"I can only tell you, Lawson, that we have dug up some queer doings during our investigation, and I think I can put my finger on a great many millions of dollars now in the hands of certain mine officers which could be recovered by the different companies they have been acting as trustees of. It would be quite an eye-opener to some of your pious Bostonians to know that the controlling officials of several mines are silent partners in some of the big selling agencies." There was a pregnant interval of silence. Perhaps the expression of my face suggested the thronging thoughts which seethed through my head as I said: "But surely, Mr. Rogers, that's off our beat. We shall make money enough along our lines without getting into that kind of a game." Mr. Rogers swung his chair half round and looked straight at me. For a long second he stared--sitting half upright, his long, fine hands clasping the arms of the chair with a clutch like steel. He said not a word. Then he replied: "Of course, Lawson, we have no need for such methods in our affairs. But it is a duty we owe investors and ourselves not to conduct this business in a way that will encourage others to continue doing it along the old lines." He frowned at me as much as to say (only he never uses such expressions), "Oh, but you do make me tired," as he always did when I, with a serious face, would ask him, as I often did: "How is it, Mr. Rogers, that young John D. can make such a success of his Sunday-School-Class Trust, and at the same time of his father's oil and investment business?" In business hours Mr. Rogers taboos frivolity. The neophyte in crime, being initiated into the mysteries of the profession by some able Fagin, gets his instruction by degrees. Great care is taken that he shall not realize too soon the depravity he is to practise, lest, appalled by the hideousness of it, he might jump the track, and along with each advance in knowledge goes a picture representing the ease of the life and the lordly rewards and pleasant adventures of the "industry." From the remote perspective of to-day very similar seems to have been the process in this most momentous conversation between Mr. Rogers and myself. The apprentice at the knees of the master was being gently and gradually admitted into the secrets of the calling--financial highwaymanry. At the moment, however, it never entered my thoughts to imagine myself other than a favorite lieutenant gathering the garnered wisdom of a great general of commerce.