'He seemed to have gotten a kind of notion about making things English or American. He abolished flogging of criminals and all sorts of old-fashioned ways; and he tried to reduce taxation; and he put down a sort of remnant of slavery that was still hanging round; and he wanted to give free land to all the emancipated folks; and he wanted to have an equal suffrage to all men, and to do away with corruption in the public offices and the civil service; and to compel the judges not to take bribes; and all sorts of things. I am afraid he wanted to do a good deal too much reform for what you folks would call the governing classes out there. I thought so at the time. He was right, you know,' Hiram said meditatively, 'but, then, I am mightily afraid he was right in a wrong sort of way.'
'He was right, anyhow,' Helena said, triumphantly.
'S'pose he was,' said Hiram; 'but things have to go slow, don't you see?'
'Well, what happened?'
'I don't rightly know how it all came about exactly; but I guess all the privileged classes, as you call them here, got their backs up, and all the officials went dead against him——'
'My great deed was too great,' Helena said.
'What is that, Helena?' her father asked.
'It's from a poem by Mrs. Browning, about another dictator; but more true of my Dictator than of hers,' Helena answered.
'Well,' Hiram went on, 'the opposition soon began to grumble——'
'Some people are always grumbling,' said Soame Rivers. 'What should we do without them? Where should we get our independent opposition?'