ll get to thinking
them, and what a man thinks a man is. There are things there that you
ought to be ashamed of, if you really thought them, but I know you
didn't, so I made free to strike them all out." Maxwell looked foolish;
he wished to assert himself, but he did not know how. Ricker went on:
"Those charming little sarcasms and innuendoes of yours would have
killed your article for really intelligent readers. They would have
suspected a young fellow having his fling, or an old fool speaking out
of the emptiness of his heart. As it is, we have got something unique,
and I don't mind telling you I'm very glad to have it. I've never made
any secret of my belief that you have talent."

"You've been very good," said Maxwell, a little rueful still. The
surgeon's knife hurts though it cures.

When Maxwell went home, he met his mother. "Why, mother," said the
young fellow, "old Ricker is going to print my report as editorial; and
we're not going to have any report."

"I told you it was good!"

Maxwell felt it was due to himself to keep some grudge, and he said,
"Yes; but he's taken all the life out of it with his confounded blue
pencil. It's perfectly dead."

It did not seem so when he saw it in proof at the office later, and it
did not seem so when he got it in the paper. He had not slept well; he
was excited by several things; by the use Ricker had made of his work,
and by the hopes of advancement which this use quickened in him. He was
not ashamed of it; he was very proud of it; and he wondered at its
symmetry and force, as he read and read it again.

He had taken very high philosophical ground in his view of the matter,
and had accused the structure of society. There must be something
rotten, he said, at the core of our civilization, when every morning
brought the story of a defalcation, great or small, in some part of our
country: not the peculations of such poor clerks and messengers as their
employers could be insured against, but of officials, public and
corporate, for whom we had no guaranty but the average morality of our
commercial life. How low this was might be inferred from the fact that
while such a defalcation as that of J. M. Northwick created dismay in
business and social circles, it could not fairly be said to create
surprise. It was, most unhappily, a thing to be expected, in proof of
which no stronger evidence need be alleged than that patent to the
_Abstract_ reporter in the community where the d