boy, all hope and high spirits, and no discount on the remotest future;
nothing but perpetual boom to the end of time--I tell you it warmed your
blood. Why, there were some things about it that made you think what a
nice kind of world this would be if people ever took hold together,
instead of each fellow fighting it out on his own hook, and devil take
the hindmost. They made up their minds at Moffitt that if they wanted
their town to grow they'd got to keep their gas public property. So they
extended their corporation line so as to take in pretty much the whole
gas region round there; and then the city took possession of every well
that was put down, and held it for the common good. Anybody that's a mind
to come to Moffitt and start any kind of manufacture can have all the gas
he wants free; and for fifteen dollars a year you can have all the gas
you want to heat and light your private house. The people hold on to it
for themselves, and, as I say, it's a grand sight to see a whole
community hanging together and working for the good of all, instead of
splitting up into as many different cut-throats as there are able-bodied
citizens. See that fellow?" Fulkerson broke off, and indicated with a
twirl of his head a short, dark, foreign-looking man going out of the
door. "They say that fellow's a Socialist. I think it's a shame they're
allowed to come here. If they don't like the way we manage our affairs
let 'em stay at home," Fulkerson continued. "They do a lot of mischief,
shooting off their mouths round here. I believe in free speech and all
that; but I'd like to see these fellows shut up in jail and left to jaw
one another to death. We don't want any of their poison."

March did not notice the vanishing Socialist. He was watching, with a
teasing sense of familiarity, a tall, shabbily dressed, elderly man, who
had just come in. He had the aquiline profile uncommon among Germans, and
yet March recognized him at once as German. His long, soft beard and
mustache had once been fair, and they kept some tone of their yellow in