own
the next day to see the deputy assistant (about a thing connected with
the same matter), told him what I wanted and passed a fifty dollar bill
across the counter and the fellow fairly threw it back at me, in a
perfect rage. He refused it!"

"Refused it," gasped Mr. Spillikins, "I say!"

Conversations such as this filled up the leisure and divided the
business time of all the best people in the city.

In the general gloomy outlook, however, one bright spot was observable.
The "wave" had evidently come just at the opportune moment. For not
only were civic elections pending but just at this juncture four or
five questions of supreme importance would be settled by the incoming
council. There was, for instance, the question of the expropriation of
the Traction Company (a matter involving many millions); there was the
decision as to the renewal of the franchise of the Citizens' Light
Company--a vital question; there was also the four hundred thousand
dollar purchase of land for the new addition to the cemetery, a matter
that must be settled. And it was felt, especially on Plutoria Avenue,
to be a splendid thing that the city was waking up, in the moral sense,
at the very time when these things were under discussion. All the
shareholders of the Traction Company and the Citizens' Light--and they
included the very best, the most high-minded, people in the city--felt
that what was needed now was a great moral effort, to enable them to
lift the city up and carry it with them, or, if not all of it, at any
rate as much of it as they could.

"It's a splendid movement!" said Mr. Fyshe (he was a leading
shareholder and director of the Citizens' Light), "what a splendid
thing to think that we shan't have to deal for our new franchise with a
set of corrupt rapscallions like these present aldermen. Do you know,
Furlong, that when we approached them first with a proposition for a
renewal for a hundred and fifty years they held us up! Said it was too
long! Imagine that! A hundred and fifty years (only a century and a
half) too long for the franchise! They expect us to install all our
poles, string our wires, set up our transformers in their streets and
then perhaps at the end of a hundred years find ourselves compelled to
sell out at a beggarly valuation. Of course we knew what they wanted.
They meant us to hand them over fifty dollars each to stuff into their
rascally pockets."

"Outrageous!" said Mr. Furlong.

"And the same th