Little by little the scope of the discussion was enlarged until it ranged over a continent, touching lightly upon lines of railroad, built or projected, across the great west our pioneers had so lately succeeded in wresting from the savages, upon mines of copper and gold hidden away among the mountains, and millions of acres of forest and grazing lands which a complacent government would relinquish provided certain technicalities were met:  touching lightly, too, very lightly,—­upon senators and congressmen at Washington.  And for the first time I learned that not the least of the functions of these representatives of the people was to act as the medium between capital and investment, to facilitate the handing over of the Republic’s resources to those in a position to develop them.  The emphasis was laid on development, or rather on the resulting prosperity for the country:  that was the justification, and it was taken for granted as supreme.  Nor was it new to me; this cult of prosperity.  I recalled the torch-light processions of the tariff enthusiasts of my childhood days, my father’s championship of the Republican Party.  He had not idealized politicians, either.  For the American, politics and ethics were strangers.

Thus I listened with increasing fascination to these gentlemen in evening clothes calmly treating the United States as a melon patch that existed largely for the purpose of being divided up amongst a limited and favored number of persons.  I had a feeling of being among the initiated.  Where, it may be asked, were my ideals?  Let it not be supposed that I believed myself to have lost them.  If so, the impression I have given of myself has been wholly inadequate.  No, they had been transmuted, that is all, transmuted by the alchemy of Weathersfield, by the personality of Theodore Watling into brighter visions.  My eyes rarely left his face; I hung on his talk, which was interspersed with native humour, though he did not always join in the laughter, sometimes gazing at the fire, as though his keen mind were grappling with a problem suggested.  I noted the respect in which his opinions were held, and my imagination was fired by an impression of the power to be achieved by successful men of his profession, by the evidence of their indispensability to capital itself....  At last when the gentlemen rose and were leaving the room, Mr. Watling lingered, with his hand on my arm.

“Of course you’re going through the Law School, Hugh,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” I replied.

“Good!” he exclaimed emphatically.  “The law, to-day, is more of a career than ever, especially for a young man with your antecedents and advantages, and I know of no city in the United States where I would rather start practice, if I were a young man, than ours.  In the next twenty years we shall see a tremendous growth.  Of course you’ll be going into your father’s office.  You couldn’t do better.  But I’ll keep an eye on you, and perhaps I’ll be able to help you a little, too.”