endulum of
civilization swings toward aristocracy; and when the follower, beginning
to think, beginning to struggle, gains a small advantage, then the
pendulum inclines toward democracy.

And always, and always, the leaders tend to forget that they are only
servants, and would be masters. "The unending audacity of elected
persons!" And always, and always, there must be a following bold enough
to prick the pretensions of the leaders and keep them in their places!

Thus, through the long still afternoon, the battle waged upon my porch.
Harriet came out and met the Honourable Mr. Caldwell, and sat and
listened, and presently went in again, without having got half a dozen
words into the conversation. And the bees buzzed, and in the meadows the
cows began to come out of the shade to feed in the open land.

Gradually, Mr. Caldwell put off his air of condescension; he put off his
appeal to party authority; he even stopped arguing the tariff and the
railroad question. Gradually, he ceased to be the great man, Favourably
Mentioned for Governor, and came down on the ground with me. He moved
his chair up closer to mine; he put his hand on my knee. For the first
time I began to see what manner of man he was: to find out how much real
fight he had in him.

[Illustration: "HE MOVED HIS CHAIR CLOSER TO MINE"]

"You don't understand," he said, "what it means to be down there at
Washington in a time like this. Things clear to you are not clear when
you have to meet men in the committees and on the floor of the house who
have a contrary view from yours and hold to it just as tenaciously as
you do to your views."

Well, sir, he gave me quite a new impression of what a Congressman's job
was like, of what difficulties and dissensions he had to meet at home,
and what compromises he had to accept when he reached Washington.

"Do you know," I said to him, with some enthusiasm, "I am more than ever
convinced that farming is good enough for me."

He threw back his head and laughed uproariously, and then moved up still
closer.

"The trouble with you, Mr. Grayson," he said, "is that you are looking
for a giant intellect to represent you at Washington."

"Yes," I said, "I'm afraid I am."

"Well," he returned, "they don't happen along every day. I'd like to see
the House of Representatives full of Washingtons and Jeffersons and
Websters and Roosevelts. But there's a Lincoln only once in a century."

He paused and then added with a sort