“Thank you, Blacklock,” said he, in a voice that made me feel as if I were a little boy in the crossroads church, believing I could almost see the angels floating above the heads of the singers in the choir behind the preacher. “Thank you. I am not surprised that you have misjudged me. God has given me a great work to do, and those who do His will in this wicked world must expect martyrdom. I should never have had the courage to do what I have done, what He has done through me, had He not guided my every step. You are not a religious man?”
“I try to do what's square,” said I. “But I'd prefer not to talk about it.”
“That's right! That's right!” he approved earnestly. “A man's religion is a matter between himself and his God. But I hope, Matthew, you will never forget that, unless you have daily, hourly communion with Almighty God, you will never be able to bear the great burdens, to do the great work fearlessly, disregarding the lies of the wicked, and, hardest of all to endure, the honestly-mistaken judgments of honest men.”
“I'll look into it,” said I. And I don't know to what lengths of foolish speech I should have gone had I not been saved by an office boy interrupting with a card for him.
“Ah, here's Walters now,” said he. Then to the boy: “Bring him in when I ring.”
I rose to go.
“No, sit down, Blacklock,” he insisted. “You are in with us now, and you may learn something by seeing how I deal with the larger problems that face men in these large undertakings, the problems that have faced me in each new enterprise I have inaugurated to the glory of God.”
Naturally, I accepted with enthusiasm.
You would not believe what a mood I had by this time been worked into by my rampant and raging vanity and emotionalism and by his snake-like charming. “Thank you,” I said, with an energetic warmth that must have secretly amused him mightily.
“When my reorganization of the iron industry proved such a great success, and God rewarded my labors with large returns,” he went on, “I looked about me to see what new work He wished me to undertake, how He wished me to invest His profits. And I saw the coal industry and the coal-carrying railroads in confusion, with waste on every side, and godless competition. Thousands of widows and orphans who had invested in coal railways and mines were getting no returns. Labor was fitfully employed, owing to alternations of over-production and no production at all. I saw my work ready for my hand. And now we are bringing order out of chaos. This man Walters, useful up to a certain point, has become insolent, corrupt, a stumbling-block in our way.” Here he pressed the button of his electric bell.