an immense compliment,
considering how few dared to do so.

"Well, Matthew," the old man would remark, after they had discussed Dr.
Pound's latest flight on the nature of the Trinity or the depravity of
man, or horticulture, or the Republican Party, "do you have any better
news of Hugh at school?"

"I regret to say, Mr. Durrett," my father would reply, "that he does not
yet seem to be aroused to a sense of his opportunities."

Whereupon Mr. Durrett would gimble me with a blue eye that lurked
beneath grizzled brows, quite as painful a proceeding as if he used an
iron tool. I almost pity myself when I think of what a forlorn stranger
I was in their company. They two, indeed, were of one kind, and I of
another sort who could never understand them,--nor they me. To what
depths of despair they reduced me they never knew, and yet they were
doing it all for my good! They only managed to convince me that my
love of folly was ineradicable, and that I was on my way head first
for perdition. I always looked, during these excruciating and personal
moments, at the coloured glass bottle.

"It grieves me to hear it, Hugh," Mr. Durrett invariably declared.
"You'll never come to any good without study. Now when I was your
age..."

I knew his history by heart, a common one in this country, although
he made an honourable name instead of a dishonourable one. And when I
contrast him with those of his successors whom I was to know later...!
But I shall not anticipate. American genius had not then evolved the
false entry method of overcapitalization. A thrilling history, Mr.
Durrett's, could I but have entered into it. I did not reflect then that
this stern old man must have throbbed once; nay, fire and energy still
remained in his bowels, else he could not have continued to dominate a
city. Nor did it occur to me that the great steel-works that lighted the
southern sky were the result of a passion, of dreams similar to those
possessing me, but which I could not express. He had founded a family
whose position was virtually hereditary, gained riches which for those
days were great, compelled men to speak his name with a certain awe.
But of what use were such riches as his when his religion and morality
compelled him to banish from him all the joys in the power of riches to
bring?

No, I didn't want to be an iron-master. But it may have been about
this time that I began to be impressed with the power of wealth, the
adulation and reveren