rward. "And then
he talked to me for two hours about himself. He told me of his
start in life as a three-dollar-a-week clerk, how rich he was, his
philosophy of life; how you should recognize defeat when it was
coming, accept it before it was complete and overwhelming and start
out afresh, how liberal and advanced were his social views, how
with all his wealth he was ready to accept a capital tax as perhaps
the best way out of the bog in which the war had left the world,
how democratic he was in his relations with his employees and his
servants. It all seemed as amazing to him as if he were describing
someone else, or as if it had just happened the day before."

Perhaps it is only to women and to journalists that men talk so
frankly about themselves, to the most romantic and best trained
listening sex and profession, who perforce survey the heights from
below. But this young woman's experience was, I have reason to
believe, a common one.

Is it vanity? You say that a man who talks so much about himself
must be vain. To conclude that he is vain is not to understand Mr.
Baruch. Is a child vain when it brings some little childish
accomplishment, some infantile drawing on paper, and delightedly
and frankly marvels at what he has done? It is given to children
and to the naive openly to wonder at themselves without vanity,
with a deep underlying sense of humility, and in Mr. Baruch's case
the unaffected delight in himself proceeds from real humility.

After twenty-five years in the jungle of Wall Street, there
is--contradictions multiply in his case--much of the child about Mr.
Baruch, simple, trustful--outside of Wall Street,--incapable of
concealment,--outside of Wall Street--of that which art has taught
the rest of us to conceal. His humility makes him wonder; his
naivete makes him talk quite frankly, unrestrained by the
conventions that balk others. After all, is not wondering at
yourself a sign of humility? A vain man, become great by luck, by
force of circumstances, by the possession of gifts which he does
not himself fully understand, would still take himself for granted.
He would not be a romance to himself, but a solid, unassailable
fact.

For Baruch the great romance is Baruch, the astonishing plaything
of fate, who started life as a three-dollar-a-week broker's clerk;
made millions, lost millions, made millions again, lost millions
again; finally, still young, quit Wall Street with a fortune that
left the ga