the dazzling young crown prince. She was observant, and
so she could not fail to observe now the cordiality with which people of
all sorts saluted him, the touch of deference in the greeting of not a
few. He was scarcely thirty, but it would have been clear to a duller
eye that he was already something of a personage. Yet he held no public
office, nor were his daily walks the walks of philanthropic labor for
the common good. In fact Semple & West's was merely a brokerage
establishment, which was understood to be cleaning up a tolerable lot of
money per annum.

They stood on the corner, waiting for a convenient chance to cross, and
West looked at her as at one whom it was pleasant to rest one's eyes
upon. She drew his attention to their humming environment. For a city of
that size the life and bustle here were, indeed, such as to take the
eye. Trolley cars clanged by in a tireless procession; trucks were
rounding up for stable and for bed; delivery wagons whizzed corners and
bumped on among them; now and then a chauffeur honked by, grim eyes
roving for the unwary pedestrian. On both sides of the street the
homeward march of tired humans was already forming and quickening.

"Heigho! We're living in an interesting time, you and I," said West. "It
isn't every generation that can watch its old town change into a
metropolis right under its eyes."

"I remember," said she, "when it was an exciting thing to see anybody on
the street you didn't know. You went home and told the family about it,
and very likely counted the spoons next morning. The city seemed to
belong to _us_ then. And now--look. Everywhere new kings that know not
Joseph. Bee!"

"It's the law of life; the old order changeth." He turned and looked
along the street, into the many faces of the homeward bound. "The
eternal mystery of the people.... Don't you like to look at their faces
and wonder what they're all doing and thinking and hoping and dreaming
to make out of their lives?"

"Don't you think they're all hoping and dreaming just one thing?--how to
make more money than they're making at present? All over the world,"
said Miss Weyland, "bright young men lie awake at night, thinking up
odd, ingenious ways to take other people's money away from them. These
young men are the spirit of America. We're having an irruption of them
here now ... the Goths sacking the sacred city."

"Clever rascals they are too. I," said West, "belong to the other group.
I sleep