f you'll simply
accept what I say, without discussion. When I want discussion I'll ask
your advice."

"I'm afraid you don't think it's worth much," said Tetlow humbly, "and I
guess it isn't."

"On the contrary, invaluable," declared Norman with flattering emphasis.
"Where you lack and I excel is in decision and action. I'll often get
you to tell me what ought to be done, and then I'll make you do
it--which you'd never dare, by yourself."

At eleven sharp Galloway came, looking as nearly like a dangerous old
eagle as a human being well could. Rapacious, merciless, tyrannical; a
famous philanthropist. Stingy to pettiness; a giver away of millions.
Rigidly honest, yet absolutely unscrupulous; faithful to the last letter
of his given word, yet so treacherous where his sly mind could nose out
a way to evade the spirit of his agreements that his name was a synonym
for unfaithfulness. An assiduous and groveling snob, yet so militantly
democratic that, unless his interest compelled, he would not employ any
member of the "best families" in any important capacity. He seemed a
bundle of contradictions. In fact he was profoundly consistent. That is
to say, he steadily pursued in every thought and act the gratification
of his two passions--wealth and power. He lost no seen opportunity,
however shameful, to add to his fortune or to amuse himself with the
human race, which he regarded with the unpitying contempt characteristic
of every cold nature born or risen to success.

His theory of life--and it is the theory that explains most great
financial successes, however they may pretend or believe--his theory of
life was that he did not need friends because the friends of a strong
man weaken and rob him, but that he did need enemies because he could
grow rich and powerful destroying and despoiling them. To him friends
suggested the birds living in a tree. They might make the tree more
romantic to the unthinking observer; but they in fact ate its budding
leaves and its fruit and rotted its bough joints with their filthy
nests.

We Americans are probably nearest to children of any race in
civilization. The peculiar conditions of life--their almost Arcadian
simplicity--up to a generation or so ago, gave us a false training in
the study of human nature. We believe what the good preacher, the
novelist and the poet, all as ignorant of life as nursery books, tell us
about the human heart. We fancy that in a social system modeled upon the