hen she finally made me
realize that I couldn't hold my own against the 'career,'" was the young
man's answer. Then he added: "I want work, father--that is what I am out
here for; the hardest kind of work, and plenty of it; something that I
can put my heart into. Can you find it for me?"

There was the wisdom of the centuries in the gentle smile provoked by
this unashamed disappointed lover's appeal.

"I wouldn't take it too hard--the career business--if I were you, son,"
said the wise man. "And as for the work, I reckon we can satisfy you, if
your appetite isn't too whaling big. How would a State office of some
kind suit you?"

"Politics?" queried Blount, bringing his horse down to the walk for
which his father had set the example. "I've thought a good bit about
that, though I haven't had any special training that way. The schools of
to-day are turning out business lawyers--men who know the commercial and
industrial codes and are trained particularly in their application to
the great business undertakings. That has been my ambition: to be a
business adviser, and, perhaps, after a while to climb to the top of the
ladder and be somebody's corporation counsel."

"But now you have changed your notion?"

"I don't know; sometimes I wonder if I haven't. There is another field
that is exceedingly attractive to me, and you have just named it. No man
can study the politics of America to-day without seeing the crying need
for good men: men who will not let the big income they could command in
private undertakings weigh against pure patriotism and a plain duty to
their country and their fellow-men; strong men who would administer the
affairs of the State or the nation absolutely without fear or favor; men
who will hew to the line under any and all conditions. There's an awful
dearth of that kind of material in our Government."

A quaint smile was playing under the drooping mustaches of that veteran
politician the Honorable Senator Sage-Brush.

"I reckon we do need a few men like that, Evan; need 'em mighty bad.
Think you could fill the bill as one of them if you had a right good
chance?"

The potential hewer of political chips which should lie as they might
fall smiled at what seemed to be merely an expression of parental
favoritism.

"I'm not likely to get the chance very soon," he returned. "Just at
present, you know, I am still a legal resident of the good old
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and a member of its bar--e