said, pityingly: "Mr. Coster, your punishment for
assassinating your own soul is that your children are bound to have the
hearts of clerks. You are now definitely nothing but a bank cashier.
That's what!"

"Get out!" shrieked the bank cashier, plagiarizing from a greater than
he.

The tone of voice made the private policeman draw near. When he saw it
was Hendrik to whom Mr. Coster was speaking, he instantly smelled
liquor. What other theory for an employee's loud talking in a bank? He
hoped Hendrik would not swear audibly. The bank would blame it on the
policeman's lack of tact.

"_Au revoir._" And Hendrik smiled so very pleasantly that the policeman,
whose brains were in his biceps, sighed with relief. At the same time
the whisper ran among the caged clerks in the mysterious fashion of all
bad news--the oldest of all wireless systems!

_Hendrik Rutgers was fired!_

Did life hold a darker tragedy than to be out of a job? A terrible
world, this, to be hungry in.

As Hendrik walked into the cage to get his few belongings, pale faces
bent absorbingly over their ledgers. To be fed, to grow comfortably old,
to die in bed, always at so much per week. Ideal! No wonder, therefore,
that his erstwhile companions feared to look at what once had been a
clerk. And then, too, the danger of contagion! A terrible disease,
freedom, in a money-making republic, but, fortunately, rare, and the
victims provided with food, lodging, and strait-jackets at the expense
of the state. Or without strait-jackets: bars.

Hendrik got his pay from the head of his department, who seemed of a
sudden to recall that he had never been formally introduced to this Mr.
H. Rutgers. This filled Hendrik at first with great anger, and then with
a great joy that he was leaving the inclosure wherein men's thoughts
withered and died, just like plants, for the same reason--lack of
sunshine.

On his way to the street he paused by his best friend--a little old
fellow with unobtrusive side-whiskers who turned the ledger's pages over
with an amazing deftness, and wore the hunted look that comes from
thirty years of fear of dismissal. To some extent the old clerk's
constant boasting about the days when he was a reckless devil had
encouraged Hendrick.

"Good-by, Billy," said Hendrik, holding out his hand. "I'm going."

Little old Billy was seen by witnesses talking in public with a
discharged employee! He hastily said, "Too bad!" and made a pretense of
adding