d always
enriches first the bank and later on a bit of soil.

Hendrik Rutgers had no desire to enrich either bank or soil.

He was blue-eyed, brown-haired, clear-skinned, rosy-cheeked, tall,
well-built, and square-chinned. He always was in fine physical trim,
which made people envy him so that they begrudged him advancement, but
it also made them like him because they were so flattered when he
reduced himself to their level by not bragging of his muscles. He had a
quick-gaited mind and much fluency of speech. Also the peculiar sense of
humor of a born leader that enabled him to laugh at what any witty devil
said about others, even while it prevented him from seeing jokes aimed
at his sacred self. He not only was congenitally stubborn--from his
Dutch ancestors--but he had his Gascon grandmother's ability to believe
whatever he wished to believe, and his Scandinavian great-grandfather's
power to fill himself with Berserker rage in a twinkling. This made him
begin all arguments by clenching his fists. Having in his veins so many
kinds of un-American blood, he was one of the few real Americans in his
own country, and he always said so.

It was this blood that now began to boil for no reason, though the
reason was really the spring.

He had acquired the American habit of reading the newspapers instead of
thinking, and his mind therefore always worked in head-lines. This time
it worked like this: MORE MONEY AND MORE FUN!

Being an American, he instantly looked about for the best rung of the
ladder of success.

He had always liked the cashier. A man climbs at first by his friends.
Later by his enemies. That is why friends are superfluous later.

Hendrik, so self-confident that he did not even have to frown,
approached the kindly superior.

"Mr. Coster," he said, pleasantly, "I've been on the job over two years.
I've done my work satisfactorily. I need more money." You could see from
his manner that it was much nicer to state facts than to argue.

The cashier was looking out of the big plate-glass window at the
wonderful blue sky--New York! April! He swung on his swivel-chair and,
facing Hendrik Rutgers, stared at a white birch by a trout stream three
hundred miles north of the bank.

"Huh?" he grunted, absently. Then the words he had not heard indented
the proper spot on his brain and he became a kindly bank cashier once
more.

"My boy," he said, sympathetically, "I know how it is. Everybody gets
the fit about th