He could not understand my feeling, and it was not reasonable. But all these years of desperate fight there had grown up in my heart a hatred of my enemy beyond the usual cold passions of business. I hated him as a machine, as a man,--as a cruel, treacherous, selfish, unpatriotic maker of dollars. So in the end they came to my terms, and the lawyers set to work on the papers. The Strauss interests were to take over the Meat Products stock at our figure, and also the Empress Line, our private-car enterprise, and two or three smaller matters that had grown up in connection with the packing business. When Slocum and I went on to New York to finish the transaction, Sarah and the girls accompanied us, on their way to Europe, where they were going for a pleasure trip. [Illustration: "_There isn't enough money coined to bring me to him._"] Thus in a few months my labors came to flower, and suddenly the map of my life changed completely. The end was not yet, but no longer was I the needy adventurer besieging men of means to join me in my enterprises, dodging daily blows in a hand-to-hand scrimmage--a struggling packer! I had brought Strauss to my own terms. And when the proud firm of Morris Brothers, the great bankers, invited me to confer with them in regard to our railroad properties in the Southwest, and to take part in one of those deals which in a day transform the industrial map of the country, I felt that I had come out upon the level plateau of power. CHAPTER XXVII DOUBTS _The time of jubilation--At the bankers'--The last word from Farson--Sarah and I go to see the parade--We meet the Drounds--A fading life--Sad thoughts--Jane speaks out--What next?--Sarah is no longer jealous_ It was that autumn of jubilation after the Spanish War. The morning when I drove through the city to the bankers' office, workmen were putting up a great arch across the avenue for the coming day of celebration. Our people had shown the nations of the world the might and the glory in us. Forgotten now was the miserable mismanagement of our brave men, the shame of rotten rations, the fraud of politicians--all but the pride of our strength! A new spirit had come over our country during these months--a spirit of daring and adventure, of readiness for vast enterprises. That business world of which I was a part was boiling with activities. The great things that had been done in the past in the light of the present seemed but the deeds of babes. And every man who had his touch upon affairs felt the madness of the times.