ler, Doby, Speaker, and he's
stuffed all the important committees so that you can't get an honest
measure considered. You can talk to the committees all you've a mind to,
and they'll just listen and never do anything. There's five hundred in
the House, and it ain't any more of a Legislature than a camp-meetin'
is. What do you suppose they done last Friday morning, when there wahn't
but twenty men at the session? We had an anti-pass law, and all these
fellers were breakin' it. It forbid anybody riding on a pass except
railroad presidents, directors, express messengers, and persons in
misfortune, and they stuck in these words, 'and others to whom passes
have been granted by the proper officers.' Ain't that a disgrace to
the State? And those twenty senators passed it before we got back on
Tuesday. You can't get a bill through that Legislature unless you go up
to the Pelican and get permission of Hilary--"

Here Mr. Redbrook stopped abruptly, and glanced contritely at his
companion.

"I didn't mean to get goin' so," he said, "but sometimes I wish this
American government'd never been started."

"I often feel that way myself, Mr. Redbrook," said Austen.

"I knowed you did. I guess I can tell an honest man when I see one. It's
treason to say anything against this Northeastern louder than a whisper.
They want an electric railrud bad up in Greenacre, and when some of us
spoke for it and tried to get the committee to report it, those cheap
fellers from Newcastle started such a catcall we had to set down."

By this time they were at the Widow Peasley's, stamping the snow from
off their boots.

"How general is this sentiment?" Austen asked, after he had set down his
bag in the room he was to occupy.

"Why," said Mr. Redbrook, with conviction, "there's enough feel as I do
to turn that House upside down--if we only had a leader. If you was only
in there, Austen."

"I'm afraid I shouldn't be of much use," Austen answered. "They'd have
given me a back seat, too."

The Widow Peasley's was a frame and gabled house of Revolutionary days
with a little terrace in front of it and a retaining wall built up from
the sidewalk. Austen, on the steps, stood gazing across at a square
mansion with a wide cornice, half hidden by elms and maples and
pines. It was set far back from the street, and a driveway entered the
picket-fence and swept a wide semicircle to the front door and back
again. Before the door was a sleigh of a pattern new t