“To shift discussion,” said Morton lightly, “a discussion that would seem academic rather than practical, and coming to the City and what you call its appetites, let me suggest this: Much of that trouble of which you speak arises by faults of politics as the latter science is practiced by the parties. Take yourself and our silent friend.” Here Morton indicated me: “Take the two parties you represent. Neither was ever known to propose an onward step. Each of you has for his sole issue the villainies of the other fellow; the whole of your cry is the iniquity of the opposition; it is really! I'll give both of you this for a warning. The future is to see the man who, leaving a past to bury a. past, will cry 'Public Ownership!' or some equally engaging slogan. Gad! old chap, with that, the rabble will follow him as the rats followed the pied piper of Hamelin. The moralist and the grafter will both be left, don't y' know!” Morton here returned into that vapidity from which, for the moment, he had shaken himself free. “Gad!” he concluded, “you will never know what a passion to own things gnaws at your peasant in his blouse and wooden shoes until some prophetic beggar shouts 'Public Ownership!' you won't, really!” “Sticking to what you term the practical,” said the Reverend Bronson, “tell me wherein our reform administration has weakened itself.” “As I've observed,” responded Morton, “you pick out a law and make a pet of it, to the neglect of criminal matters more important. It is your fad--your vanity of party, to do this. Also, it is your heel of Achilles, and through it will come your death-blow.” Then, as if weary of the serious, Morton went off at a lively tangent: “Someone--a very good person, too, I think, although I've mislaid his name--observed: 'Oh, that mine enemy would write a book!' Now I should make it: 'Oh, that mine enemy would own a fad!' Given a fellow's fad, I've got him. Once upon a time, when I had a measure of great railway moment--really! one of those measures of black-flag millions, don't y' know!--pending before the legislature at Albany, I ran into a gentleman whose name was De Vallier. Most surprising creature, this De Vallier! Disgustingly honest, too; but above all, as proud as a Spanish Hidalgo of his name. Said his ancestors were nobles of France under the Grand Monarch, and that sort of thing. Gad! it was his fad--this name! And the bitterness wherewith he opposed my measure was positively shameful. Really, if the floor of the Assembly--the chap was in the Assembly, don't y' know--were left unguarded for a moment, De Vallier would occupy it, and call everybody but himself a venal rogue of bribes. There was never anything more shocking!