But the general had little time to devote to John, for he was state organizer of a movement that had for its object the abolition of middlemen in trade, and he was travelling most of the time. The dust gathered on his law-books, and his Sunday suit grew frayed at the edges and shiny at the elbows, but his heart was in the cause, and his blue eyes burned with joy when he talked, and he was happy, and had to travel two days and nights when the fourth baby came, and then was too late to serve on the committee on reception, and had to be satisfied with a minor place on the committee on entertainment and amusements of which Mrs. Culpepper was chairman. But John turned in half of a fee that came from the East for a lawsuit that both he and Ward had forgotten, and Miss Lucy would have named the new baby Mary Ward, but the general stood firm for Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Sitting at Sunday dinner with the Wards on the occasion of Elizabeth Cady Stanton Ward's first monthly birthday, John listened to the general's remarks on the iniquity of the money power, and the wickedness of the national banks, and kept respectful and attentive silence. The worst the young man did was to wink swiftly across the table at Watts McHurdie, who had been invited by Mrs. Ward with malice prepense and seated by Nellie Logan. The wink came just as the general, waving the carving knife, was saying: "Gentlemen, it's the world-old fight--the fight of might against right. When I was a boy like you, John, the fight was between brute strength and the oppressed; between slaves and masters. Now it is between weakness and cunning, between those who would be slaveholders if they could be, and those who are fighting the shackles." And Mrs. Ward saw the wink, and John saw that she saw it, and he was ashamed. So before the afternoon was over, Mr. and Mrs. John Barclay went over to Hendricks's, picking up Molly Culpepper on the way, and the three spent the evening with the general and Miss Hendricks--a faded mousy little woman in despairing thirties; and before the open fire they sat and talked, and John played the piano for an hour, and thought out an extra kink for the Golden Belt Wheat Company's charter. He jabbered about it to Jane as they walked home, and the next day it became a fact.