rule, all the bank clerks in Mariposa treated Judge Pepperleigh's
premises as their own. He used to sit and sneer at Pupkin after he
had gone till Zena would throw down the Pioneers of Tecumseh Township
in a temper and flounce off the piazza to her room. After which the
judge's manner would change instantly and he would relight his corn
cob pipe and sit and positively beam with contentment. In all of
which there was something so mysterious as to prove that Mr. Pupkin's
chances were hopeless.

Nor was that all of it. Pupkin's salary was eight hundred dollars a
year and the Exchange Bank limit for marriage was a thousand.

I suppose you are aware of the grinding capitalistic tyranny of the
banks in Mariposa whereby marriage is put beyond the reach of ever so
many mature and experienced men of nineteen and twenty and
twenty-one, who are compelled to go on eating on a meal ticket at the
Mariposa House and living over the bank to suit the whim of a group
of capitalists.

Whenever Pupkin thought of this two hundred dollars he understood all
that it meant by social unrest. In fact, he interpreted all forms of
social discontent in terms of it. Russian Anarchism, German
Socialism, the Labour Movement, Henry George, Lloyd George,--he
understood the whole lot of them by thinking of his two hundred
dollars.

When I tell you that at this period Mr. Pupkin read Memoirs of the
Great Revolutionists and even thought of blowing up Henry Mullins
with dynamite, you can appreciate his state of mind.