ie. We think there's a chance for his salvation, don't we, Perry?"

I refused to accept the remark as flattering.

Another object of their assaults was Frederick Grierson, who by this
time had emerged from obscurity as a small dealer in real estate into a
manipulator of blocks and corners.

"I suppose you think it's a lawyer's business to demand an ethical
bill of health of every client," I said. "I won't stand up for all of
Tallant's career, of course, but Mr. Wading has a clear right to take
his cases. As for Grierson, it seems to me that's a matter of giving a
dog a bad name. Just because his people weren't known here, and because
he has worked up from small beginnings. To get down to hard-pan, you
fellows don't believe in democracy,--in giving every man a chance to
show what's in him."

"Democracy is good!" exclaimed Perry. "If the kind of thing we're coming
to is democracy, God save the state!"...

On the other hand I found myself drawing closer to Ralph Hambleton,
sometimes present at these debates, as the only one of my boyhood
friends who seemed to be able to "deal with conditions as he found
them." Indeed, he gave one the impression that, if he had had the making
of them, he would not have changed them.

"What the deuce do you expect?" I once heard him inquire with
good-natured contempt. "Business isn't charity, it's war.

"There are certain things," maintained Perry, stoutly, "that gentlemen
won't do."

"Gentlemen!" exclaimed Ralph, stretching his slim six feet two: We were
sitting in the Boyne Club. "It's ungentlemanly to kill, or burn a town
or sink a ship, but we keep armies and navies for the purpose. For a
man with a good mind, Perry, you show a surprising inability to think
things, out to a logical conclusion. What the deuce is competition, when
you come down to it? Christianity? Not by a long shot! If our nations
are slaughtering men and starving populations in other countries,--are
carried on, in fact, for the sake of business, if our churches are
filled with business men and our sky pilots pray for the government, you
can't expect heathen individuals like me to do business on a Christian
basis,--if there is such a thing. You can make rules for croquet, but
not for a game that is based on the natural law of the survival of the
fittest. The darned fools in the legislatures try it occasionally, but
we all know it's a sop to the 'common people.' Ask Hughie here if there
ever was a law put on the