the man of whom it had been said. The best way
with Crittenden was evidently the direct one. He had seen that in the
first five minutes of observation of him. So he would simply tell him
how bookish and impossible it had sounded, and see what he had to say.
He'd probably laugh and say the minister had it all wrong, of course,
regular minister's idea.

And so presently they were off, on a real talk, beyond what he had hoped
for, and Crittenden was telling him really what he had meant. He was
saying in his firm, natural, easy voice, as though he saw nothing
specially to be self-conscious about in it, "Why, of course I don't rank
lumbering and wood-working with medicine. Wood isn't as vital to human
life as quinine, or a knowledge of what to do in typhoid fever. But
after all, wood is something that people have to have, isn't it?
Somebody has to get it out and work it up into usable shape. If he can
do this, get it out of the woods without spoiling the future of the
forests, drying up the rivers and all that, and have it transformed into
some finished product that people need in their lives, it's a sort of
plain, everyday service, isn't it? And to do this work as economically
as it can be managed, taking as low a price as you can get along with
instead of screwing as high a price as possible out of the people who
have to have it, what's the matter with that, as an interesting problem
in ingenuity? I tell you, Mr. Welles, you ought to talk to my wife about
this. It's as much her idea as mine. We worked it out together, little
by little. It was when Elly was a baby. She was the second child, you
know, and we began to feel grown-up. By that time I was pretty sure I
could make a go of the business. And we first began to figure out what
we were up to. Tried to see what sort of a go we wanted the business to
have. We first began to make some sense out of what we were doing in
life."

Mr. Welles found himself overwhelmed by a reminiscent ache at this
phrase and burst out, his words tinged with the bitterness he tried to
keep out of his mind, "Isn't that an awful moment when you first try to
make some sense out of what you are doing in life! But suppose you had
gone on doing it, always, always, till you were an old man, and never
succeeded! Suppose all you seemed to be accomplishing was to be able to
hand over to the sons of the directors more money than was good for
them? I tell you, Mr. Crittenden, I've often wished that once,