marriage altar, and the recklessness with which we elect men to
offices of public trust. While we have many public men, schooled in
the science of government, whom the spoils of office cannot corrupt,
we have an army of demagogues who rely upon saloon politics for
promotion, and on all moral questions reason with their stomachs
instead of their brains. This is especially true in the government of
our large cities.

Sam Jones, lecturing in a city noted for its corrupt government said:
"Take the political gang you have running this city, put them in a
cage, then let the devil pass along and look in and he would say,
'That beats anything I have in my show.'"

We don't seem to realize that every public man is a teacher, every
home is a school, and the education received outside the schoolroom is
often more effective than the education inside. All the forces and
elements of the organism of society are teachers and all life is
learning. The birth of an infant into this world is its matriculation
into a university, where it graduates in successive degrees. And do
you know in this great school of human life, where I come with you to
study the traits of our kind, that we never reach a grade that we are
not influenced by what touches us? Here I am past fifty years of age
(and then "some"), yet I am constantly being influenced by what
touches me.

Start a new song with a popular air and it will spread throughout the
whole country. Boys will whistle it and girls will sing it. A number
of years ago, when at the station ready to leave home for New England,
a lad near me began to whistle and then to sing a new song. It was a
catchy tune and took hold of me. On the train I found myself trying to