en talk about statesmanship and
jurisprudence and international law that I realized how America would
need great brains later on, more and more, as she would have to
arbitrate, maybe, for the whole world.

I smiled inwardly as I listened, for didn't I know that in just a few
years the nation would have Samuel Foster Crittenden to rely on? Sam is
a statesman by inheritance, for he has all sorts of remarkable Tennessee
ancestry back of him from Colonial times down to his father's father,
who was one of the great generals of our own Civil War. And as I
listened to those splendid men talk about military matters, just as
Judge Crittenden had talked to Sam and me about his father, the general,
ever since we were big enough to sit up and hear about it, and discuss
what American brains and character could be depended upon to do, I
glowed with pride and confidence in Sam. I'm glad I didn't know then
about the collapsed structure of my hopes for him that Sam was even then
secretly unsettling. At the thought my hand trembled on the wheel and I
turned my car hastily away from two chickens and a dog in the road and
my mind from the anxiety of Sam to further pleasant thoughts of Peter.

I don't believe Judge Vandyne's thoughts of Peter are as pleasant as
mine, for Peter doesn't go to the office at all any more; he spends his
waking moments at a club where players and play-writers and all men
play a great deal of the time. I forget its name, but it makes the judge
mad to mention it.

"The dear old governor's mind is gold-bound," said Peter, sadly, after
we came away from luncheon with the judge down in Wall Street. "Why
should I grub filthy money when he has extracted the bulk of it that he
has? I must go forward and he must realize that he should urge me on up.
I ought not to be tied down to unimportant material things. I must not
be. You of all people understand me and my ambitions, Betty." As he said
it he leaned toward me across the tea-table at the Astor, where we had
dropped exhaustedly down to finish the discussion on life which the
judge's practical tirade had evoked.

"But then, Peter, you know it was a very great thing Judge Vandyne
showed his bank how to do about that international war loan. In England
and Scotland they speak of him with bated breath. It was so brilliant
that it saved awful complications for Belgium."

"Oh, he's the greatest ever--in all material ways," answered Peter, with
hasty loyalty and some pride