Imagine such an idiotic idea as that!"
"I think such views are entirely to his credit," alarmed Dorothy.
"Oh, of course, but the plan is not practicable. If he allows such an
invention to slip through his fingers, the Standard Oil people will
likely get hold of it, form a monopoly, and then where would humanity
at large be? I tell him the right way is to patent it, make all the
money he can, and use the cash for benefiting humanity under the
direction of some charitable person like myself."
"Did you suggest that to him?"
"I did not intimate who the sensible person was, but I elucidated the
principle of the thing."
"Yes, and what did he say?"
"Many things, Dorothy, many things. At one time he became confidential
about his possessions in foreign lands. It seems he owns several
castles, and when he visits any of them he cannot prevent the moujiks,
if that is the proper term for the peasantry over there, from
prostrating themselves on the ground as he passes by, beating their
foreheads against the earth, and chanting, in choice Russian, the
phrase: 'Defer, defer, here comes the Lord High Executioner,' or words
to that effect. I told him I didn't see why he should interfere with
so picturesque a custom, and he said if I visited one of his castles
that these estimable people, at a word from him, would form a corduroy
road in the mud with their bodies, so that I might step dry-shod from
the carriage to the castle doors, and I stipulated that he should at
least spread a bit of stair carpet over the poor wretches before I
made my progress across his front yard.
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