“We are ready to acknowledge your—er—originality, Mr. Toomey, and will be delighted to listen.”
To Toomey it was a rare moment. He enjoyed it so keenly that he wished he might prolong it. Uncoiling his long legs, he surveyed his auditors with a tolerant air of amusement:
“I presume there are no objections to my mentioning a few of the flaws that I see in the schemes which have been outlined?”
“Our time is limited,” hinted Mr. Butefish.
“It won’t take long to puncture those bubbles,” Toomey answered, contemptuously.
Certainly he had made a raise somewhere!
“We will hear your criticisms,” replied Mr. Butefish, with the restraint of offended dignity.
“In the first place, everybody knows that the soil in this country sours and alkalies when water stands on it.” Toomey spoke as a man who had wide experience. He looked at “Doc” Fussel, who shrivelled with the chagrin that filled him, when Toomey added, “That settles the peppermint bog, doesn’t it?
“Take the next proposition: What’s the use of car-lines that begin nowhere and end nowhere? A cripple could walk from one end of the town to the other in seven minutes. You couldn’t raise enough outside capital to buy the spikes for it.
“Take fossils—a school boy would know that the demand for fossils is limited, and who is sure that the bed is inexhaustible until it’s tested. When the government is taking nitrates out of the air in Prouty to make ammunition, you and I will be under the daisies, Governor.”