"Yes," she answered kindly; "there are exceptions. I know of one in my own experience, but in this case it only made it more unfortunate. I knew a boy once who applied the idealization formed during the inflammable period to a girl who at that time thought she cared for him. Then her horizon broadened and she found and married the man she really loved; but the boy held on to his early ideal, becoming a recluse, embittered against the world and incapable of seeing that unless the ideal becomes a reality to both it can never safely amount to anything." Thatcher looked at his wife questioningly, and Merry's eyes also fastened themselves upon her mother's face. Marian's voice as much as her words disclosed more than she intended. As she paused Philip, supposing the conversation to be concluded, mentioned the name which was in each one's mind except the boys'. "By the way, Mother," he remarked, "Mr. Huntington wants me to meet a friend of his named Hamlen, who, he says, used to be a friend of yours." "Yes," she said, looking up at him quickly,--"yes; I, too, wish you to meet Mr. Hamlen. He is in New York now. Perhaps you will see him before you return. I want you to know him well." As Thatcher assisted them in getting off to the theater, he managed to draw Marian one side. "Hamlen's name is Philip, isn't it?" he asked. She nodded, wondering at the question. "Was that why you gave our boy the same name--and was it Hamlen you referred to just now?" "Yes, Harry." He drew her gently to him and kissed her. "Poor chap!" he said. "If I had known that I would have made a greater effort to be friendly with him." * * * * * XXVI * * * * * During these depressed months Thatcher was not the only man of affairs who saw the successes of his career threatened with disaster as a result of the unnecessary burdens imposed by inexperienced and impractical officials at Washington. Business groaned aloud as destructive control and regulation delayed and paralyzed commerce. Labor, hand in hand with its new ally Theory, stalked abroad through the land, demanding shorter hours and increased wages, receiving recognition as a privileged class from those in authority, exempt from respecting others' rights, which is necessary to create and preserve responsibility: substance when it struck at Capital, shadow when Capital in self-defense struck back. The corporations which formed the pulse of the country's life were so harassed that they paused in their constructive energies, wondering what new menace would rise up before them, and yet were expected to give better service while bound hand and foot by unwise legislative restrictions, and burdened by unnecessary legislative demands for increased expenditure. Samson, shorn of his strength by the shears of a legalized Delilah, was expected to hold up with his enervated arms the pillars of the temple which "psychological" complacency was pulling down.