yo geniuses. Even at this
early period Humphrey Crewe's thirst for knowledge was insatiable: he
cared little, the biography tells us, for galleries and churches and
ruins, but his comments upon foreign methods of doing business were
astonishingly precocious. He recommended to amazed clerks in provincial
banks the use of cheques, ridiculed to speechless station-masters the
side-entrance railway carriage with its want of room, and the size of
the goods trucks. He is said to have been the first to suggest that
soda-water fountains might be run at a large profit in London.

In college, in addition to keeping up his classical courses, he found
time to make an exhaustive study of the railroads of the United States,
embodying these ideas in a pamphlet published shortly after graduation.
This pamphlet is now, unfortunately, very rare, but the anonymous
biographer managed to get one and quote from it. If Mr. Crewe's
suggestions had been carried out, seventy-five per cent of the railroad
accidents might have been eliminated. Thorough was his watchword even
then. And even at that period he foresaw, with the prophecy of genius,
the days of single-track congestion.

His efforts to improve Leith and the State in general, to ameliorate the
condition of his neighbours, were fittingly and delicately dwelt upon.
A desire to take upon himself the burden of citizenship led--as
we know--to further self-denial. He felt called upon to go to the
Legislature--and this is what he saw:--(Mr. Crewe is quoted here at
length in an admirable, concise, and hair-raising statement given in an
interview to his biographer. But we have been with him, and know what he
saw. It is, for lack of space, reluctantly omitted.)

And now we are to take up where the biography left off; to relate, in a
chapter if possible, one of the most remarkable campaigns in the history
of this country. A certain reformer of whose acquaintance the honest
chronicler boasts (a reformer who got elected!) found, on his first
visit to the headquarters he had hired--two citizens under the influence
of liquor and a little girl with a skip rope. Such are the beginnings
that try men's souls.

The window of every independent shopkeeper in Ripton contained a
large-sized picture of the Leith statesman, his determined chin slightly
thrust down into the Gladstone collar. Underneath were the words, "I
will put an end to graft and railroad rule. I am a Candidate of the
People. Opening rally o