"A crime! Of course not. We should call that philanthropy." "Oh, I see. Then your father is a philanthropist." "Of course he is; one of the best known in Culbut. You don't really suppose he is the rich man he appears to be, do you?" "I should have thought he might be fairly well off, if he has been practising philanthropy for any length of time." "For a lifetime," he said reverentially. "I will tell you my father's story." "Do!" I encouraged him. "I should like to hear it." I lit another cigar. He cleared his throat and began. CHAPTER IV "Our family," said young Perry, "has held a good position in Culbut for many generations. My great-grandfather is said to have come here as a boy with ten thousand pounds in his pocket; but by diligence and sobriety he managed to get rid of nearly all of it while he was still a young man." "How did he do it?" I asked. "He got into the warehouse of a poor cloth-merchant. He stuck to his work night and day, and lost his employers so much money, that they took him into partnership when he was only twenty-one. Then he redoubled his efforts, bought in the dearest markets and sold in the cheapest, and decreased the trade of the firm by leaps and bounds. He married his master's daughter, and she brought him a considerable number of debts. Before he was thirty he had retired from business a very poor man, and spent the rest of his life serving his fellow citizens. He was Lord Mayor of Culbut three times, and was offered a baronetcy, which he refused. "My great-grandfather and my grandfather were both poor men, and my father was brought up in the lap of indigence. But when he was quite a boy, he saw a sight that affected his whole life. "He was walking along the poor street in which he lived, when he saw a carriage with four horses and postillions coming along. In it was seated a miserably rich-looking old man swathed in furs, who was being taken off to prison. My father hung on to the back of the carriage--he was but a child--and was carried inside the prison gates. There he saw the treatment that was then considered good enough for rich malefactors. They drove through a large garden to a fine-looking house, and when the carriage stopped at the door a groom of the chambers came out, followed by two footmen in powdered wigs and silk stockings. The wretched creature was taken inside, and before he went away my father learnt that he would be treated with every refinement of luxury. And what do you think his crime was?" "I haven't the least idea," I replied. "Probably making somebody a present of a fortune." "No. His crime was that he had thrown a pot of caviare into a provision shop." "And you're not allowed to do that here?"