“No,” replied the professor, “for the ignorant and vicious poor play into the hands of the selfish and vicious rich, and between the two the honest and industrious body of the people is being ground as between the upper and nether millstone. Indeed, I do not know which is the greater curse to the country, the stock thieves, whose dens are under the shadow of Trinity Church spire, and who combine to corrupt courts, juries, and legislators, or the dynamiters and anarchists who would involve the innocent and the guilty in one common wreck of social order. I hope I am no senseless alarmist, Dr. Eustace, but I am sure we must have relief, or there will be national ruin.” “From what source, professor, do you expect relief to come?” inquired the doctor. “Frankly, I don’t know,” was the reply. “Maybe your next National Convention will relieve the situation,” insinuated the doctor, slyly. “I am sure that relief will not come,” said the professor, “from existing political parties, whose orators grow earnest and belligerent over the ghosts of dead issues, and travel around and around over the same path, like an old horse on an arrastra, forever going somewhere and never getting anywhere, neither knowing or caring whether he is grinding pay rock or waste rock, conscious only of the whip of his driver, and hopeful only of his allowance of barley.” “Why, John, I thought you were a devoted partisan,” said the doctor. “Did you?” was the retort. “Well, you were mistaken. What can be hoped from political parties when legislators who are not free from suspicion of venality are voted for and elected year after year, because Grant captured Vicksburg, or Lincoln issued a proclamation of emancipation, or Stonewall Jackson was killed more than twenty-five years ago? Must the people forever submit to the rule of brawlers, and vote sellers, and trust betrayers, because such men hurrah for some flag which other men once carried into battle? Must the masses lie down in the path of Juggernaut and invite him to crush them, because the evil-visaged god parades his devotion to party issues which were long ago remitted to the limbo of things lost on earth?” “The people will right all the evils of which you complain, professor, so soon as they see that it is to their interest to do so.”