The Rules of the Game | Page 5

avoid.
The S, W, E, and N keys on the typewriter bothered him, hypnotized
him, forced him to strike fantastic combinations of their own. Once

Harvey entered to point out to him an impossible N.S.
Over his lists Harvey, the second bookkeeper, and Fox held long
consultations. Then Bob leaned back in his office chair to examine for
the hundredth time the framed photographs of logging crews, winter
scenes in the forest, record loads of logs; and to speculate again on the
maps, deer heads, and hunting trophies. At first they had appealed to
his imagination. Now they had become too familiar. Out the window
were the palls of smoke, gigantic buildings, crevasse-like streets, and
swirling winds of Chicago.
Occasionally men would drift in, inquiring for the heads of the firm.
Then Fox would hang one leg over the arm of his swinging chair, light
a cigar, and enter into desultory conversation. To Bob a great deal of
time seemed thus to be wasted. He did not know that big deals were
decided in apparently casual references to business.
Other lists varied the monotony. After he had finished the tax lists he
had to copy over every description a second time, with additional
statistics opposite each, like this:
S.W. 1/4 of N.W. 1/4, T. 4 N.R., 17, W. Sec. 32, W.P. 68, N. 16, H. 5.
The last characters translated into: "White pine, 68,000 feet; Norway
pine, 16,000 feet; hemlock, 5,000 feet," and that inventoried the
standing timber on the special forty acres.
And occasionally he tabulated for reference long statistics on how
Camp 14 fed its men for 32 cents a day apiece, while Camp 32 got it
down to 27 cents.
That was all, absolutely all, except that occasionally they sent him out
to do an errand, or let him copy a wordy contract with a great many
whereases and wherefores.
Bob little realized that nine-tenths of this timber--all that wherein S P
(sugar pine) took the place of W P--was in California, belonged to his
own father, and would one day be his. For just at this time the principal

labour of the office was in checking over the estimates on the Western
tract.
Bob did his best because he was a true sportsman, and he had entered
the game, but he did not like it, and the slow, sleepy monotony of the
office, with its trivial tasks which he did not understand, filled him with
an immense and cloying languor. The firm seemed to be dying of the
sleeping sickness. Nothing ever happened. They filed their interminable
statistics, and consulted their interminable books, and marked squares
off their interminable maps, and droned along their monotonous,
unimportant life in the same manner day after day. Bob was used to
out-of-doors, used to exercise, used to the animation of free human
intercourse. He watched the clock in spite of himself. He made
mistakes out of sheer weariness of spirit, and in the footing of the long
columns of figures he could not summon to his assistance the slow,
painstaking enthusiasm for accuracy which is the sole salvation of
those who would get the answer. He was not that sort of chap.
But he was not a quitter, either. This was life. He tried conscientiously
to do his best in it. Other men did; so could he.
The winter moved on somnolently. He knew he was not making a
success. Harvey was inscrutable, taciturn, not to be approached. Fox
seemed to have forgotten his official existence, although he was hearty
enough in his morning greetings to the young man. The young
bookkeeper, Archie, was more friendly, but even he was a being apart,
alien, one of the strangely accurate machines for the putting down and
docketing of these innumerable and unimportant figures. He would
have liked to know and understand Bob, just as the latter would have
liked to know and understand him, but they were separated by a wide
gulf in which whirled the nothingnesses of training and temperament.
However, Archie often pointed out mistakes to Bob before the sardonic
Harvey discovered them. Harvey never said anything. He merely made
a blue pencil mark in the margin, and handed the document back. But
the weariness of his smile!
One day Bob was sent to the bank. His business there was that of an
errand boy. Discovering it to be sleeting, he returned for his overcoat.

Harvey was standing rigid in the door of the inner office, talking to
Fox.
"He has an ingrained inaccuracy. He will never do for business," Bob
caught.
Archie looked at him pityingly.

III
The winter wore away. Bob dragged himself out of bed every morning
at half-past six, hurried through a breakfast, caught a car--and hoped
that the bridge would be closed. Otherwise he would