initial commit of ebook 29568HEADmain

1 files changed, 4081 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/29568-8.txt b/29568-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ddd3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/29568-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,4081 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of 'Charge It', by Irving Bacheller
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: 'Charge It'
+       Keeping Up With Harry
+
+Author: Irving Bacheller
+
+Release Date: August 1, 2009 [EBook #29568]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 'CHARGE IT' ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "SHE WISHED ME TO SUGGEST SOMETHING FOR HER TO DO" [See
+page 56]]
+
+
+
+
+"CHARGE IT"
+
+OR
+
+KEEPING UP WITH HARRY
+
+A story of fashionable extravagance and of the
+successful efforts to restrain it made
+by The Honorable Socrates Potter
+the genial friend of Lizzie
+
+BY
+
+IRVING BACHELLER
+
+ILLUSTRATED
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
+
+NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+MCMXII
+
+
+
+
+Books by
+
+IRVING BACHELLER
+
+ Charge It. Ill'd. 12mo                         net $1.00
+ Keeping Up With Lizzie. Ill'd. Post 8vo         net 1.00
+ Eben Holden. Ill'd. Post 8vo                        1.50
+                                Edition de Luxe      2.00
+ Eben Holden's Last Day A-Fishing. 16mo               .50
+ Dri and I. Ill'd. Post 8vo                          1.50
+ Darrell of the Blessed Isles. Ill'd. Post 8vo       1.50
+ Vergilius. Post 8vo                                 1.35
+ Silas Strong. Post 8vo                              1.50
+ The Hand-Made Gentleman. Post 8vo                   1.50
+ In Various Moods. Poems. Post 8vo               net 1.00
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1912. BY HARPER & BROTHERS
+
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER, 1912
+
+K-M
+
+
+
+
+TO MY DEAR FRIEND
+
+LEDYARD PARK HALE
+
+ANOTHER HONEST LAWYER
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ CHAP.                                                            PAGE
+    I. In Which Harry Swiftly Passes from One Stage of His
+           Career to Another                                         1
+   II. Which Begins the Story of the Bishop's Head                  11
+  III. Which Is the Story of the Pimpled Queen and the Black
+           Spot                                                     33
+   IV. In Which Socrates Encounters "New Thought" and
+           Psychological Hair                                       45
+    V. In Which Socrates Discusses the Over-Production of Talk      55
+   VI. In Which Betsey Commits an Indiscretion                      69
+  VII. In Which Socrates Attacks the Worst Doers and Best
+           Sellers                                                  75
+ VIII. In Which Socrates Attacks the Helmet and the Battle-Ax       84
+   IX. In Which Socrates Increases the Supply of Splendor           91
+    X. In Which Socrates Breaks the Drag and Tandem Monopoly in
+           Pointview                                                99
+   XI. In Which Sundry People Make Great Discoveries               106
+  XII. In Which Harry Is Forced to Abandon Swamp Fiction and
+           Like Follies and to Study the Geography and Natives
+           of a Land Unknown to Our Heiristocracy                  118
+ XIII. In Which the Minister Gets Into Love and Trouble            127
+  XIV. In Which Socrates Discovers a New Folly                     139
+   XV. In Which Harry Returns to Pointview and Goes to Work        148
+  XVI. Which Presents an Incident in Our Campaign Against New
+           New England                                             171
+ XVII. Which Presents a Decisive Incident in Our Campaign
+           Against Old New England                                 176
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+ "SHE WISHED ME TO SUGGEST SOMETHING FOR HER TO DO"       Frontispiece
+ "WHAT DIDN'T THEY SAY? THEY FLEW AT ME LIKE WILDCATS."             60
+ "'IT'S THE VAN ALSTYNE CREST,' I SAID. 'IT'S A PROOF OF
+     RESPECTABILITY.'"                                              86
+ "RADIANT IN SILK, LACE, DIAMONDS, PEARLS, AND RUBIES"              94
+ "HARRY'S PET COLLIE HAD COME UP TO THE BACK DOOR WITH A
+     HUMAN SKULL IN HIS MOUTH"                                     148
+ "HE LOOKED LIKE A MAN WITH A WOODEN LEG"                          188
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+It may interest, if it does not comfort, the reader to know that
+this little story is built upon facts. The ride of Harry, the
+hundred-dollar pimple, the psychological hair, the downfall of Roger,
+all happened, while the Bishop's Head is one of the possessions of a
+New England family.
+
+                                                             I. B.
+
+
+
+
+"CHARGE IT"
+
+I
+
+IN WHICH HARRY SWIFTLY PASSES FROM ONE STAGE OF HIS CAREER TO ANOTHER
+
+
+"Harry and I were waiting for his motor-car," said the Honorable
+Socrates Potter. "He couldn't stand and wait--that would be
+losing time--so we kept busy. Went into the stores and bought
+things--violets, candy, golf-balls, tennis-shoes, new gloves, and
+neckties. Harry didn't need 'em, but he couldn't waste any time
+and--
+
+"'There's the car!'
+
+"In each store Harry had used the magic words, 'Charge it,' and passed
+on.
+
+"We were going over to Chesterville to settle with the contractor who
+had built his father's house. We had an hour and four minutes in which
+to do it all, and then--the 6.03 express for New York. Harry had to
+get it to be in time for a bridge party.
+
+"We climbed in. Harry grabbed the wheel. The gas-lever purred, the
+gears clicked, the car jumped into motion and rushed, screeching, up
+the hill ahead of us, shot between a trolley-car and a wagon, swung
+around a noisy runabout, scared a team into the siding, and sped
+away.
+
+"The town behind us! Country-houses on either side! A bulldog in the
+near perspective! He set himself, made a rush at us, as if trying to
+grab a wheel off the car, and the wheel got him. We flushed a lot of
+chickens. The air seemed to be full of them. Harry waved an apology to
+the farmer, as if to say:
+
+"'Never mind, sir, I'm in a hurry now. Take my number and charge
+it.'
+
+"'He struck a fowl, and, turning, I saw a whirl of feathers in the air
+behind us and the farmer's fist waving above the dust.
+
+"Harry would have paid for the dog and the fowl in money but not in
+time--not even in a second of time! Harry had an engagement for a
+bridge party and must catch the 6.03 express.
+
+"A man on a bicycle followed by a big greyhound was just ahead. We
+screeched. The man went into the ditch and took a header. The
+greyhound didn't have time to turn out then. He bent to the oars until
+he had gained lead enough to save himself with a sidelong jump into
+the buttercups.
+
+"'Charge it!'
+
+"The needle on the speedometer wavered from fifty to fifty-five, then
+struck at sixty, held a second there, and passed it. Gnats and flies
+hit my face and stung like flying shot. The top of the road went up in
+a swirl of dust behind us. I hung on, with my life in my trembling
+hands. We zipped past teams and motor-cars.
+
+"We filled every eye with dust and every ear with screeches and every
+heart with a swift pang of terror.
+
+"'Charge it!'
+
+"A rider with a frightened horse raced on ahead of us to the next
+corner. We sped across the track into Chesterville and--
+
+"'Hold up! There's the office ahead.'
+
+"The levers move, down goes the brake, and we're there.
+
+"'Eleven miles in fourteen minutes!' Harry exclaims, as I spring out
+and hurry to the door. It was really sixteen minutes, but I always
+allow Harry a slight discount.
+
+"'Not in!' I shout, in a second.
+
+"'Not in--heart of Allah!--where is he?'
+
+"'At the Wilton job on the point.'
+
+"'We'll go get him.'
+
+"'You go; I'll wait here.'
+
+"Away he rushes--I thank God for the brief respite. This high power
+encourages great familiarity with the higher powers. But the Creator's
+name is used here in no light or profane spirit, let me say. In each
+case it is only a brief prayer or, rather, the beginning of a prayer
+which one has not time to finish. It is cut short by a new adventure.
+
+"I say to myself that I shall not ride back with Harry. No, life is
+still dear to me. I will take the trolley. And yet--what thrilling,
+Jove-like, superhuman deviltry it was! I light a cigar and sit down.
+Harry and Wilton arrive. Fifteen minutes gone!
+
+"I get down to business.
+
+"Harry says: 'Please cut it short.'
+
+"I could have saved five hundred dollars if I had had time to present
+our side of the case with proper deliberation. But Harry keeps
+shouting:
+
+"'Do cut it short. I _must_ get there--don't you know?'
+
+"Wilton must have his pay, too--he needs every cent of it to-morrow.
+
+"'You go on. I'll stay here and settle this matter and go home by the
+trolley.'
+
+"'Let's stick together,' my young friend entreats. 'Please hurry it
+through and come on with me. I need you.'
+
+"Harry must have company. His time is wasted unless he has a
+spectator--an audience--a witness--a historian. Without that, all his
+hair-breadth escapes would be thrown away. His stories would hang by a
+thread.
+
+"'We've only twenty-one minutes,' he calls.
+
+"I say to myself: 'Damn the man whose money is like water and whose
+time is more precious than the last hour of Mahomet.' Well, of course,
+there was plenty of money, but the supply of time was limited. To
+waste a second was to lose an opportunity for self-indulgence.
+
+"I draw a check and take a hurried receipt and jump in.
+
+"Away we go. 'Look out!'
+
+"The brakes grind, and we rise in the air a little as a small boy
+crosses our bows. We just missed him--thank God!
+
+"'Don't be reckless, old man--go a bit slower.'
+
+"'It's all right. We've a clear road now.'
+
+"What a wind in our faces! There's the track ahead.
+
+"'_Look out! The train! God Almighty!_'
+
+"I spoke too late. We were almost up to the rails when I saw it. We
+couldn't stop. Cleared the track in time. Felt the wind of the engine
+in my back hair, and then my scalp moved. Just ahead was a light buggy
+in the middle of the road and a bull, frightened by the cars,
+galloping beside it.
+
+"In the excitement Harry hadn't time to blow, and the roar of the
+train had covered our noise. The bull turned into the ditch and
+speeded up. We swerved between bull and buggy and grazed the side of
+the latter.
+
+"I jumped and landed on the bull, and that saved me. It's the first
+time that I ever knocked a bull down. He got to his feet swiftly
+beside me, bellowed, and took the fence. He was a fat, well-fed bull
+with a big, round, soft side on him. I never knew that a bull was so
+mellow. My feet sank deep, and he gave way, and I hit him again with
+another part of my person. I didn't mean it, and felt for him,
+although it is likely that his feelings needed no further help from
+me. Of course I bounded off him at last and the earth hit me a hard
+upper-cut, but the bull had been a highly successful shock absorber.
+In a second or so I was able to get up and look around. The buggy had
+gone over, and the horse was on his hind legs trying to climb out of
+the dust-cloud.
+
+"Harry stopped his car and began to back up.
+
+"'That'll do for me,' I said. 'I don't sit in your padded cell any
+longer.'
+
+"I had lived a whole three-volume novel in the last forty minutes. The
+Panama Canal had been finished and England had become a republic. It
+was too much.
+
+"We found two men--one at the head of the frightened horse, the other
+lying beside the wrecked buggy with a broken leg.
+
+"And Harry had an engagement to play bridge!
+
+"I took the horse's head. The well man pulled a stake off the fence
+and chased Harry around the motor-car. He didn't intend to 'charge
+it.' Wanted cash down. I got hold of his arm and succeeded in calming
+him.
+
+"Harry apologized and assured them that he was willing to pay the
+damage. We picked up the injured man and took him to his home. On the
+way Harry explained that they should keep track of all expenses and:
+
+"'Charge it.'
+
+"In a few minutes Harry roared off in the direction of Pointview to
+get a doctor and the 6.03 express.
+
+"'It might be a little late,' he said, as he left us.
+
+"The next day Harry was arrested as a public enemy for criminal
+carelessness. He had injured three men on the highways of Connecticut,
+to say nothing of dogs and poultry. Almost everybody had something
+charged against Harry. He was highly unpopular, but a good fellow at
+heart.
+
+"I got the judge to release him on his promise to abandon motoring for
+three years.
+
+"Thus he rushed out of the motor-car stage of his career into that of
+the drag and tandem.
+
+"He had had more narrow escapes and suffered greater perils than Rob
+Roy.
+
+"Yes, bulls are a good thing--a comparatively soft thing. I recommend
+them to every motorist who may have to look for a place to land. Don't
+ever throw yourself on the real estate of New England. It can hit
+harder than you can."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+WHICH BEGINS THE STORY OF THE BISHOP'S HEAD
+
+
+"Harry is the most modern character in my little museum," said the
+Honorable Socrates Potter, as I sat with him in his cozy office. "I
+was really introduced to Harry by the Bishop of St. Clare, who died in
+1712. I didn't know his heart until the Bishop made us acquainted.
+Strange! Well, that depends on the point of view. You see, the Bishop
+was acquired and imported as an ancestor by one of the best families,
+and that's how I happened to meet him. They would have got William the
+Conqueror--of England and Fifth Avenue--if he hadn't been well
+hidden.
+
+"I am inclined to converse long and loudly on the reconstruction of
+Pointview. Of course I shall talk too much, but I am a licensed liar,
+and the number of my machine is 4227643720, so if I smash a dog here
+and there, make a note of the number and charge it. I'm going fast and
+shall not have time to stop for apologies.
+
+"In Pointview even Time has quickened his pace. Last year is ancient
+history. Lizzie has been succeeded by Miss Elizabeth, who needs a
+maid, a chauffeur, a footman, and a house-party to maintain her
+spirits. Harry and his drag have taken the place of Dan and his
+runabout.
+
+"The enemy has arrived in force. We are surrounded by country-houses
+and city abdomens of appalling size and arrogance. Mansions crown the
+slopes and line the water-front. The dialect of the lazy Yankee and
+his industrious hens are heard no more in the hills of Pointview.
+Where the hoe and the sickle were stirred by the fear of hunger, the
+golf-club and the tennis-racket are moved by the fear of fat. The
+sweat of toil is now the perspiration of exercise. The chatter of
+society has succeeded that of the goose and the polliwog. Land has
+gone up. Rocks have become real estate even while they belonged to
+Christian Scientists. Ledges, smitten by the modern Moses, have gushed
+a stream of gold. Once the land supported its owner. Now wealth
+supports land and landlord and the fullness thereof. The Fifth Avenue
+farmer has begun to raise his own vegetables at a dollar apiece and a
+crop of criminals second to none. In his hands farming becomes
+agriculture and the farm a swarming nest of parasites.
+
+"We are in the midst of a new migration from the cities back to the
+land, and all are happy save the philosophers. It is a remote reaction
+of former migrations to the mines and the oil-fields. The descendants
+of these very pioneers now seek to exchange a part of their gold for
+the ancient sod in which are the roots of their family trees and
+delusions.
+
+"With these rich men came Henry Delance, who grew up with me here and
+went to Pittsburg in his early twenties and made a fortune in the coal
+and iron business. His grandfather was old Nick Delance, a blacksmith;
+and his father owned a farm on the hills and made a bare living for
+himself and a large family. They had been simple, hard-working, honest
+people. I helped Henry to buy the old place, and, as we stood together
+on the hilltop, he said to me:
+
+"'I often think of the old days that were full of hard labor. What a
+woman my mother was! Did all the work of the house and raised seven
+boys and two girls, and every one of them has had some success in the
+world--except me. One built a big railroad, one was governor of a
+State, one a member of Congress, one a noted physician, two have made
+millions, and both of the girls married well. Now, my boy has had
+every advantage--'
+
+"'But poverty,' I suggested.
+
+"'But poverty,' he repeated, 'and I'm unable to give him that. It's
+probably the one thing that would make a man of him, and I wouldn't
+wonder if he succeeded in achieving it.'
+
+"'A rather large undertaking,' I said.
+
+"'Yes, but he's well qualified,' Henry answered, with a smile.
+
+"'What's the matter with your boy?' I asked.
+
+"'So busy with tomfoolery--no time for anything else. I've had so much
+to do that I've rather neglected Harry, and now he's too much for me.
+He knows that he's got me beat on education, but that's only the
+beginning of what he knows. Good fellow, you understand, but he's
+young and thinks me old-fashioned. I wish you'd help me to make a man
+of him.'
+
+"'What can I do?'
+
+"'Get him interested in some kind of work. He doesn't like my
+business. He hates Wall Street, and, knowing it as I do, how can I
+blame the boy? He doesn't take to the law--'
+
+"'And, knowing it as I do, how can _I_ blame him?' I interrupted.
+
+"'But, somehow, he hasn't the spring in his bow that I had--the
+get-up-and-get--the disposition to move all hell if necessary.'
+
+"'You can't expect it,' I said. 'His mainspring is broken.'
+
+"'What would you call his mainspring?' he asked.
+
+"'The desire to win money and its power. Mind you, I wouldn't call
+that a high motive, but in a young man it's a kind of a mainspring
+that sets him a-going and keeps the works busy until he can get better
+motive power. In Harry it's broken.'
+
+"'You're right--it was busted long ago,' said Henry Delance.
+
+"'Some one has got to contrive a new mainspring for the sons of
+millionaires--they're so plenty these days.'
+
+"'There's the desire to be respectable,' he suggested.
+
+"'But it is not nearly so universal as the love of money. If it were
+possible to have millionaire carpenters and shoemakers there'd be more
+hope! But I'll try to invent a mainspring for Harry. If he doesn't
+marry some fool woman there's a chance for the boy--a good chance.
+Tell me all about him.'
+
+"In his own way, which amused me a little, the old man sketched the
+character of his son, or rather confessed it.
+
+"'A kind of Alexander the Great,' he said. 'We shall have to be
+careful or lose our heads. Surfeited with power, you know. When he
+wants anything he goes to a store and says, "Charge it." That has
+ruined him. He's no scale of values in his mind.'
+
+"He told me, then, with some evidence of alarm, that Harry had become
+interested in a fool woman, older than he, noted for her beauty and
+equestrian skill--by name Mrs. Revere-Chalmers, of a well-known
+Southern family. I knew the woman--divorced from a rich old gentleman
+of great generosity, who had taken all the blame for her sake. But I
+happened to know that the circumstances on her side were not
+creditable. The truth, however, had been well concealed.
+
+"In her youth Frances Revere had two beautiful parents. In fact, they
+were all that any girl could desire--obedient and respectful to their
+youngers. She was always kind to them and kept them looking neatly and
+helped them in their lessons and brought them up in the fear of
+Tiffany and the hope of future happiness. They played most of the
+time, but never chased each other in and out of the bedrooms or made
+any noise about the house when she lay sleeping in the forenoon. Their
+sense of chivalry would not have permitted it. When she arose she
+called them to her and patted their heads and said: 'What dear parents
+I have!' It might be thought that the fair Frances led an aimless and
+idle life. Not so. The young lady was very busy and never forgot her
+aim. She was preparing herself to be a marryer of men and the leading
+marryer in the proud city of her birth. Every member of the household
+became her assistant in this noble industry. Many storekeepers had
+unconsciously joined her staff and 'charged it' until they were weary.
