At the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Clarkson Chamber of Commerce, the local boy orator, who made a point of quoting Holy Writ in his speeches, spoke of Clarkson as "no mean city," just as many another orator has applied this same apt Pauline phrase to many another metropolis. The business of Clarkson had to do with primary employments and needs. The cattle of a thousand hills and of many rough pastures were gathered here; and here wheat and corn from three states were assembled. In exchange for these products, Clarkson returned to the country all of the necessities and some of the luxuries of life. Several important railway lines had their administrative offices here. Ores were brought from the Rockies, from Mexico, and even from British Columbia, to the great smelters whose smoke and fumes hung over the town. Neither coal, wood nor iron lay near at hand, so that manufacturing was almost unknown; but the packing-houses and smelters gave employment to many laborers, drawn in great measure from the Slavonic races. Varney Street cut through the town at right angles to the river, bisecting the business district. It then gradually threw off its commercial aspect until at last it was lined with the homes of most of Clarkson's wealthiest citizens. An exaggerated estimate of the value of corner lots had caused many of them to be left vacant; and weeds and signboards exercised eminent domain between booms. North and south of Varney Street were other thoroughfares which strove to be equally fashionable, and here citizens had sometimes built themselves houses that were, as they said, as good as anything in Varney Street. Everywhere ragged edges remained; old unpainted frame buildings lingered in blocks that otherwise contained handsome houses. Sugar-loaf cubes of clay loomed lonesomely, with houses stranded high on their summits, where property owners had been too poor to cut down their bits of earth to conform to new levels. The clay banks were ugly, but they were doomed to remain until the next high tide of prosperity. The Clarkson Club stood at the edge of the commercial district, and its Milwaukee brick walls rose hot and staring in the July sun as Porter and Saxton approached. "Here we are," said Porter, leading the way into the wide hall. "We'll arrange about your business relations later. There's a very bad lunch ready upstairs, and we'll go against that first." There were only a few men in the dining-room, seated at a round table. Porter exchanged salutations with them as he passed on to a small table at the end of the room. Those who were of his own age called Porter, "Billy," and he included them all in the careless nod of old acquaintance. Porter offered Saxton the wine card, which the young man declined with instinctive knowledge that he was expected to do so. They took the simple table d'hote, which was, as Porter had predicted, very bad. The banker ate little and carried the burden of the conversation.