These arrangements do not interfere, however, with my Boston plan, for sooner or later I shall breathe its intellectual atmosphere, that I may outgrow provincialism and become intellectual by force of habit rather than will.  How long it will be before the wish can be gratified I cannot tell.  Probably next year.  You see the law is not altogether after my taste.  I feel it a waste of time to spend days quarreling like school-boys over a few hundred dollars.  I feel all the time as if I must be engaged in some life work which will make more directly for the good of my fellows.  I feel the need which the world manifests for broader ideas in economics, politics, the philosophy of life, and all social questions.  Feeling so, I cannot coop myself in a law library behind a pile of briefs, spending my days and nights in search of some authority which will save my client’s dollar.  I am unsettled, however, as to my permanent work. ...

Oakland, September 20, 1888

...  The copies of the Massachusetts law have been duly received and put to the best of use.  On my motion our Young Men’s League appointed a Committee to draft a law for presentation to the Legislature.  Judge Maguire, Ferd, [Footnote:  Ferdinand Vassault, a college friend. ] and two others, with myself, are on that Committee and we are hard at work.  I send to-day a copy of the Examiner containing a ballot reform bill just introduced by the Federated Trades.  It is based on the New York law but is very faulty.  We are working with that bill as a basis, proposing various and very necessary amendments.  We hope to get our bill adopted in Committee as a substitute for the one introduced, and believe that the Federated Trades will be perfectly willing to adopt our measure. ...

Tell me, please, how you select your election officials in your large cities.  Our mode of selection is really the weak point with us, for no matter how good a law we might procure, its enforcement would be left to “boss” tools—­corruptionists of the worst class. ...

Oakland, December 2, 1888

...  Your letter breathes the sentiments of thousands of Republicans who voted against Cleveland.  They are now “just a little” sorry that so good a man is beaten.  I never quite understood your political position.  Your letter to Ferd giving your reason was, I must say, not conclusive, for I cannot believe that you can find a greater field of usefulness or power in the Republican than in the Democratic party, surely not now that the new Democracy—­a party aggressive, filled with the reform spirit, and right in the direction it takes, now that such a party is in the field.