contempt and
thereby corrode his manliness."

"I don't think that he scraped up his principles from the Witherspoon
side of the house," McGlenn declared. "If he had, we should at once
have discovered in him the unmistakable trace of the hog. Oh, I don't
think he will stay in the club very long. His tendency will be to
drift away. All rich men are the enemies of democracy. If they pretend
that they are not, they are hypocrites; if they believe they are not,
it is because they haven't come to a correct understanding of
themselves. The meanest difference that can exist between men is the
difference that money makes. There is some compassion in an
intellectual difference, and even in a difference of birth there is
some little atonement to be expected, but a moneyed difference is
stiff with unyielding brutality."

In this opinion they struck a sort of agreement, but they soon fell
apart, and they wrangled until they reached a place where their
pathway split. They halted for a moment; they had been fierce in
argument. Now they were calm.

"Can't you come over to-night, John?" McGlenn asked.

"No, I can't possibly come to-night, John. I've got a piece of work on
hand and must get it off. I've neglected it too long already."

But he did go over that night, and he wrangled with McGlenn until
twelve o'clock.

CHAPTER XIII.

BUTTING AGAINST A WALL.

When we have become familiar with an environment we sometimes wonder
why at any time it should have appeared strange to us; and it was thus
with Henry as the months moved along. The mansion in Prairie Avenue
was now home-like to him, and the contrasts which its luxurious
belongings were wont to summon were now less sharp and were dismissed
with a growing easiness. Feeling the force which position urges, he
worked without worry, and conscious of a certain ability, he did not
question the success of his plans. But how much of the future did he
intend these plans to cover? He turned from this troublesome
uncertainty and found satisfaction in that state of mind which permits
one day to forecast the day which is to follow, and on a futurity
stretching further than this he resolutely turned his back. In his
work and in his rest at the Press Club, whither he went every
afternoon, he found his keenest pleasure. He was also fond of the
theater, not to sit with a box party, but to loiter with Richmond--to
enjoy the natural, to growl at the tame, and to leave the place
wheneve