup of coffee and
go for the doctor at once.”


170
“You speak as though you didn't want to see
father,” said Mary. “And I think you will have
to hurry if you want to catch him.”
“If I'm going for the doctor,” Winslow re-
sponded, impatiently, “of course I don't need to
see father.”
Winslow wanted to postpone his next interview
with his father as long as possible. He had but a
confused memory of what he had said the night
before, but he knew well enough that whatever it
was it had stirred his father profoundly, and that
if it had not been for his mother's opportune ar-
rival the discussion between them might have
been even stormier than it was. He had a hope
that after a bath and a cup of coffee and a brisk
walk his head would be clearer, and he could recol-
lect at least the main lines of the talk with his
father, so that he should be prepared for the re-
sumption of the conversation whenever his father
might be ready to take it up again. Therefore he
delayed over his dressing until he heard the outer
door of the house slammed, and so knew that his
father had gone for the day. ...
Then he went down-stairs gently, avoiding bis
mother also. Having no appetite for food, he
drank a cup of coffee hastily, and left the house
immediately.
At the office of the family physician he wrote
a brief message on the slate in the doctor's ab-
sence, and then he walked down town, with his
blood cooled and his brain sharpened by the stiff


171
wind which blew steadily from the west. Yet he
was not able to piece together wholly his conver-
sation of the night before. That he had come
home under the influence of liquor, and that his
father had discovered his condition — this much
was plain enough; but what was not so plain was
the tenor of the talk he had had with his father
and the substance of it. All that the son could
make sure of the next morning was that he had
said much that had better have been left un-
said.
He arrived in Broad Street a little before
twelve, still in doubt and greatly wondering how
his father would greet him. As it happened, Ezra
Pierce was not in the office, having gone to see
Silvige & Cusachs, so Farebrother explained.
Winslow gave a sigh of relief at his brief re-
prieve and went into his own office.
As he left the room Farebrother crossed over
to Arrowsmith and whispered, “The Prince Im-
perial was out on a spree last night, and he looks
pretty rocky this morning, doesn't he ?”
Arrowsmith answered, briefly, “I didn't look at
him.”
“I looked at him," said Farebrother, “and I
know the tail-end of a jag when I see one. How
is it the old man doesn't get on to what is going
on under his nose ?”
“Perhaps it is because he is minding his own
business,” retorted Arrowsmith.
“That's all very well,” Farebrother returned,


172
“but if his own son's getting full isn't his own
business, whose business is it anyway?”
When lunch - time came Ezra Pierce had not
yet returned, and Winslow slipped out to get a
cocktail, and to try to eat a plate of chicken-salad
-an attempt in which he failed.
On his return to the office Winslow found his
father giving directions to Arrowsmith.
When he saw his son, Ezra Pierce looked up
and said : “ Winslow, go into my room ; I want
to talk to you."
Winslow obeyed silently, while his father made
an end of his instructions to the old book-keeper.
Then Ezra Pierce went into his own room and
closed the door behind him, much to Farebrother's
annoyance.
The clerk looked over to Arrowsmith, and said:
“I shouldn't wonder if the old man was onto
the Young Napoleon's little game, after all. I
guess he's reading the riot-act to him in there
now.”
But, greatly to Farebrother's surprise, there
were no sounds of scolding from the private of-
fice, and five minutes after it had been closed the
door opened again and Winslow came out.
What Ezra Pierce had said to his son had been
very brief, but it was to the point.
“Winslow," he began, “your condition last
night was disgraceful. I don't ask you whether
you have ever been intoxicated before, but I tell
you plainly it must never happen again.”


173
wil,
“I don't really know how it happened ; 1—"
Winslow began.
“You needn't try to explain,” interrupted his
father, roughly. “I don't want any explanation.
I don't want anything to explain another time.
I'm going to forgive you this once; but it is the
last chance I give you—understand that."
“I understand,” repeated Winslow.
Ezra Pierce was silent a moment; then he went
on :
“As for the things you said when you didn't
know what you were saying- I prefer not to talk
to you about them.”
“I'm glad of that, because,” Winslow respond-
ed—“well, because I don't really remember what
I did say, exactly.”
“So much the better,” Ezra Pierce rejoined.
“I shall forget them, too. I do not see how you
could say such things to me. I can't understand
it at all. I don't, But I'm not going to talk to
you about that. I said I wouldn't, and I won't.”
“ Thank you,” Winslow answered. “I wish I—"
“One thing I must say,” began his father again
-"one thing I have decided. It is perhaps my
fault that you were led into the temptation of
drink. You have had too much money. I have
been too indulgent to you. But it is not too late
to stop that, perhaps. At any rate, I mean to
try. I have been giving you ten thousand dol-
lars a year. That's too much for a young man
like you, with very few expenses. You have made


176
Ezra talked about business, about stocks, about
the prospects and the probabilities. Winslow
listened eagerly, and asked adroit questions, and
thus gained the information which guided his
speculations. Sometimes Winslow had engage-
ments, and went out for the evening, and then
his father had to pass the hours alone. He would
read his paper slowly, and then he would walk up
and down the hall for an hour at a time, until the
creaking of his boots, which she could hear dis-
tinctly, became to Mary almost unbearable.
Towards the end of March Mrs. Pierce im-
proved, and was permitted to sit up for an hour
or two in a rocking-chair before the fire. She
was so much stronger that Mary was authorized to
bring down the baby for its grandmother to pet.
Ezra Pierce was allowed to spend part of the
evening in his wife's room; and Winslow took
advantage of this improvement in his mother's
health to go to Washington, where he was called
—so he told his wife-to a meeting of the com-
mittee of the alumni association of his college.
He was to be gone only one night.
On the afternoon of the day he left New York
a marked copy of the current number of the
Upper Ten was sent to his wife by mail; and it
was handed to her by Sanchez, with a low bow,
as she was seated in a rocking-chair at Mrs.
Pierce's bedside.
Early that winter the Upper Ten had changed
owners and editors. It had always pretended to


