One division of this Congress represents millions of citizens; the other division represents about half a hundred Governors of States. The theory of this is, that the people, by virtue of their Constitution, place a Senatorial check upon their own representative wishes.

Also, every city makes its own laws, and every county makes laws for all cities within it, and every State makes laws for all the cities and counties within it; and the nation, for every city and county and State within itself.

No city or county or State, nor any number of them, may withdraw from the union.

Every citizen is a sovereign, because there is no sovereign in the country.

The sovereignty rests in all the people; which is the wherefore that each and every one is a sovereign.

The supreme law of the Federation is a written constitution, which forbids monarchical uses; yet the treaty power of the President and Senate dealing with foreign monarchs is of equal supremacy. The sovereign people's House of Representatives cannot enter into the treaty negotiations. The most precious possession is liberty, and the majority rules. Thus, Thus, the majority has the most liberty.

The majority of Congress is the majority of the country in representative capacity.

Congress makes laws under power of the Constitution, and the Supreme Court has power to declare these laws unconstitutional.

In all these matters, the people erect their laws over themselves. They publish legislation which they continually break.. They are proud to break laws which they themselves have made instead of being punished by laws that a monarch might have made.

These laws emanate from the wisdom of the country at large. Congress and the President represent this wisdom and the will thereof. Many of the wisest lawgivers in the country being in Congress, they therefore represent the will of the less wise. Thus, if the law-givers use any superior wisdom which they may possess, they do not represent the will of the people.

The three branches of government are

the executive, the legislative and the judiciary. Should the executive act illegally, the judiciary will intervene; yet the judiciary is powerless to act save through the instrumentality of the executive. When the legislative has published a law, a lawbreaker may appeal to the judiciary to determine the lawfulness thereof.

Since the Government is an expression of the will of the majority, therefore the executive, the legislative and the judiciary endeavor to act complacently therewith. But this is difficult, because no one knows who the majority are, where they are, nor what they desire.

The majority does not know itself until after the votes are counted.

The majority might favor legislation evil and oppressive unto the minority; but in this regard a peculiar condition exists. The majority of the citizens are poor; the rich are few. And yet, so much honesty is manifest that the multitudinous poor never make laws that are despotic upon the few rich. In truth, the latter are in better circumstances here than in monarchies; wealthier than monarchs.

Thus, much credit is reflected upon the poor for not using their powers ill.

CHAPTER VIII.

The world is a different one from that in which Wah-wah squatted with his pile of flints. Different and yet the same old world. It has made little if any discoveries below the depth of human nature where Wah-wah stood. His meagre development and sub-savage arts were all consigned to the pride that led Ainu to his cave. And all man's intellect now, his feats, his demonstrations and his rarities are bundled up in the leading away of a woman before the rest of his kind. But, say that we have more. We have in our hands more emblems of the infinite, more tokens of heart and brain, and finer divergencies. The sentiments we extol, and the customs and vanities and sincerities, existed with Wah-wah, or shortly after him. Our politicians grapple with greater problems; to wit, the handling of greater numbers. Our priests talk to us with more subtle ideas, yet pull the veil of the future no further aside than did Leanface before the eyes of the startled Lake

men. We have had more oratory, more books, prayers, miracles and dreams, prophecies and commentaries-above all, commentaries. Yet here is the same man struggling for mastery among his fellows; his manifold pleasures merely the stings of a more involute desire.

This is not pessimism. Not one deed is adversely criticised. It is but to say that amid his gallery of pictures and hall of inventions and panorama of power, with here and there a mansion of telescopes, glaring, still stands the ancient man. And That Man is always The Man. Analyze him as you will; say that he is this and that, is more of one thing and less of another; and beneath it all is the one thing you cannot analyze, cannot fathom, cannot touch, cannot see, cannot govern, and seldom speak to the man.

He stands now in well-fitting clothes; his hair is exactly brushed; his linen, white; and he dons his kid gloves with a knowing air. Perhaps he is something of an artist or sporting gentleman or has a vein of cowardice, or has succeeded in something. In his own mind he is what he has never told you; that is, that which you yourself are, while you wonder if others be the same.

new

It is because man has given names to so many new things and has a diversified system of nomenclature for himself that he esteems himself different. Names are invented for inventions; and some of the old implements are honored with terms because their wooden originality was replaced with gold, then with copper, then with iron, then with steel, and then with tin. Sovereigns as well as sugarbowls. A king may or may not be what a king was; nor a sword nor a scutcheon nor a coat. Yet men use the words to play on the same old passions amid which those glittered.

For instance, there is patriotism. It has become of little use, save for the purposes of war. Let a hostile explosion be heard off our coasts, and there would be the same gathering of sturdy spirits that ever has hurled back the invader to his ships and the bloody billow. And he who does not feel the flag waving in his heart and the drum beating in his blood should not be permitted to dwell in the land. Nevertheless, it must

be admitted that, in point of patriotism, we are not at the present time a nation nor a race. We are a country. How can we feel with that sworded patriot whose race and nation and country and city were all in one? He stood upon a hill and beheld his country from temple frieze to outer wall. He, when an invader threatened, grasped his buckler and cried, "These men are attacking me—my very self. He reared a statue or smoothed out a road and meditated, it is mine, my daily life; its beauty is of me.

