Company. He could, on ten hours' notice, appear before the board of
aldermen or the state legislature and prove, absolutely, with figures
all in rows and with precedents from Poland and New Zealand, that the
street-car company loved the Public and yearned over its employees;
that all its stock was owned by Widows and Orphans; and that whatever it
desired to do would benefit property-owners by increasing rental values,
and help the poor by lowering rents. All his acquaintances turned
to Littlefield when they desired to know the date of the battle of
Saragossa, the definition of the word "sabotage," the future of the
German mark, the translation of "hinc illae lachrimae," or the number of
products of coal tar. He awed Babbitt by confessing that he often sat up
till midnight reading the figures and footnotes in Government reports,
or skimming (with amusement at the author's mistakes) the latest volumes
of chemistry, archeology, and ichthyology.

But Littlefield's great value was as a spiritual example. Despite
his strange learnings he was as strict a Presbyterian and as firm a
Republican as George F. Babbitt. He confirmed the business men in the
faith. Where they knew only by passionate instinct that their system of
industry and manners was perfect, Dr. Howard Littlefield proved it
to them, out of history, economics, and the confessions of reformed
radicals.

Babbitt had a good deal of honest pride in being the neighbor of such a
savant, and in Ted's intimacy with Eunice Littlefield. At sixteen
Eunice was interested in no statistics save those regarding the ages
and salaries of motion-picture stars, but--as Babbitt definitively put
it--"she was her father's daughter."

The difference between a light man like Sam Doppelbrau and a really fine