There had been two years in Cornell before he came to Boston. He had rowed in his class eight on Lake Cayuga. Hence that physical self-respect which betokens the young man accustomed unconcernedly to strip in a college boathouse or gymnasium. But to eyes grown impatient with the college athlete's all too customary intellectual torpor and social complacency it was a holiday to find this well-made body, tall, broad in the shoulder, narrow at hips, lean and muscular, housing also the brain of the thinker and the spirit of the pioneer. For the astonishing thing was to find a young man of this type studying to be a portrait painter instead of a bond salesman. It didn't sound Yankee. I said so. That shot rang the bell. He began to open up. He was, it appeared, of German extraction. His grandfather, who had wished to become an artist, had come to America in a period when artists were about as much in request among us as concert pianists on a cattle ranch. He had earned his living as an architectural sculptor. The talent plunged, like a river, underground for a generation; then reappeared. What happened when this little fellow's fingers began to itch for the pencil was easy to guess. The father and grandfather put their heads together and resolved that he should have his chance. It began to unravel. Now one understood the earnestness which seemed at first precocious--the seemingly cool indifference to the call of the world, the flesh and the devil which usually troubles youngsters of twenty-four. Here was something more than ambition. Loyalty, affection, gratitude, and family pride. This boy had more than talent. He had character. * * * * * With this we are in the heart of the conflict between the artist and the trader: between the will to create and the will to possess. It is the central conflict of any age; especially of this, and especially in America. The young man comes to the forks of the road where he must decide whether he shall acquire or create; whether he shall be a business man or a prophet. He finds himself in a society which offers princely rewards to the commercial career and little but pains and penalties to those who would create. This youngster was just learning his way around in the problem. He recited, with comical irony, the squalid platitudes which are chewed out at a youth bold enough to follow his creative bent: