He had cast out disgust and
disapproval as youthful and unphilosophical, resolved anew to play his
part in the history of the country, letting the unborn events of his
term of enforced quiescence determine what the part must be. He had not
yet reached the stage of enthusiasm, but he had at least mounted to that
of interest; and he had even caught himself wondering if, should a law
pass in Great Britain, reducing the House of Peers to an elective body,
or permitting peers of his grade to sit in the House of Commons, he
would return? There was little doubt that there was more good to be
accomplished in the new country.

His English great-great-grandfather had been historically active in the
reforms of 1832; a great-uncle had devoted his services to the passing
of the Reform Act of 1867; and a cousin to the Corrupt Practices Act of
1883. Reform was in his blood, and as, after all, the United States was
as much his own as Great Britain, he hoped in time to feel for it the
same passion of affection he had cherished for the country that had
given him fame and honors with both hands. And he knew that his other
hope of being of practical service to the United States in accordance
with his own ideal was no idle dream, for it was quite apparent from the
newspapers and reviews that the best men all over the country were awake
at last to the perils besetting the Republic, and that a bloodless
revolution was slowly making its way over the country. He had
unmitigated contempt for the revolutionist of the red shirt, insatiable
for the notoriety so easily obtained by appealing to the passions of men
a shade more ignorant than himself; no blood revolution was possible in
the United States during its present condition of prosperity. No country
can be universally roused to revolt with any weapons more deadly than
words until it has long felt the pinch of hunger in its vitals, and
watched millions starve while hundreds consumed the fat of the land. No
doubt there was grinding poverty in the crowded tenement districts of
the Eastern States, but those men were not the stuff of which
revolutionists were made, if only because they deliberately elected the
rigors of the town rather than supply the crying demand for labor and
servants throughout the country. It was only the idle that foregathered
and talked anarchism or even socialism; not those that cared to work.

Here in California there was practically no such thing as poverty, or if
there