THE PLUM TREE 
 
THE PLUM TREE 
 
 By 
 
 DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS 
 
 /l 
 
 Author of 
 The Cost, Golden Fleece, Etc. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY 
 
 E. M. ASHE 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS 
 
 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
Copyright 1905 
 The Bobbs-Merrill Company 
 
 March 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 BRAUNWORTH & CO. 
 
 BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS 
 
 BROOKLYN, N. Y. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I How IT ALL BEGAN i 
 
 II AT THE COURT OF A SOVEREIGN 17, 
 
 III SAYLER "DRAWS THE LINE" 33 
 
 IV THE SCHOOL OF LIFE-AS-IT-IS 44 
 V A GOOD MAN AND His WOES 68 
 
 VI Miss RAMSAY REVOLTS 78 
 
 VII BYGONES 96 
 
 VIII A CALL FROM "THE PARTY" 107 
 
 IX To THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY 123 
 
 X THE FACE IN THE CROWD 136 
 
 XI BURBANK 144 
 
 XII BURBANK FIRES THE POPULAR HEART 163 
 
 XIII ROEBUCK & Co. PASS UNDER THE YOKE 168 
 
 XIV A " BOOM-FACTORY " 177 
 XV MUTINY 193 
 
 XVI A VICTORY FOR THE PEOPLE 199 
 
 XVII SCARBOROUGH 209 
 
 XVIII A DANGEROUS PAUSE 221 
 
 XIX DAVID SENT OUT AGAINST GOLIATH 224 
 
 XX PILGRIMS AND PATRIOTS 234 
 
 XXI AN INTERLUDE 249 
 
 XXII MOSTLY ABOUT MONEY 261 
 
 XXIII IN WHICH A MOUSE HELPS A LION 271 
 
 XXIV GRANBY INTRUDES AGAIN 282 
 XXV AN HOUR OF EMOTION 292 
 
 XXVI "ONLY AN OLD JOKE" 296 
 
 XXVII A DOMESTIC DISCORD 306 
 
 XXVIII UNDER A CRAYON PORTRAIT 314 
 
 XXIX A LETTER FROM THE DEAD 327 
 
 XXX A PHILOSOPHER RUDELY INTERRUPTED 333 
 
 XXXI HARVEY SAYLER, SWINEHERD 345 
 
 XXXII A GLANCE BEHIND THE MASK OF GRANDEUR 365 
 
 XXXIII A "SPASM OF VIRTUE" 380 
 
 XXXIV "LET Us HELP EACH OTHER" 387 
 
 M22L61 
 
THE PLUM TREE 
 
THE PLUM TREE 
 
 HOW IT ALL BEGAN 
 
 "We can hold out six months longer, at least 
 six months." My mother s tone made the six 
 months stretch encouragingly into six long 
 years. 
 
 I see her now, vividly as if it were only yester 
 day. We were at our scant breakfast, I as blue 
 as was ever even twenty-five, she brave and con 
 fident. And hers was no mere pretense to reas 
 sure me, no cheerless optimism of ignorance, but 
 the through-and-through courage and strength of 
 those who flinch for no bogey that life or death 
 can conjure. Her tone lifted me; I glanced at 
 her, and what shone from her eyes set me on my 
 feet, face to the foe. The table-cloth was darned 
 in many places, but so skilfully that you could 
 
 I 
 
2 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 have looked closely without detecting it. Not a 
 lump of sugar, not a slice of bread, went to waste 
 in that house; yet even I had to think twice to 
 realize that we were poor, desperately poor. She 
 idid not hide our poverty; she beautified it, she 
 dignified it into Spartan simplicity. I know it is 
 not the glamour over the past that makes me be 
 lieve there are no women now like those of the 
 race to which she belonged. A The world, to-day, 
 yields comfort too easily to the capable ; hardship 
 is the only mould for such character, and in those 
 days, in this middle-western country, even the 
 capable were not strangers to hardship. 
 
 "When I was young," she went on, "and 
 things looked black, as they have a habit of look 
 ing to the young and inexperienced," that put 
 in with a teasing smile for me, "I used to say 
 to myself, Well, anyhow, they can t kill me/ 
 And the thought used to cheer me up wonder 
 fully. In fact, it still does." 
 
 I no longer felt hopeless. I began to gnaw my 
 troubles again despair is still. 
 
 "Judge Granby is a dog," said I ; "yes, a dog." 
 
 "Why dog ?" objected my mother. "Why 
 
HOW IT ALL BEGAN 3 
 
 not simply mean man ? I ve never known a dog 
 that could equal a man who set out to be 
 ornery/ " 
 
 "When I think of all the work I ve done for 
 him in these three years " 
 
 "For yourself," she interrupted. "Work you 
 do for others doesn t amount to much unless it s 
 been first and best for yourself." 
 
 "But he was benefited by it, too," I urged, 
 "and has taken life easy, and has had more cli 
 ents and bigger fees than he ever had before. I d 
 like to give him a jolt. I d stop nagging him to 
 put my name in a miserable corner of the glass in 
 his door. I d hang out a big sign of my own over 
 my own office door." 
 
 My mother burst into a radiant smile. "I ve 
 been waiting a year to hear that," she said. 
 
 Thereupon I had a shock of fright inside, 
 for I d never have dared to show fear before my 
 mother. There s nothing else that makes you so 
 brave as living with some one before whom you 
 haven t the courage to let your cowardice show 
 its feather. If we didn t keep each other up to the 
 mark, what a spectacle of fright and flight this 
 
4 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 world-"drama would be! Vanity, the greatest of 
 vices, is also the greatest of virtues, or the source 
 of the greatest virtues which comes to the same 
 thing. 
 
 "When will you do it?" she went on, and then 
 I knew I was in for it, and how well-founded was 
 the suspicion that had been keeping my lips tight- 
 shut upon my dream of independence. 
 
 "I ll I ll think about it," was my answer, in 
 a tone which I hoped she would see was not hesi 
 tating, but reflective; "I mustn t go too far, or 
 too fast." 
 
 "Better go too far and too fast than not go at 
 all," retorted my wise mother. "Once a tortoise 
 beat a hare, once. It never happened again, yet 
 the whole timid world has been talking about it 
 ever since." And she fell into a study from which 
 she roused herself to say, "You d better let me 
 bargain for the office and the furniture, and the 
 big sign." She knew but could not or would 
 not teach me how to get a dollar s worth for a 
 dollar ; would not, I suspect, for she despised par 
 simony, declaring it to be another virtue which is 
 becoming only in a woman. 
 
HOW IT ALL BEGAN 5 
 
 "Of course, when " I began. 
 
 "We ve got to do something in the next six 
 months," she warned. And now she made the six 
 months seem six minutes. 
 
 I had at my tongue s end something about the 
 danger of dragging her down into misfortune; 
 but before speaking I looked at her, and, looking, 
 refrained. To say it to her would have been too 
 absurd, to her who had been left a widow with 
 nothing at all, who had educated me for college, 
 and who had helped me through my first year 
 there, helped me with money, I mean. But for 
 what she gave besides, more, immeasurably more, 
 but for her courage in me and round me and 
 under me, I d never have got my degree or any 
 thing else, I fear. To call that courage help 
 would be like saying the mainspring helps the 
 watch to go. I looked at her. "They can t kill 
 me, can they?" said I, with a laugh which sound 
 ed so brave that it straightway made me brave. 
 
 So it was settled. 
 
 But that was the first step in a fight I can t re 
 member even now without a sinking at the heart. 
 The farmers of Jackson County, of which Pulaski 
 
6 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 was the county seat, found in litigation their chief 
 distraction from the stupefying dullness of farm 
 life in those days of pause, after the Indian and 
 nature had been conquered and before the big 
 world s arteries of thought and action had pene 
 trated. The farmers took eagerly to litigation 
 to save themselves from stagnation. Still, a 
 new lawyer, especially if he was young, had an 
 agonizing time of it convincing their slow, stiff, 
 suspicious natures that he could be trusted in such 
 a crisis as "going to law." 
 
 To make matters worse I fell in love. 
 
 Once it was years afterward, though not 
 many years ago Burbank, at the time governor, 
 was with me, and we were going over the main 
 points for his annual message. One of my sug 
 gestions my orders to all my agents, high and 
 low, have always been sugar-coated as "sugges 
 tions" started a new train of thought in him, 
 and he took pen and paper to fix it before it had 
 a chance to escape. As he wrote, my glance wan 
 dered along the shelves of the book-cases. It 
 paused on the farthest and lowest shelf. I rose 
 
HOW IT ALL BEGAN 7 
 
 and went there, and found my old school-books, 
 those I used when I was in Public School Num 
 ber Three, too near thirty years ago ! 
 
 In the shelf one book stood higher than the 
 others tall and thin and ragged, its covers torn, 
 its pages scribbled, stained and dog-eared. Look 
 ing through that old physical geography was like 
 a first talk with a long-lost friend. It had, in 
 deed, been my old friend. Behind its broad back 
 I had eaten forbidden apples, I had aimed and 
 discharged the blow-gun, I had reveled in blood- 
 and-thunder tales that made the drowsy school 
 room fade before the vast wilderness, the scene 
 of breathless struggles between Indian and set 
 tler, or open into the high seas where pirate, or 
 worse-than-pirate Britisher, struck flag to Amer 
 ican privateer or man-o -war. 
 
 On an impulse shot up from the dustiest depths 
 of memory, I turned the old geography sidewise 
 and examined the edges of the cover. Yes, there 
 was the cache I had made by splitting the paste 
 board with my jack-knife. I thrust in my finger 
 nail ; out came a slip of paper. I glanced at Bur- 
 bank he was still busy. I, somewhat stealth- 
 
8 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 ily, you may imagine, opened the paper and 
 well, my heart beat much more rapidly as I saw 
 in a school-girl scrawl: 
 
 I was no longer master of a state ; I was a boy 
 in school again. I could see her laboring over 
 this game of "friendship, love, indifference, hate." 
 I could see "Redney" Griggs, who sat between 
 her and me, in the row of desks between and 
 parallel to my row and hers, could see him 
 swoop and snatch the paper from her, look at it, 
 grin maliciously, and toss it over to me. I was 
 in grade A, was sixteen, and was beginning to 
 take myself seriously. She was in grade D, was 
 little more than half my age, but looked older, 
 and how sweet and pretty she was! She had 
 black hair, thick and wavy, with little tresses es 
 caping from plaits and ribbons to float about her 
 forehead, ears, and neck. Her skin was darker 
 then, I think, than it is now, but it had the same 
 
HOW IT ALL BEGAN 9 
 
 smoothness and glow, certainly, it could not 
 have had more. 
 
 I think the dart must have struck that day, 
 why else did I keep the bit of paper? But it did 
 not trouble me until the first winter of my launch 
 ing forth as "Harvey Sayler, Attorney and 
 Counselor at Law/ She was the daughter of the 
 Episcopal preacher; and, as every one thought 
 well of the prospects of my mother s son, our 
 courtship was undisturbed. Then, in the spring, 
 when fortune was at its coldest and love at its 
 most feverish, her father accepted a call to a 
 church in Boston, eight hundred miles away. 
 
 To go to see her was impossible; how could 
 the money be spared, fifty dollars, at the least ? 
 Once when they had been gone about four 
 months my mother insisted that I must. But I 
 refused, and I do not know whether it is to my 
 credit or not, for my refusal gave her only pain, 
 whereas the sacrifices she would have had to 
 make, had I gone, would have given her only 
 pleasure. I had no fear that Betty would change 
 in our separation. There are some people you 
 
io THE PLUM TREE 
 
 hope are stanch, and some people you think will 
 be stanch, if , and then there are those, many 
 women and a few men, whom it is impossible to 
 think of as false or even faltering. I did not fully 
 appreciate that quality then, for my memory was 
 not then dotted with the graves of false friend 
 ships and littered with the rubbish of broken 
 promises ; but I did appreciate it enough to build 
 securely upon it. 
 
 Build ? No, that is not the word. There may 
 be those who are stimulated to achievement by 
 being in love, though I doubt it. At any rate, I 
 was not one of them. My love for her absorbed 
 my thoughts, and paralyzed my courage. Of the 
 qualities that have contributed to what success I 
 may have had, I put in the first rank a disposi 
 tion to see the gloomiest side of the future. But 
 it has not helped to make my life happier, invalu 
 able though it has been in preventing misadven 
 ture from catching me napping. 
 
 So another year passed. Then came hard 
 times, real hard times. I had some clients 
 enough to insure mother and myself a living, 
 with the interest on mortgage and note kept 
 
HOW IT ALL BEGAN 11 
 
 down. But my clients were poor, and poor pay, 
 and slow pay. Nobody was doing well but the 
 note-shavers. I How mother fought to keep 
 the front brave and bright! not her front, for 
 that was bright by nature, like the sky beyond 
 the clouds; but our front, my front, the front 
 of our affairs. No one must see that we were 
 pinching, so I must be the most obviously pros 
 perous young lawyer in Pulaski. What that 
 struggle cost her I did not then realize ; no, could 
 not realize until I looked at her face for the last 
 time, looked and turned away and thought on 
 the meaning of the lines and the hollows over 
 which Death had spread his proclamation of eter 
 nal peace. I have heard it said of those mark 
 ings in human faces, "How ugly !" But it seems 
 to me that, to any one with eyes and imagination, 
 line and wrinkle and hollow always have the 
 somber grandeur of tragedy. I remember my 
 mother when her face was smooth and had the 
 shallow beauty that the shallow dote on. But 
 her face whereon was written the story of fear 
 lessness, sacrifice, and love, that is the face beau 
 tiful of my mother for me. 
 
12 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 In the midst of those times of trial, when she 
 had ceased to smile, for she had none of that 
 hypocritical cheerfulness which depresses and is 
 a mere vanity to make silly onlookers cry 
 "Brave!" when there is no true bravery, just 
 when we were at our lowest ebb, came an offer 
 from Bill Dominick to put me into politics. 
 
 I had been interested in politics ever since I 
 was seven years old. I recall distinctly the be 
 ginning : 
 
 On a November afternoon, it must have been 
 November, though I remember that it was sum 
 mer-warm, with all the windows open and many 
 men in the streets in shirt-sleeves, at any rate, I 
 was on my way home from school. As I neared 
 the court-house I saw a crowd in the yard and 
 was reminded that it was election day, and that 
 my father was running for reelection to the state 
 senate; so, I bolted for his law office in the sec 
 ond story of the Masonic Temple, across the 
 street from the court-house. 
 
 He was at the window and was looking at the 
 polling place so intently that he took no notice of 
 me as I stood beside him. I know now why he 
 
HOW IT ALL BEGAN 13 
 
 was absorbed and why his face was stern and 
 sad. I can shut my eyes and see that court-house 
 yard, the long line of men going up to vote, sin 
 gle file, each man calling out his name as he 
 handed in his ballot, and Tom Weedon who 
 shot an escaping prisoner when he was deputy 
 sheriff repeating the name in a loud voice. 
 Each oncoming voter in that curiously regular 
 and compact file was holding out his right arm 
 stiff so that the hand was about a foot clear of 
 the thigh ; and in every one of those thus con 
 spicuous hands was a conspicuous bit of white 
 paper a ballot. As each man reached the poll 
 ing window and gave in his name, he swung 
 that hand round with a stiff-armed, circular mo 
 tion that kept it clear of the body and in full 
 view until the bit of paper disappeared in the slit 
 in the ballot box. 
 
