Dr. Richards took time for thought before he replied to this. He had come to feel a little shy of contradicting the man who never argued.
“As political parties now stand in this country,” he said slowly, “another one would but add so much more to the corruption and bribery at present existing. Is that what you mean?”
“Precisely. As matters now stand, the ideas which I am quite willing to call National are gaining new adherents every day, irrespective of party. And when a plant has once taken root, it isn’t well to be digging it up every day or two, to see how the process is going on.”
“You are as sanguine as Bellamy himself, Mr. Clare,” said Alice. “I wonder if he really believes in his Boston of the future?”
“He takes care to slur over the embryonic stages,” observed the doctor, laughing, “and present to us his Phœnix, the Nation, fully grown.”
“You must remember we are passing through the embryonic stage now,” said Mr. Clare, “though, I confess, I should have liked a few particulars of our chipping the shell, and just how we looked when we first came out.”
“Ah! there you put your finger on the weak point. He insists that the shell was chipped, not cut by the sword; and I don’t see the slightest possibility of that.”
“One never does till the hour strikes.”
“The hour!” said Father McClosky, “sure, it’s the hour and the Man, too, that we want. Where’s the Man?”
“Perhaps not yet born,” said Ernest Clare, smiling; “perhaps a baby in his mother’s arms; perhaps a schoolboy, studying the Monroe Doctrine and parsing the Declaration of Independence; perhaps working at some trade or profession: guiding the plough, like Cincinnatus; surveying his native land, like Washington; or practising law, like Abraham Lincoln.”