177
be the organ of ultra-fashionable society, and in
the hands of its new managers it became less
snobbish, perhaps, but far more vulgar, and it
developed a fondness for abusive personalities.
One of the features of the paper in its new form
was the amplification of a bit of current gossip
into the semblance of a short story, which was
called “A Tale of To-day," and which allowed
all the parties in interest readily to recognize
themselves through the thin veil of disguise...
In the number of this sheet sent to Mary large
blue marks called her attention to“A Tale of To-
day," the title of which was “ The Rivals; or, the
Pretty Prima Donna, the Truculent Tenor, and
the Young Man from Wall Street.” So transpar-
ent was the description of Winslow as the Young
Man from Wall Street, so exact were the allusions
to his father, his wife, his infant daughter, that
Mary could not doubt for a moment, and read on
almost in spite of herself. Haying outlined the
position, the character, and the personal appear-
ance of the Young Man from Wall Street - and
abundant irony lurked in the flattering description
—the writer declared that, as everybody knew, it
was this young man who had furnished the funds
in the summer for starting the Daisy Fostelle
Opera Comique Company, and who had paid its
expenses week by week during the winter, undis-
mayed by the evident unwillingness of the play-
going public to share with him more than a meagre
portion of the burden. Then came the point of
12


178
the tale, which turned on the rumors of a grow-
ing intimacy between the pretty prima donna and
the tenor of the company - a German with an
Italian name, Pisani—and on the consequent jeal-
ousy of the Young Man from Wall Street, who
heard most disquieting reports; but who, owing
to the illness of his mother in New York, was not
able to join the company as it journeyed weekly
from town to town. There was a scorpion sting
in the final paragraph of the story, in which it
was noted that the prima donna and the tenor
and the rest of the company were then in Washing.
ton, and that perhaps the Young Man from Wall
Street might be able to drop in on them unex-
pectedly, excusing himself to his own family
circle on the plea of a desire to listen to the great
debate in the Senate.
Almost before she knew what she was doing
Winslow Pierce's wife had read the wretched
tale through to the end, sick at heart. She won-
dered often afterwards why it was that she had in-
stantly accepted as true a story so carelessly malig-
nant; but she did accept it at once; she never even
hesitated. It explained so many things which
came rushing back to her memory-Winslow's
words at one time and his actions at another; his
excuses for staying in town in summer, and his
excuses for leaving town in winter. Her husband
had been making love to another woman-of that
she was assured; and what most pained her then
was that he had not had the courage and the


179
manliness frankly to leave his wife to go to the
other woman. She recalled his hypocritical kiss
at parting from her that very morning, and un-
consciously she raised her hand and wiped her
cheek and her lips as though to cleanse them.
And as she did this her dark eyes flamed with
indignation, and she gave a sudden cry of dis-
gust.
In the sharpness of the blow the young wife
had forgotten that she was sitting by the side of
her husband's mother.
Mrs. Pierce had been watching Mary's face
since the marked copy of the Upper Ten had been
opened. Now she lifted her thin white hand and
laid it on Mary's arm.
“ What is the matter, my dear ?" she asked.
“ There is matter enough, Mrs. Pierce !" Mary
answered, in the hot flood of her indignation at
her husband's conduct. “Winslow is a villain !
And I shall take my child and leave this house to-
day !"
Mrs. Pierce looked at her daughter-in-law with
frightened eyes, but she made no protest.
“So you have found out something,” she said.
“ What is it? What has Winslow been doing?”
“What has he been doing ?” the young wife
echoed. “He has been doing everything that he
shouldn't do! He has been making love to an-
other woman! And he has been jealous because
another man made love to her. No doubt she is
used to it by this time !"


181
from you—but I must. I couldn't stay here with
him after what has happened.”
“Don't think of me, my dear,” Mrs. Pierce re-
sponded ; “I shall not be here long."
“Oh, yes, you will,” cried Mary, seizing the
elder lady's hand. “You must not talk that
way.”
“I know best, I think ; and I don't know that
· I want to be well,” Mrs. Pierce responded.
“Don't think of me—but, if you love me, think
of Winslow !"
“The less I think of Winslow-ugh !" groaned
Mary.
“I know he has wronged you,” the sick woman
went on, speaking precisely and with an effort,
“but he is weak.”
“ Weak !" repeated Mary—“weak !"
. “He is weak,” said his mother. “Who should
know him if I do not ? «Unstable as water, he
shall not excel'—that's a text that always made
me think of Winslow. He is easily led — too
easily. But you could save him !"
“ It looks like it, doesn't it?" Mary asked, with
a bitter laugh.
“He must have fallen into evil hands," urged
his mother. “But you can bring him back into
the straight path and keep him there. And no-
body but you can do it. He loves you dearly.”
“ Then he has taken a strange way to prove
it,” the wife returned.
“ He is weak — very weak,” Mrs. Pierce ad-


