Richard Connell

“ If Hector Gower had my tender memories in a mind crammed with deals and figures, they were connected with Grantville, and with Hooley, twenty miles farther along, where his boyhood had been spent; for even he had had a boyhood of a sort.
What a lot of water had gone over the dam since those days! By George, he did have fun catching catfish in the Skinner River. Were any left? He wondered. A long suppressed desire asserted itself. He'd like to spend a day fishing for catfish. He'd like—well, why couldn't he? He, the master of millions! No, there was this meeting in Chicago to-morrow ”

“ Why, the papers say he don't believe in givin' his hired men vacations.”
“But I tell you I am the real Hector Gower,” insisted the financier.
“There, there!” said the woman, in a soothing voice. “You kin be Napoleon, or William Jennings O'Brien, or anybody you please. Bums is always great men. Why, I've fed three Rockefellers, a couple of Vanderbilts, Rudyard Kipling and Sherlock Holmes on this very doorstep! If it's a meal you want, why don't you say so like a man—not try to put on airs?” ”

“ At thirty he organized his first trust. At fifty he had become a person of terrifying importance, so unbending, dignified, aloof, that to ordinary mortals, like us, he seemed not a person but an Institution or a Legend. ”

“ ROBERT GOWER, in his New York office, found this note in his morning's mail, written in his father's familiar, bold scrawl:
Dear Son: You're old enough to take my place. Go to it. I'm taking a long vacation. If the newspapers ask where I am, just say I've gone catfishing.
Hector Gower. P. S. Give the boys all the vacation they can stand. ”

“ Why, Skinner River is where they always chuck off all the bums.”
The wife appeared with a bar of soap and a towel. “Here,” she said, thrusting them at Hector. “Make yourself decent, at the pump. Guess we can spare you a few catfish. You kin have some ef you'll help a spell with the chores.”
THE Captain of Industry sat gratefully on the back steps and for the first time in months relished his breakfast. His dyspepsia seemed to fade away before the magic of fried catfish and a real outdoor appetite. When he had finished, seven little tails told of seven catfish departed. ”

“ Second, I want to give all the men in the New York office two weeks off this summer.”
Bob's title was General Manager of the New York office. His father regarded him as too easy-going to be really efficient. He admitted, however, that at twenty-eight Bob did have an unusual knack for getting along with people. Men liked to work for him.
Hector Gower took a puff on his opulent cigar, that was almost a snort.
“Hang it all!” he said. “I told you once that I don't believe in vacations. I don't want one. I never took one in my life. ”

“ Fried catfish!
Humbly and, for the first time in years, a bit timidly, Hector Gower approached the back door and knocked. A fat farmer came to the door.
“I am Hector Gower,” said the great man, impressively.
The fat farmer let forth a bellow of raucous laughter.
“Hey, Jen! Hey, Jen!” he shouted back into the house. “Come a-runnin'. The frowsiest bum I ever sot eyes on is out here, claimin' he's Hector Gower.”
“Sakes alive!” exclaimed his wife, appearing with a platter of fried catfish. “Ef he ain't the beatin'est. Hector Gower?” She echoed her husband's laughter. ”

“ Millership, president of the First Bank of Chicago, on the long-distance phone for me.” (Farmer bestirs himself to do the great man's bidding.)
He became conscious that his garb was hardly a dignified one. A brief, mud-plastered nightshirt, even of finest linen, is no fit garment for a Colossus of Finance—especially if he be quite plump—to appear in, in public. ”