PREFACE.

SEVERAL years since on a serene magnificent June night, under the long hollow massy hall of a dimlylighted dungeon-like barrack, feeling the lethargy of the prison creeping over him, the author turned toward an aperture in the dusky roof just as the moonbeams were falling in silvery showers above the tops of the snow shining mountains. Invoking the gentle deity of dreams, as he watched the cold starry sentinels posted in the dark blue midnight sky, and heard the distant footfalls of the guards, he sank to slumber, but not to sound repose nor softly sweet. As the guest of a Siberian Department of Silence and Surveillance, at the grey dawn of a raw and gusty morning, lowering and scowling over the dark landscape, the author awakened just in time to review Hell in training, and almost to hear the despairing murmurs of the damned before the fire was kindled.

At the moment of his awakening the Hell God of the Czar had commenced to unlock the ponderous jaws of that icy vault of revolt against Tyranny. A letter and permit conducted the author through the dayless gloom of the damp tomb. The last revelation of the hellish sepulcher was a marvelous revealment; one of those completely developed men of noble greatness, cast in a perfect mold of manly

beauty; marked was the presence and majestic the mien of the magnificently slender, pale, and haggard Dian with raven hair, straight nose, and black eyes.

The sunlit presence of an American, so genial and cordial is the spirit of Liberty, instantly warmed to life a heart long and painfully frozen to glacial death. A sympathetic glow of feeling not wholly possible to suppress seemed to lift up and awaken the dormant powers of a vigorous understanding which had long breathed only the icy poison of the sepulture. The genius of this night prison, the eternal spirit of this chainless mind, with the authority naturally and properly belonging to intellectual superiority, had kept its solitary watch even under the Siberian gravemound of Russian Justice.

Suddenly aroused, the carriage of the exile bespoke calm courage and undauntedness. In a cultivated voice, without polite circumlocution, but with an unsurpassed elegance of manner, full of meekness and a cheek-redness of spiritual simplicity and health-breathing charity, the prisoner said he was expiating the crime of a Socialist suspect. "I am not," he continued, "a creature of such unintelligent impulse. They have read history to little purpose who do not perceive that socialism and communism are epidemic diseases usually concomitants of the parasitic era of a lawless ruler. The historical sequence of despotic authority throughout the ages shows that the usurper of the rights of others is the real communist, who first threatens, and, if suffered to go unchecked, sooner or later destroys the bases of society. Even when truth is upon their side

mankind can be slowly acclimated only to new problems; only a fervent desire to know and diffuse knowledge will lead men to investigate social forces. Timeliness under the most liberal forms of government is essential to effect those reformations which add most to the societary wellbeing of both classes. Both are but the children of to-day, and cannot be the men of to-morrow without the antecedent parentage of thought." Just as the author felt he must have some further talk with the erect and intrepid spirit, the austerely inquisitive Deputy Czar, who was afflicted with a superfetation of voluminous paunch, and self-infected elephantine leprosy of soul, after closely inspecting his annotation, coldly motioned the author to move on. Instantly the prisoner's face resumed its heroic firmness, his voice was sonorous and clear, but, as the fettered hand waved farewell, a teardrop glistened upon the uplifted lengthening chain.

It is not strange that the political concepts of this ambassador of Christ, whose finely sculptured form was locked in the iron of Russian despotism, should have left a lifelong impression upon the author.

The reflection that the forces of civilization cramped in dungeons of ignorance, shackled by custom, and gyved by the Cerberus of commercial greed might encounter in America the fate which manacled the Siberian exile, together with the philosophic doctrine of that scientific statesman in regard to the subversion of Justice and disregard to our social compact, suggested to the author

the educational purpose of the Imaginary Dialogue of President McKinley and Senator Hanna.

The intrinsic grandeur of the exile's character, contrasted with the external splendor of President McKinley and Senator Hanna, arrayed in the festal robes of Imperialism and Prosperity, will depreciate the gravity of the discourse only in the estimation of the readers who see the comical aspects of the persona dramatis. The author acknowledges many unsightly errors revealed by print which the manuscript did not discover. Some of the material was collated, but the compilation of the work did not commence until after the adjournment of the Kansas City Convention on July 6, 1900, and sparse opportunity was afforded for revision during the author's illness.

To exorcise the economic skeletons and present more vivid and pleasing images of thought, and in following precedents set by Plato, Sir Christopher North, Walter Savage Landor, and more modern writers, the author

"has dialogued for him what he would say."

At the opening of their conversation the Senator finds the President extremely perplexed, stricken with remorse, and unwilling to agree even to a short armistice with truth. The Senator's inflexible resolution and subtle designs interest and finally overcome the scruples of the President. At the satiric prodding of the Senator the compunctious visitings of the President quickly vanish. The Senator is by no means made to appear a microcism on stilts. He is in fact the shears of Party Destiny. He is not at all ap

prehensive that the overloaded Public Ass may kick off the burdens of the Power-holding Class. His stock of knowledge is so inexhaustible he can masquerade with truth and play the fool with circumspection; he displays his prowess rather in ridicule of his opponents than in pompous discourses-so the end is gained, what signifies the route!— and when he opes his mouth the President is silent. For his naïveté as a politician, conscientious love of Justice, lack of independent volition, and discernment in judging human affairs, the President is reproached by the Senator, who regards him unfit to control a party corrupted by the sordid soul of commercialism. Throughout the discussion the Senator is justly apprehensive of the irresolution and weakness of the President, whom he counsels to be hypercritical, cautious, not what he seems, but always what he sees. The judicious critic may censure as unsuitable the parrot-like speeches of the President and those of his mealy-mouthed mouthpieces, but he is assured they are facsimiles as reported of Jack skyscraper-prosperity and imperial soaring. As to the majesty of Senator Hanna's genius and the demonism of his political orthodoxy, there is no other nor greater evidence than their impress stamped indelibly upon the President and the Republican party.

The forked crest of the Senator, his sarcastic petulance, ruthless logic, and smooth-tongued authority are manifest throughout the consultations. These Napoleons of Tyranny have no sort of competition in their trade of Politics: Each has an equal portion of liberal self-forget