Certainly, it had been an evil year for those who thought and hoped. That showed itself even in the primaries, where now the local leaders found it hard to keep their rank and file content. Still less could John get on, with his abstract talk of pure government and simple laws. Sovereign voters were showing a strange tendency to go in directly for abstract benefits, or what they conceived to be such. Even city workers were discontented; and there was said to be much misery in the mining districts. The coal magnates--Tamms, Duval, and Remington--finding that that ichor of our civilization was growing too plentiful, had laid their heads together and were “diminishing the output;” that is, they forbade that more than a certain number of tons should be mined per week. Thus did they not only cut off that draught of life from the general social fabric, but about one-third of the cupbearers thereof were thrown out of work. Upon this, many of the rest had struck. Their places in the mines had promptly been filled by other human energy in the shape of so many head of human beings, male and female, shipped from Poland; while the strikers and even some of the Poles, who had escaped and could read and write, were making trouble. But these themes are too heavy for our slight pen; except such outcome of it as even all the world might see--and Mrs. Flossie Gower may feel. And, if politics had thus all gone askew, John was just a shade discouraged with his social work as well. Many a talk did he and Derwent have about it, lying becalmed off the sullen Jersey coast, smoking their midnight cigars beneath the sky. “They will come to the club fast enough,” he would say, “and read a newspaper or two, and smoke a pipe--when they have not money enough to pay for drinks at the bar-room. They will listen to what we tell them, politely enough. But what I find is the hardest thing to cope with is a sort of scoffing humor: as if we were all muffs, and they knew it, and only put up with it so long as it suited their convenience.” “A curious thing this jeering habit in your democracy,” muttered Derwent. “They have caught the trick of Voltaire’s cynicism and turned it upwards. They are incredulous of excellence and of benevolence in high places--even of yours, old fellow, I am afraid,” he added. “I never could see how there could be class-hatred in America; but class-hatred there certainly is.” “I talk to these boys of books and pictures, and the joys of art, and the delights of nature; and I fear, if they do not cry ‘Oh, chestnuts’ at me, or some other current slang, it is out of mere good-nature and because they like me. Their delight in nature is limited to the nearest base-ball field, the newspapers they take up are generally those printed on pink paper, and as for books--I doubt if many of them ever opened one, except he knew it was obscene.”