+All her papa's money had been invested in the business, and he began
+to borrow for a rainy day. Then there came a long spell of wet
+weather. At last something had to be done. Frances began to use her
+talents. No prince or noble duke had come for her, so she married an
+old man worth ten million dollars and sent her parents to an orphan
+asylum with a fair allowance of spending-money. They are her only
+heirs, and now, at thirty, but with ample capital, she has set up
+again in the marrying business.
+
+"She lives in a big country-house, and has a lot of cats and dogs that
+are shampooed every day. Her life is pretty much devoted to the
+regulation of hair. Her own requires the exclusive attention of a
+hired girl. Its tint, luster, and general effect show excellent taste
+and close application. Considering its area, her scalp is the most
+remarkable field of industry in Connecticut. Has herself made into a
+kind of life-sized portrait every day and carefully framed and lighted
+and hung. It is a beautiful portrait, but it is not a portrait of
+her.
+
+"Her life is arduous. I have some reason to think that it wearies her.
+She rings for the masseuse at 10.30 A.M. and breakfasts in bed at
+twelve o'clock. Soon after that the chiropodist and the manicure and
+the hair-dresser begin to saw wood; then the grooms and second
+footmen. At two o'clock she goes out to pat the head of the
+ten-thousand-dollar bull and give some sugar to the horses, all of
+whom have been prepared for this ordeal by bathing and massage.
+
+"It's great to be able to pat the head of a ten-thousand-dollar bull.
+It's a pretty vanity. All the Fifth Avenue farmers indulge in it. Some
+slap them on the back and some poke them in the ribs with the point of
+a parasol, but the correct thing is to pat them on the head and say:
+Dear old Romeo!
+
+"After a turn in the saddle Mrs. Revere-Chalmers led society until
+midnight. With her a new spirit had arrived in the ancient stronghold
+of the Yankee.
+
+"I began to learn things about Harry--a big, blond, handsome youth who
+had traveled much. He had been to school in New York, London,
+Florence, and Paris, and had graduated from Harvard. For a time he
+called it Hahvud, but passed that trouble without serious injury and
+put it behind him. In the European stage of his career he had been
+attacked by lions, griffins, and battle-axes and had lost some of his
+red blood. There he had acquired a full line of Fifth Avenue dialect
+and conversation with trills and grace notes from France and Italy. He
+had been slowly recovering from that trouble for a year or so when I
+met him. Now and then a good, strong, native idiom burst out in his
+conversation.
+
+"Harry was a man without a country, having never had a fair chance to
+acquire one. He had touched many high and low places--from the top of
+the Eiffel Tower to the lowest depths of the underworld. Also, he knew
+the best hotels in Europe and eastern America, and the Duke of
+Sutherland and the Lord Mayor of London, and Jack Johnson, the
+pugilist. Harry knew only the upper and lower ends of life.
+
+"He was an extremist. Also, he was a prolific and generous liar. He
+lied not to deceive, but to entertain. There was a kind of noble
+charity in his lying. He would gladly perjure his soul to speed an
+hour for any good friend. His was the fictional imagination largely
+exercised in the cause of human happiness. Now and then he became the
+hero of his own lies, but he was generally willing to divide the
+honors. His friends knew not when to believe him, and he often
+deceived them when he was telling the truth.
+
+"Early in April, Henry Delance came to me and said: 'Soc, you've been
+working hard for years, and you need a rest. Let's get aboard the next
+steamer and spend a fortnight in England.'
+
+"I had little taste for foreign travel, but Betsey urged me to go, and
+I went with Henry and his wife, their daughter Ruth and the boy Harry,
+and sundry maids and valets. We had been a week in London, when Henry
+and the Mrs. came into my room one day, aglow with excitement. Mrs.
+Delance was first to address me.
+
+"'Mr. Potter, congratulate us,' said she. 'We find that Henry is a
+lineal descendant of William the Conqueror.'
+
+"'Henry, it is possible that William could prove an alibi, or maybe
+you could,' I suggested.
+
+"'I'd make an effort,' said he, with a trace of embarrassment, 'but my
+wife thinks that we had better plead guilty and let it go. That kind
+of thing doesn't interest me so much as it does her.'
+
+"'After all,' I answered, by way of consolation, 'if you think it's
+like to do you any harm, it doesn't need to get out. I shall respect
+your confidence.'
+
+"'Too late!' his wife exclaimed. 'The facts have been cabled to
+America.'
+
+"I was writing letters in my room, next day, when Harry interrupted me
+with a hurried entrance. He locked the door inside, and in a kind of
+playful silence drew from under his rain-coat, and deposited on my
+table, a human skull.
+
+"'The Bishop of St. Clare,' he whispered, in that curious dialect
+which I shall not try to imitate.
+
+"'He isn't looking very well,' I said, not knowing what he meant.
+
+"'This is the Bishop's head--the Bishop of St. Clare,' Harry whispered
+again. 'He was one of our ancestors--by Jove!'
+
+"'Is that all that was the matter with him?' I asked.
+
+"'No; his epitaph says that he died of a fever in 1712.'
+
+"'How did you get hold of his head?' I asked. 'Win it in a raffle?'
+
+"'I bribed the old verger in the crypt of St. Mary's. Offered him two
+sovereigns to lift the stone lid and let me look in. He said he
+couldn't do that, but discreetly withdrew when I put the money in his
+hand. It was up to me, don't you know, and here is the Bishop's
+head.'
+
+"'Going to have him photographed in a group of the family?' I asked.
+
+"'No, but you see Materna paid two pounds for a chunk off a tombstone,
+and I thought I would give her a souvenir worth having,' said he, and
+blushed for the first time since our interview had begun. 'This is
+unique.'
+
+"'And you didn't think the Bishop would miss it?' I suggested.
+
+"'Not seriously,' he answered. 'I guess it's a fool thing to have
+done, but I thought that I could have some fun with the Bishop's head.
+Mother is going to round up all the Delances at Christmas for a big
+dinner--uncles, aunts, and cousins, you know--a celebration of our
+genealogical discoveries with a great family tree in the center of the
+table. The history of the Delances will be read, and I thought that I
+would spring a surprise--tell them that I had invited our old
+ancestor, Sir Robert Delance, Bishop of St. Clare; that, contrary to
+my hope, he had accepted, and that I would presently introduce him. In
+due time I would produce the head and read from his life and writings,
+which I bought in a London book-stall. Finally, I thought that I would
+have him tell how he happened to be present. Don't you think he would
+make a hit?'
+
+"'He would surely make a hit--a resounding hit,' I said, 'but not as a
+proof of respectability. Even if the Bishop is your ancestor, you have
+no good title to his bones. I presume that every visitor to the old
+church puts his name and address in a register?'
+
+"'Yes.'
+
+"'Well, suppose the theft is discovered and the verger gives you away.
+All the money you've got wouldn't keep you out of prison.'
+
+"Harry began to turn pale. He was a good fellow, but this genealogical
+frenzy had turned his head, and his head was not as old as the
+Bishop's. It was unduly young.
+
+"'Assume that you get home with your prize, the Bishop's head would be
+the worst enemy that his descendants ever had. It would always accuse
+you and grin at your follies. And would you dare proclaim the truth
+over in Pointview that you really have the skull of the Bishop of St.
+Clare?'
+
+"The boy was scared. He had suddenly discovered an important fact. It
+was the north pole of his education.
+
+"'By Jove! I'm an ass,' he said. 'What shall I do with it?'
+
+"'Say nothing of the thing to anybody, not even to your father, and
+get rid of it.'
+
+"'That's what I'll do,' he said, as he wrapped the skull in a piece of
+newspaper, hid it under his coat, and left me.
+
+"We sailed next afternoon, and that evening, when Harry and I sat
+alone in a corner of the deck, I asked him what he had done with the
+Bishop's head.
+
+"'Tried to get rid of it, but couldn't,' he said. 'My conscience
+smote me, and I took the old bone back to St. Mary's. Going to do
+my duty like a man, you see, but it wouldn't work. New verger on the
+job! I weakened. Then I put it in a box and had it addressed to a
+fictitious man in Bristol, and sent my valet to get it off by
+express. It went on, and was returned for a better address. You see,
+my valet--officious ass!--had left his address at the express office.
+How _gauche_ of him! While we were lying at the dock a messenger
+came to my state-room with the Bishop's head. I had to take it and
+pay five shillings and a sixpence for the privilege.'
+
+"'The old Bishop seems to be quite attached to his new relative,' I
+said.
+
+"'Yes, but when the deck is deserted, by and by, I'm going to drop him
+overboard.'
+
+"And that is what he did--dropped it, solemnly, from the ship's side
+at dinnertime, and I witnessed the proceeding.
+
+"The adventure had one result that was rather curious and unexpected.
+It brought Harry close to me and established our relations to each
+other. That they admitted me to his confidence as a friend and
+counselor of the utmost frankness was on the whole exceedingly
+fortunate. From that time he began to trust me and to distrust
+himself.
+
+"So it happened that I was really introduced to Harry by the Bishop of
+St. Clare, who died in 1712, and those credentials gave me a standing
+which I could not otherwise have enjoyed.
+
+"Coming home, I limbered up my imagination and outlied Harry.
+
+"I was forced to invent that cheerful, handy liar the late Dr. Godfrey
+Vogeldam Guph, Professor of the Romance Languages in the University of
+Brague and the intimate friend of any great man you may be pleased to
+mention. With his help I have laid low even the most authoritative,
+learned, and precise liars in the State of Connecticut. I do it by
+quoting from his memoirs.
+
+"Harry's specialty were lies of adventure in court and palace, and, as
+Dr. Guph had known all the crowned heads, he became an ever-present
+help in time of trouble.
+
+"Every lie of Harry's I outdid with another of ampler proportions. He
+put on a little more steam, but I kept abreast or a length ahead of
+him. By and by he broke down and begged for quarter.
+
+"'On my word as a gentleman,' said he, 'that last story I told was
+true. It really happened, don't you know?'
+
+"'Well, Harry, if you will only notify me when you propose to tell the
+truth, I shall be glad to take your word for it,' was my answer.
+
+"'And keep Dr. Guph chained,' said he.
+
+"'Exactly, and give you like warning when I have a lie ready to
+launch.'
+
+"'That's a fair treaty,' he agreed.
+
+"'And a good idea,' I said. 'As a liar of long experience I have found
+it best to notify all comers what to expect of me when I see a useful
+lie in the offing. That has enabled me to give my fancy full play
+without impairing my reputation. My noblest faculties have had ample
+exercise while my word has remained at par.'
+
+"We made an agreement along that line, and Harry ceased to be a liar,
+and became a story-teller of much humor and ingenuity."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+WHICH IS THE STORY OF THE PIMPLED QUEEN AND THE BLACK SPOT
+
+
+"Well, on our return, Mrs. Delance had a helmet and a battle-ax, with
+sundry accessories, emblazoned on her letter-heads and the doors of
+her limousine. Here was another case of charge it, but this time it
+was charged against her slender capital of good sense. Mrs. Delance
+was a stout lady of the Dreadnought type. Harry settled down in the
+home of his father and began to study the 'middle clahsses' with a
+drag and tandem and garments for every kind of leisure. The girls went
+to ride with him, and naturally began to smarten their dress and
+accents and to change their estimates. His 'aristocratic' friends and
+manners were much in their company and ever in their dreams.
+
+"Of course, all that began to react on the young men: if that was the
+kind of thing the girls liked, they must try to be in it. Slowly but
+surely a Pointview aristocracy began its line of cleavage and a
+process of integration. Crests appeared on the letter-heads and
+limousine doors of the newly rich. In a month or so people of brain
+and substance degenerated into a condition of hardened shameless
+idiocy.
+
+"Some of our best citizens went abroad, each to find his place among
+the descendants of William the Conqueror. Suddenly I discovered that
+the clerk in my office was ashamed to be seen on the street with a
+package in his hands.
+
+"Our young men began to long for wealth and leisure. They grew
+impatient of the old process of thrift and industry. It was too slow.
+Many of them opened accounts in Wall Street.
+
+"Young Roger Daniels had some luck there and began to advertise the
+fact with a small steam-yacht and a cruise. We were going as hard as
+ever to keep up, but on higher levels of aspiration. The girls were
+engaged in a strenuous contest for the prize of Harry's favor, with
+that handsome young _divorcée_ well in the lead.
+
+"Roger and his party were about to return from their cruise, and Harry
+was to give them a ball at the Yacht Club.
+
+"The day before the ball our best known physician came to see Mrs.
+Potter, who was ill, and cheered us up with a story. The Doctor was
+young, attractive, and able. He had threatened every appendix in
+Pointview, and had a lot of inside information about our men and
+women--especially the latter. He looked weary.
+
+"'Yesterday was a little hard on me,' he said. 'It began at four in
+the morning with a confinement case and ended at one A.M. There were
+two operations at the hospital, a steady stream at the office, and a
+twenty-mile ride over the hills. Got back in the evening pretty well
+worn out. Tumbled into bed at two minutes of eleven, and was asleep
+before the clock struck. The 'phone-bell at my bedside awoke me. I let
+it go on for a minute. Hadn't energy enough to get up. It rang and
+rang. Out I tumbled.
+
+"'Hello!' I said.
+
+"'A voice answered. "I am Mrs. So-and-So's butler," it said. "She
+wishes to see you as soon as you can get here. It's very urgent."
+
+"'"What's the matter?"
+
+"'"Don't know, sir, but it is serious."
+
+"'"All right," I said.
+
+"'My chauffeur was off for the night, so I 'phoned to the stable and
+got Patrick and told him to hitch up the black mare at once, dressed,
+and took everything that I was likely to need in an emergency, got
+into the wagon, and hurried away in the darkness. After all, I
+thought, it is something to have one's skill so much in request by the
+rich and the powerful. It was a long ride with one horse-power, but we
+got there.
+
+"'Many windows of the great house were aglow. The first butler met me
+in the hall and took me to my lady's chamber--an immense room finished
+in the style of the First Empire. She was half reclining and playing
+solitaire as she smoked a cigarette on a divan that occupied a dais
+overhung with rare tapestries on a side of the room. The effect of the
+whole thing was queenly--_à la_ Récamier. She greeted me wearily and
+without rising.
+
+"'"Sit down," said she, and I did so.
+
+"'She turned to a good-looking maid who timidly stood near the divan.
+
+"'"My dear little woman, you weary me--please go," she said.
+
+"'The maid went.
+
+"'"Dawctah," the lady said to me, "I have a nahsty little pimple on
+my right cheek, and I really cahn't go to the ball, you know, unless
+it is cuahed. Won't you kindly--ah--see what can be done?"
+
+"'"A pimple! God prosper it!" I said to myself. "Has the great M.D.
+become a P.D.--a mere doctor of pimples?"
+
+"'I inspected the pimple--a very slight affair.
+
+"'"Why, if I were you, I'd just cover the pimple with a little square
+of court-plaster," I said. "It would become you."
+
+"'"What a pretty idea! That's just what I will do," she exclaimed.
+
+"'"Please charge it, Dawctah," she said, wearily, as she resumed her
+solitaire.
+
+"'I charged a hundred dollars, but nothing could pay me for the
+humiliation I suffered. Going home, I pounded the mare shamefully.'
+
+"'You charged a good price,' I said.
+
+"'Yes; but it's like pulling teeth to get any money out of her. One
+has to earn it twice. Worth a million, and hangs everybody up. Some
+have to sue.'
+
+"'Does nothing to-day that can be done to-morrow,' I said.
+
+"'True,' said he; 'she don't look after her business, and thinks that
+every one is trying to cheat her.'
+
+"'Same old story,' was my remark. I was her husband's lawyer. 'Well,
+dear, how much do you suppose McCrory's bill is for the last month?'
+he would ask her. She would look thoughtful and say: 'Oh, about
+fifteen hundred dollars.' 'My dear,' he would go on, 'it is ten
+thousand six hundred and forty-three dollars and twenty-four cents.'
+'Oh, that's impossible,' she would answer. 'There's some mistake about
+it. I'll never O.K. such a bill. It's an outrage!' But the bill was
+always right.
+
+"'I didn't suppose you would know the lady--I haven't mentioned her
+name,' said the Doctor.
+
+"'I know her, but don't worry--I shall not betray your confidence. I
+knew her husband. It wore him out looking after the charge-it
+department. Now she's trying to get Harry Delance for his job.'
+
+"'She's badly in need of a clerk,' said the Doctor, 'and I hope she
+gets one. He could look after the pimples as well as I can.'
+
+"Many were getting ready for the ball, but this lady was the only one
+I knew of who had spent a hundred dollars for facial improvement.
+Harry, however, was about to spend a thousand dollars for the
+improvement of his conscience. It was one of the necessary expenses
+and it came about in this way:
+
+"The day of the ball had arrived. Harry came to see me about noon. He
+said that he had been busy all the morning with preparations for the
+ball, but--
+
+"He showed me a telegram. It was from Roger Daniels, and it said:
+
+"'The recent slump in the market has put me in hell's hole. Please
+wire one thousand dollars to Bridgeport, where I am hung up. If you
+do, I shall give you good collateral and eternal gratitude. If you
+don't, we shall have to miss the ball. Please remember that I am
+waiting at the other end of the wire like a hungry cat at a
+mouse-hole.'
+
+"Harry looked worried. The ball must come off, and, without Roger, it
+would be like Hamlet minus the melancholy Dane. It was a special
+compliment to Roger.
+
+"'What do you advise me to do?' he asked.
+
+"'Pay it.'
+
+"'It will probably be a dead loss.'
+
+"'Probably, but it's plainly up to you. He's got in trouble keeping
+your pace. To tell the honest truth, you're responsible for it, and
+the public will charge it to your account. You must pay the bill or
+suffer moral bankruptcy.'
+
+"Harry was taken by surprise.
+
+"'But I can pay for _my_ folly,' he said.
+
+"'Yes; but when it becomes another man's folly it's stolen property,
+and as much yours as ever. The goods have your mark on 'em, and, by
+and by, they're dumped at your door. They may be damaged by dirt and
+vermin, but you've got to take 'em.
+
+"'After all, Harry, why should a young man whose education has cost
+a hundred thousand dollars, if a cent, be giving up his life to
+folly? You're too smart to spend the most of your time looking
+beautiful--trying to excite the admiration of women and the envy
+of men. That might do in some of the old countries where the
+people are as dumb as cattle and are capable only of the emotion of
+awe and need professional gentlemen to excite it, and to feed upon
+their substance. Here the people have their moments of weakness, but
+mostly they are pretty level-headed. They judge men by what they do,
+not by what they look like. The professional gentleman is first an
+object of curiosity and then an object of scorn. He's not for us.
+Young man, I knew your father and your grandfather. I like you and
+want you to know that I am speaking kindly, but you ought to go to
+work.'
+
+"'Mr. Potter, he said, 'upon my word, sir, I'm going to work one of
+these days--at something--I don't know what.'
