Scorning the established rule
of progress, he had spiked his rails through untrodden forests and
unexplored canons to watch the pioneer come after by the road he
had blazed. Chief among the makers of the Northwest, he yearly
conceived and executed with amazing audacity enterprises that
would have marked as monumental the life work of lesser men.
Farnum, rising from his seat unconsciously as a tribute of
respect, acknowledged thus tacitly the presence of greatness in
the person of Joe Powers.
The straight lips of the empire builder tightened as his eyes
gleamed over the soft luxury of his daughter's boudoir. James
would have been hard put to it to conceive any contrast greater
than the one between this modern berserk and the pampered daughter
of his wealth. A Hun or a Vandal gazing down with barbaric scorn
on some decadent paramour of captured Rome was the most analogous
simile Farnum's brain could summon. What freak of nature, he
wondered, had been responsible for so alien an offspring to this
ruthless builder? And what under heaven had the two in common
except the blood that ran in both their veins?
Peter C. Frome, who had followed his brother-in-law into the room,
introduced the young man to the railroad king.
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