hisper and skip--still, what little you do in the
matter is complimentary to the crime.

It means, if it means anything, that our outlying properties will all
be given up by the Democrats, and our flag hauled down. All of them? Not
only the properties stolen by Mr. McKinley and Mr. Roosevelt, but the
properties honestly acquired? Joe, did you believe that hardy statement
when you made it? Yet you made it, and there it stands in permanent
print. Now what moral law would suffer if we should give up the stolen
ones? But--

"You know our standard-bearer. He will maintain all that we have
gained"--by whatever process. Land, I believe you!

By George, Joe, you are as handy at the game as if you had been in
training for it all your life. Your campaign Address is built from the
ground up upon the oldest and best models. There isn't a paragraph in it
whose facts or morals will wash--not even a sentence, I believe.

But you will soon be out of this. You didn't want to do it--that is
sufficiently apparent, thanks be!--but you couldn't well get out of it.
In a few days you will be out of it, and then you can fumigate yourself
and take up your legitimate work again and resume your clean and
wholesome private character once more and be happy--and useful.

I know I ought to hand you some guff, now, as propitiation and apology
for these reproaches, but on the whole I believe I won't.

I have inquired, and find that Mitsikuri does not arrive here until
to-morrow night. I shall watch out, and telephone again, for I greatly
want to see him.

Always Yours,
MARK.

P. S.--Nov, 4. I wish I could learn to remember that it is unjust and
dishonorable to put blame upon the human race for any of its acts.
For it did not make itself, it did not make its nature, it is merely
a machine, it is moved wholly by outside influences, it has no hand in
creating the outside influences nor in choosing which of them it will
welcome or reject, its performance is wholly automatic, it has no more
mastership nor authority over its mind than it has over its stomach,
which receives material from the outside and does as it pleases with
it, indifferent to it's proprietor's suggestions, even, let alone his
commands; wherefore, whatever the machine does--so called crimes and
infamies included--is the personal act of its Maker, and He, solely,
is responsible. I wish I could learn to pity the human race inste