182
mitted. “And if you give him up now he will
go down fast. He has no one but you, for I shall
not last long—and when I am gone who will care
for father if you leave the house ?”
“Oh, Mrs. Pierce,” cried Mary, standing up and
looking straight in her mother-in-law's eyes, “ do
you really mean that you wish me to forgive
Winslow ?”
“Yes," was the answer.
“I couldn't do it !” the young wife declared,
vehemently. “How can you ask me ?”
“ Couldn't you do it for my sake ?” pleaded the
elder woman.
“For your sake ?" Mary repeated.
“For father's sake, too,” Mrs. Pierce con-
tinued. “He will be all alone soon, and he needs
some one to take care of him. And you know
Winslow is fond of you."
“Fond of me !" cried Mary. “He is very fond
of me to treat me so — to insult me in this
way."
“He is fond of you, for all that,” returned Mrs.
Pierce, “and you know it. He will surely come
back to you. If you will only think before you
do anything hasty.”
“Think?" returned Mary. "Thinking won't
make it any better. I might think and think for
years without altering my mind. There's only
one thing for me to do now: I must go away
where I sha'n't have to see him again! I must
take the baby and be out of the house before he


183
gets back!” And she rushed to the door as
though to quit the house at once.
“Mary !" called the sick woman, raising herself
in bed.
So appealing was the cry that the young wife
stood still, with her hand on the door.
“Mary,” repeated Mrs. Pierce, holding herself
erect with a final effort of will. “You must not
go! It is your duty to stay here to stay by your
husband's side-—to save him if you can. I say it
is your duty! And you and I, Mary, come of a
stock that bas always tried to do its duty.”
Then her strength failed, and the frail figure
sank back on the bed.
It was about noon the next morning when Wins-
low returned from his visit to Washington and
mounted the steps of the house in Madison
Square. There was crape on the bell. His moth-
er had died a little after daybreak that morning.


.
i
XIV.
The next day was Sunday, and Doctor Thurs-
ton preached on The Good Woman, taking Ezra
Pierce's wife as an illustration, and paying due
meed of praise to her virtues. :
That same morning the most of the Sunday pa-
pers published portraits of the dead woman, with
florid accounts of her character and of her char-
itable activity. The Gotham Gazette bad portraits
also of the widower, of the son, and of the daugh-
ter-in-law, and of the only grandchild, accompa-
nied by a sketch of the house wherein the death
had occurred. The Daily Dial took advantage
of Mrs. Pierce's death to print a three-column
article on the “Wives of New York's Richest
Men,” in which it gave portraits of these ladies
and liberal estimates of their husbands' fort-
unes.
The funeral took place on Monday, a dull April
day, with heavy clouds threatening to break into
rain all the morning. Despite the weather, the
church was crowded when the hearse drew up
before the door. The Pierces had few friends;
for they had lived in the city almost as strangers,
throwing out no tendrils and thrusting down no



“THE YOUNG WIFE STOOD STILL, WITH HER HAND ON THE DOOR”





186
consolation. Indeed, Ezra Pierce heard hardly a
word of the funeral service, so occupied was he in
trying to settle his own feelings.
Nor did the dead woman's son listen with any
more attention than his father. While Ezra Pierce
was apparently unmoved by the grief which was
really shaking the foundations of his being, Wins-
low was in a state of feverish excitement. His
mother was dead, and he had a vague fear that
her death might be due to her having come down-
stairs insufficiently clad on the midnight when he
had gone home intoxicated. He could not get out
of his thoughts the fear that perhaps her death lay
at his door. He was paler than usual, and his pal-
lor was of an unwholesome whiteness. While his
father sat motionless, obviously lost to all that
was going on about him, Winslow was agitated,
and moved uneasily as Doctor Thurston read from
the Scriptures.
He was so restless that once Mary put forth her
hand involuntarily to recall him to himself. He
started when she touched him, and glanced about
timorously as if to see whether he were watched.
Then he straightened himself up, and buttoned
his double-breasted frock-coat, and smoothed the
backs of his black kid gloves. He had scarcely
looked at his wife, and he had not exchanged fifty
words with her since he had returned two days
before to find his mother dead. Since then he had
been so preoccupied with his own feelings, with
his unformulated remorse, with his anxieties for


188
then that she had been able to recall her husband
to himself.
At last the services came to an end, and the
coffin was borne from the church, and the three
mourners followed it. The sight-seeing idlers
watched them get into the carriage, and drive
away slowly after the hearse; and then they dis-
persed gradually, commenting on the eloquence
of Doctor Thurston, and criticising the absence
of flowers, which seemed to them like a strange
meanness on the part of a man as enormously rich
as Ezra Pierce.
During the long drive to Greenwood the three
mourners in the carriage which followed the
hearse scarcely spoke to each other. But on the
way back, when they were almost in the centre
of the Brooklyn Bridge, the storm broke at last,
with thunder and a crashing downpour of rain;
and again the weather served as a topic of conver-
sation for those who had no heart for any more
searching talk.
Ten minutes after they had returned to the
house in Madison Square, of which Mary was
thereafter to be mistress, Winslow slipped out to
get an afternoon paper, that he might see the
news from Wall Street.
By some inexplicable blunder the announce-
ment had been made in the Street on Saturday
morning that it was Ezra Pierce who had died,
and, as a result, the three or four stocks which
he was supposed to be sustaining dropped im-


