He couldn't change a whole people's habit of thought, he reflected. Even the _Courier_ followed the popular whim by miles and led it only by inches. So it seemed, at least. And yet if one should try to make his scheme a public one and leave the _Courier_ out--imagine it! And must the _Courier_, then, be invited in? Must everybody and his nigger "pass their plates?" Ah! how had a few years--a few months--twisted and tangled the path to mastership! Through what thickets of contradiction, what morasses of bafflement, what unimperial acceptance of help and counsel did that path now lead! And this was no merely personal fate of his. It was all Dixie's. He would never change his politics; O no! But how if men's politics, asking no leave of their owners, change themselves, and he who does not change ceases to be steadfast? Behold! All the way down the Swanee River, spite of what big levees of prevention and draining wheels of antiquated cure, how invincibly were the waters of a new order sweeping in upon the "old plantation." And still the old plantation slumbered on below the level of the world's great risen floods of emancipations and enfranchisements whereon party platforms, measures, triumphs, and defeats only floated and eddied, mere drift-logs of a current from which they might be cast up, but could not turn back. He bent over the desk. "Jove!" was all he said; but it stood for the realization of the mighty difference between the map under his eyes and what he was under oath to himself to make it. What "lots" of men--not mountaineers only, but Blacklanders, too--had got to change their notions--notions stuck as fast in their belief as his mountains were stuck in the ground--before that map could suit him. To think harder, he covered his face with his hands. The gale rattled his window. He failed to hear Enos just outside his door, alone and very drunk, prying off the tin sign of John March, Gentleman. He did not hear even the soft click of the latch or the yet softer footsteps that brought the drunkard close before his desk; but at the first word he glanced up and found himself covered with a revolver. "Set still," drawled Enos. In his left hand was the tin sign. "This yeh trick looked ti-ud a-tellin' lies, so I fotch it in." Without change of color--for despair stood too close for fear to come between--John fixed his eyes upon the drunken man's and began to rise. The weapon followed his face up. "Enos, point that thing another way or I'll kill you." He took a slow step outward from the desk, the pistol following with a drunken waver more terrible than a steady aim. Enos spoke along its barrel, still holding up the sign. "Is this little trick gwine to stay fetch in? Say 'yass, mawsteh,' aw I blow yo' head off." But John still held the drunkard's eye. As he took up from his desk a large piece of ore, he said, "Enos, when a man like you leaves a gentleman's door open, the gentleman goes and shuts it himself."