as anything; we instinctively recognize the vitiating quality of the political atmosphere in our constant use of the phrase “if it could only be taken out of politics,” as with the tariff, the currency, municipal government, etc. But my friends in the political line could join my friends in the literary line in the surprise they felt at my decision to retire at the end of that last term. The politicians did not think I meant what I said, of course; it is quite impossible for a politician to imagine a man’s meaning what he says, since politicians so seldom mean what they say themselves; they considered it merely as bad politics to have said such a thing at all. “It’ll embarrass you when you run again,” they would warn me in their bland _naïveté_. It did not embarrass me, however, because I would not and did not run again, though I had to decline a nomination or two before they were convinced, but their own lack of faith, those who were still Independents, at least, proved an ultimate embarrassment to them, for they neglected to agree upon a candidate to succeed me, and by the next election they had grouped themselves in factions, each with its own candidate. Perhaps this untoward result came to pass as much because the independent movement by that time had become the Independent party, as for any other reason discernible to the mind of man; at least, it was disparaged by the use of that term, which implied its own reproach in Toledo, and its sponsors conducted themselves so much after the historic precedents of faction in political parties, by separating into the inevitable right and left wing, that they managed to get themselves soundly beaten. Eight years is a long time to serve in any office. My grandfather had given four years to the Civil War, and I had found the mayor’s office as trying, as difficult, and as alien as he had found his martial experience. The truth is, that long before the eight years were over the irritation of constant, persistent, nagging criticism had got on my nerves, and, besides the pain of misunderstanding and misrepresentation, I grew to have a perfect detestation for those manipulations which are the technic of politics. And, then, one cannot be a mayor always, and it were better to retire than to be dismissed. “But I thought you didn’t mind criticism?” a man said to me one day. “I always supposed that after a while one became callous.” My dear friend Bishop Williams of Detroit was at the table, and I shall ever be grateful to him for the smile of instant comprehension and sympathy with which he illuminated the reply he made before I had time to speak. “Yes, callous,” he remarked, “or--raw.”