“I'd played a big game, you know. When my father died we hadn't much left but position--and that was going. I don't blame my father--he wasn't a business man--he should have been a literary critic--that little book of essays of his still sells, you know; not much but there's a demand for a dozen copies every year and that's a good deal for an American who's been dead for thirty. Well, that's where the children get their liking for things like that--I've got it too, a little--I could have done something there if I'd had time. But I never had time. “I could have done it when I got out of Harvard--drifted along like half a dozen people I know, played at law, played at writing, played always and forever at being a gentleman--ended up as an officer of the Century Club with what little money I had in an annuity. But I couldn't stand the idea of just scraping along. And for nearly ten years I put those things aside. “You know about my going West and the way I lived there. It wasn't easy when I'd been at Harvard and gone everywhere in New York and Boston--starting in so far below the bottom that you couldn't even see the bottom unless you squinted your eyes. But I never took a job with more money if I thought I could learn anything in a job with less--and every place I went I stayed until I could handle the job of the man two places ahead of me--and if I didn't get his job when I asked for it I went somewhere else. I don't think I read a book except a technical one for the first five years. And after that, when the chain-stores started going they asked me back to New York--a big offer too--but it wasn't the kind I wanted and I threw it down. I knew just how I wanted to come back to New York and that's the way I came. “I don't suppose my morals were too edifying those years. But they were as good as the men I went with and I kept myself in hand. I saw men go to pieces with drink--and I didn't drink. I saw men go to pieces over women--and I kept away from that kind of woman. A man has to have women in his life no matter how much you talk about it--but I took the kind with the price-tag because when you paid them you were through. I could have married a dozen times if I'd wanted but I didn't want--that old hocus-pocus of tradition was still with me, stronger than death--I thought I knew the kind of wife I wanted and she was in the East. “Then the partnership with Jessup came and I took it. And after a year I was made. I wasn't the last of one of the penniless old families that give each other dinners once a month and pretend they're the real society because they haven't money enough to trail in the present society game--even by then I was--what did that last newspaper story say? 'a figure of nation-wide importance.' Then it must be just about time, I thought, that this figure of nation-wide importance began to look around a little and married the wife he'd been waiting for and started to pick up all the things he hadn't had for twelve years.