application of their ideas as the rest of us. I'd even go as far as to
say that in certain circumstances I'd let them win. They help drive home
my idea that the old parties, like old, established business houses,
have got to maintain a standard or they will lose the business to which
they are rightfully entitled. When you see your customers passing your
front door to try a new shop farther up the street, you want to sit down
and consider what's the matter, and devise means of regaining your lost
ground. It doesn't pay merely to ridicule the new man or cry that his
goods are inferior. Yours have got to be superior--or"--and the gray
eyes twinkled for the first time--"they must be dressed up to look
better in your show window."

Bassett rose and walked the length of the room, with his hands thrust
into his trousers pockets, and before he sat down he poured himself a
glass of water from the pitcher and drank it slowly, with an air of
preoccupation. He moved easily, with a quicker step than might have been
expected in one of his figure. The strength of his hand was also in the
firm line of his vigorous, well-knit frame. And his rather large head,
Dan observed, rested solidly on broad shoulders.

Harwood's thoughts were, however, given another turn at once. Morton
Bassett had said all he cared to say about politics and he now asked Dan
whether he was a college man, to which prompting the reporter recited
succinctly the annals of his life.

"You're a Harrison County boy, are you? So you didn't like the farm, and
found a way out? That's good. You may be interested in some of my
books."

Dan was immediately on guard against being bored; the library of even an