Of his reply, as printed in the New York _World_, we quote the salient passages, answering the further query as to the advisability of going into politics: I should say yes to the young man of intelligence, culture, and efficiency, if these things were crossed with patriotism. In the main those who go into public life are picked men, and by just so much as they are picked men they are ahead of the average. This is a fact in spite of the oft-repeated assertion that the representatives of the people are only of average grade. If among a dozen young men, each of whom should decide to devote his life to the public service and should qualify and work hard and conscientiously for it, one--just one--should get himself into public life and sustain himself with credit to himself and benefit to the country, I should consider it a great return for the effort put forth. The man who has to make his own way, who is without a competency to start with, and who enters public life these days before he has saved enough to live independently of his income as a public man, has a hard time before him. Hard Time for the Poor Man. The young man who has never earned his living for himself, no matter what his advantages of circumstances or training, is sure to make many mistakes through ignorance of hard, practical life. Not personally having the same needs as the man of the people, he doesn't know what to do or how to do it. Young men who enjoy the advantages of special training and the opportunities that wealth gives may become especially qualified for public life; such opportunities and training are necessary to complete qualifications, but often they are not equal to them. That which may be had without effort is not often highly prized. But all young men of ability, whether favored by fortunes or not, owe it both to themselves and to the nation to give attention to public affairs, to keep themselves in touch with things, to be in constant preparation for public life if the opportunity or necessity comes to them. Everybody knows there is a large number of such young men in the great business and industrial centers who give no attention, or very little, to public affairs. The manufacturing, the commercial or financial operations, the contracting or transportation enterprises which they take up give them so much better financial returns than public life would yield that they lose sight altogether of the government, upon whose proper conduct their success in their various callings and enterprises depends--upon which, in fact, the very chance to enter these callings and carry on those enterprises rests, and whose demoralization would wipe out everybody's chances in life.