n contact with him, what
must it have been, Richard speculated, in his prime, in those wonderful
years when he was building the great business, expanding it with a
daring of conception and a rapidity of execution which had fairly taken
away the breath of his contemporaries. He had introduced new methods,
laid down new principles, defied old systems, and created better ones
having no precedent anywhere but in his own productive brain. It might
justly be said that he had virtually revolutionized the mercantile
world, for when the bridges that he built were found to hold, in spite
of all dire prophecy to the contrary, others had crossed them, too, and
profited by his bridge building.

The three young men did their best to lead Mr. Kendrick to talk of
himself, but of that he would do little. Constantly he spoke of the work
of his associates, and when it became necessary to allude to himself it
was always as if they had been identified with every move of his own. It
was Alfred Carson who best recognized this trait of peculiar modesty in
the old man, and who understood most fully how often the more impersonal
"we" of his speech really stood for the "I" who had been the mainspring
of all action in the growth of the great affairs he spoke of. Carson was
the son of a man who had been one of the early heads of a newly created
department, in the days when departments were just being tried, and he
had heard many a time of the way in which Matthew Kendrick had held to
his course of introducing innovations which had startled the men most
closely associated with him, and had made them wonder if he were not
going too far for safety or success.

"Well, well, gentlemen," said Mr. Kendrick, rising abruptly at last,
"you have beguiled me into long speech. It takes me back to old days to
sit and discuss a young business like this one with young men like you.
It has been very interesting, and it delights me to find you so ready to
take counsel, while at the same time you show a healthy belief in your
own judgment. You will come along--you will come along. You will make
mistakes, but you will profit by them. And you will remember always, I
hope, a motto I am going to give you."

He paused and looked searchingly into each face before him: Hugh
Benson's, serious and sincere; Alfred Carson's, energy and purpose
showing in every line; his own boy's, Richard's, keen interest and a
certain proud wonder looking out of his fine eyes as he watched t