"Oh, that is mine still," said Randolph, "but other people don't want
it. There is no use, mother, in evading the question. We live in an
age of market values. We must consider them. Butter and cheese have a
sure market value, and the knowledge of the law in my head has not.
Nobody wants it enough to pay anything for it, to give us a moneyed
equivalent wherewith we may buy the things we need. Therefore, if
nobody wants that, we must offer them something else. When it comes
to the rights of our fellow-men to spend their own money as they
choose, that is inalienable. It is about the most firmly established
right in the country. No; people cannot be coerced into buying my
little store of knowledge, therefore I will try them with my little
store of butter and cheese and eggs and molasses."

Randolph Anderson laughed. Aside from regard for his mother's
feelings, he had not the slightest scruple against his business
venture. On the contrary, it rather amused him. He must have had a
latent taste for business, for he quite enjoyed studying the markets
and purchasing his stock in trade. He purchased wisely, too. He
offered a choice stock of goods, or, rather, his two salesmen did. He
himself did not sell much over his own counters, except in the case
of a great rush of business. But it was not from the least sensation
of superiority. It was merely because of a distrust of his own
ability to acquit himself well in such a totally different branch of
industry. Anderson was cast on unusually simple and ingenuous lines.
Nobody would have believed it, but he was actually somewhat modest
and shy before his own clerks, and realized sensitively his own lack
of experience. So he had a way of subsiding when customers appeared,
and retreating to his office in the rear of the building. He spent
most of his time in this office. It was a very pleasant one,
overlooking the river, on which steamboats and canal-boats travelled