We have many States, whose inhabitants are of aforesaid every race, creed, color and previous condition, and only one thing in common—a flag. The colors is the only bond of these many colors. And this was not theirs all their lives.

In times of peace, there is no emblem of patriotism save that of war. And patriotism schisms up into love of State, municipal pride and street improvement committees.

It was with such thoughts as these that Malachy Mulverhill tapped his Havana cigar and watched the ash fall to its reflection on a silver tray. In point of color, the ash may have fallen from his ashen hairs, or, brightened, been the light of his eyes. His visage was what might be termed Greek-Irish; classic yet modern the physiognomy of his blood.

Near him sat his nephew, Lysander Mulverhill, who was leaning over his reflection in a long mahogany table.

After some deliberation, Malachy Mulverhill remarked, "I sometimes think that this country will be a stupendous arena for the first man who understands it."

Lysander grimaced over this proposition, but gave cogitation no further expression than such facial as aforesaid.

Malachy continued: "This country could be handled as easily as a comic opera on a stage by the right man. If I were young, I would try."

"And so would I, if I were youngerfive or six years, say; that would make me about nineteen. Unfortunately, at that age, the idea did not occur. I was then agitated by the American girl question and took no interest in affairs of the ballot." He gazed ahead or maybe into the past dreamily. "Do you think my

hair is as light as when I was nineteen? Has it the same copper tints?"

"I think I shall smoke the rest of this cigar in the presence of your father," Malachy mused. "It is a fifty-cent ovation from a very dear friend of mine; your frivolous temperament is not conducive to the full enjoyment of its delicate Cuban aroma. I had wished to offer

you some advice, and

"Found me unworthy?" "Merely unprepared," replied Malachy, whose uncleship was as suave as his congenial respect for a good cigar. Momentarily, in departing, he stood motionless in the doorway; a weakness of his. Malachy Mulverhill seldom left a room without pausing to meditate on the threshold. There he would suffer a sudden thought, lift his head, and stride potentially away.

Lysander looked down at the widespread polar-bear rug, with its huge head, gleaming eyes and powerful array of teeth. The head in some way reminded him of himself; of the same seeming strength, but without activity. Inwardly as savage as the bear had been, he had borne himself almost as actless as the rug was now.

Those that can see the soul formulating itself, incarnating itself and developing the features, might have suspected in him a mysterious underheart of energy, an underlying voice that wanted to roar. But withal he had been modern and ethical, docile, half-imaginative of his own latent desires. Seated on the shimmering upholstery of wealth or a pace below the high windows of commercialism, he had lightly suppressed the infernal growl of the savage. Yet even the passing critic might have remarked that behind that countenance had been more than one baleful moment, and more than one abhorrent glance at the artifice of things. No impotent melancholy was there, but a power to restrain without apparent effort the darker potencies of human nature.

With such, he was trenchant enough to possess the olden virtues, love for his kin, gallantry in duty, combining a pleasant voice, a kindly smile and a dignified man

ner.

It was in this amiable mood that he now went in search of his uncle to request that advice he had so flippantly rebuffed.

case, the "after all" took place before anything had begun. After all, a After all, a woman who would be wife of an Anthony Bruges was not the woman to be desired. This consolation did not nullify the demand for further solace. It was befitting to estimate Honora Faraday over and again. A woman must be measured by her loves and not her charms; by her acts instead of her hair. He returned her the affection he had taken in fancy, and unkissed the kisses that had not been. He transferred her to Bruges, as if she had once belonged to himself. Bruges and Honora might be mated, but they never could match, it seemed. There is no egotism like the lover's. Thus, in Lysander's view, she receded from a woman of beauty to woman in the abstract. The abstract woman is always subject to criticism. A man conjures up all those witty French. proverbs. For about seventy-five cents, one can purchase upward of two hundred and fifty maxims appropriate to the regard of a disgruntled lover. Woman, ever exacting, never exact, is the burden of their style. The disappointed one beheld an exhibition of these in a bookshop window, but did not push his researches in the feminine mind by their means.

Anthony Bruges was popular, influential, handsome, and Lysander himself had extended him some degree of friendship. He had followed, feasted, laughed and sported with Bruges. At that period there had been no occasion for elevating the man to a high standard of criticism. It was the comparison with Honora Faraday that immediately caused Mulverhill to see all the contrasting hues in Bruges' personality.

In the ordinary pleasaunces of life, Bruges could have passed mostwheres and mosttimes in the usual good-will of most of his fellows. Still, in romance, the spectator has, Lysander opined, the right to expect an ideal. A love affair must be

melodramatic; it must be uncontaminated with the worldly; it has rules and regulations of its own. In marriage, woman shows her highest achievement. Selection among her suitors is her broadest scope for honor and perspicuity. Lysander was a belated suitor. He had arrived upon the scene a few days after the betrothal kiss. He wondered why she had not waited, procrastinated, dallied, used some strategy after seeing him, Lysander, before proclaiming her until-death choice.

