The loud, preposterous moral crusades that so endlessly rock the republic—against the rum demon, against Sunday baseball, against Sunday moving-pictures, against dancing, against fornication, against the cigarette, against all things sinful and charming—these astounding Methodist jehads offer fat clinical material to the student of mobocracy. In the long run, nearly all of them must succeed, for the mob is eternally virtuous, and the only thing necessary to get it in favor of some new and super-oppressive law is to convince it that that law will be distasteful to the minority that it envies and hates. The poor numskull who is so horribly harrowed by Puritan pulpit-thumpers that he can't go to a ball game on Sunday afternoon without dreaming of hell and the devil all Sunday night is naturally envious of the fellow who can, and being envious of him, he hates him and is eager to destroy his offensive happiness. The farmer who works 18 hours a day and never gets a day off is envious of his farmhand who goes to the crossroads and barrels up on Saturday afternoon; hence the virulence of prohibition among the peasantry. The hard-working householder who, on some bitter evening, glances over the Saturday Evening Post for a square and honest look at his wife is envious of those gaudy drummers who go gallivanting about the country with scarlet girls; hence the Mann act. If these deviltries were equally open to all men, and all men were equally capable of appreciating them, their unpopularity would tend to wither.

I often think, indeed, that the prohibitionist tub-thumpers make a tactical mistake in dwelling too much upon the evils and horrors of alcohol, and not enough upon its delights. A few enlarged photographs of first-class bar-rooms, showing the rows of well-fed, well-dressed bibuli happily moored to the brass rails, their noses in fragrant mint and hops and their hands reaching out for free rations of olives, pretzels, cloves, pumpernickle, Bismarck herring, anchovies, schwartenmagen, wieners, Smithfield ham and dill pickles—such a gallery of contentment would probably do far more execution among the dismal shudra than all the current portraits of drunkards' livers. To vote for prohibition in the face of the liver portraits means to vote for the good of the other fellow, for even the oldest bibulomaniac always thinks that he himself will escape. This is an act of altruism almost impossible to the mob-man, whose selfishness is but little corrupted by the imagination that shows itself in his betters. His most austere renunciations represent no more than a matching of the joys of indulgence against the pains of hell; religion, to him, is little more than synthesized fear.... I venture that many a vote for prohibition comes from gentlemen who look longingly through swinging doors—and pass on in propitiation of Satan and their alert consorts, the lake of brimstone and the corrective broomstick....

PIf George Washington were alive today, what a shining mark he would be for the whole camorra of uplifters, forward-lookers and professional patriots! He was the Rockefeller of his time, the richest man in the United States, a promoter of stock companies, a land-grabber, an exploiter of mines and timber. He was a bitter opponent of foreign alliances, and denounced their evils in harsh, specific terms. He had a liking for all forthright and pugnacious men, and a contempt for lawyers, schoolmasters and all other such obscurantists. He was not pious. He drank whisky whenever he felt chilly, and kept a jug of it handy. He knew far more profanity than Scripture, and used and enjoyed it more. He had no belief in the infallible wisdom of the common people, but regarded them as inflammatory dolts, and tried to save the republic from them. He advocated no sure cure for all the sorrows of the world, and doubted that such a panacea existed. He took no interest in the private morals of his neighbors.

Inhabiting These States today, George would be ineligible for any office of honor or profit. The Senate would never dare confirm him; the President would not think of nominating him. He would be on trial in all the yellow journals for belonging to the Invisible Government, the Hell Hounds of Plutocracy, the Money Power, the Interests. The Sherman Act would have him in its toils; he would be under indictment by every grand jury south of the Potomac; the triumphant prohibitionists of his native state would be denouncing him (he had a still at Mount Vernon) as a debaucher of youth, a recruiting officer for insane asylums, a poisoner of the home. The suffragettes would be on his trail, with sentinels posted all along the Accotink road. The initiators and referendors would be bawling for his blood. The young college men of the Nation and the New Republic would be lecturing him weekly. He would be used to scare children in Kansas and Arkansas. The chautauquas would shiver whenever his name was mentioned....

And what a chance there would be for that ambitious young district attorney who thought to shadow him on his peregrinations—and grab him under the Mann Act!

