w York
City, felt as certain Americans do when they go to Paris--that the moral
restraints of his native place no longer applied. With all his ability,
he was not shrewd enough to realize that the Police Department was
having him as well as the rest of us carefully shadowed. He was caught
red-handed by a plain-clothes man doing what he had no business to do;
and from that time on he dared not act save as those who held his secret
permitted him to act. Thenceforth those officials who stood behind the
Police Department had one man on the committee on whom they could count.
I never saw terror more ghastly on a strong man's face than on the face
of this man on one or two occasions when he feared that events in the
committee might take such a course as to force him into a position where
his colleagues would expose him even if the city officials did not.
However, he escaped, for we were never able to get the kind of proof
which would warrant our asking for the action in which this man could
not have joined.

Traps were set for more than one of us, and if we had walked into these
traps our public careers would have ended, at least so far as following
them under the conditions which alone make it worth while to be in
public life at all. A man can of course hold public office, and many a
man does hold public office, and lead a public career of a sort, even if
there are other men who possess secrets about him which he cannot afford
to have divulged. But no man can lead a public career really worth
leading, no man can act with rugged independence in serious crises, nor
strike at great abuses, nor afford to make powerful and unscrupulous
foes, if he is himself vulnerable in his private character. Nor will
clean conduct by itself enable a man to render good service. I have
always been fond of Josh Billings's remark that "it is much easier to
be a harmless dove than a wise serpent." There are plenty of decent
legislators, and plenty of able legislators; but the blamelessness and
the fighting edge are not always combined. Both qualities are necessary
for the man who is to wage active battle against the powers that prey.
He must be clean of life, so that he can laugh when his public or his
private record is searched; and yet being clean of life will not
avail him if he is either foolish or timid. He must walk warily and
fearlessly, and while he should never brawl if he can avoid it, he must
be ready to hit hard if the need arises. Let