t to happen; and as they took their way toward the
city together, the reason of this mood became apparent.

"Now, you know," he began, "great things were happening this afternoon,
and as I sometimes like to view history in the making, I went out to
see what I could see. I 'm afraid that our respected mayor is destined
to play a very inconspicuous role in this evening's entertainment. If
I am correctly informed, he is not to have a speaking part. As an
accidental mayor, pitchforked into his present position by Fortune in
one of her ironical moods, he is to be allowed merely a seat on the
platform, where he may be seen but not heard. But to go back to the
beginning. When it was learned that the President of the United States
intended to honour us with a visit and to stand and deliver a speech,
it occurred to a group of representative citizens that a professional
baseball player and street-car conductor was scarcely a fit person to
receive so distinguished a guest; so they very properly resolved that
his part in the exercises should be reduced to a minimum. To that end
a committee, including among others Mr. Bradford, Mr. Parr, and our
worthy alumnus, Mr. Cobbens, wrote a letter to Emmet in which they
suggested that his speech of welcome at the station be limited to
three, or at the most to five, minutes. They intimated also that after
the speech of welcome was concluded, Mr. Emmet need not concern himself
further in the entertainment of the President."

"I call that beastly snobbishness," said Leigh indignantly. "Whatever
the man's former position may have been, he is now the mayor and
entitled to all the honours of his office. On the same principle, the
swells of forty years ago might have refused to recognise Lincoln as
the President because he once split rails. And in fact they
practically did. He had to be dead before they began to think that his
rise in the world was a vindication of the equality of opportunity they
pretended to believe in."

"'Beastly' is perhaps the proper adjective under the circumstances,"
the other admitted, "but why should we lose sleep and shorten our days
with fruitless indignation because men of a certain kind act as men of
that kind always have acted? I prefer to look at the dramatic and
humorous side of it, having, perhaps unfortunately, reached the
speculative and acquiescent time of life. And the situation at the
station was not without its amusing aspect. Mr. Emmet's wel