He leaned back in his chair and wobbled the cigar in his mouth. "These young Napoleons of finance are forever chasing off to Canada with other folks' money; they're too brilliant. I tell 'em down town that it ain't genius we want in business, it's just ordinary, plain, every-day talent for getting down early and staying at your job. That's what I say. There was Smith over at the Drovers' National; he was a clear case of genius. They thought over there that he was making business by chasing around the country attending banquets and speaking at bankers' conventions. I guess Smith's essays were financially sound too, for Smith knew finance, scientific finance, like a college professor, and used to come to the clearing-house meetings and talk to beat the band about what Bagehot said and how the Bank of England did; but all the time he was spending his Sundays over in Kansas City, drumming up banking business by playing poker with the gentlemen he expected to get for his customers. He's running a laundry now on the wrong side of the Canadian border. Over at the Drovers' they ain't so terribly scientific now, and their cashier don't have an expense fund to carry him around the country making connections. Making connections!" he repeated, and chuckled. He had the conceit of his own wisdom, and while he was always generous in his dealings with his rivals, and had several times helped them out of difficulties, he rejoiced in their errors and congratulated himself on his foresight and caution. "You oughtn't to laugh at the downfall of other people," said Evelyn; "it's wicked of you." But she was laughing herself at his enjoyment of his own joke, and was proud of the qualities which she knew had contributed to his success. He felt baffled that he had not fully concluded all he had intended to say about Wheaton and his merits, but he did not see his way back to the subject, and he rose yawning. "I guess it's time to go to bed," he said, and he went about turning off the electric lights by the buttons in the hall. Evelyn went upstairs ahead of him, and kissed him good night at his door. "You'd better go to the opera with the Whipples," he called to her over his shoulder, as he waited for her to reach her own door before turning off the upper hall light. "Not a bit of it," she answered through the dark. The novel with which Evelyn tried to read herself to sleep that night did not hold her attention, and after her memory had teased her into impatience, she threw the book down and for a long time lay thinking. She knew her father so well that she had no doubt of the current of his thought and his wish to praise James Wheaton and disparage Warry Raridan, and it troubled her; not because she herself had any well-defined preferences as between them or in their favor as against all other men she knew; but it seemed to her that her father had disclosed his own feeling rather unnecessarily and pointedly.