The older man smiled reflectively and turned his eyeglass in his hand as he spoke.
"It was the year after the big fire when I first took the Guardian into my office. You are a close enough student of the game to know that that was just about forty years ago."
Smith nodded.
"Before Richard Smith was born. But I remember the date. Who appointed you as agent?"
Mr. Osgood pointed to the scrawl at the foot of the framed commission.
"My old friend, James Wintermuth," he said. He paused a moment. "I can almost see him now as he looked when he came to call on me—in the old office farther down the street. Tall and quick-tempered, and you can imagine how strong in the fingers he was in those days! I recall I used to keep my glove on when I shook hands with him. He was a fine young chap, was James. Perhaps a little too hasty for us conservative New Englanders, but—" He broke off, a half-smile on his lips.
Smith remained silent.
"It's a fault you young New Yorkers are apt to have," the Bostonian presently went on. "Most of you are a trifle aggressive for us over here—just a bit radical."
The other laughed good-naturedly.
"I myself should say that my honored chief had lived down his radicalism long ago. It's lucky for Silas Osgood and Company that there is a little of it left somewhere in the company, for the President convalesced from his attack of radicalism in eighteen eighty-five or thereabouts and has never been threatened with a relapse or a recurrence. You may criticize us, sir, but you will have to admit that unless there was a little radicalism in my own department, the Guardian would never have accepted the lines and the liability in this down-town district that you have sent us and are sending us now. I hope I'm conservative enough, but with all due respect to Mr. Wintermuth, what he calls conservatism often strikes me as dry rot."