The conversation that
interwove with the pattern of the day's work was all much of a piece.
One discussed how Mr. Wilson had made his money, what method Mr. Hiemer
had employed, and the means resorted to by Mr. Hardy. One related
age-old but eternally breathless anecdotes of the fortunes stumbled on
precipitously in the Street by a "butcher" or a "bartender," or "a darn
_mess_enger boy, by golly!" and then one talked of the current gambles,
and whether it was best to go out for a hundred thousand a year or be
content with twenty. During the preceding year one of the assistant
secretaries had invested all his savings in Bethlehem Steel. The story
of his spectacular magnificence, of his haughty resignation in January,
and of the triumphal palace he was now building in California, was the
favorite office subject. The man's very name had acquired a magic
significance, symbolizing as he did the aspirations of all good
Americans. Anecdotes were told about him--how one of the vice-presidents
had advised him to sell, by golly, but he had hung on, even bought on
margin, "and _now_ look where he is!"
Such, obviously, was the stuff of life--a dizzy triumph dazzling the
eyes of all of them, a gypsy siren to content them with meagre wage and
with the arithmetical improbability of their eventual success.
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