Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/304

 bankrupt. The city rulers would fain have imitated the course of certain States of that period, whose only use of a fictitious sovereignty was to commit rascally actions with apparent impunity. The city fathers soon found, however, that the city they dishonored did not possess this doubtful privilege. The revenues passed under the control of receivers. The docks, and large slices of the public parks, were sold to the highest bidder. From being the worst, Nuiore became the best-governed, city in Christendom; for the police no longer granted favors to ruffians on the ground of their being heelers of Mike This or Pat That.

"The city fathers, cut off from their former browsinggrounds, began, on one pretext or another, to nibble away what remained of Central Park. A prosperons Western city made a fair bid for the obelisk. The offer for what they called "the owld sthone" was accepted with alacrity. But their innate love of jobbery must find vent, even in the execution of this little scheme for disposing of what was not theirs to dispose of. The job was intrusted to a contractor willing to share with certain of the committee. He was, as might be expected, a bungler: the obelisk, allowed to fall, broke in three pieces. The Western city refused to accept the pieces, which lay where they had fallen. The upper pieces were finally broken up by a thrifty contractor as macadamizing material. This piece would have shared the same fate, had not the board of aldermen, about that time, been legislated out of existence as an antiquated nuisance. Under the new city government, this fragment was re-erected on its former emplacement, with an inscription