And he talks--generalities to the public. Perhaps that's all he can
talk now. Wise? Yes. But does he know the men about him? Does he
really know men? Nobody knows. Thus 'twixt fear and hope I
see--suspense. I'll swear I can't doubt, I can't believe. Whether
it is going to work out or not--whether he or anybody can work it
out of the haze of theory--nobody knows; and nobody's speculation
is better than mine and mine is worthless.

This is the game, this is the excitement, this is the doubthope and
the hopedoubt. I send this word about it to you (I could and would
to nobody else: you're snowbound, you see, and don't write much and
don't see many people: restrain your natural loquacity!) But for
the love of heaven tell me if you see any way _very clearly_. It's
a kind of misty dream to me.

I ask myself why should I concern myself about it? Of course the
answer's easy and I think creditable: I do profoundly hold this
democratic faith and believe that it can be worked into action
among men; and it may be I shall yet see it done. That's the secret
of my interest. But when this awful office descends on a man, it
oppresses him, changes him, you are not quite so sure of him, you
doubt whether he knows himself or you in the old way.

And I find among men the very crudest ideas of government or of
democracy. They have not thought the thing out. They hold no
ordered creed of human organization or advancement. They leave all
to chance and think, when they think at all, that chance determines
it. And yet the Great Hope persists, and I think I have grown an
inch by it.

I wonder how it seems, looked at from the cold mountains of Lake
Saranac?

It's the end of the year. Mrs. Page and I (alone!) have been
talking of democracy, of these very things I've written. The
bell-ringing and the dancing and the feasting are not, on this
particular year, to our liking. We see all our children gone--half
of them to nests of their own building, the rest on errands of
their own pleasure, and we are left, young yet, but the main job of
life behind us! We're going down to a cottage in southern North
Carolina (with our own cook and motor car, praise God!) for
February, still further to think this thing out and incidentally to
build us a library, in which we'll