“I’ve been with you gentlemen before,” he began in a dry, even tone, “when you’ve sat by the coffins of boys born and raised in this town; and, if I remember rightly, you were never any too well satisfied when you checked them up.  What’s the matter, anyhow?  Why is it that reputable young men are as scarce as millionaires in Sand City?  It might almost seem to a stranger that there was some way something the matter with your progressive town.  Why did Ruben Sayer, the brightest young lawyer you ever turned out, after he had come home from the university as straight as a die, take to drinking and forge a check and shoot himself?  Why did Bill Merrit’s son die of the shakes in a saloon in Omaha?  Why was Mr. Thomas’s son, here, shot in a gambling-house?  Why did young Adams burn his mill to beat the insurance companies and go to the pen?”

The lawyer paused and unfolded his arms, laying one clenched fist quietly on the table.  “I’ll tell you why.  Because you drummed nothing but money and knavery into their ears from the time they wore knickerbockers; because you carped away at them as you’ve been carping here tonight, holding our friends Phelps and Elder up to them for their models, as our grandfathers held up George Washington and John Adams.  But the boys were young, and raw at the business you put them to, and how could they match coppers with such artists as Phelps and Elder?  You wanted them to be successful rascals; they were only unsuccessful ones—­that’s all the difference.  There was only one boy ever raised in this borderland between ruffianism and civilization who didn’t come to grief, and you hated Harvey Merrick more for winning out than you hated all the other boys who got under the wheels.  Lord, Lord, how you did hate him!  Phelps, here, is fond of saying that he could buy and sell us all out any time he’s a mind to; but he knew Harve wouldn’t have given a tinker’s damn for his bank and all his cattlefarms put together; and a lack of appreciation, that way, goes hard with Phelps.

“Old Nimrod thinks Harve drank too much; and this from such as Nimrod and me!

“Brother Elder says Harve was too free with the old man’s money—­fell short in filial consideration, maybe.  Well, we can all remember the very tone in which brother Elder swore his own father was a liar, in the county court; and we all know that the old man came out of that partnership with his son as bare as a sheared lamb.  But maybe I’m getting personal, and I’d better be driving ahead at what I want to say.”

The lawyer paused a moment, squared his heavy shoulders, and went on:  “Harvey Merrick and I went to school together, back East.  We were dead in earnest, and we wanted you all to be proud of us some day.  We meant to be great men.  Even I, and I haven’t lost my sense of humour, gentlemen, I meant to be a great man.  I came back here to practise, and I found you didn’t in the least want me to be a great man.  You wanted me to be