tated beliefs as the frivolous part. The belief of the money market, which is mainly composed of grave people, is as imitative as any belief: you will find one day every one enterprising, enthusiastic, vigorous, eager to buy and eager to order; in a week or so you will find almost the whole society depressed, anxious, and wanting to sell. If you examine the reasons for the activity or for the inactivity or for the change, you will hardly be able to trace them at all, and as far as you can trace them they are of little force. In fact, these opinions were not formed by reason but by mimicry: something happened that looked a little good, on which eager, sanguine men talked loudly, and common people caught their tone; a little while afterwards, and when people were tired of talking this, something also happened, looking a little bad, on which the dismal, anxious people began, and all the rest followed their words; and in both cases an avowed dissentient is set down as "crotchety." "If you want," said Swift, "to gain the reputation of a sensible man, you should be of the opinion of the person with whom for the time being you are conversing." There is much quiet intellectual persecution among "reasonable" men: a cautious person hesitates before he tells them anything new, for if he gets a name for such things, he will be called " flighty," and in times of decision he will not be attended to. - - In this way the infection of imitation catches men in their most inward and intellectual part, their creed; but it also invades men by the most bodily part of the mind, so to speak, -the link between soul and body, the manner. No one needs to have this explained, we all know how a kind of subtle influence makes us imitate or try to imitate the manner of those around us to conform to the fashion of Rome-whatever the fashion may be, and whatever Rome we may for the time be at is among the most obvious needs of human nature. But what is not so obvious, though as certain, is that the influence of the imitation goes deep as well as extends wide: "The matter," as Wordsworth says, "of style very much comes out of the manner." If you will endeavor to write an imitation of the thoughts of Swift in a copy of the style of Addison, you will find that not only is it hard to write Addison's style from its intrinsic excellence, but also that the more you approach to it the more you lose the thought of Swift: the eager passion of the meaning beats upon the mild drapery of the words. So you could not express the plain thoughts of an Englishman in the grand manner of a Spaniard. Insensibly, and as by a sort of magic, the kind of manner which a man catches eats into him, and makes him in the end what at first he only seems. This is the principal mode in which the greatest minds of an age produce their effect: they set the tone which others take and the fashion which others use. There is an odd idea that those who take what is called a "scientific view" of history need rate lightly the influence of individual character: it would be as reasonable to say that those who take a scientific view of nature need think little of the influence of the sun. On the scientific view, a great man is a great new cause, compounded or not out of other causes, for I do not here or elsewhere in these papers raise the question of free will, but anyhow new in all its effects and all its results. Great models for good and evil sometimes appear among men, who follow them either to improvement or degradation. A POLITICAL EPISODE.1 BY HJALMAR HJÖRTH BOYESEN. (From "The Light of her Countenance.") [HJALMAR HJÖRTH BOYESEN: A Norse-American novelist, poet, and littérateur, was born at Frederiksvärn, Norway, September 23, 1848, and graduated at the University of Christiania in 1868. Removing to the United States soon afterward, he edited a Norwegian paper in Chicago for a short time, was professor of German at Cornell University 1874-1880, and from 1880 held a similar position in Columbia College, New York city, where he died October 4, 1895. He evinced a remarkable facility in writing English, and became popular as a novelist and writer of short stories. His principal publications were: 66 Gunnor," "A Norseman's Pilgrimage," "Falconberg," "Queen Titania," "A Daughter of the Philistines," "The Mammon of Unrighteousness," "Modern Vikings,' "Norseland Tales," "Tales from Two Hemispheres," etc. Many of his books have been translated into German and Norwegian.] OLD Mr. Burroughs waited impatiently at luncheon for his son's appearance. His widowed sister, Mrs. Whitcomb, who presided over his household, had to bear the brunt of his ill humor, but she was a large and genial woman, and a little bit obtuse, and could endure a good deal without any ruffling of temper. She was, moreover, so proud of her brother that she felt complimented even at being scolded by him. She was 1 Copyright, 1889, by D. Appleton & Co. Published by permission. intensely conscious of his wealth, distinction, and national fame, and bragged of him in a guileless way to her acquaintances. Her nephew, who was given to being sarcastic with her, she could not quite make out, but admired him immensely. She spoke of him with bated breath, as of some higher order of creature, whose ways were exalted above her comprehension and criticism. She knew in a vague way his reputation, but it made no difference with her, and in no wise affected her treatment of him. She was in a state of general bewilderment as to metropolitan ways and manners, and had never quite found her footing in this Babylonic confusion. She had had very decided opinions in Indiana; but as, somehow, they did not apply to New York, she had given up the habit of judging. She lacked both the energy and the ability at her age to readjust her mental lens of vision to new conditions, and she floated with her bewildered smile through New York society, without finding lodgment or acquiring any definable place in it. She was the