ver turned out, after he had come home from the university as
straight as a die, take to drinking and forge a check and shoot himself?
Why did Bill Merrit's son die of the shakes in a saloon in Omaha? Why
was Mr. Thomas's son, here, shot in a gambling house? Why did young
Adams burn his mill to beat the insurance companies and go to the pen?"

The lawyer paused and unfolded his arms, laying one clenched fist
quietly on the table. "I'll tell you why. Because you drummed
nothing but money and knavery into their ears from the time they wore
knickerbockers; because you carped away at them as you've been carping
here tonight, holding our friends Phelps and Elder up to them for their
models, as our grandfathers held up George Washington and John Adams.
But the boys, worse luck, were young and raw at the business you put
them to; and how could they match coppers with such artists as Phelps
and Elder? You wanted them to be successful rascals; they were only
unsuccessful ones--that's all the difference. There was only one boy
ever raised in this borderland between ruffianism and civilization who
didn't come to grief, and you hated Harvey Merrick more for winning out
than you hated all the other boys who got under the wheels. Lord, Lord,
how you did hate him! Phelps, here, is fond of saying that he could buy
and sell us all out any time he's a mind to; but he knew Harve wouldn't
have given a tinker's damn for his bank and all his cattle farms put
together; and a lack of appreciation, that way, goes hard with Phelps.

"Old Nimrod, here, thinks Harve drank too much; and this from such as
Nimrod and me!"

"Brother Elder says Harve was too free with the old man's money--fell
short in filial consideration, maybe. Well, we can all remember the
very tone in which brother Elder swore his own father was a liar, in
the county court; and we all know that the old man came out of that
partnership with his son as bare as a sheared lamb. But maybe I'm
getting personal, and I'd better be driving ahead at what I want to
say."

The lawyer paused a moment, squared his heavy shoulders, and went on:
"Harvey Merrick and I went to school together, back East. We were dead
in earnest, and we wanted you all to be proud of us some day. We
meant to be great men. Even I, and I haven't lost my sense of humor,
gentlemen, I meant to be a great man. I came back here to practice, and
I found you didn't in the least want me to be a great man. You wanted me
to