“'You are wrong,' I said. 'The American way is to begin at the bottom. It's a very good way--the only way by which one may be thoroughly prepared for management. In that way he gets hold of the sense that is common in the rank and file of his army, and knowing that, he will know what to do in every emergency.' “'If that is true, John might as well have been born poor. Does his position and the fact that I have five thousand shares of stock count for nothing?' “'Well, you get dividends on the stock. If you expect to get dividends also on the position that you got from your grandfather you are wrong. In this country we have no crown princes who begin at the top. Inherited superiority is an amusing thing to look at but a poor foundation for credit. In this country we bank on demonstrated superiority.' “Mrs. Butters rose and haughtily withdrew from my office with the pride of the Shrimpstones glittering in her eye. “Now, John Butters was a good fellow. He was over-mothered. Indeed, the word for it is smothered. He was like a man cast into the sea with a Shrimpstone tied around his neck. He would have done well with half a chance. I never saw a man so badly in need of poverty, so damned with affectionate, gilded, comfortable female despotism. She bought one business after another for him and put him in at the top. He has failed in all these undertakings. His way is littered with broken crowns and the wreckage of little kingdoms. “Now his youth is gone and he is the same useless, ineffective good fellow that he was in the beginning. For years he and his mother have been sitting on that high horse of hers and galloping around to the amusement of all beholders. He has got tired of it and jumped off and settled down as the clerk of a wife who takes him lightly. “He is the victim of assumed superiority which is nothing more or less than Williamism.” CHAPTER IV.--WHICH HANDS OUT SOME SOME COMMON TO THE SUPERERS IN AMERICA The Honorable Socrates Potter went to the typewriter and got some oil and a cloth and began to clean the gun of his great grandfather as he talked. “You see, William says: To hell with the common man. Let him do the work and the fighting. We'll take the product of toil and the loot of war and enjoy ourselves. We will not have a thing to do but super. If we glut the officers of the army and our leading citizens with, the product and the loot, they'll stand by us. “Is it not significant that the number of plutocrats in Germany has doubled since the war began? William proposes to make human slaughter a business. He is running a giant butcher shop. “Every idler, every superer is an ally of William and an enemy of Democracy.” “But they seem to get the best of it--these superers,” I suggested. “They have a lot of fun.” “They seem to, but, soon or late, they learn it hasn't paid. They come to grief or insanity--these slackers in the game of life. Let me tell you the little story of THE WEDDING TOURIST.