I found him watching me keenly to see if I followed his line of thought. After a moment, he went on: “It sounds so obvious now, Flint; but I believe that I alone saw it as a scientific problem. Your blackmailer, your poker-sharp, all those types of mind had been working on the thing in a crude way; but to me it appeared from a different angle. Everyone else had looked on it in the form of special cases, particular men who had to be swayed by particular motives. I began as a youth where they left off. I spent some years on it, Flint, examining it in all its bearings; and finally I evolved a system of classification which enabled me to approach any specific case along general lines. I can’t go into that now; but it suddenly gave me an insight into motives and actions such as I doubt if anyone ever had before.” He paused and watched the smoke curling up from his cigar. Again he seemed to be deep in the consideration of some problem connected with and yet alien to what he had been saying. For a time he was lost in thought; and I waited to hear the rest of the story. “Well, Flint,” he went on at last, “it certainly seemed on the face of it to be a very useless accomplishment from the practical point of view; from the standpoint of mere cash, I mean. And yet, it still fascinated me. When I was quite a young man I determined to go to Canada and take up lumber. I was an orphan; there was nothing to keep me in this country, for I had no near relations; and I felt that it might do me good to cut loose from things here and go away into the woods for a time. I had enough capital to start in a small way; so I went. My ideas of the lumber-trade were vague at the time. If I had known what it was, I doubt if I should have touched it. “At first sight, it looked a hopeless venture. I knew nothing of the trade; I was a youngster then; I’d had no training in financial operations. Failure seemed to be the only outcome; and the men on the spot laughed at me. I simply would not admit that I was beaten at the start; and everything drove me on against my better judgment. And I had one tremendous asset. I knew men.