the indomitable spirit of the young adventurer drove
him, until he reached the golden sands of California. There he toiled
for many years, until Fortune at length smiled upon his quenchless
efforts. Then he tossed aside his rough tools and set out for the less
constricted fields of the East.

He invested his money wisely, and in the course of years turned it
several times. He became a banker. He aspired to the hand of a
sister of a railway president, and won it. He educated his sons in the
best colleges of the East, and then sent them to Europe on their
honeymoons. And finally, when the burden of years began to press
noticeably, and the game became less attractive, he retired from
the field of business, cleared off his indebtedness, organized the
Ketchim Realty Company, put its affairs on the best possible basis,
and then committed the unpardonable folly of turning it over to the
unrestricted management of his two sons.

The result was chaos. At the expiration of a year the old gentleman
hurried back into the harness to save the remnant of his fortune, only
to find it inextricably tied up in lands of dubious value and
questionable promotional schemes. The untangling of the real estate he
immediately took into his own hands. The schemes he left to his sons.

A word in passing regarding these sons, for they typify a form of
parasitical growth, of the fungus variety, which in these days has
battened and waxed noxious on the great stalk of legitimate commercial
enterprise. They were as dissimilar, and each as unlike his father, as
is possible among members of the same family. Both sought, with
diligent consecration, the same goal, money; but employed wholly
different means to gain that end. James, the elder, was a man of ready
wit, a nimble tongue, and a manner which, on occasions when he could
think of any one but himself, was affable and gracious. He was a
scoffer of religion, an open foe of business scruple, and the avowed
champion of every sort of artifice and device employed in ancient,
mediaeval, or modern finance to further his own selfish desires, in
the minimum of time, and at whatever cost to his fellow-man. In his
cups he was a witty, though arrogant, braggart. In his home he was
petulant and childish. Of real business acumen and constructive
wisdom, he had none. He would hew his way to wealth, if need be,
openly defiant of God, man, or the devil. Or he would work in subtler
ways, through deceit, jugglery, or