came peeping in at morn,

and can recall milking-time in July or August when, sitting on the
rail-fence surrounding the barn-yard, he watched the pigeons snipping
up grain, the old hen scratching up worms for the chicks, the ducks and
the drakes and the geese and the ganders proudly waddling back and
forth, among and around the fluffy ducklings and goslings, and the
bull-pup sound asleep by the side of the tortoise-shell cat. Probably he
will think of some particular milking-time when the calm, contented
serenity of the barn-yard was suddenly disturbed by the unexpected
descent in its midst of a neighboring peacock, who, apparently
unconscious of the consternation produced by his entry, proceeded
proudly to spread his dazzling plumage to convince every one, from Uncle
Cy, on the milking-stool, and mild-eyed Bess, down to the white
fan-tailed dove, that he was--It.

Conjure up the picture--the peacock at milking-time in the farm-yard;
thus Addicks came to Boston--though it is far from my intention to
identify the bucolic background I have drawn with the Hub of the
Universe.

Boston, up to this time, had been singularly free from the mushroom
variety of millionaire which had sprung up overnight in such numbers in
New York and Philadelphia. Proudly defiant of a product so alien to all
her traditions, her citizens would have sworn that no votary of modern
high finance could exist over one curfew-toll within her gates. For
Boston had her own financial eminence, of a character in keeping with
the chill conditions of conservatism and rectitude appropriate to the
metropolis of the New England conscience. She had her Stock Exchange,
her numerous great corporations, her scores of single and
multimillionaires, and it was her boast that her capital had played the
greatest legitimate part in the country's growth. She had furnished a
large percentage of the money which had created our vast Western railway
system; she had found and made the superb copper-mines of Michigan and
Montana, and in all parts of the land branches of her sturdy
institutions were vitally assisting the miracle of America's
development. Notwithstanding what these wide-flung enterprises imply of
commercial push and audacity, Boston, at the time Addicks discovered gas
there, was one of the most trusting wealth-investing communities in the
world. She had her simple rules of business conduct which years of
usage had consecrated into all-powerful precedent, but her