an ingratiating
personality, and a literary style.

The small town man, unimaginative and of restricted mental horizon
does not think in terms of masses of mankind. Masses vaguely appall
him. They exist in the big cities on which he turned his back in
his unaudacious youth. His contacts are with individuals. His
democracy consists in smiling upon the village painter and calling
him "Harry," in always nodding to the village cobbler and calling
him "Bill," in stopping on the street corner with a group, which
has not been invited to join the village club, putting his hand on
the shoulder of one of them and calling them "Fellows."

Politics in the small town is limited to dealing with persons, to
enlisting the support of men with a following at the polls.

Mr. Harding once drew this picture of his idea of politics. "If I
had a policy to put over I should go about it this way," he said.
"You all know the town meeting, if not by experience, by hearsay.
Now if I had a program that I wanted to have adopted by a town
meeting I should go to the three or four most influential men in my
community. I should talk it out with them. I should make
concessions to them until I had got them to agree with me. And then
I should go into the town meeting feeling perfectly confident that
my plan would go through. Well it's the same in the nation as in
the town meeting, or in the whole world, if you will. I should
always go first to the three or four leading men."

Mr. Harding thinks of politics in this personal way. He does not
conceive of it as the force of ideas or the weight of morality
moving the hearts of mankind. Mankind is only a word to him, one
that he often uses,--or perhaps he prefers humanity, which has two
more syllables--a large loose word that he employs to make his
thought look bigger than it really is, something like the stage
device for making an ordinary man seem ten feet tall.

Thus he will never try to move the mass of the people as his
predecessors have. He will not "go to the country." He will not
bring public opinion to bear as a disciplinary force in his
household. He will treat the whole United States as if it were a
Marion, consulting endless "best minds," composing differences,
seeking unity, with the aid of his exceptional tact.

This attitude has its disadvantages. If you have a passion for
ideas and an indifference for persons you can say "yes" or "no"
easily; you may end by being dictatorial and arrogant,