not worry
me overmuch, because I knew my dad would have closed on it like Jim
Jackson's foot always accidentally trod on and spiked anything that
rolled his way in the old man's store.

Jim Hosley and I, two bachelors who have been down here in this great
metropolis for ten years, looking for the fortunes we always hear about
at the annual Waldorf dinners of the Oswegatchie County Society as being
a part of the perquisites of our northern tribe, then lived together in
a top apartment pretty well down-town, conveniently situated five
flights up without an elevator and the same number back on the turn
when anything was needed from the corner store. Jim came from Gorley and
I from Dazer Falls. The solitude of the upper air, therefore, suited us.
A man can stand for five hours at any corner in Dazer Falls and shout
"Fire" through a forty-inch megaphone without starting up a native.
Dazer Falls is a study in village still life. In Gorley silence and race
suicide are equally common and not noticed except by strangers. Up in
the fifth flat we got away from the world almost as well, except that
the clatter of our dish-washing and the thumping of our disagreeing
opinions would at times sound like the whirr of industry, for Jim and I
did our own housework, our own thinking and lived as cheaply as monopoly
will permit (monopoly, that is the thing I am against as a political
economist, I can tell you). The pile that was to come our way we had not
yet receipted for. Once or twice, years before, we had thought we were
getting close to it, but we found we'd have to change our politics to
get farther. After that I lost all personal ambition, as I could get so
few people to listen to my plans for making everything right. These
kickers spent all their time kicking against monopoly, but wouldn't let
me show them how to slay it. When I began my studies along this line I
hesitated whether to begin war near the top with the United States
Senate or at the bottom with the poor masses in the slums. Down at the
bottom I would be more at home, for I know full well what it is to be
bleached by the blues of adversity. In saving the masses though, by a
direct appeal, I did not think I could do much to brag about down here,
for they don't understand more than half you say to them in English and
their suspicion sours the half they take in before they make any use of
it. This would have made it extra hard for me, because advice was all I
had to use in