belong to _us_ then. And now--look. Everywhere new kings that know not
Joseph. Bee!"
"It's the law of life; the old order changeth." He turned and looked
along the street, into the many faces of the homeward bound. "The
eternal mystery of the people.... Don't you like to look at their faces
and wonder what they're all doing and thinking and hoping and dreaming
to make out of their lives?"
"Don't you think they're all hoping and dreaming just one thing?--how to
make more money than they're making at present? All over the world,"
said Miss Weyland, "bright young men lie awake at night, thinking up
odd, ingenious ways to take other people's money away from them. These
young men are the spirit of America. We're having an irruption of them
here now ... the Goths sacking the sacred city."
"Clever rascals they are too. I," said West, "belong to the other group.
I sleep of nights and wake up in the morning to have your bright young
Goths take my money away from me."
He laughed and continued: "Little Bobby Smythe, who used to live here,
was in my office the other day. I was complimenting him on the
prosperity of the plumbers' supply manufacture--for such is his mundane
occupation, in Schenectady, N.Y. Bobby said that plumbers' supplies were
all well enough, but he made his real money from an interesting device
of his own. There is a lot of building going on in his neighborhood, it
seems, and it occurred to him to send around to the various owners and
offer his private watchman to guard the loose building materials at
night. This for the very reasonable price of $3.50 a week. It went like
hot cakes. 'But,' said I, 'surely your one watchman can't look after
thirty-seven different places.' 'No,' said Bobby, 'but they think he
does.' I laughed and commended his ingenuity. 'But the best part of the
joke,' said he, 'is that _I haven't got any watchman at all_.'"
Sharlee Weyland laughed gayly. "Bobby could stand for the portrait of
young America."
"You've been sitting at the feet of a staunch old Tory Gamaliel named
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