ch. Every superfluous expenditure must be cut
off. As for the park and free library, that seems wild now, doesn't it?
I don't regret abandoning the scheme. The people of this town never did
appreciate public spirit or generosity, did they?"

"Never."

"I'm very sorry you spoke to Mrs. Borrow about helping their church. Do
you think she remembers it?"

"She met me to-day and said they were expecting something handsome."

Mr. Grimes laughed bitterly.

"That's always the way with those people. They are the worst beggars!
When a lot of folks get together and start a church it is almost
indecent for them to come running around to ask other folks to support
it. I have half a notion not to give them a cent."

"Not even for Mr. Borrow's salary?"

"Certainly not! Half the clergymen in the United States get less than a
thousand dollars a year; why can't he do as the rest do? Am I to be
called upon to support a lot of poor preachers? A good deal of nerve is
required, I think, to ask such a thing of me."

Two weeks afterward Mr. Grimes and his wife sat together again on the
porch in the cool of the evening.

"Now," said Grimes, "let us together go over these charities we were
talking about and be done with them. Let us start with the tough fact
staring us in the face that, with only one million dollars at four per
cent. and all our new and necessary expenses, we shall have to look
sharp or I'll be borrowing money to live on in less than eight months."

"Well," said Mrs. Grimes, "what shall we cut out? Would you give up the
Baptist organ that we used to talk about?"

"Mary Jane, it is really surprising how you let such things as that stay
in your mind. I considered that organ scheme abandoned long ago."

"Is it worth while, do you think, to do anything with the Methodist
Church mortgage?"

"How much is it?"

"Three thousand dollars, I think."

"Yes, three thousand from forty thousand leaves us only thirty-seven
thousand. Then, if we do it for the Methodists we shall have to do it
for the Lutherans and the Presbyterians and swarms of churches all
around the country. We can't make flesh of one and fowl of another. It
will be safer to treat them all alike; and more just, too. I think we
ought to try to be just with them, don't you, Mary Jane?"

"And Mr. Borrow's salary?"

"Ha! Yes! That is a thousand dollars, isn't it? It does seem but a
trifle. But they have no children and they have themselves completely
adjuste