We have made up our minds to lie low and keep still and show them some.
Of course one ought to have some of one's own to show. But the trouble always is, if it is really good, one is sure not to know it, or at least one does not know which it is. The best we can do with goodness, some of us, if we want it to show more quickly or to hurry people along in goodness more, is to show them other people's.
I sometimes think that if everybody in the world could know my plumber or pay a bill to him, the world would soon begin slowly but surely to be a very different place.
My plumber is a genius.
CHAPTER II
IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE EFFICIENT?
Perhaps it will seem a pity to spoil a book—one that might have been really rather interesting—by putting the word "goodness" down flatly in this way in the middle of it.
And in a book which deals with crowds, too, and with business.
I would not yield first place to any one in being tired of the word. I think, for one, that unless there is something we can do to it, and something we can do to it now, it had better be dropped.