, a quart of Martini,
and a hundred and forty hair bridles to look at on the wall."

He stared around at the array disconsolately. "Mr. Shoe, I'm sizzled.
Good night."

Far worse than the controlled, steady drinker is the solitary drinker,
and it was this that Daylight was developing into. He rarely drank
sociably any more, but in his own room, by himself. Returning weary
from each day's unremitting effort, he drugged himself to sleep,
knowing that on the morrow he would rise up with a dry and burning
mouth and repeat the program.

But the country did not recover with its wonted elasticity. Money did
not become freer, though the casual reader of Daylight's newspapers, as
well as of all the other owned and subsidised newspapers in the
country, could only have concluded that the money tightness was over
and that the panic was past history. All public utterances were cheery
and optimistic, but privately many of the utters were in desperate
straits. The scenes enacted in the privacy of Daylight's office, and
of the meetings of his boards of directors, would have given the lie to
the editorials in his newspapers; as, for instance, when he addressed
the big stockholders in the Sierra and Salvador Power Company, the
United Water Company, and the several other stock companies:--

"You've got to dig. You've got a good thing, but you'll have to
sacrifice in order to hold on. There ain't no use spouting hard times
explanations. Don't I know the hard times is on? Ain't that what
you're here for? As I said before, you've got to dig. I run the
majority stock, and it's come to a case of assess. It's that or smash.
If ever I start going you won't know what struck you, I'll smash that
hard. The small fry can let go, but you big ones can't. This ship
won't sink as long as you stay with her. But if you start to leave
her, down you'll sure go before you can get to shore. This assessment
has got to be met that's all."

The big wholesale supply houses, the caterers for his hotels, and all
the crowd that incessantly demanded to be paid, had their hot
half-hours with him. He summoned them to his office and displayed his
latest patterns of can and can't and will and won't.

"By God, you've got to carry me!" he told them. "If you think this is
a pleasant little game of parlor whist and that you can quit and go
home whenever you want, you're plumb wrong. Look here, Watkins, you
remarked five minutes ago that you wouldn't st