Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/366

 Cincinnati, from Columbus, from Toledo. The legislature began to make its reluctant concessions; it gave cities, for instance, the right to have street railway franchises referred to the people for approval or rejection. And at last in the great awakening, the state constitution was ultimately amended and cities were given home rule. It was the irony of life that Golden Rule Jones and Tom Johnson could not have lived to see that day!

LXII

A few weeks after my election to a fourth term I wrote out and gave to the reporters a statement in which I said that I would not be again a candidate for the office of mayor. I had been thinking of my old ambition in letters, and of those novels I had planned to write. Already I had been six years in office and I had not written a novel in all that time. And here I was, just entering upon another term. If ever I were to write those novels I would better be about it, before I grew too old and too tired. The politicians, regarding all such statements as but the professional insincerities of their trade, could not consider my decision seriously of course, or credit its intention. They were somewhat like my friends in the literary world, or like some of them at least, who were unable to understand why I should not continue indefinitely to run for mayor, though the politicians were not so innocent and credulous, since they did not believe that I