"There," announced the merchant with a satisfied sigh, "I have done my duty. I have sent off three telegrams and a lot of letters. How funny it seems to get busy after being so idle! Next week will see us all back at the grind, I suppose, and rushing about as if we had never been away." "Are you sorry?" "No," was the hearty response. "I like to play when I play; but I like also to work. I enjoy my business very much. It is an interesting and useful one, and I like to think that in my small way I am helping to furnish the world with things that are necessary, and tend toward comfort and convenience as well as toward beauty. People cannot get on without dishes--you and I have proved that." "Not unless we all go back to being savages," said Theo humorously. "We shall not do that, I hope," returned Mr. Croyden gravely. "Each century should see the race farther ahead--a more honest, kindlier, Christian nation. That is the motto we must bring with us out of this war. Not more territory, more money, more power; but truer manhood and purer souls. If the conflict does this for our people all the sacrifice and loss of life it has meant will not have been in vain. Out of the wreck a better America should arise, and we each must help it to arise--you as well as I, for we need not only good men and women but good boys and girls, if we are to have a fine country." "A boy can't do much toward it, I'm afraid," Theo said. "On the contrary, a boy can do a great deal," replied Mr. Croyden. "It is the boys of to-day who are going to be the men of to-morrow; and there is no such thing as suddenly becoming a good man, any more than there is such a thing as a seed suddenly becoming a full-blown plant. Everything has to grow, and grow slowly, too. So if you wish to be a wise, honest citizen who will help forward this glorious country we all love so much, you want to be setting about it right now, you and every other boy. And you want to go at the work earnestly, too, for you will be a man before you know it." "It looks a long way off to me now," mused Theo. "Such things always do; but time flies pretty fast. You will find yourself in college the next thing you know; and after that you will be beginning to plan your career. What are you going to be, Theo?" "I don't know, sir," was the uncertain answer. "I'd just like to do something that really needs to be done; something that people cannot get on without." "That is a splendid ambition," came heartily from Mr. Croyden. "I thought perhaps you'd be thinking of taking up your father's job." "I be a surgeon!" gasped Theo. "Why not?" "Oh, because I'd be no good at it," the boy said. "I should never know what to do with sick people. I'd be scared to death. It seems to me now that I would rather go into making something; but I do not just know what." "You want to be a business man, eh?" "That is what I'd rather do." "Humph!" There was an interval of silence; then Mr. Croyden said: