The word “reformer,” like the word “politician” has degenerated, and, in the mind of the common man, come to connote something very disagreeable. In four terms as mayor I came to know both species pretty well, and, in the later connotations of the term, I prefer the politician. He, at least, is human. The reformers, as Emerson said, affect one as the insane do; their motives may be pious, but their methods are profane. They are a buzz in the ear. I had read this in Emerson in my youth, when for a long time I had a veritable passion for him, just as in a former stage, and another mood, I had had a veritable passion for books about Napoleon, and, at another, for the works of Carlyle, and the controversy excited by the reckless Froude; but the truth--as it appears to me, or at any rate, the part of a truth--was not borne in upon me until I came to know and to regard, with dread, the possibility that I might be included in their number, which I should not like, unless it were as a mere brother in humanity, somewhat estranged in spirit though we should be. XXXIX The disadvantages of being classed as a reformer are not, I am sure, sufficiently appreciated; if they were the peace of the world would not be troubled as constantly as it is by those who would make mankind over on a model of which they present themselves as the unattractive example. One of those advantages is that each reformer thinks that all the other reformers are in honor committed to his reform; he writes them letters asking for expressions of sympathy and support, and, generally, when he finds that each of the others has some darling reform of his own which he is determined to try on an unwilling public, he is at once denounced as a traitor to the whole scheme of reform in the universe. Another disadvantage is that reformers never are reëlected, and I might set forth others, were it my intention to embark on that interesting subject.