He would be known as the baseball king, and the world
would forget his petty triumphs as a director of express.
He deemed it significant that the present directors of that same Federal
Express Company one day held a meeting in Breede's office. It showed, he
thought, how life "worked around." The thing was coming to his very
door. With considerable interest he studied the directors as they came
and went. Most of them, like Breede, were men whose wealth the daily
press had a habit of estimating in rotund millions. He regarded them
knowingly, thinking he could tell them something that might surprise
them. But they passed him, all unheeding, moneyed-looking men of good
round girth, who seemed to have found the dollar-game worth while.
The most of them, he was glad to note, were in dress slightly more
advanced than Breede. One of them, a small but important-looking old
gentleman with a purple face and a white parted beard, became on the
instant Bean's ideal for correctness. From his gray spats to his
top-hat, he was "dignified yet different," although dressing, for
example, in a more subdued key than Bulger. Yet he was a constantly
indignant looking old gentleman, and Bean guessed that he would be a
trouble-maker on any board of directors. It seemed to him that he would
like to take this person's place on the board; oust him in spite of his
compelling garments.
And Breede would know then that he was something more than a machine.
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