nal of this character; ardent defenders
and detractors of his are still living, but all agree that he was
a strange man of great power. The author disclaims any intention of
writing a biography of him. Some of the things set down in this book
he did, and others he did not do. Some of the anecdotes here related
concerning him are, in the main, true, and for this material the author
acknowledges his indebtedness particularly to Colonel Thomas B. Cheney
of Ashland, New Hampshire, and to other friends who have helped him.
Jethro Bass was typical of his Era, and it is of the Era that this book
attempts to treat.

Concerning the locality where Jethro Bass was born and lived, it will
and will not be recognized. It would have been the extreme of bad taste
to have put into these pages any portraits which might have offended
families or individuals, and in order that it may be known that the
author has not done so he has written this Afterword. Nor has he
particularly chosen for the field of this novel a state of which he is
a citizen, and for which he has a sincere affection. The conditions
here depicted, while retaining the characteristics of the locality,
he believes to be typical of the Era over a large part of the United
States.

Many of the Puritans who came to New England were impelled to emigrate
from the old country, no doubt, by an aversion to pulling the forelock
as well as by religious principles, and the spirit of these men
prevailed for a certain time after the Revolution was fought. Such men
lived and ruled in Coniston before the rise of Jethro Bass.

Self-examination is necessary for the moral health of nations as well
as men, and it is the most hopeful of signs that in the United States we
are to-day going through a period of self-examination.

We shall do well to ascertain the causes which have led us gradually to
stray from the political principles laid down by our forefathers for
all the world to see. Some of us do not even know what those principles
were. I have met many intelligent men, in different states of the Union,
who could not even repeat the names of the senators who sat for them in
Congress. Macaulay said, in 1852, "We now know, by the clearest of all
proof, that universal suffrage, even united with secret voting, is no
security, against the establishment of arbitrary power." To quote James
Russell Lowell, writing a little later: "We have begun obscurely to
recognize that... popular government i