“What for should I hush?” demanded Mr. Feeny. “Cheese it yourself!” Feeling the incident closed, Mr. Feeny's glance shifted in the direction of the stage, where a number of men and women were seated in a wide half circle. “'Tis a white-faced minstrel show! But, oh, heavens, ain't them girls the hard-featured huzzies?” thought Mr. Feeny. A gentleman had risen and was making a few introductory remarks, the exact drift of which was lost on Mr. Feeny, but as he subsided, his place was taken by another gentleman who smilingly acknowledged the decorous ripple of applause his name had evoked. He commenced to speak and Mr. Feeny gave him his undivided attention. “He's a grand flow of words. I wonder he don't choke,” was his mental comment. Eventually he became aware that he was listening to an account of the decay of the cottage industries of France. Laboriously following the speaker he possessed himself of this concrete fact in segments and was moved to instant contempt of the speaker's conclusions. He had never noticed this decay in industry; his personal observations led him to believe that while jobs were sometimes hard to obtain, there was always plenty of work after you got them. He prepared to quit that spot with expedition, since he felt that any more economics would constitute a surfeit. But as he slid from his chair, the first gentleman advanced again to the center of the stage, and Mr. Feeny caught a name he knew, the magical name of MacCandlish. “I'll see the next turn,” he told himself, as amidst a perfect storm of applause a cheerful little man of a portly presence approached the footlights. “It's him all right, I seen him onct through the bull's-eye window of the smoking-room afore the mate cussed me out forward,—and him worth his hundred millions!” Mr. Feeny breathed hard. There was the hush of expectancy. The little man smiled kindly, tolerantly, while the lights seemed to cast a golden halo about him. “It is my privilege to appear before this congress to speak on the uses of wealth,” he began in a soft purring voice. “And I only regret that I have not had the leisure in which to prepare a paper on so interesting a theme. However—a few thoughts occur to me——” Mr. MacCandlish paused for a brief space, and then once more that kindly voice flowed across the footlights. “It has always been my conviction that those who have lacked the opportunity to examine the operations of wealth are frequently led astray. In the first place, riches are invariably the direct result of great economic services undertaken for the good of mankind!”—and thus launched, Mr. MacCandlish began to deal not with the dead and dry of theories and panaceas, but with the living actualities of trade and production. “Ain't it grand what the likes of him does for the likes of me!” thought Mr. Feeny in a pause, and then again that soft voice opened up fresh regions for him.