reserved pending some sort
of reorganization, which would ultimately be of great benefit to all the
parties concerned; but this was much like telling a hungry man that if
he would possess his appetite in patience, he would very likely have a
splendid dinner next year. Women are not constituted to understand this
sort of reasoning. It is needless to say that in our general talks on
the situation these personalities were not referred to, for although
Margaret was silent, it was plain to see that she was uneasy.

Morgan liked to raise questions of casuistry, such as that whether money
dishonestly come by could be accepted for good purposes.

"I had this question referred to me the other day," he said. "A
gambler--not a petty cheater in cards, but a man who has a splendid
establishment in which he has amassed a fortune, a man known for his
liberality and good-fellowship and his interest in politics--offered
the president of a leading college a hundred thousand dollars to endow a
professorship. Ought the president to take the money, knowing how it was
made?"

"Wouldn't the money do good--as much good as any other hundred thousand
dollars?" asked Margaret.

"Perhaps. But the professorship was to bear his name, and what would be
the moral effect of that?"

"Did you recommend the president to take the money, if he could get it
without using the gambler's name?"

"I am not saying yet what I advised. I am trying to get your views on a
general principle."

"But wouldn't it be a sneaking thing to take a man's money, and refuse
him the credit of his generosity?"

"But was it generosity? Was not his object, probably, to get a
reputation which his whole life belied, and to get it by obliterating
the distinction between right and wrong?"

"But isn't it a compromising distinction," my wife asked, "to take
his money without his name? The president knows that it is money
fraudulently got, that really belongs to somebody else; and the
gambler would feel that if the president takes it, he cannot think very
disapprovingly of the manner in which it was acquired. I think it would
be more honest and straightforward to take his name with the money."

"The public effect of connecting the gambler's name with the college
would be debasing," said Morgan; "but, on the contrary, is every charity
or educational institution bound to scrutinize the source of every
benefaction? Isn't it better that money, however acquired, should be
used for