And now, though I had thought my way around a circle, I began to glimpse some understanding of what was taking place in a manner nominally so preposterous. People had tormented themselves with these questions until they were weary, callous and bitterly ironic. The country was in the toils of an invisible monster that devoured its heart and wasted its substance. The name of this monster was Hard Times. The problem of unemployment was chronic, desperate and apparently hopeless. The cause of it was unknown. People were sick of thinking and talking about something for which there was no help. They had either to despair or laugh. Then came Coxey, fanatic, mountebank or rare comedian,--so solemn in his egregious pretensions that no one knew which,--and they laughed. It might become serious. Mass psychology was in a highly inflammable condition. There was always that thought in reserve to tinge the laughter with foreboding. But if there came a conflagration, then perhaps the questions would be unexpectedly answered; nobody cared much what else happened. Cincinnati turned over with a frightful snort and was suddenly quiet. I prayed that he might be dead and went to sleep. The next morning the New York Herald man took me aside. “I’ve been recalled from this assignment to go to Europe,” he said. “I’m waiting for a man to relieve me. He will pick us up some time to-day.” I said I was sorry; and I was, for we were made to each other’s liking. “I don’t care for the man who is relieving me,” he continued. “Besides, he isn’t competent to do what I’m about to ask you to undertake in my place.” “Anything I can,” I said. “You are from the west,” he continued, “and therefore you’re not likely to know how jumpy the Wall Street people are about what’s going on. They are afraid of this Coxey movement,--of what it may lead to. They want to know a lot about it,--more than they can get from the newspaper stories. I’ve been sending a confidential letter on it daily to Valentine ... you know, ... John J., president of the Great Midwestern Railroad. He wants the tale unvarnished, and what you think of it, and what others think of it. He particularly wants to know in the fullest way how the Coxeyites are received along the way, for therein is disclosed the state of public feeling. Well, I wish you to take this commission off my hands. It pays fifty a week for the life of the circus. I’ll see him in New York, tell him who you are and why I left it for you to do. Then when the thing is over you can run up to New York from Washington and get your money.” I hesitated. “It’s Wall Street money,” I said.