189
mediately from five to ten points each. When
the report of Ezra Pierce's death was promptly
contradicted, and it was known that it was the
wife who had died and not the husband, these
stocks rose again, and even closed a point or two
higher than they had been the day before. But the
temporary break in the market had been enough to
make Winslow Pierce lose every dollar which he
had put up on margin. All his various speculations
were closed out at an alarming loss. Although he
did not know the full extent of his disaster when
he went to his mother's funeral, he was aware that
he had lost all the money he had borrowed, and
that he owed nearly a hundred thousand dollars.
When Mary came up-stairs to her own sitting-
room that afternoon, after giving the final orders
for the day to the servants, she found her hus-
band seated before the fire, with a little after-
noon paper in his grasp. His face was haggard
and his hand was shaking.
He looked up as his wife entered.
“ Mary,” he said, in a sudden need for sym-
pathy, “come here, I've got something to tell
you.” He felt as though he must set forth his
strange plight to some one at once.
Mary had not intended to bave an explanation
with her husband for two or three days yet, mean-
ing to give him time to recover from the first
shock of his mother's death.
“Well,” she said, “if you think it is best to
have our talk out now, I'm ready."


190
: “Mary,” he began, standing before her, “ do
you know what I've done ?”
“Yes,” she answered, to his great surprise. “I
know all about that woman.”
“What woman ?” he returned, falling back.
For answer Mary went to her desk between
the windows and took out the copy of the Upper
Ten, and opened it to the marked article, and held
this out to her husband.
He took it with trembling hand, not knowing.
what to expect. He read it rapidly.
: “Do you think that this means me?” he
asked.
“I'm sure it does,” she answered.
“But you don't believe it ?” he cried.
“I do believe it,” was her response, and she
looked him calmly in the eyes. “And you will
not deny it—to me-to-day.”
“But it isn't true!” he began, violently; but
he hesitated under her clear glance and calm in-
sistence.
Then impulsively he dropped into the chair
nearest to him, and took his head in his hands
and rocked to and fro.
“Yes, it is true," he admitted; “I confess it.
I don't know how it ever happened. I'm ashamed
of myself, Mary. I can't look you in the face !
But you don't know how I've suffered at the
thought of deceiving you! Yet I always loved
you, Mary; you must know that! I may talk to
other women, or-or flirt with them even, but I



“DO YOU KNOW WHAT I'VE DONE?'”





191
always love you best, Mary. You know that,
don't you ?”
Mary made no answer for a moment. She went
over to the window and looked down at the rain-
swept square. For the first time she saw her
husband as he really was, and she felt a contempt
for him which took the sting out of her resentful
indignation.
Finally she faced about. “I am going to for-
give you this once,” she said, slowly, “because I
pro—because I am willing to give you another
chance. But I shall not submit to such humilia-
tion a second time. If I ever find you out again,
I take my child, and I leave this house at once,
and you will never see me again.”


XV
In the house in Madison Square the void caused
by the death of Ezrą Pierce's wife was never
filled; and there was no day for months when one
or another of the inmates did not miss “Mother.”
Mary took her place naturally at the head of the
household, and the machinery of house-keeping
continued to move without creak or jar. Owing
to his daughter-in-law's unremitting endeavor,
Ezra Pierce knew no difference in his material
comfort ; but the absence of his customary com-
panion of so many years he felt keenly, though
he said nothing. His sense of loss was none the
less acute for being inarticulate. He did not know
what it was to be externally sentimental, and he
never tried to analyze his own feelings; but, all
the same, he was conscious of a dumb ache.
Yet he had no objection whatever to their pass-
ing the hot months at the same house at Noroton
Point they had occupied the year before. As it
was Baby's second summer, Mary moved out of
town earlier than usual, and her father - in - law
yielded to her wishes without a word of objec-
.tion. He was coming to rely on his son's wife
more and more, and he began even to pay a little


196
gling lines—the Smithville and Athens Railway
and the De Soto and Johnstown Railway—both of
them fearfully overloaded with stock and bonds.
Ezra Pierce had been picking up the stock of
these two roads until he secured enough to
control both of them. This he did during the
summer; and the board of directors elected at
the August meetings of the two companies repre-
sented Ezra Pierce alone, and were chosen to do
Ezra Pierce's bidding. Winslow sat on both
boards. Both roads were in wretched condition;
it was rumored that neither was earning more
than operating expenses. Ezra Pierce so man-
aged that first one and then the other defaulted
for the interest on the first mortgage. Applica-
tion was made for the appointment of a receiver.
The first mortgage bonds which had been selling
at about ninety fell rapidly to eighty, and then by
slow degrees it went down to less than seventy;
and Ezra Pierce bought cautiously but steadily
until he had at last a very large majority of the
bonds of these two struggling corporations, as well
as the full control of their official machinery.
Then he proceeded to acquire a little more than
half of the stock of the prosperous Barataria
Consolidated; and by the aid of this small major-
ity of the shares he elected his own board of di-
rectors at the October meeting. The day after that
meeting he gave orders to sell all these shares of
Barataria Consolidated, except the few needful to
enable his representatives in the board to hold


198
was not aware of the sale of these shares as soon as
the father had no further use for them. The order
to sell them had been given one day when Mary had
taken her husband over to Greenwood, to see that
his mother's grave had been planted with hardy
shrubs for the winter. It was at least a fort-
night after this that Winslow, going with his
father to the vault where the certificates had been
kept, asked where they were, and was told that
they had been sold.
His face blanched instantly, and he steadied
himself against the thick door of the safe.
“Sold ?” he repeated, trying his best to keep
his voice from trembling. “To whom ?”.
“How should I know who bought them ?” Ezra
Pierce answered. “I sold them through Silvige
& Cusachs.”
“And have you-have you sold all the Bara-
taria you had ?” the son asked, with his head still
hidden in the depths of the safe.
“All but a hundred shares or so—a hundred and
thirteen, I think,” his father responded. “Three
or four of the little lots are left, maybe. The
day after the election of the new board I gave
Silvige & Cusachs orders to peddle it off as quickly
as they could without breaking the price.”
“And you don't know who bought them ?”
Winslow repeated, helplessly.
“I don't want to buy them back,” his father
answered. “They are already down seven points
since I got rid of them.”


