did. And the rest of the talk these gentlemen have been giving you is

just about as wrong, too. Let me tell you one thing: if you folks were honest, if you didn't send rascals to Springfield and to Congress, if you weren't ready to take a dollar and club a man if he didn't hand it over, there wouldn't be this bribery business. I know it, because I've got the club over and over again. And one thing more, it's no more use for you and I to kick about the men who put their money into trusts than it would be to try to swallow all the water in the lake. That's the way business has got to be done nowadays, and if it weren't done you folks would starve, and your wives and children would starve--"

"Who are you?" some began to shout, interrupting me.

"I am E.V. Harrington!" I called back.

Then they hooted: "Hello, Senator. Put him out!"

I turned toward Will, and called to him:--

"Come on! I want to have a word with you, Will."

He followed me downstairs into a saloon. Some of the loafers who had heard our talk upstairs came in and crowded up to the bar, and I set up the drinks all around several times. Will wouldn't take any whiskey. Then the bartender let us into a little room at the end of the bar, where we could be by ourselves.

"Will!" I exclaimed, "whatever has happened to you?"

It wrung my heart to see what a wreck he was. He had let his beard grow to cover up his wasted face. His eyes were sunk and bloodshot. The old waterproof covered a thin flannel coat.

"I'm all right," he replied gloomily. "What do you want of me?"

"I want you to come out and get some dinner with me, first," I said.

But he shook his head, saying he must go home to May.

"It ain't no use, Van," he added, in a high, querulous voice. "We don't belong together. May and I are of the people--the people you fatten on."

"Quit that rot! I am one of the people, too."

"Oh, you're Senator, I expect, by this time," he sneered. "What did it cost you, Van?"

"I don't want to talk politics."

"That's all I care to talk. I want to get a chance to show you fellows up one of these days. I'm considering a proposition for part control of a paper--a labor weekly."

So he talked for a while about his scheme of getting hold of a little three-cent outfit and making it into an organ of kick and criticism. He had seen life from the inside during the war, he explained, and he wanted to give the public the benefit of his experience. He had a snarl for every conceivable thing that was, and he was eager to express it. When I showed him that such an attitude was dead against American feeling, he accused me of trying to suppress his enterprise because it was aimed at my friends, "the thieves and robbers." It was hopeless to argue with him, and the more we talked the worse I felt. He was just bitter and wild, and he kept saying: "You taught me what it meant! You showed me what it was to be rich!" The war had ruined his health and weakened his mind. The gentle, willing side in him had turned to fury. He was a plain crank now!

"I'll buy this paper for you--or I'll start a new one for you to curse me and my friends with--if you'll just take May and the children and go down to my farm in the country. There are two thousand acres down there, Will, and you can do as you please on the place. When you've got back your health, then you can start in to baste me as good as you've a mind to."

But he refused to compromise his "cause." So we parted at the door of the saloon, he buttoning up his old raincoat and striding out for the West Side without a look back to me. And as I hailed a cab to take me to the club I heard in my ears that charge, "You taught me what it meant to be rich, Van!" It made me mad, but it hurt just the same.

Though I knew perfectly well that I was not responsible for his crankiness, yet I thought that if he could have kept on at business under me he would have been all right, earning a good living for his wife and children, and not taking up with thoughts he hadn't the mind to think out. For Will was not one to step safely out of the close ranks of men, but he was always a mighty faithful worker wherever he was put. And now he was just a crank--good for nothing.