Real Heroine

I

It would not be the writer of this narrative if he did not interject
certain opinions of his own which parties and politicians, even his
newspaper colleagues, have been wont to regard as peculiar. By common
repute he has been an all-round old-line Democrat of the regulation
sort. Yet on the three leading national questions of the last fifty
years--the Negro question, the Greenback question and the Free Silver
question--he has challenged and antagonized the general direction of
that party. He takes some pride to himself that in each instance the
result vindicated alike his forecast and his insubordination.

To one who witnessed the break-up of the Whig party in 1853 and of the
Democratic Party in 1860 the plight in which parties find themselves at
this time may be described as at least, suggestive. The feeling is at
once to laugh and to whistle. Too much "fuss and feathers" in Winfield
Scott did the business for the Whigs. Too much "bearded lady" in Charles
Evans Hughes perhaps cooked the goose of the Republicans. Too much
Wilson--but let me not fall into _lese majeste_. The Whigs went into
Know-Nothingism and Free Soilism. Will the Democrats go into Prohibition
and paternalism? And the Republicans--

The old sectional alignment of North and South has been changed to East
and West.

For the time being the politicians of both parties are in something of a
funk. It is the nature of parties thus situate to fancy that there is
no hereafter, riding in their dire confusion headlong for a fall. Little
other than the labels being left, nobody can tell what will happen to
either.

Progressivism seems the cant of the indifferent. Accentuated by the
indecisive vote in the elections and heralded by an ambitious President
who writes Humanity bigger than he writes the United States, and is
accused of aspiring to world leadership, democracy unterrified and
undefiled--the democracy of Jefferson, Jackson and Tilden ancient
history--has become a back number. Yet our officials still swear to a
Constitution. We have not eliminated state lines. State rights are not
wholly dead.

The fight between capital and labor is on. No one can predict where it
will end. Shall it prove another irrepressible conflict? Are its issues
irreconcilable? Must the alternative of the future lie between Socialism
and Civil War, or both? Progress! Progress! Shall there be no
stability in either actualities or principles? And--and--wh