This takes a breadth of view
and a loftiness of ideal that only one race in the world has ever
possessed--our own. The great man, politically, is the man who can
eliminate the personal element from a great cause. The little man is
the--well," turning to Truesdale, "there are the general data; make your
own application of them."
"I see," said Truesdale; "my people are naturally against the governing
powers anyway, from instinct and heredity; even when one of them does
attain official position, it is only the position of the worm in the
apple. And they think, too, that it is a more sane and practical thing to
help one another out of a tangible difficulty than to sacrifice one
another to an intangible cause. I never contended they were not human!"
"That isn't all, by any means," said Brower, determinedly. "There's just
as bad behind." He resettled himself in his chair, as he claimed the
attention of the room. He seemed to Truesdale as if seating himself in a
saddle--a saddle on the back of some well-ridden hobby. Truesdale already
heard the steed pant and champ.
"This town of ours labors under one peculiar disadvantage: it is the only
great city in the world to which all its citizens have come for the one
common, avowed object of making money. There you have its genesis, its
growth, its end and object; and there are but few of us who are not
attending to that object very strictly. In this Garden City of ours every
man cultivates his own little bed and his neighbor his; but who looks
after the paths between? They have become a kind of No Man's Land,
and the weeds of a rank iniquity are fast choking them up.
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