Righteousness a stern and terrible thing implying not joy
      Staunch advocate on the doctrine of infant damnation
      That’s the great thing, to keep ’em ignorant as long as possible
      The saloon represented Democracy, so dear to the American public
      They deplored while they coveted
      We lived separate mental existences
      We had learned to pursue our happiness in packs
      What you wants, you gets
      Your American romanticist is a sentimental spoiled child

CONISTON

By Winston Churchill

“We have been compelled to see what was weak in democracy as well as what was strong.  We have begun obscurely to recognize that things do not go of themselves, and that popular government is not in itself a panacea, is no better than any other form except as the virtue and wisdom of the people make it so, and that when men undertake to do their own kingship, they enter upon, the dangers and responsibilities as well as the privileges of the function.  Above all, it looks as if we were on the way to be persuaded that no government can be carried on by declamation.”

—­JamesRussell Lowell.

BOOK I

CHAPTER I

First I am to write a love-story of long ago, of a time some little while after General Jackson had got into the White House and had shown the world what a real democracy was.  The Era of the first six Presidents had closed, and a new Era had begun.  I am speaking of political Eras.  Certain gentlemen, with a pious belief in democracy, but with a firmer determination to get on top, arose,—­and got in top.  So many of these gentlemen arose in the different states, and they were so clever, and they found so many chinks in the Constitution to crawl through and steal the people’s chestnuts, that the Era may be called the Boss-Era.  After the Boss came along certain Things without souls, but of many minds, and found more chinks in the Constitution:  bigger chinks, for the Things were bigger, and they stole more chestnuts.  But I am getting far ahead of my love-story—­and of my book.

The reader is warned that this first love-story will, in a few chapters, come to an end:  and not to a happy end—­otherwise there would be no book.  Lest he should throw the book away when he arrives at this page, it is only fair to tell him that there is another and a much longer love story later on, if he will only continue to read, in which, it is hoped, he may not be disappointed.