The man before him was the perfection of that noble work of Heaven, a Prominent Citizen. Joshua Lennox endowed Bowery chapels with organs and meat-supplies; he contributed heavily to missions among the benighted Japanese; he assisted in arbitrating strikes wherein his fellow-employers were concerned; he always served on memorial committees; and he regularly subscribed to the campaign funds of all movements toward municipal political reform. If his climbing wife insisted upon having liquor in the house, Mr. Lennox never touched it. If she served tobacco, he did not smoke. If she took in a Sunday paper, written and printed on Saturday, he would read no news until the appearance of the Monday journal merely written and printed on Sunday. And if his mercantile establishment sold poker-chips under the pseudonym of "counters," he was aware only that it did not sell playing-cards. The business he considered as his creation had grown beyond the limits of his power, and though, a good man and sincere, he might have done something by keeping a closer eye upon his work, he was in reality as much the creature of conditions as his worst-paid cash-boy. The great Frederick complained that a monarch could not know all the evil done in his kingdom: Joshua Lennox was so busy benefiting mankind that he had no leisure to observe in his own shop the state of affairs that made his philanthropy financially possible. "I hope you are going with us to the opera, Mr. Lennox," said Dyker. The old man shook his silvered head. "No," said he in the slow, deliberate utterance that he had acquired with his first million of dollars; "I am on my way farther down town than that." "But you had better come," urged Wesley, knowing that refusal was certain. "This is the last performance of the season." "On the contrary," the merchant chuckled kindly, "I think you had better let Marian go to the opera alone and come along with me. I am going to the first performance of a new season." "Where's that?" "To the Municipal Improvement Mass Meeting at Cooper Union." That made it Dyker's turn to smile. "Oh, but I couldn't do that," he said. "I'm on the other side, you know." "Against good government?" The elder man manifestly enjoyed this mild thrust. "Against irregularity, Mr. Lennox. There never has been and there never can be any lasting reform from the outside. We must clean our own houses. That is why I have moved to my present address. I believe in reform from within the party, and I believe that to effect this we want men of your sort to help us indoors and not to attack us from the street." The merchant's cold eye looked hard at the speaker, but Dyker's lowered lids betrayed nothing.