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But above all--sometimes Archer put it above all--it was in that library that the Governor of New York, coht, had turned to his host, and said, banging his clenched fist on the table and gnashing his eye-glasses: "Hang the professional politician! You're the kind of man the country wants, Archer If the stable's ever to be cleaned out, "

"Men like you--" how Archer had glowed at the phrase! How eagerly he had risen up at the call! It was an echo of Ned Winsett's old appeal to roll his sleeves up and get down into the esture, and whose summons to follow him was irresistible

Archer, as he looked back, was not sure that men like himself WERE what his country needed, at least in the active service to which Theodore Roosevelt had pointed; in fact, there was reason to think it did not, for after a year in the State Assembly he had not been re-elected, and had dropped back thankfully into obscure if usefulof occasional articles in one of the refor to shake the country out of its apathy It was little enough to look back on; but when he reeneration and his set had looked forward--the narrow groove of , sport and society to which their vision had been lis seemed to count, as each brick counts in a well-built wall He had done little in public life; he would always be by nature a contes to contereat th and pride

He had been, in short, what people were beginning to call "a good citizen" In New York, for many years past, every new movement, philanthropic, municipal or artistic, had taken account of his opinion and wanted his name People said: "Ask Archer" when there was a question of starting the first school for crippled children, reorganising the Museu the new Library, or getting up a new society of chamber music His days were full, and they were filled decently He supposed it was all ahe knew he had ht of it now as a thing so unattainable and i because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery There were a hundred million tickets in HIS lottery, and there was only one prize; the chances had been too decidedly against hiht of Ellen Olenska it was abstractly, serenely, as one inary beloved in a book or a picture: she had become the composite vision of all that he had missed That vision, faint and tenuous as it was, had kept hi of other women He had been as called a faithful husband; and when May had suddenly died--carried off by the infectious pneuest child--he had honestly ether had shown hie was a dull duty, as long as it kept the dignity of a duty: lapsing fro about him, he honoured his own past, and ood in the old ways