only
your job."

"What do you want of me, young man?" he inquired. "Is it my soul?"

"Not at all," I answered. "It's the America you know, expressed in such
simple human terms that even a young ignoramus like me will be able to
understand it. Out of this big country a good many thousands of men, I
suppose, have come to you for money. Which are the most significant
ones?"

And I went on to explain my idea. Soon it began to take hold of him. We
talked until after midnight, and later we had other talks. It was hard
at first in the questioning to dodge the technical side of it all, the
widely intricate workings of that machine of credit of which he was
chief engineer. But as he saw how eager I was to feel his view and
become enthused, by degrees he humanized it all. And not only that, he
trusted me, he gave me the most intimate glimpses into this life of big
money, although when I dared to include such bits in the story that I
showed him he calmly scratched them out and said:

"You're mistaken, young man. I didn't say that."

As he talked I saw again that vision I had had on the North River docks.
For into this man's office had come the men of the mines, the factories
and the mills, the promoters of vast irrigations on prairies, builders
of railroads, real estate plungers, street traction promoters,
department store owners, newspaper proprietors, politicians--the
builders and boomers, the strong energetic men of the land. He showed me
their power and made me feel it was still but in its infancy. He made me
feel a dazzling future rushing upon us, a future of plenty still more
controlled by the keen minds and wide visions of the powerful men at the
top.

Of all these men and the rushing world of power they lived in, I have
only a jumble of memories now. For my own life was a jumble--irregular,
crowded and intense. In their offices, clubs and homes, in their motors,
on yachts and trains, in Chicago and Pittsburgh and other cities, I
followed them, making my time suit theirs. Some had no use for me at
all, but I found others delighted to talk--like the great Dakota
ranchman who ordered twenty thousand copies of the issue in which his
story appeared and scattered them like seeds of fame over the various
counties of wheat, corn and alfalfa he owned. And in the main I had
little trouble. I met often that curious respect which so many men of
affairs seem to have, God knows why, for a successful writer.

I got in where men