“Saving remnant” was a phrase to his liking, and he kept turning it over and investing it with modern meanings. Before we blew out the candles we were in accord on the proposition that while we have government by parties the parties have got to be run by some one; what is everybody’s business being, very truly, nobody’s business. Hence the development of party organizations and their domination by groups, with the groups themselves deriving inspiration usually from a single head. Under the soothing influence of these bromides Smith fell to sleep denouncing the direct primary. “Instead of giving the power to the people,” he muttered drowsily, “the bloomin’ thing has commercialized office-seeking. We’re selling nominations to the highest bidder. If I were ass enough to chase a United States senatorship, I wouldn’t waste any time on the people until I’d been underwritten by a few strong banks. And if I won, I’d be like the Dutchman who said he was getting along all right, only he was worried because he had to die and go to hell yet. It would be my luck to be pinched as a common felon, and to have my toga changed for a prison suit at Leavenworth.” Some candidate for the doctorate, hard put for a subject, might find it profitable to produce a thesis on American political phraseology. As a people we are much addicted to felicitous combinations of words that express large ideas in the smallest possible compass. Not only does political wisdom lend itself well to condensation, but the silliest fallacy will carry far if knocked into a fetching phrase. How rich in its connotations even to-day is the old slogan, “Tippecanoe and Tyler too”! and many others equally illuminative of a period might be dug out of the records from the beginning of our history, including “the tariff is a tax,” “the full dinner-pail,” down to “he kept us out of war.” A telling phrase or a catchword is enormously persuasive and convincing--the shrewdest possible advertisement.