199
Winslow said nothing more. He aided his fa-
ther to take back to the office a bundle of the
Athens and Smithville Railway bonds.
As soon as he could make an excuse to go out,
he crossed the street to a bar-room and ordered a
glass of brandy and drank it off. Then he dropped
into a chair and sat there motionless for a quarter
of an hour.
From the window of the office Farebrother had
watched him.
“Guess our Young Napoleon has something on
his mind,” he said to Arrowsmith. “Did you
see how white he was, and how his hand shook as
he gave you those bonds ?”.
The old book-keeper did not look up. “I've
seen other people's hands shake before now,” was
all he said.
“I suppose so," Farebrother admitted ; “but I
don't believe you ever saw a worse case than the
heir-apparent's just now. He looked as if he'd
been robbing the Chemical Bank and knew Su-
perintendent Byrnes was after him."
It was more than an hour before Winslow re-
turned to the office that afternoon, and he made
an excuse and went home early. Yet it was late
when he arrived at the house in Madison Square.
That evening at dinner he said scarcely a word,
and he hardly tasted the food set before him.
When his wife asked him if there was anything
the matter, it was with petulant impatience that
he declared that he was all right. That night his


XVI
The next day was Friday, and it dawned gray
and damp. All the early morning, until the roar
of the city swelled up and drowned them, could
be heard the strident whistles of the ferry-boats
as they pushed their way through the fog hang-
ing thick on the North River. A little later in
the day, about the hour when the shop-girls go
to their work, there was a drizzle of rain ; and
when the rain intermitted, a dank steam rose
from the muddy sidewalks. Whatever wind there
was, and it was infrequent, was moist and ener-
vating. The atmosphere was sodden and chill;
and the great city rarely waked to a more cheer-
less day.
At the house in Madison Square, Ezra Pierce
came down to breakfast promptly, and found
Mary waiting for bim as usual, and ready to pour
out his coffee. Winslow was late in getting up
and late in coming down. He had been out the
night before, and it was nearly midnight when he
had returned to the house. He had explained to
his father at dinner that he had just received an
unexpected summons to a meeting of the commit-
tee of his alumni association. Even after he got






“'WHAT'S THE MATTER, MASTER WINSLOW ?'"


207
''WIIAT'S THE MATTER, MASTER WINSLOW ?'"
“That's the front - do' bell, of course, sah,”
Sanchez responded, stepping forward briskly to
answer it.
“But who is it ?” Winslow asked.
“I don't know, sah, tell I've been to see," was
the natural reply to this foolish question.
Winslow stood in silent fear, listening to catch
the first word of the man who had rung the door-
bell.
“Has Mr. Pierce gone down yet ?” said the
resonant voice of Doctor Thurston.
“No, sah,” Sanchez answered. “Not yet, sah.”
“Then ask him if he can see me for a moment,”
said the minister, going into the parlor.
“Yes, sah,” returned the butler, with a bow.
Winslow drew a long breath of relief, and took
up the paper again and glanced over it idly.
His father came down-stairs at once, and greeted
Doctor Thurston cordially. It struck Winslow
as unusual that the door of the parlor should be
closed. What could Doctor Thurston have to say
to his father so private that he could not listen to
it? And why had Doctor Thurston come at all,
at an hour so unusual ?
The conference between Ezra Pierce and the
minister lasted nearly half an hour; and the final
ten minutes of this time Winslow spent walking
up and down the hall in an agony of impatience
and apprehension.
At last the door of the parlor opened and Doc-
tor Thurston came out.


209
under the dripping branches of the bare trees.
The rain had ceased an hour earlier, but the at-
mosphere was moist and cold; and at the corners
the pavement was foul with the slippery ooze of
the street.
After they had crossed Twenty - third Street,
Winslow mustered up courage to ask, “ What did
Doctor Thurston want out of you this time ?"
Ezra Pierce gave his son a glance of rebuke.
“I wish you would not speak of Doctor Thurs-
ton in that way,” he said. “He asked me for
money, of course, but he knows I am glad to give
it always. It is a pleasure to me to help along
the church when I can.”
“It's a pleasure the Doctor's willing to let you
have pretty often,” Winslow retorted. “How
much does he expect now ?”.
“Now that the hard times are over, Doctor
Thurston wants to make our Thanksgiving cele-
bration better than ever before,” Ezra Pierce re-
sponded.
“And he means to have you pay for about half
of it, of course,” Winslow broke in. “Well, you
can afford it, that's one thing.”
“Yes," admitted his father; “I have much to be
thankful for, as far as business is concerned.” Then
he sighed, a most unusual thing for him to do.
Winslow's thoughts went back at once to his
mother; and again he was seized by remorse that
perhaps he was responsible for her death.
Thus it was that father and son kept silence as
14


