wise clubwomen, the cut-glass society crowd, the proud owner of the
automobile, the "respectable parties concerned," the proprietor of the
Golden Eagle, the clerks in the Bee Hive, the country crook who aspires
to be a professional criminal some day, "the leading citizen," who
spends much of his time seeing the sights of his country, the college
boys who wear funny clothes and ribbons on their hats, and the
politicians, greedy for free advertising. They are ordinary two-legged
men and women, and if there is one thing more than any other that marks
our town, it is its charity, and the mercy that is at the bottom of all
its real impulses.

Our business seems to outsiders to be a cruel one, because we have to
deal as mere business with such sacred things as death and birth, the
meeting and parting of friends, and with tragedies as well as with
comedies. This is true. Every man--even a piano tuner--thinks his
business leads him a dog's life, and that it shows him only the seamy
side of the world. But our business, though it shows the seams, shows us
more of good than of bad in men. We are not cynics in our office; for we
know in a thousand ways that the world is good. We know that at the end
of the day we have set down more good deeds than bad deeds, and that the
people in our town will keep the telephone bell ringing to-morrow, more
to praise the recital of a good action than they will to talk to us
about some evil thing that we had to print.

Time and again we have been surprised at the charity of our people. They
are always willing to forgive, and be it man or woman who takes a
misstep in our town--which is the counterpart of hundreds of American
towns--if the offender shows that he wishes to walk straight, a thousand
hands are stretched out to help him and guide him. It is not true that a
man or woman who makes a mistake is eternally damned by his fellows. If
one persists in wrong after the first misdeed it is not because
sheltering love and kindness were not thrown around the wrongdoer. We
have in our town women who have done wrong and have lived down their
errors just as men do, and have been forgiven. A hundred times in our
office we have talked these things over and have been proud of our
people and of their humanity. We are all neighbours and friends, and
when sorrow comes, no one is alone. The town's greatest tragedies have
proved the town's sympathy, and have been worth their cost.

II

The Young Prince