“Suppose something did happen to him, though.  You don’t know what it means, keepin’ property together these days—­just keepin’ it alive, let alone makin’ it grow the way I do.  I’ve seen too many estates hacked away in chunks, big and little.  I tell you when a man dies the wolves come out o’ the woods, pack after pack, to see what they can tear off for themselves; and if that dead man’s chuldern ain’t on the job, night and day, everything he built’ll get carried off.  Carried off?  I’ve seen a big fortune behave like an ash-barrel in a cyclone—­ there wasn’t even a dust-heap left to tell where it stood!  I’ve seen it, time and again.  My Lord! when I think o’ such things comin’ to me!  It don’t seem like I deserved it—­no man ever tried harder to raise his boys right than I have.  I planned and planned and planned how to bring ’em up to be guards to drive the wolves off, and how to be builders to build, and build bigger.  I tell you this business life is no fool’s job nowadays—­a man’s got to have eyes in the back of his head.  You hear talk, sometimes, ’d make you think the millennium had come—­but right the next breath you’ll hear somebody hollerin’ about ‘the great unrest.’  You bet there’s a ‘great unrest’!  There ain’t any man alive smart enough to see what it’s goin’ to do to us in the end, nor what day it’s got set to bust loose, but it’s frothin’ and bubblin’ in the boiler.  This country’s been fillin’ up with it from all over the world for a good many years, and the old camp-meetin’ days are dead and done with.  Church ain’t what it used to be.  Nothin’s what it used to be—­everything’s turned up from the bottom, and the growth is so big the roots stick out in the air.  There’s an awful ruction goin’ on, and you got to keep hoppin’ if you’re goin’ to keep your balance on the top of it.  And the schemers!  They run like bugs on the bottom of a board—­after any piece o’ money they hear is loose.  Fool schemes and crooked schemes; the fool ones are the most and the worst!  You got to fight to keep your money after you’ve made it.  And the woods are full o’ mighty industrious men that’s got only one motto:  ‘Get the other fellow’s money before he gets yours!’ And when a man’s built as I have, when he’s built good and strong, and made good things grow and prosper—­those are the fellows that lay for the chance to slide in and sneak the benefit of it and put their names to it!  And what’s the use of my havin’ ever been born, if such a thing as that is goin’ to happen?  What’s the use of my havin’ worked my life and soul into my business, if it’s all goin’ to be dispersed and scattered soon as I’m in the ground?”