worst then.
Age has its powers, but it has its defects, and he had no hope that his
own defects would be wiped out by luck at the polls. Spirit was gone out
of him, longing for the future had no place in his mind; in the world of
public work he was dead and buried. How little he had got from all his
life! How few friends he had, and how few he was entitled to have! This
is one of the punishments that selfishness and wrong-doing brings; it
gives no insurance for the hours of defeat and loss. Well, wealth and
power, the friends so needed in dark days, had not been made, and Barode
Barouche realized he had naught left. He had been too successful from
the start; he had had all his own way; and he had taken no pains to make
or keep friends. He well knew there was no man in the Cabinet or among
his colleagues that would stir to help him--he had stirred to help no
man in all the years he had served the public. It was no good only to
serve the public, for democracy is a weak stick on which to lean. One
must stand by individuals or there is no defence against the malicious
foes that follow the path of defeat, that ambush the way. It is the
personal friends made in one's own good days that watch the path and
clear away the ambushers. It is not big influential friends that are so
important--the little unknown man may be as useful as the big boss in
the mill of life; and if one stops to measure one's friends by their
position, the end is no more sure than if one makes no friends at all.

"There's nothing left for me in life--nothing at all," he said as he
tossed in bed while the thunder roared and the storm beat down the
shrubs. "How futile life is--'Youth's a dream, middle age a delusion,
old age a mistake!'" he kept repeating to himself in quotation. "What
does one get out of it? Nothing--nothing--nothing! It's all a poor show
at the best, and yet--is it? Is it all so bad? Is it all so poor and
gaunt and hopeless? Isn't there anything in it for the man who gives and
does his best?"

Suddenly there came upon him the conviction that life is only futile
to the futile, that it is only a failure to those who prove themselves
incompetent, selfish and sordid; but to those who live life as it ought
to be lived, there is no such thing as failure, or defeat, or penalty,
or remorse or punishment. Because the straight man has only good ends to
serve, he has no failures; though he may have disappointments, he has
no defeats; for the true sec