Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/132

 *ness man for mayor, a statement that was destined to ring in my ears for a good many years. They disliked him of course because he would not do just what they told him to,—that being the meaning and purpose of a business man for mayor,—but insisted that there were certain other people in the city who were entitled to some of his service and consideration—namely, the working people and the poor. The politicians and the preachers objected to him on the same grounds: the unpardonable sin being to express in any but a purely ideal and sentimental form sympathy for the workers or the poor. It seemed to be particularly exasperating that he was doing all this in the name of the Golden Rule, which was for the Sunday-school; and they even went so far as to bring to town another Sam Jones, the Reverend Sam Jones, to conduct a "revival" and to defeat the Honorable Sam Jones. The Reverend Sam Jones had big meetings, and said many clever things, and many true ones, the truest among them being his epigram, "I am for the Golden Rule myself, up to a certain point, and then I want to take the shotgun and the club." I think that expression marked the difference between him and our Sam Jones, in whose philosophy there was no place at all for the shotgun or the club. The preachers were complaining that Mayor Jones was not using shotguns, or at least clubs, on the "bad" people in the town; I suppose that since their own persuasions had in a measure failed, they felt that the Mayor with such instruments might have made the "bad" people look as if they had been converted anyway.