ABSTRACT
The other night I sat up late reading one of those books on politics which are regarded as essential to any sort of intellectual respectability. It was a book that might be referred to in the Constitutional Convention at Albany. As I read along I was possessed with two convictions about the author. The first was that he had worn a high hat when he wrote the book; the second, that he had no teeth, which made him a little difficult to understand. And all through that hot and mosquito-ridden night the disintegration of his vocabulary went churning through my head … “social consciousness … sovereign will… electoral duties … national obligations … on moral, economic, political, and social grounds … social consciousness … sovereignty … electoral … social … sovereign… national … sovereign …” Each word was as smooth and hard and round as a billiard-ball, and in the malice of my sleeplessness I saw the toothless but perfectly groomed man in a high hat making patterns of the balls which were handed to him by his butler.
