"I should have liked to see Whoppington very much," said Sam, "but I suppose I must wait till I come back. It must be very different from other cities. You must feel there as if you were at the center of things--at the very mainspring of all our life, I mean."
"You've hit the nail on the head," said his uncle. "Whoppington holds up all the rest of the country. There is the Government that makes everything go. There's no business there to speak of; no manufacturing, no agriculture in the country round--nothing to distract your attention but the power of the Administration that lies behind all the rest. Just think what this country would be without Whoppington! Just imagine the capital city sinking into the ground and what would we all do? Even here at Slowburgh what would be left for us?"
"Wouldn't we have breakfast to-morrow morning, papa?" asked the little girl in his lap.
"Er-er-well, perhaps we might have breakfast----"
"Perhaps we might have--but no, we couldn't either; it's the tariff that gives us our clothes by keeping all foreign clothes out of the country, and then we shouldn't have er-er----"
"It would upset the post-office," suggested Sam, coming to the rescue.
"Yes, to be sure, that is what I meant. It would cause a serious delay in the mails, that's certain."
"And then there would be no soldiers," added Sam.
"Of course. How stupid of me to overlook that. How would you like to see no soldiers in the street?"
"Yes, my dear boy," he proceeded, turning to Sam, "I would not want to have it repeated in my district, but I confess that I am always homesick for Whoppington when I am here. That's the real world there. There's the State Department where they manage all the foreign affairs of the world. What could we do without foreign affairs? And the Agricultural Department. How could we get in our crops without it? And the Labor Department. Every man who does a day's work depends on the Labor Department for his living, we may say. And the----"
"Yes, the War Department. We depend on that for our wars. Perhaps at first that does not seem to be so useful, but----"
"Oh! but, Uncle George, surely it is the most useful of all. What could we do without wars. Just fancy a country without wars!"