210
they walked down Broadway. They were on the
east side, which Ezra Pierce preferred, as it was
less crowded. They crossed Union Square, where
the trees were as forlorn as those in Madison
Square.
When they were in front of Grace Church,
Winslow saw that the time had come, and that
he could postpone no longer what had to be said.
The same cowardice which had moved him to se-
lect the street as the place in which to tell his
father about his love for Mary Romeyn and his
engagement to her, made him choose it now as
the fit spot for a graver confession.
No one who saw the father and the son walking
silently side by side could have guessed what the
subject of their conversation would be when they
should break into speech ; no one who did not
know them would even take them to be father
and son — Ezra Pierce, wiry, tall, and bent, with
his overcoat ill-buttoned and his ill-brushed hat;
Winslow, slight and dapper, with his stylishly-cut
garments, his immaculate hat, and his silver-han-
dled umbrella. Now and again a man who passed
them would recognize Ezra Pierce; and some-
times he would nudge his companion and whisper
the rich man's name. Once a New Yorker point-
ed them out to a Western friend, with the re-
mark,“ That's Ezra Pierce, the Wall Street oper-
ator; he's worth ten millions easy; and that's his
son with him." The Westerner looked after
them and said, “Ten millions, eh? The boy's


214
Central stock you wanted ? I got it here and
there in small lots, mainly from the holders along
the line, four shares here and seven there. And
once, when I brought in one certificate for seven
shares, I happened to think how easy it would be
to raise the seven to seventy. It was only add-
ing a cipher in one place and a ty in another. I
saw that the man who had made out the certifi-
cate had a handwriting like mine. I believed that
I could change the amount without danger of de-
tection. And I was pushed for money then, you
had cut me down ; and I bad debts and heavy ex-
penses, and I had to have money in a hurry. Be-
sides, I thought that the shares were going to be
yours, and so—"
Ezra Pierce interrupted. “And so you did not
see any wrong in robbing your father?”
“It was wrong, of course,” the son explained ;
“but it wasn't like taking from anybody else, was
it? You see, I knew all your money was going
to be mine sooner or later."
Ezra Pierce said nothing. He was paler with
an ashen paleness, and the lines in his face deep-
ened.
“At any rate, that's what I did,” Winslow con-
tinued. “Whenever I could get certificates for
six or seven or eight or nine shares, I altered them
to sixty, seventy, eighty, and ninety. You paid
for them, and I got the money I needed to pay
my debts and to get square generally. I thought
you were going to keep them in your safe. I


215
never dreamed you were ever going to sell
them.”
Apparently Ezra Pierce had hardly listened to
Winslow's last sentences. It was with a groan,
almost, that he broke out again, “My son a thief !”
Winslow winced, but he could not answer.
“How could you ?" asked his father, in an-
guish—“how could you ?”
“Oh, I had to have money somehow,” said the
son, "and I knew you wouldn't give it to me ; so
I took it. And it isn't my fault, really, that I'm
in this scrape—it's yours. I was only trying to
do what I've seen you doing again and again these
two years that I've been down in the Street ; I
was trying to get something for nothing, that's
all. That's what you do ; only you're sharper
than I am, and you don't get caught."
“Do you dare to tell me that I have ever robbed
anybody of a dollar ?” asked Ezra Pierce, in anger.
“You made a million dollars by the deal in
General Ceramic, didn't you ?” retorted Winslow.
“Well, whose pockets did that come out of, I'd
like to know ? And this very Barataria Central
stock—what did you want that for? You must
have made a million on that operation, first and
last; and if you are a million richer, somebody
is a million poorer, of course. There isn't much
difference between us, father, so far as I can see,
except that you make your money out of other
people and you get off, while I tried to make my
money out of you and I've got left. And there's


217
“What has he got to do with this? Is it he who
has been leading you astray ?”
“Sam Sargent got some of those altered certifi-
cates, and it was his clerk who was in yesterday
asking about them,” Winslow responded; "that's
what Sam Sargent has got to do with it. All the
leading astray he did was to give his good money
for the certificates I've altered. And I guess
he'll be mad when he finds it out.”
“Sargent,” said Ezra Pierce. “That man stands
in my way all the time.”
“I know you won't like it, father ; but there's
only one thing for you to do," the son continued;
“you've got to go to Sam Sargent now, this
morning, and fix this thing somehow. Sam
Sargent can send me to Sing Sing if he has a
mind to; and if you don't want to see me go
there, you've got to square things with him—beg
off-or buy off—or something !".
Ezra Pierce looked his son in his eyes.
“And why shouldn't I want you to be in Sing
Sing ?” he asked, bitterly. “You would be out of
mischief there, and I should know the worst.”


XVII
The office of Mr. Sargent was in the Bowdoin
Building, No. 76 Broadway, under the shadow of
the steeple of Trinity Church. The building was
old, but the office itself bad been recently re-
fitted. Sargent was an epicurean, and he saw no
reason why the rooms in which he spent the best
part of the day should not be as luxuriously
fitted up as those in his house, where he merely
ate and slept. The walls were wainscoted with
oak; and the partitions shutting off the book-
keepers and clerks were also of oak, with panels
of plate-glass; and of oak, with cushions of Spanish
leather, were the comfortable arm-chairs. The
ticker between the two Broadway windows was
supported by an old oaken bracket, now black
with age, and probably taken from some church;
and the basket into which the tape jerkily un-
rolled itself was of delicate Japanese bronze.
There was a cloisonné ash-receiver on the table
in front of the low leather-cushioned seats in the
windows.
In the corner stood a tall clock, in a carved
oaken case. When this toned forth the hour of
eleven the owner of the office was standing be-


