He saw all about him men, younger than himself, turned out of positions they had occupied, with usefulness and integrity, for years, and for no other reason than to make way for some “boy” in his early twenties. Men of his own standing had from time to time in the past decade raged hopelessly against this tendency in a nation, where the great god, Efficiency, demands the fine flower of each man’s life, and looks with disfavor upon lined faces and whitening hair, even when the capacity for service is unimpaired. It is part of the doctrine of “_show me_.” There being any good, or any force not capable of being “shown”—well, it was doubtful. Best not take chances. Mar had sympathized with his contemporaries for being elbowed out of their places, but he had smiled at one or two who had suffered the common fate of the American clerk, in spite of having dyed their hair, and worn jaunty pince-nez instead of “good honest spectacles.” Nevertheless, Mar’s own secret uneasiness—not being assuaged by hair dye or dissipated by pince-nez—took the form of making him the more ready to be the Trennor Brothers’ pack-horse, unconsciously the more eager to oblige any and everybody at the bank, to “show” from Monday morning to Saturday afternoon how indispensable he was. He knew they could get no one to do what he did with the same care and assiduity for the same salary. His astonishment was, therefore, hardly less than his chagrin, when he found upon his desk, one morning, a letter from the firm “terminating their long and pleasant connection upon the usual notice.” In the bitterness of that hour he felt that nothing he ever had suffered before had mattered so vitally. As long as a man has work he can bear trouble and disappointment—life without work—it was something not to be faced. For the work, little by little, had devoured everything else, narrowed down his friendships, cut off his recreations, produced a brain-fag that made him unfit even for reading anything but newspapers. He set instantly about finding another post. The story of the days that followed—the writing to and interviewing whippersnapper young managers of flourishing concerns, and of being more or less cavalierly “turned down,” as the slang phrase went—it would make a book of itself; a tragic and significant book to boot, and one essentially “American.” The Mar boys behaved very well. _They_, at least, were not surprised. They had, in point of fact, expected the occurrence long before. What they had not expected was that the old man “would take it so mighty hard.” Why, he could scarcely be more cut up if he were alone in the world—dependent entirely upon his own exertions—instead of having two fine go-ahead sons, who were getting on in life so rapidly that it really wasn’t a matter of vital importance whether the old man did anything or not; for they had every intention of being good to their father.