etings
wherever he could obtain admittance, studied the press in even the
smaller towns, travelled through the South and relieved himself of
whatever abstract sympathy he may have cherished for the colored race,
visited the sweat-shops of New York, the meat-packing establishments of
Chicago, the factories of New England, every phase of the great
civilization he knew of; and while he found much to admire and condemn,
both left him evenly indifferent. With all his soul he longed for
England. She might have her selfishness and her snobberies, lingering
taints in her political system, but she stood at the apex of
civilization, and her very faults were interesting; far removed from the
brazen crudities of the New World's struggle for wealth and power. And
although the blood of reformers was in his veins, and in his secret soul
he was an idealist to the point of knight-errantry, the desire for
reform had ebbed out of him during his American exile. And he knew the
fate of a good many American reformers. There were several in high
places at present, cheerfully trimmed down from the statesman to the
political ideal. Julia Kaye--clever woman!--had put the matter into an
epigram. The American statesman was the superior politician.

And how was he, out of tune with every phase of the country, to find the
ghost of an opportunity to lead it? He was no actor. If he had a merit
it was sincerity, a contempt for subterfuge as beneath both his powers
and the lofty position to which he had been born. Moreover, he was
honest; an equally aristocratic failing and drawback.

He recalled a conversation he had held in the smoking-compartment of a
Pullman with a sharp young politician, who had become voluble after
Gwynne had "stood him" two high-balls.

"It's graft or quit," he had announced. "All this cleaning up in
insurance and what not, all this talk of curbing the trusts and the rest
of it don't fool yours truly one little bit. It's just the ins trying to
get ahead of the outs. It's not the honestest or the best man that gets
there in God's own country, but the smartest--every time. Those that are
crying the loudest against the grafters are just waiting for a chance to
graft good and hard themselves. I am, and I don't care who knows it.
Only I don't waste any strength kicking. The labor party works itself up
over trusts and capitalists, and most of the capitalists come out of
that factory, and are the first to grind those left behind them,