and his friends. If he had
been honest he would have gone through life like the average man. Go
back in your mind and figure up the fellows that have fallen and see if
the fellow with no bad habits isn't in the majority. Mind, I'm not
figuring on the poor devil without education or advantages, the fellow
who robs hen-roosts or steals dimes. I'm talking about the fellow who
walks off with one hundred and seventy-five dollars, robs the banks or
post-offices, the fellow who touches the widow and orphan."

"I can't understand you," ventured Alfred.

"Well, you can't understand the fellow who had no bad habits."

"But the boss is not playing fair with the public," protested Alfred.

"Well, who on earth ever did play fair with the public? I know you, with
your ideas bounded by Fayette County's limitations, don't understand
these things. There's men who would not take advantage of any man in a
personal business transaction, who will get in on almost anything that
will worst the public. The public is a cruel monster; the public
condemned and crucified Christ; the public is behind every lynching. The
public condemns and ostracizes a man, even though he has lived an
upright life all his days, when some scalawag, for personal or financial
reasons, assails him in a newspaper. When Commodore Vanderbilt gave
utterance to the words, 'The public be damned,' he expressed the
sentiment of four-fifths of those who have rubbed up against the public,
as had the sturdy old man who acquired his estimate of human nature
while rowing the public over the river. The public would ride across the
river without paying him fare. The public will crowd into our show
tonight without paying. The public will eat all the fruit that ripens,
all the grain that grows, drink all the liquors malted and take anything
they can get for nothing. I mean the public rabble, the mob, not the
individual. The only time you can trust the public is when their
sympathies are aroused over some great public calamity that brings death
and desolation. Then the public is of one mind, the public then shows to
best advantage."

"Well, you are the funniest man I ever heard talk. Now what are you
going to do to make the public what you consider it should be?"

"Educate it; educate it. Three-fourths of the public are suckers,
one-fourth skinners. Now, I don't mean to assert that one-fourth are
dishonest men, but most of them are men a bit too fly for the others.
You know there'