"Yes, sir—James, or whatever else you please, sir," said the valet, accommodatingly.
"Then, James, if I have all that ready cash in the cellar, you can have the $15,000 that has just come. I—ah—I don't think I shall need it to-day," said Dawson, in a lordly fashion.
"Me, sir?" said James. "Thank you, sir, but really I have no place to put it. I don't know what to do with what I have already on hand."
"Then give it to the poor," said Dawson, desperately.
Again the valet smiled. He evidently thought his master very queer this morning.
"There ain't any poor any more, sir," he said.
"No poor?" cried Dawson.
"Of course not," said James. "Really. Mr. Dawson, you seem to have forgotten a great deal. Don't you remember how the forty-seventh amendment to the Constitution abolished poverty?"
"I—ah—I am afraid, James," said Dawson, gasping for breath, "that I've had a stroke of some kind during the night. All these things of which you speak seem—er—seem a little strange to me, James. There seems to be some lesion in my brain somewhere. Tell me about—er—how things are. Am I still in the United States?"
"Yes, sir, you are still in the United States."