“You see, the fact is,” said the young man with the blonde mustache whom Will called Ned Conro, “voting is a confounded bore, any way.” “But of course you have an interest in national politics, if not in municipal affairs?” said aunt Madison, inquiringly, as she looked up from her knitting and beamed benevolently at the young man through her gold-bowed spectacles. “I suppose you young men at Harvard, with all your study of history and political economy, are wide awake about all these things.” “Oh, we talk free trade and protection more or less, that is, the fellows did who took that course of study last year. I don’t go in for that sort of thing myself very much; my money isn’t in manufactures, and I don’t care a continental about the tariff one way or the other. And as for politics,—of course we all go in for the hurrah and fun in a presidential campaign, but I don’t look forward to doing anything further in that line after I graduate. It is all well enough for any one who has a fancy for it and who wants to run for office, and that sort of thing. But there can’t be more than two senators and one governor in a state at a time, and anything less than that isn’t worth the trouble. “I’ve mighty little respect for any man who condescends to be a ward politician. Boston is an Irish city, after all, though last year some of the better class got their blood up and had a clearing out; but the game isn’t worth the candle, and I, for one, am willing to let the Irish go the whole figure if they wish to do it. We can’t get rid of them, and it doesn’t pay to mix up with them. I don’t propose to vote to have my father, or any other gentleman of good old New England stock, sit beside some liquor-seller or grocer as common councilman or alderman.” “Neither do I,” ejaculated my _vis-à-vis_, whom Will had introduced as Mr. Mather; “a fellow who begins to bother his head about all these little twopenny municipal affairs only soils his hands for his pains, and doesn’t improve matters one atom. It’s well enough to vote if one wants to, but what does a single vote amount to? It counts no more when cast by a Harvard professor than by some South Cove ‘Mick.’ Suppose Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown are up for school committee; you don’t know a thing about either of them, except that they are nominated by a set of rummies and demagogues, or else by a lot of women or pious temperance cranks. You are a professional man and your time is worth ten dollars an hour,—you don’t care a fig about the whole school committee business anyway; it’s the women’s affair—they can vote on that. Let them turn out and manage it as they did last year, if they want to; but you can’t expect a man to look after these matters, and be elbowed and hooted down at the caucuses, if he has the tastes of a gentleman and all the responsibilities of a profession or a large business on his shoulders.”