Every community has its dissenters, protestants, kickers, cranks; the more the merrier. My town has not lacked impressive examples, and I early formed a high resolve to strive for membership in their execrated company. George W. Julian,--one of the noblest of Hoosiers,--who had been the Free-Soil candidate for Vice-President in 1852, a delegate to the first Republican convention, five times a member of Congress, a supporter of Greeley’s candidacy, and a Democrat in the consulship of Cleveland, was a familiar figure in our streets. In 1884 I was dusting law-books in an office where mug-wumpery flourished, and where the iniquities of the tariff, Matthew Arnold’s theological opinions, and the writings of Darwin, Spencer, and Huxley were discussed at intervals in the days’ business. IV Many complain that we Americans give too much time to politics, but there could be no safer outlet for that “added drop of nervous fluid” which Colonel Higginson found in us and turned over to Matthew Arnold for further analysis. No doubt many voices will cry in the wilderness before we reach the promised land. A people which has been fed on the Bible is bound to hear the rumble of Pharaoh’s chariots. It is in the blood to resent the oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely. The winter evenings are long on the prairies, and we must always be fashioning a crown for Cæsar or rehearsing his funeral rites. No great danger can ever seriously menace the nation so long as the remotest citizen clings to his faith that he is a part of the governmental mechanism and can at any time throw it out of adjustment if it doesn’t run to suit him. He can go into the court-house and see the men he helped to place in office; or if they were chosen in spite of him, he pays his taxes just the same and waits for another chance to turn the rascals out.