him a little lesson to take out of office with
him--one that will ruin his second-term hopes--and then close our
bank."

From the bank, the Board of Trade, the Stock Exchange, and his
luncheon with Senator Gossitch, Ames returned to his office for the
private interviews which his chief secretary had arranged. Then
followed further consultations with Hood over the daily, weekly, and
monthly reports which Ames required from all the various commercial,
financial, and mining enterprises in which he was interested; further
discussions of plans and schemes; further receipt and transmission of
cable, telegraphic, and telephone messages; and meetings with his
heads of departments, his captains, lieutenants, and minor officers,
to listen to their reports and suggestions, and to deliver his quick,
decisive commands, admonitions, and advice. From eight in the morning
until, as was his wont, Ames closed his desk and entered his private
elevator at five-thirty in the evening, his office flashed with the
superenergy of the man, with his intense activity, his decisive words,
and his stupendous endeavors, materialistic, absorptive, ruthless
endeavors. If one should ask what his day really amounted to, we can
but point to these incessant endeavors and their results in augmenting
his already vast material interests and his colossal fortune, a
fortune which Hood believed ran well over a hundred millions, and
which Ames himself knew multiplied that figure by five or ten. And the
fortune was increasing at a frightful pace, for he gave nothing, but
continually drew to himself, always and ever drawing, accumulating,
amassing, and absorbing, and for himself alone.

Snapping his desk shut, he held a brief conversation over the wire
with the Beaubien, then descended to his waiting car and was driven
hastily to his yacht, the _Cossack_, where Monsignor Lafelle awaited
as his guest. It was one of the few pleasures which Ames allowed
himself during the warm months, to drop his multifarious interests and
spend the night aboard the _Cossack_, generally alone, rocking gently
on the restless billows, so typical of his own heaving spirit, as the
beautiful craft steamed noiselessly to and fro along the coast, well
beyond the roar of the huge _arena_ where human beings, formed of
dust, yet fatuously believing themselves made in the image of infinite
Spirit, strive and sweat, curse and slay, in the struggle to prove
their doubtful right to live.