“Show? Folly—listen to me; and get a good grip on your breath, for you are going to need it. Within three days I shall have completed my method, and then—let the world stand aghast, for it shall see marvels. Washington, within three days—ten at the outside—you shall see me call the dead of any century, and they will arise and walk. Walk?—they shall walk forever, and never die again. Walk with all the muscle and spring of their pristine vigor.” “Colonel! Indeed it does take one’s breath away.” “_Now_ do you see the money that’s in it?” “I’m—well, I’m—not really sure that I do.” “Great Scott, look here. I shall have a monopoly; they’ll all belong to me, won’t they? Two thousand policemen in the city of New York. Wages, four dollars a day. I’ll replace them with dead ones at half the money.” “Oh, prodigious! I never thought of that. F-o-u-r thousand dollars a day. Now I do begin to see! But will dead policemen answer?” “Haven’t they—up to this time?” “Well, if you put it that way—” “Put it any way you want to. Modify it to suit yourself, and my lads shall still be superior. They won’t eat, they won’t drink—don’t need those things; they won’t wink for cash at gambling dens and unlicensed rum-holes, they won’t spark the scullery maids; and moreover the bands of toughs that ambuscade them on lonely beats, and cowardly shoot and knife them will only damage the uniforms and not live long enough to get more than a momentary satisfaction out of that.” “Why, Colonel, if you can furnish policemen, then of course—” “Certainly—I can furnish any line of goods that’s wanted. Take the army, for instance—now twenty-five thousand men; expense, twenty-two millions a year. I will dig up the Romans, I will resurrect the Greeks, I will furnish the government, for ten millions a year, ten thousand veterans drawn from the victorious legions of all the ages—soldiers that will chase Indians year in and year out on materialized horses, and cost never a cent for rations or repairs. The armies of Europe cost two billions a year now—I will replace them all for a billion. I will dig up the trained statesmen of all ages and all climes, and furnish this country with a Congress that knows enough to come in out of the rain—a thing that’s never happened yet, since the Declaration of Independence, and never will happen till these practically dead people are replaced with the genuine article. I will restock the thrones of Europe with the best brains and the best morals that all the royal sepulchres of all the centuries can furnish—which isn’t promising very much—and I’ll divide the wages and the civil list, fair and square, merely taking my half and—” “Colonel, if the half of this is true, there’s millions in it—millions.”