+
+"'The sooner the better,' I said. 'Work is the thing that makes
+men--nothing else. In Pointview everybody used to work. Now here are
+some facts for your genealogy that you haven't discovered. Your
+grandfather and grandmother raised a family of nine children and never
+had a servant--think of that. Your grandmother made clothes for the
+family and did all the work of the house. She was a doctor, a nurse, a
+teacher, a spinner, a weaver, a knitter, a sewer, a cook, a
+washerwoman, a gentle and tender mother. Now we are beginning to rot
+with idleness.
+
+"'Let me tell you a story of a modern lady of Pointview.'
+
+"Then I told him of the Doctor's call on the pimpled queen at
+midnight, and added:
+
+"'Think of that! Think of the fathomless depths of vanity and
+selfishness that lie under that pimple. It's a monument more sublime
+than the Matterhorn. Think of the poor fellow that has to marry that
+human millstone, and be the clerk of her charge-it department.'
+
+"'I can think of no worse luck, really,' said he. 'I wonder who it
+is!'
+
+"'Doctors never give names,' I said. 'But you might look for the
+little black square of court-plaster."
+
+"'By Jove!' he exclaimed. 'I shall look with interest.'
+
+"The ball came off, and Roger got there, and so did the lady and the
+square of black court-plaster; and that night Harry began a new stage
+in his career.
+
+"After all, Harry was no dunce, but he was not yet convinced."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+IN WHICH SOCRATES ENCOUNTERS "NEW THOUGHT" AND PSYCHOLOGICAL HAIR
+
+
+"When people have little to do they go back to childishness. They long
+for novelty--new playthings, new adventures, new sensations, new
+friends. So our upper classes are utterly restless. Every old pleasure
+is a slough of despond. The ladies have tried jewels, laces, crests,
+titled husbands, divorces, gambling, cocktails, cigarettes, and other
+branches of exhilaration. They have passed through the slums of
+literature and of the East Side of Gotham. The gentlemen have shown
+them the way and smiled with amusement and gone on to greater
+triumphs. To these people every old idea is 'bromide.' It bores them.
+They scoff at men 'who take themselves seriously.' In a word, Moses
+and the Prophets are so much 'dope.' And they are excellent people who
+really want to make the world better, but the childish craze for
+novelty is upon them. Mrs. Revere-Chalmers was one of this kind. Harry
+came to me next day at my house and said:
+
+"'By Jove! you know, it was my friend Mrs. R.-C. who wore the black
+square. But she is really a charming woman--not at all a bad sort. I
+want you to know her better. She made me promise to bring you over
+to-morrow afternoon if you would come.'
+
+"We went. It was a 'new-thought' tea--a deep, brain-racking,
+forefinger-on-the-brow function. You could see the thoughts of the
+ladies and sometimes hear them as a 'professor' with long hair and
+smiles of fathomless inspiration wrapped himself in obscurity and
+called unto them out of the depths. He was all depth. They gazed at
+his soulful eyes and plunged into deep thought, catching at straws,
+and he returned to New York by the next train and probably made
+another payment, on account, to his landlady. Tea and conversation
+followed his departure.
+
+"I had observed that Mrs. Revere-Chalmers had undergone a singular
+change of aspect, but failed to locate the point of difference until a
+sister had said to her in a tone of honeyed deviltry:
+
+"'My dear, you are growing younger--quite surely younger, and your
+hair is so lovely and so--different! You know what I mean--it has the
+luster of youth, and the shade is adorable without a trace of gray in
+it.'
+
+"This last phrase was the point of the dagger, and Mrs. Chalmers felt
+it. Sure enough, her hair had changed its hue, and was undeniably
+fuller and younger.
+
+"Then our hostess gave out a confession which has made some history
+and is fully qualified to make more. It is a curious fact that one who
+is abnormal enough to commit a crime is apt to have poor caution.
+
+"'I have been taking lessons of the Professor, and have produced this
+hair by concentration,' said she. 'It is a creation of the new thought
+and so wonderful I could almost forgive one for not believing me.'
+
+"'A gem of thought--a hair poem!' I could not help exclaiming. 'Did it
+come all at once, in a flood of inspiration, or hair by hair?'
+
+"'All at once,' she answered.
+
+"I charged it and went on as if nothing great had happened.
+
+"'Considered as a work of the imagination, it is wonderful, and should
+rank with the best of Shakespeare's,' I assured her. 'But it will
+subject you to unsuspected perils, for your footstool will be the
+shrine of the hairless and you shall see the top of every bald head
+in America.'
+
+"Another lady sprang to her assistance by telling how she had
+extracted a pearl necklace from an unwilling husband who had said that
+he couldn't afford it, by concentration. The new thought had fetched
+him.
+
+"The noble unselfishness with which they had used this miraculous gift
+of the spirit appealed to Harry and to me.
+
+"In that brilliant company was a slim woman of the armored cruiser
+type, who had come to Betsey one day and said:
+
+"'You're spoiling your husband. You make too much of him. You don't
+seem to know how to manage a husband, and the husbands of Pointview
+are being ruined by your example. They expect too much of us. We women
+have got to stand together. Don't you read the _Female Gazette_?'
+
+"'No--I have been waiting till I could get a rubber-plant and other
+accessories,' said Betsey.
+
+"'Well, it may not be _en règle_, but it is full of good sense,' said
+the lady. 'I've brought an article with me that I wish you would
+read.'
+
+"She left the article, and its title was 'How to Manage a Husband.' It
+averred that too much petting, too much indulgence, made a man selfish
+and conceited; that affection should be administered with scientific
+reserve. Men should be taught to wait on themselves, and all that.
+
+"They called on me for remarks, and I said:
+
+"'I am glad to have become acquainted with the power of concentration.
+I propose that we all quit work and begin to concentrate. Matter is
+only a creation of spirit. Let us exercise our several sovereign
+spirits and try to turn out a better line of matter. Let us have fewer
+rocks and stones and more comforts. Sweat and toil are a great
+mistake. Let us turn Delance's Hill into plum-pudding and the stones
+thereof into caramels and its pond into tomato-soup. Why not? They
+have no reality, no substance. They are nothing but thoughts--and our
+thoughts, at that--and why shouldn't we change 'em? But somehow we
+can't fetch it. According to the Professor, we have got into the habit
+of thinking in terms of rock, soil, and water, and we can't get over
+it. There are some few of us who stand for better things; but the
+majority keep thinking in the old rut, and we can't sway them. The
+Professor says that all we need is to get together and agree and then
+concentrate. But agreement doesn't seem to be necessary. You know that
+there was a time when everybody, after much concentration, agreed that
+the world was flat--everybody but one man. Now the world was stubborn.
+It wouldn't give up. It hung on to its roundness, and let the people
+think what they pleased. They tried to flatten it with countless tons
+of concentration, but it held its shape. The one man had his way
+about it. So don't be discouraged by an adverse majority on this
+plum-pudding project. One lady has shown us a sample of concentrated
+hair, and it looks good to me. Why all this striving, all this trouble
+about the problems of life and death, when the straight, broad way of
+concentration is open to us? Why shouldn't we have concentrated bread
+and meat and shoes and socks and silks.
+
+"'Now the subject of concentration is by no means new. It has been a
+success for centuries. The late Dr. Guph tells in his memoirs of a
+singular race of people known as the Flub Dubs who once dwelt on the
+lost isle of Atlantis. They were the greatest concentrators that ever
+lived. Every one thought that he was the greatest man in the world,
+and thought it so hard and so persistently that it came true--in a
+way. Naturally they aimed high, and every man thought himself the
+rightful king, and a strife arose over the crown, so that no one
+could wear it and many were slain in a great tussle. And when they
+were resting from their struggles one rose and said: "Kings of the
+realm, you are as the dust under my feet. I scorn you. A few minutes
+ago I decided to reverse my concentrator and aim at a higher goal. It
+was easy of attainment. I have suddenly become the biggest fool on
+this island and the humblest of all men."
+
+"'The announcement was greeted with great applause, and within three
+minutes his popularity had so enhanced that they put him on the
+throne. Such was the power of truth. And all confessed and joined his
+party, and he was known as the wisest king of the Flub Dubs.
+
+"'The moral that Dr. Guph adduces is this: You cannot make figs out of
+thistles, and unregulated concentration leads to trouble.'
+
+"Harry and I started for home in a deep silence.
+
+"'Hell!' I exclaimed, presently.
+
+"'And that reminds me that I feel like the king of the Flub Dubs,'
+said Harry.
+
+"'Which indicates that you are likely to decline the office,' I
+remarked.
+
+"'It's serious business--this matter of finding a wife,' he declared.
+
+"'What's the matter with Marie Benson?' I asked. 'There's a real woman
+and the best-looking girl in Connecticut.'
+
+"'Charming girl!' he exclaimed. 'But, dear boy! she talks too much.'
+
+"'That is a fault that could be remedied; and, after all, it's a kind
+of generosity. It's the very opposite of concentration.'
+
+"'Ah--if she would only reform!' he said.
+
+"'Leave that to me,' I answered, as he dropped me at my door."
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+IN WHICH SOCRATES DISCUSSES THE OVER-PRODUCTION OF TALK
+
+
+"Marie was my ward, and as pretty a girl as ever led a bulldog or ate
+a box of chocolates at a sitting. She was a charming fish-hook, baited
+with beauty and wealth and culture and remarkable innocence. She had
+dangled about on mama's rod and line for a year or so, but the fish
+wouldn't bite. For that reason I grabbed the rod from the old lady and
+put on a bait of silence and a sinker, and moved to deep water and
+began to do business.
+
+"Marie had a failing, for which, I am sorry to say, she was in no way
+distinguished. She talked too much, as Harry had said. There are too
+many American women who talk too much. Marie's mother used to talk
+about six-thirds of the time. You had to hear it, and then you had to
+get over it. She had a way of spiking the shoes of Time so that every
+hour felt like a month while it was running over you. You ought to
+have seen her climb the family tree or the sturdy old chestnut of her
+own experience and shake down the fruit! Marie had one more tree in
+her orchard. She had added the spreading peach of a liberal education
+to the deadly upas of Benson genealogy and the sturdy old chestnut of
+mama's experience. The _vox Bensonorum_ was as familiar as the
+Congregational bell. The supply of it exceeded the demand, and after
+every one was loaded and ready to cast off, the barrels came rolling
+down the chute.
+
+"The next time I saw Marie she was a bit cast down. She wished me to
+suggest something for her to do. Said she wanted a mission--a chance
+to do some good in the world. Thought she'd enjoy being a nurse. I
+felt sorry for the girl, and suddenly I saw the flicker of a brilliant
+thought.
+
+"'Marie,' I said, 'as a member of The Society of Useful Women you are
+under a serious obligation, and you have taste for missionary work.
+Well, what's the matter with beginning on Nancy Doolittle? You owe her
+a duty and ought to have the courage--nay, the kindness--to perform
+it. Nancy talks too much.'
+
+"'Well, I should say so,' said Marie. 'Nancy is a scourge--I have
+often thought of it.'
+
+"'She's downright wasteful,' I went on. 'She fills every hour with
+information, and then throws on some more. It keeps coming. Your seams
+open, and then it's every hand to the pumps! Dora Perkins and Rebecca
+Ford are just as extravagant. They toss out gems of thought and
+chunks of knowledge as if they were as common as caramels.
+
+"'You should go to these girls and kindly but firmly remind them of
+this fault. Tell them that too much conversation has created more old
+maids and grass and parlor widows than any other cause. Give them a
+little lecture on the old law of supply and demand. Show them that it
+applies to conversation as well as to cabbages--that if one's talk is
+too plentiful, it becomes very cheap. Suggest that if Methuselah had
+lived until now and witnessed all the adventures of the human race, he
+couldn't afford to waste his knowledge. If he talked only half the
+time nobody would believe him. They'd think he was crazy, and they'd
+know why, in past ages, everybody had died but him, and they'd wonder
+how he had managed to survive the invention of gunpowder. These girls
+have overestimated the value of good-will. Their securities are not
+well secured. There are millions of watered stock in their
+treasuries, and it isn't worth five cents on the dollar. Marie, you
+can have a lot of fun. I almost envy you.
+
+"'Tell these girls that the remedy is simple. They must be careful to
+regulate the supply to the demand. They could easily raise the price
+above par by denying now and then that they have any conversation in
+the treasury.'
+
+"Marie promised to undertake this important work, and I knew that in
+connection with it she would also get some valuable advice.
+
+"You see, this tendency to extravagant display has sunk in very deep.
+Our young people really do know a lot, and they want others to know
+that they know it. They are plumed with culture, and it has become a
+charge instead of a credit.
+
+"Well, things began to mend. Betsey and I went to dine with the
+Bensons one evening, and Marie was as quiet as a lamb. She answered
+modestly when we spoke to her. She told no stories; her jeweled crown
+of culture was not in sight; she listened with notable success, and
+delighted us with well-managed and illuminating silence. Neither she
+nor her mother nor Mrs. Bryson ventured to interrupt the talk of a
+noted professor who dined with us. Marie was charming.
+
+"After dinner she led me into the library, where we sat down
+together.
+
+"She seemed a little embarrassed, and presently said, with a laugh, 'I
+had a talk with those girls, as you suggested.'
+
+"'What did they say?' I asked.
+
+"'What didn't they say?' she exclaimed. 'They flew at me like
+wildcats. They tore me to pieces--said I was the most dreaded talker
+in Pointview, that I had talked a steady stream ever since I was born,
+that nobody had a chance to get in a word with me, that I had made all
+the boys sick who ever came to see me. What do you think of that?'
+
+[Illustration: "WHAT DIDN'T THEY SAY? THEY FLEW AT ME LIKE WILDCATS."]
+
+"'It's a gross exaggeration!' I said.
+
+"'Well, I thought it over, and made up my mind they were right,' she
+went on. 'We kissed and made up and organized the Listeners' Circle,
+and mama and Mrs. Bryson and Mrs. Doolittle have joined. Our purpose
+is to regulate our talk supply very strictly to the demand.'
+
+"'It's a grand idea!' I exclaimed. 'The Ladies' Talk and Information
+Trust! Why, it will soon control the entire product of Pointview, and
+can fix the price. Marie, it's only a matter of time when the
+conversation of you girls is going to be in the nature of a luxury and
+as much desired as diamonds. It won't be long before some young fellow
+will offer his life for one word from you.'
+
+"'Oh, _I'm_ hopeless! Nobody cares for me--not a soul!' said Marie.
+
+"'Wait and give 'em a chance,' I answered.
+
+"'Do you think it's true that I've been such a pestilence?' she
+asked, as her fingers toyed with the upholstery. 'You know you've been
+a kind of father to me, and I want you to tell me frankly if I've
+really made the boys sick.'
+
+"'Why, my dear child, if I were a young man I'd be kneeling at your
+feet,' I said; and no wonder, for they were a beautiful pair of feet,
+and none ever supported a nobler girl. Then I went on: 'Marie, your
+talk is charming. The demand continues. I feel honored by your
+confidence. Please go on.'
+
+"'I believe I've been foolish without knowing it,' she said, her smile
+beautiful with its sadness.
+
+"'My dear child, if there were no folly in the world it would be a
+stupid place, and I for one should want to move,' I said. 'Some never
+discover their own follies, and they _are_ hopeless. You are as wise
+as you are dear. It's in your power to do a lot of good. Think what
+you've already accomplished. I wish you would continue to help us
+discourage foolish display in America.
+
+"'Are there any more chestnuts in the fire?' she asked, with a laugh.
+'Not that I'm afraid. I suppose the fire is good for me.'
+
+"'Marie, I love your fingers too well to burn them unduly,' I said.
+'By the way, I expect that Harry Delance will be wanting to marry you
+soon.'
+
+"'Harry!' she exclaimed. 'I talked him to death--and out of the
+notion--long ago, and I'm not sorry. He isn't my kind.'
+
+"'Harry's a good fellow,' I insisted.
+
+"'But he's so dreadfully nice--such a hopeless aristocrat! Grandfather
+would have a fit. I want a big, full-blooded, brawny chap, who isn't a
+slave to his coat and trousers--the kind of man you've talked so much
+about--one who could get his hands dirty and be a gentleman. I'm
+longing for the outdoor life--and the outdoor man to live it with
+me.'
+
+"'Give Harry a chance--his uneducation had only just begun,' I urged.
+
+"I left Marie with a rather serious look in her face, and began to
+wonder how I should accomplish the uneducation of Harry.
+
+"That young man came to see me, in a day or two, at our home. My new
+set of Smollett lay on the piano, and he greatly admired it. Above all
+things Harry loved books, and his specialty was Smollett; he had read
+every tale in the series, at college, and made a mark with his thesis
+on 'The Fathers of English Fiction.' He spent an hour of delight with
+those books of mine. Then he said to me:
+
+"'Only fifty copies printed?'
+
+"'Only fifty,' I said.
+
+"'Could I get a set?'
+
+"'All sold,' I assured him, 'but I shall be glad to give these books
+to you on two conditions.'
+
+"He turned in astonishment.
+
+"'They can do you no further harm, and my first request is that you do
+not lend them. My second is that you take them home in my wheelbarrow
+by daylight with your own hands.'
+
+"He silently demurred.
+
+"'At last those books have a chance to do some little good in the
+world, and I don't want them to lose it,' I urged. 'The hands,
+feet, and legs of the high and low born are slowly being deprived of
+their rights in this community. Pride is robbing them of their
+ancient and proper offices. How many of the young men and women of
+our acquaintance would be seen on the street with a package in their
+hands, to say nothing of a wheelbarrow? Their souls are above it!'
+
+"'Why should they carry packages and roll wheelbarrows?' Harry asked.
+'Stores deliver goods these days.'
+
+"'That's one reason why it costs so much to live. We have to pay for
+our pride and our indolence and the delivery of the goods. It's all
+charged in the bill. Some member of the family used to go to market
+every morning with his basket and carry the goods home with him.'
+
+"'It would be ridiculous for me to do that,' said Harry. 'We're able
+to pay the bills.'
+
+"'But you're doing a great injustice to those who are not. You make
+the delivery system a necessary thing, and those who can't afford it
+have to help you stand the expense--a gross injustice. I want you to
+help me in this cause of the hand and foot. Your example would be full
+of inspiration. Excuse me a moment.'
+
+"I went for the wheelbarrow and rolled it up to the front door. Then
+we brought out the books and loaded them. That done, I seized the
+handles of the barrow.
+
+"'Come on,' I said. 'I'll do the work--you share the disgrace with
+me.'
+
+"My gray hairs were too much for him.
+
+"'No; give me the handles,' he insisted. 'If it won't hurt you, it
+won't hurt me--that's sure.'
+
+"So, in his silk hat and frock-coat and spats, with a carnation in his
+buttonhole, he seized the wheelbarrow like a man, and away we went. I
+steered him up the Main Street, and people began to hail us with
+laughter from automobiles, and to jest with us on the sidewalk, and
+Marie came along with two other pretty girls, and the barrow halted in
+a gale of merriment.
+
+"'What in the world are you doing?' one of them asked.
