his old town as a sweet
and wholesome place. The metamorphosis he now beheld was startling. He
certainly must continue his stroll and glimpse the infamy to which his
town had descended.

Another thing: Carter Watson had a keen social and civic consciousness.
Independently wealthy, he had been loath to dissipate his energies
in the pink teas and freak dinners of society, while actresses,
race-horses, and kindred diversions had left him cold. He had the
ethical bee in his bonnet and was a reformer of no mean pretension,
though his work had been mainly in the line of contributions to the
heavier reviews and quarterlies and to the publication over his name
of brightly, cleverly written books on the working classes and the
slum-dwellers. Among the twenty-seven to his credit occurred titles such
as, "If Christ Came to New Orleans," "The Worked-out Worker," "Tenement
Reform in Berlin," "The Rural Slums of England," "The people of the East
Side," "Reform Versus Revolution," "The University Settlement as a Hot
Bed of Radicalism" and "The Cave Man of Civilization."

But Carter Watson was neither morbid nor fanatic. He did not lose his
head over the horrors he encountered, studied, and exposed. No hair
brained enthusiasm branded him. His humor saved him, as did his wide
experience and his conservative philosophic temperament. Nor did he
have any patience with lightning change reform theories. As he saw it,
society would grow better only through the painfully slow and arduously
painful processes of evolution. There were no short cuts, no sudden
regenerations. The betterment of mankind must be worked out in agony and
misery just as all past social betterments had been worked out.

But on this late summer afternoon, Carter Watson was curious. As he
moved along he paused before a gaudy drinking place. The sign above
read, "The Vendome." There were two entrances. One evidently led to the
bar. This he did not explore. The other was a narrow hallway.
Passing through this he found himself in a huge room, filled with
chair-encircled tables and quite deserted. In the dim light he made out
a piano in the distance. Making a mental note that he would come back
some time and study the class of persons that must sit and drink at
those multitudinous tables, he proceeded to circumnavigate the room.

Now, at the rear, a short hallway led off to a small kitchen, and here,
at a table, alone, sat Patsy Horan, proprietor of the Vendome, consuming