to deny that Raymond
seemed to have days when he found even me dilatory and exasperating; but
old Brand would probably have driven him mad.

Well, the prospects of his estate were not too brilliant. The lawsuits
had been expensive and sometimes unsuccessful; the bank had passed a
dividend, and the old houses, which had meant a lot of money in their
day, meant less now and even loss in a near future. The time was fast
coming when this circumscribed and unprotected neighborhood was to
admit other--and prejudicial--interests: boarding-houses, of course; and
refined homes for inebriates; and correspondence-schools for engineers;
and one of the Prince houses became eventually the seat of a
publishing-firm which needed a little distinction more than it needed a
wide spread of glass close to the sidewalk.

Whatever the state of Raymond's fortunes, it was easy to see that they
were not likely to improve in his hands. He detested business, both _en
gros_ and _en detail_. Despite his ancestry, he seemed to have been born
with no faculty for money-making, and he never tried to make up his
deficiency. It was all of a piece with the stone-throwing of his boyhood
days--he never attempted to improve himself: it was enough to follow the
gifts with which he had been natively endowed. Precept, example,
opportunity--all these went for naught. To the end of his days he viewed
the American "business man" as a portentous and inexplicable
phenomenon--one to be regarded with distaste and wonder. He persisted
in thinking of the type as a juvenile one--an energetic and clever boy,
who was immensely active and immensely productive of results (in an
immensely limited field), but who was incapable of anything like an
_apercu_ or a _Weltanschauung_ (oh, he had plenty of words for it!), and
who was essentially booked to lose much more than he gained. He disliked
"offices" and abominated "hours." I think that even my own modest
professional applications sometimes became a puzzle to him....

And here I stand--convicted of having perpetrated another section
without one short paragraph and without a single line of conversation.
Let me hasten to bring Raymond to my suite and my desk-side, and make
him speak.

He came down one morning, as administrator of his mother's estate, to
consider the appraisal of the personal property--many familiar items,
and some discouraging ones.

"Do you _have_ to do this?" he asked me, with the paper in his hand. "Do
y