+
+"'It's the remains of the late Mr. Smollett,' I explained.
+
+"'I'm setting an example to the young,' said Harry, as he mopped his
+forehead. 'Couldn't help it. I had to do this thing.'
+
+"'Great!' Marie exclaimed. 'Simply great! I'm going to get me a
+wheelbarrow.'
+
+"She would take hold of the handles and try it, and went on half a
+block in spite of our protests, creating much excitement.
+
+"That was the first rude beginning of The Basket and Wheelbarrow
+Brigade in Pointview, of which I shall tell you later. And now I shall
+explain my generosity--it can generally be explained--and how I came
+by the Smollett."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+IN WHICH BETSEY COMMITS AN INDISCRETION
+
+
+"Christmas was approaching, and Betsey said to me one day that she had
+been guilty of a great extravagance.
+
+"'I know you will forgive me just this once,' she went on. 'My love
+for you is so extravagant that I had to keep pace with it. You've
+simply got to accept something very grand.'
+
+"'I can't think of anything that I need unless it's a new jack-knife,'
+I said.
+
+"'Nonsense!' she exclaimed. 'You've got to let me spend some money for
+you. I've been held down in the expression of my affections as long as
+I can stand it. I've doubled my charities since we were married, as a
+token of my gratitude, and now I've a right to do something to please
+myself.'
+
+"'All right! We'll lift the lid,' I said. 'We can lie about it, I
+suppose, and cover up our folly.'
+
+"'Well, of course we don't have to tell what it cost,' said Betsey;
+'and, Socrates, you can't expect to reform me in a year. It's taken
+half a lifetime to acquire my follies.'
+
+"That's one trouble with the whole problem. You can't tear down a
+structure which has been slowly rising for half a century in a day, or
+in many days.
+
+"Christmas arrived, and Betsey went down-stairs with me and covered my
+eyes in the hall and led me to the grand piano. Then I was permitted
+to look, and there was the most gorgeous set of books that my eyes
+ever beheld--a set of Smollett, in lovely brown calf, decorated with
+magnificent gold tooling! Yes, I love such things--who doesn't?--and
+I gave Betsey a great hug, and we sat down with tears in our eyes to
+look at the pages of vellum and the wonderful etchings which adorned
+so many of them. They were charming. I knew that the books had cost at
+least a thousand dollars. Grandpa Smead looked awfully stern in his
+gold frame on the wall.
+
+"'Now don't think too badly of me,' she urged. 'Every poor family
+within twenty miles is eating dinner at my expense this Christmas
+Day.'
+
+"'You are the dearest girl in all the land!' I said. 'There's nobody
+like you.'
+
+"'I knew that you were fond of the classics,' said Betsey, 'so I
+consulted Harry Delance, and he suggested that I should give you a set
+of Smollett; said it would renew your youth. You know he's devoted to
+Smollett.'
+
+"'And why shouldn't we keep up with Harry?' I said.
+
+"'Well, you know he took the first prize in literature, and ought to
+have excellent taste. Then the young man who sold the set to me is
+working his way through Yale. I was glad to help him, too; he
+recommended these books--said they were moral and uplifting--not at
+all like the modern trash. He knew that we enjoyed home reading. Mary
+will read them aloud to us, and we'll enjoy them together.'
+
+"This father of romance was not unknown to me, and I did not share her
+confidence in the joys ahead of us, but said nothing.
+
+"After a fine dinner Betsey wanted to start in at once. We sat down by
+the fireside while her secretary began to read aloud from one of the
+treasured volumes. I had not read the story, and chose it as being the
+least likely to make trouble. In a short time we came to rough going
+and the young woman began to falter.
+
+"'That will do,' said Betsey, suddenly, as I tried to conceal my
+emotions.
+
+"She took the book from the hands of her secretary and read on in
+silence for a minute or so.
+
+"'My land!' she exclaimed, with a look of horror. 'That book would
+corrupt the morals of John Bunyan.'
+
+"'Never mind; John never lived in Pointview,' I argued. 'He didn't
+have a chance to get hardened.'
+
+"Betsey had a determined look in her face, and rang for the coachman.
+
+"'I'll have them stored in the stable,' said she, firmly.
+
+"'If you don't keep it locked, all the women in the neighborhood'll be
+in there,' I warned her, knowing that she couldn't help telling her
+friends of what had happened.
+
+"'That's no reason why the men should be unduly exposed,' said Betsey.
+'Poor things! It's my duty to protect _you_ as long as I can,
+Socrates.'
+
+"I promised to get rid of the books somehow, and persuaded her to let
+them stay where they were until I had had time to think about it. Then
+she said:
+
+"'Socrates, forgive me. I didn't mean it, and I wanted to be so nice
+to you. I guess it's a just punishment for my extravagance. I thought
+the modern novels were bad enough. What can I do for you now?'
+
+"'Always, when you're in doubt, do nothing,' I suggested.
+
+"'Oh, I know what I'll do!' she exclaimed, joyfully. 'I'll knit you a
+pair of socks with my own hands.'
+
+"'Eureka!' I shouted. 'Those socks shall make footprints on the sands
+of time.'"
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+IN WHICH SOCRATES ATTACKS THE WORST DOERS AND BEST SELLERS
+
+
+"One evening, soon after that, Betsey and I went to a party at Deacon
+Benson's. The Deacon is Marie's grandfather--a strict, old-line
+Congregationalist. The old gentleman owned some two hundred acres in
+the very heart of Pointview and about a mile of shore-front. In all
+the buying and selling, he had refused to part with an acre of his
+land, now worth at least a million dollars. He had willed it all to
+Marie.
+
+"Deacon Joe was a relic of Puritan days, with shrewd eyes under heavy
+gray tufts, and a mouth bent like a sickle, and whiskers under a
+strong chin, and lines in his face that suggested the heart of a lion.
+In his walks he was always accompanied by a hickory cane and a bulldog
+whose countenance and philosophy were like unto those of the Deacon.
+
+"He was a perfectly honest man who had joined the church with mental
+reservations. He had reserved the right to employ certain adjectives
+and nouns which had been useful in Pointview since the days of the
+pioneer, and which had grown more and more indispensable to the
+opinions of an honest man. The verb 'to damn' in all its parts and
+relations had been one of them. The word 'hell' was another. It
+represented a thing of great conversational value, and he recommended
+it with perfect frankness to certain people. He loved hell and hard
+cider, and hated Episcopalians. He loved to tell how one Episcopalian
+had cheated him in a horse trade, and how another had never paid for a
+bushel of onions. That was enough for him. He had always thought them
+a loose, unprincipled lot with no adequate respect for fire and
+brimstone. But Deacon Joe was honest, and his word was worth a hundred
+cents on the dollar.
+
+"Now the Delances were Episcopalians from away back--High-Church
+Episcopalians, at that. The old man had sniffed a good deal when Harry
+began to pay attention to Marie, and had come to see me about it.
+
+"I eased his fears and appealed to his avarice. Harry had too much
+money and some follies, I confessed, but he was sound at heart, and I
+had hope of making a strong man of him, and of course his money might
+be a great lever in his hands.
+
+"'Very well--we'll keep an eye on him,' he snapped, and left me
+without another word.
+
+"After that Marie was allowed to go out with the young man in his drag
+and tandem.
+
+"Harry and his sister came to the party at Deacon Joe's, and brought
+with them a late volume of D'Annunzio for Marie to read. Harry wished
+to know if I had read it, and gave us a talk on the realism of this
+modern Italian author.
+
+"Again I drew on the memoirs of Dr. Godfrey Vogeldam Guph, and this
+time I explained that the learned doctor had all the talents but one.
+He never told a lie--never but once, and that was on his death-bed.
+Yes, it was a little late, but still it was in time to save his
+reputation, and, possibly, even his soul. To a man of his parts the
+truth had always been good enough, and lying unnecessary. If he had
+told a lie it wouldn't have amounted to anything--everybody would have
+believed it. He wouldn't have got any credit--poor man! He had no more
+use for a lie than a fish has for a mackintosh--until he came to his
+last touching words, which were delivered to a minister and his sister
+Sophia, who had been reading to him from a book of D'Annunzio.
+
+"'My chance has arrived at last,' he said to Sophia, 'and in order
+that I may make the most of it, you will please send for a minister.'
+
+"The latter came, and, seeing the book, asked the good man if he had
+read it.
+
+"'Alas! my friend, that it should be necessary for me to tell a lie on
+my death-bed,' said the Doctor. 'But now, at last, I tell it proudly
+and promptly. I have not read that book.'
+
+"'And therein I do clearly see the truth,' said the wise old
+minister.
+
+"'Which is this,' the learned Doctor confessed. 'I have come to an
+hour when a lie, and nothing but a lie, can show my sense of shame. I
+solemnly swear that I have not read it!'
+
+"'Well, at least you're a noble liar,' said the man of God. 'I absolve
+you.'
+
+"'I claim no credit--I am only doing my duty,' said the good Doctor,
+with a sign of ineffable peace.
+
+"As soon as I could get his attention, I called Harry aside and
+whispered: 'In Heaven's name, boy, get hold of that book and hang on
+to it.'
+
+"'Why?' he asked.
+
+"'You don't know the old man as I do--that's why,' I said. 'If he
+should happen to read it, he'd go after you with his grandfather's
+sword the next time you showed up here.'
+
+"Marie stood near us, and I beckoned to her, and she came to my side.
+
+"'The book,' said Harry--'would you let me take it?'
+
+"'I took it to my grandfather, and he is reading it in his room,' she
+answered. 'Shall I go and get it?'
+
+"Harry hesitated.
+
+"'He won't mind,' said Marie; 'I'll go and get it.'
+
+"And away she went.
+
+"She came back to us soon, a bit embarrassed.
+
+"'He seems to be very much interested and--and a little cross,' said
+she. 'I think he will bring it out to you soon.'
+
+"Harry turned pale.
+
+"'You look sick, old man,' I said.
+
+"'I'm not feeling very well,' said he, 'and I think I shall excuse
+myself and go home.'
+
+"There was danger of a scene, but he got away unharmed. By and by the
+lionhearted deacon came out of his room, asked severely for 'young
+Delance,' wandered through the crowd, answered indignantly a few
+inquiries about his health, and returned to his lair.
+
+"I saw that the Deacon was mad. New New England had imprudently bumped
+into old New England, and it was too soon to estimate the damage."
+
+The Honorable Socrates Potter laughed as he filled his pipe, and
+resumed with an attitude of ease and comfort;
+
+"I'm a bit of a Puritan myself, although I understood Harry better
+than did the Deacon. The young people have been captured by the
+frankness of the Latin races. They call it emancipation. Travel and
+the higher education have opened the storage vats of foreign
+degeneracy and piped them into our land. Certain young men who have
+been 'finished' abroad, where they filled their souls with Latin
+lewdness, have turned it into fiction and a source of profit. Women
+buy their books and rush through them, and only touch the low places.
+There they lie entranced, thick as autumnal leaves that strew the
+brooks in Vallombrosa. Like the women in the sack of Ismail, they sit
+them down and watch for the adultery to begin.
+
+"The imagination of the old world seems to have gone wild--Oscar
+Wilde! How the Oscars have thriven there since the first of them went
+to jail!--a degenerate dynasty!--hiding the stench of spiritual rot
+with the perfume of faultless rhetoric, speaking the unspeakable with
+the tongues of angels and of prophets! And mostly, my boy, they have
+thriven on the dollars of American women under the leadership of
+modern culture. And, you know, the maiden follows mama. She is an
+apologist of sublime lewdness, of emancipated human caninity. Now I am
+no prude. I can stand a fairly strong touch of human nature. I can
+even put up with a good deal of the frankness of the cat and dog. But
+the frankness of some modern authors makes me sorry that Adam was a
+common ancestor of theirs and mine. It's a disgrace to Adam and the
+whole human brotherhood. We sons of the Puritans ought to get busy in
+the old cause. Noah had the good sense to keep the animals and the
+people apart, and that's what we've always stood for."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+IN WHICH SOCRATES ATTACKS THE HELMET AND THE BATTLE-AX
+
+
+"Marie came to see us at our home next morning and began to cry as
+soon as she had sat down in the library. The thing I had looked for
+had come to pass. Her grandfather had dropped Harry from his list, and
+warned him to keep off the rag-carpet. There was to be no more
+prancing around in the 'toot-coach' and the 'Harry-cart,' as he called
+them, for Marie. In his view it was the surest means of getting to
+perdition. Harry was an idler, and he had always found that an idle
+brain was the devil's workshop. Marie might be polite to the young
+man, but she must keep her side of the road and see that there was
+always plenty of room between them.
+
+"'He's so hateful,' Marie said of her grandfather. 'He made such a
+fuss about our getting a crest that we've a perfect right to! Mama had
+to give it up.'
+
+"'What! Do you mean to tell me that you have no crest!' I inquired,
+anxiously.
+
+"'We have one, but we cannot use it; our hands are tied,' was her
+sorrowful answer.
+
+"'I'm astonished. Why, everybody is going to have a crest in
+Pointview.
+
+"'The other day I suggested to Bridget Maloney, our pretty chambermaid,
+that she ought to have the Maloney crest on her letter-heads.
+
+"'"What's that?" says Bridget.
+
+"'"What's that!" I said, with a look of pity.
+
+"'Then I showed her a letter from Mrs. Van Alstyne, with a lion and a
+griffin cuffing each other black and blue at the top of the sheet.
+
+"'"It's grand!" said she.
+
+"'"It's the Van Alstyne crest," I said. "It's a proof of respectability.
+Aren't you as good as they are?"
+
+"'"Every bit!" said she.
+
+"'"That's what I thought. Don't you often feel as if you were better
+than a good many people you know?"
+
+"'"Sure I do."
+
+"'"Well, that's a sign that you're blue-blooded," said I. "Probably
+you've got a king in your family somewhere. A crest shows that you
+suspect your ancestors--nothing more than that. It isn't proof, so
+there's no reason why you shouldn't have it. You ought not to be going
+around without a crest, as if you were a common servant-girl. Why,
+every kitchen-maid will be thinking she's as good as you are. You want
+to be in style. You have money in the bank, and not half the people
+who have crests are as well able to afford 'em."
+
+"'"How much do they cost?"
+
+[Illustration: "'IT'S THE VAN ALSTYNE CREST,' I SAID. 'IT'S A PROOF OF
+RESPECTABILITY.'"]
+
+"'"Nothing--at least, yours'll cost nothing, Bridget. I shall be glad
+to buy one for you."
+
+"'The simple girl thanked me, and I found the Maloney crest for her,
+and had the plate made and neatly engraved on a hundred sheets of
+paper.
+
+"'Next week the Pointview _Advocate_ will print this item: "Miss
+Bridget Maloney, the genial chambermaid of Mrs. Socrates Potter, uses
+the Maloney crest on her letter-heads. She is said to be a lineal
+descendant of his Grace Bryan Maloney, one of the early dukes of
+Ireland."
+
+"'Bridget is haughty, well-mannered, and a neat dresser. She's a
+pace-maker in her set. Even the high-headed servants of Warburton
+House imitate her hats and gowns.
+
+"'Yesterday Katie O'Neil, one of Mrs. Warburton's maids, came to me
+for information as to the heraldry of her house. I found a crest for
+Katie; and then came Mary Maginness; and Bertha Schimpfelheim, the
+daughter of a real German count; and one August Bernheimer, a young
+barber of baronial blood; and Pietro Cantaveri, our prosperous
+bootblack, who was the grandson of an Italian countess; and so it
+goes, and soon all the high-born servers of Pointview will be supplied
+with armorial bearings.
+
+"'These claims to distinction shall be soberly chronicled in the
+_Advocate_. Not one is to be overlooked or treated with any lack of
+respect. On the contrary, the whole thing will be exploited with a
+proper sense of awe.'
+
+"Marie laughed.
+
+"'Wait till I tell mama,' she said. 'It's lucky you told me. It's
+saved us. I guess grandfather was right about that.'
+
+"'And he's right about Harry, too,' I said. 'But don't despair; I'm
+trying to put a new mainspring in the boy. If I succeed, your
+grandfather may have to change his mind.'
+
+"She went away comforted, but not happy.
+
+"Well, I went on with the crest campaign. Bertha, Pietro, and the
+others got their crests and saw their names in the paper.
+
+"The supply of crests was soon perfectly adequate, and among our best
+people the demand for them began to diminish, and suddenly ceased. The
+beast rampant and couchant, the helmet and the battle-ax, associated
+only with mixed tenses and misplaced capitals according to their
+ancient habit. This chambermaid grammar was referred to by my friend,
+Dr. Guph, as the 'battle-ax brand'--a designation of some merit.
+Expensive stationery fell into the fireplaces of Pointview, and
+armorial plates were found in the garbage. The family trees of the
+village were deserted. Not a bird twittered in their branches. The
+subject of genealogy was buried in deep silence, save when the
+irreverent referred to some late addition to our new aristocracy.
+
+"Now I want to make it clear that we have no disrespect for the
+customs of any foreign land. If I were living in a foreign land and
+needed evidence of my respectability, I'd have a crest, if it was
+likely to prove my case. But America was founded by the sons of the
+yeomen, and the yeomen established their respectability with other
+evidence. Their brains were so often touched by the battle-ax that
+some of us have an hereditary shyness about the head, and we dodge at
+every baronial relic."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+IN WHICH SOCRATES INCREASES THE SUPPLY OF SPLENDOR
+
+
+"In due time the Society of Useful Women met at our house, and I was
+invited to make a few remarks, and said in effect:
+
+"'We are trying to correct the evil of extravagant display in
+America, and first I ask you to consider the cause of it. We find it
+in the ancient law of supply and demand. The reason that women love to
+array themselves in silk and laces and jewels and picture-hats and
+plumes of culture and sunbursts of genealogy lies in the fact that
+the supply of these things has generally been limited. Their cost is
+so high, therefore, that few can afford them, and those who wear
+them are distinguished from the common herd. This matter of buying
+distinction is the cause of our trouble. Now I propose that we
+increase the supply of jewels, silks, laces, picture-hats, and
+ancestors in Pointview--that we bring them within the reach of all,
+and aim a death-blow at the distinction to be obtained by displaying
+them. There isn't a servant-girl in this community who doesn't pant
+for luxuries. Why shouldn't she? I move that we have a committee
+to consider this inadequate supply of luxuries, with the power to
+increase the same at its own expense.'
+
+"I was appointed chairman of that committee, and went to work, with
+Betsey and Mrs. Warburton as coadjutors.
+
+"We stocked a store with clever imitations of silks, satins, and
+old lace, and the best assortment of Brummagem jewelry that could be
+raked together. We had a great show-case full of glittering
+paste--bracelets, tiaras, coronets, sunbursts, dog-collars, rings,
+necklaces--all extremely modish and so handsome that they would
+have deceived any but trained eyes. Our pearls and sapphires were
+especially attractive. We hired a skilled dressmaker, familiar
+with the latest modes, and a milliner who could imitate the most
+stunning hats on Fifth Avenue at reasonable prices. Every servant in
+good standing in our community was permitted to come and see and
+buy and say 'Charge it.'
