Mr. Rogers shook his head. “I am sorry, but we do not happen to have any politicians in the club. I thought it over carefully and concluded that it was better not, for they cannot avoid knowing objectionable people who might manage to get themselves invited here, too.” Again, I interposed before Bertie could answer. “What becomes of your law of progress? If it is as inborn and inevitable--unhinderable--as you say, why does it not sweep your class in its current? Surely that class is increased from year to year by ambitious recruits whose offspring will be as cultivated as you are to-day--that is part of your law of progress. It seems to me that a natural instinct should force you and your sort to labour to keep yourselves high above the masses and fill the great public offices of the country.” As he turned to me the light in his eyes was almost warm and I felt as if I had said something really clever. That is his little way. “That was very well reasoned,” he said, “and your theory has certain facts to substantiate it, inasmuch as public life does receive recruits from the upper-class from year to year. Perhaps, some day, under the stress of a great menace, the entire class will throw in its weight. But just now--merely to give the country a stiffer man than McKinley--I am afraid they will not. We are such optimists, our luck has had such few facers, and just now we are so prosperous. It is only a dream to imagine the best in both parties suddenly deserting and uniting; for the best men seem to avoid leadership and notoriety; it is only by doing so that they can find a comparatively clean path through the political muck.” Bertie shrugged his shoulders and pushed back his chair. “You look well in that tweed outfit and those leggings, Rogers,” he said, “but you’d look a jolly sight better in your shirt sleeves and with mud on your boots. You and the rest of your dilettante class are living in a Fool’s Paradise, and when you’re choking over your first nasty mess of Bryanism you’ll wish you’d taken off your coat while you had a valet to assist you. For my part I’m rather keen on Bryan getting in. I want to see a real democracy. What you’ve got now is neither one thing nor the other. Say what you like you have an enormously large aristocratic class, a class which is always looking round for somebody to snub and which holds itself immeasurably above the masses. You’ll be a monarchy yet with every title that ever was heard of, and American inventions to boot. The result of your Trust system will be two classes--the wealthy and the helpless poor. The hour the wealthy class feels that it is strong enough it will make for a court and a nobility. And a nice mess you’ll make of it.”