wife at breakfast and dinner, and on their
Sunday walks. He brings his papers home at night and goes over them with
her, for, though her specialty is bringing up the children, she is
deeply interested in his business and often makes suggestions which he
follows. This causes him to admire her intensely, which he would not
necessarily do were she merely a good wife and mother.

He has no hobbies or pastimes. True, he plays golf, but with him golf is
not a diversion. He plays because he finds the exercise increases his
efficiency ("efficiency" is perhaps his favorite word), and because many
of his commercial associates are golfers, and he can talk business with
them on the links.

His house is pleasant and stands upon a good-sized city lot. It is
filled with very shiny mahogany furniture and strong-colored portieres
and sofa cushions. It is rather more of a house than he requires, for
his tastes are simple, but he has a feeling that he ought to have a
large house, for the same reason that he and his wife ought to dress
expensively--that is, out of respect, as it were, to his business.

One of his chief treasures is an automatic piano, upon which he rolls
off selections from Wagner's operas. He likes the music of the great
German because, as he has often told me, it stirs his imagination,
thereby helping him to solve business problems and make business plans.

The thing he most abhors is general conversation, and he is never so
amusing--so pathetically and unconsciously amusing--as when trying to
take part in general conversation and at the same time to conceal the
writhings of his tortured spirit. There is but one thing which will
drive him to attempt the feat, and that is the necessity of making
himself agreeable to some man, or the wife of some man, from whom he
wishes to get business.

The census of 1910 gave Birmingham a population of 132,000, and it is
estimated that since that time the population has increased by 50,000.
Birmingham not only knows that it is growing, but believes in trying to
make ready in advance for future growth. It gives one the impression
that it is rather ahead of its housing problems than behind them. Its
area, for instance, is about as great as that of Boston or Cleveland,
and its hotels may be compared with the hotels of those cities. If it
has not so many clubs as Atlanta, it has, at least, all the clubs it
needs; and if it has not so many skyscrapers as New York, it has several
which