Adventure Magazine Cover — page 5: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

the foggy street, and his blue eyes studied the occupants of the big office. There was Henry Marsh, humped like an old buzzard, his long nose close to the ledger page, as he had been the first time James had seen him. He had grown old with Mellon & Co.—so old that he worried about his job. There were younger men, working adding machines, delving in accounts; preparing themselves for a life of drudgery. Over in the cashier’s cage was David Conley, frozen- faced, pathetic; as old as Mellon & Co. James shuddered slightly. If he lived to be seventy, and worked faithfully, he might occupy that cage. James was being paid the munificent sum of seventy dollars a month. He happened to know that David Conley drew one hundred and fifty dollars in his monthly envelope. James shook his head and shifted his gaze back to the window. He did not feel like working. It all seemed so November 23rd, 1926 useless; this idea of putting down figures and adding them up; eating, sleeping, and coming back to put down more figures. He turned from contemplation of the wet street, and looked at Blair Mellon, senior member of the firm, who had come in from his private office. He was nearing seventy, thin, stooped, irascible. Nothing seemed to please him. His beady eyes shifted from one employee to another, as he walked slowly. He had made a success of business, but a wreck of himself. The boys of the firm called him ‘‘Caucus,” because of the fact that once a week he would hold a caucus in the office, at which time he would impress upon them the fact that the firm was everything, and that nothing else mattered. He would invite suggestions from depart- ment heads, and when an idea did not please him he would fly into a rage. James Eaton Legg mildly suggested at one of the COMIC OOO® S C@