Smiths who wrap themselves in the grave-clothes of old precedents, and who love the Constitution only when they fly to it for shelter. Tired business men, weary professional men, bored farmers, timorous statesmen are not of the vigorous stuff of those “Who founded us and spread from sea to sea A thousand leagues the zone of liberty, And gave to man this refuge from his past, Unkinged, unchurched, unsoldiered.” Our country’s only enemies are the sick men, the tired men, who have exhausted themselves in the vain pursuit of vain things; who forget that democracy like Christianity is essentially social, and who constitute a sick remnant from whom it is devoutly to be hoped the benign powers may forever protect us. VII It was a year ago that I met my old friend Smith, irritable, depressed, anxious, in the German capital. This morning we tramped five miles, here among the Vermont hills where he has established himself. Sound in wind and limb is my old neighbor, and his outlook on life is sane and reasonable. I have even heard him referring, with something of his old emotion, to that dark winter at Valley Forge, but with a new hopefulness, a wider vision. He does not think the American Republic will perish, even as Nineveh and Tyre, any more than I do. He has come to a realization of his own errors and he is interested in the contemplation of his own responsibilities. And it is not the German specialist he has to thank for curing his weariness half so much as Fanny. Fanny! Fanny is the wisest, the most capable, the healthiest-minded girl in the world. Fanny is adorable! As we trudged along the road, Smith suddenly paused and lifted his eyes to a rough pasture slightly above and beyond us. I knew from the sudden light in his face that Fanny was in the landscape. She leaped upon a wall and waved to us. A cool breeze rose from the valley and swept round her. As she poised for a moment before running down to join us in the road, there was about her something of the grace and vigor of the Winged Victory as it challenges the eye at the head of the staircase in the Louvre. She lifted her hand to brush back her hair,--that golden crown so loved by light! And as she ran we knew she would neither stumble nor fall on that rock-strewn pasture. When she reached the brook she took it at a bound, and burst upon us radiant.