McHurdie nods his comprehension.
"Yes," continues the general, "and I tell them all about the new improvements. There are more of us out on the Hill now than in town, Watts; I spent some time with David Frye and Henry Schnitzler and Jim Lord Lee this morning, and called on General Hendricks for a little while."
"Did you find him sociable?" asks the poet, grinning up from his bench.
"Oh, so-so—about as usual," answers the general.
"He was always a proud one," comments Watts. "Will Henry Schnitzler be stiff-necked about his monument there by the gate?" asks the little Scotchman.
"Inordinately, Watts, inordinately! The pride of that man is something terrible."
The two old men chuckle at the foolery of the moment. The general folds away the evening paper and rises to go.
"Watts," he says, "I have lived seventy-eight years to find out just one thing."
"And what will that be?" asks the harness maker.
"This," beams the old man, as he puts his spectacle case in his black silk coat; "that the more we give in this world, the more we take from it; and the more we keep for ourselves, the less we take." And smiling at his paradox, he goes through the shop into the sunset.