Mrs. Bogardus laughed.
“But I'm paying a man to do it for him. It upsets my contract with that other fellow for Paul to do his work. We have a claim on what we pay for in this world.”
“I suppose we have. But Paul thinks that nothing can pay the price of those artificial relations between man and man. I think that's the way he puts it.”
“Good Heavens! Has the boy read history? It's a relation that began when the world was made, and will last while men are in it.”
“I am not defending Paul's ideas, Colonel. I have a great sympathy with tyrants myself. You must talk to him. He will amuse you.”
“My word! It's a ticklish kind of amusement when we get talking. Why, the boy wants to turn the poor old world upside down—make us all stand on our heads to give our feet a rest. Now, I respect my feet,”—the colonel drew them in a little as the lady's eyes involuntarily took the direction of his allusion,—“I take the best care I can of them; but I propose to keep my head, such as it is, on top, till I go under altogether. These young philanthropists! They assume that the Hands and the Feet of the world, the class that serves in that capacity, have got the same nerves as the Brain.”
“There's a sort of connection,” said Mrs. Bogardus carelessly. “Some of our Heads have come from the class that you call the Hands and Feet, haven't they?”
The colonel admitted the fact, but the fact was the exception. “Why, that's just the matter with us now! We've got no class of legislators. I don't wish to plume myself, but, upon my word, the two services are about all we have left to show what selection and training can do. And we're only just getting the army into shape, after the raw material that was dumped into it by the civil war.”
“Weren't you in the civil war yourself?”
“I was—a West Pointer, madam; and I was true to my salt and false to my blood. But, the flag over all!—at the cost of everything I held dear on earth.” After this speech the colonel looked hotter than ever and a trifle ashamed of himself.