When they were walking over the crisp snow in the woods—now deserted¹, for hotel guests and peasants alike were at the long midday meal—he resumed the subject. Her vivid sympathy and interest had brought back the bitter struggle of the past two years with a rush.

“How I wish you had been with me when we made our graft² fight,” he said, looking at her with fond eager eyes. “What a mate you would have been. When the whole town is howling at a man because he is trying to do the right thing, he needs just such a woman as you to keep the courage in him. The concerted opinion of the majority has an insidious³ power! Sometimes we wondered if we could be right, if we were not all dreamers, unpractical, doing our city more harm than good. The whole country was aghast at our exposures, business was almost dead, capital refused to come our way; the poor old city that had been wrecked⁴ by the most fearful natural calamity⁵ of modern times—$500,000,000 went up in smoke—seemed to cry out against us for holding her down, to beg for a chance to limp out of her bog⁶. But we looked ahead, convinced that there could be no permanent prosperity for San Francisco until the sore was scraped to the bone and sterilized⁷; in other words, until the political scoundrels and the get-rich-quick element, that obtained their crushing franchises⁸ by corrupting⁹ a packed Board of Supervisors¹⁰, and bought everybody, from the boss and the mayor down to the man in the street with a vote to sell, were either

分享到：