It was only on occasions that this sentiment got possession of him strongly.  He was generally able to keep it down.  Hard work, assisted by his natural faculty for singleness of purpose and concentration of attention, kept him from lifting the eyes of his heart toward the unattainable.  Moreover, he had developed an enthusiasm, genuine in its way, for the land of his adoption.  The elemental hugeness of its characteristics—­its rivers fifty to a hundred miles in width, its farms a hundred thousand acres in extent, its sheep herds and cattle herds thousands to the count—­were of the kind to appeal to an ardent, strenuous nature.  There was an exhilarating sense of discovery in coming thus early to one of the world’s richest sources of supply at a minute when it was only beginning to be tapped.  Out in the Camp there was an impression of fecundity, of earth and animal alike, that seem to relegate poverty and its kindred ills to a past that would never return; while down in the Port the growth of the city went on like the bursting of some magic, monstrous flower.  It was impossible not to share in some degree the pride of the braggart Argentine.

It was difficult, too, not to love a country in which the way had been made so smooth for him.  While he knew that he brought to his work those qualities most highly prized by men of business, he was astonished nevertheless at the rapidity with which he climbed.  Men of long experience in the country had been more than once passed over, while he got the promotion for which they had waited ten and fifteen years.  He admired the way in which for the most part they concealed their chagrin, but now and then some one would give it utterance.

“Hello, grafter!” a little man had said to him, on the day when his present appointment had become known among his colleagues.

The speaker was coming down the stairs of the head office in the Avenida de Mayo as Strange was going up.  His name was Green, and though he had been twenty years in Argentine, he haled from Boston.  Short and stout, with gray hair, a gray complexion, a gray mustache, and wearing gray flannels, with a gray felt hat, he produced a general impression of neutrality.  Strange would have gone on his way unheeding had not the snarling tone arrested him.  He had ignored this sort of insult more than once; but he thought the time had come for ending it.  He turned on an upper step, looking down on the ashy-faced little man, to whom he had once been subordinate and who was now subordinate to him.

“Hello—­what?” he asked, with an air of quiet curiosity.

“I said, Hello, grafter,” Green repeated, with bravado.

“Why?”

“I guess you know that as well as I do.”

“I don’t.  What is it?  Out with it.  Fire away.”

His tranquil air of strength had its effect in overawing the little man, though the latter stood firm and began to explain.

“A grafter is a fellow with an underground pull for getting hold of what belongs to some one else.  At least that’s what I understand by it—­”