"Are you a Democrat or a Republican?"
"Who can say what he is, in the present day? One feels disposed to vote with the opposition, whatever it is."
"Perhaps that is your principle through life," said Miss Ballinger, demurely, as she bound a Shetland veil round her face, which the wind was buffeting too roughly. After that he lost the sunlight, and the cloud-like shadows that crossed it. The next moment she continued, "You spoke of the papers just now. If they denounce corruption, they are not as bad as we are always told they are."
"Their denunciations lose all weight, because they vilify every one. The Angel Gabriel wouldn't be safe from their attacks. No man's home or his most private domestic concerns are sacred. No lie is too preposterous for them to invent; no scandal too hideous for them to propagate. As no man who brought an action for libel in the States ever got substantial redress, they carry on their vile trade with impunity—until some editor happens to be shot by an outraged husband, or father, when the community says, complacently, "Ah! served him right!" Can you wonder that the best citizens often shrink from the pillory of election for office, whether it be the municipal town council, or anything else? To have their early difficulties, their family griefs—it may be their family disgrace—their most secret wounds, torn open; to be pelted with the rotten eggs of vilification day after day—what man, unless he be made of adamant, or is sunk so low as to be absolutely indifferent to public opinion, would willingly subject himself to all this?"
"If a man had a very strong sense of public duty, and if his record were a clean one, I should think he would. How are things ever to be improved if all you educated men say this? By the bye, what do you do with your life, Mr. Ferrars? Something more than vibrate between Europe and America, I suppose?"
"Well, what I do can be done as well on one side of the Atlantic as the other. I was brought up to the study of medicine. But I gave that up when I was still young. Now I do nothing but write."
"Caustic criticism of your own country, I suppose? Anonymous?"
"Yes, anonymous."
"Perhaps you wrote 'Plutocracy,' the authorship of which excited so much curiosity, a few years ago?"
"I should not own it if I had," he replied, rather sharply. "I hold Sir Walter Scott's line of conduct quite justifiable in such cases. No secret could be kept if it was necessary to stand and deliver to the first highwayman who demanded your treasure."