d, like
the multitude, prove to have chart and compass and definite port in
objective when their conduct is more attentively examined. Victor
Dorn's system was as perfect as it was simple, and he held himself to
it as rigidly as the father superior of a Trappist monastery holds his
monks to their routine. Also, Victor had learned to know and to be on
guard against those two arch-enemies of the man who wishes to "get
somewhere"--self-excuse and optimism. He had got a good strong leash
upon his vanity--and a muzzle, too. When things went wrong he
instantly blamed HIMSELF, and did not rest until he had ferreted out
the stupidity or folly of which HE had been guilty. He did not grieve
over his failures; he held severely scientific post mortems upon them
to discover the reason why--in order that there should not again be
that particular kind of failure at least. Then, as to the other
arch-enemy, optimism, he simply cut himself off from indulgence in it.
He worked for success; he assumed failure. He taught himself to care
nothing about success, but only about doing as intelligently and as
thoroughly as he could the thing next at hand.

What has all this to do with his infatuation for Jane? It serves to
show not only why the Workingmen's League was growing like a plague of
gypsy moth, but also why Victor Dorn was not the man to be conquered by
passion. Naturally, Jane, who had only the vaguest conception of the
size and power of Victor Dorn's mind, could not comprehend wherein lay
the difference between him and the men she read about in novels or met
in her wanderings among the people of her own class in various parts of
the earth. It is possible for even the humblest of us to understand
genius, just as it is possible to view a mountain from all sides and
get a clear idea of it bulk and its dominion. But the hasty traveler
contents himself with a glance, a "How superb," and a quick passing on;
and most of us are hasty travelers in the scenic land of
intellectuality. Jane saw that he was a great man. But she was
deceived by his frankness and his simplicity. She evoked in him only
the emotional side of his nature, only one part of that.

Because it--the only phase of him she attentively examined--was so
impressive, she assumed that it was the chief feature of the man.

Also, young and inexperienced women--and women not so young, and with
opportunity to become less inexperienced but without the ability to
learn b