shepherds and
shepherdesses of that beautiful Arcadia--the shepherds in their Tuxedo
jackets, with vast white shirt-fronts broad as the map of Africa, with
spotless white waistcoats girdling their equators, wearing heavy gold
watch-chains and little patent shoes blacker than sin itself--and the
shepherdesses in foaming billows of silks of every colour of the
kaleidoscope, their hair bound with glittering headbands or coiled with
white feathers, the very symbol of municipal purity. One would search
in vain the pages of pastoral literature to find the equal of it.

And as they talked, the good news spread from group to group that it
was already known that the new franchise of the Citizens' Light was to
be made for two centuries so as to give the company a fair chance to
see what it could do. At the word of it, the grave faces of manly
bondholders flushed with pride, and the soft eyes of listening
shareholders laughed back in joy. For they had no doubt or fear, now
that clean government had come. They knew what the company could do.

Thus all night long, outside of the club, the soft note of the motor
horns arriving and departing wakened the sleeping leaves of the elm
trees with their message of good tidings. And all night long, within
its lighted corridors, the bubbling champagne whispered to the
listening rubber trees of the new salvation of the city. So the night
waxed and waned till the slow day broke, dimming with its cheap prosaic
glare the shaded beauty of the artificial light, and the people of the
city--the best of them--drove home to their well-earned sleep; and the
others--in the lower parts of the city--rose to their daily toil.

END

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich, by
Stephen Leacock

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