When Nathan and Lewis and Mencken put to sea in their pea-green boat there was room for only three. And so Upton Sinclair was left on the beach while the Great Emancipators set forth for New York or heaven. Boston is near the shore, though, and soon the first literary travelling man found himself in the old Back Bay Station. Ever since the porter dropped his luggage in Copley Square, ever since the moment when the man's eyes flooded as he said: "Home, thank God" there has been a Bostonian flavor, even occasionally a Cantabrigian tang to his work. It is through granite one drills to reach oil, he must have thought, and as good granite as that of Teapot Dome is in the steps of the Park Street Church.

So the drilling of Boston by Mr. Sinclair has gone merrily on. If it has never gone very deep it is because the tools have been many. They have ranged from the Bookman to the Boston Traveler, and now the Forum has discovered, with Mr. Sinclair taking the melody on the slide trombone, that murders in Boston cost three thousand dollars.

This situation has its pathetic side, aside from the implied underselling by other cities. For an old lawyer, grown fat with riches gathered beside the Charles, has said within the hearing of Mr. Sinclair: "Hang onto your money. Nobody respects anything else. . . ." "Harvard and State Street and Beacon Hill had taught him that attitude," adds Mr. Sinclair, who is an expert at qualitative analysis. And Max Keezor agreed, with a respectful pull at his forelock, "Aye, a little learning do be a dangerous thing."