minutes.  The speech was very different from what they expected, and rather disappointed them all.  However, he won back their good opinions in closing, for he ended with a very pleasant “thank you,” to Blunkers, so neatly worded, and containing such a thoroughly apt local joke, that it put all in a good humor, and gave them something to tell their neighbors, on their return home.  The advantage of seldom joking is that people remember the joke, and it gets repeated.  Peter almost got the reputation of a wit on that one joke, merely because it came after a serious harangue, and happened to be quotable.  Blunkers was so pleased with the end of the speech that he got Peter to write it out, and to this day the “thank you” part of the address, in Peter’s neat handwriting, handsomely framed, is to be seen in Blunkers’s saloon.

Peter also did a little writing this summer.  He had gone to see three or four of the reporters, whom he had met in “the case,” to get them to write up the Food and Tenement subjects, wishing thereby to stir up public feeling.  He was successful to a certain degree, and they not merely wrote articles themselves, but printed three or four which Peter wrote.  In two cases, he was introduced to “staff” writers, and even wrote an editorial, for which he was paid fifteen dollars.  This money was all he received for the time spent, but he was not working for shekels.  All the men told him to let them know when he had more “stories” for them, and promised him assistance when the reports should go in to the legislature.

Peter visited his mother as usual during August.  Before going, he called on Dr. Plumb, and after an evening with him, went to two tenements in the district.  As the result of these calls, he carried three children with him when he went home.  Rather pale, thin little waifs.  It is a serious matter to charge any one with so grave a crime as changling, but Peter laid himself open to it, for when he came back, after two weeks, he returned very different children to the parents.  The fact that they did not prosecute for the substitution only proves how little the really poor care for their offspring.

But this was not his only summering.  He spent four days with the Costells, as well as two afternoons later, thoroughly enjoying, not merely the long, silent drives over the country behind the fast horses, but the pottering round the flower-garden with Mrs. Costell.  He had been reading up a little on flowers and gardening, and he was glad to swap his theoretical for her practical knowledge.  Candor compels the statement that he enjoyed the long hours stretched on the turf, or sitting idly on the veranda, puffing Mr. Costell’s good Havanas.

Twice Mr. Bohlmann stopped at Peter’s office of a Saturday and took him out to stay over Sunday at his villa in one of the Oranges.  The family all liked Peter and did not hesitate to show it.  Mr. Bohlmann told him: 

“I sbend about dree dousand a year on law und law-babers.  Misder Dummer id does for me, but ven he does nod any longer it do, I gifts id you.”