“Well, Madison, that was the beginning of it all; and then we talked, and the long and short of it is, that Mather and I didn’t take long in coming to the conclusion that if a fellow ever proposed to make anything of himself, twenty-two or three wasn’t any too early to begin to think about it. We mulled over it a while, until finally we struck on a scheme. “Mather’s mother had come from the South, and he had some far-away cousins there who had been the hottest kind of rebs. Perhaps that was what suggested it to us; but at any rate we are in for it now, and have given each other our word of honor to stick to it for three years at least, and then—well, we shall see. “I had two millions and he eight hundred thousand. I have no family, you know, and he has only married brothers and sisters; so we are free on that score; and we have decided to put half of our fortunes into buying up enough stock in a lot of Southern papers to give us practical control of the country papers over a large area down here.” “He writes from some little town in Alabama,” said Mildred in parenthesis. Then she continued: “We have brought with us five or six bright Harvard boys whom we know, and whom we are going to work in as editors of dailies in strategic places. Each fellow will also have general supervision of a dozen small weekly papers scattered through the states here. “These papers form almost the sole outlook upon the world’s affairs which the people down here ever get, and, with the exception of the locals with which they are padded, are about as useful as Rollins’ Ancient History. “Mather and I are hard at work studying local history and politics and prejudices, and are planning some of the tallest kinds of innovations. We haven’t shown our hand yet, of course, and it is generally understood that we are here to invest in land. “Of course we shan’t make a cent out of it all—too many niggers, and the whites are frightfully poor—can’t pay for and don’t want anything better than they have; but, by Jove, if I don’t succeed in shaking up some of these consummate old Bourbons down here by the end of the next three years, then my name isn’t Edwin G. Conro!—that’s all. However, they aren’t all such a bad lot.” “Well,” said Mildred, as she skimmed through the last page in silence and slowly returned the letter to the envelope, “whether these aspiring youths succeed in bringing the millennium down there by the time they are twenty-five remains to be seen, but at all events they will learn some things Harvard College has not yet taught them, and whether they help those people much or not they have taken the first step to save themselves.” CHAPTER XVI.