rt, made
up a family of four, and took their place in Capital annals.

John Harley had a red and jovial face that promised conviviality. It was
the custom with John Harley to slap a new acquaintance on the shoulder
and hail him as "Old Man." He was long of body, short of leg, apoplectic
as to neck--a girthy, thick, explosive, boisterous gentleman, who could
order a good dinner and could eat one. He could find you a fair bottle
of wine, and then assist in emptying it. He aimed at the open and frank
and generous, and was willing you should think him of high temper, one
who would on provocation deal a knock-down blow.

Senator Hanway was his opposite, being of no more color than a monk and
of manners as precisely soft as a lady's. He never raised his voice,
never lost his temper; he strove for an accurate gentility--to give the
lie to noble foes at home--and far from owning any ferocities of fist,
retorted to a heated person who charged him with flat falsehood by a
mere shrug of the shoulders and a simple:

"I refuse to discuss it, sir!"

And all with a high air that left his opponent gasping and helpless and
floundering with the feeling that he had been somehow most severely and
completely, not to say most righteously, rebuked.

There you have vague charcoal sketches of Senator Hanway and John
Harley; you may note as wide a difference between the two as lies
between warclubs and poisons. And yet they fitted with each other like
the halves of a shell. Also they were masters of intrigue; only John
Harley intrigued like a Wolsey and Senator Hanway like a Richelieu.

John Harley played the business man, and was rough and plain and
blunt--a man of no genius and with loads of common sense. He made a
specialty of unpalatable truths and discarded sentiment. Indeed, he was
so good a business man that he got possession of a rotund interest in a
group of coal mines without the outlay of a dollar, and later became the
owner of sundry sheaves of railway stocks on the same surprising terms.

Not that the coal and the railway companies lost by John Harley. When it
was known that he possessed an interest in the mines, certain armor
plate mills and shipbuilding concerns, as well as nineteen steamboat
lines, came forward to buy the coal. As for the railway, whereas prior
to John Harley's introduction as shareholder and director it could get
no consideration in the way of freights from those giant corporations
which have to do with b