isgiving, produced an original design.
Trefusis approved of it, and resolved to have it executed by the hands
of the designer. He hired a sculptor's studio, purchased blocks of
marble of the dimensions and quality described to him by the mason, and
invited him to set to work forthwith.

Trefusis now encountered a difficulty. He wished to pay the mason the
just value of his work, no more and no less. But this he could not
ascertain. The only available standard was the market price, and this he
rejected as being fixed by competition among capitalists who could only
secure profit by obtaining from their workmen more products than they
paid them for, and could only tempt customers by offering a share of the
unpaid-for part of the products as a reduction in price. Thus he
found that the system of withholding the indispensable materials for
production and subsistence from the laborers, except on condition of
their supporting an idle class whilst accepting a lower standard
of comfort for themselves than for that idle class, rendered the
determination of just ratios of exchange, and consequently the practice
of honest dealing, impossible. He had at last to ask the mason what he
would consider fair payment for the execution of the design, though he
knew that the man could no more solve the problem than he, and that,
though he would certainly ask as much as he thought he could get, his
demand must be limited by his poverty and by the competition of the
monumental tradesman. Trefusis settled the matter by giving double what
was asked, only imposing such conditions as were necessary to compel the
mason to execute the work himself, and not make a profit by hiring other
men at the market rate of wages to do it.

But the design was, to its author's astonishment, to be paid
for separately. The mason, after hesitating a long time between
two-pounds-ten and five pounds, was emboldened by a fellow-workman,
who treated him to some hot whiskey and water, to name the larger sum.
Trefusis paid the money at once, and then set himself to find out how
much a similar design would have cost from the hands of an eminent
Royal Academician. Happening to know a gentleman in this position, he
consulted him, and was informed that the probable cost would be from
five hundred to one thousand pounds. Trefusis expressed his opinion that
the mason's charge was the more reasonable, somewhat to the indignation
of his artist friend, who reminded him of the yea