He was gruff, but this gruffness was simply a mask to keep at arm's length those persons whom he did not desire for friends. When he died he left a will that was a model of its kind. There were not a hundred lines in the document. He divided his fortune into three parts, but he turned the shops over to his son John, without stipulations, wholly and absolutely, to do with them as he pleased. But he had written a letter in which he had set forth his desires. It may be understood at once that these desires readily coincided with those of the son. John had not begun in the office. On the contrary, during school vacations he worked as a puddler's apprentice, as a molder's apprentice, in the rail-shop, in the sheet-and wire-shops. He worked with his hands, too, and drew his envelope on Saturday nights like the rest of them. There was never any talk about John's joining the union; the men looked upon his efforts good-naturedly and as a joke. The father, with wisdom always at his elbow, never let the fishing trips go by. John had his play. At the age of twenty he knew as much about the manufacture of steel as the next one. He loved the night shifts, when the whole place seethed and glowed like an inferno. This manual education had done something else, too. It had broadened his shoulders, deepened his chest, and flattened his back. Many a time the old man used to steal out and watch the young Hercules, stripped to the waist, drag rails to the cooling-room. When John entered college athletics he was not closely confined to the training-tables. Under the guidance of such a father, then, there could not be as a result anything less than a thorough man.