impressed by the personnel of
that committee--chiefly old men, to be sure, but men of immense
dignity and considerable weight in local finance; and also, for a
counterpoise, there was Miss Starkweather. He hadn't liked the way
Miss Starkweather looked at him. She had looked at him with the same
rigid intensity with which his wife looked at a fly in the
dining-room.

As the door closed behind the last of the committee, the Mayor drew a
prodigious breath, and walked over to the window, where for several
minutes he remained in deep thought. He tried to remember Mr. Mix's
peroration:

"Thousands of years ago, Mr. Mayor, when the race of man was still
dressed in skins, and domiciled in caves, and settling its differences
with clubs and brickbats, there was no institution of law,--there was
no written language. But as civilization advanced, men found the
necessity of communicating their ideas; so that they devised a form of
speech which would enable them to exchange these ideas--such as they
were--about life, and law. And later on, it was plain that in order to
perpetuate these ideas and pass them to posterity, it was necessary to
write them down; and so there was developed a written language, and by
this method civilized men through all the ages have written down the
laws under which they are willing to live. It would be impractical for
all of us to meet together to pass our laws, and therefore we elect
representatives who make our laws for us. These laws are binding upon
all of us until they are set aside by still other legislators, still
acting for the whole people, who have chosen them as their legislative
representatives. The duty of the executive branch of our government is
to enforce those laws, whether made yesterday, or made fifty years
ago, or five hundred years ago, and written down in our law-books....
This is our third conference with you, Mr. Mayor, in regard to one of
those laws. I therefore have to inform you, in behalf of our committee
and our League, and our whole city (whose representatives in City
Council passed that law for our common good) that you stand today at
the parting of the ways. You must choose whether to uphold your sacred
oath of office, or to disregard it. And within forty-eight hours you
will have made that choice, and we shall know where our duty lies....
I thank you for your patience."

The Mayor was one of those who, without the first atom of sustaining
evidence, had long been vaguely