The
secretary withdrew the letter, and slipped another in its place.

"Homer Firth, the landscape man," he chanted, "wants permission to use
blue flint on the new road, with turf gutters, and to plant silver firs
each side. Says it will run to about five thousand dollars a mile."

"No!" protested the great man firmly, "blue flint makes a country place
look like a cemetery. Mine looks too much like a cemetery now. Landscape
gardeners!" he exclaimed impatiently. "Their only idea is to insult
nature. The place was better the day I bought it, when it was running
wild; you could pick flowers all the way to the gates." Pleased that
it should have recurred to him, the great man smiled. "Why, Spear," he
exclaimed, "always took in a bunch of them for his mother. Don't you
remember, we used to see him before breakfast wandering around the
grounds picking flowers?" Mr. Thorndike nodded briskly. "I like his
taking flowers to his mother."

"He SAID it was to his mother," suggested the secretary gloomily.

"Well, he picked the flowers, anyway," laughed Mr. Thorndike. "He didn't
pick our pockets. And he had the run of the house in those days. As
far as we know," he dictated, "he was satisfactory. Don't say more than
that."

The secretary scribbled a mark with his pencil. "And the landscape man?"

"Tell him," commanded Thorndike, "I want a wood road, suitable to a
farm; and to let the trees grow where God planted them."

As his car slid downtown on Tuesday morning the mind of Arnold Thorndike
was occupied with such details of daily routine as the purchase of a
railroad, the Japanese loan, the new wing to his art gallery, and an
attack that morning, in his own newspaper, upon his pet trust. But his
busy mind was not too occupied to return the salutes of the traffic
policemen who cleared the way for him. Or, by some genius of memory,
to recall the fact that it was on this morning young Spear was to be
sentenced for theft. It was a charming morning. The spring was at
full tide, and the air was sweet and clean. Mr. Thorndike considered
whimsically that to send a man to jail with the memory of such a morning
clinging to him was adding a year to his sentence. He regretted he had
not given the probation officer a stronger letter. He remembered the
young man now, and favorably. A shy, silent youth, deft in work, and
at other times conscious and embarrassed. But that, on the part of a
stenographer, in the presence of the Wisest Man in W