en't got to live, we haven't got
to live; but, by God! we've got to stand for the nation--and the
Constitution--and the Republican party!"

He paused, threw back his beautiful old head, and shook his mane just a
little. (How he would have liked to see himself at that moment!)

"The _Weekly Star_ of Hempfield," he said, "will remain an incorruptible
exponent of American institutions. The people may cease to believe in
God and the Constitution, but the _Star_ will remain firm and staunch.
We shed our blood upon the field of Antietam: we stand ready to shed it
again--for the nation, the Grand Old Party, and the high protective
tariff. Though beaten upon by stormy seas, we shall remain impregnable."

I cannot describe how impregnable the old Captain looked, standing there
by Ed's desk, one clenched fist raised aloft. He was at his best, and
his best was better than you will often find in these days.

But the old Captain could no more understand Ed Smith than Ed could
understand him. He would rather have laid his right hand upon living
coals of fire than to have taken what he considered a "dirty dollar" for
advertising. And yet in his day, no man in Westmoreland County was a
keener political manipulator than he. He had traded his influence quite
simply and frankly for the public printing. Was it not the natural
reward of the faithful party worker? Had he not stumped the state for
Blaine? Had not congressmen come to his door with their hats in their
hands offering him favours in exchange for his support? And he had
travelled always on railroad passes, as was his due as an influential
editor, and voted, when a member of the legislature, with sincere belief
in the greatness of all captains of industry, for every railroad bill
that came up.

But the idea of taking crude money for reading notices favourable to the
electric lighting contract in Hempfield, or of publishing for payment
the cards of Democrats--it was not in his lexicon. Times change, and the
methods of men.

When the old Captain once got started on the freedom of the press he was
hard to stop; but as he talked Ed's courage began to return, for he
could never take the old Captain quite seriously. At the first pause he
broke in with a faint attempt at jocularity.

"Who's editing this paper, anyway, Captain?"

The old Captain looked at him in astonishment.

"Why, I am," said he. "I've edited the Hempfield _Star_ for thirty
years."

I think he really believed