"Oh, I've had my youth, and I shan't begin to put on a long face because I've lost it. I didn't have your stature, Ben, but I had a pretty fair middling-size one of my own. They used to say of me that I had an eye for the big chance, and that's a thing a man's got to be born with. To see big you've got to be big, and that's what I like about you--you ain't busy looking for specks." "If I can only become as big a man as you, General, I shall be content." "No, you won't, no, you won't, don't stop at me. Already they are beginning to call you my 'wonderful boy,' you know. 'I like that wonderful boy of yours, George,' Jessoms said to me only last night at the club. You know Jessoms--don't you? He's president of the Union Bank." "Yes, I talked to him for two solid hours yesterday." "He told me so, and I said to him: 'By Jove, you're right, Jessoms, and that boy's got a future ahead of him if he doesn't swell.' Now that's the Gospel truth, Ben, and all the body you've got ain't going to save you if you don't keep your head. If you ever feel it beginning to swell, you step outside and put it under a pump, that's the best thing I know of. How old are you?" "Twenty-six." "And you've got fifty thousand dollars already?" "Thanks to you, sir." "So you ain't swelled yet. Well, I've given you six years of hard training, and I made it all the blamed harder because I liked you. You've got the look of success about you, I've seen enough of it to know it. They used to say of me in Washington that I could sit in my office chair and overlook a line of men and spot every last one of them that was going to get on. I never went wrong but once, and that was because the poor devil began to swell and thought he was as big as his own shadow. But if the look's there, I see it--it's something in the eye and the jaw, and the grip of the hands that nobody can give you except God Almighty--and by George, it turns me into a downright heathen and makes me believe in fate. When a man has that something in the eye and in the jaw and in the grip of the hand, there ain't enough devils in the universe to keep him from coming out on top at the last. He may go under, but he won't stay under--no, sir, not if they pile all the bu'sted stocks in the market on top his shoulders." "Anyway, you've started me rolling, General, whether I spin on or come to a dead stop." "Then remember," he retorted slyly, as we parted,' "that my earnest advice to a young man starting in business is--don't begin to swell!"