 I wished to ask my father what this strange 
 spectacle meant; but, as I glanced up at him to 
 begin my question, I knew I must not, for I felt 
 that I was seeing something which shocked him 
 so profoundly that he would take me away if I 
 reminded him of my presence. I know now that 
 
14 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 I was witnessing the crude beginnings of the 
 money-machine in politics, the beginnings of 
 the downfall of parties, the beginnings of the 
 overthrow of the people as the political power. 
 Those stiff-armed men were the "floating voters" 
 of that ward of Pulaski. They had been bought 
 up by a rich candidate of the opposition party, 
 which was less scrupulous than our party, then 
 in the flush of devotion to "principles" and led by 
 such old-fashioned men as my father with old- 
 fashioned notions of honor and honesty. Those 
 "floaters" had to keep the ballot in full view from 
 the time they got it of the agent of their pur 
 chaser until they had deposited it beyond the 
 possibility of substitution he must see them "de 
 liver the goods." 
 
 My father was defeated. He saw that, in poli 
 tics, the day of the public servant of public in 
 terests was over, and that the night of the private 
 servant of private interests had begun. He re 
 signed the leadership into the dexterous hands 
 of a politician. Soon afterward he died, mutter 
 ing : "Prosperity has ruined my country !" 
 
 From that election day my interest in politics 
 
HOW IT ALL BEGAN 15 
 
 grew, and but for my mother s bitter prejudice 
 I should have been an active politician, perhaps 
 before I was out of college. 
 
 Pulaski, indeed all that section of my state, 
 was strongly of my party. Therefore Dominick, 
 its local boss, was absolute. At the last county 
 election, four years before the time of which I 
 am writing, there had been a spasmodic attempt 
 to oust him. He had grown so insolent, and had 
 put his prices for political and political-commer 
 cial "favors" to our leading citizens so high, 
 that the "best element" in our party reluctantly 
 broke from its allegiance. To save himself he 
 had been forced to order flagrant cheating on the 
 tally sheets; his ally and fellow conspirator, 
 M Coskrey, the opposition boss, was caught and 
 was indicted by the grand jury. The Reformers 
 made such a stir that Ben Cass, the county prose 
 cutor, though a Dominick man, disobeyed his 
 master and tried and convicted M Coskrey. Of 
 course, following the custom in cases of yielding 
 to pressure from public sentiment, he made the 
 trial-errors necessary to insure reversal in the 
 higher court; and he finally gave Dominick s 
 
16 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 judge the opportunity to quash the indictment. 
 But the boss was relentless, Cass had been 
 disobedient, and had put upon "my friend 
 M Coskrey" the disgrace of making a sorry fig 
 ure in court. "Ben can look to his swell reform 
 friends for a renomination," said he; "he ll not 
 get it from me." 
 
 Thus it came to pass that Dominick s lieuten 
 ant, Buck Fessenden, appeared in my office one 
 afternoon in July, and, after a brief parley, asked 
 me how I d like to be prosecuting attorney of 
 Jackson County. Four thousand a year for four 
 years, and a reelection if I should give satisfac 
 tion; and afterward, the bench or a seat in Con 
 gress! I could pay off everything; I could 
 marry ! 
 
 It was my first distinct vision of the plum tree. 
 To how many thousands of our brightest, most 
 promising young Americans it is shown each 
 year in just such circumstances ! 
 
II 
 
 r AT THE COURT OF A SOVEREIGN 
 
 That evening after supper I went to see Domi- 
 nick. 
 
 In the lower end of Pulaski there was a large 
 beer-garden, known as Dominick s headquarters. 
 He received half the profits in return for making 
 it his loafing-place, the seat of the source of all 
 political honor, preferment and privilege in the 
 third, sixth and seventh congressional districts. 
 I found him enthroned at the end of a long table 
 in the farthest corner of the garden. On one side 
 of him sat James Spencer, judge of the circuit 
 court, "Dominick s judge" ; on the other side 
 Henry De Forest, principal owner of the Pulaski 
 Gas and Street Railway Company. There were 
 several minor celebrities in politics, the law, and 
 business down either side of the table, then Fes- 
 senden, talking with Cowley, our lieutenant gov 
 ernor., As soon as I appeared Fessenden nodded 
 
i8 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 to me, rose, and said to the others generally: 
 "Come on, boys, let s adjourn to the next table. 
 Mr. Dominick wants to talk to this young fel 
 low." 
 
 I knew something of politics, but I was not. 
 prepared to see that distinguished company rise 
 and, with not a shadow of resentment on any 
 man s face, with only a respectful, envious glance 
 at me, who was to deprive them of sunshine for 
 a few minutes, remove themselves and their 
 glasses to another table. When I knew Domi 
 nick better, and other bosses in this republic of 
 ours, I knew that the boss is never above the 
 weaknesses of the monarch class for a rigid and 
 servile court etiquette. My own lack of this 
 weakness has been a mistake which might have 
 been serious had my political power been based 
 upon men. It is a blunder to treat men without 
 self-respect as if they were your equals. They 
 expect to cringe ; if they are not compelled to do 
 so, they are very likely to forget their place. At 
 the court of a boss are seen only those who have 
 lost self-respect and those who never had it. The 
 
AT THE COURT OF A SOVEREIGN ig 
 
 first are the lower though they rank themselves, 
 and are ranked, above the "just naturally low." 
 
 But Dominick was alone, his eternal glass of 
 sarsaparilla before him. He used the left corner 
 of his mouth both for his cigar and for speech. 
 To bid me draw near and seat myself, he had to 
 shift his cigar. When the few words necessary 
 were half-spoken, half-grunted, he rolled his 
 cigar back to the corner which it rarely left. He 
 nodded condescendingly, and, as I took the indi 
 cated chair at his right, gave me a hand that was 
 fat and firm, not unlike the flabby yet tenacious 
 sucker of a moist sea-creature. 
 
 He was a huge, tall man, enormously muscu 
 lar, with a high head like a block, straight in 
 front, behind and on either side ; keen, shifty, pig 
 eyes, pompous cheeks, a raw, wide mouth; slov 
 enly dress, with a big diamond as a collar button 
 and another on his puffy little finger. He was 
 about forty years old, had graduated from black 
 smith too lazy to work into prize-fighter, thence 
 into saloon-keeper. It was as a saloon-keeper that 
 he founded and built his power, made himself the 
 
20 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 , local middleman between our two great political 
 factors, those who buy and break laws and those 
 who aid and abet the lawlessness by selling them 
 selves as voters or as office-holders. 
 \ Dominick had fixed his eyes upon his sarsapa- 
 rilla. He frowned savagely into its pale brown 
 . foam when he realized that I purposed to force 
 him to speak first. His voice was ominously surly 
 as he shifted his cigar to say : "Well, young fel 
 low, what can I do for you?" 
 
 "Mr. Fessenden told me you wanted to see 
 me," said I. 
 
 "He didn t say nothing of the sort," growled 
 Dominick. "I ve knowed Buck seventeen years, 
 and he ain t no liar." 
 
 I flushed and glanced at the distinguished com 
 pany silently waiting to return to the royal pres 
 ence. Surely, if these eminent fellow citizens of 
 mine endured this insulting monarch, I could, 
 I, the youthful, the obscure, the despondent. Said 
 I : "Perhaps I did not express myself quite accu 
 rately. Fessenden told me you were considering 
 making me your candidate for county prosecutor, 
 and suggested that I call and see you." 
 
HE SHIFTED HIS CIGAR TO SAY: " WELL, YOUNG FELLOW, WHAT 
 CAN 1 DO FOR YOU ? " /. 2V 
 
AT THE COURT OF A SOVEREIGN 2i 
 
 Dominick gave a gleam and a grunt like a hog 
 that has been flattered with a rough scratching of 
 its hide. But he answered : "I don t give no 
 nominations. That s the province of the party, 
 young man." 
 
 "But you are the party," was my reply. At 
 the time I was not conscious that I had thus 
 easily dropped down among the hide-scratchers. 
 I assured myself that I was simply stating the 
 truth, and ignored the fact that telling the truth 
 can be the most degrading sycophancy, and the 
 subtlest and for that reason the most shameless, 
 lying. 
 
 "Well, I guess I ve got a little something to 
 say about the party," he conceded. "Us young 
 fellows that are active in politics like to see young 
 fellows pushed to the front. A good many of the 
 boys ain t stuck on Ben Cass, he s too stuck on 
 himself. He s getting out of touch with the com 
 mon people, and is boot-licking in with the swells 
 up town. So, when I heard you wanted the nomi 
 nation for prosecutor, I told Buck to trot you 
 round and let us look you over. Good party 
 man?" 
 
22 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 "Yes and my father and grandfather before 
 
 me." 
 
 "No reform germs in your system ?" 
 
 I laughed I was really amused, such a relief 
 was it to see a gleam of pleasantry in that menac 
 ing mass. "I m no better than my party," said 
 I, "and I don t desert it just because it doesn t 
 happen to do everything according to my no 
 tions." 
 
 "That s right," approved Dominick, falling 
 naturally into the role of political schoolmaster. 
 "There ain t no government without responsibil 
 ity, and there ain t no responsibility without or 
 ganization, and there ain t no organization with 
 out men willing to sink their differences." He 
 paused. 
 
 I looked my admiration, I was most grateful 
 to him for this chance to think him an intellect. 
 Who likes to admit that he bows before a mere 
 brute ? The compulsory courtiers of a despot may 
 possibly and in part tell the truth about him, after 
 they are safe; but was there ever a voluntary 
 courtier whose opinion of his monarch could be 
 believed? The more distinguished the courtier 
 
AT THE COURT OF A SOVEREIGN 23 
 
 the greater his necessity to exaggerate his royal 
 master or mistress to others and to himself. 
 
 Dominick forged on : "Somebody s got to lead, 
 and the leader s got to be obeyed. Otherwise 
 what becomes of the party ? Why, it goes to hell, 
 and we ve got anarchy." 
 
 This was terse, pointed, plausible the stereo 
 typed "machine" argument. I nodded emphati 
 cally. 
 
 "Ben Cass," he proceeded, "believes in disci 
 pline and organization and leadership only when 
 they re to elect him to a fat job. He wants to use 
 the party, but when the party wants service in 
 return, up goes Mr. Cass snout and tail, and off 
 he lopes. He s what I call a cast iron " I shall 
 omit the vigorous phrase wherein he summarized 
 Cass. His vocabulary was not large ; he therefore 
 frequently resorted to the garbage barrel and the 
 muck heap for missiles. 
 
 I showed in my face my scorn for the Cass sort 
 of selfishness and insubordination. "The leader 
 has all the strings in his hand," said I. "He s 
 thexmly one who can judge what must be done. 
 He must be trusted and obeyed." 
 
24 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 "I see you ve got the right stuff in you, young 
 man," said Dominick heartily. "So you want the 
 job?" 
 
 I hesitated, I was thinking of him, of his 
 bestial tyranny, and of my self-respect, unsullied, 
 but also untempted, theretofore. 
 
 He scowled. "Do you, or don t you?" 
 
 "Yes," said I, I was thinking of the debts 
 and mother and Betty. "Yes, indeed ; I d esteem 
 it a great honor, and I d be grateful to you." If 
 I had thrust myself over-head into a sewer I 
 should have felt less vile than I did as my fears 
 and longings uttered those degrading words. 
 
 He grunted. "Well, we ll see. Tell the boys 
 at the other table to come back." He nodded a 
 dismissal and gave me that moist, strong grip 
 again. 
 
 As I went toward the other table each man 
 there had a hand round his glass in readiness for 
 the message of recall. I mentally called the roll 
 wealth, respectability, honor, all on their knees 
 before Dominick, each with his eye upon the 
 branch of the plum tree that bore the kind of 
 fruit he fancied. And I wondered how they felt 
 
AT THE COURT OF A SOVEREIGN 25 
 
 inside, for I was then ignorant of the great 
 foundation truth of practical ethics, that a man s 
 conscience is not the producer but the product of 
 his career. 
 
 Fessenden accompanied me to the door. "The 
 old man s in a hell of a humor to-night," said he. 
 "His wife s caught on to a little game he s been 
 up to, and she s the only human being he s afraid 
 of. She came in here, one night, and led him out 
 by the ear. What a fool a man is to marry when 
 there s a chance of running into a mess like that ! 
 But you made a hit with him. Besides, he needs 
 you. Your family " Buck checked himself, 
 feeling that drink was making him voluble. 
 
 "He s a strong man, isn t he?" said I; "a born 
 leader." 
 
 "Middle-weight champion in his day," replied 
 Fessenden. "He can still knock out anybody in 
 the organization in one round." 
 
 "Good night and, thank you," said I. So I 
 went my way, not elated but utterly depressed, 
 more depressed than when I won the first case in 
 which I knew my client s opponent was in the 
 right and had lost only because I outgeneraled 
 
26 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 his stupid lawyer. I was, like most of the sons 
 and daughters of the vigorous families of the 
 earnest, deeply religious early- West, an idealist 
 by inheritance and by training ; but I suppose any 
 young man, however practical, must feel a shock 
 when he begins those compromises between theo 
 retical and practical right which are part of the 
 daily routine of active life, and without which 
 active life is impossible. 
 
 I had said nothing to my mother, because I did 
 not wish to raise her hopes or her objections. I 
 now decided to be silent until the matter should 
 be settled. The next day but one Fessenden came, 
 bad news in his face. "The old man liked you," 
 he began, "but" 
 
 I had not then learned to control my expres 
 sion. I could not help showing what ruins of 
 lofty castles that ominous "but" dropped upon 
 my head. 
 
 "You ll soon be used to getting it in the neck 
 if you stay in politics," said Fessenden. "There s 
 not much else. But you ain t so bad off as you 
 think. The old man has decided that he can af 
 ford to run one of his reliable hacks for the place. 
 
AT THE COURT OF A SOVEREIGN 27 
 
 He s suddenly found a way of sinking his hooks 
 in the head devil of the Reformers and Ben Cass* 
 chief backer, Singer, you know him, the law- 
 yer." 
 
 Singer was one of the leaders of the state bar 
 and superintendent of our Sunday-school. 
 
 "Dominick has made De Forest give Singer 
 the law business of the Gas and Street Railway 
 Company, so Singer is coming over to us." Buck 
 grinned. "He has found that local interests must 
 be subordinated to the broader interests of the 
 party in state and nation. 
 
 I had been reading in our party s morning pa 
 per what a wise and patriotic move Singer had 
 made in advising the putting off of a Reform 
 campaign, and I had believed in the sincerity of 
 his motive! 
 
 Fessenden echoed my sneer, and went on: 
 "He s a rotten hypocrite ; but then, we can always 
 pull the bung out of these Reform movements 
 that way." 
 
 "You said it isn t as bad for me as it seems," 
 I interrupte^ 
 
 "Oh, yes. You re to be on the ticket. The old 
 
28 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 man s going to send you to the legislature, 
 lower house, of course." 
 
