There was in the House at that time a newly elected member whom Johnson had supported for election and no sooner was he in his seat than he opposed every measure Johnson espoused, and, under the warming applause his disloyalty won from Johnson’s enemies, he became an opponent of the mayor more vociferous than effective. He was exactly, I think, of that type described by Emerson, who in the course of saying everything worth saying, or that will be worth saying for the next two hundred years, said: “Republics abound in young civilians who believe that the laws make the city, that grave modifications of the policy and modes of living and employments of the population, that commerce, education and religion, may be voted in or out; and that any measure, though it were absurd, may be imposed on a people if only you can get sufficient voices to make it a law. But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand which perishes in the twisting; that the state must follow and not lead the character and progress of the citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of; and they only who build on Ideas build for eternity; and that the form of government which prevails is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it. The law is only a memorandum. We are superstitious, and esteem the statute somewhat; so much life as it has in the character of living men is its force.” I knew this young civilian then only as one of the Johnson group and as that was sufficient introduction, in the _camaraderie_ that existed between those of us who were devoted to the same cause, I stopped, at his salutation, and chatted with him for a moment. He had asked my opinion on a bill he had introduced, a measure to prohibit or regulate public dances in cities, or some such thing, and when I failed to evince the due degree of interest in the young man’s measure, he was at once displeased and tried to heat me to the proper degree of warmth in the holy cause of reform. He began, of course, by an indignant demand to know if I was in favor of the evils that were connected with public dances, and when I tried to show him that my inability to recognize his measure as the only adequate method of dealing with those evils did not necessarily indicate approval of them, he struck the prescribed attitude, held up his right hand and said something in the melodramatic style, about the oath of office I had taken not many days before. I saw at once then that I was dealing with a member in high standing of the order of the indurated sectarian mind, whose fanaticism makes them the most impossible persons in the world, and having never been certain which of the advice in the Proverbs should be accepted, I yielded to a fatal habit of joking--the history of the Republic is strewn with the wrecks of careers that were broken by a jest--and told him that I had taken my oath of office before a notary public, and that perhaps it had