"
"He must have thought so from the way we kept stoning him," said the
doctor, with a soft laugh.
"Which of our contradictions," asked the banker, in the same tone of
gentle bonhomie, "has given you and our friend pause just now?"
The Altrurian answered, after a moment: "I am not sure that it is a
contradiction, for as yet I have not ascertained the facts I was seeking.
Our friend was telling me of the great change that had taken place
in regard to work, and the increased leisure that your professional people
are now allowing themselves; and I was asking him where your working-men
spent their leisure."
He went over the list of those he had specified, and I hung my head in
shame and pity; it really had such an effect of mawkish sentimentality.
But my friends received it in the best possible way. They did not laugh;
they heard him out, and then they quietly deferred to the banker, who made
answer for us all:
"Well, I can be almost as brief as the historian of Iceland in his chapter
on snakes: those people have no leisure to spend."
"Except when they go out on a strike," said the manufacturer, with a
certain grim humor of his own; I never heard anything more dramatic than
the account he once gave of the way he broke up a labor union.
Pages:
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60