"He is always on the ungrateful side of the few, the poor, the weak and the fallen; and he even sympathizes with beggars, criminals, fallen women and low persons; is not afraid to mingle with them. And what advantage can he ever derive out of that? Absent-minded, forgetful, engrossed in his queer ideas and impossible ideals, he gets lost in his theories and books, and loses life. He does not realize that millions have found this world as it is and millions more will leave it so. Poor man, he is a dreamer of dreams; and to see the invisible, to hear inaudible voices, is the most expensive thing in life. He sacrifices affluence, influence, power, political office, honor, _éclat_, applause, the respect of the community, the regard of his neighbors, the praise of the press, the advantages of politics and of the people's approval--sacrifices all these for his pitiful brain-begotten fancies. He is a dreamer of dreams. Yet he seems to like this journey along the lines of most resistance, says it is least resistance to him, and he tells me that he enjoys his poverty and all, immensely. He freely indulges in most of the vain and worldly pleasures of life as he sees them, regardless of all others, considers one day as holy as another and no day so mean as to wear a long and sanctimonious face on, and he says that the only thing which he prohibits is prohibition in any form. His wife does not fear him, does not have to obey him, does as she pleases, and his children are as free and wild as little savages. He is a bad man. "But what can be done? Ministers and other good men have repeatedly tried to save him, but he evades all their efforts, avoids all their sermons. He would save them the trouble of saving him, he says, because he thinks he can do it so much better himself. What can be done? All things are here to serve him, none to subserve him. He is a law unto himself, and has little or nothing to do with the Government, so he says. He is a bad man. He is not going to heaven--and yet, and yet--if there were more like him this world would be so different, and perhaps no one would ever want to go to heaven." There was a pause and a silence at the close of the reading, but our essayist was soon spared "the agony of suspense," as he mockingly remarked. Then came comments of varied shades of opinion, approving and disapproving, constructive and destructive, too many to mention, and Keidansky enjoyed them all. At length I ventured to ask him what sort of administrator his friend, the bad man, would make if he was ever elected to office.