"If you will study the past," she went on, "you will find that advance in legislation has always been in the direction of less law, less granting of special privileges. Take the time of the Stuarts, for example, when the king granted monopolies in the sale of all kinds of goods. It is abhorrent to us, and yet I suppose those protected merchants believed their monopolies to be rights. Slowly these rights have come to be considered wrongs, and the people have abolished them. So all other monopolies will be abolished, when people come to see that it is an infringement of liberty to have a class of men enjoying any special privilege whatever. The way to build up a home-market is to make our own people able to buy what they want. "There never was a time when our own people were not too poor to buy what they wanted. Goods lie rotting in our Eastern factories, and we export many products which the farmer would be very glad to consume, if he were able. The farmer is poor; but it isn't because he needs protection, it isn't because he doesn't produce enough--it's because what he does produce is taken from him by bankers and corporations." Bradley read her letters over and over again. Every word which she uttered had more significance than words from any one else. She seemed a marvellous being to him. He looked eagerly in every letter for some personal expression, but she seemed carefully to avoid that; and though his own letters were filled with personalities, she remained studiously impersonal. She replied cordially and kindly, but with a reserve that should have been a warning to him; but he would not accept warnings now--he was too deeply moved. Under the influence of her letters he developed a tremendous capacity for work. The greatest stimulus in the world had come to him, and remained with him. If it should be withdrawn at any time, it would weaken him. He did not speculate on that. XV. HOME AGAIN WITH THE JUDGE. The day that came to close his work at Iowa City had something of an awakening effect in it. The mere motion of the train brought back again in intensified form the feelings he had experienced on the day he left Rock River. Life was really before him at last. His studies were ended, and he was prepared for his entrance into law. He looked forward to a political career indefinitely. He left that in the hands of the Judge. It was in June, and the country was very beautiful. Groves heavy with foliage, rivers curving away into the glooms of bending elm and bass-wood trees, fields of wheat and corn alternating with smooth pastures where the cattle fed--a long panorama of glorified landscape which his escape from manual labor now enabled him to see the beauty of, its associations of toil and dirt no longer acutely painful.