The waiting-room outside his private office was nearly always crowded with intending visitors. The callers were carefully sifted, and all those who were strangers and those who had come without having an appointment were passed on to someone else as far as this was possible. Great credit is due to his ever faithful personal attendant at home and on his travels, Carl Fischer, for the perfect tact which he showed in the performance of this difficult task.
In spite of all this sifting, however, the time left for getting through a day's mail was not sufficient. I therefore, shortly after entering the company's services, made it a point to submit to his notice only those letters which I considered of real importance. According to the mood in which he seemed to be I then acquainted him with the contents of as much of the remainder as I thought it wise to do. I believe I gradually succeeded in acquiring a fair amount of skill in reading his mind, and this facility enabled me to avoid more dangerous rocks than one. I tried to proceed along similar lines when he was away from Hamburg, especially when he was taking a holiday. On such occasions I forwarded on to him only the important letters, taking great care, however, that he was not kept out of touch with any matter of real consequence, so that he should never feel that he was left in the dark about anything. After some time I had the satisfaction of being told by him when he returned from a holiday that that had been "his first real holiday since he had joined the Packetfahrt."
Once one had learnt to understand his way of reasoning and his individual traits, it was not difficult to know how to treat him. If a mistake had been made, or if some oversight had taken place, the most foolish thing would be not to tell him so at once. To act otherwise would mean the immediate and permanent forfeiture of his confidence, whilst an open admission of the mistake would strengthen his faith enormously. He hated to be shut out from the actual practice of the company's business by a Chinese wall of bureaucratic control. Whenever such a wall was in process of erection he quickly and inexorably pulled it down, and he always remained in personal contact with every department and with every prominent member of the staff as far as the size of the huge undertaking enabled him to do so. For this reason he but rarely, and only when the pressure of other business was encroaching too much on him, omitted to receive at his private office the captains who came to make their reports to the directors. He knew, of course, every one of them personally, as he had appointed many of them himself years ago. He was no stranger to their various idiosyncrasies, and he knew all their good qualities. He was also personally acquainted with a great many of those unconventional and often somewhat blunt but always good-natured individuals of humble rank who seem to thrive wherever much shipping is going on. He was not too proud to write an appreciative article on the death of one of them, which, since it reflects high credit on his own generosity and kindness of heart, ought not to be allowed to be forgotten altogether. It was published by the _Hamburger Fremdenblatt_, to the staff of which the subject of his appreciation might, in a sense, be said to have belonged.