of unpretentious acquisitiveness, devoted to business and distracted
by no aesthetic or intellectual interests. He was the only son of his
mother, the widow of a bankrupt steam-miller, and he had been a delicate
child to rear. He left Mr. Gambard's college at Ealing after passing the
second-class examination of the College of Preceptors at the age of
sixteen, to go into a tea-office as clerk without a salary, a post he
presently abandoned for a clerkship in the office of a large refreshment
catering firm. He attracted the attention of his employers by suggesting
various administrative economies, and he was already drawing a salary of
two hundred and fifty pounds a year when he was twenty-one. Many young
men would have rested satisfied with so rapid an advancement, and would
have devoted themselves to the amusements that are now considered so
permissible to youth, but young Harman was made of sterner stuff, and it
only spurred him to further efforts. He contrived to save a
considerable proportion of his salary for some years, and at the age of
twenty-seven he started, in association with a firm of flour millers,
the International Bread and Cake Stores, which spread rapidly over the
country. They were not in any sense of the word "International," but in
a search for inflated and inflating adjectives this word attracted him
most, and the success of the enterprise justified his choice. Originally
conceived as a syndicated system of baker's shops running a specially
gritty and nutritious line of bread, the Staminal Bread, in addition to
the ordinary descriptions, it rapidly developed a catering side, and in
a little time there were few centres of clerkly employment in London or
the Midlands where an International could not be found supplying the
midday scone or poached egg, washed down by a cup of tea, or coffee, or
lemonade. It meant hard work for Isaac Harman. It drew lines on his
cheeks, sharpened his always rather pointed nose to an extreme
efficiency, greyed his hair, and gave an acquired firmness to his rather
retreating mouth. All his time was given to the details of this
development; always he was inspecting premises, selecting and dismissing
managers, making codes of rules and fines for his growing army of
employees, organizing and reorganizing his central offices and his
central bakeries, hunting up cheaper and cheaper supplies of eggs and
flour, and milk and ham, devising advertisements and agency
developments. He h