But as he got cooler, that did not seem to him a project worthy of a gentleman exactly.  Was it possible for a gentleman to get even with such a fellow as that conductor on the letter’s own plane?  And when he came to this point, he began to ask himself, if he had not acted very much like a fool.  He didn’t regret striking the fellow—­he hoped he had left a mark on him.  But, after all, was that the best way?  Here was he, Philip Sterling, calling himself a gentleman, in a brawl with a vulgar conductor, about a woman he had never seen before.  Why should he have put himself in such a ridiculous position?  Wasn’t it enough to have offered the lady his seat, to have rescued her from an accident, perhaps from death?  Suppose he had simply said to the conductor, “Sir, your conduct is brutal, I shall report you.”  The passengers, who saw the affair, might have joined in a report against the conductor, and he might really have accomplished something.  And, now!  Philip looked at leis torn clothes, and thought with disgust of his haste in getting into a fight with such an autocrat.

At the little station where Philip waited for the next train, he met a man—­who turned out to be a justice of the peace in that neighborhood, and told him his adventure.  He was a kindly sort of man, and seemed very much interested.

“Dum ’em,” said he, when he had heard the story.

“Do you think any thing can be done, sir?”

“Wal, I guess tain’t no use.  I hain’t a mite of doubt of every word you say.  But suin’s no use.  The railroad company owns all these people along here, and the judges on the bench too.  Spiled your clothes!  Wal, ‘least said’s soonest mended.’  You haint no chance with the company.”

When next morning, he read the humorous account in the Patriot and Clarion, he saw still more clearly what chance he would have had before the public in a fight with the railroad company.

Still Philip’s conscience told him that it was his plain duty to carry the matter into the courts, even with the certainty of defeat.  He confessed that neither he nor any citizen had a right to consult his own feelings or conscience in a case where a law of the land had been violated before his own eyes.  He confessed that every citizen’s first duty in such case is to put aside his own business and devote his time and his best efforts to seeing that the infraction is promptly punished; and he knew that no country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law, and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.  As a finality he was obliged to confess that he was a bad citizen, and also that the general laxity of the time, and the absence of a sense of duty toward any part of the community but the individual himself were ingrained in him, am he was no better than the rest of the people.