We hear much in these days of the wickedness of power, of the evil behavior of men in high places, of men in low places, and men whom the people have been perforce obliged to trust.  This is no new thing, though the struggle against it, the combination of the forces of reform and blackmail, of dreamers and highwaymen, is offering some new phases.

There is a kind of music popular with uncritical audiences and with people who know no better, which answers to the name of “ragtime.”  It is the music of those who do not know good music or who have not the moral force to demand it.  The spirit of ragtime is not confined to music:  graft is the ragtime of business, the spoils system the ragtime of politics, adulteration the ragtime of manufacture.  There is ragtime science, ragtime literature, ragtime religion.  You will know each of these by its quick returns.  The spirit of ragtime determines the six best sellers, the most popular policeman, the favorite congressman, the wealthiest corporation, the church which soonest rents its pews.

But it does not, control the man who thinks for himself.  It has no lien on the movements of history, its decrees avail nothing in the fixing of truth.  The movements of the stars pay it no tribute, neither do the movements of humanity.  The power of graft is a transient deception.  Emerson’s parable of the illusions gives the clue to our time, to all time, in its contrast of the things which appear with the things that abide.

“There is no chance and no anarchy in the Universe,” says Emerson, “all is system and gradation.  Every god is there sitting in his sphere.  The young mortal enters the hall of the firmament; there he is alone with them alone, they pronouncing on him benedictions and gifts, and beckoning him up to their thrones.  On the instant and incessantly fall snow storms of illusions.  He fancies himself in a vast crowd which sways this way and that and whose movements and doings he must obey.  He fancies himself poor, orphaned, insignificant.  The mad crowd drives hither and thither, now furiously commanding this thing to be done, now that.  What is he that he should resist their will and think and act for himself?  Every moment new changes and new showers of deceptions to baffle and distract him.  And when, by and by, for an instant the air clears and the cloud lifts a little, there are the gods still sitting around him on their thrones—­they alone with him alone.”

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The last paragraphs of this little essay were written within a huge hotel of steel and stone in the heart of a bustling city, in the most gracious of lands and under the bluest of skies.  A great commercial city it was, a wondrous city, full of all manner of men—­eager, impulsive, loving, enthusiastic men; men cunning and grasping, given over to all “high, hard lust and wilful deed;” carefree, joyous men living in the present and taking their chances for the future; men who have whistled all the airs