ning is the chief good. We dare not
teach them otherwise, for fear they may falter in the fight when it
comes their turn, and the children of others will crowd them out of the
palace into the poor-house. If we felt sure that honest work shared by
all would bring them honest food shared by all, some heroic few of us,
who did not wish our children to rise above their fellows--though we
could not bear to have them fall below--might trust them with the
truth. But we have no such assurance, and so we go on trembling before
Dryfooses and living in gimcrackeries."

"Basil, Basil! I was always willing to live more simply than you. You
know I was!"

"I know you always said so, my dear. But how many bell-ratchets and
speaking-tubes would you be willing to have at the street door below?
I remember that when we were looking for a flat you rejected every
building that had a bell-ratchet or a speaking-tube, and would have
nothing to do with any that had more than an electric button; you wanted
a hall-boy, with electric buttons all over him. I don't blame you. I
find such things quite as necessary as you do."

"And do you mean to say, Basil," she asked, abandoning this unprofitable
branch of the inquiry, "that you are really uneasy about your place?
that you are afraid Mr. Dryfoos may give up being an Angel, and Mr.
Fulkerson may play you false?"

"Play me false? Oh, it wouldn't be playing me false. It would be merely
looking out for himself, if the new Angel had editorial tastes and
wanted my place. It's what any one would do."

"You wouldn't do it, Basil!"

"Wouldn't I? Well, if any one offered me more salary than 'Every
Other Week' pays--say, twice as much--what do you think my duty to my
suffering family would be? It's give and take in the business world,
Isabel; especially take. But as to being uneasy, I'm not, in the least.
I've the spirit of a lion, when it comes to such a chance as that.
When I see how readily the sensibilities of the passing stranger can be
worked in New York, I think of taking up the role of that desperate man
on Third Avenue who went along looking for garbage in the gutter to eat.
I think I could pick up at least twenty or thirty cents a day by
that little game, and maintain my family in the affluence it's been
accustomed to."

"Basil!" cried his wife. "You don't mean to say that man was an
impostor! And I've gone about, ever since, feeling that one such case
in a million, the bare possibility of i