 I did not cheer up. An assemblyman got only 
 a thousand a year. 
 
 "The pay ain t much," confessed Buck, "but 
 there ain t nothing to do except vote according to 
 order. Then there s a great deal to be picked 
 ip on the side, the old man understands that 
 I others have got to live besides him. Salaries in 
 politics don t cut no figure nowadays, anyhow, 
 [t s the chance the place gives for pick-ups." 
 
 "At first I flatly refused, but Buck pointed out 
 that I was foolish to throw away the benefits sure 
 to come through the "old man s" liking for me. 
 "He ll take care of you," he assured me. "He s 
 got you booked for a quick rise." My poverty 
 was so pressing that I had not the courage to re 
 fuse, -the year and a half of ferocious struggle 
 and the longing to marry Betty Crosby had com 
 bined to break my spirit. I believe it is Johnson 
 who says the worst feature of genteel poverty is 
 its power to make one ridiculous. I don t think 
 so. No; its worst feature is its power to make 
 one afraid. 
 
AT THE COURT OF A SOVEREIGN 29 
 
 That night I told my mother of my impending 
 "honors." We were in the dark on our little 
 front porch. She was silent, and presently I 
 thought I heard her suppressing a sigh. "You 
 don t like it, mother?" said I. 
 / "No, Harvey, but I see no light ahead in 
 any other direction, ajad~I-guess~ one should al 
 ways steer toward what light there is." She 
 stood behind my chair, put her hands on my 
 shoulders, and rested her chin lightly on the top 
 of my head. "Besides, I can trust you. What 
 ever direction you take, you re sure to win in the 
 end." 
 
 I was glad it was dark. An hour after I went 
 to bed I heard some one stirring in the house, 
 it seemed to me there was a voice, too. I rose 
 and went into the hall, and so, softly to my moth 
 er s room. Her door was ajar. She was near the 
 window, kneeling there in the moonlight, pray 
 ing for me. 
 
 I had not been long in the legislature before I 
 saw that my position was even more contempti 
 ble than I anticipated. So contemptible, indeed, 
 
30 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 was it that, had I not been away from home and 
 among those as basely situated as myself, it 
 would have been intolerable, a convict infinitely 
 prefers the penitentiary to the chain gang. Then, 
 too, there was consolation in the fact that the 
 people, my fellow citizens, in their stupidity and 
 ignorance about political conditions, did not 
 realize what public office had come to mean. 
 At home they believed what the machine-con 
 trolled newspapers said of me that I was a 
 "manly, independent young man," that I was 
 "making a vigorous stand for what was honest in 
 public affairs," that I was the "honorable and dis 
 tinguished son of an honorable and distinguished 
 father." How often I read those and similar 
 eulogies of young men just starting in public 
 life ! And is it not really amazing that the people 
 believe, that they never say to themselves : "But, 
 if he were actually what he so loudly professes 
 to be, how could he have got public office from a 
 
 I soon gave up trying to fool myself into im 
 agining I was the servant of the people by intro 
 ducing or speaking for petty little popular meas- 
 
AT THE COURT OF A SOVEREIGN 31 
 
 ures. I saw clearly that graft was the backbone, 
 the whole skeleton of legislative business, and 
 that its fleshly cover of pretended public service 
 could be seen only by the blind. I saw, also, that 
 no one in the machine of either party had any 
 real power. The state boss of our party, United 
 States Senator Dunkirk, was a creature and ser 
 vant of corporations. Silliman, the state boss of 
 the opposition party, was the same, but got less 
 for his services because his party was hopelessly 
 in the minority and its machine could be useful 
 only as a sort of supplement and scapegoat. 
 
 With the men at the top, Dunkirk and Silli 
 man, mere lackeys, I saw my own future plainly 
 enough. I saw myself crawling on year after 
 year, crawling one of two roads. Either I 
 should become a political scullion, a wretched 
 party hack, despising myself and despised by 
 those who used me, or I should develop into a 
 lackey s lackey or a plain lackey, lieutenant of a 
 boss or a boss, so-called a derisive name, really, 
 when the only kind of boss-ship open was head 
 political procurer to one or more rich corpora 
 tions or groups of corporations. I felt I should 
 
32 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 probably become a scullion, as I thought I had 
 no taste or instinct for business, and as I was 
 developing some talent for "mixing," and for 
 dispensing "hot air" from the stump. 
 
 I turned these things over and over in my 
 mind with an energy that sprang from shame, 
 from the knowledge of what my mother would 
 think if she knew the truth about her son, and 
 from a realization that I was no nearer marry 
 ing Betty Crosby than before. At last I wrought 
 myself into a sullen fury beneath a calm surface. 
 The lessons in self-restraint and self-hiding I 
 learned in that first of my two years as assembly 
 man have been invaluable. 
 
 When I entered upon my second and last 
 winter, I was outwardly as serene as as a vol 
 cano on the verge of eruption. 
 
Ill 
 
 SAYLER "DRAWS THE LINE" 
 
 In February the railways traversing our state 
 sent to the capitol a bill that had been drawn by 
 our ablest lawyers and reviewed by the craftiest 
 of the great corporation lawyers of New York 
 City. Its purpose, most shrewdly and slyly con 
 cealed, was to exempt the railways from practi 
 cally all taxation. It was so subtly worded that 
 this would be disclosed only when the com 
 panies should be brought to court for refusing 
 to pay their usual share of the taxes. Such meas 
 ures are usually "straddled" through a legisla 
 ture, that is, neither party takes the responsi 
 bility, but the boss of each machine assigns to 
 vote for them all the men whose seats are secure 
 beyond any ordinary assault of public indigna 
 tion. In this case, of the ninety-one members of 
 the lower house, thirty-two were assigned by 
 Dunkirk and seventeen by Silliman to make up a 
 majority with three to spare. 
 
 33 
 
34 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 My boss, Dominick, got wind that Dunkirk 
 and Silliman were cutting an extra melon of un 
 common size. He descended upon the capitol and 
 served notice on Dunkirk that the eleven Domi 
 nick men assigned to vote for the bill would vote 
 against it unless he got seven thousand dollars 
 apiece for them, seventy-seven thousand dol 
 lars.,; Dunkirk needed every one of Dominick s 
 men to make up his portion of the majority; he 
 yielded after trying in vain to reduce the price. 
 All Dominick would say to him on that point, so 
 I heard afterward, was: 
 
 "Every day you put me off, I go up a thousand 
 dollars a head." 
 
 We who were to be voted so profitably for 
 Dunkirk, Silliman, Dominick, and the railroads, 
 learned what was going on, Silliman went on a 
 "tear" and talked too much. Nine of us, not in 
 cluding myself, got together and sent Cassidy, 
 member from the second Jackson County district, 
 to Dominick to plead for a share. I happened to 
 be with him in the Capital City Hotel bar when 
 Cassidy came up, and, hemming and hawing, ex 
 plained how he and his fellow insurgents felt. 
 
SAYLER "DRAWS THE LINE" 35 
 
 Dominick s veins seemed cords straining to 
 bind down a demon struggling to escape. "It s 
 back to the bench you go, Pat Cassidy, back to 
 the bench where I found you," he snarled, with a 
 volley of profanity and sewage. "I don t know 
 nothing about this here bill except that it s for 
 the good of the party. Go back to that gang of 
 damned wharf rats, and tell em, if I hear another 
 squeak, I ll put em where I got em." 
 
 Cassidy shrank away with a furtive glance of 
 envy and hate at me, whom Dominick treated 
 with peculiar consideration, I think it was be 
 cause I was the only man of education and of any 
 pretensions to "family" in official position in 
 his machine. He used to like to class himself and 
 me together as "us gentlemen," in contrast to 
 "them muckers," meaning my colleagues. 
 
 Next day, just before the voting began, Domi 
 nick seated himself at the front of the governor s 
 gallery, the only person in it. I see him now as 
 he looked that day, black and heavy-jawed and 
 scowling, leaning forward with both forearms 
 on the railing, and his big, flat chin resting on 
 
36 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 his upturned, stubby thumbs. He was there to see 
 that each of us, his creatures, dependent abso 
 lutely upon him for our political lives, should 
 vote as he had sold us in block. There was no 
 chance to shirk or even to squirm. As the roll- 
 call proceeded, one after another, seven of us, 
 obeyed that will frowning from the gallery, 
 jumped through the hoop of fire under the quiv 
 ering lash. I was eighth on the roll. 
 
 "Sayler!" How my name echoed through 
 that horrible silence! 
 
 I could not answer. Gradually every face 
 turned toward me, I could see them, could feel 
 them, and, to make bad enough worse, I yielded 
 to an imperious fascination, the fascination of 
 that incarnation of brute-power, power of mus 
 cle and power of will. I turned my eyes upon 
 the amazed, furious eyes of my master. It seemed 
 to me that his lips must give passage to the oaths 
 and filth swelling beneath his chest, and seething 
 behind his eyes. 
 
 "Sayler !" repeated the clerk in a voice that ex 
 ploded within me. 
 
 "No !" I shouted, not in answer to the clerk, 
 
SAYLER "DRAWS THE LINE" 37 
 
 but in denial of that insolent master-to-dog com 
 mand from the beast in the gallery. 
 
 The look in his eyes changed to relief and con 
 temptuous approval. There was a murmur of 
 derision from my fellow members. Then I re 
 membered that a negative was, at that stage of 
 the bill, a vote for it, I had done just the reverse 
 of what I intended. The roll-call went on, and I 
 sat debating with myself. Prudence, inclination, 
 the natural timidity of youth, the utter futility of 
 opposition, fear, above all else, fear, these 
 joined in bidding me let my vote stand as cast. 
 On the other -side stood my notion of self-respect. 
 I felt I must then and there and for ever decide 
 whether I was a thing or a man. Yet, again and 
 again I riad voted for measures just as corrupt, 
 had voted for them with no protest beyond a 
 cynical shrug and a wry look. Every man, even 
 the laxest, if he is to continue to "count as one/ 
 must have a point where he draws the line be 
 yond which he will not go. The liar must have 
 things he will not lie about, the thief things he 
 will not steal, the compromiser things he will not 
 compromise, the practical man in the pulpit, in 
 
38 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 politics, in business, in the professor s chair, or 
 editorial tribune, things he will not sacrifice, what 
 ever the cost. That is "practical honor." I had 
 reached my line of practical honor, my line be 
 tween possible compromise and certain demoral 
 ization. And I realized it. 
 
 When the roll-call ended I rose, and, in a voice 
 that I knew was firm and clear, said : "Mr. 
 Speaker, I voted in the negative by mistake. I 
 wish my vote recorded in the affirmative. I am 
 against the bill." 
 
 Amid a fearful silence I took my seat. With 
 a suddenness that made me leap, a wild and crazy 
 assemblyman, noted as the crank of that session, 
 emitted a fantastic yell of enthusiastic approval. 
 Again there was that silence ; then the tension of 
 the assembly, floor and crowded galleries, burst 
 in a storm of hysterical laughter. 
 
 I wish I could boast how brave I felt as I re 
 versed my vote, how indifferent to that tempest 
 of mockery, and how strong as I went forth to 
 meet my master and hear my death-warrant. But 
 I can t, in honesty, I m only a human being, not 
 a hero, and these are my confessions, not my pro- 
 
SAYLER "DRAWS THE LINE" 39 
 
 fessions. So I must relate that, though the voice 
 that requested the change of vote was calm and 
 courageous, the man behind it was agitated and 
 sick with dread. There may be those who have 
 the absolute courage some men boast, if not 
 directly, then by implication in despising him 
 who shows that he has it not. For myself, I must 
 say that I never made a venture, and my life 
 has been a succession of ventures, often with 
 my whole stake upon the table, I never made a 
 venture that I did not have a sickening sensation 
 at the heart. My courage, if it can be called by 
 so sounding a name, has been in daring to make 
 the throw when every atom of me was shrieking, 
 "You ll lose ! You ll be ruined !" 
 
 I did not see Dominick until after supper. I 
 had nerved myself for a scene, indeed, I had 
 been hoping he would insult me. When one 
 lacks the courage boldly to advance along the 
 perilous course his intelligence counsels, he is 
 lucky if he can and will goad some one into 
 kicking him along it past the point where retreat 
 is possible. Such methods of advance are not 
 dignified, but then, is life dignified? To my sur- 
 
40 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 prise and alarm, Dominick refused to kick me 
 into manhood. He had been paid, and the 
 seventy-seven thousand dollars, in bills of large 
 denomination, were warming his heart from the 
 inner pocket of his waistcoat. So he came up to 
 me, scowling, but friendly. 
 
 "Why didn t you tell me you wanted to be let 
 off, Harvey ?" he said reproachfully. "I d a done 
 it. Now, damn you, you ve put me in a place 
 where I ve got to give you the whip." 
 
 To flush at this expression from Dominick 
 was a hypocritical refinement of sensitiveness. 
 To draw myself up haughtily, to turn on my 
 heel and walk away, that was the silliness of a 
 boy. Still, I am glad I did both those absurd 
 things. When I told my mother how I had 
 ruined myself in politics she began to cry, and 
 tears were not her habit. Then she got my 
 father s picture and kissed it and talked to it 
 about me, just as if he were there with us; and 
 for a time I felt that I was of heroic stature. 
 
 But, as the days passed, with no laurels in the 
 form of cases and fees, and as clients left me 
 through fear of Dominick s power, I shriveled 
 
SAYLER "DRAWS THE LINE" 41 
 
 back to human size, and descended from my ped 
 estal. From the ground-level I began again to 
 look about the matter-of-fact world. 
 
 I saw I was making only a first small pay 
 ment on the heavy price for the right to say 
 no, for the right to be free to break with any man 
 or any enterprise that menaced my self-owner 
 ship. That right I felt I must keep, whatever its 
 cost. Some men can, or think they can, lend 
 their self-ownership and take it back at conve 
 nience ; I knew I was not of them and let none 
 of them judge me. Especially let none judge me 
 who only deludes himself that he owns himself, 
 who has sold himself all his life long for salaries 
 and positions or for wealth, or for the empty 
 reputation of power he wields only on another s 
 sufferance. 
 
 A glance about me was enough to disclose the 
 chief reason why so many men had surrendered 
 the inner citadel of self-respect. InJ;hejcrucial 
 hour, when they had. had..lO- choose .between sub 
 servience and a hard battle with adversity, forth 
 from their hearts had issued a traitor weakness, 
 the feeling of responsibility to wife and children, 
 
42 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 and this traitor had easily delivered them captive 
 to some master or masters. More, or less, than 
 human, it seemed to me, was the courage that 
 could make successful resistance to this traitor, 
 and could strike down and drag down wife and 
 children. "I must give up Elizabeth," I said to 
 myself, "for her own sake as well as for mine. 
 Marry her I must not until I am established se 
 curely in freedom. And when will that be ?" In 
 my mood of darkness and despair, the answer to 
 that question was a relentless, "Never, especially 
 if you are weighted with the sense of obligation 
 to her, of her wasting her youth in waiting for 
 you." 
 