"And father? Is he booming?" in quired Malachy Mulverhill.

"Anthony is making an astonishing fight for him," Honora replied, with a smile and a mimicry of enthusiasm. "Tumultuous applause, uproarious sentiment, deafening cheers and all that," says Anthony, "are about to be."

"Lysander," said the gray Mulverhill, "is it not time that you become tumultuous, uproarious and deafening in Mr. Faraday's cause? Consider how delightful the obligations involving Miss Faraday if you should help instate her father at the White House."

"Miss Faraday has consolidated all obligations toward her admirers," said Lysander. "However, I am ready to assist without reward of even one smile."

She paid him in advance, somewhat aggravating, and the two were soon seated beside. Within a small circle of their chairs was brilliantly displayed the fact that they were seated in the metropolis of their country. Honora was metropolitan to the last sheen of her hat.

"How did we come to be talking of fairy tales?" Lysander asked.

"May I?" he redounded on the instant. "And yet, do "And yet, do you know," he added thoughtfully, "the villain is always fancying himself the hero. He might think that rescuing the forlorn maiden from the powers that bind her arms is but heroic play; but who can wrench her from the black arts that darken her mind. One is hardly able to rescue a maid who is loth to leave."

Purple on her hat seemed to illuminate the black hair and fade to a lavender shadow on her face. Dim, tawny shadows were in the tents of her white skirt. Carefully he noted them.

Without ado, he arose, arms folded. "Madam," he whispered, "permit me to declare that in the privacy of my thoughts I have been standing as Anthony Bruges' rival." Love scowled on his features.

She arose gaily. "I should not think you would have told me this."

There was no doubt as to his manner. He was not burlesquing the fairy-tale. He was blushingly in earnest.

"We may meet frequently," he resumed. "You are warned."

She glanced toward her mother and Mrs. Mulverhill; then back to him. “I need no warning."

"Perhaps women-no; I shall not say that."

"You may; one is not frank unless he is entirely so."

"I meant to say that perhaps some women might consider it bad art for a man to warn them. Now will you forgive me for that?"

"Forgiveness is too serious a matter to be debated between us," she drawled mer

"You are disappointed in me?" "I had no sentiment that had advanced far enough to be disappointed."

"You are depressed with something."

"Scarcely. And yet I was thinkingno; I am not as frank as you. I withdraw the statement. You know, we are in politics now. We must be cautious."

"You mean," he suggested, "that a beautiful woman never knows the delight of friendship. It is always love, is it not? From this man and that, in his eyes she sees nothing but love. It is, it is wearying, I admit. The beauty of friendship is not for beauty."

A half hour afterwards he was upstairs in his rooms. Honora had left a banquet of memories by which to stand in sentimental hunger. The lavender-shadThe lavender-shadowed face and white dress between black hair and the black velvet carpet. The hair -Bruges had kissed it, doubtlessly. Those eyes; they had bedewed with love for Bruges. The mouth had felt his mouth. The long but not prominent nose well nigh as deep at the brows as at the base was too rare for Bruges' appraising. The affair was incomprehensible. She was incomparable; Bruges one of many. "The girl is mad," the lover should mutter. "No, woman's beauty is merely an accident of form and color. In our transports it seems to mean something. That is what mystifies. We are puzzled by that which she seems and then seems not. Were she honest, she would not seem, but be. And yet, she must mean something. Nature would not let such imperial complexion go to waste on nothing of within. A month ago, and I was proud to think it meant she was mine."

He roamed to his rear room, which indicated the mingling of his tastes in that it contained a piano and a punching bag. The piano had been purchased as a place to lay the banjo; on the latter his repertory was three airs; on the piano, five. With the punching bag he was more proficient, and was a master of its various rhythms.

Now, with one hand atop of the piano and the other holding the chandelier, he dominated the room, in meditation.

Perhaps Honora's marriage was political.

Bruges was not only a millionaire but a politician. It was not sweet to think of the matter in this way.

try. With such a lineage, one would not feel the weight of Bruges' coming to Honora with love in one hand and ambition in the other; wooing the daughter with his heart and tempting the father with the hearts of his fellow-citizens. Lysander was not addicted to the seeking of honors nor the begrudging them to others. He could have borne, a hero on his shoulders as a prank and blithely held the joke to be on the hero.

He might study politics as Malachy had advised. Verily, he must do something. At one time he might have entered West Point; but practicing the arts of war in peaceful times was like learning football from a book. Politics, though, would be a capital experience, one that was in the manner of his family. It was, moreover, a duty he owed the country from which the family drew revenue.

It would not be difficult for him. Nothing was. That was his quarrel with life: it would not quarrel with him. And now, in Honora he had the difficulty he had always sought. Strange to relate, he did not esteem it. In truth, from the first moment of meeting, he had felt absolutely assured of her. She had been momen

tarily delightful. When she thwarted the delight, he was more bewildered than pained. But the pain was to come.

It came the more each day. Every move of his mind sunk him deeper in the quicksands. Now and then he disjoined her from his thoughts altogether. She returned with more fascination than ever. The worst of it was, he oft pictured her as side by side with himself, and could think of no man and woman more picturesque or mateable.