226
What more no need to have never c. although
Now I'll take it off your hands at the market price.
What more do you want ?”
“ There's no need to get excited about this,"
Sargent returned. “I have never said that I
wanted anything more than your offer, although
your proposition is not quite satisfactory in one
respect. The Barataria Central opened this morn-
ing at 913, and I paid 98} for the forged certifi-
cates."
“Very well, then,” cried Ezra Pierce; “let's
have no more words about it. I'll give you 984
for those certificates."
Sam Sargent looked his visitor squarely in the
face. “All the Barataria certificates I bought of
you are not forgeries," he said, with meaning,
“and the stock has gone down 81 since my pur-
chase.”
“Do you want me to buy all those back, too ?”
Ezra Pierce asked. “Well, I'll do it. Make
out your statement, and I'll give you a check.
Will that satisfy you ?”
“Really, Mr. Pierce,” Sam Sargent responded,
“your interest in this matter is very extraordi-
nary.”
“I don't see how,” was the hesitating answer,
as Ezra Pierce drew back in his chair.
“I'll tell you how,” explained the other. “I've
known you a good many years, and we have
bucked against each other more than once, as you
remember, I dare say; and in all that time I
never heard of your making a bad bargain with


231
Ezra Pierce slowly rose and straightened his
bent figure. “I suppose I must go and see him
too,” he said, without a quaver in his voice.
“You can go, of course,” Sargent suggested,
“ but it won't do any good. Poole is as hard as
steel. Don't go till to-morrow anyway.”
“Why not ?" asked the father, with his band
on the knob of the door to go forth.
“Well, because I'll help you out, if you will
take my advice,” Sargent responded. “I'll send
round word to Poole that I can't see him till to-
morrow at lunch - time. And you ship that bad
boy of yours to Europe early to-morrow morning."
He took up a newspaper and looked at an ad-
vertisement.
“Yes, that's it,” he continued. “The Chicago
sails at eleven to-morrow morning. Get the boy
out of the way at once. Ship him to Paris—that's
the place for him. Give him five or ten thousand
a year, and then he won't get into mischief again;
at least, not into mischief of this kind. Let
him have the kind of fun over there that he likes
-it will keep him quiet and amuse him. And if
you pay up as you propose, I don't believe any-
body will molest him over there. It's forgery, of
course, and he could be extradited, I suppose, but
I guess you can hush the matter up after the boy
is gone. That's my advice ; you can take it or
leave it, just as you please.”
And Sam Sargent struck a match to relight his
cigar, which he had allowed to go out.


232
“That's not the way I do my duty by my
child,” said Ezra Pierce, rising. “As you say,
my ideas about morals are different from yours,
and what you propose may suit your morals—I
don't know—but it doesn't suit mine.”
“Don't be brash !” Sargent returned, with easy
good-nature. “Don't go near Poole to-day. Take
the night to think it over, and I rather guess you
will change your mind before morning, and get
the boy out of the country before Poole shows
those altered certificates to the District Attorney
and the Grand Jury."
“Do you think he will go as far as that ?" cried
the father of the guilty man, with a sudden vision
of the court-room and the judge passing sentence.
“Cyrus Poole isn't an easy man to deal with,”
Sargent responded. “You know that. And if
he is really set on this thing, he's likely to make
it very disagreeable for the boy. That's why I
advise you to send the youngster where a Central
Office detective can't pay him an unexpected
visit.”
Then he opened the door to let Ezra Pierce
pass out.
When they had both entered the main office,
Sargent lowered his voice, and said to Pierce,
“My clerk knows about this—but you can trust
him.” Then he called the clerk.
“Mr. Routh,” he said, “I have made an ar-
rangement with Mr. Pierce, who will take all my
Barataria Consolidated off my hands at par.


233
Make out a statement at once, and send it to Mr.
Pierce's office.”
“ All right,” Routh answered; “I can have it
ready in ten minutes."
“You send me a check any time to-day, Mr.
Pierce,” said Sargent, “and I will send over the
certificates."
“You shall have the money at once," Ezra
Pierce responded; “but I will come for those
certificates myself.”
“Well,” Sargent returned, “I don't know but
what it would be as well.”


235
spent the money you stole. It seems the woman
is a friend of his, too!"
“That's all over now,” Winslow responded,
abruptly, avoiding his father's eyes as best he
could. “That is-well—it's all over anyhow.
What's important now is his willingness to let
you have those certificates.”
“Those and all the others he had,” the father
returned. “He makes money out of my neces-
sities. He insists on my buying all his Barataria
Consolidated at par.”
“What does the price matter so long as you've
got the stock back ?” asked Winslow, impatiently.
“You've plenty of money, haven't you? And I
don't see a better use for it than keeping your
only son out of jail!”
Ezra Pierce looked at his only son, and was
shocked at the change in his manner, at the ab-
sence of respect, at the cynicism of his speech, at
the many evidences of moral disintegration. He
did not know what to make of the transformation.
He was wholly at a loss to understand his own
boy. Rarely were two men more dissimilar ex-
ternally and internally; and yet, as the two stood
there by the window of the private office, with the
gray light falling upon them, no one who saw them
could doubt their relationship. That they were
father and son was obvious to the most casual ob-
server, though they had not a feature or a senti-
ment in common.
“Perhaps my money may not be able to keep


