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CALLING ON WILLIAM PENN
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Washington every day so that these clocks can be kept strictly on the tick.

If we were a city of mystics, instead of a city of hustling and perturbed business men, we would elect a soothsayer to dwell on the little gallery below William Penn. The pleasantest job in the world has always been that of an oracle. This soothsayer would be wholly aloof from the passion of the streets. (Passion, said William Penn, is a sort of fever in the mind, which always leaves us weaker than it found us.) He would spend his time reading the "Fruits of Solitude" and would occasionally scribble messages on slips of paper, which he would weight with marbles and throw overboard. Those who found these precious sayings would read them reverently, and go on about their folly undismayed. Baskets of victuals and raiment would occasionally be conveyed to this lofty dreamer by humble admirers. On his windy perch he would brood lovingly upon the great city of his choice. When election time came round he would throw down slips telling people whom to vote for. If he thought (not mincing words) that none of the proposed candidates was worth a damn, he would frown down forbiddingly, and the balloting would have to be postponed until candidates satisfactory to his vision had been put forward. When they told him that John Jones had hosts of friends, scraps of paper would be found in the City Hall courtyard saying "It is the friends of mayors who make all the trouble." And the