awyer nodded.

"The old regime passed with him. Adolf Scherer succeeds him, and you may
take my word for it, he's a coming man. Mr. Durrett, who was a judge of
men, recognized that. Scherer was an emigrant, he had ideas, and rose to
be a foreman. For the last few years Mr. Durrett threw everything on his
shoulders...."

Little by little the scope of the discussion was enlarged until it ranged
over a continent, touching lightly upon lines of railroad, built or
projected, across the great west our pioneers had so lately succeeded in
wresting from the savages, upon mines of copper and gold hidden away
among the mountains, and millions of acres of forest and grazing lands
which a complacent government would relinquish provided certain
technicalities were met: touching lightly, too, very lightly,--upon
senators and congressmen at Washington. And for the first time I learned
that not the least of the functions of these representatives of the
people was to act as the medium between capital and investment, to
facilitate the handing over of the Republic's resources to those in a
position to develop them. The emphasis was laid on development, or rather
on the resulting prosperity for the country: that was the justification,
and it was taken for granted as supreme. Nor was it new to me; this cult
of prosperity. I recalled the torch-light processions of the tariff
enthusiasts of my childhood days, my father's championship of the
Republican Party. He had not idealized politicians, either. For the
American, politics and ethics were strangers.

Thus I listened with increasing fascination to these gentlemen in evening
clothes calmly treating the United States as a melon patch that existed
largely for the purpose of being divided up amongst a limited and favored
number of persons. I had a feeling of being among the initiated. Where,
it may be asked, were my ideals? Let it not be supposed that I believed
myself to have lost them. If so, the impression I have given of myself
has been wholly inadequate. No, they had been transmuted, that is all,
transmuted by the alchemy of Weathersfield, by the personality of
Theodore Watling into brighter visions. My eyes rarely left his face; I
hung on his talk, which was interspersed with native humour, though he
did not always join in the laughter, sometimes gazing at the fire, as
though his keen mind were grappling with a problem suggested. I noted the
respect in which his opinions were held, and m