 I wrote her all that was in my mind. "You 
 must forget me," I said, "and I shall forget you 
 for I see that you are not for me." 
 
 The answer came by telegraph "Please don t 
 ever again hurt me in that way." And of the let 
 ter which came two days later I remember clearly 
 this sentence : "If you will not let me go on with 
 you, I will make the journey alone." 
 
 This shook me, but I knew only too well how 
 the bright and beautiful legions of the romantic 
 
SAYLER "DRAWS THE LINE" 43 
 
 and the ideal could be put to flight, could be 
 hurled headlong- into the abyss of oblivion by the 
 phalanxes of fact. 
 
 "I see what I must do," was my answer to her 
 letter. "And I shall do it. Be merciful to me, 
 Elizabeth. Do not tempt me to a worse cow 
 ardice than giving you up. I shall not write 
 again." 
 
 And I did not. Every one of her letters was 
 answered sometimes, I remember, I wrote to 
 her the whole night through, shading my window 
 so that mother could not from her window see 
 the reflection of my lamp s light on the ground 
 and become anxious. But I destroyed those long 
 and often agonized answers. And I can not say 
 whether my heart was the heavier in the months 
 when I was getting her letters, to which I dared 
 not reply, or in those succeeding months when 
 her small, clear handwriting first ceased to greet 
 me from the mail. 
 
IV 
 
 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE-AS-IT-IS 
 
 A day or so after I lost the only case of conse 
 quence I had had in more than a year, Buck 
 Fessenden came into my office, and, after dosing 
 me liberally with those friendly protestations 
 and assurances which please even when they do 
 not convince, said : "I know you won t give me 
 
 , away, Sayler, and I can t stand it any longer to 
 watch you going on this way. Don t you see the 
 
 ;old man s after you hammer and tongs? He ll 
 never let up. You won t get no clients, and, if 
 
 iyjDu dp, you_won t win no cases. 
 
 Those last five wofdsj-spoHn in Buck s most 
 significant manner, revealed what my modesty 
 or, if you prefer, my stupidity had hidden 
 from me. I had known all along that Dominick 
 was keeping away and driving away clients ; but 
 I had not suspected his creatures on the bench. 
 To this day, after all these years of use, only 
 with the greatest reluctance and with a mor- 
 
 44 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE-AS-IT-IS 45 
 
 al uneasiness which would doubtless amuse 
 most political managers, do I send "suggestions" 
 or "intimations" to my men in judicial office 
 and I always do it, and always have done it, in 
 directly. And I feel relieved and grateful when 
 my judges, eager to "serve the party," anticipate 
 me by sending me a reassuring hint. 
 
 I did not let Buck see into my mind. "Non 
 sense!" I pooh-poohed; "I ve no cause to com 
 plain of lack of business; but even if I had, I d 
 not blame Dominick or any one else but myself." 
 Then I gave him a straight but good-humored 
 look. "Drop it, Buck," said I. "What did the 
 old man send you to me for? What does he 
 want?" 
 
 He was too crafty to defend an indefensible 
 position. "I ll admit he did send me," said he 
 with a grin, "but I came on my own account, 
 too. Do you want to make it up with him? 
 You can get back under the plum tree if you ll 
 say the word." 
 
 I could see my mother, as I had seen her two 
 hours before at our poor midday meal, an old, 
 old woman, so broken, so worn ! And all through 
 
46 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 the misery this Dominick had brought upon us. 
 Before I could control myself to speak, Buck 
 burst out, a look of alarm in his face, "Don t 
 say it, Mr. Sayler, I know, I know. I told 
 him it d be no use. Honest, he ain t as bad as you 
 think, he don t know no better, and it s because 
 he liked and still likes you that he wants you 
 back." He leaned across the desk toward me, 
 in his earnestness, and I could not doubt his sin 
 cerity. "Sayler," he went on, "take my advice, 
 get out of the state. You ain t the sort that gives 
 in, and no more is he. You ve got more nerve 
 than any other man I know, bar none, but don t 
 waste it on a fool fight. You know enough about 
 politics to know what you re up against." 
 "Thank you," said I, "but I ll stay on." 
 He gave over trying to persuade me. "I hope," 
 said he, "you ve got a card up your sleeve that 
 the old man don t know about." 
 
 I made some vague reply, and he soon went 
 away. I felt that I had confirmed his belief in 
 my fearlessness. Yet, if he could have looked 
 into my mind, how he would have laughed at 
 his credulity! Probably he would have pitied 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE-AS-IT-IS 47 
 
 me, too, for it is one of the curious facts of hu 
 man nature that men are amazed and even dis 
 gusted whenever they see in others the weak 
 nesses that are universal. I doubt not, many who 
 read these memoirs will be quite honestly Phari 
 saical, thanking Heaven that they are not touched 
 with any of my infirmities. 
 
 It may have been coincidence, though I think 
 not, that, a few days after Fessenden s call, a 
 Reform movement against Dominick appeared 
 upon the surface of Jackson County politics. I 
 thought, at the time, that it was the first streak 
 of the dawn I had been watching for, the awa 
 kening of the sluggish moral sentiment of the 
 rank and file of the voters. I know now that it 
 was merely the result of a quarrel among the 
 corporations that employed Dominick. He had 
 been giving the largest of them, Roebuck s Uni 
 versal Gas and Electric Company, called the 
 Power Trust, more than its proportional share of 
 the privileges and spoils. The others had pro 
 tested in vain, and as a last resort had ordered 
 their lawyers to organize a movement to "purify" 
 Jackson County, Dominick s stronghold. 
 
48 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 I did not then know it, but I got the nomina 
 tion for county prosecutor chiefly because none 
 of the other lawyers, not even those secretly di 
 recting the Reform campaign, was brave enough 
 publicly to provoke the Power Trust. I made a 
 house to house, farm to farm, man to man, can 
 vass. We had the secret ballot, and I was elected. 
 The people rarely fail to respond to that kind of 
 appeal if they are convinced that response can not 
 possibly hurt, and may help, their pockets. And, 
 by the way, those occasional responses, signifi 
 cant neither of morality nor of intelligence, lead 
 political theorists far astray. As if honor or 
 honesty could win other than sporadic and more 
 or less hypocritical homage practical homage, 
 I mean among a people whose permanent ideal 
 is wealth, no matter how got or how used. That 
 is another way of saying that the chief charac 
 teristic of Americans is that we are human 
 and, whatever we may profess, cherish the hu 
 man ideal universal in a world where want is 
 man s wickedest enemy and wealth his most 
 winning friend. But as I was relating, I was 
 elected, and my majority, on the face of the re- 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE-AS-IT-IS 49 
 
 turns, was between ten and eleven hundred. It 
 must actually have been many thousands, for 
 never before had Dominick "doctored" the tally 
 sheets so recklessly. 
 
 Financially I was now on my way to the sur 
 face. I supposed that I had become a political 
 personage also. Was I not in possession of the 
 most powerful office in the county ? I was aston 
 ished that neither Dominick nor any other mem 
 ber of his gang made the slightest effort to con 
 ciliate me between election day and the date of my 
 taking office. I did succeed in forcing from reluc 
 tant grand juries indictments against a few of the 
 most notorious, but least important, members of 
 the gang; and I got one conviction which was 
 reversed on trial-errors by the higher court. 
 
 The truth was that my power had no exist- 
 nce. Dominick still ruled, through the judges 
 and the newspapers. The press was silent when 
 it could not venture to deprecate or to condemn 
 rne. 
 
 But I fought on almost alone. I did not fail 
 to make it clear to the people why I was not suc 
 ceeding, and what a sweep there must be before 
 
50 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 Jackson County could have any real reform. I 
 made an even more vigorous campaign for re 
 election than I had made four years before. 
 The farmers stood by me fairly well, but the 
 town went overwhelmingly against me. Why? 
 Because I was "bad for business" and, if re- 
 elected, would be still worse. The corporations 
 with whose law-breaking I interfered were 
 threatening to remove their plants from Pulaski, 
 that would have meant the departure of thou 
 sands of the merchants best customers, and the 
 destruction of the town s prosperity. I think the 
 election was fairly honest. Dominick s man beat 
 me by about the same majority by which I had 
 been elected. 
 
 "Bad for business!" the most potent of po 
 litical slogans. And it will inevitably result some 
 
 \ day in the concentration of absolute power, polit- 
 j ical and all other kinds, in the hands of the few 
 
 ^ who are strongest and cleverest. For they can 
 1 make the people bitterly regret and speedily re- 
 / pent having tried to correct abuses ; and the peo- 
 
 \_ple, to save their dollars, will sacrifice their liber 
 ty. I doubt if they will, in our time at least, learn 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE-AS-IT-IS 51 
 
 to see far enough to realize that who captures 
 their liberty captures them and, therefore, their 
 dollars too. 
 
 By my defeat in that typical contest I was dis 
 heartened, embittered, and ruined. For, in my 
 enthusiasm and confidence I had gone deeply into 
 debt for the expenses of the Reform campaign. 
 At midnight of election day I descended into the 
 black cave of despair. For three weeks I ex 
 plored it. When I returned to the surface, I was 
 a man, ready to deal with men on the terms of 
 human nature. I had learned my lesson. 
 
 For woman the cost of the attainment of 
 womanhood s maturity is the beautiful, the di 
 vine freshness of girlhood. For man, the cost of 
 the attainment of manhood s full strength and 
 power is equally great, and equally sad, his 
 divine faith in human nature, his divine belief 
 that abstract justice and right and truth rule the 
 world. 
 
 Even now, when life is redeeming some of 
 those large promises to pay which I had long ago 
 given up as hopeless bad debts ; even now, it gives 
 me a wrench to remember the cruelest chapter in 
 
52 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 that bitter lesson. So certain had I been of re 
 election that I had arranged to go to Boston the 
 day after my triumph at the polls. For I knew 
 from friends of the Crosbys in Pulaski that Eliz 
 abeth was still unmarried, was not engaged, and 
 upon that I had built high a romantic hope. 
 
 I made up my mind that mother and I must 
 leave Pulaski, that I must give up the law and 
 must, in Chicago or Cleveland, get something 
 to do that would bring in a living at once. Be 
 fore I found courage to tell her that which 
 would blast hopes wrapped round and rooted in 
 her very heart, and, fortunately, before I had to 
 confess to her the debts I had made, Edward 
 Ramsay threw me a life-line. 
 
 He came bustling into my office one after 
 noon, big and broad, and obviously pleased with 
 himself, and, therefore, with the world. He had 
 hardly changed in the years since we were at 
 Ann Arbor together. He had kept up our friend 
 ship, and had insisted on visiting me several 
 times, though not in the past four years, which 
 had been as busy for him as for me. Latterly his 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE-AS-IT-IS 53 
 
 letters urging me to visit him at their great coun 
 try place, away at the other end of the state, had 
 set me a hard task of inventing excuses. 
 
 "Well, well !" he exclaimed, shaking my hand 
 violently in both his. "You wouldn t come to see 
 me, so I ve come to you." 
 
 I tried not to show the nervousness this an 
 nouncement stirred. "I m afraid you ll find our 
 hospitality rather uncomfortable," was all I said. 
 Mother and I had not spread much sail to our 
 temporary gust of prosperity; and when the 
 storm began to gather, she straightway close- 
 reefed. 
 
 "Thanks, but I can t stop with you this time," 
 said he. "I m making an inspection of the Power 
 Trust s properties, and I ve got mother and sister 
 along. We re living in the private car the com 
 pany gives me for the tour." He went on to tell 
 how, since his father s death, he had been forced 
 into responsibilities, and was, among many other 
 things, a member of the Power Trust s executive 
 committee. 
 
 Soon came the inevitable question, "And how 
 are you getting on?" 
 
54 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 "So so," replied I ; "not too well, just at the 
 present. I was beaten, you know, and have to go 
 back to my practice in January." 
 
 "Wish you lived in my part of the state," said 
 he. "But the Ramsay Company hasn t anything 
 down here." He reflected a moment, then 
 beamed. "I can get you the legal business of the 
 Power Trust if you want it," he said. "Their 
 lawyer down here goes on the bench, you know 
 he was on the ticket that won. Roebuck want 
 ed a good, safe, first-class man on the bench in 
 this circuit." 
 
 But he added nothing more about the Power 
 Trust vacancy at Pulaski. True, my first impulse 
 was that I couldn t and wouldn t accept; also, I 
 told myself it was absurd to imagine they would 
 consider me. Still, I wished to hear, and his fail 
 ure to return to the subject settled once more the 
 clouds his coming had lifted somewhat. 
 
 Mother was not well enough to have the Ram- 
 says at the house that evening, so I dined with 
 them in the car. Mrs. Ramsay was the same sim 
 ple, silent, ill-at-ease person I had first met at 
 the Ann Arbor commencement, probably the 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE-AS-IT-IS 55 
 
 same that she had been ever since her husband s 
 wealth and her children s infection with new 
 fangled ideas had forced her from the plain ways 
 of her youth. I liked her, but I was not so well 
 pleased with her daughter. Carlotta was then 
 twenty-two, had abundant, noticeably nice brown 
 hair, an indifferent skin, pettish lips, and restless 
 eyes, a little too close together, a spoiled wilful 
 young woman, taking to herself the deference 
 that had been paid chiefly to her wealth. She 
 treated me as if I were a candidate for her favor 
 whom she was testing so that she might decide 
 whether she would be graciously pleased to toler 
 ate him. 
 
 Usually, superciliousness has not disturbed 
 me. It is a cheap and harmless pleasure of cheap 
 and harmless people. But just at that time my 
 nerves were out of order, and Miss Ramsay s 
 airs of patronage "got" on me. I proceeded po 
 litely to convey to her the impression that she 
 did not attract me, that I did not think her worth 
 while this, not through artful design of inter 
 esting by piquing, but simply in the hope of 
 rasping upon her as she was rasping upon me. 
 
56 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 When I saw that I had gained my point, I ig 
 nored her. I tried to talk with Ed, then with his 
 mother, but neither would interfere between me 
 and Carlotta. I had to talk to her until she vol 
 untarily lapsed into offended silence. Then Ed, 
 to save the evening from disaster, began dis 
 cussing with me the fate of our class-mates. I 
 saw that Carlotta was studying me curiously, 
 even resentfully, I thought; and she was coldly 
 polite when I said good night. 
 
 She and her mother called on my mother the 
 next morning. "And what a nice girl Miss 
 Ramsay is, so sensible, so intelligent, and so 
 friendly !" said my mother, relating the incidents 
 of the visit in minute detail when I went home 
 at noon. 
 
 "I didn t find her especially friendly," said I. 
 Whereat I saw, or fancied I saw, a smile deep 
 down in her eyes, and it set me to thinking. 
 
 In the afternoon Ed looked in at my office in 
 the court-house to say good-by. "But first, old 
 man, I want to tell you I got that place for you. 
 I thought I had better use the wire. Old Roebuck 
 is delighted, telegraphed me to close the ar- 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE-AS-IT-IS 57 
 
 rangement at once, congratulated me on being 
 able to get you. I knew it d be so. He has his 
 eyes skinned for bright young men, all those 
 big men have. Whenever a fellow, especially a 
 bright young lawyer, shows signs of ability, they 
 scoop him in." 
 
