But Fulkerson said that was the splendid side of Dryfoos.

He had a courage, a magnanimity, that was equal to the strain of any such uncertainty.

He had faced the music once for all, when he asked Fulkerson what the thing would cost in the different degrees of potential failure; and then he had gone off, leaving everything to Fulkerson and the younger Dryfoos, with the instruction simply to go ahead and not bother him about it.

Fulkerson called that pretty tall for an old fellow who used to bewail the want of pigs and chickens to occupy his mind.

He alleged it as another proof of the versatility of the American mind, and of the grandeur of institutions and opportunities that let every man grow to his full size, so that any man in America could run the concern if necessary.