True public spirit is equally difficult for the millionaire and for the clerk.  It is, in fact, very tedious work.  It implies the quiet daily determination to get eatable chops and steaks by honest means, chiefly for oneself, but incidentally for everybody else.  It necessitates trouble and inconvenience.  I was in a suburban house one night, and it was the last night for registering names on an official list of voters before an election; it was also a rainy night.  The master of the house awaited a carriage, which was to be sent up by a candidate, at the candidate’s expense, to take him to the place of registration.  Time grew short.

“Shall you walk there if the carriage doesn’t come?” I asked, and gazed firmly at the prospective voter.

At that moment the carriage came.  We drove forth together, and in a cabin warmed by a stove and full of the steam of mackintoshes I saw an interesting part of the American Constitution at work—­four hatted gentlemen writing simultaneously the same particulars in four similar ledgers, while exhorting a fifth to keep the stove alight.  An acquaintance came in who had trudged one mile through the rain.  That acquaintance showed public spirit.  In the ideal community a candidate for election will not send round carriages in order, at the last moment, to induce citizens to register; in the ideal community citizens will regard such an attention as in the nature of an insult.

I was told that millionaires and presidents of trusts were chiefly responsible for any backwardness of public spirit in the United States.  I had heard and read the same thing about the United States in England.  I was therefore curious to meet these alleged sinister creatures.  And once, at a repast, I encountered quite a bunch of millionaire-presidents.  I had them on my right hand and on my left.  No two were in the least alike.  In my simplicity I had expected a type—­formidable, intimidating.  One bubbled with jollity; obviously he “had not a care in the world.”  Another was grave.  I talked with the latter, but not easily.  He was taciturn.  Or he may have been feeling his way.  Or he may have been not quite himself.  Even millionaire-presidents must be self-conscious.  Just as a notorious author is too often rendered uneasy by the consciousness of his notoriety, so even a millionaire-president may sometimes have a difficulty in being quite natural.  However, he did ultimately talk.  It became clear to me that he was an extremely wise and sagacious man.  The lines of his mouth were ruthlessly firm, yet he showed a general sympathy with all classes of society, and he met my radicalism quite half-way.  On woman’s suffrage he was very fair-minded.  As to his own work, he said to me that when a New York paper asked him to go and be cross-examined by its editorial board he willingly went, because he had nothing to conceal.  He convinced me of his uprightness and of his benevolence.  He showed a nice regard for the claims of the Republic, and a proper appreciation of what true public spirit is.