The farmer who once welcomed the lightning-rod salesman as a friend of mankind is moving to town now and languidly supervising the tilling of his acres from an automobile. One of these vicarious husbandmen, established in an Indiana county seat, found it difficult to employ his newly acquired leisure. The automobile had not proved itself a toy of unalloyed delight, and the feet that had followed unwearied the hay rake and plow faltered upon the treads of the mechanical piano. He began to alternate motor flights with more deliberate drives behind a handsome team of blacks. The eyes of the town undertaker fell in mortal envy upon that team and he sought to buy it. The tired husbandman felt that here, indeed, was an opportunity to find light gentlemanly occupation, while at the same time enjoying the felicities of urban life, so he consented to the use of his horses, but with the distinct understanding that he should be permitted to drive the hearse! VI If we are not, after all, a happy people, in the full enjoyment of life and liberty, what is this sickness that troubleth our Israel? Why huddle so many captains within the walls of the city, impotently whining beside their spears? Why seek so many for rest while this our Israel is young among the nations? “Thou hast multiplied the nation and not increased the joy; they joy before thee according to the joy in harvest and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.” Weariness fell upon Judah, and despite the warnings of noble and eloquent prophets she perished. It is now a good many years since Mr. Arnold cited Isaiah and Plato for our benefit to illustrate his belief that with us, as with Judah and Athens, the majority are unsound. And yet from his essay on Numbers--an essay for which Lowell’s “Democracy” is an excellent antidote--we may turn with a feeling of confidence and security to that untired and unwearying majority which Arnold believed to be unsound. Many instances of the soundness of our majority have been afforded since Mr. Arnold’s death, and it is a reasonable expectation that, in spite of the apparent ease with which the majority may be stampeded, it nevertheless pauses with a safe margin between it and the precipice. Illustrations of failure abound in history, but the very rise and development of our nation has discredited History as a prophet. In the multiplication of big and little Smiths lies our only serious danger. The disposition of the sick Smiths to deplore as unhealthy and unsound such a radical movement as began in 1896, and still sweeps merrily on in 1912, never seriously arrests the onward march of those who sincerely believe that we were meant to be a great refuge for mankind. If I must choose, I prefer to take my chances with the earnest, healthy, patriotic millions rather than with an oligarchy of tired Smiths. Our impatience of the bounds of law set by men who died before the Republic was born does not justify the whimpering of those