“That is not fairly stated, Dick; it is too broad.  We shall make a selection; we won’t go in the stream above ankle deep.”

“That is a resolution, sir, that has been often made but never kept—­for this reason:  you can’t sit on dry land and calculate the force of the stream.  It carries those who paddle in it off their feet, and then they must swim with it or—­sink.”

“Dick, for Heaven’s sake, no poetry here.”

“Nay, sir,” said old Skinner, “remember, ’twas you brought the stream in.”

“More fool I.  ‘Flow on, thou shining Dick’; only the more figures of arithmetic, and the fewer figures of speech, you can give old Skinner and me, the more weight you will carry with us.”

The young man colored a moment, but never lost his ponderous calmness.

“I will give you figures in their turn, But we were to begin with the general view.  Half-measures, then, are no measures; they imply a vacillating judgment; they are a vain attempt to make a pound of rashness and a pound of timidity into two pounds of prudence.  You permit me that figure, sir; it comes from the summing-book.  The able man of business fidgets.  He keeps quiet, or carries something out.”

Old Skinner rubbed his hands.  “These are wise words, sir.”

“No, only clever ones.  This is book-learning.  It is the sort of wisdom you and I have outgrown these forty years.  Why, at his age I was choke-full of maxims.  They are good things to read; but act proverbs, and into the Gazette you go.  My faith in any general position has melted away with the snow of my seventy winters.”

“What, then, if it was established that all adders bite, would you refuse to believe his adder would bite you, sir?”

“Dick, if a single adder bit me, it would go farther to convince me that the next adder would bite me too than if fifty young Buffons told me all adders bite.”

The senile youth was disconcerted for a single moment.  He hesitated.  The keys that the old man had himself said would unlock his judgment lay beside him on the table.  He could not help glancing slyly at them, but he would not use them before their turn.  His mind was methodical.  His will was strong in all things.  He put his hand in his side-pocket, and drew out a quantity of papers neatly arranged, tied, and indorsed.

The old men instantly bestowed a more watchful sort of attention on him.

“This, gentlemen, is a list of the joint-stock companies created last year.  What do you suppose is their number?”

“Fifty, I’ll be bound, Mr. Richard.”

“More than that, Skinner.  Say eighty.”

“Two hundred and forty-three, gentlemen.  Of these some were stillborn, but the majority hold the market.  The capital proposed to be subscribed on the sum total is two hundred and forty-eight millions.”

“Pheugh!  Skinner!”