quotations all his life. Mrs. Bryan tells of the manner in which he asked for her hand. The time having come when it was appropriate that a pointed conversation should take place with her father, the young man began thus:

"Mr. Baird, I have been reading Proverbs a good deal lately, and I find that Solomon says: 'Whoso findeth a wife, findeth a good thing and obtaineth favor of the Lord.""

"Yes," Mary Baird's father replied, "But Paul suggests that while he that marrieth doeth well, he that marrieth not doeth better."

Dismayed only for a brief moment, the aspiring youth rejoined:

"Paul may have said that, but surely Solomon would be the better authority on this point, because Paul never married."

I have no doubt that Mr. Bryan's hold on the people is due in large part to his habitual use of Scriptural illustration. It is ceasing to be true; it has already ceased to be true in Eastern cities; but the people of the United States still know the Bible and are deeply affected by references to it. The East does not understand how great a part the pulpit and the Chautauqua platform play in the West, nor how much Mr. Bryan's influence derives from the fact that he is the best known preacher of righteousness throughout vast sections of the land.

Mr. Bryan is a deeply pious man. He holds family worship daily. He says He says grace at every meal — at dinner his family audibly join in the words of thanks. He has never been heard to use a profane nor an indelicate word, and such is the irradiance of his character that he never hears

He does not, literally, know one card from another. He does not know the taste of liquor nor tobacco. Finally, he gives away, for charitable and religious purposes, more than he keeps for himself and his family. This is out of a chapter which may not be written during Mr. Bryan's lifetime, but the statement is true.

Yet this total abstainer admits that he once proposed to drink wine-under a certain condition. In Japan, at a dinner at which the health of Admiral Togo was being drunk, Mr. Bryan's glass was

His theology is of the old-fashioned variety. "Evolution" to him still means the descent of man from the ape. His batteries are never silent against "the materialist who is endeavoring to drive God out of the universe." He is strong on foreign missions. He is not ashamed to adhere to the religion of miracle, of salvation through the blood of the Saviour, and to preach it in public and private, with the zeal of an apostle.

His philosophy of life is as simple as his theological faith. The world is a great and serious place, but after all, living in it is a perfectly plain matter. Right is right, and wrong is wrong. Choose you this

day whom ye will serve. If the Lord be God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him. To this disciple of the Lord everything is clear thing is clear the path of duty in private life, the assurance of immortality, the problems of the currency, of the tariff, and of international politics. I really suppose Mr. Bryan never had a religious nor a political doubt.

He sees simply sees everything in a definiteness, a distinctness, which to other observers it does not possess sees everything in its idea, its elementary essence, as a Platonist might say. He visualizes like a child or a primitive man: that is a house, and this is a tree; that is Imperialism and this is the Money Power. A word or a phrase possesses no connotations; it holds but a single, unchanging meaning; and, above all, it has its definite moral assessment in the world of things. There is "Wall Street" not a phrase including, to be sure, the idea of great and manifold financial functions, but mainly suggestive of power often opposed to the general welfare; no, nothing like that. "Wall Street," for Mr. Bryan, is as definitely, as vividly, a personification of evil as Apollyon was to Bunyan's hero.

These are the "privileged classes". They stand apart, easily distinguished, from the "masses." See them. Count them. The idea that the masses and the classes pass into each other does not suggest itself. Everywhere, for Mr. Bryan's literal mind, there are great gulfs fixed. He is not influenced, his judgments are not rendered less positive, by any suspicion that things may, after all, be just a little complex. He is detained by no conception of life and history as the resultant of confused and warring currents, involved motives, conflicting duties, unconscious ironies; he is disturbed by no consciousness of the bewildering contradictions of struggle and passion in which the world-travail works itself out. A simple man, all is simple to him.

And does it need to be said how tremendous a power over the people is this faculty of simple vision? No Amiel ever led a people. Too much thought paralyzes in the world of action; only he who sees simply will smite. The simple man is the confident man.

About the time of the announcement of the Administration's attitude toward the Chinese loan, I had an opportunity of chatting with the Secretary of State. It seemed to him that there could be only one possible stand for Democrats to take in the matter; it was wonderful to him that anybody could think the question worth discussing. There were two kinds of people in the world: aristocrats and democrats. There were two theories of government: the aristocratic and the democratic. On the democratic theory of government, there were four reasons which forbade the United States from backing the bankers who wanted to lend money to China. Mr. Bryan ran off the four reasons on his fingers. That was all there was to the Chinese question. It reduced to the simple issue between aristocracy and democracy. He was conscious of no complications, no qualifications, no side considerations. I

It is a rare and priceless quality — simplicity. Perhaps it is an adequate, as well as an unusual, equipment for a Minister of Foreign Affairs.

