“Look what comes of making rows,” he went on. “I wouldn't have that Ward now for a gift. _The Chronicle_'s red in the face with wrath and happiness. Everybody's hair on end as it is. Disgusting, ain't it? Well--down east, where the land's tilted up so you can turn a section over bottom upwards by heaving one end with a rail, well--there was a man there had a farm at the bottom of a long hill, and his neighbour's punkins up above used to roll down on him. But he didn't make any row, because his yard was littered with punkins, no. He ate the punkins. Well, now, take the neighbour above, he might have gone down and called somebody a thief for not returning strayed punkins, and two pillars of the church might have disliked each other. But he didn't. He built a board fence along the lower edge of his cornfield and caught his own punkins. And there was mutual respect, mutual respect. Well--the boys, they always want to fight. They go round saying, 'The old man's level-headed,' but they ain't satisfied with building that fence to catch those punkins without heaving a rock down an aggravating man's chimney, or else it makes 'em mad to have punkins rolled at 'em, and moreover they don't roll fast enough. Disgusting, ain't it?” “Wood! Wood! Wherein----” Carroll rushed in and turned up the electric light impatiently. “Wh-what you going to do about the First Ward?” He had thin bright curly hair, the slimmest of bodies, and moved like a restless insect. “Tell'em to count it twenty-eight Reform plurality, no more and no less! And turn off that light! And clear out! Well--now--that Charlie Carroll, he's a living fidget. Well--when they used to race steamboats on the Mississippi, they'd put a nigger on the safety valve, so it wouldn't get nervous. I've heard so. I've seen 'em tie it up with a string. Well--winning the race depended some on the size and serenity of the nigger, that'd see it wasn't his place to worry, for he'd get blown off all right in the natural course of things. For sitting on a safety valve you want a nigger that won't wriggle. Well--Charlie's a good man. Keeps people thinking about odds and ends of things. If one thing out of forty is going to happen, his mind's going to be a sort of composite picture of the whole forty. Sees eight or ten dimensions to a straight line. Yes--folks are pretty liberal. They'll allow there's another side to 'most anything, and a straight line's got no business to be so gone particular. It's the liberal-mindedness of the public that lets us win out, of course. But--you've got to sit still sometimes, and wait for the earth to turn round.” “I suppose you have. It'll turn round.” “Yes, it'll turn round.” The tumult outside had subsided in a dull, unsettled rumble. The moon went into retreat among silver-grey clouds. Tecumseh Street muttered in the darkness of its pit. The stereopticons continued. “_The Chronicle_ suspects the U. S. Census,” from _The Press_.