party leaders, and I think less of them as I grow older. The politician and
the auctioneer might be described like the lunatic, the lover and the poet,
as "of imagination all compact." One sees more mares' nests than would
fill a book; the other pure gold in pinchbeck wares; and both are out for
gudgeons.

It is the habit--nay, the business--of the party speaker when he mounts the
raging stump to roar his platitudes into the ears of those who have the
simplicity to listen, though neither edified nor enlightened; to aver that
the horse he rides is sixteen feet high; that the candidate he supports is
a giant; and that he himself is no small figure of a man.

Thus he resembles the auctioneer. But it is the mock auctioneer whom he
resembles; his stock in trade being largely, if not altogether, fraudulent.
The success which at the outset of party welfare attended this legalized
confidence game drew into it more and more players. For a long time they
deceived themselves almost as much as the voters. They had not become
professional. They were amateur. Many of them played for sheer love of
the gamble. There were rules to regulate the play. But as time passed and
voters multiplied, the popular preoccupation increased the temptations and
opportunities for gain, inviting the enterprising, the skillful and the
corrupt to reconstitute patriotism into a commodity and to organize public
opinion into a bill of lading. Thus politics as a trade, parties as
trademarks, the politicians, like harlots, plying their vocation.

Now and again an able, honest and brave man, who aims at better things,
appears. In the event that fortune favors him and he attains high station,
he finds himself surrounded and thwarted by men less able and courageous,
who, however equal to discovering right from wrong, yet wear the party
collar, owe fealty to the party machine, are sometimes actual slaves of the