his face, called out:-- “Who wants to subscribe to the Prospect Union?” Wolcott reached for the nearest newspaper, and buried himself in it; he couldn’t endure Ellis. “Who wants to subscribe to the Prospect Union? Only a dollar,” repeated Ellis, wiggling his subscription list before Wolcott’s eyes. “What the devil is the Prospect Union?” growled Wolcott. He crumpled the “Transcript” and tossed it back on the table. “Why, don’t you know?” asked Ellis, in genuine surprise. “I’ve taught geography there for two years.” Wolcott snapped back a single word. It was neither a pretty word nor a refined one; the mildest significance one could attach to it was that Wolcott was scarcely in sympathy with Ellis or anything that was his. “The Prospect Union,” explained Haydock, in the deliberate way that was so often taken seriously, “is a most admirable educational institution, carried on in Cambridgeport by the Harvard undergraduate. It is elaborately designed to make the lower classes--the labouring man--dissatisfied with his station in life. I am proud to say, that I once went there every Friday night for six months to teach two bricklayers, three dry-goods clerks, and a nigger how to appreciate the beautiful works of the late Mr. Keats. I spoiled their lives, and they all love me. Allow me, in my humble way, to help the cause.” He rolled a silver dollar the length of the table to Ellis. Ellis smiled, and put the money in his pocket; he considered Haydock a very “unmoral” person indeed, but liked him, and hoped that some day he would make something of himself. “That’s very nice--now who’s the next patron?” the philanthropist went on, earnestly. “The Prospect Union is really a mighty fine thing. Even if the men down there don’t learn very much out of books, they can come there and see us,” he had almost unnoticeably emphasised the “us.” “My God!” said Wolcott, slowly. The words and the way he sized up Ellis, from top to toe, were heavy with a sort of thick-headed contempt. “They can go there and look at _you_, can they?” Wolcott muttered the unrefined word again. Then he got up with an enormous stretch, yawned, looked at Ellis once more, and laughed, as he went out of the room. Of the lesser brutalities, a contemptuous laugh is, perhaps, the most brutal of all. Ellis’s thin face reddened. There was silence until the outer door slammed. “Damn such a man!” declared Ellis, in a loud whisper. This was bold language for him to speak. Later in the night, he woke up and thought about it. “Oh, I wouldn’t,” protested Haydock, mildly. “He’s so magnificent.”