I have transferred the accounts to the Discount and
Deposit National, where Leonidas Thornley stands guard against the new
order that seeks to make business a synonym for crime."
Thornley was of the type that was dominant in our commercial life before
the "financiers" came--just as song birds were common in our trees until
the noisy, brawling, thieving sparrows drove them out. His oldest son was
about to marry Joe's daughter--Alva. Many a Sunday I have spent at his
place near Morristown--a charming combination of city comfort with farm
freedom and fresh air. I remember, one Sunday, saying to him, after he had
seen his wife and daughters off to church: "Why haven't you got rich? Why
haven't you looked out for establishing these boys and girls of yours?"
"I don't want my girls to be sought for money," said he, "I don't want my
boys to rely on money. Perhaps I've seen too much of wealth, and have come
to have a prejudice against it. Then, too, I've never had the chance to get
rich."
I showed that I thought that he was simply jesting.
"I mean it," said he, looking at me with eyes as straight as a
well-brought-up girl's. "How could my mind be judicial if I were personally
interested in the enterprises people look to me for advice about?"
And not only did he keep himself clear and his mind judicial but also
he was, like all really good people, exceedingly slow to believe others
guilty of the things he would as soon have thought of doing as he would
have thought of slipping into the teller's cage during the lunch hour and
pocketing a package of bank-notes.
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