of an alien race, when they are mine already?"

"But you had too full a measure. That was the reason you emptied the cup
and turned your back. You wanted hard work--to use your gifts."

"What does it all amount to? Suppose I insidiously work up a reform
movement in this State, and am shot into Congress over the head of the
machine? Suppose my gifts are as extraordinary as I have been led to
suppose--ordinarily a man feels damned commonplace--and by force of
those gifts I hold my own against the formidable organizations I shall
encounter there at every turn? Suppose this reform spirit in the United
States grows and strengthens, and I come along in time to benefit by it,
and am landed in Washington--even in the White House? What of it? I had
a thousand times rather be prime-minister in England--in other words the
real head of eleven million square miles of the earth's surface,
dictator to a good part of the world, for that matter. Your public men
are servants--or ought to be, according to your Constitution. In England
we render service by courtesy, and rule the roost. In this country every
man in public life is not only at the mercy of his constituents, but in
daily terror of having his head cut off by the man above him. Even the
President has to be a politician above all things."

"You used to talk in England--as if you were not wholly swayed by
personal ambition."

"It is not so difficult over there to conceive high and mighty
ideals--fool yourself, if you like. But I'll be hanged if I can see
myself baring my breast for poisoned arrows, with a seraphic smile on my
lips, over here! It is all so crude! I want to be a main instrument in
reform as much as ever--Oh yes! But I am not sure that one motive is
not to make the life and the game more tolerable. And the everlasting
machine! There won't be a day, inside or out of it, that I won't run up
against every damnable meanness that human nature is capable of. I must
handle these men, placate them--or get out. History has not yet failed
to repeat itself. If I succeed, in favoring conditions, in forming a new
party, I may end as a boss myself! Exalted ideal! Inspiring thought!
Better go home and live like a gentleman. I could have some sort of a
career, and I have seen enough in this country to drive me towards the
conclusion that there are worse things in life than curbing one's
youthful ambitions a bit."

He was still striding up and down the room, his expressive hands