don't we, Perry?"

I refused to accept the remark as flattering.

Another object of their assaults was Frederick Grierson, who by this time
had emerged from obscurity as a small dealer in real estate into a
manipulator of blocks and corners.

"I suppose you think it's a lawyer's business to demand an ethical bill
of health of every client," I said. "I won't stand up for all of
Tallant's career, of course, but Mr. Wading has a clear right to take his
cases. As for Grierson, it seems to me that's a matter of giving a dog a
bad name. Just because his people weren't known here, and because he has
worked up from small beginnings. To get down to hard-pan, you fellows
don't believe in democracy,--in giving every man a chance to show what's
in him."

"Democracy is good!" exclaimed Perry. "If the kind of thing we're coming
to is democracy, God save the state!"...

On the other hand I found myself drawing closer to Ralph Hambleton,
sometimes present at these debates, as the only one of my boyhood friends
who seemed to be able to "deal with conditions as he found them." Indeed,
he gave one the impression that, if he had had the making of them, he
would not have changed them.

"What the deuce do you expect?" I once heard him inquire with
good-natured contempt. "Business isn't charity, it's war.

"There are certain things," maintained Perry, stoutly, "that gentlemen
won't do."

"Gentlemen!" exclaimed Ralph, stretching his slim six feet two: We were
sitting in the Boyne Club. "It's ungentlemanly to kill, or burn a town or
sink a ship, but we keep armies and navies for the purpose. For a man
with a good mind, Perry, you show a surprising inability to think things,
out to a logical conclusion. What the deuce is competition, when you come
down to it? Christianity? Not by a long shot! If our nations are
slaughtering men and starving populations in other countries,--are
carried on, in fact, for the sake of business, if our churches are filled
with business men and our sky pilots pray for the government, you can't
expect heathen individuals like me to do business on a Christian
basis,--if there is such a thing. You can make rules for croquet, but not
for a game that is based on the natural law of the survival of the
fittest. The darned fools in the legislatures try it occasionally, but we
all know it's a sop to the 'common people.' Ask Hughie here if there ever
was a law put on the statute books that his friend Watling couldn't g