uiet and as
determined as hers. "Now, I've been through several campaigns and am not
only a good fighter, but I'm conceited enough to believe I'm a pretty
good organizer,--and that's a hundred times better."

"Well, tell me just how to go to work to enlist the multitude, to win
the populace;--in short, to get votes," said Gertrude. "How do I
begin?"

"Well, there are two ways," answered the young man. "If you were a man I
would say, you can break in by sheer force of audacity, without definite
purpose; or, you can enter quietly, with a fixed principle in mind which
you wish to see worked out in public life. The first is the old idea,
the latter is the new."

"And the old way?" said Gertrude.

"Well, if you enter in the old-fashioned way, you will have to place
yourself at the disposal of the chairman of some campaign committee in
the city; you will read a great deal of 'literature' prepared by the
committee, mostly vituperative nonsense about the opposing party; you
will learn this by heart, follow the red light and the brass band to the
nearest 'stump,' and mixing what you have read, but not thought out,
with some stories of considerable age and questionable humor, will
deliver it all to a bored and weary audience, confident that you have
established a reputation for eloquence.

"By this time you will feel like a full-fledged politician; you will
become mysterious and tell everybody everything you know in confidence;
secret conferences will be held behind closed doors; old clothes and a
slouchy manner will be brought out to catch the labor vote; you will
speak to all sorts of people, and call them by their first names,
thinking all the time that, if a candidate, you would lead your ticket.
As a matter of fact, you may have lost hundreds of votes."

"Yes," said Gertrude with spirit, "and then I would be taken up by the
machine. They would call me a budding genius and I should look upon the
boss as a great man."

"Yes," pursued Bailey, "until you begin to think for yourself. Then it
will occur to you as strange that in a representative government you
should be selected as a candidate of your party recommended as you have
been; still more strange that the platform upon which you are to run was
set up in type in the newspaper offices several hours before the
convention which nominates you met, and had been submitted to the
president of the railroad that runs through your town for his approval
or revision."

"Yes