Appeal_, when the latter suddenly died. Marietta was
promising to come to Philadelphia next year, in order, as she said, that
Eugene might get her a rich husband; but Angela informed him privately
that Marietta was now irrevocably engaged and would, the next year,
marry a wealthy Wisconsin lumber man. Everyone was delighted to hear
that Eugene was doing so well, though all regretted the lapse of his
career as an artist. His fame as an advertising man was growing, and he
was thought to have considerable weight in the editorial direction of
the _North American Weekly_. So he flourished.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

It was in the fall of the third year that the most flattering offer of
any was made him, and that without any seeking on his part, for he was
convinced that he had found a fairly permanent berth and was happy among
his associates. Publishing and other trade conditions were at this time
in a peculiar condition, in which lieutenants of any importance in any
field might well be called to positions of apparently extraordinary
prominence and trust. Most of the great organizations of Eugene's day
were already reaching a point where they were no longer controlled by
the individuals who had founded and constructed them, but had passed
into the hands of sons or holding companies, or groups of stockholders,
few of whom knew much, if anything, of the businesses which they were
called to engineer and protect.

Hiram C. Colfax was not a publisher at all at heart. He had come into
control of the Swinton-Scudder-Davis Company by one of those curious
manipulations of finance which sometimes give the care of sheep into the
hands of anything but competent or interested shepherds. Colfax was
sufficiently alert to handle anything in such a way that it would
eventually make money for him, even if that result were finally attained
by parting with it. In other words, he was a financier. His father had
been a New England soap manufacturer, and having accumulated more or
less radical ideas along with his wealth, had decided to propagandize in
favor of various causes, the Single Tax theory of Henry George for one,
Socialism for another, the promotion of reform ideas in politics
generally. He had tried in various ways to get his ideas before the
public, but had not succeeded very well. He was not a good speaker, not
a good writer, simply a good money maker and fairly capable thinker, and
this irritated him. He thought once of buying or st