er mug," said this man, with feeling. The rest laughed again. In
Green's Ferry a certain easy-going good-heartedness is required by the
public conscience, rather than decalogue virtues. Garvey liked sharp
practice--all right; if you were yourself hurt, you would naturally
begin to vote against him; otherwise, it was none of your business,
except as successful rascality had a claim on your admiration. Young
Strong liked to write furious reform editorials--all right; if you
were the one hit, you would swear at Strong and stop your subscription
until a hit on some one else made you renew it; otherwise, it was none
of your business and lively reading. They leaned against the wall and
desk, and began with perfect good-nature to tell stories of the Judge.
"R'member the time he got that Mexican ranch? Fellow thought it was a
bill of sale for thirty acres he was signing, and it was three
hundred."

"Best thing was when he made old man Meeker believe he was dying, and
deed over a good fifty thousand dollars in stock to his daughter--and
married the girl, sir, before the old fellow found he was good for
twenty years more. He made the air smell of brimstone the rest of his
life if you mentioned Garvey to him! Drowned in a ford a winter or two
later, after all. Used to live in a little shanty up Indian Crick and
raise potatoes--and Garvey sent him a cow--cheekiest thing!"

Strong turned sharply away from the laugh that followed, and went on
with his work, while they slowly dispersed. He worked on savagely with
brows drawn together. "It isn't so much the existence of scoundrels
like Garvey that gets me," he was saying to himself, "as the way the
whole crowd of them take him." He stopped to read over the words he
was correcting--they were editorial:

"Was ever folly greater than this of our community, in dropping
everything else to run after money. For what do you expect to do with
it when you get it? Better eating, and drinking, and the privilege of
being toadied to by those who want to make something out of you--what
more can you get out of money, if you have never made anything of
_yourself_? Just as a pig, if he might take his choice whether he
would be turned into a man or would be moved into a cosier sty, with
more unbounded swill, would doubtless choose the sty!"

"My broom against the ocean," he said; but he went on correcting
doggedly.

And, not to conceal from you what was in reality the most significant
fact about Wi