 "I can t believe it," said I, dazed. "I ve been 
 fighting him for four years hard." 
 
 "That s it!" said he. "And don t you fret 
 about its being a case of trying to heap coals of 
 fire on your head. Roebuck don t use the fire- 
 shovel for that sort of thing. He s snapping you 
 up because you ve shown him what you can do. 
 That s the way to get on nowadays, they tell me. 
 Whenever the fellows on top find the chap, espe 
 cially one in public office, who makes it hot for 
 them, they hire him. Good business all around." 
 
 Thus, so suddenly that it giddied me, I was 
 translated from failure to success, from pov 
 erty to affluence, from the most harassing anx 
 iety to ease and security. Two months before I 
 should have rejected the Power Trust s offer 
 with scorn, and should have gloried in my act 
 as proof of superior virtue. But in those crucial 
 
58 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 two months I had been apprentice to the master 
 whom all men that ever come to anything in this 
 world must first serve. I had reformed my line 
 of battle, had adjusted it to the lines laid down 
 in the tactics of Life-as-it-is. 
 
 Before I was able to convince myself that my 
 fortunes had really changed, Ed Ramsay tele 
 graphed me to call on him in Fredonia on busi 
 ness of his own. It proved to be such a trifle that 
 I began to puzzle at his real reason for sending 
 for me. When he spun that trifle out over ten 
 days, on each of which I was alone with Carlotta 
 at least half my waking hours, I thought I had 
 the clue to the mystery. I saw how I could in 
 crease the energy of his new enthusiasm for me, 
 and, also, how I could cool it, if I wished to be 
 rash and foolish and to tempt fate again. 
 
 "Oh, the business didn t amount to much," 
 was my answer to one of my mother s first ques 
 tions, on my return. She smiled peculiarly. In 
 spite of my efforts, the red came at least I felt 
 red. 
 
 "How did you like his sister?" she went on, 
 again with that fluttering smile in the eyes only. 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE-AS-IT-IS 59 
 
 "A very nice girl," said I, in anything but a 
 natural manner. My mother s expression teased 
 me into adding : "Don t be silly. Nothing of that 
 sort. You are always imagining that every one 
 shares your opinion of me. She isn t likely to fall 
 in love with me. Certainly I shan t with her." 
 
 Mother s silence somehow seemed argumenta 
 tive. 
 
 "I couldn t marry a girl for her money," I re 
 torted to it. 
 
 "Of course not," rejoined mother. "But there 
 are other things to marry for besides money, or 
 love, other things more sensible than either. 
 For instance, there are the principal things, 
 home and children." 
 
 I was listening with an open mind. 
 
 "The glamour of courtship and honeymoon 
 passes," she went on. "Then comes the sober 
 business of living, your career and your home. 
 The woman s part in both is better played if 
 there isn t the sort of love that is exacting, al 
 ways interfering with the career, and making the 
 home-life a succession of ups and downs, mostly 
 downs." 
 
60 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 "Carlotta is very ambitious," said I. 
 
 "Ambitious for her husband/ replied my 
 mother, "as a sensible woman should be. She 
 appreciates that a woman s best chance for big 
 dividends in marriage is by being the silent part- 
 ner in her husband s career. She ll be very do 
 mestic when she has children. I saw it the instant 
 I looked at her. She has the true maternal in 
 stinct. What a man who s going to amount to 
 something needs isn t a woman to be taken care 
 of, but a woman to take care of him." 
 
 She said no more, she had made her point; 
 and, when she had done that, she always stopped. 
 
 Within a month Ed Ramsay sent for me again, 
 but this time it was business alone. I found him 
 in a panic, like a man facing an avalanche and 
 armed only with a shovel. Dunkirk, the senior 
 United States senator for our state, lived at Fre- 
 donia. He had seen that, by tunneling the 
 Mesaba Range, a profitable railroad between Fre- 
 donia and Chicago could be built that would 
 shorten the time at least three hours. But it 
 would take away about half the carrying busi 
 ness of the Ramsay Company, besides seriously 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE-AS-IT-IS 61 
 
 depreciating the Ramsay interest in the existing 
 road. "And," continued Ed, "the old scoundrel 
 has got the capital practically subscribed in New 
 York. The people here are hot for the new road. 
 It ll be sure to carry at the special election, next 
 month. He has the governor and legislature 
 in his vest pocket, so they ll put through the char 
 ter next winter." 
 
 "I don t see that anything can be done," said 
 Ed s lawyer, old Judge Barclay, who was at the 
 consultation. "It means a big rake-off for Dun 
 kirk. RoJiticjs^jcm^ 
 
 That s natural enough, since there is money to be 
 made out of it. I don t see how those in politics 
 that don t graft, as they call it, are any better 
 than those that do. Would they get office if they 
 didn t help on the jobs of the grafters? I sup 
 pose we might buy Dunkirk off." 
 
 "What do you think, Harvey?" asked Ed, 
 looking anxiously at me. "We ve got to fight the 
 devil with fire, you know." 
 
 I shook my head. "Buying him off isn t 
 fighting, it s surrender. We must fight him, 
 with fire." 
 
62 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 I let them talk themselves out, and then said, 
 "Well, I ll take it to bed with me. Perhaps 
 something will occur to me that can be worked 
 up into a scheme." 
 
 In fact, I had already thought of a scheme, but 
 before suggesting it I wished to be sure it was as 
 good as it seemed. Also, there was a fundamen 
 tal moral obstacle, the road would be a public 
 benefit ; it ought to be built. That moral problem 
 caused most of my wakefulness that night, simple 
 though the solution was when it finally came. 
 The first thing Ed said to me, as we faced each 
 other alone at breakfast, showed me how well 
 spent those hours were. 
 
 "About this business of the new road," said he. 
 "If I were the only party at interest, I d let Dun 
 kirk go ahead, for it s undoubtedly a good thing 
 from the public standpoint. But I ve got to con 
 sider the interests of all those I m trustee for, 
 the other share-holders in the Ramsay Company 
 and in our other concerns here." 
 
 "Yes," replied I, "but why do you say Dun 
 kirk intends to build the road ? Why do you take 
 that for granted?" 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE-AS-IT-IS 63 
 
 "He s all ready to do it, and it d be a money 
 maker from the start." 
 
 "But/ I went on, "you must assume that he 
 has no intention of building, that he is only mak 
 ing an elaborate bluff. How do you know but 
 that he wants to get this right of way and char 
 ter so that he can blackmail you and your con- 
 i cerns, not merely once, but year after year? 
 } You d gladly pay him several hundred thousand 
 ( a year not to use his charter and right of way, 
 Shouldn t you ?" 
 
 "I never thought of that !" exclaimed Ed. "I 
 believe you re right, Harvey, and you ve taken a 
 weight off my conscience. There s nothing like 
 a good lawyer to make a man see straight. What 
 an infernal hound old Dunkirk is !" 
 
 "And," I went on, "if he should build the road, 
 what would he do with it ? Why, the easiest and 
 biggest source of profit would be to run big ex 
 cursions every Saturday and Sunday, especially 
 Sunday, into Fredonia. He d fill the place every 
 Sunday, from May till November, with roister 
 ing roughs from the slums of Chicago. How d 
 the people like that?" 
 
64 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 "He wouldn t dare/ objected Ramsay, stup 
 idly insisting on leaning backward in his deter 
 mination to stand straight. "He s a religious 
 hypocrite. He d be afraid." 
 
 "As Deacon Dunkirk he wouldn t dare," I re 
 plied. "But as the Chicago and Fredonia Short 
 Line he d dare anything, and nobody would 
 blame him personally. You know how that is." 
 
 Ed was looking at me in dazed admiration. 
 "Then," I went on, "there are the retail mer 
 chants of Fredonia. Has it ever occurred to them, 
 in their excitement in favor of this road, that it ll 
 ruin them? Where will the shopping be done if 
 the women can get to Chicago in two hours and 
 a half?" 
 
 "You re right, you re right!" exclaimed Ed, 
 rising to pace the floor in his agitation. "Bully 
 for you, Harvey ! We ll show the people that the 
 road ll ruin the town morally and financially." 
 
 "But you must come out in favor of it," said 
 I. "We mustn t give Dunkirk the argument that 
 you re fighting it because you d be injured by it. 
 No, you must be hot for the road. Perhaps you 
 might give out that you were considering selling 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE-AS-IT-IS 65 
 
 your property on the lake front to a company that 
 was going to change it into a brewery and huge 
 pleasure park. As the lake s only a few hundred 
 yards wide, with the town along one bank and 
 your place along the other, why, I think that d 
 rouse the people to their peril." 
 
 "That s the kind of fire to fight the devil with," 
 said he, laughing. "I don t think Mister Senator 
 Dunkirk will get the consent of Fredonia." 
 
 "But there s the legislature," said I. 
 
 His face fell. "I m afraid he ll do us in the 
 end, old man." 
 
 I thought not, but I only said, "Well, we ve 
 got until next winter, if we can beat him here." 
 
 Ed insisted that I must stay on and help him at 
 the delicate task of reversing the current of Fre 
 donia sentiment. My share of the work was im 
 portant enough, but, as it was confined entirely 
 to making suggestions, it took little of my time. 
 I had no leisure, however, for there was Carlotta 
 to look after. 
 
 When it was all over and she had told Ed and 
 he had shaken hands with her and had kissed me 
 
66 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 and had otherwise shown the chaotic condition 
 of his mind, and she and I were alone again, she 
 said, "How did it happen ? I don t remember that 
 you really proposed to me. Yet we certainly are 
 engaged." 
 
 "We certainly are," said I, "and that s the es 
 sential point, isn t it?" 
 
 "Yes," she admitted, "but," and she looked 
 mystified. 
 
 "We drifted," I suggested. 
 
 She glanced at me with a smile that was an 
 enigma. "Yes we just drifted. Why do you 
 look at me so queerly?" 
 
 "I was just going to ask you that same ques 
 tion," said I by way of evasion. 
 
 Then we both fell to thinking, and after a long 
 time she roused herself to say, "But we shall be 
 very happy. I am so fond of you. And you are 
 going to be a great man and you do so look it, 
 even if you aren t tall and fair, as I always 
 thought the man I married would be. Don t look 
 at me like that. Your eyes are strange enough 
 when you are smiling; but when you I often 
 wonder what you re so sad about." 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE-AS-IT-IS 67 
 
 "Have you ever seen a grown person s face 
 that wasn t sad in repose?" I asked, eager to shift 
 from the particular to the general. 
 
 "A few idiots or near idiots," she replied with 
 a laugh. Thereafter we talked of the future and 
 let the past sleep in its uncovered coffin. 
 
A GOOD MAN AND HIS WOES 
 
 After Ed and I had carried the Fredonia elec 
 tion against Dunkirk s road, we went fishing with 
 Roebuck in the northern Wisconsin woods. I had 
 two weeks, two uninterrupted weeks, in which to 
 impress myself upon him ; besides, there was Ed, 
 who related in tedious but effective detail, on the 
 slightest provocation, the achievements that had 
 made him my devoted admirer. So, when I went 
 to visit Roebuck, in June, at his house near Chi 
 cago, he was ready to listen to me in the proper 
 spirit. 
 
 I soon drew him on to tell of his troubles with 
 Dunkirk how the Senator was gouging him and 
 every big corporation doing business in the state. 
 "I ve been loyal to the party for forty years," 
 said he bitterly, "yet, if I had been on the other 
 side it couldn t cost me more to do business. I 
 have to pay enough here, heaven knows. But it 
 costs me more in your state, with your man 
 
 68 
 
A GOOD MAN AND HIS WOES 69 
 
 Dunkirk." His white face grew pink with anger. 
 "It s monstrous ! Yet you should have heard him 
 address my Sunday-school scholars at the last an 
 nual outing I gave them. What an evidence of 
 the power of religion it is that such wretches as 
 he pay the tribute of hypocrisy to it !" 
 
 His business and his religion were Roebuck s 
 two absorbing passions, religion rapidly pre 
 dominating as he drew further away from sixty. 
 
 "Why do you endure this blackmailing, Mr. 
 Roebuck?" I asked. "He is growing steadily 
 
 worse." 
 
 /^ "He is certainly more rapacious than he was 
 
 /ten years ago," Roebuck admitted. "Our virtues 
 
 / or our vices, whichever we give the stronger 
 
 hold on us, become more marked as we approach 
 
 I Judgment. When we finally go, we are prepared 
 
 \ for the place that has been prepared for us." 
 
 V "But why do you put up with his impudence?" 
 
 "What can we do ? He has political power and 
 
 is our only protection against the people. They 
 
 f have been inflamed with absurd notions about 
 
 \ their rights. They are filled with envy and sus- 
 
 ^ picion of the rich. They have passed laws to ham- 
 
70 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 per us in developing the country, and want to 
 pass more and worse laws. So we must either 
 go out of business and let the talents God has 
 given us lie idle in a napkin, or pay the Dunkirks 
 to prevent the people from having their ignorant 
 wicked way, and destroying us and themselves. 
 For how would they get work if we didn t pro 
 vide it for them ?" 
 
 ,"A miserable makeshift system," said I, hark 
 ing back to Dunkirk and his blackmailing, for I 
 was not just then in the mood to amuse myself 
 with the contortions of Roebuck s flexible and 
 fantastic "moral sense." 
 
 "I ve been troubled in conscience a great deal, 
 Harvey, a great deal, about the morality of what 
 /we business men are forced to do. I hope indeed 
 I feel that we are justified in protecting our 
 property in the only way open to us. The devil 
 must be fought with fire, you know." 
 
 "How much did Dunkirk rob you of last 
 year?" I asked. 
 
 "Nearly three hundred thousand dollars," he 
 said, and his expression suggested that each dol 
 lar had been separated from him with as great 
 
A GOOD MAN AND HIS WOES 71 
 
 agony as if it had been so much flesh pinched 
 from his body. "There was Dominick, besides, 
 and a lot of infamous strike-bills to be quieted. 
 It cost five hundred thousand dollars in all in 
 your state alone. And we didn t ask a single bit 
 of new legislation. All the money was paid just 
 to escape persecution under those alleged laws! 
 Yet they call this a free country ! When I think 
 of the martyrdom yes, the mental and moral 
 martyrdom, of the men who have made this coun 
 try What are the few millions a man may 
 amass, in compensation for what he has to en 
 dure? Why, Sayler, I ve not the slightest doubt 
 you could find well-meaning, yes, really honest, 
 God-fearing people, who would tell you I am a 
 scoundrel! I have read sermons, delivered from 
 pulpits against me ! Sermons from pulpits!" 
 
 "\ have thought out a plan," said I, after a mo 
 ment s silent and shocked contemplation of this 
 deplorable state of affairs, "a plan to end Dun 
 kirk and cheapen the cost of political business." 
 
 At "cheapen the cost" his big ears twitched as 
 if they had been tickled. 
 
 "You can t expect to get what you need fof 
 
72 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 nothing," I continued, "in the present state of 
 public opinion. But I m sure I could reduce ex 
 penses by half at least half." 
 I had his undivided attention. 
 "It is patently absurd," I went on, "that you 
 who finance politics and keep in funds these fel 
 lows of both machines should let them treat you 
 as if you were their servants. Why don t you 
 put them in their place, servants at servants 
 wages ?" 
 
