st of voters
before an election; it was also a rainy night. The master of the house
awaited a carriage, which was to be sent up by a candidate, at the
candidate's expense, to take him to the place of registration. Time grew
short.

"Shall you walk there if the carriage doesn't come?" I asked, and gazed
firmly at the prospective voter.

At that moment the carriage came. We drove forth together, and in a
cabin warmed by a stove and full of the steam of mackintoshes I saw an
interesting part of the American Constitution at work--four hatted
gentlemen writing simultaneously the same particulars in four similar
ledgers, while exhorting a fifth to keep the stove alight. An
acquaintance came in who had trudged one mile through the rain. That
acquaintance showed public spirit. In the ideal community a candidate
for election will not send round carriages in order, at the last moment,
to induce citizens to register; in the ideal community citizens will
regard such an attention as in the nature of an insult.

I was told that millionaires and presidents of trusts were chiefly
responsible for any backwardness of public spirit in the United States.
I had heard and read the same thing about the United States in England.
I was therefore curious to meet these alleged sinister creatures. And
once, at a repast, I encountered quite a bunch of millionaire-presidents.
I had them on my right hand and on my left. No two were in the least
alike. In my simplicity I had expected a type--formidable, intimidating.
One bubbled with jollity; obviously he "had not a care in the world."
Another was grave. I talked with the latter, but not easily. He was
taciturn. Or he may have been feeling his way. Or he may have been not
quite himself. Even millionaire-presidents must be self-conscious. Just
as a notorious author is too often rendered uneasy by the consciousness
of his notoriety, so even a millionaire-president may sometimes have a
difficulty in being quite natural. However, he did ultimately talk. It
became clear to me that he was an extremely wise and sagacious man. The
lines of his mouth were ruthlessly firm, yet he showed a general
sympathy with all classes of society, and he met my radicalism quite
half-way. On woman's suffrage he was very fair-minded. As to his own
work, he said to me that when a New York paper asked him to go and be
cross-examined by its editorial board he willingly went, because he had
nothing to conceal. He convinced me o