Again and again, when his keenest attention was demanded in New York, he had received an excited telegram bidding him hasten to the spot and witness the final combination which was to affect the great result; and as invariably he had added to the sum of his disappointments. Five years ago the buildings, in the course of a wind-storm, had burned to the ground, and not only the difficult and expensive machinery had gone with them, but the personal effects of several hundred men. More than once Fessenden’s faith had been shaken, and even with the vast resources at his disposal he had hesitated before the increasing costliness of his coy ideal; but he dreaded the possibly demoralizing effect of his first failure; the position in which he could place the United States lured him on; and his father believed in the idea and encouraged him to persist. When the war threatened, Fessenden went out to his Western settlement and worked in the laboratory and machine-shops himself. At the last possible moment he hastened home and raised one of the most satisfactory regiments that went to Cuba. By this time he was a rigid disciplinarian, and his original genius for detail was fully developed. He also found his opportunity to distinguish himself, and returned to New York better pleased with life than since he had left South America. And the old Fessenden? There was much of him left, for strong individualities with the eternal boy in them change less than psychologists would have us believe, however much they may develop. He was less enthusiastic about some of his old ideals; his patience was at the same time greater and less; he was even more practical than Nature had made him, matter-of-fact and intolerant of shams, and somewhat hardened and cynical by his constant manipulation of fabulous wealth and the buying of men. Although money would never be his god, his life and times had taught him to respect, almost to reverence it as the mightiest force in the world of his day. He had in his brief span watched the crumbling of ancient aristocracies, the progressive ascendency of the middle classes all over Europe, their reconstruction of power in their various states, their contributions to solidity and permanence, their slow absorption of the helpless classes above, and their increasing contempt for royal figure-heads; in his own country he had witnessed an outburst of wealth that in volume and results had never occurred before in the history of the world. He saw the financial centre of gravity swinging steadily from London to New York, the enormous aggregations of capital, combined with the unlimited production of the United States, controlling the markets of the world. Money had raised the United States from a negligible quantity, often mentioned with disrespect, into a menace which was winning for her the precarious tributes of hatred and abuse, more especially since she had let it be seen that she estimated affectionate overtures at their just value.