more personal terms than its square miles,
its towering buildings, and its censused millions, one must think of
those individuals. Almost every great industry owns one and seldom
more than one; that often enough is not, in a money sense, the
predominant figure of his industry; others of his rivals or even of his
partners may be actually more powerful than he; but he is the
personality; he represents to the outsiders the romance and mystery of
the secrets and early, naked adventures of the great achievement.
Thus, to think of the great mercantile establishments of State Street
is to think immediately of one man; another very vivid and picturesque
personality stands for the stockyards; another rises from the wheat
pit; one more from the banks; one from the steel works. The man who
was pacing restlessly and alone the rooms of the Fort Dearborn Club on
this stormy afternoon was the man who, to most people, bodied forth the
life underlying all other commerce thereabouts but the least known, the
life of the lakes.

The lakes, which mark unmistakably those who get their living from
them, had put their marks on him. Though he was slight in frame with a
spare, almost ascetic leanness, he had the wiry strength and endurance
of the man whose youth had been passed upon the water. He was very
close to sixty now, but his thick, straight hair was still jet black
except for a slash of pure white above one temple; his brows were black
above his deep blue eyes. Unforgettable eyes, they were; they gazed at
one directly with surprising, disconcerting intrusion into one's
thoughts; then, before amazement altered to resentment, one realized
that, though he was still gazing, his eyes were vacant with
speculation--a strange, lonely withdrawal into himself. His
acquaintances, in explaining him to strangers, said he had lived too
much by himself of late; he and one man servant shared the great house
which had been unchanged--and in which nothing appeared to have been
worn out or have needed replacing--since his wife left him, suddenly
and unaccountably, about twenty years before. At that time he had
looked much the same as now; since then, the white slash upon his
temple had grown a bit broader perhaps; his nose had become a trifle
aquiline, his chin more sensitive, his well formed hands a little more
slender. People said he looked more French, referring to his father
who was known to have been a skin-hunter north of Lake Superior in th