point of view--a condition based upon a
peculiar power of analysis--self-analysis in particular, which was
constantly permitting him to tear himself up by the roots in order to
see how he was getting along. He would daily and hourly when not
otherwise employed lift the veil from his inner mental processes as he
might lift the covering from a well, and peer into its depths. What he
saw was not very inviting and vastly disconcerting, a piece of machinery
that was not going as a true man should, clock fashion, and
corresponding in none of its moral characteristics to the recognized
standard of a man. He had concluded by now, from watching various
specimens, that sane men were honest, some inherently moral, some
regulated by a keen sense of duty, and occasionally all of these virtues
and others were bound up in one man. Angela's father was such an one. M.
Charles appeared to be another. He had concluded from his association
with Jerry Mathews, Philip Shotmeyer, Peter MacHugh and Joseph Smite
that they were all rather decent in respect to morals. He had never seen
them under temptation but he imagined they were. Such a man as William
Haverford, the Engineer of Maintenance of Way, and Henry C. Litlebrown,
the Division Engineer of this immense road, struck him as men who must
have stuck close to a sense of duty and the conventions of the life they
represented, working hard all the time, to have attained the positions
they had. All this whole railroad system which he was watching closely
from day to day from his little vantage point of connection with it,
seemed a clear illustration of the need of a sense of duty and
reliability. All of these men who worked for this company had to be in
good health, all had to appear at their posts on the tick of the clock,
all had to perform faithfully the duties assigned them, or there would
be disasters. Most of them had climbed by long, arduous years of work to
very modest positions of prominence, as conductors, engineers, foremen,
division superintendents. Others more gifted or more blessed by fortune
became division engineers, superintendents, vice-presidents and
presidents. They were all slow climbers, rigid in their sense of duty,
tireless in their energy, exact, thoughtful. What was he?

He looked into the well of his being and there he saw nothing but shifty
and uncertain currents. It was very dark down there. He was not honest,
he said to himself, except in money matters--he often won