"Am I a Democrat? You very well know I have always been one, and I am still clinging with grim, dogged fealty to the few precious fragments of genuinely orthodox democracy, that survive the blows of disloyal demagogic platform carpenters who raided recent national conventions. Americans of all parties need to remember that their first duty as citizens is allegiance to individual convictions of the morality of public policies, instead of the existing mischievous custom of servile submission to the ukase of committee and convention dictators. The time-honored party name, Democracy, is disgraced by the effort to make it mother a mongrel brood of socialists, whose wild antics and schemes of universal confiscation would cause Thomas Jefferson to gasp. If he could only leave his grave long enough to make one speech, he would stamp out the clubs profaning his revered name, and scourge the 'populistic' leaders--now strutting under the standard of his stolen mantle--as Christ emptied the polluted temple. The spectacle of the so-called 'Democracy' of to-day would so sicken his wise, honest, sturdy soul that, I verily believe, a spiritual somersault would land him close to Metternich's axiom: 'All _for_, not _through_, the people.' The constitutional basic, and virile principles of my dear old Party will weather this dusty whirlwind of popular delusion, stirred up by ravening socialist wolves, cloaked in Jeffersonian fleeces; and primitive, genuine, untainted democracy must come to its own once more." "Yours is a rosy view, Mr. Churchill, but who will undo the mischief accomplished by American demagogues who are spurring the people into the pitch and sulphur pit of rank, Godless communism? What remedy will avail? Not schools, not colleges, not universities where athletics, 'higher criticism' and 'phonetic spelling' absorb attention to the exclusion of Christian ethics--now thrown aside as obsolete as the Ptolemaic system of astronomy. The decadent tendency of our people to habitually seek excitement and diversion at public places of amusement, has reduced the once attractive home to a mere economic residential combination of refectory, dormitory and station for laundry delivery. Interest in the outside world usurps domestic attachments, loosens family ties and that interdependence of the members of the hearthstone circle, that once made genuine, old-fashioned home life so potent a factor in developing well-balanced, wholesome character, both individual and national. It seems to me the dear old 'Home, Sweet Home' of other days is now sadly transformed into the nest of _ennui_ and hysterical unrest, whence all must flee who determine to 'have a good time'----" The Bishop's homily was cut short by a sharp cry in the hall, the patter of running steps,--and into the dining-room darted a red-haired child of six years, followed by a panting nurse, flushed and trembling, who held in one hand a discarded small slipper and silk sock.