+
+"Mrs. Warburton's ball for the servants of Pointview, to be given in
+the Town Hall, was coming near. It happened that the committee of
+arrangements included Marie and the young Reverend Robert Knowles.
+Their intimacy began in the work of that committee. For days they rode
+about in the minister's motor-car getting ready for the ball and for
+the greater intimacy that followed it.
+
+"Our ball sent its radiance over land and sea. Sunbursts shone like
+stars in the Milky Way. A fine orchestra furnished music. Reporters
+from New York and other cities were present.
+
+"The nurses, cooks, kitchen-girls, laundresses, and chambermaids of
+Pointview were radiant in silk, lace, diamonds, pearls, and rubies.
+The costumes were brilliant, but all in good taste. Alabaster? Why, my
+dear boy, they would have made the swell set resemble a convention of
+beanpoles. For the matter of busts, they busted the record!
+
+"The only mishap occurred when Bertha Schimpfelheim--some call her Big
+Bertha--slipped and fell in a waltz, injuring the knee of her
+companion. To my surprise the brainiest of these working-folk saw the
+satire in which they were taking part, and entered into it with all
+the more spirit because they knew.
+
+[Illustration: "RADIANT IN SILK, LACE, DIAMONDS, PEARLS, AND RUBIES"]
+
+"The presence of Mr. Warburton, Mr. and Mrs. Delance, Marie, and the
+Reverend Robert Knowles on the floor insured proper decorum and lent
+an air of seriousness to the event. It proved an effective background
+for Marie. She shone like a pigeon-blood ruby among garnets. She wore
+no jewels, and was distinguished only by her beauty and the simplicity
+of her costume and the unmistakable evidence of good breeding in her
+face and manners.
+
+"Harry sat with me in the gallery.
+
+"'She's wonderful!' he exclaimed. 'All this rococo ware simply
+emphasizes her charm. Only a girl of brains could carry it off as she
+does. She's among them and yet apart. An old duke once told me that if
+you want to know the rank of a lady, observe how she treats an
+inferior. It's quite true. By Jove! I'm in love with Marie, and I'm
+going to make her my wife if possible.'
+
+"'That's one really substantial result of the ball,' I said.
+
+"'Do you think that she cares for Knowles--that minister chap?'"
+
+"'I'm inclined to think that she likes you better,' I said.
+
+"'Is your inclination encouraged by evidence?'
+
+"'That query I must decline to answer,' said I.
+
+"'Well, you know, I'm not going to be long in doubt,' the boy
+declared, as he left me.
+
+"The event was an epoch-maker. Long reports of it appeared in the
+daily press and traveled far in a surge of thoughtful merriment. For
+instance: 'Miss Mary Maginness, the accomplished lady-in-waiting of
+Mrs. William Warburton, of Warburton House, wore a coronet and a
+dog-collar of diamonds above a costume of white brocaded satin,
+trimmed with old duchesse lace and gold ornaments. Miss Maginness is a
+lineal descendant of Lord Rawdon Maginness, of Cork, who early in the
+seventeenth century commanded an army that drove the Italians out of
+Ireland.'
+
+"And so it went, with column after column of glittering detail. Since
+then the servants have enjoyed a monopoly in splendor--it's been a
+kind of Standard Jewel Company, and certain rich men have boasted in
+my presence that they haven't a jewel in their houses; and one added
+with quite unneeded emphasis: 'Not a measly jewel. My wife says that
+they suggest dish-water and aprons.'
+
+"'It is too funny!' said Mrs. Warburton. 'You know those jewels at the
+ball were quite as real as many that are worn by ladies of fashion.
+Most rich women who want to save themselves worry keep their jewels in
+the strong-box and wear replicas of paste and composition.'
+
+"The instalment jeweler has gone out of business, and half a dozen
+servant-girls have refused to make further payments on their
+solitaires and returned them.
+
+"One singular thing happened. Nearly all those servants paid their
+bills to our store, and we closed out with an unexpected profit, while
+a number of stores who charged their goods to the noble band of
+employers have stopped for need of money."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+IN WHICH SOCRATES BREAKS THE DRAG AND TANDEM MONOPOLY IN POINTVIEW
+
+
+"Harry's father came often for a smoke and talk with me after dinner,
+and his favorite subject was Harry. As a subject of conversation,
+Harry was more successful than the average crime. In this respect he
+resembled a divorce or a murder. That's how it happened that Harry got
+on my mind. He is one of the most skilful riders of the human mind
+that I know of. He was wearing us out, and we were all bucking to get
+him off. Well, his father was thinking about him while I was thinking
+about the rest of Pointview. It was another case of Rome and Cæsar.
+Harry's last achievement was to accuse his father of being the
+fossiliferous remnant of an ancient time.
+
+"'The truth is, Harry hasn't enough competition in his line,' I
+suggested, one evening. 'The other boys are doing well, but they don't
+keep up with him.
+
+"'You know after I left college, in my youth, I spent a couple of
+years in Wyoming. Well, Mary Ann Crowder was the only single lady
+within a hundred miles, and she was the most obstreperous damn critter
+that I ever saw. She had a monopoly an' knew it, an' wasn't decently
+polite. Put on more style than a nigger at a cakewalk. Though she had
+red hair an' only one eye, some of the boys used to ride sixty miles
+for a visit with her. Then they had to swim the Snake River and maybe
+wrestle with a tame bear that was loose in the dooryard. By and by a
+man with two unmarried daughters moved on to a ranch near us, and then
+Mary Ann began to be polite. She suddenly became a human being, an'
+killed the bear, an' moved across the river an' married the first man
+that proposed, and lived happily ever after.
+
+"'What we need here is another drag and tandem.'
+
+"'Get what you need, and I'll pay the bills,' said Harry's father.
+
+"So I went to a sale in New York, bought my drag and tandem-cart, and
+had them shipped to Pointview. Our local sign-painter put a crest or,
+rather, a kind of royal hatchment, on the panels of both. Then I sold
+them for next to nothing to a local livery on conditions. Its new
+owner agreed to use the drag for chowder-parties, and to break the
+worst-looking nags in his stable to drive tandem on the cart.
+
+"Tommy Ruggles, a smart-looking knight of the currycomb, whose first
+name was a kitchen word in Pointview, sprang to my assistance. He had
+curly hair, and a good deal of natural cuteness, and was, moreover, 'a
+divvle with the girls.' He contracted with me to take a selected list
+of female servants for an airing in the tandem-cart. He was to get a
+royalty of five dollars a head on every servant that was properly
+aired, with a small premium on red ones.
+
+"He began with Big Bertha, our worthy German countess. Tommy had a
+playful humor, and cracked his long whip over the rough-harnessed nags
+and merrily tooted his horn as the rig lumbered along through the main
+streets of our village. Many laughed and many wondered, while an army
+of noisy kids followed and hung on behind.
+
+"Tommy got his second girl, who was hit on the head with a ripe
+tomato, and then it was all over. The girls wouldn't stand for it. The
+sport had become too exciting. Tommy told me how he had invited
+Bridget Maloney, and she had said: 'Na-a-ah! Do yez take me for an
+idiot? Sure every rotten egg in the town would be jumpin' at me.'
+
+"It suggested an idea. As the imitation idiots had given out, we
+would try the real thing. So I 'phoned the manager of our thriving
+idiot asylum on the Post Road and arranged to have Tommy take one of
+his patients every day for a drive in the cart. Why shouldn't all the
+idiots enjoy themselves? Fresh air would be good for them. It would
+turn the cart into a charity which would cover a part of my sins. I
+asked for the better class of idiots--the quiet ones, who had sense
+enough to appreciate a good thing. The parade began and continued day
+after day.
+
+"Harry had retired his tandem after Tom, with a stiff-backed idiot by
+his side, had clattered after him through the village behind the two
+spavined nags to the amusement of many people. He had kept up with
+Harry.
+
+"Soon that kind of a rig was known as the Idiot Wagon. Then Tommy
+resigned; it was more than he could stand. He said he was willing to
+do any honest work for money, but not that. He said that the idiots
+imagined themselves rich, and put on so much style that it made the
+whole thing ridiculous.
+
+"'Never mind--it's the habit of idiots,' I said.
+
+"'One of 'em thinks he's Napoleon Bonaparte, an' calls me his man, and
+wears a plug hat and sits as straight as a ramrod, and bows to the
+people when they laugh at him,' said Tommy. 'Some of 'em get stuck on
+the cart, and it's a fight to get 'em out of it. I tell ye, I'm sick
+o' the job. The sight o' that cart makes me feel nutty.'
+
+"'Never mind, Tom,' I said; 'you've been a public benefactor, and you
+and the cart are entitled to an honorable discharge.'
+
+"Every bright day the drag was tooling over the road with picnic-parties
+on their way to one of the popular beaches. Our local lodges and
+political clubs, and now and then a load of Italians, were able to
+enjoy the luxury which had been the exclusive delight of Harry and the
+fluffy maidens of Pointview.
+
+"Drags an' tandems are all right if you don't go too far with 'em. We
+were just in time to prevent them from becoming tools of degeneration
+in our village."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+IN WHICH SUNDRY PEOPLE MAKE GREAT DISCOVERIES
+
+
+"There were many private panics in Pointview. It was my privilege to
+observe, under calm exteriors, a raging fever of excitement--characters
+going bankrupt, collectors wandering in a fruitless quest. One little
+rill that flowed into the swift river of national trouble issued from
+the bosom of my clerk, Mr. 'Cub' Sayles. It had been one of the most
+placid bosoms in Pointview. Now it was in the midst of what I have
+since referred to as the 'Violet and Supper Panic of 1907.'
+
+"Cub was a quiet, hard-working, serious-minded boy whose mother moved
+in the higher circles of Boston. He had a low, pleasant voice, a
+touch of Harry's dialect, and a sad face. He had asked for a higher
+salary, and I had asked for information.
+
+"'You see every time I go to call on my girl I have to take a bunch of
+violets or a two-pound box of candy,' he said. 'Then if we go to the
+theater her chaperon has to be with us--don't you know? She's a stout
+lady who complains of faintness before the play ends, and I have to
+ask them out to supper. Then I am always greatly alarmed, for you
+never can tell what will happen, sir, with two ladies at supper and
+only twenty dollars in your pocket, and both ladies fond of game and
+crab-meat. It's really very trying. I sit and tremble as I watch them,
+and go home with only a feeble remnant of my salary, and next day I
+have to pawn my diamond ring.'
+
+"'All that isn't honest,' I said. 'You're getting her favor under
+false pretenses. You're trying to make her believe that you are a
+sort of aristocrat with lots of money. Why don't you tell her the
+truth--that you can't afford violets, that the two-pound box is a
+burden that is breaking your back, and that every theater-supper sends
+you to the pawnbroker's?'
+
+"'I can't--she would throw me over,' he explained. 'The girls expect
+those things. They like to show and talk about them--don't you know?
+It's the fashion. Our best young men do it, sir.'
+
+"'Well, if you are willing to give up your honor for a lady's smile
+you won't do for me,' I said. 'You must not only tell the truth, but
+live it. You must be just what you are--a poor boy working for twenty
+dollars a week. If the girl doesn't like it she's unfit to associate
+with honest men. If you don't like it I don't like you.'
+
+"Perspiration had begun to dampen the brow of Cub.
+
+"'I--I hadn't seen it in that light, sir,' he said. 'But what am I to
+do, sir? I am heavily indebted to my tailor.'
+
+"'What! Haven't you paid for those lovely garments?'
+
+"'I had them charged, sir,' Cub sadly answered. 'My mother sent me a
+hundred dollars to pay for them, but I loaned it to Roger Daniels. I
+should be much obliged, sir, if you would collect it for me.'
+
+"I went to Roger and made him pay the debt. He paid it in a curious
+way--by going to his tailor and buying a hundred dollars' worth of
+clothes for Cub and having them charged. It was compounding a felony,
+but my client was satisfied and Roger was grateful. He began to have
+some regard for me. Not every lawyer had been able to make him pay.
+Within a day or so he came to consult me about a mortgage on his
+patrimony.
+
+"Roger had married and settled down immediately after his remarkable
+cruise. He had kept his party in ignorance of his financial troubles
+and returned with his reputation as an aristocrat firmly established.
+The gay young Bessie Runnymede had accepted him at once. He had become
+junior partner in a firm of brokers and had rented a handsome
+residence in Pointview.
+
+"So they began their little play with ladies, lords, and gentlemen in
+the cast, and with a country-house, a tandem, a crested limousine, and
+a racing launch for scenery. But Roger had what is known as a bad
+season. Well, you know, the moving-picture shows had got such a hold
+on the public.
+
+"At first we concluded that he must have made another lucky play in
+the market. Then, after six months or so, bills against Roger began to
+arrive for collection from sundry department stores in the city. He
+was a good fellow and had plausible excuses, and I declined to press
+payment and returned the bills.
+
+"One day, some eight months after the wedding, an urgent telegram
+from Roger brought me to New York. I found the young man in his
+office, with his wife at his side. They were both in tears. I sat down
+with them, and he told me this story:
+
+"'The fact is, I'm a thief,' he began. 'I have confessed the truth to
+my partners. Since my marriage I have taken about twenty thousand
+dollars--needed every cent of it to keep going. The fact is, I
+expected to make a killing in the market and return the money--had
+inside information--but everything went wrong. Yesterday I was cleaned
+out.
+
+"'I went home late in the evening. I hoped that my wife would be in
+bed, but she was waiting for me. She said that I looked sick, and
+wanted to know what was the matter. I told her that I had a headache,
+and got into bed as soon as possible; but I couldn't sleep. Long after
+midnight my wife rose and turned on the light and came to my bed and
+said that she knew I was troubled about something--that she had seen
+it in my face for weeks. She begged that I would let her help me bear
+it. Then I told her the truth, and discovered--for I didn't know her
+before--one of the noblest women in the world. She hid her face in the
+pillow, and then I had a bad moment.
+
+"'"Why did you do it?" she asked as soon as she could speak.
+
+"'And I said: "We've been foolish--trying to keep up with Harry and
+the rest of them. It was my fault. I ought to have told you that I
+couldn't go the pace."
+
+"'She saw the truth in a flash, and the old-fashioned woman in her got
+to work.
+
+"'"Roger, get up and dress yourself," said she. "We will go and see
+your partners to-night. We will go together, for I am as guilty as
+you. We will tell them the truth and beg for time. Maybe we can get
+the money."
+
+"'We started in our motor-car about one o'clock for the city, on dark
+and muddy roads. Some ten miles out we broke an axle and left car and
+driver and went on afoot. My wife wouldn't wait. No trains were
+running. But we could get a trolley five miles down the road. So we
+went on in the dark and silence. I put my arm around her, and not a
+word passed between us for an hour or so. I don't know what she was
+thinking of, but I was trying to count my follies. It began to rain,
+and I felt sorry for Bess, and took off my coat and threw it over
+her.'
+
+"'"I don't mind the rain," she said. "It will cool me."
+
+"'We were a sight when we got to the trolley, and just before daylight
+we rang the bell of the senior partner. Our weariness and muddy shoes
+and rain-soaked garments were a help to us. They touched his heart,
+sir. Anyhow, he gave me a week of grace in which to make good. I must
+get the money somehow, and I want your advice about it.'
+
+"'I'm glad of one part of it all,' I said--'that you have discovered
+each other and learned that you are human beings of a pretty good
+sort. I've much more respect for both of you than I ever had before.'
+
+"He looked at me in surprise.
+
+"'Oh, you are a better man than you were three months ago!' I answered
+him. 'You happen to have run against the law, and it's shocked and
+frightened you. But you are improving. Long ago you began to incur
+debts which you couldn't pay, and you must have known that you
+couldn't pay them. In that manner you became possessed of a large sum
+of money belonging to other people. It was used not for necessities,
+but to maintain a foolish display. That is the most heartless kind of
+fraud. I've much more respect for you now that you see your fault and
+confess it. I'm convinced now that you have a conscience, and that
+you will be likely to make some use of it in the future. I'm
+particularly grateful to your wife. She has shown me that she is just
+a woman, and not an angel. I don't believe that it was at all
+necessary for you to have groveled in aristocratic crimes in order to
+win her heart. The yacht cruise and the tandem and the violets and the
+Fifth Avenue clothes and the ton of candy were quite superfluous. You
+needed only to tell her the truth, like a man, and say that you loved
+her.'
+
+"'It is true, Roger,' said the girl as she broke down again.
+
+"'I did it all to please you, dear,' the boy answered, in his effort
+to comfort her.
+
+"'And it did please me,' she said, brokenly, 'but I know that I should
+have been better pleased if--'
+
+"She hesitated, and I expressed her thought for her:
+
+"'If he had centralized on manhood. There is something sweeter than
+violets and grander than fine raiment in a sort of character that a
+boy should offer to the girl he loves.'
+
+"They were both convinced. It was easy to see that now, and I promised
+to do what I could for them.
+
+"I got a schedule of the young man's debts and found that he owed,
+among other debts, six thousand dollars to sundry shops and department
+stores in New York--the purchases of his wife in the eight months of
+their wedded life. I asked her how it could have happened.
+
+"'He opened accounts for me and said I could buy what I wanted, and
+you know it is so easy to say "Charge it,'" was her answer. 'Every one
+has accounts these days, and they tempt you to buy more than you
+need.'
+
+"'It is true. Credit is the latest ally of the devil. It is the great
+tempter. It is responsible for half the extravagance of modern life.
+The two words 'charge it' have done more harm than any others in the
+language. They have led to a vast amount of unnecessary buying. They
+have developed a talent for extravagance in our people. They have
+created a large and growing sisterhood and brotherhood of dead-beats.
+They have led to bankruptcy and slow pay and bad debts. They have
+raised the cost of everything we require because the tradesman compels
+us to pay his uncollected accounts. They are added to your bills and
+mine, and the merchant prince suffers no impairment of his fortune.
+
+"Bessie's bank-account was also overdrawn. That reminds me of a new
+sinner--the bank-check. It is so easy to draw a check--and, then,
+somehow, it's only a piece of paper. You let it go without a pang
+while you would be very thoughtful if you were counting out the money
+and parting with it.
+
+"The check is another way of saying 'Charge it.'
+
+"That evening I went to see Harry."
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+IN WHICH HARRY IS FORCED TO ABANDON SWAMP FICTION AND LIKE FOLLIES AND
+TO STUDY THE GEOGRAPHY AND NATIVES OF A LAND UNKNOWN TO OUR
+HEIRISTOCRACY
+
+
+"I found Harry smoking with Cub Sayles in his den above stairs in the
+big country-house of Henry Delance. As I entered Harry said to his
+young friend:
+
+"'I have to talk over some things with Mr. Potter--would you mind
+going down to the library?'
+
+"Cub withdrew, and Harry sat down with me.
+
+"'I suppose you've seen him?' he asked, nervously.
+
+"'Whom?'
