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24
THE NEW ARCADIA.

week, and soup-kitchens, and all the means adopted for pauperizing them. Our better fellows would starve rather than avail themselves of such methods."

"Was our friend the agitator with the broken nose present?" inquired the little man, poking the doctor playfully with the end of his pipe. "I did not think, Courtenay, that you were coming to that, when I knew and respected you in the old country!"

"He was there, sure enough, looking blacker than ever," replied Frank, "but kept in check by an older man who talked like a book, and brandished his arms."

"My right-hand man," added the doctor, "a fellow named Elms, who knows something of everything."

"A dangerous kind of character," remarked Tom. "But what's coming of all this talk?—we've heard the like before, you know."

"Yes, and you are going to see something of it put into practice at length."

"But Where's your money? You must have capital, abuse it as you may."

"I do not underrate it, I assure you," said the doctor; "but I want labour to rely more on itself, to learn its true strength, the vast fund of resource it has in reserve, if it will combine for production rather than for destruction."

"But Where's your money to begin with?" persisted the little man. "You know I'm a man of business."

"Excuse me, old fellow, I never knew that before!" said the doctor, slapping the thigh of his neighbour. "I observe that if ever there is a thick-skulled, narrow-minded, short-sighted machine of a dotard knocking around, he claims to be a business man above everything. None of your schemes for him!"