remember that I'm an old man who has fought the good fight and is very
weary."

"I've got to confess there isn't much wit and humor in me--there doesn't
seem to be just now," stammered Harlan, after groping some moments for
suitable reply to what he accepted as badinage.

"Oh, I don't want jest in answer to that, sir," protested the General.
"I am in earnest." But his tone was still a bit whimsical. "You know,
even so great a man as Caesar consulted the oracle and the omens and the
soothsayers. Why should not I practice a little divination? Now answer
me, young man--or I'll say, young _men_ of the State?"

"Yet I can't think you really mean that, General," protested Harlan,
wholly confused by this persistent banter.

"Call it in fun, call it in earnest, still I demand my answer." General
Waymouth was serious now. "I came here resolved to tell Thelismer, face
to face, that I could not sacrifice the last strength of my life in the
way he has asked. But when you met me at the station all my ambitions
for this newer generation, as I have dreamed them, came up in me. My
boy, this State of ours is in a bad way. In one respect it is especially
bad. We have one solemn law in our constitution that is made our own
political football and the laughing-stock of the nation. We forbid the
sale of liquor. Look at that saloon we are passing at this moment! It is
a law that affects nearly every person in our State--comes near to every
one, directly or indirectly. The manner of its breaking, publicly and
protected by politics, has bred disrespect for all law in the boys who
are growing up. And they are the ones who will run our State when we
oldsters are gone. I'll not say anything about the other reforms that
conditions are calling for. There's _one_--the big one that flaunts
itself in our faces. I'm of the old school, Mr. Thornton. I don't
believe in the prohibitory principle as applied to the liquor question.
It hasn't the right spirit behind it--it is invoked by bigots and
fanatics who refuse helpful compromise. But it's a law--our law! Every
day that passes under present conditions adds its little to the
damnation of the moral principle in our boys and girls, growing up with
eyes and ears open. God, I wish I were twenty years younger! But I'm old
enough to have fantastic notions; old enough to insist on an answer to
my question, in spite of what you may think of my mental condition. Will
you release me from that promise? I made i