Who does not know of men in business who aim to secure a competence and are resolved to put by the ways that are sharp and mean, after a fortune has been secured? Men vainly imagine that after they have amassed much they will neutralize the evil they have done by doing much good, but in the meantime they have done evil to themselves and are no longer free to live by the ideal. Giving themselves unholily to the quest of the high, they have become transformed and debased into something mean and strange. One knows of men in the ministry to whom is given the putatively wise counsel to be discreetly cautious and evasively silent until the time comes for the occupancy of a great pulpit, when, as it is basely said, a man can afford to speak out of his soul. But when the great pulpit prize is won, the gleam, alas, is gone, the vision lies shattered. The man has been corrupted and his soul corroded and he who was willing for a time to be silent in the hope that some day, through the methods of silence, he might achieve the right of speaking out more bravely, has in the meantime become a dumb dog who has lost the power as well as the will to utter himself in fashion brave and unafraid. Seemingly good men, outwardly decent men enter into political life and imagine that they must for a time strike hands with corruption until the hour will come when they shall be able to smite corruption with their own fists. They palter and they falter, whispering sorrowfully, “Truly it is regrettable, but one must do these things.” One distinguished statesman in American life declared to a friend many years ago that there are times when a man must eat a peck of dirt in order to gain high office. He gained the office, he ate his peck, and the tragedy is that it is not only become the steady article of his diet, but he loves it and he would not live without it, that it is become of the very essence of his being.