partners in the business, by gift. But they were unknown. The business world knew J. Langdon, a name that was a power, but these three young men were ciphers without a unit. Slee turned out afterward to be a very able man, and a most capable and persuasive negotiator, but at the time that I speak of his qualities were quite unknown. Mr. Langdon had trained him, and he was well equipped for his headship of the little firm. Theodore Crane was competent in his line—that of head clerk and Superintendent of the subordinate clerks. No better man could have been found for that place; but his capacities were limited to that position. He was good and upright and indestructibly honest and honorable, but he had neither desire nor ambition to be anything above chief clerk. He was much too timid for larger work or larger responsibilities. Young Charley was twenty-one, and not any older than his age—that is to say, he was a boy. His mother had indulged him from the cradle up, and had stood between him and such discomforts as duties, studies, work, responsibility, and so on. He had gone to school only when he wanted to, as a rule, and he didn’t want to often enough for his desire to be mistaken for a passion. He was not obliged to study at home when he had the headache, and he usually had the headache—the thing that was to be expected. He was allowed to play when his health and his predilections required it, and they required it with a good deal of frequency, because he was the judge in the matter. He was not required to read books, and he never read them. The results of this kind of bringing up can be imagined. But he was not to blame for them. His mother was his worst enemy, and she became this merely through her love for him, which was an intense and steadily burning passion. It was a most pathetic case. He had an unusually bright mind; a fertile mind; a mind that should have been fruitful. But because of his mother’s calamitous indulgence, it got no cultivation and was a desert. Outside of business, it is a desert yet.

Charley’s deadly training had made him conceited, arrogant, and overbearing. Slee and Theodore had a heavier burden to carry than had been the case with Mr. Langdon. Mr. Langdon had had nothing to do but manage the business, whereas Slee and Crane had to manage the business and Charley besides. Charley was the most difficult part of the enterprise. He was a good deal given to reorganizing and upsetting Mr. Slee’s most promising arrangements and negotiations. Then the work had to be all done over again. (AD, 23 Feb 1906, CU-MARK, partly published in MTA, 2:135–36)