ousand to boot! It seemed to me you were giving away a good deal!"

But John Kollander's approving nod and George Brotherton's great laugh
overcame the editor, and the talk turned to other things.

There came a day in Harvey when men, looking back at events from the
perspective of another day, believed that in those old days of Harvey,
Daniel Sands was master and Dr. Nesbit was servant. And there was much
evidence to indicate that Daniel's was the master spirit of those early
times. But the evidence was merely based on facts, and facts often are
far from the truth. The truth is that Daniel Sands was the beneficiary
of much of the activity of Doctor Nesbit in those days, but the truth is
also that Doctor Nesbit did what he did--won the county seat for Harvey,
secured the railroad, promoted the bond election, which gave Daniel
Sands the franchises for the distribution of water, gas and
electricity--not because the Doctor had any particular regard for Daniel
Sands but because, first of all, the good of the town, as the Doctor saw
it, seemed to require him to act as he acted; and second, because his
triumph at any of these elections meant power, and he was greedy for
power. But he always used his power to make others happy. No man ever
came to the Doctor looking for work that he could not find work for that
man. Men in ditches, men on light poles, men in the court house, men at
Daniel Sands's furnaces, men grading new streets, men working on city or
county contracts knew but one source of authority in Harvey, and that
was Doctor James Nesbit. Daniel Sands was a mere money grubbing incident
of that power. Daniel could have won no one to vote with him; the county
seat would have gone to a rival town, the railroad would not have veered
five miles out of its way to reach Harvey, and a dozen promoters would
have wrangled for a dozen franchises but for Dr. Nesbit.

And if Dr. Nesbit made it his business to see that Dick Bowman had work,
it was somewhat because he knew how badly the little Bowmans needed
food. And if he saw to it that Dick's vote in the council occasionally
yielded him a substantial return from those whom that vote benefited so
munificently, it was partly because the Doctor felt how sorely Lida
Bowman, silently bending over her washtub, needed the little comforts
which the extra fifty-dollar bill would bring that Dick sometimes found
in his monthly pay envelope. And if the Doctor saw to it that Ira Dooley
was mad