 "But I ve no time to go into politics, and I 
 don t know anything about it don t want to 
 know. It s a low business, ignorance, corrup 
 tion, filthiness." 
 
 "Take Dunkirk, for example," I pushed on. 
 "Jlis lieutenants and heelers hate him because he 
 doesn t divide squarely. The only factor in his 
 .^jpower is the rank and file of the voters of our 
 \ party. They, I m convinced, are pretty well 
 \aware of his hypocrisy, but it doesn t matter 
 fnuch what they think. They vote lik<e.,shep and 
 accept whatever leaders and candidates our ma 
 chine gives them. They are almost stone-blind in 
 their partizanship and they can always be fooled 
 
A GOOD MAN AND HIS WOES 73 
 
 up to the necessary point. And we can fool them 
 ourselves, if we go about it right, just as well as 
 Dunkirk does it for hire. * 
 
 "But Dunkirk is their man, isn t he?" he sug 
 gested. 
 
 "Any man is their man whom you choose to 
 give them," replied I. "And don t you give them 
 Dunkirk ? He takes the money from the big busi 
 ness interests, and with it hires the men to sit in 
 the legislature and finances the machine through 
 out the state. It takes big money to run a politi 
 cal machine. His power belongs to you people, 
 to a dozen of you, and you can take it away from 
 him; his popularity belongs to the party, and it 
 would cheer just as loudly for any other man who 
 wore the party uniform." 
 
 "I see," he said reflectively; "the machine rules 
 the party, and money rules the machine, and 
 we supply the money and don t get the benefit. 
 It s as if I let my wife or one of my employes 
 run my property." 
 
 "Much like that," I answered. "Now, why 
 shouldn t you finance the machine directly and do 
 away with Dunkirk, who takes as his own wages 
 
74 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 about half what you give him? He takes it and 
 wastes it in stock speculations, gambling with 
 your hard-earned wealth, gambling it away cheer 
 fully, because he feels that you people will always 
 give him more." 
 
 "What do you propose?" he asked; and I could 
 see that *his acute business mind was ready to 
 pounce upon my scheme and search it hopefully 
 if mercilessly. 
 
 "A secret, absolutely secret, combine of a dozen 
 of the big corporations of my state, those .that 
 make the bulk of the political business, the com 
 bine to be under the management of some man 
 whom they trust and whose interests are business, 
 not political." 
 
 "He would have enormous power," said Roe 
 buck. 
 
 I knew that he would point first and straight 
 at that phase of my scheme, no matter how sub 
 tly I might disguise it. So I had pushed it into 
 his face and had all but pointed at it myself so that 
 I might explain it away. "Power ?" said I. "How 
 do you make that out ? Any member of the com 
 bine that is dissatisfied can withdraw at any time 
 
A GOOD MAN AND HIS WOES 75 
 
 and go back to the old way of doing- business. Be 
 sides, the manager won t dare appear in it at all, 
 he ll have to hide himself from the people and 
 from the politicians, behind some popular figure 
 head. There s another advantage that mustn t be 
 overlooked. Dunkirk and these other demagogues 
 who bleed you are inflaming public sentiment 
 more and more against you big corporations, 
 that s their way of frightening you into yielding 
 to their demands. Under the new plan their 
 demagoguery would cease. ,Ikiiilt-^QU_think it s 
 high timp^Jnr th_lparlfrs nf commerce and in 
 dustry to combine_inteilig.erilly- - -against dema 
 goguery ? Don t you think they have cringed be 
 fore it, and have financed and fostered it too 
 long?" 
 
 This argument, which I had reserved for the 
 last, had all the effect I anticipated. He sat rub 
 bing his broad, bald forehead, twisting his white 
 whiskers and muttering to himself. Presently he 
 asked, "When are you and Lottie Ramsay going 
 to be married?" 
 
 "In the fall," said I. "In about three months." 
 "Well, we ll talk this over again after you 
 
76 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 are married and settled. If you had the substan 
 tial interests to give you the steadiness and bal 
 last, I think you d be the very man for your 
 scheme. Yes, something some such thing as 
 you suggest must be done to stop the poisoning 
 of public opinion against the country s best and 
 strongest men. The political jdep_artment_ of the 
 business interests ought to be as thoroughly or 
 ganized as the other departments are. . Come to 
 me again after you re married." 
 
 I saw that his mind was fixed, that he would 
 be unable to trust me until I was of his class, of 
 the aristocracy of corpulent corporate persons. I 
 went away much downcast ; but, two weeks after 
 ward he telegraphed for me, and when I came he 
 at once brought up the subject of the combine. 
 
 "Go ahead with it," he said. "I ve been think 
 ing it over and talking it over. We shall need 
 only nine others besides myself and you. You 
 represent the Ramsay interest." 
 
 He equipped me with the necessary letters of 
 introduction and sent me forth on a tour of my 
 state. When it was ended, my "combine" was 
 formed. And / was the combine, was master of 
 
A GOOD MAN AND HIS WOES 7? 
 
 this political blind pool. I had taken the first, the 
 hardest step, toward the realization of my dream 
 of real political power, to become an unbossed 
 boss, not the agent and servant of Plutocracy or 
 Partizanship, but using both to further my own 
 purposes and plans. 
 
 I had thus laid out for myself the difficult feat 
 of controlling two fiery steeds. Difficult, but not 
 impossible, if I should develop skill as a driver 
 for the skilful driver has a hand so light that his 
 horses fancy they are going their own road at 
 their own gait. 
 
VI 
 
 MISS RAMSAY REVOLTS 
 
 The last remark Roebuck had made to me 
 on his doorstep, as I was starting on my mission 
 was : "Can t you and Lottie hurry up that mar 
 riage of yours ? You ought to get it over and out 
 of the way." When I returned home with my 
 mission accomplished, the first remark my mother 
 made after our greeting was: "Harvey, I wish 
 you and Lottie were going to marry a little 
 sooner." 
 
 A note in her voice made me look swiftly at 
 her, and then, without a word, I was on my knees, 
 my face in her lap and she stroking my head. "I 
 feel that I m going to to your father, dear," she 
 said. 
 
 I heard and I thought I realized ; but I did not. 
 Who, feeling upon him the living hand of love, 
 was ever able to imagine that hand other than 
 alive? But her look of illness, of utter exhaus 
 tion, that I understood and suffered for. "You 
 
 78 
 
MISS RAMSAY REVOLTS 79 
 
 must rest," said I; "you must sit quiet and be 
 waited on until you are strong again." 
 
 "Yes, I will rest," she answered, "as soon as 
 my boy is settled." 
 
 That very day I wrote Carlotta telling her 
 about mother s health and asking her to change 
 the date of our wedding to the first week in Au 
 gust, then just under a month away. She tele 
 graphed me to come and talk it over. 
 
 She was at the station in her phaeton to meet 
 me. We had not driven far before I felt and saw 
 that she was intensely irritated against me. As I 
 unburdened my mind of my anxieties about 
 mother, she listened coldly. And I had to wait a 
 long time before I got her answer, in a strained 
 voice and with averted eyes: "Of course, I m 
 sorry your mother isn t well, but I can t get ready 
 that soon." 
 
 It was not her words that exasperated me ; the 
 lightning of speech from the storm-clouds of 
 anger tends to clear the air. It was her expres 
 sion. 
 
 Never have I known any one who could con 
 centrate into brows and eyes and chin and lips 
 
8o THE PLUM TREE 
 
 more of that sullen and aggressive obstinacy 
 which is the climax of provocativeness. Pa 
 tience, in thought at least, with refusal has not 
 been one of my virtues. This refusal of hers, this 
 denial of happiness to one who had deserved so 
 much and had received so little, set temper to 
 working in me like a quick poison. But I was 
 silent, not so much from prudence as from ina 
 bility to find adequate words. 
 
 "I can t do it," repeated Carlotta, "and I 
 won t." She made it clear that she meant the 
 "won t," that she was bent upon a quarrel. 
 
 But in my struggle to train those stanchest of 
 servants and maddest of masters, the passions, I 
 had got at least far enough always to choose both 
 the time and the ground of a quarrel. So I said : 
 "Very well, Carlotta. Then, that is settled." And 
 with an air sufficiently deceptive to pass muster 
 before angry eyes, I proceeded to talk of indiffer 
 ent matters. 
 
 As I sat beside her, my temper glowering in 
 the straining leash, I revolved her conduct and 
 tried to puzzle out its meaning. It is clear, 
 thought I, that she does not care for me as people 
 
MISS RAMSAY REVOLTS 81 
 
 about to marry usually profess to care. Then, 
 does she wish to break the engagement ? 
 
 That tamed my anger instantly. 
 
 Yes, I thought on, she wishes to be free to 
 free me. And, as my combine is formed and my 
 career well advanced in the way to being estab 
 lished, what reason is there for trying to prevent 
 her from freeing herself ? None for I can easily 
 explain the situation to mother. "Yes," I con 
 cluded, "you can avoid a quarrel, can remain 
 friends with Carlotta, can give and get freedom." 
 What had changed her? I did not know; I did 
 not waste time in puzzling ; I did not tempt fate 
 by asking. "You are poor, she is rich," I remind 
 ed myself. "That makes it impossible for you 
 to hesitate. You must give her no excuse for 
 thinking you lack pride." 
 
 Thus I reasoned and planned, my temper back 
 in its kennel and peaceful as a sheep. That even 
 ing I avoided being alone with her; just as I was 
 debating how to announce that I must be leaving 
 by the first train in the morning a telegram came 
 from Roebuck calling me to Chicago at once. 
 When we were all going to bed, I said to Mrs, 
 
82 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 Ramsay : "I shall see you and Ed in the morning, 
 but" to Carlotta "you don t get up so early. 
 I ll say good-by now," this in the friendliest 
 possible way. 
 
 I was conscious of Mrs. Ramsay s look of won 
 der and anxiety ; of Ed s wild stare from Carlotta 
 to me and back again at her. She bit her lip and 
 her voice was unsteady as she said : "Oh, no, 
 Harvey. I ll be up." There was a certain meek 
 ness in her tone which would probably have de 
 lighted me had I been what is usually called 
 "masterful." 
 
 When I came down at seven o clock after an 
 unquiet night, Carlotta was lying in wait for me, 
 took me into the parlor and shut the door. "What 
 do you mean?" she demanded, facing me with 
 something of her wonted imperiousness. 
 
 "Mean?" said I, for once feeling no resentment 
 at her manner. 
 
 "By leaving this way," she explained with 
 impatience. 
 
 "You heard Mr. Roebuck s telegram," said I. 
 
 "You are angry with me," she persisted. 
 
 "No, Carlotta," said I. "I was, but I am not. 
 
MISS RAMSAY REVOLTS 83 
 
 As soon as I saw what you wished, I was grate 
 ful, not angry." 
 
 "What did I wish?" 
 
 "To let me know as gently and kindly as you 
 could that you purposed to end our engagement. 
 And I guess you are right. We do not seem to 
 care for each other as we ought if we " 
 
 "You misunderstood me," she said, pale and 
 with flashing eyes, and in such a struggle with 
 her emotions that she could say no more. 
 
 If I had not seen that only her pride and her 
 vanity were engaged in the struggle, and her 
 heart not at all, I think I should have abandoned 
 my comfortable self-deception that my own pride 
 forbade discussion with her. As it was, I was able 
 to say: "Don t try to spare me, Carlotta, I m 
 glad you had the courage and the good sense not 
 to let us both drift into irrevocable folly. I thank 
 you." I opened the door into the hall. "Let us 
 talk no more about it. We could say to each other 
 only the things that sting or the things that stab. 
 Let us be friends. You must give me your friend 
 ship, at least." I took her hand. 
 
 She looked strangely at me. "You want me 
 
84 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 to humble myself, to crawl at your feet and beg 
 your pardon," said she between her teeth. "But 
 I shan t." She snatched away her hand and threw 
 back her head. 
 
 "I wish nothing but what is best for us both," 
 said I. "But let us not talk of it now when 
 neither of us is calm." 
 
 "You don t care for me!" she cried. 
 
 "Do you love me?" I rejoined. 
 
 Her eyes shifted. I waited for her reply and, 
 when it did not come, I said: "Let us go to 
 breakfast." 
 
 "I ll not go in just now," she answered, in a 
 quiet tone, a sudden and strange shift from that 
 of the moment before. And she let me take her 
 hand, echoed my good-by, and made no further 
 attempt to detain me. 
 
 That was a gloomy breakfast despite my ef 
 forts to make my own seeming of good-humor 
 permeate to the others. Mrs. Ramsay hid a som 
 ber face behind the coffee-urn; Ed ate furiously, 
 noisily, choking every now and then. He drove 
 me to the station; his whole body was probably 
 as damp from his emotions as were his eyes and 
 
MISS RAMSAY REVOLTS 85 
 
 his big friendly hand. The train got under way; 
 I drew a long breath. I was free. 
 
 But somehow freedom did not taste as I had 
 anticipated. Though I reminded myself that I 
 had acted as any man with pride and self-respect 
 would have acted in such delicate circumstances, 
 and though I knew that Carlotta was no more in 
 love with me than I was with her, this end to our 
 engagement seemed even more humiliating to me 
 than its beginning had seemed. It was one more 
 instance of that wretched fatality which has pur 
 sued me through life, which has made every one 
 of my triumphs come to me in mourning robes 
 and with a gruesome face. In the glittering array 
 of "prizes" that tempts man to make a beast and 
 a fool of himself in the gladiatorial show called 
 Life, the sorriest, the most ironic, is the grand 
 prize, Victory. 
 
 The parlor car was crowded ; its only untaken 
 seat was in the smoking compartment, which 
 had four other occupants, deep in a game of 
 poker. Three of them were types of common 
 place, prosperous Americans; the fourth could 
 
86 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 not be so easily classed and, therefore, interested 
 me especially as I was in the mood to welcome 
 anything that would crowd to the background my 
 far from agreeable thoughts. 
 
 The others called him "Doc," or Woodruff. 
 As they played, they drank from flasks produced 
 by each in turn. Doc drank with the others, and 
 deeper than any of them. They talked more and 
 more, he less and less, until finally he interrupted 
 their noisy volubility only when the game com 
 pelled. I saw that he was one of those rare men 
 upon whom amiable conversation or liquor or 
 any other relaxing force has the reverse of the 
 usual effect. Instead of relaxing, he drew him 
 self together and concentrated more obstinately 
 upon his game. Luck, so far as the cards con 
 trolled it, was rather against him, and the other 
 three players took turns at audacious and by no 
 means unskilful play. I was soon admiring the 
 way he "sized up" and met each in turn. Pru 
 dence did not make him timid. He advanced and 
 retreated, "bluffed" and held aloof, with acute- 
 ness and daring. 
 
 At a station perhaps fifty miles from Chicago, 
 
MISS RAMSAY REVOLTS 87 
 
 the other three left, and Doc had four hundred- 
 odd dollars of their money. 
 
