“Not if the slate hangs behind your door—­or any man’s, father,” was the theorist’s sober reminder.  “Reform doesn’t come in by that road.”

“Hold on, boy; steady-go-easy’s the word.  Reform comes in by any old trail it can find, mostly, and thanks its lucky stars if it doesn’t run up against any bridges washed out or any mud-holes too deep to ford.  We’ve got a good man for governor right now; not any too broad maybe, but good—­church good.  Nobody has ever said he’d take a bribe; but he isn’t heavy enough to sit on the lid and hold it down.  Alec Gordon, the man who is going to succeed him next fall, is all the different kinds of things that the present governor isn’t, so that is fixed.”

“How ’fixed’?” queried the younger man, who, though he was not from Missouri, was beginning to fear that he would constantly have to be shown.

“In the same way that everything has to be fixed if we are going to get results,” was the calm reply.  “After the governor, the man upon whom the most depends is the attorney-general.  The fellow who is in now, Dortscher, is one of the candidates, but we’ve crossed his name off.  The next man we considered was Jim Rankin.  In some ways he’s fit; he’s a hard fighter, and the man doesn’t live who can bluff him.  But Jim’s poor, and he wants mighty bad to be rich, so I reckon that lets him out.”

All of this was directly subversive of Evan Blount’s ideas touching the manner in which the political affairs of a free country should be conducted, but he was willing to hear more.

“Well?” he said.

“What we want this time is one of your hew-to-the-line fellows, son.  Reckon you’d like to try it?”

The young man who was less than a week away from the atmosphere of the idealistic school and its theories was frankly aghast.  That his father should be coolly proposing him for a high office in the State in which, notwithstanding the birthright, he was as new as the newest immigrant, seemed blankly incredible.  But when the incredibility began to subside, the despotism of the machine methods which could propose and carry out such unheard-of things loomed maleficent.

“I’m afraid we are a good many miles apart in this matter of politics,” he said, when the proposal had been given time to sink in.  “America is supposed to be a free country, with a representative government elected by the suffrages of the people; do you mean to say that you and a few of your friends ignore the basic principles of democracy to such an extent that you nominate and elect anybody you please to any office in the State?”

The far-seeing eyes of the veteran were twinkling again.

“Oh, I don’t know about our being so far apart,” was the deprecatory protest.  “You’re just a little bit long on theory, that’s all, son.  When it comes down to the real thing—­practical politics, as some folks call it—­somebody has to head the stampede and turn it.  And if we don’t do it this coming fall, the other bunch will.”