but have not had a chance to go over the list carefully. Have they all gone in under their own names?"
I ran over page after page, looking for names as he called them off, but most of them had disguised their ventures through dummies. We had no trouble in putting our fingers on their allotments, however; Mr. Rogers commenting in his sage and caustic way on men and politics. It was growing late, and at a natural stopping-place in our talk I sent for paper and string, with my own hands tied up the book, and—with all the airs of extreme leisureliness—literally bolted.
No school-boy with a three-pound trout caught in a deep hole under a big willow bearing the sign, "Any one fishing here will be prosecuted," no burglar with an unexpected fat swag, was ever in such a fever to lug his booty to a concealed place as I to get that infinitely precious bundle to the Waldorf. At last I landed it in my room and began to scan the interesting pages. My first thought was to look for our own big dummy subscription. As I supposed, it was not there. Roughly I added the totals of the different sheets and compared them, with the 412 millions we had given the public, which was now indelibly, the world over, a matter of record. Again I stopped to congratulate myself on my good fortune in securing this first-hand evidence of the fraud that had been practised on the people.
I leaned over the thick pages with their various inscriptions. The names and addresses carried me into every corner of the United States and into the great cities of Europe as well. Set down there were towns and villages I had never heard of, and my mind made pictures for me of fathers, mothers, and children, beguiled by my pledges and promises, embracing the opportunity to add to their scanty hordes. But it was not a moment to indulge in scares, so I slipped over the people's mites and fixed my mind on the millions.