“So, the honeymoon is over!” he said, and pressed my hand.  “You are right to come back to business, and after awhile you can have another honeymoon, eh?  I have had many since I married.  And how long do you think was my first?  A day!  I was a foreman then, and the wedding was at six o’clock in the morning.  We went into the country, the wife and I.”

He laid down his knife and fork, possessed by the memory.  “I have grown rich since, and we’ve been to Europe and back to Germany, and travelled on the best ships and stayed at the best hotels, but I never enjoyed a holiday more than that day.  It wasn’t long afterwards I went to Mr. Durrett and told him how he could save much money.  He was always ready to listen, Mr. Durrett, when an employee had anything to say.  He was a big man,—­an iron-master.  Ah, he would be astonished if only he could wake up now!”

“He would not only have to be an iron-master,” I agreed, “but a financier and a railroad man to boot.”

“A jack of all trades,” laughed Mr. Scherer.  “That’s what we are—­men in my position.  Well, it was comparatively simple then, when we had no Sherman law and crazy statutes, such as some of the states are passing, to bother us.  What has got into the politicians, that they are indulging in such foolishness?” he exclaimed, more warmly.  “We try to build up a trade for this country, and they’re doing their best to tie our hands and tear it down.  When I was in Washington the other day I was talking with one of those Western senators whose state has passed those laws.  He said to me, ’Mr. Scherer, I’ve been making a study of the Boyne Iron Works.  You are clever men, but you are building up monopolies which we propose to stop.’  ‘By what means?’” I asked. “‘Rebates, for one,’ said he, ’you get preferential rates from your railroad which give you advantages over your competitors.’  Foolishness!” Mr. Scherer exclaimed.  “I tell him the railroad is a private concern, built up by private enterprise, and it has a right to make special rates for large shippers.  No,—­railroads are public carriers with no right to make special rates.  I ask him what else he objects to, and he says patented processes.  As if we don’t have a right to our own patents!  We buy them.  I buy them, when other steel companies won’t touch ’em.  What is that but enterprise, and business foresight, and taking risks?  And then he begins to talk about the tariff taking money out of the pockets of American consumers and making men like me rich.  I have come to Washington to get the tariff raised on steel rails; and Watling and other senators we send down there are raising it for us.  We are building up monopolies!  Well, suppose we are.  We can’t help it, even if we want to.  Has he ever made a study of the other side of the question—­the competition side?  Of course he hasn’t.”

He brought down his beer mug heavily on the table.  In times of excitement his speech suggested the German idiom.  Abruptly his air grew mysterious; he glanced around the room, now becoming empty, and lowered his voice.