If you have read "The Hon. Peter Stirling," you will remember that the hero rose to political stature largely by means of attending to the needs of the district, befriending the poor and the helpless and having a friendly, encouraging word for his constituents, high or low. The American public welcomed the book because it was glad to see the boss vindicated by these human qualities, and to think that there was a saving grace of unselfish service in the composition of the average successful politician. It would be unjust to the big four were I not to acknowledge that they have been shrewd or human enough to pursue in some measure this affable policy, and that the neighborhood and the district in which they live recognize them as hustlers to obtain office, privileges, and jobs for the humble citizen wishing to be employed by or to sell something to the City Government. To this constituency the comparatively small tax levied seems all in the day's work, a natural incident of the principle that when a man does something, he ought to be paid for it. To them the distinction that public service is a trust which has no right to pecuniary profit beyond the salary attached, and a reasonable amount of stationery, seems to savor of the millennium and to suggest a lack of practical intelligence on the part of its advocates. They pay the lawyer and the doctor; why not the Alderman? To _A Political Optimist_. III. I am reminded by Josephine that I seem to be getting into the dumps, which does not befit one who claims to be an optimistic philosopher. The drama just set before you is not, I admit, encouraging as a national exhibit, and I can imagine that you are already impatient to retort that the municipal stage is no fair criterion of public life in this country. I can hear you assert, with that confident air of national righteousness peculiar to the class of blind patriots to which you belong, that the leading politicians of the nation disdain to soil their hands by contact with city politics. Yet there I take issue with you squarely, not as to the fact but as to the truth of the lofty postulate seething in your mind that the higher planes of political activity are free from the venal and debasing characteristics of municipal public service--from the influence of the money power operating on a low public standard of honesty.