“If you are not otherwise engaged you’ll have a chance to-morrow evening,” remarked Mrs. Gorham; “we have invited him to dine with us.”

“Good; I shall be glad to see the boy, and can acquit myself of my obligation to his father at the same time.  Hello, Mistress Patricia,” he added, catching the child in his arms.  “What has my little tyrant been up to?”

“Call me ‘Lady Pat,’” she said, grandly. “He named me that.”

“Who did?” her father asked, his mind diverted from the previous conversation.

“Mr. Sanford.”  Patricia rolled her eyes impressively.  “Oh, he’s the grandest thing!  He must be a prince in disguise.”

“That isn’t what his father calls him,” laughed Gorham.

“What are you going to advise him?” Eleanor asked.

“I can’t tell until I see him and discover how much imagination he has.”

“Imagination?” his wife queried.

“Yes; is that a new idea to you?  Ability never asserts itself to its utmost unless fed by the imagination, and I don’t know yet whether Allen possesses either.  Success in any line depends upon the extent of a man’s power of imagination.”

“Then why don’t poets make business successes?  They have imaginative ideas,” argued Alice, thinking of her remarks upon this subject earlier in the afternoon.

“True”—­Gorham smiled at her earnestness—­“great poets are inspired, but rarely, if ever, do they apply those inspirations to practical purposes.  That is why they so seldom enter business, and still more rarely succeed if they do.”

His face sobered as the idea took firmer possession of him.

“I differ from the poet only in that I make use of my imaginative ideas in solving the great business problems of the present and the future instead of in forming rhymes and metres.  To do this I must command unlimited resources; but what does money mean except the opportunity to gratify ideals?  With this I can force my imagination to produce utilitarian results.”

This would have been Robert Gorham’s exposition of his conception of the Archimedes lever, as opposed to that which Allen Sanford had heard his father give.  To Gorham the power of the lever depended upon the strength of the imaginative ideals, and the “cold, hard cash” was simply the necessary fulcrum upon which the lever rested.

II

“The proposition is too gigantic for me even to comprehend.”

The Hon. Mr. Kenmore, member of the United States Senate, laid down the bulky prospectus of the “Consolidated Companies,” and looked up into his caller’s genial face.

Gorham flicked the ash from his cigar and smiled good-naturedly.  “That is, perhaps, a natural statement, Mr. Kenmore,” he replied, deliberately.  “I am not surprised that you find it difficult to comprehend the vast possibilities of our enterprise; yet its success, already established, must convince you that no good argument can be advanced against its practicability.”