"You young fellows just over from the other side don't always realize what it means to run an office. If you succeed, you have no time to think of your sketches, except after dinner or on the train, maybe. And if you don't succeed, you have to grab at every little job to earn enough to pay office expenses." Hart's blank face did not commit him to this piece of wisdom. "The only time I ever had any real fun was when I was working for the old firm, in New York. God! I did some pretty good things then. Old man Post used to trim me down when I got out of sight of the clients, but he let me have all the rope he could. And now,--why it's you fellows who have the fun!" "And you who trim us down!" Hart retorted, with a grim little smile. "Well, perhaps. I have to keep an eye on all you Paris men. You come over here well trained, damned well trained,--we can't do anything like it in this country,--but it takes a few years for you to forget that you aren't in la belle France. And some never get over their habit of making everything French Renaissance. You aren't flexible. Some of you aren't creative--I mean," he hastened to explain, getting warm on a favorite topic, "you don't feel the situation here. You copy. You try to express everything just as you were taught. But, if you want to do big work, you have got to feel things for yourself, by thunder!" Jackson kept his immobile face. It did not interest him to know what Wright thought of the Beaux Arts men. Yet he had no intention of falling out with Wright, who was one of the leading architects of the country, and whose connection might be valuable to him. "I see you don't care to have me preach," the older man concluded humorously. "And you know your own business best." He remembered that the Powers Jackson gift for a school would call sooner or later for a large public building. Probably the family interests had arranged to put this important piece of work into Hart's hands. Wright hoped for the sake of his art that the trustees would put off building until the young architect had developed more independence and firmness of standard than he had yet shown. "I think I understand a little better than I did two years ago what it takes to succeed here in Chicago," Jackson remarked at last. Wright shot a piercing glance at him out of his tired eyes. "It means a good many different kinds of things," the older man said slowly. "Just as many in architecture as elsewhere. It isn't the firm that is putting up the most expensive buildings that is always making the biggest success, by a long shot." "I suppose not," Hart admitted. And there the conversation lapsed. The older man felt the real impossibility of piercing the young architect's manner, his imperturbability. "He doesn't like me," he said to himself reproachfully.