"You mean the _Post?_"

"Well, the editor of the _Post_ certainly would be in line, whereas the
president of Blaines Grammar School certainly ain't."

"What do you mean by in line, Plonny?"

Mr. Neal invested his cigar with an enigmatic significance. "I might
mean one thing and I might mean another. I s'pose you never give a
thought to poltix, did you?"

"Well, in a general way I have thought of it sometimes."

"Think of it some more," said Mr. Neal, from the door. "I see a kind of
shake-up comin'. People say I've got infloonce in poltix, and sort of
help to run things. Of course it ain't so. I've got no more infloonce
than what my ballot gives me, and my takin' an intelligent public
interest in what's goin' on. But it looks to an amatoor like the people
are gettin' tired of this ring-rule they been givin' us, and 're goin'
to rise in their majesty pretty soon, and fill the offices with young
progressive men who never heeled f'r the organization."

He went away, leaving the young president of Blaines vastly cheered.
Certainly no language could have made Neal's meaning any plainer. He
had come to tell West that, if he would only consent to get in line, he,
great Neal, desired to put him in high office--doubtless the Mayoralty,
which in all human probability meant the Governorship four years later.

West sat long in rapt meditation. He marveled at himself for having ever
accepted his present position. Its limitations were so narrow and so
palpable, its possibilities were so restricted, its complacent
provincialism so glaring, that the imaginative glories with which he had
once enwrapped it seemed now simply grotesque. As long as he remained,
he was an entombed nonentity. Beyond the college walls, out of the reach
of the contemptible bigotry of the trustees of this world, the people
were calling for him. He could be the new type of public servant, the
clean, strong, fearless, idolized young Moses, predestined to lead a
tired people into the promised land of political purity. Once more a
white meadow of eager faces rolled out before the eye of his mind; and
this time, from the buntinged hustings, he did not extol learning with
classic periods, but excoriated political dishonesty in red-hot phrases
which jerked the throngs to their feet, frenzied with ardor....

And it was while he was still in this vein of thought, as it happened,
that Colonel Cowles, at eleven o'clock on the first night of June,
dropped dead in hi