never had your ability,"
he began painfully, "you've gone ahead pretty fast,--the truth is that
Perry and I have been worried about you for some time. We've tried
not to be too serious in showing it, but we've felt that these modern
business methods were getting into your system without your realizing
it. There are some things a man's friends can tell him, and it's their
duty to tell him. Good God, haven't you got enough, Hugh,--enough
success and enough money, without going into a thing like this Riverside
scheme?"

I was intensely annoyed, if not angry; and I hesitated a moment to calm
myself.

"Tom, you don't understand my position," I said. "I'm willing to discuss
it with you, now that you've opened up the subject. Perry's been talking
to you, I can see that. I think Perry's got queer ideas,--to be plain
with you, and they're getting queerer."

He sat down again while, with what I deemed a rather exemplary patience,
I went over the arguments in favour of my position; and as I talked,
it clarified in my own mind. It was impossible to apply to business an
individual code of ethics,--even to Perry's business, to Tom's business:
the two were incompatible, and the sooner one recognized that the
better: the whole structure of business was built up on natural, as
opposed to ethical law. We had arrived at an era of frankness--that was
the truth--and the sooner we faced this truth the better for our peace
of mind. Much as we might deplore the political system that had grown
up, we had to acknowledge, if we were consistent, that it was the base
on which our prosperity was built. I was rather proud of having evolved
this argument; it fortified my own peace of mind, which had been
disturbed by Tom's attitude. I began to pity him. He had not been very
successful in life, and with the little he earned, added to Susan's
income, I knew that a certain ingenuity was required to make both ends
meet. He sat listening with a troubled look. A passing phase of feeling
clouded for a brief moment my confidence when there arose in my mind an
unbidden memory of my youth, of my father. He, too, had mistrusted my
ingenuity. I recalled how I had out-manoeuvred him and gone to college;
I remembered the March day so long ago, when Tom and I had stood on the
corner debating how to deceive him, and it was I who had suggested the
nice distinction between a boat and a raft. Well, my father's illogical
attitude towards boyhood nature, towards human