It is so simple!  Take the average Congressman.  The Secretary of the Treasury sends in an elaborate report—­a budget, in fact—­involving a complete and harmonious scheme of revenue and expenditure.  Must the Congressman read it?  No; it is not necessary to do that; he only cares for practical measures.  Or a financial bill is brought in.  Does he study that bill?  He hears it read, at least by title.  Does he take pains to inform himself by reading and conversation with experts upon its probable effect?  Or an international copyright law is proposed, a measure that will relieve the people of the United States from the world-wide reputation of sneaking meanness towards foreign authors.  Does he examine the subject, and try to understand it?  That is not necessary.  Or it is a question of tariff.  He is to vote “yes” or “no” on these proposals.  It is not necessary for him to master these subjects, but it is necessary for him to know how to vote.  And how does he find out that?  In the first place, by inquiring what effect the measure will have upon the chance of election of the man he thinks will be nominated for President, and in the second place, what effect his vote will have on his own reelection.  Thus the principles of legislation become very much simplified, and thus it happens that it is comparatively so much easier to govern than it is to run a grocery store.

LOVE OF DISPLAY

It is fortunate that a passion for display is implanted in human nature; and if we owe a debt of gratitude to anybody, it is to those who make the display for us.  It would be such a dull, colorless world without it!  We try in vain to imagine a city without brass bands, and military marchings, and processions of societies in regalia and banners and resplendent uniforms, and gayly caparisoned horses, and men clad in red and yellow and blue and gray and gold and silver and feathers, moving in beautiful lines, proudly wheeling with step elate upon some responsive human being as axis, deploying, opening, and closing ranks in exquisite precision to the strains of martial music, to the thump of the drum and the scream of the fife, going away down the street with nodding plumes, heads erect, the very port of heroism.  There is scarcely anything in the world so inspiring as that.  And the self-sacrifice of it!  What will not men do and endure to gratify their fellows!  And in the heat of summer, too, when most we need something to cheer us!  The Drawer saw, with feelings that cannot be explained, a noble company of men, the pride of their city, all large men, all fat men, all dressed alike, but each one as beautiful as anything that can be seen on the stage, perspiring through the gala streets of another distant city, the admiration of crowds of huzzaing men and women and boys, following another company as resplendent as itself, every man bearing himself like a hero, despising the heat and the dust, conscious only of doing his