inner before Mrs. Lenox began:

"Dick, I have just been reading your last night's speech at the
Municipal Club and I'm quite effervescing with it. I want to put you up
on a pedestal and call the attention of Mr. Frank Lenox to you. He is
one of the innumerable excellent gentlemen, over the length and breadth
of the land, who are so busy running everything else that they let city
politics go to the place that I'm not allowed to mention. It does my
heart good to see you taking it up in earnest."

"It was a good speech, all right. I've read it, too," said Mr. Lenox.
"And I'm all the wretch my wife calls me. I wish I'd heard you in your
frenzy, Percival, though I have less faith in speeches and principles
than she has. Reform is only a seed, you know, and most seeds never come
to maturity or bear fruit. So most people justly doubt the reformer."

"Do you think we're thin sound-waves who do nothing but vibrate?" said
Dick.

"Not at all; but I mean there are no such things in the world as
abstractions. There are only men and women. Thoughts don't seethe; men
and women seethe. Principles don't reform or corrupt; men and women do
the reforming and corrupting. If you want to do things, don't begin by
making the air resound with denunciations of wickedness; but make people
believe in you and despise the other fellow. When they like you they'll
begin to think about your ideas."

"I don't know any better way to make people believe in me than to stand
up for what I think to be right," said Dick sharply.

"Stand up all you like," Lenox answered. "But the trouble with most good
people is that they are contented to stand up. To arrive anywhere you've
got to get right down and scrap."

"Oh, I'm only trying my muscle a bit," Dick answered laughingly. "I do
not intend to do much generalizing except in the way of advertisement.
I'm planning to put a spoke in the wheels of a few particular wrongs."

"That's what I hope. It's easier to fulminate than to fight."

"Then you'll be glad to know that Dick has already been answerable for
galvanizing the Municipal Club into new life," Ellery put in. "It has
been, as you know, a delightfully scholarly affair, any of whose members
were quite capable of writing a text-book on civics; but Dick has roped
in a lot of new men and stirred up the old ones."

"To what end?"

"Well, for two things; we have appointed committees to keep close tab on
all of the proceedings of the council--to attend e