s general counsel. We got down to business at
once. I told them how well our affairs were moving in Boston and
listened to their tidings of progress elsewhere. We were all in the
merry mood of success. The past was nothing but a bad dream; our
thoughts were on the rich moments beyond November 1st when we should
handle and know the real currency of our victory.

The telephone bell rang. Some one wanted Addicks quick.

Addicks stepped to the instrument. We all heard him say: "Hello."
Then--"Is that you, Fred?" (Fred Keller was his personal secretary.)
Then--"Yes, I hear you plainly. Repeat it." Then--a minute's wait while
we listened. Then--"When will they get up there?" Then--"Send every one
home, lock up and go over to the house, and call me on my wire." All
this in his ordinary, well-attuned, even voice, without the emphasis of
a word to show that the subject was a hair more important than any of
the hundred and one ordinary messages which went to make up a large part
of his daily life. The talk was so commonplace that we were none of us
interested enough to even stop our chatter.

Addicks stepped from the telephone and in a "bring-me-a-finger-bowl"
tone of voice said: "Tom, come into the other room for a minute; I want
a word with you."

He passed ahead of me through a small parlor into his bedroom. I
followed. He went straight to the bureau, took something from a drawer,
slipped it into his pocket, turned and dropped upon a lounge. But a
minute had elapsed since he had gone to the telephone. Could this gray
ghost be the same man who a short time ago had been smiling so
contentedly at Parker Chandler's last story? His face was the color of a
mouldy lead pipe and seared with strange lines and seams. The eyes that
met mine were dim and glazed, lustreless and dead as the eyes of a fish
dragged from watery depths.

Courage is not character; it is temperamental. There is an impression
that the man truly brave is he who can face sudden, unexpected
misfortune or calamity without a tremor or a flicker to suggest his
hurt. That is but a single phase and indicative of physical rather than
moral qualities; or, perhaps, merely the callousness born of long
exposure to danger. One of the bravest men I've ever known stood
watching the ticker one day during a downward run. Suddenly I heard "My
God, I'm ruined!" and he fell in a faint on the floor. And a certain
bank officer, whom I knew to be an arrant coward when arrested for