practice of morality? Is Mr. Flint your example of the fittest type to
exist and survive, or Gladstone or Wilberforce or Emerson or Lincoln?"

"Emerson!" cried the Honourable Hilary, the name standing out in red
letters before his eyes. He had never read a line of the philosopher's
writings, not even the charge to "hitch your wagon to a star" (not in the
"Book of Arguments"). Sarah Austen had read Emerson in the woods, and her
son's question sounded so like the unintelligible but unanswerable
flashes with which the wife had on rare occasions opposed the husband's
authority that Hilary Vane found his temper getting the best of him--The
name of Emerson was immutably fixed in his mind as the synonym for
incomprehensible, foolish habits and beliefs. "Don't talk Emerson to me,"
he exclaimed. "And as for Brush Bascom, I've known him for thirty years,
and he's done as much for the Republican party as any man in this State."

This vindication of Mr. Bascom naturally brought to a close a
conversation which had already continued too long. The Honourable Hilary
retired to rest; but--if Austen had known it--not to sleep until the
small hours of the morning.

It was not until the ensuing spring that the case of Mr. Zebulun Meader
against the United Northeastern Railroads came up for trial in Bradford,
the county-seat of Putnam County, and we do not wish to appear to give it
too great a weight in the annals of the State. For one thing, the weekly
newspapers did not mention it; and Mr. Paul Pardriff, when urged to give
an account of the proceedings in the Ripton Record, said it was a matter
of no importance, and spent the afternoon writing an editorial about the
domestic habits of the Aztecs. Mr. Pardriff, however, had thought the
matter of sufficient interest personally to attend the trial, and for the
journey he made use of a piece of green cardboard which he habitually