others had been doing. Mr. Bode did it, just like I have been doing.
He dealt with Tighe and Company. I have a wife and four children, Mr.
Mollenhauer. My youngest boy is only seven years old. Think of them, Mr.
Mollenhauer! Think of what my arrest will mean to them! I don't want to
go to jail. I didn't think I was doing anything very wrong--honestly I
didn't. I'll give up all I've got. You can have all my stocks and houses
and lots--anything--if you'll only get me out of this. You won't let 'em
send me to jail, will you?"

His fat, white lips were trembling--wabbling nervously--and big hot
tears were coursing down his previously pale but now flushed cheeks.
He presented one of those almost unbelievable pictures which are yet so
intensely human and so true. If only the great financial and political
giants would for once accurately reveal the details of their lives!

Mollenhauer looked at him calmly, meditatively. How often had he seen
weaklings no more dishonest than himself, but without his courage and
subtlety, pleading to him in this fashion, not on their knees exactly,
but intellectually so! Life to him, as to every other man of large
practical knowledge and insight, was an inexplicable tangle. What were
you going to do about the so-called morals and precepts of the world?
This man Stener fancied that he was dishonest, and that he, Mollenhauer,
was honest. He was here, self-convicted of sin, pleading to him,
Mollenhauer, as he would to a righteous, unstained saint. As a matter
of fact, Mollenhauer knew that he was simply shrewder, more far-seeing,
more calculating, not less dishonest. Stener was lacking in force and
brains--not morals. This lack was his principal crime. There were people
who believed in some esoteric standard of right--some ideal of conduct
absolutely and very far removed from practical life; but he had never
seen them practice it save to their own financial (not moral--he would
not say that) destruction. They were never significant, practical men
who clung to these fatuous ideals. They were always poor, nondescript,
negligible dreamers. He could not have made Stener understand all this
if he had wanted to, and he certainly did not want to. It was too bad
about Mrs. Stener and the little Steners. No doubt she had worked hard,
as had Stener, to get up in the world and be something--just a little
more than miserably poor; and now this unfortunate complication had to
arise to undo them--this Chicago