The  front  steps  of  some  of  the  comfortable  houses  were  being
swept  by  industrious  servant  girls,  and  out  of  the  chimneys
twisted,  fantastically,  rich  blue  smoke;  the  bare  branches
of  the  trees  were  silver-grey  against  the  sky;  gaining  at
last  an  old-fashioned,  wooden  bridge,  I  stood  for  a  whDe
gazing  at  the  river,  over  the  shallows  of  which  the  spend-
thrift hand  of  nature  had  flung  a  shower  of  diamonds.  And  I
reflected  that  the  world  was  for  the  strong,  for  him  who  dared
reach  out  his  hand  and  take  what  it  offered.  It  was  not  money
we  coveted,  we  Americans,  but  power,  the  self-expression
conferred  by  power.  A  single  experience  such  as  I  had  had
the  night  before  would  sufiBce  to  convince  any  sane  man
that  democracy  was  a  failure,  that  the  world-old  principle
of  aristocracy  would  assert  itself,  that  the  attempt  of  our
ancestors  to  curtail  political  power  had  merely  resulted  in
the  growth  of  another  and  greater  economic  power  that
bade  fair  to  be  limitless.  As  I  walked  slowly  back  into  town
I  felt  a  reluctance  to  return  to  the  noisy  hotel,  and  finding
myself  in  front  of  a  little  restaurant  on  a  side  street,  I  entered
it.  There  was  but  one  other  customer  in  the  place,  and  he
was  seated  on  the  far  side  of  the  counter,  with  a  newspaper
in  front  of  him ;  and  while  I  was  ordering  my  breakfast  I
was  vaguely  aware  that  the  newspaper  had  dropped,  and  that
he  was  looking  at  me.  In  the  slight  interval  that  elapsed
before  my  brain  could  register  his  identity  I  experienced  a
•distinct  shock  of  resentment;  a  sense  of  the  reintrusion  of
an  antagonistic  value  at  a  moment  when  it  was  most  xmwel-
come.  .  ..