 I dropped into the seat opposite him it was 
 by the window and amused myself watching 
 him, while waiting for a chance to talk with him ; 
 for I saw that he was a superior person, and, in 
 those days, when I was inconspicuous and so was 
 not compelled constantly to be on guard, I never 
 missed a chance to benefit by such exchanges of 
 ideas. 
 
 He was apparently about forty years old, to 
 strike a balance between the youth of eyes, mouth, 
 and contour, and the age of deep lines and gray 
 ish, thinning hair. He had large, frank, blue eyes, 
 a large nose, a strong forehead and chin, a grossly 
 self-indulgent mouth, there was the weakness, 
 there, as usual ! Evidently, the strength his mind 
 and character gave him went in pandering to 
 physical appetites. In confirmation of this, there 
 were two curious marks on him, a nick in the 
 rim of his left ear, a souvenir of a bullet or a 
 knife, and a scar just under the edge of his chin 
 to the right. When he compressed his lips, this 
 scar, not especially noticeable at other times, 
 
88 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 lifted up into his face, became of a sickly, bluish 
 white, and transformed a careless, good-humored 
 cynic into a man of danger, of terror. 
 
 His reverie began, as I gathered from his un 
 guarded face, in cynical amusement, probably 
 at his triumph over his friends. It passed on to 
 still more agreeable things, something in the 
 expression of the mouth suggested thoughts of 
 how he was going to enjoy himself as he "blew 
 in" his winnings. Then his features shadowed, 
 darkened, and I had my first view of the scar ter 
 rible. He shook his big head and big shoulders, 
 roused himself, made ready to take a drink, no 
 ticed me, and said, "Won t you join me?" His 
 look was most engaging. 
 
 I accepted and we were soon sociable, each tak 
 ing an instinctive liking to the other. We talked 
 of the business situation, of the news in the pa 
 pers, and then of political affairs. Each of us saw 
 that there he was at the other s keenest interest in 
 life. He knew the game, practical politics as dis 
 tinguished from the politics talked by and to the 
 public. But he evaded, without seeming to do so, 
 all the ingenious traps I laid for drawing from 
 
MISS RAMSAY REVOLTS 89 
 
 him some admission that would give me a clue to 
 where he "fitted in." I learned no more about 
 him than I thought he learned about me. 
 
 "I hope we shall meet again," said I cordially, 
 as we parted at the cab-stand. 
 
 "Thank you," he answered, and afterward I 
 remembered the faint smile in his eyes. 
 
 I, of course, knew that Roebuck was greatly 
 interested in my project for putting political busi 
 ness on a business basis ; but not until he had ex 
 plained why he sent for me did I see how it 
 had fascinated and absorbed his mind. "You 
 showed me," he began, "that you must have un 
 der you a practical man to handle the money and 
 do the arranging with the heelers and all that 
 sort of thing." 
 
 "Yes," said I; "it s a vital part of the plan, 
 We must find a man who is perfectly trustworthy 
 and discreet. Necessarily he ll know or suspect 
 something not much, but still something of 
 the inside workings of the combine." 
 
 "Well, I ve found him," went on Roebuck, in 
 a triumphant tone. "He s a godless person, with 
 no character to lose, and no conception of what 
 
go THE PLUM TREE 
 
 character means. But he s straight as a string. 
 Providence seems to have provided such men for 
 just such situations as these, where the devil 
 must be fought with fire. I ve been testing him 
 for nearly fifteen years. But you can judge for 
 yourself." 
 
 I was the reverse of pleased. It was not in my 
 calculations to have a creature of Roebuck s 
 foisted upon me, perhaps indeed, probably a 
 spy. I purposed to choose my own man; and I 
 decided while he was talking, that I would accept 
 the Roebuck selection only to drop him on some 
 plausible pretext before we began operations. I 
 was to meet the man at dinner, Roebuck had 
 engaged a suite at the Auditorium. "It wouldn t 
 do to have him at my house or club," said he; 
 "neither do we want to be seen with him." 
 
 Coincidence is so familiar a part of the daily 
 routine that I was not much surprised when my 
 acquaintance, the astute poker player with the 
 scar, walked in upon us at the Auditorium. But 
 Roebuck was both astonished and chagrined 
 when we shook hands and greeted each other like 
 old friends. 
 
MISS RAMSAY REVOLTS 91 
 
 "How do you do, Mr. Sayler?" said Woodruff. 
 
 "Glad to see you, Doctor Woodruff," I replied. 
 "Then you knew me all the time? Why didn t 
 you speak out? We might have had an hour s 
 business talk in the train." 
 
 "If I d shown myself as leaky as all that, I 
 guess there d have been no business to talk 
 about," he replied. "Anyhow, I didn t know you 
 till you took out your watch with the monogram 
 on the back, just as we were pulling in. Then I 
 remembered where I d seen your face before. I 
 was up at your state house the day that you threw 
 old Dominick down. That s been a good many 
 years ago." 
 
 That chance, easy, smoking-compartment meet 
 ing, at which each had studied the other dispas 
 sionately, was most fortunate for us both. 
 
 The relation that was to exist between us 
 more, much more, than that of mere employer 
 and employe made fidelity, personal fidelity, * 
 imperative; and accident had laid the foundation 
 for the mutual attachment without which there is 
 certain to be, sooner or later, suspicion on both 
 sides, and cause for it. 
 
92 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 The two hours and a half with Woodruff, at 
 and after dinner, served to reinforce my first im 
 pression. I saw that he was a thorough man of 
 the world, that he knew politics from end to end, 
 and that he understood the main weaknesses of 
 human nature and how to play upon them for the 
 advantage of his employers and for his own huge 
 amusement. He gave a small exhibition of that 
 skill at the expense of Roebuck. He appreciated 
 that Roebuck was one of those unconscious 
 hypocrites who put conscience out of court in 
 advance by assuming that whatever they wish 
 to do is right or they could not wish to do it. He 
 led Roebuck on to show off this peculiarity of his, 
 a jumbling, often in the same breath, of the 
 most sonorous piety and the most shameless 
 business perfidy. All the time Woodruff s face 
 was perfectly grave, there are some men who 
 refuse to waste any of their internal enjoyment 
 in external show. 
 
 Before he left us I arranged to meet him the 
 next morning for the settlement of the details of 
 his employment. When Roebuck and I were 
 
MISS RAMSAY REVOLTS 93 
 
 alone, I said: "What do you know about him? 
 Who is he?" 
 
 "He comes of a good family here in Chicago, 
 one of the best. Perhaps you recall the Bow- 
 ker murder?" 
 
 "Vaguely," I answered. 
 
 "It was Woodruff who did it. We had a hard 
 time getting him off. Bowker and Woodruff s 
 younger brother were playing cards one day, 
 and Bowker accused him of cheating. Young 
 Woodruff drew, perhaps they both drew at the 
 same time. At any rate, Bowker shot first and 
 killed his man, he got off on the plea of self-de 
 fense. It was two years before Bowker and Doc 
 met, in the lobby of the Palmer House, I hap 
 pened to be there. I was talking to a friend when 
 suddenly I felt as if something awful was about 
 to happen. I started up, and saw Bowker just 
 rising from a table at the far end of the room. I 
 shan t ever forget his look, like a bird charmed 
 by a snake. His lips were ajar and wrinkled as 
 if his blood had fled away inside of him, and his 
 throat was expanding and contracting." 
 
94 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 Roebuck wiped beads of sweat from his fore 
 head. "It was Doc Woodruff walking slowly 
 toward him, with a wicked smile on his face, and 
 that scar you noticed the scar?" 
 
 I nodded. 
 
 "Well, you can imagine how that scar stood 
 out. He came slowly on, nobody able to move a 
 muscle to stop him. When he was about ten feet 
 from Bowker and as near me as you are now, 
 Bowker gave a kind of shudder and scream of 
 fright, drew his pistol, and fired. The bullet 
 clipped Woodruff s ear. Quick as that " Roe 
 buck snapped his fingers "Doc drew, and sent 
 a bullet into his heart. He fell forward across the 
 table and his pistol crashed on the marble floor. 
 Doc looked at him, gave a cold sort of laugh, 
 like a jeer and a curse, and walked out into the 
 street. When he met a policeman he said, Tve 
 killed Dick Bowker. Here s my gun. Lock me 
 up perfectly cool, just as he talked to us to 
 night." 
 
 "And you got him off?" 
 
 "Yes. I hated to do it, too, for Dick was one 
 
MISS RAMSAY REVOLTS 95 
 
 of my best friends. But Doc was too useful to 
 us. In his line he s without an equal." 
 
 "How did he get that scar?" said I. 
 
 "Nobody knows. He left here when he was a 
 boy, to avoid being sent to the reformatory. 
 When he turned up, after a dozen years, he said 
 he had been a doctor, but didn t say where or 
 how. And he had that scar. One day a man 
 asked him how he got it. He picked up a bottle, 
 and, with his pleasant laugh, broke it over the 
 fellow s jaw. About like that/ said he. People 
 don t ask him questions." 
 
 "He s my man," said I. 
 
VII 
 
 BYGONES 
 
 A telegram had been thrust under my door 
 "I must see you. Don t fail to stop off here on 
 your way back. Answer. Carlotta." 
 
 Again she was at the station in her phaeton. 
 Her first look, long before I was near enough 
 for speech, showed me how her mood had 
 changed; but she waited until we were clear of 
 the town. "Forgive me," she then said in the ab 
 rupt, direct manner which was the expression of 
 her greatest charm, her absolute honesty. "I ve 
 got the meanest temper in the world, but it don t 
 last, and as soon as you were gone I was ashamed 
 of myself." 
 
 "I don t understand why you are making these 
 apologies," said I, "and I don t understand why 
 you were angry." 
 
 "That s what it means to be a man," she re 
 plied. "Your letter about your mother made me 
 furious. You hadn t ever urged me to hurry up 
 
 96 
 
BYGONES 97 
 
 the wedding on your own account. And your 
 letter made me feel as if, while you personally 
 didn t care whether we ever married or not, still 
 for your mother s sake you were willing to to 
 sacrifice yourself." 
 
 "Let me see my letter," said I. 
 
 "I tore it into a thousand pieces," said she. 
 "But I don t mean that you really wrote just that. 
 You didn t. But you made me jealous of your 
 mother, and my temper got hold of me, and then 
 I read the meanest kind of things into and un 
 der and all round every word. And I m sorry." 
 
 I could find nothing to say. I saw my freedom 
 slipping from me. I watched it, sick at heart ; yet, 
 on the other hand, I neither tried nor wished to 
 detain it, though I could easily have made a re 
 newal of our engagement impossible. I have no 
 explanation for this conflict of emotions and mo 
 tives. 
 
 "Don t make it so hard for me," she went on. 
 "I never before in my life told anybody I was 
 sorry for anything, and I thought I never would. 
 But I am sorry, and we ll have the wedding 
 the first day of August." 
 
98 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 Still I found nothing to say. It was so pain 
 fully obvious that, true to her training, she had 
 not given and was not giving a thought to the 
 state of my mind and feelings. What she wished, 
 that she would do the rest did not interest her. 
 
 "Are you satisfied, my lord? * she demanded. 
 "Have I humbled myself sufficiently?" 
 
 "You haven t humbled yourself at all," said I. 
 "You have only humbled me." 
 
 She did not pause on my remark long enough 
 to see what it meant. "Now that it s all settled," 
 she said gaily, "I don t mind telling you that I 
 began to make my preparations to be married on 
 the first of August when, do you think?" 
 
 "When?" I said. 
 
 "The very day I got your nasty letter, putting 
 me second to your mother." And she laughed, 
 and was still laughing, when she added: "So, 
 you see, I was determined to marry you." 
 
 "I do," said I dryly. "I suppose I ought to 
 feel flattered." 
 
 "No, you oughtn t," she retorted. "I simply 
 made up my mind to marry you. Ami I d do it, 
 no matter what it cost. I get that from father. 
 
BYGONES 99 
 
 But I ve got mother s disposition, too and that 
 makes me far too good for such a cold, unsenti 
 mental, ambitious person as you." 
 
 "Don t you think you re rather rash to confess 
 so frankly when I could still escape?" 
 
 "Not at all," was her confident answer. "I 
 know you, and so I know nothing could make 
 you break your word." 
 
 "There s some truth in that," and I hope that 
 I do not deceive myself in thinking I was honest 
 there. "More truth, perhaps, than you guess." 
 
 She looked shrewdly at me and friendlily. 
 "Don t be too sure I haven t guessed," said she. 
 "Nobody s ever so blind as he lets others think. 
 It s funny, isn t it? There are things in your 
 mind that you d never tell me, and things in my 
 mind that I d never tell you. And each of us 
 guesses most of them, without ever letting on." 
 She laughed queerly, and struck the horse smart 
 ly so that he leaped into a gait at which conversa 
 tion was impossible. 
 
 When we resumed, the subject was the details 
 of our wedding. 
 
 At home again, I found my mother too ill to 
 
100 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 leave her bed. She had been ill before, many 
 times when she wouldn t confess it, several times 
 when she was forced to admit it, but never before 
 so ill that she could not dress and come down 
 stairs. "I shall be up to-morrow/ she assured 
 me, and I almost believed her. She drew a letter 
 from under her pillow. "This came while you 
 were away," she went on. "I kept it here, be 
 cause " a look of shame flitted across her face, 
 and then her eyes were steady and proud again, 
 "why should I be ashamed of it? I had the 
 impulse to destroy the letter, and I m not sure 
 but that I m failing in my duty." 
 
 I took it, yes, it was from Boston, from 
 Betty. I opened it and fortunately had nerved 
 myself against showing myself to my mother. 
 There was neither beginning nor end, just a sin 
 gle sentence : 
 
 "From the bottom of my broken heart I am 
 thankful that I have been spared the horror of 
 discovering I had bound myself for life to a 
 coward." 
 
 The shot went straight to the center of the tar 
 get. But There lay my mother did she not 
 
BYGONES icj 
 
 have the right to determine my destiny she who 
 had given me my life and her own? I tore up 
 Betty s letter, and I looked at mother and said, 
 "There s nothing in that to make me waver or 
 regret." It was the only lie I ever told her. I 
 told it well, thank God, for she was convinced, 
 and the look in her face repaid me a thousand 
 fold. It repays me once more as I write. 
 
 Carlotta and I were married at her bedside, and 
 she lived only until the next day but one. When 
 the doctor told me of the long concealed mortal 
 disease that was the cause of her going, he ended 
 with : "And, Mr. Sayler, it passes belief that she 
 managed to keep alive for five years. I can t un 
 derstand it." But / understood. She simply re 
 fused to go until she felt that her mission was 
 accomplished. 
 
 "We must never forget her," said Carlotta, 
 trying to console me by grieving with me. 
 
 I did not answer, how could I explain? 
 Never forget her ! On the contrary, I knew that 
 I must forget, and that I must work and grow 
 and so heal the wound and cover its scar. I lost 
 not a day in beginning. 
 
102 . THE PLUM TREE 
 
 To those few succeeding months I owe the 
 power I have had all these years to concentrate 
 my mind upon whatever I will to think about ; for 
 in those months I fought the fight I dared not 
 lose fought it and won. Let those who have 
 never loved talk of remembering the dead. 
 
