No. 2. _The Easy-going Hypocrite._--Here is another slip from the tree of human nature, which flourishes on this soil with a sturdy growth. A large section of the American people has been talking for buncombe, not merely since years ago the member of Congress from North Carolina naïvely admitted that his remarks were uttered solely for the edification of the county of that name, and so supplied a descriptive phrase for the habit, but from the outset of our national responsibilities. To talk for effect with the thinly concealed purpose of deceiving a part of the American people all of the time has been and continues to be a favorite practice with many of the politicians of the country. Yet this public trick of proclaiming sentiments and opinions with the tongue in the cheek is the conspicuous surface-symptom of a larger vice which is fitly described as hypocrisy. There is a way of looking at this accusation which deprives it of part of its sting, yet leaves us in a predicament not very complimentary to our boasted sense of humor. It is that the free-born American citizen means so well that he is habitually dazzled by his own predilections toward righteousness into utterances which he as a frail mortal cannot hope to live up to, and consequently that he is prone to express himself in terms which none but the unsophisticated are expected to believe. In other words, that he is an unconscious hypocrite. However harmless this idiosyncrasy may have been as a preliminary trick of expression, there is no room for doubt that the plea of unconsciousness must cease to satisfy the most indulgent moral philosopher after a very short time. Yet we have persevered in the practice astonishingly, until it may be said that hyperbole is the favorite form of public utterance on almost any subject among a large class of individuals, in the expectation that only a certain percentage will not understand that the speaker or writer is not strictly in earnest. In this manner the virtuous and the patriotic are enabled to give free vent to their emotions and to set their fellow-citizens and themselves highest among the people of the earth without other expenditure than words, resolutions, or empty laws. The process gently titillates the self-esteem of the performer so that he almost persuades himself for the time being that he believes what he is saying: He appreciates that his hearers like better to have their hopes rehearsed as realities at the expense of veracity than to be reminded of imperfections at the expense of pride: And he rejoices in those whom he has fooled into believing that their hopes have been realized, and that all the virtue which he tremendously stands for is part and parcel of the national equipment. Under the insidious influence of this mode of enlightenment the every-day keen American citizen goes about with his head in the air, knowing in his secret heart that one-half of what he hears from the lips of those who