A Pledge in Mortmain.

was an afternoon in early June. Two men

sat in the wide embrasure of a window of the White House at Washington. On a table near them were a few books and a set of diagrams, to which they now and then referred in the course of their conversation. The sultry summer day was drawing to a close. Long soft shadows stretched across the lawn, out of which brighthued blossoms looked up as if to welcome the coming coolness. The gray walls of the Treasury building took on a yellowish gleam in the light

of the setting sun. The cool evening breeze that came in through the open window was freighted with the scent of honeysuckle that clambered over the trellis below, vexed and thwarted by overmuch effort to compel it to obedience.

One of the men was the President of the United States. The other was a citizen, summoned to his presence by a telegram, which read, "Come on Saturday, when I shall be at leisure." It is treasured now as a priceless memento. They were not strangers. Even in the boyhood of one, their lines had crossed. Afterward they had been fellow-soldiers, divided in rank by a great gulf, yet greeting each other when they met.

When the conflict was over their lives drifted even further apart. One of them had joined the legislative molders of the nation's destiny; the other was hidden in the oblivion of a great national experiment. The one had helped to shape the legislation that was intended to reconstruct, out of the chaos that war had left in its train, a new civilization. The other had watched upon the theater of its operation the resultant effects of this legislation. As a consequence, perhaps, while in purpose and sentiment they had grown nearer to each other, yet in their convic

tions as to policy and methods they had drifted very widely asunder.

The one had been disappointed and chagrined at the failure of measures, which he had heartily supported, to accomplish a tithe of the results he had anticipated. He could not doubt their justice. He could not understand their failure. Had he dared to question the universality of the principles of freedom on which they rested, he might have doubted whether the nation had not gone too far. He did not doubt. He only wondered why good seed planted with blood and tears, "with malice toward none and with charity for all," should yield such meager sheaves of good and such an abundant harvest of evil. He had applied a specific remedy to a certain state of facts. The results had not been in accordance with his expectations. He was seeking earnestly for the malign influence-the immediate extraneous force which had prevented the operation of causes whose efficacy he would not permit himself to doubt.

The other, with less interest perhaps in the success of these specific measures, had been a keen observer of their operation. His lot had been cast among people whose daily lives had

been colored by their influence. To him, the measures from which his companion had hoped so much and in which he could not yet abandon faith had come to seem so crude and ill-digested that, instead of wondering at the evil results which had followed hard upon their adoption, he was amazed that infinitely worse things had not occurred. Casting about to discover the reason, he perceived that the President and his political associates of a previous decade had legislated with only a superficial knowledge of the life they sought to shape, omitting from their consideration some of the most important and difficult elements of the problem they undertook to solve. It was not surprising that they did so. The situation in which they found themselves was a strange one, and only the outer form of the social fabric they sought to rebuild was known to them. They had peopled the conquered territory with an imaginary life so like and yet so unlike the reality that it was not strange that a halfknowledge noted the resemblances and that a fuller intimacy recalled the discrepancies.

The two had met at this time to compare their views upon these questions.

It was not the first time it had been mooted

between them.

Before the Legislator had become the President, the citizen had more than once pressed his own views upon him, urging a consideration of the remedy he proposed. Apparently his insistence was without result. Almost in despair because those who stood at the head of affairs would not listen to what he desired to say, he appealed to a larger audience, and spread his views before the whole people. The popular verdict which he had thus secured had brought his theories again to the attention of the Legislator now become President. They had impressed that officer so deeply that he had given up a considerable portion of his inaugural address to their consideration, and had sought this opportunity for consulting personally with the author.

For more than two hours they had been in close conversation, sometimes walking back and forth in the room, as was the President's frequent custom when deeply interested, sometimes referring to the books and diagrams upon the table, and sometimes sitting by the window; but always pursuing the same theme. The room was full of historic memories, but neither had time to think of them. Now and then a clerk came and held