est.'"

"Do they sell the weather?" I asked, very much amused.

"Yes, twice; once over a private wire, and then to the public, after the
value of it has been squeezed out, in the shape of predictions. Oh, the
weather bureau is worth all the money it costs, for business purposes. It
is a great auxiliary."

Dining that evening with Henderson at his club, I had further opportunity
to study a representative man. He was of a good New Hampshire family,
exceedingly respectable without being distinguished. Over the
chimney-place in the old farmhouse hung a rusty Queen Anne that had been
at the taking of Louisburg. His grandfather shouldered a musket at Bunker
Hill; his father, the youngest son, had been a judge as well as a farmer,
and noted for his shrewdness and reticence. Rodney, inheriting the thrift
of his ancestors, had pushed out from his home, adapting this thrift to
the modern methods of turning it to account. He had brought also to the
city the stamina of three generations of plain living--a splendid
capital, by which the city is constantly reinforced, and which one
generation does not exhaust, except by the aid of extreme dissipation.
With sound health, good ability, and fair education, he had the cheerful
temperament which makes friends, and does not allow their misfortunes to
injure his career. Generous by impulse, he would rather do a favor than
not, and yet he would be likely to let nothing interfere with any object
he had in view for himself. Inheriting a conventional respect for
religion and morality, he was not so bigoted as to rebuke the gayety of a
convivial company, nor so intractable as to make him an uncomfortable
associate in any scheme, according to the modern notions of business,
that promised profit. His engaging manner made him popular, and his
good-natured adroitness made him successful. If his early experience of
life caused him to be cynical, he was not bitterly so; his cynicism was
of the tolerant sort that does not condemn the world and withdraw from
it, but courts it and makes the most of it, lowering his private opinion
of men in proportion as he is successful in the game he plays with them.
At this period I could see that he had determined to be successful, and
that he had not determined to be unscrupulous. He would only drift with
the tide that made for fortune. He enjoyed the world--a sufficient reason
why the world should like him. His business morality was gauged by what
other people do