Honorable Abiel Burroughs' sister that was all. And the Honorable Abiel was, as far as society was concerned, only the father of Julian Burroughs. He was known to exist, but was rarely seen. His existence was inferred from the house in the Avenue and his son's extravagance. Though he sat occasionally on public platforms and contributed liberally to popular charities, the metropolis was not half as much interested in him as in his son; and exminister though he was, the newspapers took far less account of him than of the handsome young man who bore his name, and whose chief distinction consisted in his capacity to spend. It may have been because the Honorable Abiel felt a little uneasy in his obscurity that he had begun of late to resume his interrupted connection with politics. He saw plainly that there was no political future for a Republican in New York, unless he happened to get a national appointment; and he squirmed a good deal at the thought of severing his connection with a party which had conferred such great honors upon him. He who had known Lincoln and Chase and Seward, and who was a repository of anecdotes concerning those departed chieftains, how could he make common cause with copperheads and Tammany and the rebel brigadiers? Mr. Burroughs, after a great deal of anxious reflection, came to the conclusion that his turning Mugwump was out of the question. But Julian, who had no traditions to trouble him, could scarcely be reproached for choosing his party with a view to his own advantage. He could scarcely be bound by his father's antecedents. The important thing was for him to get to Washington, not by the slow and laborious byway of Albany, but by the straight road of a congressional nomination. The old gentleman had, by a shrewd and roundabout maneuver, obtained the assurance from the leader of Tammany Hall that for sixty thousand dollars, paid ostensibly for campaign expenses, the nomination was at his disposal. He could see no moral objection to accepting this offer, at the same time as he was personally identified with the Republican organization and lending his respectable name to cloak infamous deals and trades and corruption of voters. Whatever his party did was (if not laudable) at least defensible; and after each election he was ready to put his signature to documents whitewashing the unblushing tricksters who profess to represent the Grand Old Party in the metropolis. No man who cherished a lurking ambition under his waistcoat could afford to be overscrupulous, Burroughs reasoned; and he found even a certain satisfaction in exhibiting a broad, pachydermatous front toward those obnoxious persons who took him to task for his indorsement of rascality. He had after each such attack an agreeable sense of solidarity with his party, and a revived hope of being called to the front in some conspicuous capacity. Julian, entering, took his seat quietly at the table, called for a bottle of claret, and fell to eating, while his father sat with his shaggy brows knitted, gazing intently at him. "Well, Jule," he said at last, "have you made up your mind about the matter we talked about last night?" "Yes." "And what is your decision?" The old man's voice almost trembled as he asked the question, and there was a tense, strained look in his eyes, which betrayed his agitation. "I have decided to yield to your wishes," the son replied, putting down his glass of claret and wiping his mustache with his napkin. The Honorable Abiel cleared his throat noisily and blew his nose. Then, with a visible sense of relief, he attacked his beefsteak, which was one of the few things his French chef could not spoil for him. "Jule," he observed after a considerable glad you have taken my advice in this matter. pause, "I am You may have to do some mighty nasty things, though, before you get through with this business; but I hope you are equal to them." "What do you refer to?" asked Julian, putting down his knife and fork. "Well, you know, in the first place, you'll have to be a Democrat, and that, you know, is pretty nasty." "Oh, yes; but scarcely any nastier than being a Republican. "Good for you, Jule," cried the old man, with a most unexpected laugh. "I like to see you stick up for your party." "It was rather a mild way of sticking up for it," remarked Julian. "Well, mild or strong, I like it. But that was not what I had in mind. You have got to go down to the convention next week and make a speech accepting the nomination. You have got to put in something about Jeffersonian simplicity, and you've got to go for the Republicans. Point the finger of scorn at the scandals during Grant's administration-Belknap, Robeson, Babcock, and all the rest of them; haul us over the coals for overtaxation, centralization, favoring monopolies, tendency to Cæsarism, and anything else you can think of. If you like, I'll write the speech for you; for, to be frank, Jule, I should be afraid of your putting your foot in it. You know I am an old hand at that sort of composition. I know to a T just where the applause will come in, and I know just how to tickle an American audience. If they are Democrats, Thomas Jefferson will fetch them every time, and Samuel J. Tilden - be sure you bring in his full name, with a stop for applause after each -and Horatio Seymour and all the other venerable mossbacks. Then, I'll give you another first-rate idea. Find out what kind of flattery will be most agreeable to your audience. If they have no virtues at all, or achievements that you can detect, praise their sense of fair play — which, by the way, they have none of―and, above all, their sturdy American common sense; make them feel in their ignorance their superiority to those preposterous persons who have gone through college or been abroad or in any way forfeited their birthright as plain American citizens.' "But then I shall be casting discredit upon myself, governor." "Oh, never mind that. They won't hunt up your record, |