hem, together with his very distinct personality, had conduced
to provide him with a courtesy title in his old age.

It is more than probable that, had Alden P. Ricks been a large,
commanding person possessed of the dignity the average citizen
associates with men of equal financial rating, the Street would have
called him Captain Ricks. Had he lacked these characteristics, but borne
nevertheless even a remote resemblance to a retired mariner, his world
would have hailed him as Old Cap Ricks; but since he was what he was--a
dapper, precise, shrewd, lovable little old man with mild, paternal
blue eyes, a keen sense of humor and a Henry Clay collar, which latter,
together with a silk top hat, had distinguished him on 'Change for forty
years--it was inevitable that along the Embarcadero and up California
Street he should bear the distinguishing appellation of Cappy. In any
other line of human endeavor he would have been called Pappy--he was
that type of man.

Cappy Ricks had so much money, amassed in the wholesale lumber and
shipping business, that he had to engage some very expensive men to
take care of it for him. He owned the majority of the stock of the Ricks
Lumber and Logging Company, with sawmills and timberlands in California,
Oregon and Washington; his young men had to sell a million feet of
lumber daily in order to keep pace with the output, while the vessels
of the Blue Star Navigation Company, also controlled by Cappy, freighted
it. There were thirty-odd vessels in the Blue Star fleet--windjammers
and steam schooners; and Cappy was registered as managing owner of every
one.

Following that point in his career when the young fellows on the Street,
discovering that he was a true-blue sport, had commenced to fraternize
with him and call him Cappy, the old gentleman ceased to devote his
attention to the details of his business. He was just beginning to enjoy
life; so he shifted the real work of his multifarious interests to the
capable shoulders of a Mr. John P. Skinner, who fitted into his niche
in the business as naturally as the kernel of a healthy walnut fits its
shell. Mr. Skinner was a man still on the sunny side of middle life,
smart, capable, cold-blooded, a little bumptious, and, like the late
Julius Caesar, ambitious.

No sooner had Cappy commenced to take life easy than Skinner commenced
to dominate the business. He attended an efficiency congress and came
home with a collection of newfangled ideas th