Norman Gortsby sat on a bench in the Park, with his back to a strip of
bush-planted sward, fenced by the park railings, and the Row fronting him
across a wide stretch of carriage drive.  Hyde Park Corner, with its
rattle and hoot of traffic, lay immediately to his right.  It was some
thirty minutes past six on an early March evening, and dusk had fallen
heavily over the scene, dusk mitigated by some faint moonlight and many
street lamps.  There was a wide emptiness over road and sidewalk, and yet
there were many unconsidered figures moving silently through the half-
light, or dotted unobtrusively on bench and chair, scarcely to be
distinguished from the shadowed gloom in which they sat.

The scene pleased Gortsby and harmonised with his present mood.  Dusk, to
his mind, was the hour of the defeated.  Men and women, who had fought
and lost, who hid their fallen fortunes and dead hopes as far as possible
from the scrutiny of the curious, came forth in this hour of gloaming,
when their shabby clothes and bowed shoulders and unhappy eyes might pass
unnoticed, or, at any rate, unrecognised.

   A king that is conquered must see strange looks,
   So bitter a thing is the heart of man.

The wanderers in the dusk did not choose to have strange looks fasten on
them, therefore they came out in this bat-fashion, taking their pleasure
sadly in a pleasure-ground that had emptied of its rightful occupants.
Beyond the sheltering screen of bushes and palings came a realm of
brilliant lights and noisy, rushing traffic.  A blazing, many-tiered
stretch of windows shone through the dusk and almost dispersed it,
marking the haunts of those other people, who held their own in life's
struggle, or at any rate had not had to admit failure.  So Gortsby's
imagination pictured things as he sat on his bench in the almost deserted
walk.  He was in the mood to count himself among the defeated.  Money
troubles did not press on him; had he so wished he could have strolled
into the thoroughfares of light and noise, and taken his place among the
jostling ranks of those who enjoyed prosperity or struggled for it.  He
had failed in a more subtle ambition, and for the moment he was heartsore
and disillusionised, and not disinclined to take a certain cynical
pleasure in observing and labelling his fellow wanderers as they went
their ways in the dark stretches between the lamp-lights.

On the bench by his side sat an elderly gentleman with a drooping air of
defiance that was probably the remaining vestige of self-respect in an
individual who had ceased to defy successfully anybody or anything.  His
clothes could scarcely be called shabby, at least they passed muster in
the half-light, but one's imagination could not have pictured the wearer
embarking on the purchase of a half-crown box of chocolates or laying out
ninepence on a carnation buttonhole.  He belonged unmistakably to that
forlorn orchestra to whose piping no one dances; he was one of the
world's lamenters who induce no responsive weeping.  As he rose to go
Gortsby imagined him returning to a home circle where he was snubbed and
of no account, or to some bleak lodging where his ability to pay a weekly
bill was the beginning and end of the interest he inspired.  His
retreating figure vanished slowly into the shadows, and his place on the
bench was taken almost immediately by a young man, fairly well dressed
but scarcely more cheerful of mien than his predecessor.  As if to
emphasise the fact that the world went badly with him the new-corner
unburdened himself of an angry and very audible expletive as he flung
himself into the seat.

"You don't seem in a very good temper," said Gortsby, judging that he was
expected to take due notice of the demonstration.

The young man turned to him with a look of disarming frankness which put
him instantly on his guard.

"You wouldn't be in a good temper if you were in the fix I'm in," he
said; "I've done the silliest thing I've ever done in my life."

"Yes?" said Gortsby dispassionately.

"Came up this afternoon, meaning to stay at the Patagonian Hotel in
Berkshire Square," continued the young man; "when I got there I found it
had been pulled down some weeks ago and a cinema theatre run up on the
site.  The taxi driver recommended me to another hotel some way off and I
went there.  I just sent a letter to my people, giving them the address,
and then I went out to buy some soap--I'd forgotten to pack any and I
hate using hotel soap.  Then I strolled about a bit, had a drink at a bar
and looked at the shops, and when I came to turn my steps back to the
hotel I suddenly realised that I didn't remember its name or even what
street it was in.  There's a nice predicament for a fellow who hasn't any
friends or connections in London!  Of course I can wire to my people for
the address, but they won't have got my letter till to-morrow; meantime
I'm without any money, came out with about a shilling on me, which went
in buying the soap and getting the drink, and here I am, wandering about
with twopence in my pocket and nowhere to go for the night."

