room financial operations which to-day would be against the law. At
that time they were well thought of, and even practiced by the eminent
philanthropist who had endowed the very chair which Moreton occupied.
The trustees felt that it was unkind and unnecessary to complicate
their already difficult duties by such tactlessness, and their hearts
began to turn against Moreton, as most of our hearts turn against
those who make life too hard for us. Before long they asked him
to resign on account of his age--he was just sixty and extremely
vigorous; but immediately afterward, having been deeply surprised
and hurt, he did what Goldsmith recommends to lovely woman under not
dissimilar circumstances--he died. He left his two young sons--he had
married late in life--absolutely unprovided for. Ben, the elder of the
two, was sixteen, and just ready for college; but he could not give
four precious years to an academic degree. He went to work. With the
background of an educated environment and a very sound knowledge of
economic questions, breathed in from his earliest days, he found a
place at once on a new paper--or, rather, on an old paper just
being converted into a new organ of liberalism--_Liberty_. It was
independent in politics, and was supposed to be independent in
economic questions, but by the time Ben worked up to the editorship it
was well recognized to be an anticapitalist sheet. The salary of its
editor, though not large, was sufficient to enable him to send his
younger brother through college, with the result that David, a little
weak, a little self-indulgent, a little--partly through physical
causes--disinclined to effort, was now a poet, a classicist and an
instructor in a fresh-water college. Ben made him an allowance to
enable him to live--the college not thinking this necessary for its
instructors. But during the war Ben had not been able to manage the
allowance, because, to the surprise of many of his friends, Ben had
volunteered early.