aid to his
aide:

"Barrett, I've got a man's job this time."

Sandwiching for banks that had deposits of over one hundred millions
appealed to Andrew Barrett. And the Standard Oil and the Steel Trust,
also, held possibilities. After the S. A. S. A. got those he would go
into business for himself.

"Who is it?" he asked, eagerly.

"Grace Goodchild!" answered H. R., absently.

"Oh, I thought--"

H. R. started. "What? Oh! You are thinking of business. Well, I'm going
to put New York on the map at one fell swoop."

Andrew Barrett beamed. At last, millions! All New York using sandwiches
at regular rates!

H. R. looked at his lieutenant and smiled forgivingly. After all, it was
not Andrew's fault that the spring was not in his soul.

"Barrett, men and women in all civilized communities desire three
things. All of them begin with a B. Can you guess?"

"Not I!" answered Barrett, with diplomatic self-depreciation. There are
questions whose answers gain you mortal enmity by depriving the
questioner of the greatest of all pleasures.

"Bread, beauty, and bunco. You satisfy all the natural wants of humanity
by supplying these three. Now men pay for their necessities with
whatever coin happens to be current. I have sometimes thought of a state
of society in which payment need not be made in interchangeable labor
units, but in the self-satisfaction of accomplishment. I have even
dreamed," he finished, sternly, "of making goodness fashionable!"

"Merciful Heaven!" exclaimed Barrett, in indescribable awe.

H. R. shook his head gloomily. "The trouble," he said, bitterly, "is
that it is so damned easy to be good, so obviously intelligent, so
natural! Men are bad, I firmly believe, because badness is so
roundabout and expensive. How else can you explain it? Society, since
money was invented, has craved for expensive things. Society is, in
truth, expense."

"Say, Chief, I don't get the dope about goodness being easy."

"Probably not; it is too obvious. The early Christians died gladly. It
was good form. Dying for God ceased to be fashionable. Hence universal
suffrage. To die for God merely means to live for God. Do you see?"

"No. The Christian part bothers me."

"Let us be heathen, then. The Spartan mother loved her sons. Sent them
to battle saying, _With your shield or on it!_ The axiom of the locality
is the fashion of the place. To die bravely in Sparta was to be
fashionable. If I can make goodness fashionable I'll