curious. It may not poison you--but the murders are coming
up again."

"What a delightful example of government ownership!" I exclaimed.

But John in Kings Port was not in the way of hearing that cure-all
policy discussed, and I therefore explained it to him. He did not seem
to grasp my explanation.

"I don't see how it would change anything," he remarked, "beyond
switching the stealing from one set of hands to another."

I put on a face of concern. "What? You don't believe in our patent
American short-cuts?"

"Short-cuts?"

"Certainly. Short-cuts to universal happiness, universal honesty,
universal everything. For instance: Don't make a boy study four years
for a college degree; just cut the time in half, and you've got a
short-cut to education. Write it down that man is equal. That settles
it. You'll notice how equal he is at once. Write it down that the negro
shall vote. You'll observe how instantly he is fit for the suffrage.
Now they want it written down that government shall take all the wicked
corporations, because then corruption will disappear from the face of
the earth. You'll find the farmers presently having it written down that
all hens must hatch their eggs in a week, and next, a league of earnest
women will advocate a Constitutional amendment that men only shall bring
forth children. Oh, we Americans are very thorough!" And I laughed.

But John's face was not gay. "Well," he mused, "South Carolina took a
short-cut to pure liquor and sober citizens--and reached instead a new
den of thieves. Is the whole country sick?"

"Sick to the marrow, my friend; but young and vigorous still. A nation
in its long life has many illnesses before the one it dies of. But we
shall need some strong medicine if we do not get well soon."

"What kind?"

"Ah, that's beyond any one! And we have several things the matter with
us--as bad a case, for example, of complacency as I've met in history.
Complacency's a very dangerous disease, seldom got rid of without the
purge of a great calamity. And worse, where does our dishonesty begin,
and where end? The boy goes to college, and there in football it awaits
him; he graduates, and in the down-town office it smirks at him; he
rises into the confidence of his superiors, the town's chief citizens,
and finds their gray hairs crowned with it,--the very men he has looked
up to, believed in, his ideals, his examples, the merchant prince,
the railroad magnate, the president of in