On and on he went, madder and madder, so crazy about himself that even his plutocratic “lieutenants,” who were using him as a stool-pigeon, could hardly keep their faces straight. At last he got to the stage at which the old kings of France got just before the Revolution--the mental state superinduced by beginning their education by setting in their copy-books as a writing model, “Kings may do whatever they please.” He never had had any sense of trusteeship; he had been flattered into believing that the railway or manufactory in which he owned a large amount of stock was his very own, that wages and salaries paid and dividends declared were his royal and gracious largess. But he at first had a dim sense that this great truth must not be publicly aired, that it was prudent to let the common people believe they had some share in the enterprise. Now, however, this dim respect for, or, rather, tolerance of, a popular delusion vanished. With rolling eyes and haughty nose and lips and high-stepping legs he advanced boldly and publicly into his kingdom. A Russian grand-duke said of the Russian people, “These fleas imagine they are the dog.” Young Jones said in effect the same thing of the depositors and stockholders in “my” enterprises, and showed publicly that he thought it. Great excitement. His plutocrat “lieutenants,” seeing that their graft through this joyous young ass was imperiled, tried to quiet him. Failing there, they tried to cajole, then to cow the insurgent “fleas.” But all in vain. The ears of Jones, attuned only to adulatory sounds, were assailed by such shuddering rudenesses as “Petty larceny thief! Jackass! Swindler! Puller-in for the big gamblers! Crazy numskull!” Frightful, wasn’t it? Not that he was in the least disturbed in his own exalted opinion of himself. An angel come from heaven direct would have moved him only to light, incredulous laughter by telling him the plain truth about himself. Still, the clamor was unpleasant; the open sneers, the sly stabs. And, above all, the ingratitude! The ingratitude of his associates in “society” who had got so much expensive entertainment and so much inspiration from him. The ingratitude of the people, his vassals, whom he paid salaries and wages and dividends, whom he permitted to deposit in his banks and to invest in his enterprises! His soul is brave, as becomes the soul porphyrogenetic. But, as it is also a sensitive soul, how it is wrung! The trouble with our young Jones is that he was premature--not in thought, but in showing his thoughts. Only premature. The madness that ravaged him is in the plutocratic air. Many eyes are rolling, many fingers are twitching in the premonitory symptoms of the malady. A few years at our plutocracy’s present rate of progress, and Jones will be recognized as a martyr. “Jones was born a little too soon. Jones came to a climax a little before the season,” the dandies will say.