They have had to make money to achieve this mechanical perfection; they have had no time for anything else during their active years. And, now that those years are over, they have nothing to do. Their minds are almost as undeveloped as those of professional pugilists. Dinners and drinks, backgammon and billiards, the lightest opera, the trashiest novels, the most sensational melodrama are the most elevating of their leisure's activities. Read? Hunt? Farm? Not much! They sit behind the plate-glass windows and bet on whether more limousines will go north than south in the next ten minutes.
If you should ask one of them whether he had read some book that was exciting discussion among educated people at the moment, he would probably look at you blankly and, after remarking that he had never cared for economics or history—as the case might be—inquire whether you preferred a "Blossom" or a "Tornado." Poor vacuous old cocks! They might be having a green and hearty old age, surrounded by a group of the choicest spirits of all time.
Upstairs in the library there are easy-chairs within arm's reach of the best fellows who ever lived—adventurers, story-tellers, novelists, explorers, historians, rhymers, fighters, essayists, vagabonds and general liars—Immortals, all of them.
You can take your pick and if he bores you send him packing without a word of apology. They are good friends to grow old with—friends who in hours of weariness, of depression or of gladness may be summoned at will by those of us who belong to the Brotherhood of Educated Men—of which, alas! I and my associates are no longer members.
CHAPTER V
MY MORALS
The concrete evidence of my success as represented by my accumulated capital—outside of my uptown dwelling house—amounts, as I have previously said, to about seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. This is invested principally in railroad and mining stocks, both of which are subject to considerable fluctuation; and I have also substantial holdings in industrial corporations. Some of these companies I represent professionally. As a whole, however, my investments may be regarded as fairly conservative. At any rate they cause me little uneasiness.
My professional income is regular and comes with surprisingly little effort. I have as clients six manufacturing corporations that pay me retainers of twenty-five hundred dollars each, besides my regular fees for services rendered. I also represent two banks and a trust company.
All this is fixed business and most of it is attended to by younger men, whom I employ at moderate salaries. I do almost no detail work myself, and my junior partners relieve me of the drawing of even important papers; so that, though I am constantly at my office, my time is spent in advising and consulting.
I dictate all my letters and rarely take a pen in my hand. Writing has become laborious and irksome. I even sign my correspondence with an ingenious rubber stamp that imitates my scrawling signature beyond discovery. If I wish to know the law on some given point I press a button and tell my managing clerk what I want. In an hour or two he hands me the authorities covering the issue in question in typewritten form. It is extraordinarily simple and easy. Yet only yesterday I heard of a middle-aged man, whom I knew to be a peculiarly well-equipped all-around lawyer, who was ready to give up his private practice and take a place in any reputable office at a salary of thirty-five hundred dollars!