alf of this bluffer I
would put it forward that he had risked everything on one deal, and that
this was no little failure of his, but a disaster, naked and complete.

He had less than ten pounds in his pocket and he owed money at the
Savoy. You see he had reckoned on doing all his business in a week, and
if it failed--an idea which he scarcely entertained--on getting back
third class to the States. He had not reckoned on the terrible expenses
of London, or the three weeks delay.

Yesterday he had sent a cable to Stringer for funds, and had got as a
reply: "Am waiting news of contract."

Stringer was that sort of man.

He was thinking about Stringer now, as he sat watching the guests of the
Savoy, Americans and English, well to do people with no money worries,
so he fancied. He was thinking about Stringer and his own position,
with less than ten pounds in his pocket, an hotel bill unreceipted, and
three thousand miles of deep water between himself and Philadelphia.

Jones was twenty-four years of age. He looked thirty. A serious faced,
cadaverous individual, whom, given three guesses you would have judged
to be a Scotch free kirk minister in mufti; an actor in the melodramatic
line; a food crank. These being the three most serious occupations in
the world.

In reality, he had started life, as before said, in a bank, educated
himself in mathematics and higher commercial methods, by correspondence,
and, aiming to be a millionaire, had left the bank and struck out for
himself in the great tumbling ocean of business.

He had glimpsed the truth. Seen the fact that the art of life is not so
much to work oneself as to make other people work for one, to convert by
one's own mental energy, the bodily energy of others into products or
actions. Had this Government contract come off, he would have, and to
his own profit, set a thousand hammers swinging, a dozen steel mills
rolling, twenty ships lading, hammers, mills and ships he had never
seen, never would see.

That is the magic of business, and when you behold roaring towns and
humming wharves, when you read of raging battles, you see and read of
the work of a comparatively small number of men, gentlemen who wear
frock coats, who have never handled a bale, or carried a gun, or steered
a ship with their own hands. Magicians!

He ordered a whisky and soda from a passing attendant, to help him
think some more about Stringer and his own awful position, and was
taking the g