Of course one ought to have some of one’s own to show.  But the trouble always is, if it is really good, one is sure not to know it, or at least one does not know which it is.  The best we can do with goodness, some of us, if we want it to show more quickly or to hurry people along in goodness more, is to show them other people’s.

I sometimes think that if everybody in the world could know my plumber or pay a bill to him, the world would soon begin slowly but surely to be a very different place.

My plumber is a genius.

CHAPTER II

IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE EFFICIENT?

Perhaps it will seem a pity to spoil a book—­one that might have been really rather interesting—­by putting the word “goodness” down flatly in this way in the middle of it.

And in a book which deals with crowds, too, and with business.

I would not yield first place to any one in being tired of the word.  I think, for one, that unless there is something we can do to it, and something we can do to it now, it had better be dropped.

But I have sometimes discovered when I had thought I was tired of a word, that what I was really tired of was somebody who was using it.

I do not mind it when my plumber uses it.  I have heard him use it (and swearing softly, I regret to say) when it affected me like a Hymn Tune.

And there is Non, too.

I first made Non’s acquaintance as our train pulled out of New York, and we found ourselves going down together on Friday afternoon to spend Sunday with M——­ in North Carolina.  The first thing he said was, when we were seated in the Pullman comfortably watching that big, still world under glass roll by outside, that he had broken an engagement with his wife to come.  She was giving a Tea, he said, that afternoon, and he had faithfully promised to be there.  But a weekend in North Carolina appealed to him, and afternoon tea—­well, he explained to me, crossing his legs and beaming at me all over as if he were a whole genial, successful afternoon tea all by himself—­afternoon tea did not appeal to him.

He thought probably he was a Non-Gregarious Person.

As he was the gusto of our little party and fairly reeked with sociability, and was in a kind of orgy of gregariousness every minute all the way to Wilmington (even when he was asleep we heard from him), we called him the Non-Gregarious Person, and every time he piled on one more story, we reminded him how non-gregarious he was.  We called him Non-Gregarious all the way after that—­Non for short.

This is the way I became acquainted with Non.  It has been Non ever since.

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