+
+"'Why, you know a mysterious stranger has been looking for me and--by
+Jove!--I'm scared stiff. He's an Englishman.'
+
+"'What of that?'
+
+"'Let me show you,' said Harry.
+
+"He took a key from his pocket, unlocked a door, and fetched the
+familiar skull of the Bishop of St. Clare and put it on the table
+before me.
+
+"'It's that damn Bishop's head,' he whispered. 'It has come
+back--would you believe it?--picked up by a fisherman on the Irish
+coast and returned to the express office in London. All the old
+directions were quite legible on the box. "To Harry Delance, SS.
+_Lusitania_. If not found, forward to Pointview, Conn., U.S.A.,
+charges collect!" So it came on. I received a notice and went down and
+got it out of bond and paid three pounds, and here it is.'
+
+"'It looks as if the Bishop was out for revenge,' I said, with a
+laugh.
+
+"'He's got on my nerves and my conscience,' said Harry. 'By Jove! he
+haunts me. When I heard of this mysterious Englishman to-day I got a
+chill.'
+
+"'You go buy yourself a small shovel and a pocket light to-morrow,' I
+suggested, and at night go back in the hills with the Bishop's head
+and bury it.'
+
+"'And if I get into trouble I want you to take care of me.'
+
+"I made no answer. It didn't seem necessary, but I said: 'There's
+another matter of which I have come to talk with you. Our friend Roger
+is in trouble.'
+
+"I told him the story of Roger's downfall. It got under his vest, and
+I added: 'Now, Harry, it's up to you to indulge in some more
+philanthropy. You ought to help him.'
+
+"'What--what can I do?' he asked in amazement.
+
+"'Lend him the money--twenty thousand dollars. It isn't all that the
+public will charge against you on Roger's account, but it will do.'
+
+"'Harry sank in his chair and threw up his hands as if grasping for a
+straw.
+
+"'It's my whole allowance for the year,' he said, 'and I couldn't
+appeal to the Governor.'
+
+"'Nevertheless you ought to do it, for Roger told me that it was your
+pace that brought him where he is.'
+
+"'What an ass!' Harry exclaimed, and the old Bishop seemed to indorse
+his view. 'By the blue beard of the Caliph, what am I to do?'
+
+"'Pay it,' I insisted.
+
+"'Pay it and die,' he groaned. 'I shall have to do it somehow, but
+this kind of thing is grinding me.'
+
+"'You can go to my ranch in Wyoming and live on nothing for six
+months,' I said. 'When you get back I'll lend you enough to tide you
+over!
+
+"'I'll do it,' he said, as if it were the very straw he had been
+reaching for.
+
+"Then he began to tell me of other troubles. Marie had been decidedly
+cool to Harry at the servants' ball. Then he had met her on the
+street, and she had barely noticed him and hurried away, with the
+young Reverend Robert Knowles at her side. Harry was, fortunately,
+going slow, but he had received internal injuries and was suffering
+from shock.
+
+"'The old man is at the bottom of it,' I explained. 'You gave him a
+dose from the wrong bottle. It p'isoned him.'
+
+"'By Jove! What a prude he is!' said Harry. 'Upon my word that is one
+of the noblest books I ever read--contains a great lesson, don't you
+know? It takes you straight to the heights.'
+
+"'Too straight,' I said. 'It turns out for nothing. It crosses a
+morass to avoid going around. When you reach the high ground you are
+covered with mud and slime. You need to be washed and disinfected, and
+perhaps you've caught a fever that will last as long as you live.
+Many a boy and girl have got mired in this swamp fiction that you
+enjoy so much. There are many of us who prefer to go around the swamp
+and keep on a decent footing even if it takes longer.'
+
+"'We want to know all sides of life,' said Harry.
+
+"'And would you care to see the girl you loved studying life in a
+brothel?'
+
+"'Well, really, you know, that's different,' Harry stammered.
+
+"'But the fact is, her feet might as well be in a brothel as her
+brain,' I insisted. 'She might shake the dust from her _feet_. Harry,
+there's one side of life that you ought to study at once--the American
+side. You've neglected the Western hemisphere in your studies. When
+can you start for the ranch?'
+
+"'Day after to-morrow--if you like. This place is a dreadful bore.'
+
+"'Good! I'll attend to the tickets to-day, The cart, drag, and horses
+will be all the better for a vacation, and the eyes of the people are
+in need of rest.'
+
+"'The whole outfit is going to be sold," said Harry. 'Idiots and the
+hoi polloi have quite ruined the sport here. The Governor is always
+poking fun at it, you know, and it has made me so weary! One can't
+stand that kind of thing forever--can he? I got after his helmet,
+battle-ax, and family tree, by Jove! Our crested chambermaids and
+bootblacks have been a great help to me. What a noble band of
+philanthropists! Father and I have made an agreement. He is going to
+chuck the battle-ax and saw the royal branches off our family tree and
+I am going to sell the drag, cart, and horses.'
+
+"'That's a great treaty,' I said. 'The settlement of the Alaskan
+frontier is not more important than fixing the boundaries of our
+social life. Let us surrender the tools of idiocy; especially, let us
+abandon all claim to the helmet and battle-ax. They're all right in
+their place, but they aren't ours. The plowshare and the pruning-hook
+are our symbols.'
+
+"'By Jove! you know, the old Bishop of St. Clare agrees with you
+exactly,' said Harry. 'I've been reading his life and writings, which
+I picked up in London, and he's about converted me to your way of
+thinking. He hated "the glittering idleness" of the rich and put
+industry above elegance.'
+
+"'And he doesn't intend that your education shall be neglected--he's
+looking after you.'
+
+"'He's as industrious as Destiny,' said the young man. 'Did you know
+that Cub Sayles is engaged?'
+
+"'To whom?'
+
+"'Mrs. Revere-Chalmers.'
+
+"'God rest his soul!' I exclaimed.
+
+"'It's just the thing for Cub,' said Harry. 'He's poor but presentable,
+and has many extravagant tastes. She's quite a bit older than he, of
+course, but that isn't unusual.'
+
+"'I warned him long ago, knowing that his folly would undo him. Now he
+will be a captain of New Thought, King of the Flub Dubs, advertising
+manager of the Psychological Hair Factory, and inspector of pimples.'
+
+"'But don't you know that he will have everything that he desires?'
+
+"'Except happiness.'
+
+"'Oh, I think that she is very fond of him!' said Harry. 'She told me
+to-day that he is the only man she ever loved, and the dear old girl
+thinks that she won him by concentration.'
+
+"With this remark, made on the 20th of May, Harry dropped out of the
+history of Pointview until December."
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+IN WHICH THE MINISTER GETS INTO LOVE AND TROUBLE
+
+
+"Cub resigned his place in my office next day, and confessed his
+purpose, and I heard him with sober respect and tried in every proper
+way to save him. It wouldn't work.
+
+"The lines of panic had left the face of Cub. The two-pound expression
+had departed from it. The faintness of chaperons would no longer
+imperil his comfort.
+
+"'A hundred and four pounds of candy and twenty suppers, and all for
+nothing!' I exclaimed. 'You ruin a girl's digestion and chuck her
+over. It isn't fair.'
+
+"'But, sir, I found that I didn't love her,' said Cub.
+
+"'What a waste of violets, confectionery, and crab-meat!'
+
+"'Yes, sir, in a way; but you see I had to have my training in
+society,' Cub declared.
+
+"What was the use? Cub had no more humor than a sewing-machine.
+
+"'The wedding day drew on apace, and just before its arrival a
+notorious weekly in New York gave the lady a drubbing. Certain
+circumstances that made her first marriage unhappy were plainly hinted
+at. The town shuddered with amazement. Cub stood pat, but the
+Episcopal minister refused to marry them. The Baptist minister balked.
+It looked like a postponement, but the knot was tied, on schedule
+time, by the Reverend Robert Knowles. That made no end of talk, and a
+small party of insurgents left his church. Deacon Benson was on the
+point of pulling out, and swore so much about it that I advised him to
+hang on for his own sake.
+
+"'But there ain't much to hang on to,' said the Deacon.
+
+"'Mrs. Revere-Chalmers-Sayles held a mortgage on the property of the
+Baptist Society of Pointview, and asked me to foreclose it.
+
+"'I have another mortgage on the Congregational church, and they're
+behind in their interest, but I'm not going to push them,' she said to
+me.
+
+"So young Mr. Knowles had acted from motives of business prudence, and
+was not much at fault. The old church had ceased to live within its
+means and had entered the 'charge it' van, and was trying to serve two
+masters.
+
+"Betsey and I paid both mortgages and threw them in the fire.
+
+"Young Mr. Knowles came to see us with Marie, and brought the thanks
+of the parish. They were a good-looking couple.
+
+"This minister of the First Congregational Church of Pointview now
+aspired to be the prime minister of its first heiress. Their
+acquaintance, which had begun in the arrangements for the servants'
+ball, had grown in warmth and intimacy as soon as Harry had gone.
+Robert began to take after Marie, with muffler open and all the gas
+on. He was a swell of a parson--utterly damned with good-fortune. Had
+an income from the estate of his father, a call from on high, a crest
+from Charlemagne, diplomas from college and the seminary, a fine
+figure, red cheeks, and 'heavenly eyes.' As to his fatal gift of
+beauty, the young ladies were of one mind. They agreed, also, about
+the cut of his garments, that were changed several times a day.
+
+"A dashing, masculine, head-punching spirit might have saved him with
+all his ballast, but he didn't have it. The Reverend Robert was a good
+fellow to everybody--a fairly sound-hearted, decent, handsome fellow,
+but not a man. To be that, one has to know things at first
+hand--especially work and trouble. He was a second-hand, school-made
+thinker. His doctrines came out of the books, but his conduct was
+mildly modern. He danced and smoked a little, and played bridge and
+golf, and made his visits in a handsome motor-car.
+
+"Marie liked the young man, and she and her mother rode and tramped
+about with him almost every day of that summer. Deacon Joe showed
+signs of faintness when he spoke of him.
+
+"One day I went up to the Benson homestead and found the old man
+sitting on his piazza alone.
+
+"'Where's Marie?' I asked.
+
+"'Off knocking around with the minister,' said Deacon Joe, in a voice
+frail with contempt.
+
+"'She might be in worse company,' I suggested.
+
+"'Maybe,' he snapped.
+
+"'What's the matter with the minister?'
+
+"'Nothing,' said the old man, with a chuckle. 'He's a complete
+gentleman, complete! So plaguy beautiful that he's a kind of a girl's
+plaything. He couldn't milk a cow or dig a hill o' potatoes. Acts kind
+o' faint an' sickly to me.'
+
+"The Deacon thoughtfully stirred the roots of his beard with the
+fingers of his right hand, and went on with a squint and a feeble tone
+which he seemed to think best suited to his subject.
+
+"'Talks so low you can hardly hear him. I have to set with my hand to
+my ear every Sunday to make out what he's sayin', an' he prays as if
+he had the lung fever. Talks o' hell as though it was a quart o' cold
+molasses. That's one reason we ain't no respect for it in this
+community. Ay--'es! That's the reason.'
+
+"He squinted his face thoughtfully and resumed with more energy.
+
+"'I like to hear a man get up on his hind legs and holler as they used
+to--by gravy! Ye can't scare anybody by whispers. Damn it, sir, what
+we need is an old-fashioned revival.'
+
+"The Deacon halted to take a chew of tobacco, and went on, with a
+sorrowful calmness:
+
+"'Now this young feller don't want to give no credit to God--not a
+bit--no, sir! Science has done everything. I've noticed it time an'
+ag'in. T'other Sunday he said that an angel spoke to Moses, an' the
+Bible says, as plain as A B C, that God spoke to him. How can he
+expect that God is going to bless his ministry, an' he never givin'
+Him any credit?'
+
+"'It's rather bad politics, anyhow,' I said.
+
+"'An' the church is goin' from bad to worse,' he complained. 'The
+average attendance is about forty-seven, an' it used to be between
+five an' six hundred, an' we are all taxed to death to keep it goin'.
+I have to pay three hundred a year for the privilege o' gittin' mad
+every Sunday. Two or three of us have got after him an' made him
+promise to do better. Some awful free-minded folks have crept into the
+church, an' the fact is, we need their money,' Deacon Joe went on.
+'What the minister ought to do is stick to the old doctrines that are
+safe an' sound. 'St'id o' that he's tryin' to sail 'twixt rock an'
+reef.'
+
+"'Between Scylla and Charybdis,' I suggested.
+
+"'Between Silly an' what?' the old man asked, as if in doubt of my
+meaning.
+
+"We were interrupted by the arrival of the Reverend Robert with Marie
+and her mother, in his handsome landaulet. Marie asked me to go with
+her to gather wild flowers in a bit of woodland not far away. I went,
+and soon saw her purpose. She had had the 'jolliest, cutest letter
+from Harry' that she had ever read, and seemed to be in doubt as to
+whether she ought to let him write to her.
+
+"'Has your grandfather forbidden it?' I asked.
+
+"'No.'
+
+"'Then it's up to you,' I said.
+
+"'Do you think he cares for me?'
+
+"'I should think him a fool if he didn't,' I said, looking down into
+her lovely dark eyes.
+
+"'But do you really and truly think that he cares for me?' she
+insisted.
+
+"'I suspect that he does.'
+
+"'Why?'
+
+"'A lawyer must not betray a confidence.'
+
+"'Do you like him?'
+
+"'Wait until his uneducation is completed, and I'll tell you. I am
+beginning to have hope for Harry.'
+
+"'I'm sorry grandpapa is so hateful!' she exclaimed, with a sigh.
+
+"I stood up for the old man and asked:
+
+"'Do you like the Reverend Robert?'
+
+"'Very much! He's so good-looking, and has such beautiful thoughts!
+Have you heard him preach?'
+
+"'No.'
+
+"'We think his sermons are fine. Everybody likes them but grandpapa.
+He wants noise, you know--lung power and old theology. I hate it!'
+
+"'He doesn't take to Robert?'
+
+"'No; he calls him a calf. Nobody is good enough for me, you know.
+He'd like me to marry some man with a hoe, who would take me to church
+and Sunday school every sabbath morning, and for a walk to the
+cemetery in the afternoon, and down to the prayer-meeting every
+Wednesday night, and on a journey from Genesis to Revelations once a
+year. It's too much to expect of a human being. Then the hoes are in
+the hands of Poles, Slavs, and Italians. So what am I to do?'
+
+"'Well, you are young--you can afford to wait a while,' I said.
+
+"'But not until I am old and all withered up. I am going to marry the
+man I love within a year or so, if he has the good sense to ask me.
+Don't you ever go to church?'
+
+"'No,' I said.
+
+"'Why not?'
+
+"I tried to think. There were the ministers--two boys and three old
+men--dried beef and veal! Not to my knowledge had a single one of them
+ever expressed an idea. They were seen, but not felt. The Church! Why,
+certainly, it was founded on the sweetness, strength, and sanity of a
+great soul. I had almost forgotten that. It had grown feeble. It had
+got its fortunes entangled in psychological hair. It should have been
+correcting the follies of the people--their selfishness, their sinful
+pride, their extravagance, their loss of honor and humanity. Had I not
+seen, in the case of Harry and his followers, how the Church had
+failed in its work? Ought it not to have sought and saved them long
+ago--saved them from needless disaster? It should have been appealing
+to their consciences. If appeals had failed it should have stung them
+with ridicule or raised a voice like that of Christ against the
+Pharisees. The Church! Why, it was living, not in the present, but in
+the past. Here in Pointview the Church itself had become one of the
+greatest follies of the time.
+
+"'I want you to go next Sunday and hear Mr. Knowles, as a favor to
+me--won't you?' Marie asked.
+
+"'Yes,' I said. 'In the next five Sundays I shall go to every
+Protestant church in Pointview. I want to know what they're doing. I
+shall put aside my scruples and go.'"
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+IN WHICH SOCRATES DISCOVERS A NEW FOLLY
+
+
+"Well, I went and saw the Reverend Robert Knowles sail between 'Silly
+and Charybdis.' He bumped on both sides, but did it rather gracefully.
+He reviewed the career of Samuel, who lived and died some thousands of
+years ago. The miraculous touch of Carlyle or Macaulay might easily
+have failed in the task of reviving a man so thoroughly dead. But the
+Reverend Robert entered this unequal contest with no evidence of
+alarm. The dead man prevailed. The power of his long sleep fell upon
+us. My head grew heavy. I felt my weight bearing down upon the
+cushions. A stiffness came into my bones.
+
+"On our way to church Betsey had placed the young minister in my
+thoughts. The trustees had reckoned that he would revive the interest
+of the young people in Sunday worship; and he did, but it was the
+worship of youth and beauty.
+
+"Well, the other churches were emptier than ever, and so the spiritual
+life of the community was in no way improved. In fact, I guess it had
+been a little embittered by the new conditions. As soon as it became
+known that Marie had won the prize of his favor the other girls had
+returned to their native altars, having discovered that the new
+minister was vain, worldly, and conceited.
+
+"Lettie Davis, who had made a dead set at him, had been strongly
+convinced of that as soon as he began to show a preference for Marie,
+and the Davis family had left the church and gone over to the
+Methodists. The young man had been filled with alarm. He feared it
+would wreck the church. That old ship of the faith was leaky and
+iron-sick, and down by the head and heel, as they say at sea. She
+rolled if one got off or on her.
+
+"Such was the condition of things when we entered the church of my
+fathers. We sat down in the Potter pew a few minutes before the
+service began. There were, by actual count, forty-nine people gathered
+around the altar of the old church, and behind us a great emptiness
+and the ghosts of the dead. In my boyhood I had sat in its dim light,
+with six hundred people filling every seat to the doors and a man of
+power and learning in the pulpit.
+
+"Faces long forgotten were there in those pews--old faces, young
+faces. How many thousands had left its altar to find distant homes or
+to go on their last journey to that nearer one in the churchyard! My
+heart was full and ready for strong meat, but none came to me. The
+moment of silence had been something rare--like an old Grecian vase
+wonderfully wrought. Then, suddenly, the singing fell upon us and
+broke the silence into ruins. It was in the nature of a breach of the
+peace. There are two kinds of people who ought to be gently but firmly
+restrained: the person that talks too much and the person that sings
+too much.
+
+"This young minister undoubtedly meant well. He's about the kind of a
+chap that I've seen in law-offices working for fifteen dollars a
+week--industrious, zealous, and able up to a point, and all right
+under supervision. He can be trusted to handle a small case with
+intelligence and judgment. But I wouldn't go to him for instruction in
+philosophy; and if I wished to relay the foundation of my life I
+should, naturally, consult some other person. As one might expect, he
+had searched the cellars of theology for canned goods, and with
+extraordinary success.
+
+"The young man had so lately arrived in this world he couldn't be
+expected to know much about its affairs, and especially about those
+of Samuel. It was graceful and decorous elocution. The Deacon
+expressed his opinion of it in snores, and I longed to follow suit.
