Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/135

 quick to speak and move and full of nervous energy, beat and beat in vain against the Chinese who sat there, smooth and polished, but stolid and imperturbable. They probably knew at the outset just what they wanted to do and what they were unwilling to do, but it required days of prolonged and chafing delay to get from them a real expression of thought, and in the end the expression was of doubtful meaning. However, Barker and the financiers with him—Hamilton Disston, Samuel R. Shipley, president of the Provident Life and Trust Company, a keen personage, and others—concluded they had sufficient and upon the basis of this concession I organized a trust with a capital of twenty millions of dollars.

A lawyer sees much of the tragedy of existence. A few years after my admission to the bar, I was retained by a man belonging to one of the most respectable of the country families of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. His son, a boy about eighteen years of age, had found employment as a clerk in one of the large insurance companies of the city. One day the directors held a meeting at the office of the company. In the course of the meeting the president went to the outer office and gave to this boy the bank book with about fifteen hundred dollars in notes, to take to the bank to deposit. The meeting was prolonged and when it adjourned late in the afternoon the president inquired for the boy and learned that he had not returned. Inquiry and search failed to disclose what had become of him, but it was ascertained that he had not reached the bank. The officers of the company held the theory that he had stolen the money, and they employed detectives and confidently declared that he would be captured within a few days. At this juncture his relatives, in much distress, came to me. Their view was he had been overcome by footpads, who knew he had a large sum of money, and they blamed the officers for sending him out with it. However, the father, who could not secure so much cash, offered to give a mortgage upon his farm for Rh