“Or a yacht,” suggested Jack.

“Well, I don’t see why a man cannot own a yacht and still care something about the decent management of his city.”

“There’s Mavick in politics.”

“Not exactly.  Mavick is in office for what he can make.  No, I will not say that.  No doubt he is a good civil servant, and we can’t expect everybody to be unselfish.  At any rate, he is intelligent.  Do you remember what Mr. Morgan said last winter?” And Edith lifted herself up on her elbow, as if to add the weight of her attitude to her words, as Jack was still smiling at her earnestness.

“No; you said he was a delightful sort of pessimist.”

“Mr. Morgan said that the trouble with the governing and legislation now in the United States is that everybody is superficially educated, and that the people are putting their superficial knowledge into laws, and that we are going to have a nice time with all these wild theories and crudities on the statute-book.  And then educated people say that politics is so corrupt and absurd that they cannot have anything to do with it.”

“And how far do you think we could get, my dear, in the crusade you propose?”

“I don’t know that you would get anywhere.  Yet I should think the young men of New York could organize its intelligence and do something.  But you think I’m nothing but a woman.”  And Edith sank back, as if abandoning the field.

“I had thought that; but it is hard to tell, these days.  Never mind, when we go back to town I’ll stir round; you’ll see.”

This was an unusual sort of talk.  Jack had never heard Edith break out in this direction before, and he wondered if many women were beginning to think of men in this way, as cowardly about their public duties.  Not many in his set, he was sure.  If Edith had urged him to go into Neighborhood Guild work, he could have understood that.  Women and ethical cranks were interested in that.  And women were getting queerer every day, beginning, as Mavick said, to take notice.  However, it was odd, when you thought over it, that the city should be ruled by the slums.

It was easy to talk about these things; in fact, Jack talked a great deal about them in the clubs, and occasionally with a knot of men after dinner in a knowing, pessimistic sort of way.  Sometimes the discussions were very animated and even noisy between these young citizens.  It seemed, sometimes, about midnight, that something might be done; but the resolution vanished next morning when another day, to be lived through, confronted them.  They illustrated the great philosophic observation that it is practically impossible for an idle man who has nothing to do to begin anything today.