His silence and his concentration give him a picturesqueness which his rivals lack. He stands apart from the human race in a chill and solitary grandeur. He seeks advertisement as little as he hankers after pleasure. The Sunday-school is his dissipation. A suburban villa is his palace. He seldom speaks to the world, and when he breaks his habit of reticence it is to utter an aphorism, perfect in concision and cynicism. "Avoid all honorary posts that cost time"--this was one of his earliest counsels to the young. "Pay a profit to nobody" is perhaps his favourite maxim. "Nothing is too small, for small things grow," is another principle which he formulated at the outset of his career. "I have ways of making money that you know nothing of," he once told a colleague, and no one will doubt the truth of his assertion. It is said that when he was scarce out of his teens he would murmur, with the hope of almost realised ambition, "I am bound to be rich, bound to be rich, bound to be rich." He imposed upon all those who served him the imperative duty of secrecy. He was unwilling that any one should know the policy of the Trust. "Congress and the State legislature are after us," he once said. "You may be subpoenaed. If you know nothing, you can tell nothing. If you know about the business, you might tell something which would ruin us." The mere presence of a stranger has always been distasteful to him. The custom of espionage has made him suspect that others are as watchful as himself. He has been described erroneously as a master of complicated villainy. He is, for evil or for good, the most single-minded man alive. He looks for a profit in all things. Even his devotion to the Sunday-school is of a piece with the test. "Put something in," says he, speaking of the work, "and according as you put something in, the greater will be your dividends of salvation."