ourage in your plan, but is convinced it will cost more than you
estimate, and cannot be made at the same time safe and commercially
remunerative."

There was plenty more, but the wind so ruffled the missive that, with
unlifted eyes, he folded it. He looked across the corner of the
court-house square to his office, whose second month's rent was due, and
the first month's not yet paid. He saw his bright blue sign with the
uncommercial title, which he had hoped to pay the painter for to-day.
For, had his proposition been accepted, the letter was to have contained
a small remittance. A gust of wind came scurrying round the post-office
corner. Dust, leaves, and flakes of cotton rose on its wave,
and--ah!--his hat went with them.

Johanna's teeth flashed in soft laughter as she waited in a doorway.
"Run," she whispered, "run, Mr. Jawn Mawch, Gen'lemun. You so long
gitt'n' to de awffice hat cayn't wait. Yass, betteh give it up. Bresh de
ha'r out'n yo' eyes an' let dat-ah niggeh-felleh ketch it. K-he! I
'clare, dat's de mos' migracious hat I eveh see! Niggeh got it! Dass
right, Mr. Mawch, give de naysty niggeh a dime. Po' niggeh! now run tu'n
yo' dime into cawn-juice."

At his desk March read again:

"We appreciate the latent value of your lands. Time must bring changes
which will liberate that value and make it commercial; but it was more a
desire to promote these changes than any belief in their nearness which
prompted my father's gifts to Rosemont College and Suez University. Not
that he shares the current opinion that you are having too much
politics. Progress and thrift may go side by side with political storms,
and I know he thinks your State would be worse off to-day if it could
secure a mere political calm.

"In reply to your generous invitation to suggest changes in your plan, I
will myself venture one or two questions.

"First--Is not the elaborateness of your plan an argument against it?
Dixie is not a new, wild country; and therefore does not your scheme--to
establish not only mines, mills and roads, but stores, banks, schools
and churches under the patronage and control of the company--imply that
as a community and commonwealth you are, in Dixie, in a state of
arrested development?

"Else why propose to do through a private commercial corporation what is
everywhere else done through public government--by legislation,
taxation, education, and courts? Cannot--or will not--your lawmakers and
taxpay