"This town of ours labors under one peculiar disadvantage: it is the only great city in the world to which all its citizens have come for the one common, avowed object of making money. There you have its genesis, its growth, its end and object; and there are but few of us who are not attending to that object very strictly. In this Garden City of ours every man cultivates his own little bed and his neighbor his; but who looks after the paths between? They have become a kind of No Man's Land, and the weeds of a rank iniquity are fast choking them up. The thing to teach the public is this: that the general good is a different thing from the sum of the individual goods. Over in the Settlement we are trying to make those new-comers realize that they are a part of the body politic; perhaps we need another settlement to remind some of the original charter-members of the same fact!" "H'm," thought Truesdale, "I believe Brower is an awfully fine fellow; but if he keeps up this kind of talk all the time with Jane...." Then, as they passed out into the street a few minutes later: "I don't just see where my consolation comes in, after all." "Perhaps they thought," responded Brower, "that you wouldn't appreciate the beauty of consolation until you had first appreciated the gravity of your case. I think their idea was less consolation than instruction." "Ouf!" said Truesdale, who disdained instruction from whatever source. "Do you know," said Brower, at the first crossing, "I'm going to talk to your father about this justice business." "Well," rejoined Truesdale, "he'll listen to you if he'll listen to anybody; but he's awfully sore about it." "So are other people sore about it--hundreds of people much poorer and humbler than any of us, people to whom the miscarriage of justice is not a mere matter of exasperation and annoyance, but a real matter of life and death. They want care and attention--as the doctors say; they need a law-dispensary--that's about it. There are institutions that look after people's minds and bodies gratis; I want to see an institution started up that will do as much for their estates. I want to see a building for it, with an endowment and a library and a force of practitioners. To think of all the things that a man with money and ideas and sympathies might do--and should do--in a town like this!" "You might try him," said Truesdale, doubtfully; "but I think Jane has got the inside track. You've heard about her Home, I suppose, and seen the plans for it. I should _want_ to put up an architectural monument in such a ghastly town as this; I should as soon think of ramming an angel into a coal-hole."