But we work by different means. You believe the
best results can be got through that in man which he has inherited from
the past--by balancing passion against passion, by offsetting appetite
with appetite. I hope for results from that in the man of to-day which
is the seed, the prophecy, of the man who is to be."

"Your method has had one recent and very striking _apparent_ success,"
said I. "But--the spasm of virtue will pass."

"Certainly," he replied, "and so too will the succeeding spasm of
reaction. Also, your party must improve itself--and mine too--as the
result of this spasm of virtue."

"For a time," I admitted. "I envy you your courage and hope. But I can't
share in them. You will serve four stormy years; you will retire with
friends less devoted and enemies more bitter; you will be misunderstood,
maligned; and there's only a remote possibility that your vindication
will come before you are too old to be offered a second term. And the
harvest from the best you sow will be ruined in some flood of reaction."

"No," he answered. "It will be reaped. The evil I do, all evil, passes.
The good will be reaped. Nothing good is lost."

"And if it is reaped," I rejoined, "the reaping will not come until
long, long after you are a mere name in history."

Even as I spoke my doubts I was wishing I had kept them to myself; for,
thought I, there's no poorer business than shooting at the beautiful
soaring bird of illusion. But he was looking at me without seeing me.
His expression suggested the throwing open of the blinds hiding a man's
inmost self.

"If a man," said he absently, "fixes his mind not on making friends or
defeating enemies, not on elections or on history, but just on avoiding
from day to day, from act to act, the condemnation of his own
self-respect--" The blinds closed as suddenly as they had opened--he had
become conscious that some one was looking in. And I was wishing again
that I had kept my doubts to myself; for I now saw that what I had
thought a bright bird of illusion was in fact the lost star which
lighted my own youth.

Happy the man who, through strength or through luck, guides his whole
life by the star of his youth. Happy, but how rare!

XXXIV

"LET US HELP EACH OTHER"

In the following September I took my daughters to Elizabeth. She looked
earnestly, first at Frances, tall and slim and fancying herself a woman
grown, then at Ellen, short and round and struggling with the giggl