“Well, I’ve won the greatest victory of my life; I have won at last a victory over myself, over my own nature. I have done what it has always been hardest for me to do.” “What?” I asked. He sat in silence for a moment, and then he said: “You know, it has always seemed to me that the most remarkable thing that was ever said of Jesus was that when he was reviled, he reviled not again. It is the hardest thing in the world to do.” The struggle over the renewal of the franchise grants to the street railway company had already begun, and the council had attempted to grant it the franchise it wished, renewing its privileges for another twenty-five years. When Mayor Jones vetoed the bill, the council prepared to pass it over his veto, and would have done so that Monday night had it not been for two men--Mayor Jones and Mr. Negley D. Cochran, the editor of the _News-Bee_, a newspaper which has always taken the democratic viewpoint of public questions. Mr. Cochran, with his brilliant gift in the writing of editorials, had called out the whole populace, almost, to attend the meeting of the council and to protest. The demonstration was so far effective that the council was too frightened to pass the street railway ordinance. The attorney for the street railway company was there, and when there was a lull in the noise, he sneered: “I suppose, Mr. Mayor, that this is an example of government under the Golden Rule.” “No,” replied Jones in a flash, “it is an example of government under the rule of gold.” Unless it were because of his interference with the nefarious privileges of a few, one can see no reason why the press and pulpit should have opposed him. What had he done? He had only preached that the fundamental doctrine of Christianity was sound, and, as much as a man may in so complex a civilization, he had tried to practice it. He had taught kindness and tolerance, and pity and mercy; he had visited the sick, and gone to those that were in prison; he had said that all men are free and equal, that they have been endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. He had said that it is wrong to kill people, even in the electric chair, that it is wrong to take from the poor, without giving them in return. He had not said these things in anger, or in bitterness; he had never been personal, he had always been explicit in saying that he, as a part of society, was equally to blame with all the rest for social wrongs. The only textbooks he ever used in his campaigns were the New Testament, the Declaration of Independence, and, of course, his beloved Walt Whitman. And yet the pulpits rang every Sunday with denunciations of him, and the newspapers opposed him. Why was it, because a man endorsed these old doctrines upon which society claims to rest, that society should denounce him?