smoked cigarettes, tossed dice in public for drinks, and “handed out” slang to his constituents; and his unconventionally in these respects is merely an occasional expression of a novel, individual, and refreshing point of view.  Mr. Jerome alone among American politicians has made a specialty of plain speaking.  He has revolted against the tradition in our politics which seeks to stop every leak with a good intention and plaster every sore with a “decorative phrase.”  He has, says Mr. Hodder, “a partly Gallic passion for intellectual veracity, for a clear recognition of the facts before him, however ugly, and a wholly Gallic hatred of hypocrisy.”  It is Mr. Jerome’s intellectual veracity, his somewhat conscious and strenuous ideal of plain speaking, which has been his personal contribution to the cause of reform; and he is right in believing it to be a very important contribution.  The effective work of reform, as has already been pointed out, demands on the part of its leaders the intellectual virtues of candor, consistency, and a clear recognition of facts.  In Mr. Jerome’s own case his candor and his clear recognition of facts have been used almost exclusively in the field of municipal reform.  He has vigorously protested against existing laws which have been passed in obedience to a rigorous puritanism, which, because of their defiance of stubborn facts, can scarcely be enforced, and whose statutory existence merely provides an opportunity for the “grafter.”  He has clearly discerned that in seeking the amendment of such laws he is obliged to fight, not merely an unwise statute, but an erroneous, superficial, and hypocritical state of mind.  Although it may have been his own official duty as district attorney to see that certain laws are enforced and to prosecute the law breakers, he fully realizes that municipal reform at least will never attain its ends until the public—­the respectable, well-to-do, church-going public—­is converted to an abandonment of what Mr. Hodder calls administrative lying.  Consequently his intellectual candor is more than a personal peculiarity—­more even than an extremely effective method of popular agitation.  It is the expression of a deeper aspect of reform, which many respectable reformers, not merely ignore, but fear and reprobate,—­an aspect of reform which can never prevail until the reformers themselves are subjected to a process of purgation and education.

It has happened, however, that Mr. Jerome’s reputation and successes have been won in the field of local politics; and, unfortunately, as soon as he transgressed the boundaries of that field, he lost his efficiency, his insight, and, to my mind, his interest.  Only a year after he was elected to the district attorneyship of New York County, in spite of the opposition both of Tammany and William R. Hearst, he offered himself as a candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination of New York on the comprehensive platform of his oath of office; but in the larger