As the laughter at iconoclastic business ceased, laughter at philanthropy burst out. The rich rascals, the smug feeders of their own vanity, the coy contributors to the conscience fund, who came in superciliousness and condescension with their pharisaical offerings, were greeted with hoots and jeers. Our young man of many millions, dauntless through all those trying years, had taught the people to look at the true inwardness of things. “Go back to your business,” they would shout at each of these astonished almsgivers. “Go back, and take with you this pittance of your filchings from your workmen and your customers. You are the real object of pity and charity. Look at the tainted sources of your income! Repent, reform, give us our rights, our just dues. Don’t pose as a philanthropist when you are giving away our money--and only a meagre part of the vast sums you have taken from us. Give justice. Generosity will take care of itself!” And in those days our young iconoclast came into his own, so everybody said. But when his friends, wholly changed in their opinion now, approached him with enthusiastic flattery, he smiled his old peculiar smile. “I came into my own, years ago,” said he. “I came into it on the day I tore down the motto ‘I am a clamorer for dividends’ and set up ‘I am a clamorer for justice’, in its place.” And when he died he did not leave his vast fortune to his children to tempt them to forget his training and example and become soft, idle, foolish and unhappy. He left it to his enterprises, its income to be divided between those who made themselves most valuable and those who, having worked well, had earned the right to a peaceful old age. * * * * * “Of all sad words of tongue or pen,” sang the poet, “the saddest are these: ‘It might have been.’” Not so. It is the vain might-have-been that gives birth to the bright shall-be! CHAPTER XIV THE INEVITABLE IDEAL