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 rather dejectedly. "And I'm working too hard. At thankless work. People don't know how to govern themselves, but they revolt against any man who tries* to govern them. You have to do it without letting them know you're doing it. That's what makes our politics so hypocritical."

He may have believed that, or he may not; he was not considering the truth of what he said, but its effect on her. He asked, as if casually, the question to which he had been leading: "Did you read the attack that this man Miller is making on me? 'Wardrobe' Miller."

"Yes, father," she confessed. He never discussed politics with her. She felt—as he intended her to feel—that he was appealing to her for a sympathetic understanding. She did not quite know how to give it. "Well," he said, cheerfully, "Miller's turn will come. He'll satisfy them for a time with this pretense of 'letting the people rule'—with their direct primaries, and their initiative, and their referendum, and all the rest of it. But there has to be a captain to the ship; and as soon as they find out that Miller's the captain they'll mutiny against him, too, and throw him overboard."

"Are they going to defeat you?" she asked, distressed.

"No," he said. "Not this time, I think. But they believe they're going to do it. And the parasites are beginning to desert me already and fasten