Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/194

 "'He that endureth to the end' What does it say?"

She repeated the Scripture to him.

"Say it in Welsh," he said, his thought returning in those ultimate moments to the speech they had used as children. But before she could direct her mind into the old sequences, the end had come.

At least, there were those in town who thought it was the end. The stock of the street railway company went up twenty-four points the next morning, and some brokers issued a letter saying now that Jones had died the securities of that enterprise offered a golden investment—about the most authentic extant illustration, I suppose, of the utter contemptibility of privilege in these states. The politicians often had been heard to say that when Jones retired the nonpartizan movement in Toledo would come to an end; in their professional analyses they had pronounced it a personal following not governed by principle, and that with the passing of the leader it would disappear and the voters become tractable and docile partizan automata again. And now that Jones was dead and one of their organization, the president of the council, was to succeed to the mayor's office, the hopes they had so long entertained seemed at last on the point of realisation. Within a few weeks, therefore, an ordinance granting the street railway company a renewal of its rights was passed by the council.

Then, instantly, the old spirit flamed anew; there were editorials, mass meetings, and all sorts of protest against the action, and in response to this indig