tely a small class of citizens in
this and every other country who are never for anybody but always
against somebody. Frequently these men are right in their opposition;
but their force is dissipated because they are habitually negative.

I know of nothing better for a young man's character than that he
should become the admirer and follower of some noted public man. Let
your discipleship have fervor. Permit your youth to be natural. But be
sure that the political leader to whom you attach yourself is worthy
of your devotion.

Usually this will settle itself. Public men will impress you not only
by their deeds, words, and general attitude; but also through a sort
of psychic sense within you which illumines and interprets all they
say and do, and makes you understand them even better than their
spoken words.

This subconscious intelligence which the people come to have of a
public man is seldom wrong.

Somehow or other the people know instinctively those who really are
unselfishly devoted to the Nation's interest. _In the end_ they never
fail to know the man who is honest.

This instinctive estimate of the qualities of mind and soul of public
men will probably select for you the captain to whom you are to give
your allegiance. Be faithful and earnest in your championship of him.
In this way you make your political life personal and human.

You give to the policies in which you believe the warmth and vitality
of flesh and blood. And, best of all, you increase within yourself
human sympathies and devotions, and thus make yourself more and more
one of the people who in due time, in your turn, it may be your duty
to lead, if the qualities of leadership are in you.

This matter of leadership among public men is becoming more and more
important, because personality in politics is meaning more every day.
Obeying generally, then, your instinct as to the public men whom you
intend to follow, subject your choice to the corrective of cold and
careful analysis.

It is probably true that the greatest danger of our future is the
peril of classes, and inseparably connected with classes the menace of
demagogy. The last decade has revealed signs that the demagogue, in
the modern meaning of that word, is making his appearance in American
civic life.

Such men always seize the most attractive "cause" as argument to the
people for their support. They are quite as willing to pose as the
especial apostles of righteousness and puri