The dean was one of those old-world politicians,--we meet them every day, and they are generally pleasant people,--who enjoy the politics of the side to which they belong without any special belief in them.

If pressed hard they will almost own that their so-called convictions are prejudices.

But not for worlds would they be rid of them.

When two or three of them meet together, they are as freemasons, who are bound by a pleasant bond which separates them from the outer world.

They feel among themselves that everything that is being done is bad,--even though that everything is done by their own party.