“It was nothing of any consequence,” answered their guest, “and your little discussion has interested me more than anything I had thought of saying. But I was going to say that according to a New York newspaper’s careful calculation, that city pays more than a million dollars every spring for white flowers for Easter decorations alone, while its expenditures for flowers during the rest of the year is estimated at not less than five millions more. Then there is the peanut crop. Who ever thinks of it? Who thinks of peanuts in any serious way? Yet it was the peanut crop that saved the people of tidewater Virginia and North Carolina from actual starvation during the first few years after the Civil War. And every year that crop amounts to more than two and a half million bushels!” “What luck for the circuses!” exclaimed Will Moreraud. “But the circuses do not furnish the chief market for peanuts,” said Irv, who was somewhat “up” on these things. “Where are they consumed, then?” asked Will. “Well, the greater part of them are used in the manufacture of ‘pure’ Italian or French olive oil--most of it ‘warranted sublime,’” said Irv. “Are we a nation of swindlers, then?” asked Phil, whose courage was always offended by any suggestion of untruth or hypocrisy or dishonesty. “I don’t know,” said Irv, “how to draw the line there. The men who make olive oil out of peanuts stoutly contend that their olive oil is really better, more wholesome, and more palatable than that made from olives.” “Why don’t they call it peanut oil, then, and advertise it as better than olive oil, and take the consequences?” asked upright, downright, bravely honest Phil. “Men in trade are not always so scrupulous about honesty and truthfulness as you are, Phil,” said Ed. “But sometimes--they excuse their falsehoods on the ground--” “There isn’t any excuse possible for not telling the truth,” said Phil. “Men who tell lies in their business are swindlers, and that’s the end of the matter. If they are making a better article than the imported one, they ought to say so, and people would find it out quickly enough. When they offer their goods as something quite different from what they really are, they are telling lies, I say, and I, for one, have no respect for a liar.” “You are right, Phil, of course,” said Ed. “But there is a world of that sort of thing done. The potteries in New Jersey, I am told, mark their finer wares with European brands, and they contend that if they did not do it they could not sell their goods.”