A full-bodied, gray-headed, gray-mustached man sat in his shirt-sleeves behind a great table, writing with a very black pencil in a large sprawling hand.  He glanced up as the door opened.

“Colonel Cowles?”

“I am the man, sir.  How may I serve you?”

Queed laid on the table the card West had given him with a pencilled line of introduction.

“Oh—­Mr. Queed!  Certainly—­certainly.  Sit down, sir.  I have been expecting you.—­Let me get those papers out of your way.”

Colonel Cowles had a heavy jaw and rather too rubicund a complexion.  He looked as if apoplexy would get him some day.  However, his head was like a lion’s of the tribe of Judah; his eye was kindly; his manner dignified, courteous, and charming.  Queed had decided not to set the Colonel right in his views on taxation; it would mean only a useless discussion which would take time.  To the older gentleman’s polite inquiries relative to his impressions of the city and so forth, he for the same reason gave the briefest possible replies.  But the Colonel, no apostle of the doctrine that time is far more than money, went off into a long monologue, kindly designed to give the young stranger some idea of his new surroundings and atmosphere.

“...  Look out there, sir.  It is like that all day long—­a double stream of people always pouring by.  I have looked out of these windows for twenty-five years, and it was very different in the old days.  I remember when the cows used to come tinkling down around that corner at milking-time.  A twelve-story office building will rise there before another year.  We have here the finest city and the finest State in the Union.  You come to them, sir, at a time of exceptional interest.  We are changing fast, leaping forward very fast.  I do not hold with those who take all change to be progress, but God grant that our feet are set in the right path.  No section of the country is moving more rapidly, or, as I believe, with all our faults, to better ends than this.  My own eyes have seen from these windows a broken town, stagnant in trade and population and rich only in memories, transform itself into the splendid thriving city you see before you.  Our faces, too long turned backward, are set at last toward the future.  From one end of the State to another the spirit of honorable progress is throbbing through our people.  We have revolutionized and vastly improved our school system.  We have wearied of mud-holes and are laying the foundations of a network of splendid roads.  We are doing wonders for the public health.  Our farmers are learning to practice the new agriculture—­with plenty of lime, sir, plenty of lime.  They grasp the fact that corn at a hundred bushels to the acre is no dream, but the most vital of realities.  Our young men who a generation ago left us for the irrigated lands of your Northwest, are at last understanding that the finest farmlands in the country are at their doors for half the price.  With all these changes has come a growing independence in political thought.  The old catchwords and bogies have lost their power.  We no longer think that whatever wears the Democratic tag is necessarily right.  We no longer measure every Republican by Henry G. Surface.  We no longer ...”