There is no reality in a single phrase uttered in politics, no meaning in one single word of any of it. There is no man in public life who stands for anything. They are shadows; they are phantasmagoria. At best they cater to the better elements; at worst they frankly subserve the worst. There is no one who stands for his own ideas himself, by himself, a man. If American politics does not look to you like a joke, a tragic dance; if you have enough blindness left in you, on any plea, on any excuse, to vote for the Democratic party or the Republican party (for at present machine and party are one), or for any candidate who does not stand for a new era,--then you yourself pass into the slide of the magic-lantern; you are an exhibit, a quaint product, a curiosity of the American soil. You are part of the problem, and you must be educated and drawn forward towards real life. This process is going on. As the community returns to life, it sees the natural world for a moment and then forgets it. The blood flushes the brain and then recedes. You yourself voted once against both parties, when you thought you could win, and when you were excited. You quoted Isaiah and I know not what poetry, and were out and out committed to principle; but to-day you are cold and hopeless. At present, hope is a mystery to you. Nevertheless the utility of those early reform movements survives. They heated the imagination of the people till the people had a momentary vision of truths which not all of them forgot; and so each year the temperature has been higher, the mind of the community clearer. We must not regard those broken reeds, the renegade leaders of reform movements, as villains; though the mere record of their words and conduct might prove them such. They have been men emerging from a mist. They see clearly for a moment, and then clouds sweep before them. Vanity, selfishness, ambition, tradition, habit, intervene like a fog. They have been betrayed, too, by the fickle public, that would not stand by them when in trouble. In the recapture of any institution by the forces of honesty there are trenches that get filled by slaughtered honor.