emen that
add your money to their corpulent millions while you wait,
is himself an interesting man and a very puzzling one to a
great many people.

One day last week I spent several hours with him at his
rooms in Young's Hotel, and it surely was a stimulating and
enjoyable time. Everybody now knows how exceedingly well Mr.
Lawson can write, and he talks as he writes--boldly,
vividly, audaciously. He thinks out loud, pouring forth a
flood of speech, breaking off in the middle of sentences,
going into long parentheses, touching on a dozen incidental
things by way of illustration as he goes, but always coming
back to the main point. He may confuse you, but he does not
confuse himself. And notwithstanding the rapidity of his
utterance and his copiousness he is not carried away into
saying what he would rather not have said.

He is handsome--tall, broad-shouldered, strong, well-knit,
and graceful--still almost youthful physically, despite his
forty-five years and the beginning of grayness in the dark,
wavy hair which covers his large, finely arched, and
well-proportioned head. His forehead is high and broad, his
gray eyes deep set under brows that come together and give
intentness and fierceness to his gaze when he is aroused.

And when Lawson is aroused you see a fighter with all his
wits about him and of utter fearlessness. He would have made
a first-class soldier, with his quickness and dash and the
pluck that was born in him, and has not to be summoned by
thinking and resolving.

THE BOSTON VIEW OF LAWSON

The Boston view of Lawson is illuminating. They are afraid
of him on State Street. He thinks so rapidly and does things
with such instant decision that he bewilders the
conventional plodders. They admit that he is brilliant, that
he has a genius for gathering in the dollars, but he shocks
the financial Mrs. Grundy. They tell you that he is
"irregular," "sensational," "bizarre," and the rest of
it--all of which means simply that he is a man of original
mind, who follows his own methods, succeeds with them, and
doesn't care a snap of his fingers about being out of the
fashion.

He has a hundred ideas and impulses where the "safe and
steady-going" business man has one--and as the safe and
steady-going Sta