leled inducements to the seeker after suburban property. What
is more," added Mr. Leet in a confidential whisper, "it would not
surprise me a bit if there were coal deposits in the twenty-five-foot
strip of mine. I have very distinct suspicions, but the paramount
importance of my other business interests has prevented me from making
the investigation which might enrich me beyond all calculation. Now,
you have time, and if you feel disposed to take that property I 'll let
you have it at the merely nominal price of one hundred and twenty-five
dollars a front foot."

This seemed reasonable enough, particularly when I considered the
chances of there being a coal mine on the property. However, as I had
told Mr. Doller, so I now told Mr. Leet: I would first have to speak to
Alice about the matter. Then I confided to Mr. Leet the object of my
mission down-town. Presumably in the hope of insuring and clinching my
devotion to his interests as represented in his twenty-five-foot lot,
Mr. Leet manifested solicitude in my behalf and inveighed bitterly
against the shiftlessness of the municipal administration as
illustrated in the neglect to tap the water main for the benefit of my
property.

"The most aggravatingly exasperating part of it all," says I, "is that
I am a Republican and have been one for thirty years. Moreover, I am a
reformer, having helped to organize the Civic Federation and having
served for somewhat more than a year as chairman of the Special
Committee on Ash Barrels and Garbage Boxes in the third precinct of the
Twenty-fifth Ward. I made several addresses during the last campaign
in advocacy of civil-service reform and all those other reforms which
are invariably advocated and promised by the party which is not in
power but wants to be. In the thirty years that I have been a
Republican I have never asked a favor of my party, and it does seem
just a bit ungrateful that the Republican reform municipal
administration which I helped to elect should seize with apparent
avidity upon its first opportunity to snub me by refusing to tap the
public water main in front of my property."

"You should see Mayor Speedy about it," suggested Mr. Leet.

"I thought of doing so," said I, "but as I had already determined to
approach him with reference to changing the name of Mush Street to
Clarendon Avenue, I concluded that I ought not to call upon him with
this complaint about the water. I particularly wish to avoid al