There was an eloquent pause after the story had been told.  "I suppose
you think I've spun you rather an impossible yarn," said the young man
presently, with a suggestion of resentment in his voice.

"Not at all impossible," said Gortsby judicially; "I remember doing
exactly the same thing once in a foreign capital, and on that occasion
there were two of us, which made it more remarkable.  Luckily we
remembered that the hotel was on a sort of canal, and when we struck the
canal we were able to find our way back to the hotel."

The youth brightened at the reminiscence.  "In a foreign city I wouldn't
mind so much," he said; "one could go to one's Consul and get the
requisite help from him.  Here in one's own land one is far more derelict
if one gets into a fix.  Unless I can find some decent chap to swallow my
story and lend me some money I seem likely to spend the night on the
Embankment.  I'm glad, anyhow, that you don't think the story
outrageously improbable."

He threw a good deal of warmth into the last remark, as though perhaps to
indicate his hope that Gortsby did not fall far short of the requisite
decency.

"Of course," said Gortsby slowly, "the weak point of your story is that
you can't produce the soap."

The young man sat forward hurriedly, felt rapidly in the pockets of his
overcoat, and then jumped to his feet.

"I must have lost it," he muttered angrily.

"To lose an hotel and a cake of soap on one afternoon suggests wilful
carelessness," said Gortsby, but the young man scarcely waited to hear
the end of the remark.  He flitted away down the path, his head held
high, with an air of somewhat jaded jauntiness.

"It was a pity," mused Gortsby; "the going out to get one's own soap was
the one convincing touch in the whole story, and yet it was just that
little detail that brought him to grief.  If he had had the brilliant
forethought to provide himself with a cake of soap, wrapped and sealed
with all the solicitude of the chemist's counter, he would have been a
genius in his particular line.  In his particular line genius certainly
consists of an infinite capacity for taking precautions."

With that reflection Gortsby rose to go; as he did so an exclamation of
concern escaped him.  Lying on the ground by the side of the bench was a
small oval packet, wrapped and sealed with the solicitude of a chemist's
counter.  It could be nothing else but a cake of soap, and it had
evidently fallen out of the youth's overcoat pocket when he flung himself
down on the seat.  In another moment Gortsby was scudding along the dusk-
shrouded path in anxious quest for a youthful figure in a light overcoat.
He had nearly given up the search when he caught sight of the object of
his pursuit standing irresolutely on the border of the carriage drive,
evidently uncertain whether to strike across the Park or make for the
bustling pavements of Knightsbridge.  He turned round sharply with an air
of defensive hostility when he found Gortsby hailing him.

"The important witness to the genuineness of your story has turned up,"
said Gortsby, holding out the cake of soap; "it must have slid out of
your overcoat pocket when you sat down on the seat.  I saw it on the
ground after you left.  You must excuse my disbelief, but appearances
were really rather against you, and now, as I appealed to the testimony
of the soap I think I ought to abide by its verdict.  If the loan of a
sovereign is any good to you--"

The young man hastily removed all doubt on the subject by pocketing the
coin.

"Here is my card with my address," continued Gortsby; "any day this week
will do for returning the money, and here is the soap--don't lose it
again it's been a good friend to you."

"Lucky thing your finding it," said the youth, and then, with a catch in
his voice, he blurted out a word or two of thanks and fled headlong in
the direction of Knightsbridge.

"Poor boy, he as nearly as possible broke down," said Gortsby to himself.
"I don't wonder either; the relief from his quandary must have been
acute.  It's a lesson to me not to be too clever in judging by
circumstances."

As Gortsby retraced his steps past the seat where the little drama had
taken place he saw an elderly gentleman poking and peering beneath it and
on all sides of it, and recognised his earlier fellow occupant.

"Have you lost anything, sir?" he asked.

"Yes, sir, a cake of soap."