CHAPTER XXII.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE TEA TABLE.
ROM my station under Miss Laura's chair, I could see that all the time Mr. Harry was speaking, Mr. Maxwell, although he spoke rather as if he was laughing at him, was yet glancing at him admiringly.
When Mr. Harry was silent, he exclaimed, "You are right, you are right, Gray. With your smooth highways, and plenty of schools, and churches, and libraries, and meetings for young people, you would make country life a paradise, and I tell you what you would do too: you would empty the slums of the cities. It is the slowness and dullness of country life, and not their poverty alone, that keep the poor in dirty lanes and tenement houses.
They want stir and amusement too, poor souls, when their day's work is over. I believe they would come to the country if it were made more pleasant for them."
"That is another question," said Mr. Harry, "a burning question in my mind—the labor and capital one.
When I was in New York, Maxwell, I was in a hospital, and saw a number of men who had been day laborers.
Some of them were old and feeble, and others were young men, broken down in the prime of life. Their limbs were shrunken and drawn. They had been digging in the earth, and working on high buildings, and confined in
