Tellygram. Sign here. (_He produces about a half inch of pencil and holds up a signature blank. The Professor signs. Absentmindedly he tears open the message, but while doing so turns and closes the door. Patsy Laferty stares at it disconsolately._) THE PROFESSOR (_Reading._) A miracle! $300,000! Just what I need for that laboratory! It’s a sign! The dream is a portent, a call! My poor dear, good uncle! What moved him to leave me that? Now I know the dream was an omen. And yet--(_thinking of a certain maiden he has been courting._)--should I really do that? Three hundred thousand are three hundred thousand, and where would I ever get that much again? (_He hesitates mentally._) We could live beautifully on that. I’m not so sure. Perhaps I could get some one else to furnish that money. (_He starts upstairs._) But that poor boy! I forgot to give him a penny, and it’s storming. (_Returns and reopens the door, looks up and down the street, and comes back._) Dear, dear, dear! I should have given him a dime, anyhow--bringing such a fortunate message. But I must think about this laboratory, though, and this money. I must not act too hastily or inadvisedly. Three hundred thousand are three hundred thousand, and---- (_He goes upstairs again solemnly._) PATSY LAFERTY (_One block south, staring at the sidewalk._) Wot did I say? Wot did I say? Dey never comes across wit nuttin’ after twelve--nuttin’. Not if you handed dem a million. THE AMERICAN FINANCIER The long line of American financiers, beginning with Stephen Girard (1750-1831), and extending via Astor, the Vanderbilts, Goulds, J. P. Morgan and F. W. Woolworth to Henry Ford of the present time, suggests nothing so much as a procession of thrifty and, in the main, cat-like animals weaving a devious way amid intricacies of law and public opinion and theories as to morals, duty, charity and the like, until finally one is led to conclude that, by and large, the financial type is the coldest, the most selfish, and the most useful of all living phenomena. Plainly it is a highly specialized machine for the accomplishment of some end which Nature has in view. Often humorless, shark-like, avid, yet among the greatest constructive forces imaginable; absolutely opposed to democracy in practice, yet as useful an implement for its accomplishment as for autocracy; either ignorant or contemptuous of ethical niceties as related to thine and mine, yet a stickler for all that concerns mine; moral and immoral sexually--both types abound; narrow to all but an infinitesimal line in nearly all that relates to the humanities as applied to individuals; wise and generous in the matter of large, even universal benefactions, yet guilty of the meanest subterfuge where their own interests are concerned; and seeking always to perpetuate their own fame. In other words, typical men and women of an avid pagan world (vide Hetty Green, Russell Sage), yet surrounded by