Dining that evening with Henderson at his club, I had further opportunity to study a representative man.  He was of a good New Hampshire family, exceedingly respectable without being distinguished.  Over the chimney-place in the old farmhouse hung a rusty Queen Anne that had been at the taking of Louisburg.  His grandfather shouldered a musket at Bunker Hill; his father, the youngest son, had been a judge as well as a farmer, and noted for his shrewdness and reticence.  Rodney, inheriting the thrift of his ancestors, had pushed out from his home, adapting this thrift to the modern methods of turning it to account.  He had brought also to the city the stamina of three generations of plain living—­a splendid capital, by which the city is constantly reinforced, and which one generation does not exhaust, except by the aid of extreme dissipation.  With sound health, good ability, and fair education, he had the cheerful temperament which makes friends, and does not allow their misfortunes to injure his career.  Generous by impulse, he would rather do a favor than not, and yet he would be likely to let nothing interfere with any object he had in view for himself.  Inheriting a conventional respect for religion and morality, he was not so bigoted as to rebuke the gayety of a convivial company, nor so intractable as to make him an uncomfortable associate in any scheme, according to the modern notions of business, that promised profit.  His engaging manner made him popular, and his good-natured adroitness made him successful.  If his early experience of life caused him to be cynical, he was not bitterly so; his cynicism was of the tolerant sort that does not condemn the world and withdraw from it, but courts it and makes the most of it, lowering his private opinion of men in proportion as he is successful in the game he plays with them.  At this period I could see that he had determined to be successful, and that he had not determined to be unscrupulous.  He would only drift with the tide that made for fortune.  He enjoyed the world—­a sufficient reason why the world should like him.  His business morality was gauged by what other people do in similar circumstances.  In short, he was a product of the period since the civil war closed, that great upheaval of patriotic feeling and sacrifice, which ended in so much expansion and so many opportunities.  If he had remained in New Hampshire he would probably have been a successful politician, successful not only in keeping in place, but in teaching younger aspirants that serving the country is a very good way to the attainment of luxury and the consideration that money brings.  But having chosen the law as a stepping-stone to the lobby, to speculation, and the manipulation of chances, he had a poor opinion of politics and of politicians.  His success thus far, though considerable, had not been sufficient to create for him powerful enemies, so that he may be said to be admired by all and feared by none.  In the general opinion he was a downright good fellow and amazingly clever.