world."

(ASHER walks over to the bench and lays down the open letter on it.)

If anything should happen to that boy, Jonathan, there wouldn't be
anything in life left for me! Industrial democracy! So you put that
into his head! Socialism, I suppose.

DR. JONATHAN. No, experimental science.

ASHER. Call it what you like. What surprises me is, when I look back
over the months you've been here, how well we've got along in spite of
your views.

DR. JONATHAN. Why not say in spite of yours, Asher?

ASHER (smiling involuntarily). Well, it's been a comfort to drop in here
and talk to you, in spite of what you believe. You've got the gift of
sympathy, Jonathan. But I don't approve of you're spending your time in
this sort of work--(he waves a hand toward the bench)--which may never
come to anything, and in doctoring people for nothing and patching up
their troubles. I daresay you enjoy it, but what worries me is how you
are going to live?

DR. JONATHAN. By practising your cardinal virtue, thrift.

ASHER. I've got a proposal to make to you part of a scheme I've been
turning over in my mind for the last six months--and when George's letter
came I decided to put it through. I went to New York and had Sterry, a
corporation lawyer, draw it up. I'm going to prove I'm not a mossback.