els, as our
grandfathers held up George Washington and John Adams. But the boys were
young, and raw at the business you put them to, and how could they match
coppers with such artists as Phelps and Elder? You wanted them to be
successful rascals; they were only unsuccessful ones--that's all the
difference. There was only one boy ever raised in this borderland between
ruffianism and civilization who didn't come to grief, and you hated
Harvey Merrick more for winning out than you hated all the other boys who
got under the wheels. Lord, Lord, how you did hate him! Phelps, here, is
fond of saying that he could buy and sell us all out any time he's a mind
to; but he knew Harve wouldn't have given a tinker's damn for his bank
and all his cattlefarms put together; and a lack of appreciation, that
way, goes hard with Phelps.

"Old Nimrod thinks Harve drank too much; and this from such as Nimrod and
me!

"Brother Elder says Harve was too free with the old man's money--fell
short in filial consideration, maybe. Well, we can all remember the
very tone in which brother Elder swore his own father was a liar, in the
county court; and we all know that the old man came out of that
partnership with his son as bare as a sheared lamb. But maybe I'm getting
personal, and I'd better be driving ahead at what I want to say."

The lawyer paused a moment, squared his heavy shoulders, and went on:
"Harvey Merrick and I went to school together, back East. We were dead in
earnest, and we wanted you all to be proud of us some day. We meant to be
great men. Even I, and I haven't lost my sense of humour, gentlemen, I
meant to be a great man. I came back here to practise, and I found you
didn't in the least want me to be a great man. You wanted me to be a
shrewd lawyer--oh, yes! Our veteran here wanted me to get him an increase
of pension, because he had dyspepsia; Phelps wanted a new county survey
that would put the widow Wilson's little bottom farm inside his south
line; Elder wanted to lend money at 5 per cent, a month, and get it
collected; and Stark here wanted to wheedle old women up in Vermont into
investing their annuities in real-estate mortgages that are not worth the
paper they are written on. Oh, you needed me hard enough, and you'll go
on needing me!

"Well, I came back here and became the damned shyster you wanted me to
be. You pretend to have some sort of respect for me; and yet you'll stand
up and throw mud at Harvey Merrick, whose