een wont to haunt our back steps and
front offices with his carefully wrapped bundle, retreated in
bewildered defeat before the clanging blows of steel on steel that
meant the erection of the first twenty-story skyscraper. "As
slick," we used to say, "as a lightning-rod agent." Of what use
his wares on a building whose tower was robed in clouds and which
used the chain lightning for a necklace? The Fourth Avenue antique
dealer had another curio to add to his collection of andirons,
knockers, snuff boxes and warming pans.

But even as this quaint figure vanished there sprang up a new and
glittering one to take his place. He stood framed in the great
plate-glass window of the very building which had brought about
the defeat of his predecessor. A miracle of close shaving his face
was, and a marvel of immaculateness his linen. Dapper he was, and
dressy, albeit inclined to glittering effects and a certain
plethory at the back of the neck. Back of him stood shining shapes
that reflected his glory in enamel, and brass, and glass. His
language was floral, but choice; his talk was of gearings and
bearings and cylinders and magnetos; his method differed from that
of him who went before as the method of a skilled aeronaut differs
from that of the man who goes over Niagara in a barrel. And as he
multiplied and spread over the land we coined a new figure of
speech. "Smooth!" we chuckled. "As smooth as an automobile
salesman."

But even as we listened, fascinated by his fluent verbiage there
grew within us a certain resentment. Familiarity with his
glittering wares bred a contempt of them, so that he fell to
speaking of them as necessities instead of luxuries. He juggled
figures, and thought nothing of four of them in a row. We looked
at our five-thousand-dollar salary, so strangely shrunken and thin
now, and even as we looked we saw that the method of the unctuous,
anxious stranger had become antiquated in its turn.

Then from his ashes emerged a new being. Neither urger nor
spellbinder he. The twentieth century was stamped across his brow,
and on his lips was ever the word "Service." Silent, courteous,
watchful, alert, he listened, while you talked. His method, in
turn, made that of the silk-lined salesman sound like the hoarse
hoots of the ballyhoo man at a county fair. Blithely he accepted
five hundred thousand dollars and gave in return--a promise. And
when we would search our soul for a synonym to express all that
was low