A man’s fortune or material progress is very much the same as his bodily growth.
Either he is growing stronger, healthier, wiser, as the youth approaching manhood, or he is growing weaker, older, less incisive mentally, as the man approaching old age.
There are no other states.
Frequently there is a period between the cessation of youthful accretion and the setting in, in the case of the middle-aged man, of the tendency toward decay when the two processes are almost perfectly balanced and there is little doing in either direction.
Given time enough, however, the balance becomes a sagging to the grave side. Slowly at first, then with a modest momentum, and at last the graveward process is in the full swing.
So it is frequently with man’s fortune.
If its process of accretion is never halted, if the balancing stage is never reached, there will be no toppling.
Rich men are, frequently, in these days, saved from this dissolution of their fortune by their ability to hire younger brains.
These younger brains look upon the interests of the fortune as their own, and so steady and direct its progress.
If each individual were left absolutely to the care of his own interests, and were given time enough in which to grow exceedingly old, his fortune would pass as his strength and will.
He and his would be utterly dissolved and scattered unto the four winds of the heavens.
But now see wherein the parallel changes.
A fortune, like a man, is an organism which draws to itself other minds and other strength than that inherent in the founder.
Beside the young minds drawn to it by salaries, it becomes allied with young forces, which make for its existence even when the strength and wisdom of the founder are fading.
It may be conserved by the growth of a community or of a state.
It may be involved in providing something for which there is a growing demand.
This removes it at once beyond the special care of the founder.
It needs not so much foresight now as direction.
The man wanes, the need continues or grows, and the fortune, fallen into whose hands it may, continues.
Hence, some men never recognise the turning in the tide of their abilities.
It is only in chance cases, where a fortune or a state of success is wrested from them, that the lack of ability to do as they did formerly becomes apparent.
Hurstwood, set down under new conditions, was in a position to see that he was no longer young.
If he did not, it was due wholly to the fact that his state was so well balanced that an absolute change for the worse did not show.
Not trained to reason or introspect himself, he could not analyse the change that was taking place in his mind, and hence his body, but he felt the depression of it.
Constant comparison between his old state and his new showed a balance for the worse, which produced a constant state of gloom or, at least, depression.
Now, it has been shown experimentally that a constantly subdued frame of mind produces certain poisons in the blood, called katastates, just as virtuous feelings of pleasure and delight produce helpful chemicals called anastates.
The poisons generated by remorse inveigh against the system, and eventually produce marked physical deterioration.
To these Hurstwood was subject.
In the course of time it told upon his temper.
His eye no longer possessed that buoyant, searching shrewdness which had characterised it in Adams Street. His step was not as sharp and firm. He was given to thinking, thinking, thinking.
The new friends he made were not celebrities.
They were of a cheaper, a slightly more sensual and cruder, grade.
He could not possibly take the pleasure in this company that he had in that of those fine frequenters of the Chicago resort.
He was left to brood.
Slowly, exceedingly slowly, his desire to greet, conciliate, and make at home these people who visited the Warren Street place passed from him.
More and more slowly the significance of the realm he had left began to be clear.
It did not seem so wonderful to be in it when he was in it.
It had seemed very easy for any one to get up there and have ample raiment and money to spend, but now that he was out of it, how far off it became.
He began to see as one sees a city with a wall about it.
Men were posted at the gates.
You could not get in.
Those inside did not care to come out to see who you were.
They were so merry inside there that all those outside were forgotten, and he was on the outside.
Each day he could read in the evening papers of the doings within this walled city.
In the notices of passengers for Europe he read the names of eminent frequenters of his old resort.
In the theatrical column appeared, from time to time, announcements of the latest successes of men he had known.
He knew that they were at their old gayeties.
Pullmans were hauling them to and fro about the land, papers were greeting them with interesting mentions, the elegant lobbies of hotels and the glow of polished dining-rooms were keeping them close within the walled city.
Men whom he had known, men whom he had tipped glasses with — rich men, and he was forgotten!
Who was Mr. Wheeler?