The chairman looked over his spectacles and said, “Gentlemen, you have heard, and no doubt with pardonable elation, the statement of our honored associate, Judge Legal. There are eight of us,” he continued, “and two millions means a quarter of a million each. Within two years, sirs, these assets will have doubled in value. There are men whose statements I would not rely implicitly upon without discounting them—say, fifty or seventy-five per cent—but, gentlemen, when it comes to downright conservatism, why, my level-headed friend the Judge takes the jackpot. Yes, sir, I undertake to say, gentlemen, he is the king bee of us all in cutting square into the heart of a proposition, and analyzing it with a precision that is truly remarkable; and when he says two millions, I have no hesitancy, gentlemen, in staking my reputation that it is three millions if it is a cent.”
As the chairman sat down he looked carefully at his gold-headed cane again to make sure it had sustained no injury.
Marcus Donald, the resident Town Company’s director, addressed the meeting, and said:
“Mr. Chairman, I never felt so rich in my life as I do at the present moment. I regret that my ancestors are not alive to rejoice with me in the prosperity I am now enjoying. There is a reason in this contemplated prosperity. First, the great natural opportunities in this wonderful valley, and, second, the unity of action on the part of the members of our Town Company.
“I have here a small matter to which I wish to call the directors’ attention.
It is a livery bill of some eighty dollars that is past due, and, perhaps, we had better arrange for it.”
Judge Legal rose to a point of order. He said that such small details as paying livery bills had no place in the deliberations of this body of men. “It is the duty of the auditing committee to first approve and then look after the payments of small items like expense bills.”