626
PARTISAN REVIEW
Search me, why the League of Nations, but he lived by Baconian
ideas of what makes the man this and that, and had a weakness for
complete information. Everything was going to be properly done,
with Einhorn, and was thoroughly organized on his desk and about
it-Shakespeare, Bible, Plutarch, dictionary and thesaurus,
Com–
mercial Law for Laymen,
real-estate and insurance guides, almanacs
and directories; then typewriter in black hood, dictaphone, telephones
on bracket arms and a little screwdriver to hand for touching off the
part of the telephone mechanism that registered the drop of the
nickel-for even at his most prosperous Einhorn wasn't going to pay
for every call he made; the company was raking in a fortune from
the coin boxes used by the other businessmen who came to the
office-, wire trays labeled Incoming and Outgoing, molten Etna
weights, notary's seal on a chain, staplers, flap-moistening sponges,
keys to money, confidential papers, to notes, condoms, personal cor–
respondence and poems and essays. When all this was arranged and
in place, all proper, he could begin to operate, back of his polished
barrier approached by two office gates, where he was one of the
chiefs of life, a white-faced executive, much aware of himself and
even of the freakish willful shrewdness that sometimes spoiled his dig–
nity and proud, plaque-like good looks.
He had
his
father to keep up with, whose business ideas were
perhaps less imaginative but broader, based on his connections with
his rich old-time cronies. The old Commissioner had made the Ein–
horn money and still kept the greater part of the titles in his name,
not because he didn't trust his son but only for the reason that to the
business community he was
the
Einhorn, the one who was approached
first with deals and offers. William was the heir and was also to be
trustee for his son Arthur, who was a sophomore at the University
of Illinois, and for Dingbat. Sometimes Einhorn was unhappy about
the Commissioner's habit of making private loans, some of them
sizable, from the bankroll he carried pinned inside the pocket of his
Mark Twain suit. But he bragged about him as a pioneer builder on
the Northwest Side and had dynastic ideas about the Einhorns--the
organizer coming after the conqueror, the poet and philosopher
succeeding the organizer, and the whole development typically
American, the work of intelligence and strength in an open field, a
world of possibilities. But really, with all respect for the Com-