All this can be said about Mr. Bryan without the slightest suggestion of disparagement. In the presence of the Godlike power which the thousands at Baltimore saw wielded — surely the most magnificent human spectacle this generation has witnessed — what matters it that the orator is not a speculative philosopher? When one is talking of one of the Boanerges or a Chrysostom, it is to pick no flaw in his genius to remark that he is not a connoisseur of mezzotints or a member of the Browning Society. Mr. Bryan could not be what he is and be otherwise than he is; he could not have the power of his sublime simplicity and still be a sophisticated member of genteel, commonplace society. Nature, to make him a Bryan, has miraculously shielded him from the diverting, complicating temptations of culture, as a saint is shielded by divine grace from the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Mr. Bryan is a modern monk.

His literal belief in the Bible, his innocence of artistic culture, his lack of interest in aught but well-approved literature, his indifference to social distinctions — all these things are the other face of that supreme moral simplicity which is the secret of his power over his great army of followers-a power greater, probably, than any other man has ever wielded in the history of our country.

V

Mr. Bryan confesses that he had looked forward with considerable fear to the taking of office. He had not held office for many years. He had lost, if he had ever had, the office habit. He was used to being in the opposition. But he has found it most delightful. He has found it a very great satisfaction to be associated with a man like Mr. Wilson, a man of clear mind, definite thoughts, and precise speech. Mr. Bryan speaks warmly of the delights of the Cabinet meetings, which are conducted in the spirit of the utmost freedom and candor, but where

plussed, the darkey asked a white friend: "Who dat Marse Wilson de Democrats runnin' for President? I had idee old Marse Bryan mos' ginahly run."

"Yes," said Mr. Bryan, "it takes a man a little while to break his old habits and turn around. I was talking the other day with the working force of the Commoner, and I said that they might possibly have noticed some slight change in the policy of the paper. Heretofore, we had been 'agin' the Government, but we had now about concluded to support the Government it seemed to be behaving itself of late, pretty well, on the whole."

Then Mr. Bryan told a story of an editor who had been persuaded to see the light on the subject of the Philippines. He was in great mental distress, as he wished to bring his paper around without stultifying himself. Finally, he achieved a new point of view and immediately sat down and wrote a long editorial which he brought triumphantly to Mr.

MR. BRYAN IN 1883

WHEN HE BEGAN TO PRACTISE LAW IN JACKSONVILLE, ILLINOIS

WHERE MR. BRYAN WAS BORN

THIS HOUSE IN SALEM, ILL., IS LITTLE CHANGED FROM WHAT IT WAS 53 YEARS AGO

Bryan, exclaiming: "How's this for a starter!"

Mr. Bryan's "starter" was the renouncing of the Dollar Diplomacy in the Far East; it is a mistake to credit the President alone with the termination of that policy.

Soon after he had entered on his new office, I asked Mr. Bryan if he felt at home in it. "Your interests," I said, "have appeared to be chiefly in questions of internal policy. Now that you have to deal with questions of external policy, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, do you feel that you are in rather a new field?"

"Not at all," was his reply. And then, characteristically, "The principles upon which foreign questions must be dealt with are precisely the same as those which govern in dealing with internal questions. There are no moral principles applying to groups other than those that apply to individuals. For instance, if you ask me whether I believe in the command, Thou shalt not steal, I answer yes, without asking what the amount involved is. The amount is not material when there is a principle involved."

"Nor is the character of the parties involved, I suppose?"

"Exactly. It does not matter whether they are individuals or governments. And so, I find nothing new in the problems

HIS RESIDENCE IN JACKSONVILLE, ILL.

THE HOUSE IN WHICH HE AND MRS. BRYAN FIRST MADE THEIR HOME

of international relations. The same rules that enable a man to live peaceably with his neighbors can be applied to nations, and they will enable nations to live peaceably with each other."

Hearing Mr. Bryan say it so confidently, with the superb lift of the head and the prophetic fire in his magnificent eye, one believed it for a moment.

"But is that quite an accurate account of the matter?" I did manage to say. "In private life we have courts to which we are forced to go to settle our quarrels. In international life, there are no tribunals before which nations can be haled."

"I was saying that the rules that apply between individuals, applied between nations, would enable them to live in peace. I was speaking of normal conditions. Of course, war cannot be considered a normal condition. (Mr. Bryan showed a slight lack of humor.) I was speaking of normal conditions and relations and of questions that ordinarily come up for consideration; the more perfectly you can apply to international affairs the moral principles that govern individuals, the less likely you are to have war. You do not need any new or different moral code."

The new Secretary of State is not an advocate of international arbitration. "Do you object to it?" I asked him.

"Not at all. I am willing to go as far with arbitration as you can go, but I recognize that you cannot go farther than you can. No matter what you might say about what ought to be done, you have to do what the people are ready to do. You cannot move faster than the people. At this time it is impossible to have arbitration for all questions, and it is impossible to let anybody decide what questions can be submitted to arbitration. That is the trouble with all arbitration treaties; it was the trouble with those the last Administration worked on. You agree to arbitrate everything except questions of national integrity and honor. In the heat of a disagreement every question seems to involve the national honor. Who is going to decide that?"

Mr. Bryan has what he thinks is an original plan for the preservation of peace. As far back as 1905 he proposed it, at a dinner in Tokio, and the following June he laid it before a London conference at which twenty-six nations were represented.