+
+"The sermon ended with a dramatic recitation, and on our way out the
+minister met us at the door.
+
+"'You must manage to keep these people awake,' I suggested to him.
+
+"'How am I to do it?' he asked.
+
+"'Well, you might have a corps of pin-stickers carefully distributed
+in the pews, or you could put the pins in your sermon. I recommend the
+latter.'
+
+"We went away with a sense of injury.
+
+"'Let's keep trying,' said Betsey, 'until you find some one you would
+care to hear. I would feel at home in any of our churches. These days
+there's no essential difference between Congregationalists, Baptists,
+Methodists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians. I've talked with all of
+them, and their differences are dead and gone. They stand in the
+printed creeds, but are no longer in the hearts of the people.'
+
+"'Then why all these empty churches?' I asked. 'Why don't the people
+get together in one great church?'
+
+"'Don't talk about the millennium,' said Betsey. 'We must try to make
+the best of what we have.'
+
+"Well, in the next four Sundays we went from church to church to get
+strength for our souls, and found only weakness and disappointment.
+Immune from ridicule and satire, the sacred inefficiency of our pulpit
+had waxed and grown and taken possession of the churches. And one
+thought came to me as I listened. There should be a number of exits to
+every Christian church, plainly marked: 'To be used in case of fire.'
+Ancient history, dead philosophy, sophomoric periods, bad music, empty
+pews, weary groups of the faithful longing for home, were, in brief,
+the things that we saw and heard. It was pathetic.
+
+"I began to think about it. Here were five church organizations, all
+weak, infirm, begging, struggling for life. The automobile and the
+golf and yacht clubs had nearly finished the work of destruction which
+incompetence had so ably begun. There was not much left of them; yet
+their combined property was worth about one hundred thousand dollars.
+They spent in the aggregate fifty-six hundred dollars for ministers'
+salaries, and their total average attendance was only four hundred and
+forty-nine. I could see no more extravagant waste of time, work, and
+capital in any other branch of human effort. Some would call it
+wicked, but, though we speak with the tongues of men and of angels,
+and have not charity, we had better have kept still.
+
+"The Reverend Mr. Knowles came to me within a day or two and
+apologized for his sermon. He complained that he couldn't be
+himself--that he didn't dare speak his thoughts.
+
+"'Whose thoughts do you speak?' I asked.
+
+"'Well, I trail along in the wake of the fathers.'
+
+"'Then you are feeding your flock on corned and kippered thoughts--on
+the dried and dug-up convictions of the dead. It isn't fair. It isn't
+even honest. The church here is dying of anemia for want of fresh
+food. The new world must have new thought to fit new conditions. Its
+outlook has been utterly changed. If a man who had never seen a
+locomotive or a motor-car or a tandem or a telephone or an electric
+light or the sons and daughters of a new millionaire or the home and
+crest of the same or a bill of a modern merchant were to come down out
+of the backwoods and try to tell us how to run the world, we should
+think him an ass, and wisely. Consider how these things have changed
+the spirit of man and surrounded it with new perils.'
+
+"'But think of the old fellows--the mossbacks--who hate your new
+philosophy,' said the minister.
+
+"'And think of the young fellows who are so easily tossed about. The
+moss of senility is covering the bloom of youth and the honor of
+youth.'"
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+IN WHICH HARRY RETURNS TO POINTVIEW AND GOES TO WORK
+
+
+"Betsey and I were giving a dinner-party at our house. Mr. and Mrs.
+Henry Delance and the Warburtons and Dan and Lizzie had come over to
+discuss a plan for the correction of the greatest folly and
+extravagance in the village--namely, the waste of its spiritual
+energy.
+
+"At first we had to discuss a fact related to another folly, for the
+Delances told how Harry's pet collie had come up to the back door that
+day with a human skull in his mouth. Of course I knew that Harry's
+Bishop had returned, but held my peace about it. To them it had
+suggested murder, and they had consulted the chief of police.
+
+[Illustration: "HARRY'S PET COLLIE HAD COME UP TO THE BACK DOOR WITH A
+HUMAN SKULL IN HIS MOUTH"]
+
+"'How do you know that it is not one of your ancestors dug up in a
+back pasture,' I said.
+
+"'It might be William the Conqueror,' Lizzie remarked.
+
+"'I deny it,' said Delance, in perfect good nature. 'We have resigned
+from William's family. As a matter of fact, I never joined it.'
+
+"I congratulated him.
+
+"'It has always seemed like the merest poppycock to me--this
+genealogical craze of the ladies,' said Henry. 'When our London
+solicitor wrote that it would take another hundred pounds to establish
+the connection beyond a doubt, he gave away the whole scheme, and I
+resigned. It was too silly. In these days of titled chambermaids I
+think we shall worry along pretty well without William.'
+
+"Then Betsey said: 'I was reading in the county history to-day that
+old Zebulon Delance, who was killed in a fight with Indians in 1750,
+was buried in a meadow back of his house.'
+
+"'It may be the skull of old Zeb,' said Henry.
+
+"'Now there's an ancestor worth having,' I suggested.
+
+"'I wonder if it can belong to old Zeb,' Henry mused.
+
+"At last we got to my plan. I pictured the condition of the community
+as I saw it, and the inefficiency of the church and the need of a new
+and active power in Pointview.
+
+"I proposed that we buy the old skating-rink and remodel it, employ
+the best talent in America, and start a new center of power in the
+community--a power that should, first of all, keep us sane, and then
+as decent as possible. The mathematics of the enterprise were at my
+fingers' ends:
+
+                "Initial Expenses              $15,000
+                "Annual Outlay for Instruction   8,000
+                "For Music                       3,500
+                "For Maintenance                 1,000
+                "For Management                  3,500
+
+"It was no small matter, but the initial expense and the first year's
+outlay were subscribed in ten minutes. Betsey set the ball rolling
+with an offer of ten thousand dollars, and then it was like shaking
+ripe apples off a tree.
+
+"'Who is to be the manager?' Delance wanted to know. 'It's a big
+job.'
+
+"'I propose that we try Harry,' I said; 'in my opinion it will
+interest him. I've had him in training for a year or so, and he's
+about ready for big work.'
+
+"'I don't believe Harry can do it,' his father declared.
+
+"'I should think it might not be to his taste,' said Bill Warburton.
+
+"'But I have later and better information than the rest of you,' I
+said. 'If you will leave the matter in my hands you may hold me
+responsible for the results.'
+
+"They gave me the white card. I could do as I liked. The fact is, I
+had just had a letter from Harry which filled me with new hope. I have
+it here."
+
+The Honorable Socrates Potter took the letter from his pocket and
+said:
+
+"You see, Harry has been discovering America. He is the Columbus of
+our heiristocracy. His mental map has been filled with great cities
+and splendid hotels, and thrifty towns and enormous areas of wheat and
+corn, and astonishing distances and sublime mountain scenes. Moreover,
+he has learned the joys of a simple life; he had to. Of course, he
+knew of these things, but feebly and without pride, as one knows the
+Tetons who has never seen them. Leaving in May, he stopped in all the
+big cities, and finished his journey from the railroad with a
+stage-ride of some ninety miles. Of the stage-ride and other matters,
+he writes thus:
+
+"'On the front seat with the driver sat a lady smoking a cigar, who,
+now and then, offered us a drink from a bottle. At her side was a lady
+with a wooden leg, and a hen in her hand. You know every woman is a
+lady out here. The driver swore at the horses, the hen swore at the
+lady, and several of the passengers swore at each other, and it was
+all done in the most amiable spirit. Two rough-necks sat beside me who
+kept shooting with revolvers at sage-hens as they--the men, not the
+hens--irrigated the tires with tobacco-juice. At the next stop I got
+into a row with a one-eyed professor of elocution, because he said I
+carried too much for the size of my mule, an' didn't speak proper. He
+objected to my pronunciation, and I to his choice of words. In the
+argument his revolver took sides with him. I got one of my toes lopped
+with a bullet, and the lady who carried the cigar and the bottle took
+me to her home and nursed me like a mother, and the lady with the
+wooden leg brought me strawberries every day and sang to me and told
+me some good stories. I had thought it was a God-forsaken country,
+but, you see, I was wrong. There's more real practical Christianity
+among these people than I ever saw before, and it's hard work to be an
+ass here. The way of the ass is full of trouble, and I begin to
+understand why you wanted me to come out to Wyoming. The people are
+rough, but as kind as angels. Felt like turning back, but these women
+put new heart in me, especially the wooden-legged one.
+
+"'"We don't like parlor talk out here," she said; "it ain't considered
+good ettikit. Folks don't mind a little, but if it goes too fur it's
+considered insultin' an' everybody begins to speak to ye like he was
+talkin' to a balky mule."
+
+"'I went on as soon as I was able, and spent the whole summer on the
+back of a cayuse. Got lost in the mountains; went hungry and cold like
+the wolf, as Garland puts it, for three days; had to think my way back
+to camp. It was the best schooling in geography and logic and American
+humanity that I ever had. Every man at the ranch, and the women, had
+been out hunting for me. I offered them money, but they woudn't take a
+cent--the joy of seeing me was enough. They haven't a smitch of the
+revolting money-hunger of the average European. With all its faults I
+am proud of my country. I want you to find a good, big American job
+for me.
+
+"'I have been reading the Bishop of St. Clare, who says: "There hath
+been more energy expended in swaggering about with full bellies and a
+burden of needless fat than would move the island to the main shore.
+If thy purse be used to buy immunity from work, it secureth immunity
+from manhood; and what is a man without manhood?"
+
+"'There is the American idea for you.
+
+"'Deacon Joe has got to change his mind about me. Marie has only
+written me one letter, and that was a frost. If you have any influence
+with the girl, don't let her get engaged to that parson.'
+
+Socrates laughed as he put the letter away, and went on:
+
+"Well, Harry came back, browned and brawny, with his cayuse, saddle,
+and sombrero, and a shooting-iron half as long as my arm.
+
+"He came here for a talk with me the day after his arrival. The
+subject of a lifework was pressing on him.
+
+"'Have you seen Zeb?' was his first query.
+
+"'Zeb?' I asked. 'Who is Zeb?'
+
+"'That dear old, irrepressible bishop,' said Harry. 'They have dug him
+up and named him Zeb, and put him on a top shelf in the library. They
+think he is one of our great-grandfathers.'
+
+"'Oh, he has been promoted,' I remarked.
+
+"Harry went on:
+
+"'My dog is responsible for the reappearance of the bishop. I took him
+with me that night, and he knew where to find it. Father is sure that
+it's the head of old Zeb Delance.'
+
+"'Let the Bishop rest where he is,' I suggested. 'Now that he has
+converted you, he will probably let up. At least, let us hope that he
+will not worry you. Of course he will remind you of past follies every
+time you look at him, but that will do you no harm.'
+
+"'Oh, I couldn't forget him! Father has been reading up on Zeb, and he
+does nothing but talk about him. He has learned that the Indians
+buried the head and burned the body of a victim.'
+
+"'He symbolizes the change in your taste. Zeb was a man of action--a
+worker. What do you propose to do now?'
+
+"'Well, I have thought some of following Dan into agriculture.'
+
+"'Don't,' was my answer. 'You're not the type for that kind of a job.
+Dan was brought up to work with his hands. I fear that you would be a
+Fifth Avenue farmer.'
+
+"'Well, what would you say to a plant for the manufacture of
+aeroplanes? I stopped at Dayton and looked into the matter, and
+learned to fly. I have ordered a biplane, and it will be delivered in
+the spring.'
+
+"I vetoed that plan, and asked where he proposed to settle.
+
+"'Right here--if possible,' said Harry.
+
+"'Good! There's one thing about your family tree that I like, and you
+ought to be proud of it. Your forebears, having been treated with
+shameless oppression, came to these inhospitable shores in 1630. They
+needn't have done it if they had been willing to knuckle down and say
+they liked crow when they didn't. They wouldn't do that, so they left
+the old sod and ventured forth in a little sailing-vessel on the
+mighty deep. It required some courage to do that. They landed safely,
+and for nearly three hundred years their descendants have lived and
+worked and suffered all manner of hardships in New England. It's a
+proper thing, Harry, that you should do your work where, mostly, they
+did their work--in dear old Connecticut.'
+
+"'And besides, it's the home of Marie,' he said.
+
+"'And let us consider what there is to be done in the home of Marie,'
+I went on. 'Here in the very town where so many of your fathers have
+lived and worked we find a singular parade of folly. The idle rich
+from a near city are closing in upon us. Many of the Yankees have
+acquired property and ceased to work. Back in the distant hills they
+toil not, but live from hand to mouth in a pitiful state of
+degeneration. The work of the hand is almost entirely that of
+Italians, Poles, Hungarians, and Greeks.
+
+"'Our tradesmen have a low code of honor. They overcharge us for the
+necessities of life. Many of them have been caught cheating. Our wives
+and sons and daughters are living beyond their means, as if ignorant
+of the fact that it is the beginning of dishonesty. Our poverty is
+mostly that of the soul. The churches are dying, and the sabbath is
+dead. What we need is a return to the honor, sanity, and common sense
+of old New England, which gave of its fullness to the land we love.
+Let's start a school of old-fashioned decency and Americanism. Let's
+call it the Church of All Faiths and make it a center of power.'
+
+"I laid the scheme before him in all its details, and then--
+
+"'I'm with you,' he said, 'and I think I can see Knowles moving and
+Deacon Joe coming down off his high horse.'
+
+"'Possibly we could use Knowles,' I suggested. 'There'll be a lot of
+detail.'
+
+"'But only as a kind of clerk,' said Harry.
+
+"As a kind of clerk, I agreed. 'We shall need a number of clerks. I
+intend that every family within ten miles shall be visited at least
+once a week. We shall not only let our light shine, but we shall make
+it shine into every human heart in this community. If they're too
+callous we'll punch a hole with our trusty blade and let the light in.
+The lantern and the rapier shall be our weapons.'
+
+"Harry was full of enthusiasm. He had met Marie on the street, and she
+was glad to learn that he was going to work.
+
+"'Incidentally, I hope to win your grandfather's consent,' he had said
+to her.
+
+"And she had answered: 'If you could do that I should think you were
+an extremely able young man.'
+
+"'And worthy of the best girl living?' Harry had urged.
+
+"'That's too extravagant,' Marie had said as she left him.
+
+"Harry went to work with me at once. He bought the rink and the ground
+beneath it and some more alongside. We spent days and nights with an
+architect making and remaking the plans, and by and by we knew that
+we were right. Soon the contractor began his work, and in three months
+we had finished the most notable meeting-house of modern times.
+
+"The walls were tinted a rich cream color, the woodwork was painted
+white. There were new carpets in the aisles, and between them
+comfortable seats for nine hundred people. The fine old pulpit from
+which Jonathan Edwards had preached his first sermon was the center of
+a little garden of ferns and palms and vines and mosses, all growing
+in good ground, with a small fountain in their midst--a symbol of
+purity. A great sheet of plate glass behind the pulpit showed a
+thicket of evergreens. High above the pulpit was another big sheet of
+glass, through which one got a broad view of the sky, and it was
+framed in these words: 'The heavens declare the glory of God and the
+firmament showeth his handiwork.'
+
+"The walls were adorned with handsome pictures loaned by my friends.
+On one wall were these modern commandments, most of which were gleaned
+from the masterly volume entitled _The Life and Writings of Robert
+Delance, Bishop of St. Clare_, which Harry had found in a London
+bookstore:
+
+"1. 'Be grateful unto God, for He hath given thee life, time, and this
+beautiful world. Other things thou shalt find for thyself.'
+
+"2. 'Be brave with thy life, for it is very long.'
+
+"3. 'Waste no time, for thy time is very little.'
+
+"4. 'See that this world is the better for thy work and kindness.'
+
+"5. 'Doubt not the truth of that thy senses tell thee, for thy God is
+no deceiver.'
+
+"6. 'Love the truth and live it, for no one is long deceived by
+lying.'
+
+"7. 'Give not unto the beast and neglect thy brother.'
+
+"8. 'Go find thy brothers in the world and see that these be many, for
+a man's strength and happiness are multiplied by the number of his
+brothers.'
+
+"9. 'Beware lest thy wealth come between thee and them and tend to
+thine own poverty and theirs.'
+
+"10. 'Suffer little children to come unto thee, for of such is the
+kingdom of heaven.'
+
+"The simple-hearted old Bishop had just the philosophy we needed. It
+seemed to have been carefully designed to meet the inventiveness of
+the modern sinner. He was turning out well and had already exerted a
+wholesome influence on the character of Harry. Would that all
+ancestors were as well chosen!
+
+"We did not wish to hinder the other churches, and that spirit went
+into all our plans. First, then, we decided that our services should
+begin at twelve o'clock every Sunday, and close at one or before
+twenty minutes after one. That gave our parishioners a chance to go
+to the other churches if they wanted to. I traveled from Boston to St.
+Louis, and returned _via_ Washington, to engage talent for our pulpit.
+I wanted the best that this land afforded, and was prepared to pay its
+price. I engaged nine ministers, distinguished for eloquence and
+learning, three Governors, the Mayor of a Western city, two United
+States Senators, one Congressman, and a Justice of the Supreme Court
+of the land. They were all great-souled men, who had shown in word and
+action a touch of the spirit of Jesus Christ. Some of them had been
+throwing light into dark places and driving money-changers from the
+temple and casting out devils. They were all qualified to enlighten
+and lift up our souls.
+
+"I asked that their lessons should be drawn from the lives of the
+modern prophets--Abraham Lincoln, Silas Wright, Daniel Webster,
+Charles Sumner, Henry Clay, Noah Webster, George William Curtis,
+Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sidney Lanier, Horace Greeley, and others like
+them. What I sought most was an increase of the love of honor and the
+respect for industry in our young men and women. Holiness was a thing
+for later consideration, it seemed to me.
+
+"I put a full-page advertisement in each local paper, which read about
+as follows:
+
+"'The Church of All Faiths.
+
+"'Built especially for sinners and for good people who wish to be
+better.
+
+"'Will begin its work in this community Sunday, June 19th, at twelve
+o'clock, with a sermon by Socrates Potter, Esq., of Pointview, in
+which he will set forth his view of what a church should do, and an
+account of what this church proposes to do, for its parishioners.
+Other churches are cordially invited to worship, and to work with us
+for the good of Pointview.'
+
+"The curiosity of all the people had been whetted to a keen edge. They
+had begged for information, but Betsey and I had said that they
+should know all about it in due time. I had given my plan to the
+contributors only, and they were to keep still about it.
+
+"Sometimes silence is the best advertisement, and certain men who seem
+to be so modest that they are shocked by the least publicity are the
+greatest advertisers in the world. The man who hides his candle under
+a bushel is apt to be the one whose candle is best known. So it
+happened with us. Nine hundred and sixteen people filled the seats in
+our church that morning by twelve o'clock, and two hundred more were
+trying to get in.
