As he turned to me the light in his eyes was almost warm and I felt as if I had said something really clever. That is his little way.
“That was very well reasoned,” he said, “and your theory has certain facts to substantiate it, inasmuch as public life does receive recruits from the upper-class from year to year. Perhaps, some day, under the stress of a great menace, the entire class will throw in its weight. But just now—merely to give the country a stiffer man than McKinley—I am afraid they will not. We are such optimists, our luck has had such few facers, and just now we are so prosperous. It is only a dream to imagine the best in both parties suddenly deserting and uniting; for the best men seem to avoid leadership and notoriety; it is only by doing so that they can find a comparatively clean path through the political muck.”
Bertie shrugged his shoulders and pushed back his chair. “You look well in that tweed outfit and those leggings, Rogers,” he said, “but you’d look a jolly sight better in your shirt sleeves and with mud on your boots. You and the rest of your dilettante class are living in a Fool’s Paradise, and when you’re choking over your first nasty mess of Bryanism you’ll wish you’d taken off your coat while you had a valet to assist you. For my part I’m rather keen on Bryan getting in. I want to see a real democracy. What you’ve got now is neither one thing nor the other. Say what you like you have an enormously large aristocratic class, a class which is always looking round for somebody to snub and which holds itself immeasurably above the masses. You’ll be a monarchy yet with every title that ever was heard of, and American inventions to boot. The result of your Trust system will be two classes—the wealthy and the helpless poor. The hour the wealthy class feels that it is strong enough it will make for a court and a nobility. And a nice mess you’ll make of it.”
“Well,” said Mr. Rogers, laughing, “it will be infinitely preferable to Populism, and it certainly will be all in the law of progress. Every American, even the Populist, wants to be rich, and as soon as he is rich he wants to be cultivated beyond his original condition. After that stage democracy is a retrogression and there is nothing to do but go on and become an aristocrat. As you say, when there are enough of them, monarchy is only a step further.”
And there the conversation ended.
I think this letter is thick enough to go—don’t you?
Ever yours,
Helen.
P. S. The evening post came just after I had finished, and brought me a welcome letter from you. I open this for a few lines of answer. Freddy must be mad. I hope to God, V. R. will keep his head. Can’t you persuade him to go to South Africa? As long as you have made up your mind not to see him till all is over, I should think it would be a positive relief to have him where you can’t see him. And if there is danger—do pack him off. Who do you suppose can be putting Freddy up to such devilment?—that creature? She may see revenge in it. Do be careful. If you came a cropper now—I read your letter to Bertie and he says he wishes you would chuck the whole thing and come over here to us, and wait patiently for Freddy’s several diseases to finish him. But I told him he never had been deeply in love—and he said he was jolly glad he hadn’t. Well, I’ll say a prayer for you, out in the forest—although I don’t believe it does a bit of good to pray for any one but yourself. My theory is that by the intense absorption, concentration, and faith of prayer, you put yourself into magnetic communication with the great Divine Force pervading the Universe and draw some of its strength into yourself. Sometimes the strength is physical, or rather is directed to physical ends, as when one prays a pain out; and at others one draws strength enough to endure and overcome anything—but not without that intense concentration. The mere babbling of a petition does no good. There you have the result of my inner observations. Try it for yourself.
Letter IV
From the Lady Helen Pole to the Countess of Edge and Ross.