In short, Mr. Henry Betts, the pioneer Eastern investor in those parts, was a profound disappointment as to personality and performances. Not so with J. Hayden Witherbee. From his Persian-lamb lapels to his patent-leather tips he was the physical embodiment of all the town had learned to expect of a visiting Wall Street capitalist. And he liked the town--that was plain. He spoke enthusiastically of the enterprise which animated it; he referred frequently and with praise to the awakening of the New South, and he was even moved to compliment publicly the cooking at the Richland House. It was felt that a stranger and a visitor could go no further. Also, he moved fast, J. Hayden Witherbee did, showing the snap and push so characteristic of the ruling spirits of the great moneymarts of the East. Before he had been in town a week he had opened negotiations for the purchase outright of the new Light and Power Company, explaining frankly that if he could come to terms he intended making it a part of his projected interurban railway. Would the present owners care to sell at a fair valuation?--that was what Mr. Witherbee desired to know. Would a drowning man grasp at a life-preserver? Would a famished colt welcome the return of its maternal parent at eventide? Would the present owners, carrying on their galled backs an unprofitable burden which local pride had forced upon them--would they sell? Here, as manna sent from Heaven by way of Wall Street, as you might say, was a man who would buy from them a property which had never paid and which might never pay; and who, besides, meant to do something noble and big for the town. Would they sell? Ask them something hard! There was a series of conferences--if two conferences can be said to constitute a series--one in Mr. Witherbee's room at the hotel, where cigars of an unknown name but an impressive bigness were passed round freely; and one in the office of the president of the Planters' National Bank. Things went well and swimmingly from the first; Mr. J. Hayden Witherbee had a most clear and definite way of putting things; and yet, with all that, he was the embodiment of cordiality and courtesy. So charmed was Doctor Lake with his manner that he asked him, right in the midst of vital negotiations, if he were not of Southern descent; and when he confessed that his mother's people had come from Virginia Doctor Lake said he had felt it from the first moment they met, and insisted on shaking hands with Mr. Witherbee again.