hing young Beverley
Byrd on the somewhat whimsical condition that his brother Stewart would
give an equal amount.

"Moreover," said young Mr. Byrd, "I'll increase it to seven hundred and
fifty dollars if your friend Winter will publicly denounce me as a
boocaneer. It'll help me in my business to be lined up with Rockefeller
and all those Ikes."

But this gift never materialized at all, for the reason that Stewart
Byrd kindly but firmly refused to give anything. A rich vein of
horse-sense underlay Byrd's philanthropic enthusiasms; and even the
necessity for the continued existence of old Blaines College appeared to
be by no means clear in his mind.

"If you had a free hand, Gardiner," said he, "that would be one thing,
but you haven't. I've had my eye on Blaines for a long time, and frankly
I don't think it is entitled to any assistance. You have an inferior
plant and a lot of inferior men; a small college governed by small ideas
and ridden by a close corporation of small trustees--"

"But heavens, man!" protested West, "your argument makes a perfect
circle. You won't help Blaines because it's poorly equipped, and Blaines
is poorly equipped because the yellow-rich--that's you--won't help it."

Stewart Byrd wiped his gold-rimmed glasses, laughing pleasantly. He was
the oldest of the four brothers, a man of authority at forty; and West
watched him with a secret admiration, not untouched by a flicker of
envy.

"What's the answer? Blessed if I know! The fact is, old fellow, I think
you've got an utterly hopeless job there, and if I were you, I believe
I'd get ready to throw it over at the first opportunity."

West replied that it was only the hard things that were worth doing in
this life. None the less, as winter drew to a close, he insensibly
relaxed his efforts toward the immediate exaltation of old Blaines. As
he looked more closely into the situation, he realized that his too
impetuous desire for results had driven him to waste energy in hopeless
directions. How could he ever do anything, with a lot of moss-backed
trustees tying his hands and feet every time he tried to toddle a step
forward--he and Blaines? Clearly the first step of all was to oust the
fossils who stood like rocks in the path of progress, and fill their
places with men who could at least recognize a progressive idea when
they were beaten across the nose with it. He studied his trustee list
now more purposefully than he had ever pored over his f