"Can't be done. Not in this State, anyhow. You've been talking to Isabel. She looks like the Pilgrim Fathers and has inherited all their antiquated notions. Honest, now--_are_ your politics so much better than ours?" "A long sight. And they are by no means perfect. We have our machine and our compromises, and all the rest of it; and even a few wholly rotten boroughs. Fifty years ago we were blatantly worse than you are to-day. As long as the game lasts, and there are two parties, there must be more or less chicanery, but we are snow-white compared with the mire of this country. And it is an anomaly I cannot understand. I have now been a year in the United States, have talked with hundreds of Americans, studied them and their institutions. Few have struck me as personally dishonest--as we interpret the word in England. Human nature in this country, indeed, has at times appeared to me almost elemental, utterly without the subtlety that makes for crooked dealing. There is a thousand times more petty trickery in Europe; and, with us, more hypocrisy, certainly; but politics we have at least elevated. Here, the best man in private life seems to become transformed the moment he enters the political atmosphere, and if he is not a scoundrel, he sails pretty close to the wind." "H--m! All you say may be true. I don't agitate my gray matter over problems. I know what we are, and the work cut out for me if I want to stay on top. I have known reformers. We have lots of spasmodic attempts at reform right here in this district. When the reform is directed at some glaring evil, something that makes us uncomfortable, then it goes through. When it's directed against politics in general, then the reformer falls so hard he never gets up--unless, to be sure, he scrambles up p. d. q. and trims with the wind. And that, I'm bound to say, he generally does. We've had our idealists--talk till your mouth waters. One session in Sacramento generally cures them. When it doesn't, we have no more idea what becomes of them than of an ant that butts in on a procession of other ants. Ever watch ants?" It was Gwynne's turn to snort. "I take my boy up on the hills every Sunday afternoon when it is fine, and we watch ants and grasshoppers and birds and all the rest of it. Why don't you get married? There's nothing like it. I may have some hard hoeing ahead of me, but I always have that cosy pretty home at the end of the day, and the sweetest wife in the world--who doesn't know the Republican party from the Democrat, and never opens a newspaper. Isabel is too high and mighty. She's a wonderful girl all right, but the last woman I'd want for a wife. I know a girl that would just suit you--Dolly Boutts. She's as pretty as a peach, and as domestic as Anabel. I'll have you both in to supper, as soon as we get a new cook. We've had four this month, and my wife warned me I was not to ask you to anything until she was perfectly satisfied. She's the best housekeeper you ever saw."