built'll get carried off. Carried off? I've seen
a big fortune behave like an ash-barrel in a cyclone--there wasn't even
a dust-heap left to tell where it stood! I've seen it, time and again.
My Lord! when I think o' such things comin' to ME! It don't seem like
I deserved it--no man ever tried harder to raise his boys right than I
have. I planned and planned and planned how to bring 'em up to be guards
to drive the wolves off, and how to be builders to build, and build
bigger. I tell you this business life is no fool's job nowadays--a man's
got to have eyes in the back of his head. You hear talk, sometimes, 'd
make you think the millennium had come--but right the next breath you'll
hear somebody hollerin' about 'the great unrest.' You BET there's a
'great unrest'! There ain't any man alive smart enough to see what it's
goin' to do to us in the end, nor what day it's got set to bust loose,
but it's frothin' and bubblin' in the boiler. This country's been
fillin' up with it from all over the world for a good many years, and
the old camp-meetin' days are dead and done with. Church ain't what it
used to be. Nothin's what it used to be--everything's turned up from the
bottom, and the growth is so big the roots stick out in the air. There's
an awful ruction goin' on, and you got to keep hoppin' if you're goin'
to keep your balance on the top of it. And the schemers! They run like
bugs on the bottom of a board--after any piece o' money they hear is
loose. Fool schemes and crooked schemes; the fool ones are the most and
the worst! You got to FIGHT to keep your money after you've made it. And
the woods are full o' mighty industrious men that's got only one motto:
'Get the other fellow's money before he gets yours!' And when a man's
built as I have, when he's built good and strong, and made good things
grow and prosper--THOSE are the fellows that lay for the chance to slide
in and sneak the benefit of it and put their names to it! And what's
the use of my havin' ever been born, if such a thing as that is goin'
to happen? What's the use of my havin' worked my life and soul into my
business, if it's all goin' to be dispersed and scattered soon as I'm in
the ground?"

He strode up and down the long room, gesticulating--little regarding
the troubled and drowsy figure by the fireside. His throat rumbled
thunderously; the words came with stormy bitterness. "You think this is
a time for young men to be lyin' on beds of ease? I tell you