policy out of his breastpocket, dangled it in
the air just out of his reach, and then flung it back at him. Later when
Jones looked at his policy he found that its face value had been cut
down one-half. James Robinson all at once began to feel his shoe pinch,
and could not discover the reason until he, too, caught sight of a
ghostly hand hovering in the vicinity of his pocket. Soon the room was
filled with a veritable chaos of flying objects. Railroads, steamship
lines, national banks, trust companies, insurance companies, went
hurtling through the air, but all the time our financier sat motionless
in his chair. It was suggested that the force which set such ponderous
objects into motion was the mysterious element known as "executive
ability."

In the final experiment the subject was a popular novelist, who gave a
most interesting exhibition of how a nation-wide reputation can be
raised and supported without the slightest apparent reason. A
painstaking examination by the Committee showed that he had concealed
about him neither talent, nor imagination, nor knowledge of human
nature, nor insight into life, nor an intimate acquaintance with the
elements of English grammar. Nevertheless, before the eyes of the amazed
observers, novel after novel went humming through the air in a direction
away from the writer, while a steady stream of bank-books, automobiles,
and country houses flowed in the opposite direction.

XV

THE CADENCE OF THE CROWD

I have always been peculiarly susceptible to the music of marching feet.
I know of no sound in nature or in Wagner that stirs the heart like the
footsteps of the crowd on the board platform of the Third Avenue "L" at
City Hall every late afternoon. The human tread is always eloquent in
chorus, but it is at its best upon a wooden flooring. Stone and asphalt
will often degrade the march of a crowd to a shuffle. It needs the
living wood to give full dignity to the spirit of human resolution that
speaks in a thousand pair of feet simultaneously moving in the same
direction; and particularly when the moving mass is not an army, but a
crowd advancing without rank or order. I am exceedingly fond of military
parades; so fond that I repeatedly find myself standing in front of
ladies of medium height who pathetically inquire at frequent intervals
what regiment is passing at that moment. But it is not the blare of the
brass bands I care for, or the clatter of cavalry, which I find
exc