he
definition of the gazetteers. Not so, however, of that class of the
genus _homo_ individualized in J. Wilton Ames. He leaned not upon such
frail dependence as the _Congressional Record_ for tempered reports of
what goes on behind closed legislative doors; he went behind those
doors himself. He needed not to yield his meekly couched desires to
the law-builders whom his ballot helped select; he himself launched
those legislators, and gave them their steering charts. But, since the
interpretation of laws was to him vastly more important than their
framing, he first applied himself to the selection of judges, and
especially those of the federal courts. With these safely seated and
instructed at home, he gave himself comfortably to the task of holding
his legislators in Washington to the course he chose.

Carmen had not spent a day at the Capital before the significance of
this fact to the common citizen swept over her like a tidal wave. If
the people, those upon whom the stability of the nation rests, looked
as carefully after appointments and elections as did Ames, would their
present wrongs continue long to endure? She thought not. And after she
had spent the day with the Washington correspondent of the Express, a
Mr. Sands, who, with his young wife, had just removed to the Capital,
she knew more with respect to the mesmerism of human inertia and its
baneful effects upon mankind than she had known before.

And yet, after that first day of wandering through the hallowed
precincts of a nation's legislative halls, she sat down upon a bench
in the shadow of the Capitol's great dome and asked herself the
questions: "What am I here for, anyway? What can _I_ do? Why have I
come?" She had acted upon--impulse? No; rather, upon instinct. And
instinct with her, as we have said, was unrestrained dependence upon
her own thought, the thought which entered her mentality only after
she had first prepared the way by the removal of every obstruction,
including self.

At the breakfast table the second morning after her arrival in the
city, Mr. Sands handed her a copy of the Express. Among the editorials
was her full report upon conditions as she had found them in Avon,
published without her signature. Following it was the editor's
comment, merciless in its exposition of fact, and ruthless in its
exposure of the cruel greed externalized in the great cotton industry
in that little town.

Carmen rose from the table indignant and protes