HONESTUS AT THE CAUCUS.


A man who is easily discouraged, who is not willing to put the good
seed out of sight and wait for results, who desponds if he cannot
obtain everything at once, and who thinks the human race lost if he is
disappointed, will be very unhappy if he persists in taking a part in
politics. There is no sphere in which self-deception is easier. A man
with a restless personal ambition is very apt to believe his own
purposes to be public ends, and he finds his party to be recreant to
its principles if he fails to get what he wants. A young man comes
from college carefully trained, with the taste for politics which
belongs to the English race, and with the wish and hope to distinguish
himself and to serve his country. He attaches himself to a party, and
works for it in the usual way, waiting for his opportunity and his
distinction. Gradually the gratification of his ambition becomes his
test of the patriotic sincerity and wisdom of his party. He does not
think that it is so. He does not state it to himself in that bald way.
But he feels that he is the kind of man that his party ought to
promote, that he has the capacity and the desire to be of use, and
that if his party has not perceptions sharp enough to know its own
best men, nor the wish to distinguish them by calling them to office,
there is something deplorable in its condition.

"I am afraid," said a gentleman of this kind to the Easy Chair, "that
my party is falling into bad hands. I see signs of corruption which
seem to me very disheartening." He shook his head forebodingly. This
gentleman did not conceal his opinion. He announced it freely, and the