“I will, mother,” I answered.  “But I think you would find that Cousin Robert exaggerates a little, makes things seem worse than they really are.  Customs change, you know.  And politics were never well—­Sunday schools.”  I, too, smiled a little.  “Father knew that.  And he would never take an active part in them.”

“He was too fine!” she exclaimed.

“And now,” I continued, “Cousin Robert has happened to come in contact with them through business.  That is what has made the difference in him.  Before, he always knew they were corrupt, but he rarely thought about them.”

“Hugh,” she said suddenly, after a pause, “you must remember one thing,—­that you can afford to be independent.  I thank God that your father has provided for that!”

I was duly admitted, the next autumn, to the bar of my own state, and was assigned to a desk in the offices of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon.  Larry Weed was my immediate senior among the apprentices, and Larry was a hero-worshipper.  I can see him now.  He suggested a bullfrog as he sat in the little room we shared in common, his arms akimbo over a law book, his little legs doubled under him, his round, eyes fixed expectantly on the doorway.  And even if I had not been aware of my good fortune in being connected with such a firm as Theodore Watling’s, Larry would shortly have brought it home to me.  During those weeks when I was making my first desperate attempts at briefing up the law I was sometimes interrupted by his exclamations when certain figures went by in the corridor.

“Say, Hugh, do you know who that was?”

“No.”

“Miller Gorse.”

“Who’s he?”

“Do you mean to say you never heard of Miller Gorse?”

“I’ve been away a long time,” I would answer apologetically.  A person of some importance among my contemporaries at Harvard, I had looked forward to a residence in my native city with the complacency of one who has seen something of the world,—­only to find that I was the least in the new kingdom.  And it was a kingdom.  Larry opened up to me something of the significance and extent of it, something of the identity of the men who controlled it.

“Miller Gorse,” he said impressively, “is the counsel for the railroad.”

“What railroad?  You mean the—­” I was adding, when he interrupted me pityingly.

“After you’ve been here a while you’ll find out there’s only one railroad in this state, so far as politics are concerned.  The Ashuela and Northern, the Lake Shore and the others don’t count.”

I refrained from asking any more questions at that time, but afterwards I always thought of the Railroad as spelled with a capital.

“Miller Gorse isn’t forty yet,” Larry told me on another occasion.  “That’s doing pretty well for a man who comes near running this state.”

For the sake of acquiring knowledge, I endured Mr. Weed’s patronage.  I inquired how Mr. Gorse ran the state.