er."

"My dear friend," he added, laughing, "don't look so horrified. _I_
didn't make things as they are. Personally, I might even prefer to
say, like Mr. Fox in the old story, _'It was not so. It is not so. And
God forbid it should be so!'_ But I can't, truthfully, and
therefore--I don't. I accept what I can't help. Self-preservation, we
all admit, is the first law of nature. Now I consider myself, and the
class I represent, as beings much more valuable to the world than,
let's say, your factory-hands, your mill-workers, your hewers of wood
and drawers of water. Thus, should the occasion arise, I should most
unhesitatingly use whatever weapons law, religion, civilization
itself, put into my hands, without compunction and possibly what some
cavilers might call without mercy; having at stake a very vital
issue--the preservation of my kind, the protection of my class against
Demos."

He spoke without heat, calmly, looking at me smilingly with his fine
intelligent eyes: there was even much of truth in his frank statement
of his case. Always has Dives spoken thus, law-protected, dining
within; while without the doors of the sick civilization he has
brought about, Lazarus lies, licked by the dogs of chance. No, this
man was advocating no new theory; once, perhaps, I might have argued
even thus myself, and done so with a clean conscience. This man was
merely an opportunist. I knew he would never "reach their stomachs"
unless he thought he had to. Indeed, since his coming, things had
changed greatly at the mills, and for the better.

"The day of the great god Gouge," he had said to Inglesby, "is
passing. It's bad business to overwork and underpay your hands into a
state of chronic insurrection. That means losing time and scamping
work. The square deal is not socialism nor charity nor a matter of any
one man's private pleasure or conscience--it's cold hard common sense
and sound scientific business. You get better results, and that's what
you're after."

Perhaps it was because Appleboro offered, at that time, very little to
amuse and interest that keen mind of his, that the Butterfly Man
amused and interested Hunter so much. Or perhaps, proud as he was,
even he could not wholly escape that curious likableness which drew
men to John Flint.

He was delighted with our collection. He could appreciate its scope
and value, something to which all Appleboro else paid but passing
heed. John Flint declared that most folks came to