Sometimes the Socialists, with their passion for generalization, for labeling and pigeonholing everything in the universe, said he was an anarchist. The more charitable of them, wishing to sterilize the term and rid it of its sinister implication, but still insistently scientific, said he was a “philosophic” anarchist. That is a term too vague to use, though in one sense, I suppose, all good men are anarchists, in that they would live their lives as well without laws as with them. Jones himself would have scorned those classifications as readily as he would had anyone said he was a duke or an earl. “No title is higher than Man,” he wrote once in a little campaign song. And he was that—a Man.
He would not join any society or, as he said, “belong” to anything. I have thought so often of what he said to a book agent one day. We were just on the point of leaving the Mayor’s office for luncheon, and the individual who wishes “just a minute” was inevitably there, blocking the way out of the office. He was indubitably a book agent; anyone who has a rudimentary knowledge of human nature can identify them at once, but this one had as his insinuating disguise some position as a representative of a Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, and he was there to confer on the Mayor the honor of a membership in that society.
“And what books am I required to buy?” asked Jones.
“Well,” the agent said, “you are not required to buy any books, but, of course, a member of the association would naturally want Mr. Jefferson’s complete works.” Jones’s eyes were twinkling; “Mr.” Jefferson amused him immensely, of course.
“They are very popular,” the man went on, “many persons are buying them.”
“I don’t find the ideas in them very popular; certainly those in Mr. Jefferson’s greatest work are not popular; no one wants to see them adopted.”
“To which one of his works do you refer?” asked the agent.
“Why, the one that is best known,” said Jones, “its title is ‘The Declaration of Independence.’ I already have a copy of that.”
The poor fellow was conscious that his enterprise was not going very well, but he said, with a flourish of magnanimity:
“Oh, well, it’s immaterial to me whether you take the books or not, but of course you will wish to belong to the association?”