the Now-Then. I was easy, he asserts, and I must admit that he is right—I was easy. Yet no one knew Addicks better than I did then. Looking back along his extraordinary career, one is obliged to allow a certain magic as a factor in his men-and-dollar tussles. We had absolutely nothing in common, Addicks and I. We thought and felt differently about every relationship of life. A dozen other ventures, sure, easy, and promising infinitely greater profits, were ready at my hand—but he appealed to my sense of adventure, he promised me abundant and glorious fighting, and I forgot everything else and went with him.
When the Now-Then touched her pier and I stepped ashore, it was as captain of Addicks' corporation and stock-market forces, with absolute power to wage war, make peace, and use in whatever way I thought best such resources of his as I could lay hands on. I lost no time. Within forty-eight hours of my return to Boston I had mapped out my campaign, reconstructed Addicks' broken lines, and gayly set forth on about as forlorn a hope as ever operator or fighter tackled.
Nothing more desperate could be imagined than the condition of the Delaware financier's affairs when I assumed control. All the resources of his companies were pledged for loans, and the constantly falling prices of his securities, coupled with the discrediting stories Rogers' agents kept in circulation, made it difficult to keep these going. To pay would mean ruin, for Addicks had no further thing of value to pledge. At the same time, Rogers' company, which had now paralleled many of the Bay State Company's pipes, had secured a large slice of that corporation's business, and had a corps of up-to-date solicitors working overtime to secure the balance. Boston, in the meantime, having decided that Addicts' star was of the shooting variety, and on its return trip, was throwing up its hat in the wake of the "Standard Oil" band-wagon. The city government and the Massachusetts Legislature had awakened to the enormity of Addicksism and were boiling over with that brand of virtue which the "System" and "Standard Oil" know so well how to rouse in American