forgot everything else and went with him.

When the _Now-Then_ touched her pier and I stepped ashore, it was as
captain of Addicks' corporation and stock-market forces, with absolute
power to wage war, make peace, and use in whatever way I thought best
such resources of his as I could lay hands on. I lost no time. Within
forty-eight hours of my return to Boston I had mapped out my campaign,
reconstructed Addicks' broken lines, and gayly set forth on about as
forlorn a hope as ever operator or fighter tackled.

Nothing more desperate could be imagined than the condition of the
Delaware financier's affairs when I assumed control. All the resources
of his companies were pledged for loans, and the constantly falling
prices of his securities, coupled with the discrediting stories Rogers'
agents kept in circulation, made it difficult to keep these going. To
pay would mean ruin, for Addicks had no further thing of value to
pledge. At the same time, Rogers' company, which had now paralleled many
of the Bay State Company's pipes, had secured a large slice of that
corporation's business, and had a corps of up-to-date solicitors working
overtime to secure the balance. Boston, in the meantime, having decided
that Addicts' star was of the shooting variety, and on its return trip,
was throwing up its hat in the wake of the "Standard Oil" band-wagon.
The city government and the Massachusetts Legislature had awakened to
the enormity of Addicksism and were boiling over with that brand of
virtue which the "System" and "Standard Oil" know so well how to rouse
in American breasts by way of American pockets. By this time Rogers'
investment in Boston had grown from the half-million he had in the
beginning estimated as sufficient to annihilate Addicks to three and a
half millions, a million and a half of which represented real property,
and the balance, all kinds of expenditures made in the fight to crush
the Delaware financier, a large part of it being invested in the votes
and favor of State and municipal authorities.

Chief among the enemies of Addicks at this period was the young and
brilliant boss of Boston, its reform mayor, the Hon. Nathan Matthews,
and thereby hangs a swinging tale. When the Addicks-Rogers gas-fight
broke out in Boston this Nathan Matthews was at the zenith of his
political career, and was rather a greater man than even reform mayors
generally fancy themselves. He was at that state of development in the
lives of as