church next Sunday I would stop in and call on him.  This I accordingly did.  He was lying in his bed, death written on his face.  He thanked me for coming, and then explained that, as he was on the point of death and knew he would never return to Washington—­it was late spring and he was about to leave—­he wished to see me to get my personal promise that, after he died, I would myself look after the interests of the Delaware Indians.  He added that he did not trust the Interior Department—­although he knew that I did not share his views on this point—­and that still less did he believe that any of his colleagues in the Senate would exert themselves in the interests of the Delawares, and that therefore he wished my personal assurance that I would personally see that no injustice was done them.  I told him I would do so, and then added, in rather perfunctory fashion, that he must not take such a gloomy view of himself, that when he got away for the summer I hoped he would recover and be back all right when Congress opened.  A gleam came into the old fighter’s eyes and he answered:  “No, I am dying, and you know it.  I don’t mind dying; but I do wish it were possible for me to get off into the great north woods and crawl out on a rock in the sun and die like a wolf!”

I never saw him again.  When he died I sent a telegram of sympathy to his wife.  A paper which constantly preached reform, and which kept up its circulation by the no less constant practice of slander, a paper which in theory condemned all public men who violated the eighth commandment, and in practice subsisted by incessant violation of the ninth, assailed me for sending my message to the dead man’s wife.  I knew the editors of this paper, and the editor who was their predecessor.  They had led lives of bodily ease and the avoidance of bodily risk; they earned their livelihood by the practice of mendacity for profit; and they delivered malignant judgment on a dead man who, whatever his faults, had in his youth freely risked his life for a great ideal, and who when death was already clutching his breast had spent almost his last breath on behalf of humble and friendless people whom he had served with disinterested loyalty.

There is no greater duty than to war on the corrupt and unprincipled boss, and on the corrupt and unprincipled business man; and for the matter of that, on the corrupt and unprincipled labor leader also, and on the corrupt and unprincipled editor, and on any one else who is corrupt and unprincipled.  But where the conditions are such, whether in politics or in business, that the great majority of men have behaved in a way which is gradually seen to be improper, but which at one time did not conflict with the generally accepted morality, then the warfare on the system should not include warfare on the men themselves, unless they decline to amend their ways and to dissociate themselves from the system.  There are many good, unimaginative citizens who in politics or in business act in accordance