It wasn’t a thing done by prosperous washing machine manufacturers, this sitting on benches in the park in the middle of the afternoon but he, at the moment, did not much care. To tell the truth the place for such a man as himself, who owned a factory where many men were employed, was at his desk in his own office. In the evening one might stroll about, read the newspapers or go to the theatre but now, at this hour, the thing was to attend to affairs, be on the job. He smiled at the thought of himself lolling there on the park bench like a public idler or a tramp. On other benches in the little park sat other men and that was the kind of men they were. Well, they were the kind of fellows who didn’t fit into things, who hadn’t jobs. One could tell that by looking at them. There was a kind of hang-dog air about them and although two of the men on a nearby bench talked to each other they did it in a dull listless way that showed they were not really interested in what they were saying. Were men, when they talked, ever really interested in what they said to each other? John Webster put his arms above his head and stretched. He was more aware of himself, of his own body, than he had been for years. “There’s something going on like the breaking up of a long hard winter. Spring is coming in me,” he thought and the thought pleased him like a caress from the hand of someone he loved. Weary tired moments had been coming to him all day long and now another came. He was like a train running through a mountainous country and occasionally passing through tunnels. In one moment the world about him was all alive and then it was just a dull dreary place that frightened him. The thought that came to him was something like this--“Well, here I am. There is no use denying it, something unusual has happened to me. Yesterday I was one thing. Now I am something else. About me everywhere are these people I have always known, here in this town. Down that street there before me, at the corner there, in that stone building, is the bank where I do the banking business for my factory. It happens that just at this particular time I do not owe them any money, but a year from now I may be in debt to that institution up to my eyebrows. There have been times, in the years I have lived and worked as a manufacturer, when I was altogether in the power of the men who now sit at desks behind those stone walls. Why they didn’t close me up and take my business away from me I don’t know. Perhaps they did not think it worth while and then, perhaps, they felt, if they left me on there I would be working for them anyway. At any rate now, it doesn’t seem to matter much what such an institution as a bank may decide to do. “One can’t quite make out what other men think. Perhaps they do not think at all.