s he is willing to make a heavy
return to the city. If he does that it will end his scheme of selling
any two hundred million dollars of Union Traction at six per cent. The
market won't back him up. He can't pay twenty per cent. to the city
and give universal transfers and pay six per cent. on two hundred
million dollars, and everybody knows it. He has a fine scheme of
making a cool hundred million out of this. Well, he can't do it. We
must get the newspapers to hammer this legislative scheme of his to
death. When he comes into the local council he must pay twenty or
thirty per cent. of the gross receipts of his roads to the city. He
must give free transfers from every one of his lines to every other
one. Then we have him. I dislike to see socialistic ideas fostered,
but it can't be helped. We have to do it. If we ever get him out of
here we can hush up the newspapers, and the public will forget about
it; at least we can hope so."

In the mean time the governor had heard the whisper of "boodle"--a word
of the day expressive of a corrupt legislative fund. Not at all a
small-minded man, nor involved in the financial campaign being waged
against Cowperwood, nor inclined to be influenced mentally or
emotionally by superheated charges against the latter, he nevertheless
speculated deeply. In a vague way he sensed the dreams of Cowperwood.
The charge of seducing women so frequently made against the
street-railway magnate, so shocking to the yoked conventionalists, did
not disturb him at all. Back of the onward sweep of the generations he
himself sensed the mystic Aphrodite and her magic. He realized that
Cowperwood had traveled fast--that he was pressing to the utmost a
great advantage in the face of great obstacles. At the same time he
knew that the present street-car service of Chicago was by no means
bad. Would he be proving unfaithful to the trust imposed on him by the
great electorate of Illinois if he were to advantage Cowperwood's
cause? Must he not rather in the sight of all men smoke out the
animating causes here--greed, over-weening ambition, colossal
self-interest as opposed to the selflessness of a Christian ideal and
of a democratic theory of government?

Life rises to a high plane of the dramatic, and hence of the artistic,
whenever and wherever in the conflict regarding material possession
there enters a conception of the ideal. It was this that lit forever
the beacon fires of Troy, that thu