SIGNING PETITIONS
Reading edition
"Another petition!" exclaimed the banker. "No, I never sign them offhand—not any more. I used to do so—once to my sorrow and to the amusement of my friends. Leave yours with me till day after to-morrow and I'll consider it. I have at least four more now on the waiting 5 list, ranging in subject from the Removal of a Soap Factory to a Bridge Across the Pacific. Every business man is hounded week in and week out with petitions."
I reluctantly surrendered my long scroll with its formidable list of signatures. "But the one that you once signed—what 10 of that?"
"Oh, that one? Well, there was a bright newsboy down on the square whose booth had been removed from a street corner because of a petition to the Police Commissioner. Of course everybody had signed the petition; for signing 15 petitions was considered the proper thing if certain names headed the list. It came to be a roster of the best families in town. This newsboy retaliated—in kind. He drafted and circulated a petition that was in due form. Everybody, including myself, signed it. Next day it was published in20 full with the names of its signers, by all our city papers, and by night everybody in the state was laughing at us.
"The petition recited that a sundial in Central Park, the gift of a wealthy citizen, was weathering badly. It should be protected. That sounded reasonable, so everybody 25 signed just below the name of everybody else. And what had we petitioned for? A roof to cover that sundial!
"You'll get no hasty signatures to a petition in this city—we remember the sundial!"