“Good heavens!  Why, look at what the man has done for the mill folks!  Whatever his motives are, the result is right there, isn’t it?  His works praise him in the gates!”

“Oh, sure!  But he hasn’t played his full hand out yet, friend.  You just give him time.  His sort don’t play to lose; they can’t afford to lose; losing is the other fellow’s job.  Parson, see here:  there are two sides to all things; one of ’em’s right and the other’s wrong, and a man’s got to choose between ’em.  He can’t help it.  He’s got to be on one side or the other, if he’s a man.  A neutral is a squashy It that both sides do right to kick out of the way.  Now you can’t do the right side any good if you’re standing flatfooted on the wrong side, can you?  No; you take sides according to what’s in you.  You know good and well one side is full of near-poors, and half-ways, and real-poors—­the downandouters, the guys that never had a show, ditchers and sewercleaners and sweatshoppers and mill hands and shuckers, and overdriven mutts and starved women and kids.  It’s sure one hell of a road, but there’s got to be a light somewhere about it or the best of the whole world wouldn’t take to it for choice, would they?  Yet they do!  Like Jesus Christ, say.  They turn down the other side cold, though it’s nicer traveling.  Why, you can hog that other road in an auto, you can run down the beggars and the kids, you can even shoot up the cops that want to make you keep the speed laws.  You haven’t got any speed laws there.  It’s your road.  You own it, see?  It’s what it is because you’ve made it so, just to please yourself, and to hell with the hicks that have to leg it!  But—­you lose out on that side even when you think you’ve won.  You get exactly what you go after, but you don’t get any more, and so you lose out.  Why?  Because you’re an egg-sucker and a nest-robber and a shrike, and a four-flusher and a piker, that’s why!

“The first road don’t give you anything you can put your hands on; except that you think and hope maybe there’s that light at the end of it.  But, parson, I guess if you’re man enough to foot it without a pay-envelope coming in on Saturdays, why, it’s plenty good enough for me—­and Kerry.  But while I’m legging it I’ll keep a weather eye peeled for crooks.  That big blonde he-god is one of ’em.  You soak that in your thinking-tank:  he’s one of ’em!”

“But look at what he’s doing!” said I, aghast.  “What he’s doing is good.  Even Laurence couldn’t ask for more than good results, could he?”

The Butterfly Man smiled.

“Don’t get stung, parson.  Why, you take me, myself.  Suppose, parson, you’d been on the other side, like Hunter is, when I came along?  Suppose you’d never stopped a minute, since you were born, to think of anything or anybody but yourself and your own interests—­where would I be to-day, parson?  Suppose you had the utility-and-nothing-but-business bug biting you, like