"Certainly," he replied, "and so too will the succeeding spasm of reaction. Also, your party must improve itself—and mine too—as the result of this spasm of virtue."
"For a time," I admitted. "I envy you your courage and hope. But I can't share in them. You will serve four stormy years; you will retire with friends less devoted and enemies more bitter; you will be misunderstood, maligned; and there's only a remote possibility that your vindication will come before you are too old to be offered a second term. And the harvest from the best you sow will be ruined in some flood of reaction."
"No," he answered. "It will be reaped. The evil I do, all evil, passes. The good will be reaped. Nothing good is lost."
"And if it is reaped," I rejoined, "the reaping will not come until long, long after you are a mere name in history."
Even as I spoke my doubts I was wishing I had kept them to myself; for, thought I, there's no poorer business than shooting at the beautiful soaring bird of illusion. But he was looking at me without seeing me. His expression suggested the throwing open of the blinds hiding a man's inmost self.
"If a man," said he absently, "fixes his mind not on making friends or defeating enemies, not on elections or on history, but just on avoiding from day to day, from act to act, the condemnation of his own self-respect—" The blinds closed as suddenly as they had opened—he had become conscious that some one was looking in. And I was wishing again that I had kept my doubts to myself; for I now saw that what I had thought a bright bird of illusion was in fact the lost star which lighted my own youth.
Happy the man who, through strength or through luck, guides his whole life by the star of his youth. Happy, but how rare!