Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/221

Rh to see Arguello wake up and be somebody: for he loved the valley between the mountains and the sea as only an Easterner transplanted to California can love.

rode again to the Bungalow: and he continued to ride there on every opportunity. He and Brainerd had many more talks on all subjects having to do with the philosophy of life. The older man was an excellent influence for his forming spirit. Only one forced to comparative failure by insuperable obstacles could, in that age of material emphasis, have gained to the wider views held by Brainerd. He saw beyond the merely utilitarian. Our moralists were prattling of Captains of Industry, exploitation—but under a prettier name—and the remote sacredness of being a millionaire; public office was a matter of victory and patronage; the saving of pennies and the spending of lives was preached as an ideal of the perfect existence. A man was morally justified in anything he did provided he kept technically within the law. Things were ends in themselves. Brainerd had dimly seen them as in themselves only means to something beyond. It was with him not simply a case of get there. Kenneth was one day telling with relish of an acquaintance who was even at college a past master at getting others to attend to details for him.

"Yes," said Brainerd, "that quality of delegating work and responsibility is one of the most valuable qualities of leadership. In fact it is indispensable to leadership. But it is not always desirable to use sheer cleverness to avoid detail—only to avoid repetition of detail. If you avoid anything in the life, you lose the value of the experience."

"That's true, too!" cried Kenneth.

In such statements of what are now considered baldly obvious truths did Brainerd lead Kenneth's young mind away from the smug, old outworn conservative ideas of a passing phase, into a contemplation of the wider outlook that was going to be possible to a new generation. And therein he fulfilled, unknowingly, his function in the fates of those about him.