without saying; but neither one of you is telling
us anything. If you would explain your method perhaps we might become
more reconciled to some of these misfits lying around the Club--like
Baker over there--"

"We have a thousand members--" Baker protested.

"What has that to do with the present discussion?"

"Why pick on me?"

"Which is the misfit in my combination with Monty?" Cosden demanded.

"I'm not labeling you fellows," the speaker disclaimed--"I couldn't if I
tried; but each of you is so different from the other that such a
friendship seems inconsistent."

There was a twinkle in Huntington's eye as he listened to the persistent
cross-examination. "We are bachelors," he said quietly. "That should
explain everything; for what is a bachelor's life but one long
inconsistency? If our friends were all alike what would be the need of
having more than one? This friend gives us confidence in ourselves,
another gives us sympathy; this friend gives us the inspiration which
makes our work successful, another is the balance-wheel which prevents
us from losing the benefit which success brings us. Each fills a
separate and unique place in our lives, and, after all, the measure of
our life-work is the sum of these friendships."

The two responses demonstrated the difference between the men. William
Montgomery Huntington came from a Boston family of position where wealth
had accumulated during the several generations, each steward having
given good account to his successor. He had taken up the practice of law
after being graduated from Harvard--not from choice or necessity, but
because his father and his grandfather had adopted it before him. His
practice had never been a large one, but the supervision of certain
trust estates, handed over to his care by his father's death, entailed
upon him sufficient responsibility to enable him to maintain his
self-respect.

It would have been a fair question to ask what Montgomery Huntington's
manner of life would have been if his father had not been born before
him. He lived alone, since his younger brother married, in the same
house into which the family moved when he was an infant in arms. Modern
improvements had been introduced, it is true, in the building just as in
the generation itself; but the walls were unchanged. The son succeeded
to the father's place in directorates and on boards of trustees in
charitable institutions, and he performed his duties faithfully, as his
pre