They had all, even Roebuck, been drinking freely in the effort to counteract the depression. But the champagne seemed only to aggravate their gloom except in the case of young Jamieson. He had just succeeded, through the death of his father, to the privilege of levying upon the people of eleven counties by means of trolley franchises which the legislature had granted his father in perpetuity in return for financial services to "the party." It is, by the way, an interesting illustration of the human being's lack of thinking power that a legislature could not give away a small gold-mine belonging to the public to any man for even a brief term of years without causing a revolution, but could and does give away far more valuable privileges to plunder and to tax, and give them away for ever, without causing any real stir. However--young Jamieson's liquor, acting upon a mind that had not had enough experience to appreciate the meaning of the situation, drove him on to insolent taunts and boasts, addressed to his neighbors but intended for me. I ignored him and, when the coffee was served, rose to depart. Roebuck urged me to stay, followed me to the coat-room, took my coat away from the servant and helped me with it. "I want to see you the first thing in the morning, Harvey," said he. "I'll call you up, if I have time," said I. We came out of the cloak-room, his arm linked in mine, and crossed the corner of the dining-room toward the outside door. Jamieson threw up his arm and fluttered his hand in an impertinent gesture of farewell. "So long, Senator Swollenhead," he cried in a thick voice. "We'll teach you a lesson in how to treat gentlemen." The last word--gentlemen--was just clearing his mouth when Dominick's tea-pot, flung with all the force of the ex-prize-fighter's big muscles and big body, landed in the midst of his broad white shirt-bosom. And with the tea-pot Dominick hurled his favorite epithet from his garbage barrel of language. With a yell Jamieson crashed over backward; his flying legs, caught by the table, tilted it; his convulsive kicks sent it over, and half the diners, including Dominick, were floored under it. All this in a snap of the fingers. And with the disappearance of the physical semblance of a company of civilized men engaged in dining in civilized fashion, the last thin veneer over hate and fury was scraped away. Curses and growling roars made a repulsive mess of sound over that repulsive mess of unmasked, half-drunken, wholly infuriated brutes. There is shrewd, sly wisdom snugly tucked away under the fable of the cat changed into a queen and how she sprang from her throne at sight of a mouse to pursue it on all fours. The best of us are, after all, animals changed into men by the spell of reason; and in some circumstances, it doesn't take much of a blow to dissolve that spell.