rs, by shutting down their works, were showing their
employees what would happen if the employees voted their political
opinions into effect, and Stoller had then mastered its meaning and was
fond of using it. "I'd like 'em to see the woods around here, that the
city owns, and the springs, and the donkey-carts, and the theatre, and
everything, and give 'em some practical ideas."

Burnamy made an uneasy movement.

"I'd 'a' liked to put 'em alongside of some of our improvements,
and show how a town can be carried on when it's managed on business
principles."

"Why didn't you think of it?"

"Really, I don't know," said Burnamy, with a touch of impatience.

They had not met the evening before on the best of terms. Stoller
had expected Burnamy twenty-four hours earlier, and had shown his
displeasure with him for loitering a day at Leipsic which he might have
spent at Carlsbad; and Burnamy had been unsatisfactory in accounting for
the delay. But he had taken hold so promptly and so intelligently that
by working far into the night, and through the whole forenoon, he had
got Stoller's crude mass of notes into shape, and had sent off in
time for the first steamer the letter which was to appear over the
proprietor's name in his paper. It was a sort of rough but very full
study of the Carlsbad city government, the methods of taxation, the
municipal ownership of the springs and the lands, and the public
control in everything. It condemned the aristocratic constitution of
the municipality, but it charged heavily in favor of the purity,
beneficence, and wisdom of the administration, under which there was no
poverty and no idleness, and which was managed like any large business.

Stoller had sulkily recurred to his displeasure, once or twice, and
Burnamy suffered it submissively until now. But now, at the change in
Burnamy's tone, he changed his manner a little.

"Seen your friends since supper?" he asked.

"Only a moment. They are rather tired, and they've gone to bed."

"That the fellow that edits that book you write for?"

"Yes; he owns it, too."

The notion of any sort of ownership moved Stoller's respect, and he
asked more deferentially, "Makin' a good thing out of it?"

"A living, I suppose. Some of the high-class weeklies feel the
competition of the ten-cent monthlies. But 'Every Other Week' is about
the best thing we've got in the literary way, and I guess it's holding
its own."

"Have to, to let the editor com