+
+"At the next service an honored minister whose soul is even greater
+than his fame preached for us, and that week a petition came to me,
+signed by six hundred citizens, complaining that the hour was
+inconvenient, and asking that it be changed to 10.30 A.M. I believe in
+the voice of the people, and obeyed it; but I knew what would happen,
+and it did. The other churches were deserted and silent. One by one
+their ministers came to see me--all save one old gentleman in whom the
+brimstone of wrath had begun to burn more fiercely. We needed and were
+glad to have the help of two of them. There were the sick and the poor
+to be visited; there were weddings and funerals and countless details
+in the organization of the new church to be attended to.
+
+"I ought to tell you that a curious and unexpected thing had happened.
+Fisherfolk, street gamins, caddies, loafers on the docks and in the
+livery stables, millionaires and million-heiresses--people who had
+thought themselves either above or below religion--came to our
+meetings. Each resembled in numbers a political rally.
+
+"We have started an improvement school for Sunday evenings, in which
+the great story is told in lectures and fine photographs thrown on a
+screen. And not only the great story, but any story calculated to
+inspire and enlighten the youthful mind. The best of the world's work
+and art and certain of the great novels will be presented in this way.
+I am going to get the great men of the world to give us three-minute
+sermons on the phonograph. Thus I hope to make it possible for our
+people to hear the voices and sentiments of kings, presidents,
+premiers, statesmen, and prophets--the men and women who are making
+history.
+
+"We have started a small country club where poor boys and girls can
+enjoy billiards, bowling, golf, and tennis. Any boy or girl in this
+town who has a longing for better things is sought and found by our
+ministers, and all kinds of encouragement are offered. People and
+clergy of almost every faith that is known here in Pointview are
+working side by side for one purpose. Think of that! The revolution
+has been complete and mainly peaceful. As to the expense of it all,
+we tax the rich, and for the rest we temper the wind to the length of
+their wool.
+
+"Of course, there were certain people who didn't like it, and among
+them was Deacon Joe. He and four others hired a minister, and sat in
+lonely sorrow in the old church every Sunday, until the expense
+sickened them. Then the Deacon got mad at the town, and refused to be
+seen in it.
+
+"'Reach everybody,' had been one of our mottoes, and Deacon Joe said
+that he guessed we wouldn't reach him."
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+WHICH PRESENTS AN INCIDENT IN OUR CAMPAIGN AGAINST NEW NEW ENGLAND
+
+
+"We had some adventures in new New England which ought to be set down.
+Here's one of them.
+
+"The old village of Trent lies back in the hills, a little journey
+from Pointview, on the shores of a pleasant river. To the unknowing
+traveler, who approaches from either hilltop, it has a peaceful and
+inviting look. But the rutted, rocky road begins at once to excite
+suspicion. A bad road is an indication and a producer of degeneracy in
+man and beast. It tends to profanity, and if it went far would
+probably lead to hell. Trent itself is one of the little modern hells
+of New England. There are the venerable and neatly fashioned houses of
+the old-time Yankee--the peaked roofs and gables, the columns, the
+cozy verandas, the garden spaces. But the old-time Yankees are gone.
+The well-kept gardens are no more. Many of the houses are going to
+ruin. One is an Italian tenement. The others are inhabited by
+coachmen, chauffeurs, gardeners, mill-hands, and degenerate Yankees.
+The inn is a mere barroom. Sounds of revelry and the odor of stale
+beer come out of it. In front are teams of burden, abandoned, for a
+time, by their drivers, and sundry human signs of decay loafing in the
+shadow of the old lindens. Among them are the seedy remnants of a once
+noble race. They are fettered by 'rheumatiz' and the disordered liver.
+They move like boats dragging their anchors. To make life tolerable
+their imaginations need assistance. They are like the Flub Dubs of
+lost Atlantis. Each imagines himself the greatest man in the village.
+They talk in loud words. They quarrel and fight over the crown. So it
+has been a brawling, besotted community.
+
+"Trent's leading citizen is a Yankee politician who owns most of its
+real estate and derives a profit from its lawless traffic. Trent has
+been his enterprise.
+
+"Knowles went over there one day to conduct a funeral, which was
+interrupted by a dog-fight under the coffin and nearly broken up by a
+row over two dollars which had been found in a pocket of the dead
+man.
+
+"We opened a club-house next to the hotel, and began a campaign for
+the regeneration of Trent. Soon we discovered that its one officer was
+unwilling to arrest offenders against law and order. We had him
+removed and a new man put in his place. This man was set upon and
+severely beaten, and lost interest in the good work. Then Harry
+applied for the job and got it. He took with him a force of husky
+young men--mostly college boys. The first day on duty he arrested in
+the street a drunken man who carried in his hands a small sack of
+potatoes. The latter whistled for help, and the enemies of law and
+order swarmed out of their haunts. Harry had become an expert ball
+pitcher, noted for speed and accuracy. He floored his man and took
+possession of the potatoes, with which he proceeded to defend himself.
+Only two balls were pitched, but they held the enemy in check until
+Harry's deputies had rushed out of the club-house. A flying wedge
+scattered the crowd. No further violence was needed. The ruffians saw
+that he meant business and had the nerve and muscle to carry it
+through, and nothing more was necessary--just then.
+
+"They took the drunken man to the lock-up, and came back and got a
+bartender, and led him in the same path. Harry has the situation well
+in hand, and is the most popular man in our community. Every day we
+have items to put to his credit, and nothing to charge against his
+reputation. There's something going on at the club every evening, and
+the rooms are crowded. Those men who had sat day by day brawling under
+the lindens now spend most of their leisure in the reading and card
+rooms. Peace reigns in Trent. Such is the power of united benevolence
+working with the strong hand and the courageous spirit."
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+WHICH PRESENTS A DECISIVE INCIDENT IN OUR CAMPAIGN AGAINST OLD NEW
+ENGLAND
+
+
+"Harry was pretty well disabled with affection for a time. He was like
+a Yankee with the 'rheumatiz,' and you know when a Yankee gets hold of
+the 'rheumatiz' he hangs on. It don't often get away from him. It
+becomes an asset--a conservational asset--an ever-present help in time
+of haying.
+
+"Since Harry's return the tactics of Marie had been faultless. Her
+eyes had said, 'Come on,' while her words had firmly held him off. He
+shook the tree every time they met, but the squirrel wouldn't come
+down.
+
+"It was a hard part for Marie to play, between the pressure of two
+handsome boys and her duty to grandpapa. The Reverend Robert had won
+the favor of the old gentleman by turning from tennis to agriculture
+for exercise. He had gone over to the Benson farm and helped with the
+spring's work; he had supper there every Sunday evening, after which
+he conducted a little service for the Deacon's benefit. He was
+pressing, as they say in golf, and it didn't improve his game. I saw
+that Marie was not quite so fond of him. I had maintained an attitude
+of strict neutrality, but could not fail to observe that Marie had
+begun to lean.
+
+"'You have captured the rest of Pointview, and you ought to be able to
+take Benson's Hill,' Marie had said to Harry. 'Grandfather is the last
+enemy of your crusade.'
+
+"It was a timely touch on the accelerator, and Harry began to speed up
+a little.
+
+"'The farm is so well defended, and there's nothing I dread so much as
+a hickory cane,' the boy had answered. 'The last visit I made to the
+farm I wondered whether I was going to convert him to my way of
+thinking, or he was going to convert me to jelly.'
+
+"Indeed, Deacon Joe stood firm as a mountain. People were saying that
+the minister would win in a walk, when Marie converted her grandfather
+by the most remarkable bit of woman's strategy that I ever observed.
+It was Napoleonic.
+
+"One day in May, Harry came, much excited, to my office. Deacon Joe
+was about to move to his island, a mile or so off shore. He was going
+to take Marie with him for an indefinite period. No boat would be
+permitted to land there except his own and the Reverend Robert's.
+Marie would be a sort of prisoner. That day she had told him of the
+plan of her grandfather. In Harry's opinion Knowles had suggested
+it.
+
+"'Where is the girl's mother?' I asked.
+
+"'On some Cook's tour in Europe, and the old man is crazy as a March
+hare,' said my young friend. 'He's got a lot of bulldogs over there,
+and his hired men have been instructed to shoot a hole in any boat
+that comes near.'
+
+"I went over to the Benson homestead that afternoon, and found Deacon
+Joe sitting on the piazza.'
+
+"'How are you?' I asked.
+
+"'Not very stout,' said he; 'heart flutters like a ketched bird.'
+
+"'What are you doing for it?'
+
+"'Doctor give me some medicine; I fergit the name of it, but it is the
+stuff they use to blow up safes with.'
+
+"'Nitroglycerin! The very thing! I hope they will succeed in blowing
+up your safe.'
+
+"I was pretty close to the old man, and was always very frank with
+him. He liked opposition, and was as fond of warfare as an Old
+Testament hero.
+
+"'What, sir?' he asked.
+
+"'There are some folks that have got to be blowed up before you can
+get an old idea out of their heads,' I went on. 'They are locked up
+with rust. That's what's the matter with you, Deacon. Your brain needs
+to be blowed open an' aired. You stored it full of ideas sixty years
+ago and locked the door for fear they'd get away. They should have
+been taken out and sorted over at least once a year, and some thrown
+into the fire to make room for better ones. If life does you any good,
+if it really teaches you anything, your brain must keep changing its
+contents.'
+
+"The Deacon hammered the table with his cane, as he shouted:
+
+"'You cussed fool of a lawyer! Don't you know that truth never
+changes? Truth, sir, is eternal.'
+
+"Then I took the bat. 'Truth often changes, but error is eternal,' I
+said. 'You know when you want to prove anything, these days, you
+quote from the memoirs of a great man. Well, I was reading the memoirs
+of the late Doctor Godfrey Vogeldam Guph not long ago. He told of a
+man who was very singular, but not so singular as the doctor seemed to
+think. This man knew more than any human being has a right to know. He
+knew the plans of God, and had formed an unalterable opinion about all
+his neighbors. Then he locked up his mind and guarded it night and
+day, for fear that somebody would break in and carry off its contents.
+And it did seem as if people wanted to get hold of his treasure, for
+they often came and asked about it, and some even questioned its
+value. He said, "Away with you--truth is eternal, and my soul is full
+and I will part with none of it."
+
+"'Meanwhile the truth about things around him began to change. Neighbor
+Smith became a good man. Neighbor Brown became a bad man. Priscilla
+Jones, who had been a vain and foolish woman, was one of the saints of
+God. The foundations of the world had changed. In a generation it
+had grown millions of years older and different--wonderfully
+different! Even God himself had changed, it would seem. His methods were
+not as people had thought them. His character was milder. Everything
+had changed but this one man. Now when he died and came to St. Peter,
+the latter said to him:
+
+"'"Who were your friends?"
+
+"'The new-comer thought a minute, and mentioned the names of some
+people who had been long dead. "They know the truth about me," he
+said.
+
+"'"Ah, but the truth changes, and they haven't seen you in many
+years," said St. Peter.
+
+"'"But I have not changed," said the man. "I am just as when they saw
+me."
+
+"'"Then you are a fool or the chief of sinners," said St. Peter.
+"Behold a man as changeless as the flint-stone, who has made no
+friends in over forty years! That is all I need to know about you.
+Take either gate you please."
+
+"'"One leads to Heaven--doesn't it?" said the new-comer, in great
+alarm.
+
+"'"Yes, but you wouldn't recognize the place. There isn't a soul in
+paradise that cares which way you go--not a soul in all its multitude
+that will be glad to see you. They have better company. Stranger! go
+which way you please, Heaven will be as uncomfortable as hell."
+
+"Deacon Joe gave me close attention, and I saw that my sword had
+nicked him a little. Anything that affected his hope of Paradise was
+sure to engage his thought. He shook his head, and said that he didn't
+believe it. But he couldn't fool me. I knew that the seed of change
+had struck into him.
+
+"I gave him another thrust. 'Deacon, you knew Harry Delance when he
+was a fool. But the truth about _him_ has changed. He is now a
+hard-working, level-headed young fellow, and you ought to be his
+friend.'
+
+"'Wal, I like the way he cuffed them fellers over at Trent,' said the
+Deacon. 'He pounded 'em noble--that's sartin. Mebbe if he licks a few
+more men I'll begin to like him.'
+
+"'Give him a chance,' was my answer. 'I hear that you are going to
+move for the summer.'
+
+"'Goin' to my island to-morrow,' said Deacon Joe. 'I'm sick of the
+autymobiles an' the young spendthrifts hangin' around Marie, an' her
+extravagance, an' the new church nonsense, an' the other goin's-on.
+I've got a good house there, an' Marie an' I are goin' to rest an'
+stroll around without bein' run over until her mother comes back. The
+only trouble I have there is the hired men. They rob me right an'
+left. I wish somebody would lick them.'
+
+"'You really need a young man like Harry,' I urged. 'And Marie needs
+him. She'll be lonely over there.'
+
+"'Not a bit,' said the Deacon. 'She'll have a saddle-horse, and young
+Knowles can come over once a week, if he wants to. I hear he's done
+splendid lately.'
+
+"'He's doing well, but I am inclined to think that Harry is the better
+man,' I said, taking sides for the first time.
+
+"'I don't believe it,' was the answer of Deacon Joe. 'Knowles is
+getting pretty sensible, and his voice is stronger.'
+
+"The Deacon moved next day, and when Sunday came I went over in a boat
+with the Reverend Robert at eight o'clock in the morning. I was taking
+a stroll on the beach when I met him, and he asked me to go along. It
+was just a social call, he explained. Incidentally, he was going to
+pray and read a Scripture lesson at the Deacon's request. As we left
+the dock, Harry came riding by on one of his thoroughbreds and I
+waved my hand to him. When we got to the Deacon's landing, I said to
+Robert:
+
+"'As I am not invited, perhaps you had better announce me to Deacon
+Joe, while I stay here in the boat.'
+
+"'All right,' he said, as he gaily jumped ashore and tied the painter
+rope.
+
+"Robert hurried in the direction of the little house, and had covered
+half the distance, when a bulldog came sneaking toward him. Robert saw
+the dog, and ran for a tree. He was making handsome progress up the
+trunk of the tree when the dog reached him, and, seizing a leg of his
+trousers, began to surge backward. The cloth parted at the knee, and
+between the pulling of man and dog, Robert lost about all the lower
+end of one trousers-leg. The hired man came running out with some more
+dogs, and said:
+
+"'It's all right, Mr. Knowles, you can come down. I hope he didn't
+hurt you.'
+
+"'Excuse me,' said the young man, 'but I think I'll stay here a
+while.'
+
+"Three dogs stood at the foot of the tree looking anxiously upward.
+
+"'They won't hurt you while I'm here,' said the hired man.
+
+"'I won't take any chances,' said Robert. 'Go shut up your lions, and
+I'll come down.'
+
+"'Who's that in the boat?' the hired man asked.
+
+"'Mr. Potter,' said Robert.
+
+"'Well, he mustn't land 'less the old man says so--I don't care who he
+is.'
+
+"Just then the hired man changed his position suddenly, and stood
+looking into the sky. I turned and saw an aeroplane coming down like
+some great bird from the hills, behind the village. It sailed high
+above the spires, and coasted down to a level some fifty feet above
+the water-plane between shore and island. In a minute or so it roared
+over me, circled the point, and came down in the open field that
+faced the Deacon's cottage. Dogs and chickens flew and ran in great
+confusion as it swooped to earth. I knew that Harry and his new flier
+had reached the island of Deacon Joe, and I hurried ashore to
+see--well, 'to see what I could see,' as the old song has it. Harry
+jumped from his seat. The hired man ran toward him. Deacon Joe and
+Marie and a woman-servant hurried out-of-doors.
+
+"In less time than it takes to tell it, Harry had licked the hired
+man, and kicked two dogs in the belly till they ran for life, and shot
+another one, and was chasing a second hired man around the wood-shed.
+Not being able to run fast enough to do further damage, Harry came to
+the astonished group in front of the house and caught Marie in his
+arms and kissed her.
+
+"Then he turned to the Deacon, and said: 'Sir, I will keep off your
+island if you wish, but I do not propose to be bluffed when I come to
+pay my compliments to you and Marie.'
+
+[Illustration: "HE LOOKED LIKE A MAN WITH A WOODEN LEG"]
+
+"Deacon Joe was dumb with astonishment. The young minister came down
+out of his tree and walked slowly toward the group, with rags flapping
+over one extremity of his union-suit. He looked like a man with a
+wooden leg.
+
+"'How did ye get here?' Deacon Joe demanded of Harry.
+
+"'Jumped from the top of Delance's Hill and landed right here,' said
+the latter.
+
+"'In that awful-lookin' thing?' the Deacon asked, pointing with his
+cane and squinting at the big biplane.
+
+"'In that thing,' Harry answered.
+
+"'How long did it take ye?'
+
+"'About five minutes.'
+
+"'It's impossible,' said the Deacon, as he approached the biplane and
+began to look at it.
+
+"'But you'll see me jump back again in a little while,' Harry assured
+him.
+
+"'Geehanniker!' the Deacon exclaimed. 'Jumped from the top of
+Delance's Hill an' licked my caretaker an' chased a hired man an'
+sp'ilt two dogs an' treed the minister and kissed the lady o' the
+house--all in about ten minutes. I guess you're a good deal of a
+feller.'
+
+"It was the kind of thing that warmed the warrior soul of the Deacon.
+
+"'Hello--here's a dead dog,' said Harry. 'If you'll have one of the
+men bring me a shovel I'll bury him there in the garden. Meanwhile you
+may tell me how much I owe you for the two dogs.'
+
+"'I guess about twenty-five dollars,' said the Deacon.
+
+"'How much off for cash?' Harry asked.
+
+"'Wal, sir, if you ain't goin' to ask me to charge it, ten dollars
+would do,' the Deacon allowed.
+
+"'There's a wonderful power in cash,' said Harry, as he produced the
+money.
+
+"'You're gettin' some sense in your head,' said the Deacon.
+
+"The shovel was brought; and Harry, who had expected to shoot a dog
+or two and had been practising for this very act, put his victim under
+three feet of soil in as many minutes. That also pleased the Deacon.
+
+"'Purty cordy, too,' the latter said, as he turned to Marie. 'Now,
+girl, take your choice. I want to know which is which, an' stop bein'
+bothered about it.'
+
+"She made her choice then and there, and as to which of the two it may
+have been you will have no doubt when I tell you that Marie had
+planned every detail in this bit of strategy and Harry had been man
+enough to put it through.
+
+"'You know Zeb's commandment has been a help to me,' he said, when I
+offered congratulations. '"Be brave with your life, for it is very
+long."'
+
+"The Deacon has changed. His heart and mind are open. Every Sunday you
+may see him in a front seat, drinking at the new fount of inspiration;
+and it is a rule of his life to make a new friend every day. I'm
+inclined to think that the old man has been saved at last.
+
+"Yes, we try to reach everybody in one way or another."
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of 'Charge It', by Irving Bacheller
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 'CHARGE IT' ***
+
+***** This file should be named 29568-8.txt or 29568-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/5/6/29568/
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.