have guided the tastes of the public--few knew how to clothe themselves
until I showed them, and few would buy their clothing until they had
seen me. I have had men stand and discuss my clothes for hours, making
up their minds about the spring fashions. These city authorities little
know what they are doing. But what do they care? Look at their clothes
and tell me how many of them fit. What is it to them that a public man
and benefactor lies here in a pile of collar boxes? They say that the
old ideas that admitted of my standing on the sidewalk are done away
with, and that this is an age of progress. What sort of progress is
this, that takes a man who has been prominent before the people for
years and dumps him into a dust pile? Look at me! I have never lacked
backbone. Why, I am all backbone. [He had a backbone of iron]. No man
ever knew me to get out of the way of a crowd or go with it. I have
been a consistent public man with a backbone for ten years and here
I am in a dust-pile!" Here the coal scuttle slipped and my old friend
tumbled into the collar boxes with a groan. As I left him I could not
help thinking how many public men all consistency and backbone have
made similar reputations with my dummy friend by never going with or
getting out of the way of the crowd, and ended by being tumbled into
the dust-bin just for the lack of a little wisdom. Alas, how like my
dethroned friend we all are, in the respect of clamoring about our
opinions and wrongs long after the public has forgotten both them and
us.

* * * * *

"This is a pretty condition for me to be in now, isn't it?" asked
another old friend of mine that I went to look after. "Why, don't you
remember me? I'm the fish that always used to be at the door as you
went by." It was true, I could hardly remember him. He used to lie in