om Harvard. Or," he added, with sudden
inspiration when his hand was already on the door, "get a woman--she'd
have a sense of beauty and would know how to jolly Green into agreeing
with her." And with this the editor was gone.

It was the end of one of those burning weeks in August that New York
often knows. The sun went down as red as blood every evening behind
the Palisades, and before the streets and roofs had ceased to radiate
heat the sun was up again above Long Island Sound, as hot and red as
ever. As Ben went uptown in the Sixth Avenue Elevated he could see
pale children hanging over the railings of fire escapes, and
behind them catch glimpses of dark, crowded rooms which had all the
disadvantages of caves without the coolness. But to-day he was too
concentrated on his own problem to notice.

Since Ben's sixteenth year his brother David had been dependent on
him. Their father had been professor of economics in a college in that
part of the United States which Easterners describe as the "Middle
West." In the gay days when muck-raking was at its height Professor
Moreton had lost his chair because he had denounced in his lecture
room financial operations which to-day would be against the law. At
that time they were well thought of, and even practiced by the eminent
philanthropist who had endowed the very chair which Moreton occupied.
The trustees felt that it was unkind and unnecessary to complicate
their already difficult duties by such tactlessness, and their hearts
began to turn against Moreton, as most of our hearts turn against
those who make life too hard for us. Before long they asked him
to resign on account of his age--he was just sixty and extremely
vigorous; but immediately afterward, having been deeply surprised
and hurt, he did what Goldsmith recommends to lovely woman under not
dissimilar circumstances--he died. He left his two young sons--he had
married late in life--absolutely unprovided for. Ben, the elder of the
two, was sixteen, and just ready for college; but he could not give
four precious years to an academic degree. He went to work. With the
background of an educated environment and a very sound knowledge of
economic questions, breathed in from his earliest days, he found a
place at once on a new paper--or, rather, on an old paper just
being converted into a new organ of liberalism--_Liberty_. It was
independent in politics, and was supposed to be independent in
economic questions, but by th