promise come up and 'kick' yourself half to death 'against the pricks' of
established business, parties, and customs, but half of you do it. In the
end all of you come limping in, poor, disheartened, defeated, and then
swing to the other extreme, by being so willing for a change you'll take
almost anything, and so the dirty jobs naturally fall to you."

"I grant much of that," Douglas said, in his deliberate way, "but happily
I have sufficient annual income from my father's estate to enable me to
live until I become acquainted in a strange city, and have time to
establish the kind of business I should care to handle. I am thinking of
practising corporation law; I specialized in that, so I may have the
pleasure before so very long of going after some of the men who do what
you so aptly term the 'dirty' jobs."

"A repetition of the customary chorus," said Mr. Winton, "differing only
in that it is a little more emphatic than usual. I predict that you will
become an office-holder, having party affiliations, inside ten years."

"Possibly," said Douglas. "But I'll promise you this: it will be a new
office no man ever before has held, in the gift of a party not now in
existence."

"Oh you dreamers!" cried Mr. Winton. "What a wonderful thing it is to be
young and setting out to reform the world, especially on a permanent
income. That's where you surpass most reformers."

"But I said nothing about reform," corrected Douglas. "I said I was
thinking of corporation law."

"I'm accustomed to it; while you wouldn't scare Leslie if you said