nd I mind, though
that is bad enough; it is the 'Commercial Idea' that eats into a man's
innards. He forgets there are things that money can't buy, and in his
heart he grows contemptuous of anything to be had 'without money and
without price.' He can't help it. If he is thinking of trade
nine-tenths of the time, his mind gets set that way. I'm ready any
minute to jump the fence, like father's old colt up on the farm. I'm not
a snob, but I recognize now that there was some reason for all our old
Hambleton ancestors being so finicky about trade.

"Do you remember how we used to talk, when we were kiddies, about keeping
our ideals? Well, I believe I'm bankrupt, Aleck, in my account with
ideals. I don't want to howl, and these remarks don't go with anybody
else, but I can say, to you, I want them back again."

Aleck did as a kiddie should do, writing much advice on long sheets of
paper, and illustrating his points richly, like a good Scotchman, with
scientific instances. A month or two later he contrived to have work to
do in Boston, so that he could go out to Lynn and look up Jimmy's case.
He even devised a cure by creating, in his mind, an office in the
biological world which was to be offered to James on the ground that
science needed just his abilities and training. But when Aleck arrived
in Lynn he found that Jim, in some fashion or other, had found a cure for
himself. He was deeper than ever in the business, and yet, in some
spiritual sense, he had found himself. He had captured his ideal again
and yoked it to duty--which is a great feat.

After twelve years of ferocious labor, with no vacations to speak of,
James's mind took a turn for the worse. Physically he was as sound as a
bell, though of a lath-like thinness; but an effervescing in his blood
lured his mind away from the study of lasts and accounts and Parisian
models and sent it careering, like Satan, up and down the earth.
Romance, which had been drugged during the transition from youth to
manhood, awoke and coaxed for its rights, and whispered temptingly in an
ear not yet dulled to its voice. Freedom, open spaces, laughter, the
fresh sweep of the wind, the high bucaneering piracy of life and
joy--these things beglamoured his senses.

So one day he locked his desk with a final click. The business was in
good shape. It is but justice to say that if it had not been, Romance
had dangled her luring wisp o' light in vain. Several of his new schem