"I'll tell you what it is, Mr. Holmes, this country is just going headlong to the dogs." It is a curious fact: I have been young and now am old, yet there has never been a time when, to hear some folk, Old England has not been going headlong to the dogs--but this by the way. "Yes, sir, to the dogs. And little Johnny Russell" thus familiarly did Wrigley speak of Lord John--"little Johnny Russell's whooping it on. Reform Bill! indeed--giving every twopenny-ha'penny householder the vote, forsooth. And it won't end there, mark my words, sir. It's but the thin end of the wedge. Before long my own workpeople will have the vote, and who'll be master in my mill then I should like to know? What's the like of them to know about politics and affairs of State I ask you? A man's got to have a head on his shoulders, I can tell you, to mell with matters like that. And he must have a stake in the country, yes, sir, a stake, and then he feels the responsibility of the thing. But lower the franchise, and where are you? Why, at the mercy of the mob, sir, the mob, a set of rick-burning, frame-smashing, ignorant no-breeches. Help yourself to the gin, Mr. Holmes, and pass the tobacco-jar to the youngsters. They're better without the Geneva water. Look what it's done for France, sir, this reforming rubbish: revolution and republicanism, and the guillotine, red ruin, and the breaking up of laws: no king, no church, no State, no aristocracy, no property, nothing sacred, atheism rampant, virtue dethroned, and vice triumphant. Now I put it to you, Mr. Holmes, isn't it only natural, part of God's law in a manner of speaking, that men of birth, and family, and fortune, and education, men with a stake in the country, aye, I stick to that, a stake, sir, a stake, should have the ruling of it. Answer me that, if you can." Now if I never admired my father before I admired him that afternoon. There he sat in a lofty armchair, his little thin legs scarce touching the floor, his old black coat almost white at the seams, and looking sadly threadbare and shabby by contrast with the shining broadcloth Mr. Wrigley had donned for the occasion--yet did he cower and quail before the owner of Wrigley Mill, and that great mansion, and many a broad acre that lay around? Not he my certes. He was just as calm and composed as when he sat in our little parlour at the head of a conference of ministers, and the hotter Mr. Wrigley blew the cooler my father seemed. "It's true enough," he said, "the great mass of the people are sadly ignorant. But whose fault is that? The great ones of the earth have ruled the roost for centuries, and yet we find they have left those whose natural guardians you say they are in an abysmal darkness." "They should educate themselves, sir," bawled Mr. Wrigley; "that is, if they've the minds to carry it, which I doubt.