“Well, slush—if that expresses it better. Of course, you don’t believe any such nonsense.”
Mr. Johnson Ringamy frowned as he looked at his secretary.
“I don’t think I understand you,” he said, at last.
“Well, look here, Mr. Ringamy, speaking now, not as a paid servant to his master, but——”
“Now, Scriver, I won’t have any talk like that. There is no master or servant idea between us. There oughtn’t to be between anybody. All men are free and equal.”
“They are in theory, and in my eye, as I might say if I wanted to make it more expressive.”
“Scriver, I cannot congratulate you on your expressive language, if I may call it so. But we are wandering from the argument. You were going to say that speaking as——Well, go on.”
“I was going to say that, speaking as one reasonably sensible man to another, without any gammon about it; don’t you think it is rank nonsense to hold that one class of labor should be as well compensated as another. Honestly now?”
The author sat back in his chair and gazed across the table at his secretary. Finally, he said:
“My dear Scriver, you can’t really mean what you say. You know that I hold that all classes of labor should have exactly the same compensation. The miner, the blacksmith, the preacher, the postal clerk, the author, the publisher, the printer—yes, the man who sweeps out the office, or who polishes boots, should each share alike, if this world were what it should be—yes, and what it will be. Why, Scriver, you surely couldn’t have read my book——”