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that exactly the same argument will be urged two years from now?"

"I know it won't," said Plonny with the calmness of absolute conviction.
"A fat legislature _always_ follows a lean one. They come in strips,
same as a shoulder of bacon."

"Well! I wouldn't think much of a party whose legs were so weak that a
little step forward--everybody knows _it's_ forward--would tumble it
over in a heap."

"The party! I ain't thinking of the _party_, Mr. West. I'm thinking,"
said Neal, the indignation in his voice giving way to a sudden
apologetic softness, "of you."

"Me? What on earth have I got to do with it?" asked West, rather touched
by the look of dog-like affection in the other's eyes.

"Everything. If the party gets let in for this extravagance, you'll be
the man who did it."

There was a silence, and then West said, rather nobly:

"Well, I suppose I will have to stand that. I must do what I think is
right, you know, and take the consequences."

"Two years from now," said Mr. Neal, gently, "there wouldn't be no
consequences."

"Possibly not," said West, in a firm voice.

"While the consequences now," continued Mr. Neal, still more gently,
"would be to put you in very bad with the party leaders. Fine men they
are, but they never forgive a man who puts a crimp into the party. You'd
be a marked man to the longest day you lived!"

"Well, Plonny! I'm not asking anything of the party leaders--"

"But suppose some of your friends wanted to ask something for _you_?"

Suddenly Plonny leaned over the table, and began speaking rapidly and
earnestly.

"Listen here, Mr. West. I understand your feelings and your position
just like they was print, and I was reading them over your shoulder.
You're walking with y'r eyes on the skies, and you don't like to look at
the ground to see that you don't break nothing as you go forward. Your
mind's full of the maw'l idea and desire to uplift the people, and it's
kind of painful to you to stop and look at the plain practical way by
which things get done. But I tell you that everybody who ever got
anything big done in this world, got it done in a practical way. All the
big men that you and I admire--all the public leaders and governors and
reform mayors and so on--got where they have by doing practical good in
a practical way. Now, you don't like me to say that if you do so-and-so,
you'll be in bad with the State leaders, f'r that looks to you as if I
thought you could be infloonc