RECREATION’S ADVERTISER 

moved with the steady manner that meant cer- 
tainty combined with wonderful alertness. He 
was the highest type of the efficient American 
business man in the crux of battle. When the 
crisis was over he would lean back, strike a 
match slowly, light his cigar and let his mouth 
relax into an easy smile. This picture of him in 
that day I have drawn in this manner because 
I must pair it with another and a sadly different 
one later on. 
One evening at a club dinner he met Senator 
John F. Dryden, of New Jersey, the head of the 
Prudential Life Insurance Company, and they 
spent some little time in the discussion of con- 
servative New England investments in which 
both were deeply interested. Raymond in tell- 
ing me of the occurrence next day said: 
“T had always thought of insurance as a 
sound business, good enough for those whose 
families are dependent on their efforts, and also 
the cause of a violent mania which possessed 
certain persons called agents and evidenced 
principally by an unfailing persistence. No 
personal application of it had ever occurred to 
me. Of insurance officials I have had little 
acquaintance and mentally pigeon-holed them 
as benevolent old gentlemen who would not 
discount twenty dollar gold pieces under thirty 
days’ notice, but in the Senator I found a man 
of fire and steel, just as keen as I or any one I 
know in the accomplishment of his hands and 
brains and within himself a perfect business 
dynamo, well-governed and secure. Now, you 
know every man stands for a principle in his 
life work. Senator Dryden impressed me won- 
derfully and I decided to do honor to his prin- 
ciple, the principle of sound life-insurance. I 
asked a friend to do me the favor of finding 
out for me, if I could get written up for twenty- 
five thousand in his company.” 
It was not a difficult matter, Raymond 
being physically what is termed a good risk, in 
fact when I knew him many years later he still 
seemed such in every way. The policy was of 
the twenty year endowment sort and, as indi- 
cated above, was taken out in the Prudential 
Company. 
It was merely a matter of chance that Ray- 
mond took this step and I know to a certainty 
that he forgot it completely only at stated 
periods, because matters, seemingly, a score 
of times of more importance were constantly 
before him. Quite different were the events 
which form the connecting link between this 
consideration and the pathetic story of the 
Griers. 
The old colonel was of that provincial type of 
business man with an ancient style of letter 
book, and to whom the conduct of no deal was 
so important as to prevent the introduction of 
some long, whimsical, highly irrelevant darky 
story. He drove down to the bank an hour after 
it had opened each morning and at noon climbed 
into the antique rockaway and went home. 
Perhaps he came down in the afternoon, per- 
haps he was off astride of Bay Ben visiting some 
of his many farms or galloping furiously along 
some of the hill roads laughing with the ex- 
hilaration of a boy. 

U. S. SENATOR JOHN F. DRYDEN 
President of the Prudential Insurance Company 
of America 
One of the young clerks in the bank was the 
son of an old friend and was supplementing his 
‘slender pay by collecting commissions for 
northern business houses, representing tobacco 
buyers in making contracts and soliciting life- 
insurance. He was a reckless youngster and 
had asked the old colonel so frequently for the 
hand of Mildred and had been told with such 
regularity.and emphasis that her father was not 
yet ready to give up his baby and certainly not 
‘“‘to a cussed young splinter like him,” that he 
had no hesitancy about approaching him on 
any subject. iat 
One spring Colonel Grier had found that 
with his knowledge of tobacco growing condi- 
tions, his widespread friendships with Virginia 
growers and his excellent location, he could 
venture into speculation on the crop with much 
