to-morrow, clamour vehemently against all public expenditure; but by far the greatest number just plain did not care.
"Go after it if it amuses you, Boyd," said Oliver Mills, the banker. "You will find that you can get things done, to be sure; but you will spend an inordinate amount of energy. What another city would order, as you would order a pound of sugar, Arguello will talk over for two years, and squabble about, and hesitate over—and end by buying a half a pound—or else decide it's too expensive. And when it is all over, those of us who have been trying to engineer the thing are totally exhausted. We've put enough into it to have built the Washington Monument. You'll find it doesn't pay. We're getting along very comfortably: why stir things up?"
Boyd's chief comfort was the obscure, lean real estate man, Ephraim Spinner. In Spinner he uncorked a dynamic enthusiasm that warmed his heart.
"I'm glad to hear you say so!" cried Spinner. "It's what I've been hammering into these hayseeds for two years! This place should be working night and day getting itself in order for the flood of visitors that is absolutely certain to pour down upon us. Every man who goes East comes back again and brings his friends with him. The boom is bound to come someday, and when it comes!" He threw his arms out with an expressive gesture. "They'll find us asleep at the switch!" he ended gloomily. He chewed savagely at the end of the cigar Boyd handed him. "What this town ought to do is to get on to itself, "he went on presently, in a calmer, wearied tone, "of course it ought to have paving and lights and all those things, just as you say, Mr. Boyd; but if it had the sense God gave a rooster it would go a lot farther than that. Look at the beach, f'rinstance. You can't get at it except afoot or horseback, and when you do get to it you find tin cans and rubbish. Yet look at that stretch from the wharf to Scott's Point! They ought to put a road in there; and they'd have no finer drive in the world than that—with the blue Pacific on one side and the lofty mountains on the other! They could advertise a drive like that all over the country, and draw tourists like a magnet. That's only one thing. And they ought to put a road along the foothills—just
