d woman who had failed to attract her attention.

The offices of the management were on the first floor, and Henry was
conducted thither and shown into Witherspoon's private apartment--into
the calico, bombazine, hardware and universal nick-nack holy of
holies. The room was not fitted up for show, but for business. Its
furniture consisted mainly of a roll-top desk, a stamp with its handle
sticking up like the tail of an excited cat, a dingy carpet and
several chairs of a shape so ungenial to the human form as to suggest
that a hint at me desirability of a visitor's early withdrawal might
have been incorporated in their construction.

"I will see if Colton has come down," Witherspoon remarked, glancing
through a door into another room. "Yes, there he is. He's coming. Mr.
Colton," said Witherspoon, with deep impressiveness, "this is my son
Henry."

The old man bowed with a politeness in which there was a reminder of a
slower and therefore a more courteous day, and taking the hand which
Henry cordially offered him, said: "To meet you affects me profoundly,
sir. Of course I am acquainted with your early history, and this adds
to the interest I feel in you; but aside from this, to meet a son of
George Witherspoon must necessarily give me great pleasure."

"Brother Colton is from Maryland," Witherspoon remarked, and a sudden
shriveling about the old man's mouth told that he was smiling at what
he had long since learned to believe was a capital hit of playfulness.
And he bowed, grabbled up a dingy handkerchief that dangled from him
somewhere, wiped off his shriveled smile, and then declared that if
frankness was a mark of the Marylander, he should always be glad to
acknowledge his native State.

Brooks, Colton's son-in-law, now came in. This man, while a
floor-walker in a dry-goods store, had attracted Witherspoon's notice,
and a position in the Colossus, at that time an experiment, was given
him. He recognized the demands of his calling, and he strove to fit
himself to them. Several years later he married Miss Colton, and now
he was in a position of such confidence that many schemes for the
broadening of trade and for the pleasing of the public's changeful
fancy were entrusted to his management. He was of a size which
appears to set off clothes to the best advantage. His face was pale
and thoughtful, and he had the shrewd faculty of knowing when to
smile. His eyes were of such a bulge as to give him a spacious range
of