Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/376

 Democrats, and he expressed the conviction that the State would some time be compelled to extirpate this evil by force.

It was very pleasant for Mr. Villard to have the Chancellor bring up the subject of their mutual friend, Carl Schurz. The Prince said that not only his great public career in America, but the personal attractions he discovered in him at their several meetings, excited his admiration. It was a great pity that such a man served a foreign and not his own country. Just that type of man was needed in Germany to supplant the Geheimrat (privy councillor) species which had given him so much trouble. Bismarck said that he could not understand, and it was not easy to explain to him, why such men as Schurz were not kept in public life. He pronounced it a great shortcoming in the American polity that the eligibility of Senators and Representatives was conditioned on their residence in the States and districts they represented. This inevitably tended to develop champions of local instead of national interests, while the privilege the English and German voters enjoyed of electing any of their countrymen otherwise qualified, regardless of residence, insured the election of the elite of the nation to the parliamentary ranks.

At the end of the drive, the Prince retired to his working-room with his secretary to attend to his correspondence until supper-time. After the evening meal, the whole family gathered around him in the spacious sitting-room. He seated himself in a large easy-chair, and was handed one of the old-fashioned long German pipes. It was lighted for him with a paper taper, and from it he sent forth clouds of tobacco-smoke with evident great enjoyment. He sat like a patriarch, listening to the telegraphic news of the morning and evening papers, which was read to him, and he accompanied and followed the reading with free comments on current events. Their frankness, clearness, and pointedness afforded another rich treat to Mr. Villard. The Chancellor's remarks led to no discussion, as he did not