I think it was because he was so utterly and entirely sincere, and because he believed these things, and tried to put them into practice in his life, and wished them to be more fully incorporated in the life of society. Society will forgive anything in a man, except sincerity. If he be sincere in charity, in pity, in mercy, in sympathy for the outcast, the despised, the imprisoned, all that vast horde of the denied and proscribed, still less will it forgive him, for it knows instinctively that the privileges men have or seek could not exist in a system where these principles were admitted as vital, inspiring force. There was nothing, of course, for one who believed in the American doctrines to do but to support such a man, and when he appeared to be so utterly without supporters it seemed to be one’s duty more than ever, though I own to having shrunk from such unconventional methods as Jones employed. That meeting at the post-office corner, for instance; someone might laugh, and in the great American self-consciousness and fear of the ridiculous, what was one to do? The opposition, that is, the two old parties, the Republican and Democratic, had nominated excellent men against Jones; the Republican nominee, indeed, Mr. John W. Dowd, was a man to whom I had gone to school, an old and very dear friend of our family, a charming gentleman of cultivated tastes. It was not easy to be in the attitude of opposing him, but my duty seemed clear, and I went into the campaign with Jones, and we spoke together every night. It was a campaign in which were discussed most of the fundamental problems of social life. A stranger, coming to Toledo at that time, might have thought us a most unsophisticated people, for there were speculations about the right of society to inflict punishment, the basis of property, and a rather searching inquiry into the subject of representative government. This was involved in the dispute as to the propriety of political machines, for the Republicans by that time had a party organization so strong that it was easily denominated a machine; it was so strong that it controlled every branch of the city government except the executive; it never could defeat Jones. There was a good deal said, too, about the enforcement of law, a subject which has its fascination for the people of my town. XXIV Besides these interesting topics there was the subject of municipal home rule. This had already become vital in Toledo because, a year or so before, the Republican party organization through its influence in the state, without having to strain its powers of persuasion, had induced the legislature to pass a special law which deprived the Mayor of Toledo of his control of the police force and vested the government of that body in a commission appointed by the governor of the state.