and toil to
ourselves alone; the palace or the poor-house is not merely for
ourselves, but for our children, whom we've brought up in the
superstition that having and shining is the chief good. We dare not teach
them otherwise, for fear they may falter in the fight when it comes their
turn, and the children of others will crowd them out of the palace into
the poor-house. If we felt sure that honest work shared by all would
bring them honest food shared by all, some heroic few of us, who did not
wish our children to rise above their fellows--though we could not bear
to have them fall below--might trust them with the truth. But we have no
such assurance, and so we go on trembling before Dryfooses and living in
gimcrackeries."

"Basil, Basil! I was always willing to live more simply than you. You
know I was!"

"I know you always said so, my dear. But how many bell-ratchets and
speaking-tubes would you be willing to have at the street door below? I
remember that when we were looking for a flat you rejected every building
that had a bell-ratchet or a speaking-tube, and would have nothing to do
with any that had more than an electric button; you wanted a hall-boy,
with electric buttons all over him. I don't blame you. I find such things
quite as necessary as you do."

"And do you mean to say, Basil," she asked, abandoning this unprofitable
branch of the inquiry, "that you are really uneasy about your place? that
you are afraid Mr. Dryfoos may give up being an Angel, and Mr. Fulkerson
may play you false?"

"Play me false? Oh, it wouldn't be playing me false. It would be merely
looking out for himself, if the new Angel had editorial tastes and wanted
my place. It's what any one would do."

"You wouldn't do it, Basil!"

"Wouldn't I? Well, if any one offered me more salary than 'Every Other
Week' pays--say, twice as much--what do you think my duty to my suffering
family would be? It's give and take in the business world, Isabel;
especially take. But as to being uneasy, I'm not, in the least. I've the
spirit of a lion, when it comes to such a chance as that. When I see how
readily the sensibilities of the passing stranger can be worked in New
York, I think of taking up the role of that desperate man on Third Avenue
who went along looking for garbage in the gutter to eat. I think I could
pick up at least twenty or thirty cents a day by that little game, and
maintain my family in the affluence it's been accustomed to."

"Ba