to that, anyway," said the
Honourable Hilary, "but what I want to know is, why you didn't advise
that eternal fool of a Meader to accept what we offered him. You'll
never get a county jury to give as much."

"I did advise him to accept it," answered Austen.

"What's the matter with him?" the Honourable Hilary demanded.

"Well, judge, if you really want my opinion, an honest farmer like
Meader is suspicious of any corporation which has such zealous and loyal
retainers as Ham Tooting and Brush Bascom." And Austen thought with a
return of the pang which had haunted him at intervals throughout the
afternoon, that he might almost have added to these names that of Hilary
Vane. Certainly Zeb Meader had not spared his father.

"Life," observed the Honourable Hilary, unconsciously using a phrase
from the 'Book of Arguments,' "is a survival of the fittest."

"How do you define 'the fittest?'" asked Austen. "Are they the men who
have the not unusual and certainly not exalted gift of getting money
from their fellow creatures by the use of any and all weapons that may
be at hand? who believe the acquisition of wealth to be exempt from the
practice of morality? Is Mr. Flint your example of the fittest type to
exist and survive, or Gladstone or Wilberforce or Emerson or Lincoln?"

"Emerson!" cried the Honourable Hilary, the name standing out in red
letters before his eyes. He had never read a line of the philosopher's
writings, not even the charge to "hitch your wagon to a star" (not in
the "Book of Arguments"). Sarah Austen had read Emerson in the
woods, and her son's question sounded so like the unintelligible but
unanswerable flashes with which the wife had on rare occasions opposed
the husband's authority that Hilary Vane found his temper getting the
best of him--The name of Emerson was immutably fixed in his mind as the
synonym for incomprehensible, foolish habits and beliefs. "Don't talk
Emerson to me," he exclaimed. "And as for Brush Bascom, I've known him
for thirty years, and he's done as much for the Republican party as any
man in this State."

This vindication of Mr. Bascom naturally brought to a close a
conversation which had already continued too long. The Honourable Hilary
retired to rest; but--if Austen had known it--not to sleep until the
small hours of the morning.

It was not until the ensuing spring that the case of Mr. Zebulun Meader
against the United Northeastern Railroads came up for trial in Bradford,