to charm the eye.  Much good soap, apparently, has gone that way, never to be recovered.  Everybody who was anybody began to blow bubbles about that time, and the bigger the bubble the greater its attraction for investors of hard-earned savings.  Outside of this love for financial iridescence, let it be called, Mr. Scherer seemed to care little then for glitter of any sort.  Shortly after his elevation to the presidency of the Boyne Iron Works he had been elected a member of the Boyne Club,—­an honour of which, some thought, he should have been more sensible; but generally, when in town, he preferred to lunch at a little German restaurant annexed to a saloon, where I used often to find him literally towering above the cloth,—­for he was a giant with short legs,—­his napkin tucked into his shirt front, engaged in lively conversation with the ministering Heinrich.  The chef at the club, Mr. Scherer insisted, could produce nothing equal to Heinrich’s sauer-kraut and sausage.  My earliest relationship with Mr. Scherer was that of an errand boy, of bringing to him for his approval papers which might not be intrusted to a common messenger.  His gruffness and brevity disturbed me more than I cared to confess.  I was pretty sure that he eyed me with the disposition of the self-made to believe that college educations and good tailors were the heaviest handicaps with which a young man could be burdened:  and I suspected him of an inimical attitude toward the older families of the city.  Certain men possessed his confidence; and he had built, as it were, a stockade about them, sternly keeping the rest of the world outside.  In Theodore Watling he had a childlike faith.

Thus I studied him, with a deliberation which it is the purpose of these chapters to confess, though he little knew that he was being made the subject of analysis.  Nor did I ever venture to talk with him, but held strictly to my role of errand boy,—­even after the conviction came over me that he was no longer indifferent to my presence.  The day arrived, after some years, when he suddenly thrust toward me a big, hairy hand that held the document he was examining.

“Who drew this, Mr. Paret!” he demanded.

Mr. Ripon, I told him.

The Boyne Works were buying up coal-mines, and this was a contract looking to the purchase of one in Putman County, provided, after a certain period of working, the yield and quality should come up to specifications.  Mr. Scherer requested me to read one of the sections, which puzzled him.  And in explaining it an idea flashed over me.

“Do you mind my making a suggestion, Mr. Scherer?” I ventured.

“What is it?” he asked brusquely.

I showed him how, by the alteration of a few words, the difficulty to which he had referred could not only be eliminated, but that certain possible penalties might be evaded, while the apparent meaning of the section remained unchanged.  In other words, it gave the Boyne Iron Works an advantage that was not contemplated.  He seized the paper, stared at what I had written in pencil on the margin, and then stared at me.  Abruptly, he began to laugh.