Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/315

 telling of my troubles. It is rather a troubled life that a mayor leads in one of these turbulent American cities, since so much of his time is taken up by reformers who seem to expect him somehow to do their holy work for them, and yet that is doubtless the business of reformers in this world, and since it is their mission to trouble some one, perhaps it is the business of a mayor to be troubled by them in his vicarious and representative capacity. I should not deny reformers their rights in this respect, or their uses in this world, and I should be the last to question their virtues. John Brown was beyond doubt a strong character and an estimable man, who did a great and heroic work in the world, even if he did do it in opposition to the law, and by the law was killed at last for doing it, but by all accounts he must have been a terrible person to live with, and I have often been glad that I was not mayor of Ossawattomie when he was living and reforming there. I would as soon have had Peter the Hermit for a constituent.

I shall not go quite so far as to admit that our reformers were as strong in character as either of these great models I have mentioned, but they were as persistent, or in combination they were as persistent; when one tired or desisted, another promptly took his place; there were so many that they could spell each other, and work in relays, and thus keep the torch ever alive and brandishing. It was not only the social evil with which they were concerned, but the evil of drink, and the evil of gambling, and the evil of theaters, and the evil of moving pictures,