believe, the strongest hold I had upon the admiration
of young George. Latin he treated with the same half-playful,
half-contemptuous courtesy that I had observed in General Bolingbroke's
manner to "the ladies," and even the doctor he regarded as a mixture of
a scholar and a mollycoddle. It was perfectly characteristic that one
thing, and one thing only, should command his unqualified respect, and
this was the possession of the potential power to knock him down.

CHAPTER X

IN WHICH I GROW UP

In my eighteenth year, when I had achieved a position and a salary in
the tobacco factory, I left the Old Market forever, and moved into a
room, which Mrs. Clay had offered to rent to me, in the house of Dr.
Theophilus. During the next twelve months my intimacy with young George,
who was about to enter the University, led to an acquaintance, though a
slight one, with that great man, the General. As the years passed my
dream of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad, instead of
evaporating, had become fixed in my mind as the fruition of all my toil,
the end of all my ambition. I saw in it still, as I had seen in it that
afternoon against the rosy sunset and the anchored vessel, the one
glorious possibility, the great adventure. The General's plethoric
figure, with his big paunch and his gouty toe, had never lost in my eyes
the legendary light in which I had enveloped it; and when George
suggested to me carelessly one spring afternoon that I should stop by
his house and have a look at his uncle's classical library, I felt my
cheeks burn, while my heart beat an excited tattoo against my ribs. The
house I knew by sight, a grave, low-browed mansion, with a fringe of
purple wistaria draping the long porch; and it was under a pendulous
shower of blossoms that we found the General seated with the evening
newspaper in his hand and his bandaged foot on a wicker stool. As we
entered the gate he was making a face over a glass of water, while he
complained fretfully to Dr. Theophilus, who sat in a rocking-chair, with
Robin, the pointer, stretched on a rug at his feet.

"I'll never get used to the taste of water, if I live to be a hundred,"
the great man was saying peevishly. "To save my soul I can't understand
why the Lord made anything so darn flat!"

A single lock of hair, growing just above the bald spot on his head,
stirred in the soft wind like a tuft of bleached grass, while his lower,
slightly protruding lip pursed i