was part of the price we had willingly paid
Conviction that government should remain modestly in the background
Everybody should have been satisfied, but everybody was not
I hated to lie to her,--yet I did so
I'm incapable of committing a single original act
It was not money we coveted, we Americans, but power
Knowledge was presented to us as a corpse
Marriage! What other career is open to a woman?
Meaningless lessons which had to be learned
Opponent who praises one with a delightful irony
Righteousness a stern and terrible thing implying not joy
Staunch advocate on the doctrine of infant damnation
That's the great thing, to keep 'em ignorant as long as possible
The saloon represented Democracy, so dear to the American public
They deplored while they coveted
We lived separate mental existences
We had learned to pursue our happiness in packs
What you wants, you gets
Your American romanticist is a sentimental spoiled child

CONISTON

By Winston Churchill

"We have been compelled to see what was weak in democracy as well as
what was strong. We have begun obscurely to recognize that things
do not go of themselves, and that popular government is not in
itself a panacea, is no better than any other form except as the
virtue and wisdom of the people make it so, and that when men
undertake to do their own kingship, they enter upon, the dangers and
responsibilities as well as the privileges of the function. Above
all, it looks as if we were on the way to be persuaded that no
government can be carried on by declamation."

--JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

BOOK I

CHAPTER I

First I am to write a love-story of long ago, of a time some little while
after General Jackson had got into the White House and had shown the
world what a real democracy was. The Era of the first six Presidents had
closed, and a new Era had begun. I am speaking of political Eras. Certain
gentlemen, with a pious belief in democracy, but with a firmer
determination to get on top, arose,--and got in top. So many of these
gentlemen arose in the different states, and they were so clever, and
they found so many chinks in the Constitution to crawl through and steal
the people's chestnuts, that the Era may be called the Boss-Era. After
the Boss came along certain Things without souls, but of many mi