how far one's judgments fall below the mark sometimes,"
he went on. "Not till this afternoon did I get a true perspective of
the man, when I saw him standing there, perfectly self-possessed and
powerful, reading his speech"--

"Reading!" she interrupted.

"Yes, reading, and actually gaining in effectiveness by doing so. It
seems that each speaker was allowed only twenty minutes, and rather
than run the risk of going off on a tangent, he had written the whole
thing out--but he knew it practically by heart."

"It was like him," she commented. "He's clever. But what did he say?"

Her eager interest, her knowledge of the man, the compliment she paid
him, filled Leigh with bitterness of which he was ashamed. He found
himself under the necessity of describing to the woman he loved the
triumph of another man, who had, as he now saw clearly, appealed to her
imagination. To be sure, it was nothing more than that, but as far as
it went, it hurt his own cause to play the role of the narrating
messenger. He was focussing her attention upon an exciting drama in
which he had borne the inglorious part of witness; but he was too proud
a man to be ungenerous in his comments, or to let her see the duality
of his mental state.

"His speech was a frank setting off of the masses against the classes,"
he returned. "He said the same things I had heard him say in
conversation, only with more pith and point. Emmet has the Irish gift
of expression when he's aroused--there's no doubt of it. He
practically took for his text: The Man in the One-storied House against
the Man in the Mansion. One thing struck me as especially keen. His
opponents have been claiming that the city is a great business
corporation, in which the citizens are stockholders and the officials
directors; but Emmet pointed out the fact that in a stock company a man
is entitled to as many votes as he has shares, while in a municipal
corporation the individual, not the stock he possesses, is the unit.
He made a good point there in maintaining that the corner-stone of
democracy is manhood suffrage, not property suffrage. He tore apart
that apparently reasonable comparison, and showed beneath it an attempt
to rob the poor man of his rights."

She nodded her appreciation. "It was a good point, but I don't agree
with him, nevertheless. Property-holders ought to have more to say in
the management of a city than those who have nothing at stake. If I
had my way, I