237
check for $117,237 to my own order. Charge it
to my private account.”
When the check was ready he signed it, and
sent Farebrother to the bank to have it certified.
Then he took it himself to Sam Sargent's office;
and a quarter of an hour later he returned, with a
thick envelope in an inner pocket.
Then he sat down at his desk and took out the
stock. He put on his glasses, and he examined
the certificates one by one, holding them up to
the light, and studying the altered figures and
amounts.
While his father was doing this Winslow was
fidgeting about the little room, sitting down, and
got up the moment after to stand by the window
and stare out at the rain-splashed front of the
Stock Exchange opposite.
At last Ezra Pierce looked up and asked, “ Are
they all like these ?”
“All those I altered ?” Winslow returned.
“ Yes. They are all like that.”
“Then that man Poole can send you to Sing
Sing if he chooses to," the father said. “I don't
see how a thing of this sort could deceive any-
body. I suppose that they didn't think of look-
ing twice at anything that came from my office-
they knew I was an honest man."
Winslow pulled his mustache impatiently.
“There's no use discussing why it was they took
them," he responded; " what you've got to do now
is to get them back as soon as you can.”


240
NATI
Square to which Winslow had brought his bride,
and which he was never to see again; in which
his baby had been born, and in which his mother
had died.
About half-past eleven o'clock that Saturday
morning, when the swift Chicago, with Winslow-
Pierce on board, sped down the bay past the
Statue of Liberty, Mary his wife was holding her
sleeping baby on her lap while she read the letter
which Sanchez had just brought her, and which
her husband had written the night before to ex-
plain to her the reasons making his flight impera-
tive. And at that hour, also, Ezra Pierce had just
left his own office in Broad Street to seek an in-
terview with Cyrus J. Poole.
O
N



“HIS WIFE CAME TO THE DOOR WITH HIM”


XIX
ONE morning in June, a little more than eigh-
teen months after Winslow Pierce had sailed away
from his native land in haste and in secrecy, leav-
ing his wife and child behind, Arrowsmith and
Farebrother were alone in Ezra Pierce's office.
The old book-keeper was standing at his tall desk,
busy over his work as usual ; and as usual the
younger clerk was posed before the empty fire-
place, as though warming his back at a non-exist-
ent fire.
Farebrother had a journal in his hand, and he
was reading a paragraph in it with obvious en-
joyment.
“I say, Arrowsmith,” he began, “bave you
seen the Stock Exchange Standard this week ?”
“No," answered the book-keeper. “I never
see it ; I don't want to see it.”
“You're losing lots of fun then,” returned Fare-
brother. “It's going for the old man this week;
and I tell you it makes the fur fly. Listen to this,
now: 'The devil still takes care of his own. It is
Ezra Pierce who has led the new raid on Niobrara
Central, and it is understood that he has made a
million dollars by the decline of the past week.
16


243
is he staying over there in Paris, having a high
old time, when he has a wife here ?”.
Arrowsmith laid down his pen and faced Fare-
brother, as though he were going to answer these
questions. Then, before he spoke, he changed
his mind, apparently. Turning back to his desk,
and taking up his pen again, he responded, “How
should I know anything about it ?”
“You do know a great deal more than you'll
tell,” returned Farebrother, disappointed. “You're
not a brilliant conversationalist, you're not. You
don't keep up your end of the talk.”
Arrowsmith smiled grimly, but he said nothing.
“Tell me one thing, then ?” persisted Fare-
brother. “Why doesn't his wife go over to Eu-
rope after him ?”
Arrowsmith looked over his shoulder at the
other as he answered, “How do you know she
doesn't think it her duty to remain at home and
take care of Mr. Pierce ?”
“Oh, I suppose she does,” Farebrother returned.
“ That must be the reason she stays here. But
you'd think she'd think it her duty to go over to
Paris and keep her young hopeful of a husband
out of mischief. If all I hear is true, there's
enough mischief lying round loose in Paris to let
any wife bave lots of exercise keeping her hus-
band out of it. And you know what a weak
softy the heir-apparent is. If there was hardly
any mischief to be had he'd be in the thick of it-
certain sure, wouldn't he ?"


By GEORGE DU MAURIER
TRILBY. A Novel. Illustrated by the Author.
Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $175; Three-
quarter Calf, $3 50; Three-quarter Crushed Le-
vant, $4 50.
Certainly, if it were not for its predecessor, we should
assign to “ Trilby" a place in fiction absolutely companion-
less. . . . It is one of the most unconventional and charm-
ing of novels.- Saturday Review, London.
It is a charming story told with exquisite grace and ten-
derness.-N. Y. Tribune.
Mr. Du Maurier has written his tale with such original-
ity, unconventionality, and eloquence, such rollicking humor
and tender pathos, and delightful play of every lively fancy,
all running so briskly in exquisite English and with such vivid
dramatic picturing, that it is only comparable ... to the
freshness and beauty of a spring morning at the end of a
dragging winter. ... It is a thoroughly unique story.—N.Y.
Sun.
PETER IBBETSON. With an Introduction by his
Cousin, Lady * * * * * “ Madge Plunket”).
Edited and Illustrated by GEORGE DU MAURIER.
Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 50.
That it is one of the most remarkable books that have
appeared for a long time is, however, indisputable.- N. Y.
Tribune,
There are no suggestions of mediocrity. The pathos is
true, the irony delicate, the satire severe when its subject is
unworthy, the comedy sparkling, and the tragedy, as we have
said, inevitable. One or two more such books, and the fame
of the artist would be dim beside that of the novelist.-N. Y.
Evening Post.
PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.
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