om politicians, who came to speak for him, that discouraged him. He
had found that single-mindedness was not the dominant quality of those
who followed politics as a profession. The loaves and fishes bulked
largely in their calculations, and he heard a distinguished man say
things at one of his meetings which Raymond knew that it was impossible
he could believe. For example, it was clearly a popular catchword that
party politics had become archaic, and that a time was near when party
would be forgotten in a larger and nobler spirit. Speakers openly
declared that great changes were in sight, and the constitution must be
modified; but, privately, they professed no such opinions. All looked to
their party and their party alone for personal advance. It seemed to
Ironsyde that their spirits were mean spirits; that they concealed
behind their profession a practice of shrewd calculation and a policy of
cynical self-advance. The talk behind the scenes was not of national
welfare, but individual success, or failure. The men who talked the
loudest on the platform of altruism and the greatest good to the
greatest number, were most alive in private conversation to the
wire-pulling and intrigue which proceeded unseen; and it was in the
machinery they found their prime interest and excitement, rather than in
the great operations the machine was ostensibly created to achieve. The
whole business on their lips in private appeared to have no more real
significance than a county cricket match, or any other game.

Thanks largely to the woman he was to wed, Ironsyde took now a
statesman-like rather than a political view as far as his inexperience
could do so. He had no axe to grind, and from the standpoint of his
ignorance, progress looked easy and demanded no more than that good will
of which Estelle so often spoke. But in practice he began to perceive
the gulf between ideal legislation and practical politics and, in
moments of physical depression, as the election approached, his heart
failed him. He grew despondent at night. Then, after refreshing sleep,
the spirit of hope reawakened. He felt very certain now that he was
going to get in; and still with morning light he hailed the victory;
while, after a heavy day, he doubted of its fruits and mistrusted
himself. His powers seemed puny contrasted with the gigantic
difficulties that the machine set up between a private member and any
effective or independent activity in the House.

He was