I'm going
to cut it out--do you understand?--cut it out. So don't ask me
again--it's no use. I've got a fearful headache this morning--and I'm
so sleepy that I'd like to go to bed for a week. It's idiotic for a
man to make such an infernal ass of himself. It knocks one out and
renders one unfit for business. How can I go down town and understand
what I'm doing when I've got such a head on as this? There's a
directors' meeting to-day, too--very important. What time was it when
we got home?"
"About three o'clock, I should say," rejoined his _vis-a-vis_
laconically, without looking up from his newspaper.
In the fifteen years that they had been intimate friends Fred Hadley
had grown so accustomed to these periodical outbursts from his old
chum Bob Stafford that he seldom paid the slightest heed to his
protests. Both self-made men, each had started practically in the
gutter and by sheer dint of grit and energy forged his way to the
front, the one as a captain of industry, the other as a promoter in
railroading and finance. Men of exceptional capacity, success had come
easily to them, and with success had come money and power. Hadley was
now vice-president of one of the biggest steel concerns in the
country, and Stafford had been even more successful. Attracted to
railroading he had found employment with a western road, and soon
displayed such a positive genius for organization that he quickly
excited the attention of eastern railroad men.
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