"We'll see who the small potato is before the day is done," Van
Meter snorted.

Gordon continued, meditatively, without noticing the interruption:

"Of all the little things on this earth a little New Yorker is the
smallest. I've met ignorance in the South, sullen pigheadedness
in New England; I've measured the boundless cheek of the West, my
native heath; but for self-satisfied stupidity, for littleness in
the world of morals, I have seen nothing on earth, or under it,
quite so small as a well-to-do New Yorker. He has little brains,
or culture, and only the rudiments of common sense, but, being from
New York, he assumes everything. Of God's big world, outside Wall
Street, Broadway, Fifth Avenue, Central Park and Coney Island, he
knows nothing; for he neither reads nor travels; and yet pronounces
instant judgment on world movements of human thought and society."

And deliberately he put on his hat and left the room.

The net result of the meeting was a vote to reduce the pastor's
salary a thousand dollars and add it to the music fund; and Van
Meter hired two detectives to watch the minister.






CHAPTER VII