 I turned away from her grave with the resolve 
 that my first act of power would be to stamp 
 out Dominick. But for him she would not have 
 gone for many a year. It was his persecutions 
 that involved us in the miseries which wasted 
 her and made her fall a victim to the mortal dis 
 ease. It was his malignity that poisoned her last 
 years, which, but for him, would have been 
 happy. 
 
 As my plans for ousting Dunkirk took shape, 
 I saw clearly that, if he were to be overthrown at 
 once, I must use part of the existing control of 
 the machine of the party, it would take several 
 years, at least three, to build up an entirely new 
 control. To work quickly, I must use Croffut, 
 Dunkirk s colleague in the Senate. And Croffut 
 was the creature of Dominick. 
 
BYGONES 103 
 
 Early in September Woodruff came to me, at 
 Fredonia, his manner jubilant. "I can get Domi 
 nick," he exclaimed. "He is furious against Dun 
 kirk because he s just discovered that Dunkirk 
 cheated him out of a hundred thousand dollars 
 on that perpetual street railway franchise, last 
 winter." 
 
 "But we don t want Dominick," said I. 
 
 My face must have reflected my mind, for 
 Woodruff merely replied, "Oh, very well. Of 
 course that alters the case." 
 
 "We must get Croffut without him," I went 
 on. 
 
 Woodruff shook his head. "Can t get him," 
 he said. "Dominick controls the two southern 
 ranges of counties. He finances his own machine 
 from what he collects from vice and crime in 
 those cities. He gives that branch of the plum 
 tree to the boys. He keeps the bigger one, the 
 corporations, for himself." 
 
 "He can be destroyed," said I, waving aside 
 these significant reminders. 
 
 "Yes, in five years or so of hard work. Mean 
 while, Dunkirk will run things at the capital to 
 
io 4 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 suit himself. Anyhow, you re taking on a good 
 deal more than s necessary starting with two 
 big fights, one of em against a man you ought to 
 use to do up the other. It s like breaking your 
 own sword at the beginning of the duel." 
 
 "Go back to the capital/ said I, after a mo 
 ment s thought ; "I ll telegraph you up there what 
 to do." 
 
 It was my first test my first chance to show 
 whether I had learned at the savage school at 
 which I had been a pupil. Scores, hundreds of 
 men, can plan, and plan wisely, at almost any 
 cross-roads general store you hear in the conver 
 sation round the stove as good plans as ever 
 moved the world to admiration. But execution, 
 there s the rub! And the first essential of an 
 executive is freedom from partialities and ha 
 treds, not to say, "Do I like him? Do I hate 
 him? Was he my enemy a year or a week or a 
 moment ago?" but only to ask oneself the one 
 question, "Can he be useful to me now?" 
 
 "I will use Dominick to destroy Dunkirk, and 
 then I will destroy him," I said to myself. But 
 that did not satisfy me. I saw that I was tern- 
 
BYGONES 105 
 
 porizing with the weakness that has wrecked 
 more careers than misjudgment. I felt that I 
 must decide then and there whether or not I 
 would eliminate personal hatred from my life. 
 After a long and bitter struggle, I did decide 
 once and for all. 
 
 I telegraphed Woodruff to go ahead. When I 
 went back to Pulaski to settle my affairs there, 
 Dominick came to see me. Not that he dreamed 
 of the existence of my combine or of my connec 
 tion with the new political deal, but simply be 
 cause I had married into the Ramsay family and 
 was therefore now in the Olympus of corporate 
 power before which he was on his knees, for a 
 price, like a wise devotee, untroubled by any such 
 qualmishness as self-respect. I was ready for 
 him. I put out my hand. 
 
 "I m glad you re willing to let bygones be 
 bygones, Mr. Sayler," said he, so moved that the 
 tears stood in his eyes. 
 
 Then it flashed on me that, after all, he was 
 only a big brute, driven blindly by his appetites. 
 How silly to plot revenges upon the creatures 
 of circumstance how like a child beating the 
 
io6 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 chair it happens to strike against! Hatreds and 
 revenges are for the small mind with small mat 
 ters to occupy it. Of the stones I have quarried to 
 build my career, not one has been, or could have 
 been, spared to waste as a missile. 
 
 I went down to the Cedar Grove cemetery, 
 where my mother lay beside my father. My two 
 sisters who died before I was born were at their 
 feet; her parents and his on either side. And I 
 said to her, "Mother, I am going to climb up to 
 a place where I can use my life as you would 
 have me use it. To rise in such a world as this 
 I shall have to do many things you would not 
 approve. I shall do them. But when I reach the 
 height, I shall justify myself and you. I know 
 how many have started with the same pledge and 
 have been so defiled by what they had to han 
 dle that when they arrived they were past cleans 
 ing ; and they neither kept nor cared to keep their 
 pledge. But I, mother, shall not break this pledge 
 to you." 
 
VIII 
 
 About a month after the Chicago and Fredonia 
 bill was smothered in committee there appeared 
 upon the threshold of my office, in the adminis 
 tration building of the Ramsay Company, a man 
 whom at first glance you might have taken for an 
 exhorter or a collector for some pious enterprise. 
 But if you had made a study of faces, your sec 
 ond glance would have cut through that gloze of 
 oily, apologetic appeal. Behind a thin screen of 
 short gray beard lay a heavy loose mouth, cruel 
 and strong; above it, a great beak and a pair of 
 pale green eyes, intensely alive. They were in 
 startling contrast to the apparent decrepitude of 
 the stooped shambling body, far too small for its 
 covering of decent but somewhat rusty black. 
 
 "Senator Dunkirk," said I, rising and advanc 
 ing to greet the justly feared leader of my party. 
 I knew there was an intimate connection between 
 this visit and the death of his pet project. I 
 107 
 
io8 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 thought it safe to assume that he had somehow 
 stumbled upon Woodruff s tunnelings, and with 
 that well-trained nose of his had smelled out their 
 origin. But I need not have disquieted myself; I 
 did not then know how softly Woodruff moved, 
 sending no warnings ahead, and leaving no trail 
 behind. 
 
 For several minutes the Senator and I felt for 
 each other in the dark in which we both straight 
 way hid. He was the first to give up and reveal 
 himself in the open. "But I do not wish to waste 
 your time and my own, Mr. Sayler," he said ; "I 
 have come to see you about the threatened split 
 in the party. You are, perhaps, surprised that I 
 should have come to you, when you have been so 
 many years out of politics, but I think you will 
 understand, as I explain myself. You know Mr. 
 Roebuck?" 
 
 "I can t say that I know him," I replied. "He 
 is not an easy man to know indeed, who is ?" 
 
 "A very able man; in some respects a great 
 man/ Dunkirk went on. "But, like so many of 
 our great men of business, he can not appreciate 
 politics, the difficulties of the man in public life 
 
A CALL FROM "THE PARTY* 109 
 
 where persuasion and compromise must be used, 
 authority almost never. And, because I have re 
 sisted some of his impossible demands, he has 
 declared war on the party. He has raised up in 
 it a faction headed by your old enemy, Dominick. 
 I need not tell you what a brute, what a beast he 
 is, the representative of all that is abhorrent in 
 politics." 
 
 "A faction headed by Dominick couldn t be 
 very formidable," I suggested. 
 
 "But Dominick isn t the nominal leader," re 
 plied Dunkirk. "Roebuck is far too shrewd for 
 that. No, he has put forward as the decoy my 
 colleague, Croffut, perhaps you know him? If 
 so, I needn t tell you what a vain, shallow, venal 
 fellow he is, with his gift of gab that fools the 
 people." 
 
 "I know him," said I, in a tone which did not 
 deny the accuracy of Dunkirk s description. 
 
 "Their object," continued the Senator, "is to 
 buy the control of the party machinery away 
 from those who now manage it in the interests of 
 conservatism and fair dealing. If they succeed, 
 the only business interest that will be considered 
 
i io THE PLUM TREE 
 
 in this state will be the Power Trust. And we 
 shall have Dominick, the ignorant brute, lashed 
 on by Roebuck s appetites, until the people will 
 rise in fury and elect the opposition, and you 
 know what it is." 
 
 "What you say is most interesting," said I, 
 "but I confess I haven t imagination enough to 
 conceive a condition of affairs in which anybody 
 with the price couldn t get what he wanted by 
 paying for it. Perhaps the business interests 
 would gain by a change, the other crowd might 
 be less expensive. Certainly the demands of our 
 party s machine have become intolerable." 
 
 "It astonishes me, Mr. Sayler, to hear you say 
 that, you, who have been in politics," he pro 
 tested, taken aback by my hardly disguised at 
 tack upon him, for he was in reality "party" 
 and "machine." "Surely, you understand the sit 
 uation. We must have money to maintain our 
 organization, and to run our campaign. Our 
 workers can t live on air; and, to speak of only 
 one other factor, there are thousands and thou 
 sands of our voters, honest fellows, too, who 
 must be paid to come to the polls. They wouldn t 
 
A CALL FROM "THE PARTY" in 
 
 vote against us for any sum; but, unless we pay 
 them for the day lost in the fields, they stay at 
 home. Now, where does our money come from? 
 The big corporations are the only source, who 
 else could or would give largely enough? And it 
 is necessary and just that they should be repaid. 
 Bu they are no longer content with moderate 
 and prudent rewards for their patriotism. They 
 make bigger_ and bigger, and more and more un 
 reasonable, demands .QIL.US, and so undermine our 
 popularity, foi^he people can t be blinded whol- 
 y to what s going on. And thus, year by year, it 
 akes more and more money to keep us in con 
 trol." 
 
 "You seem to have forgotten my point/ said 
 I, smiling. "Why should you be kept in control ? 
 If you go out, the others come in. They bluster 
 and threaten, in order to get themselves in ; but, 
 once they re elected, they discover that it wasn t 
 the people s woes they were shouting about, but 
 their own. And soon they are docile conserva 
 tives lapping away at the trough, with nothing 
 dangerous in them but their appetites." 
 "Precisely, their appetites," said he. 
 
ii2 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 "A starved man has to practise eating a long, 
 long time before he can equal the performances 
 of a trained glutton," I suggested. 
 
 His facial response to my good-humored rail 
 lery was feeble indeed. And it soon died in a look 
 of depression that made him seem even older 
 and more decrepit than was his wont. "The 
 same story, wherever I go," said he sadly. "The 
 business interests refuse to see their peril. And 
 when I, in my zeal, persist, they, several of 
 them, Sayler, have grinned at me and reminded 
 me that the legislature to be elected next fall will 
 choose my successor! As if my own selfish in 
 terests were all I have in mind! I am old and 
 feeble, on the verge of the grave. Do you think, 
 Mr. Sayler, that I would continue in public life 
 if it were not for what I conceive to be my duty 
 to my party ? I have toiled too long for it " 
 
 "Your record speaks for itself, Senator," I put 
 in, politely but pointedly. 
 
 "You are very discouraging, Sayler," he said 
 forlornly. "But I refuse to be discouraged. The 
 party needs you, and I have come to do my duty, 
 and I won t leave without doing it." 
 
A CALL FROM "THE PARTY" 113 
 
 "I have nothing to do with the company s po 
 litical contributions," said I. "You will have to 
 see Mr. Ramsay, as usual." 
 
 He waved his hand. "Let me explain, please. 
 Roover is about to resign, as you probably 
 know, he s been chairman of the party s state 
 committee for seventeen years. I ve come to ask 
 you to take his place." 
 
 It was impossible wholly to hide my amaze 
 ment, my stupefaction. Had he had the shadow 
 iest suspicion of my plans, of the true inwardness 
 of the Croffut-Dominick movement, he would as 
 readily have offered me his own head. In fact, he 
 was offering me his own head; for, with the 
 money and the other resources at my command, 
 I needed only this place of official executive of 
 the party to make me master. And here he was, 
 giving me the place, under the delusion that he 
 could use me as he had been using Roover. 
 
 He must have misread my expression, for he 
 went on: "Don t refuse on impulse, Sayler. I 
 and the others will do everything to make your 
 duties as light as possible." 
 
 "I should not be content to be a mere figure- 
 
H4 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 head, as Roover has been/ I warned him. He 
 had come, in his desperation, to try to get the 
 man who combined the advantages of being, 
 as he supposed, Dominick s enemy and a mem 
 ber of one of the state s financially influential 
 families. He had come to cozen me into letting 
 him use me in return for a mockery of an honor. 
 And I was simply tumbling him, or, rather, per 
 mitting him to tumble himself, into the pit he had 
 dug for me. Still, I felt that I owed it to my self- 
 respect to give him a chance. "If I take the place, 
 I shall fill it to the best of my ability 1 
 
 "Certainly, certainly, we want your ability." 
 Behind his bland, cordial mask I saw the spider 
 eyes gleaming and the spider claws twitching as 
 he felt his net quiver under hovering wings. 
 "We want you we need you, Sayler. We ex 
 pect you to do your best." 
 
 My best! What would my "best" have been, 
 had I been only what he thought, dependent 
 upon him for supplies, surrounded by his lieuten 
 ants, hearing nothing but what he chose to tell 
 me, and able to execute only such orders as he 
 gave or approved ! 
 
A CALL FROM "THE PARTY" 115 
 
 "I am sure we can count on you/ he urged. 
 
 "I will try it," said I, after a further hesitation 
 that was not altogether show. 
 
 He did not linger, he wished to give me no 
 chance to change my mind and fly his net. I was 
 soon alone, staring dazedly at my windfall and 
 wondering if fortune would ever give me any 
 thing without attaching to it that which would 
 make me doubt whether my gift had more of bit 
 ter or more of sweet in it. 
 
 Dunkirk announced the selection of a new 
 chairman that very afternoon, as a forecast, of 
 course, for there was the formality of my "elec 
 tion" by the sixty-three members of the state 
 committee to be gone through. His proposition 
 was well received. The old-line politicians re 
 membered my father ; the Reformers recalled my 
 fight against Dominick; the business men liked 
 my connection with the Ramsay Company, assur 
 ing stability and regard for "conservatism"; the 
 "boys" were glad because I had a rich wife and a 
 rich brother-in-law. The "boys" always cheer 
 when a man with money develops political aspi 
 rations. 
 
n6 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 I did not see Woodruff until I went down to 
 the capital to begin my initiation. I came upon 
 him there, in the lobby of the Capital City Hotel. 
 As we talked for a moment like barely-acquainted 
 strangers, saying nothing that might not have 
 been repeated broadcast, his look was asking: 
 "How did you manage to trap Dunkirk into do 
 ing it ?" I never told him the secret, and so never 
 tore out the foundation of his belief in me as a 
 political wizard. It is by such judicious use of 
 their few strokes of good luck that successful 
 men get their glamour of the superhuman. In the 
 eyes of the average man, who is lazy or inter 
 mittent, the result of plain, incessant, uninter- 
 mittent work is amazing enough. All that is 
 needed to make him cry, "Genius !" is a little 
 luck adroitly exploited. 
 
 I left Woodruff, to join Dunkirk. "Who is 
 that chap over there, Doctor Woodruff?" I 
 asked him. 
 
 "Woodruff?" replied the Senator. "Oh, a lob 
 byist. He does a good deal for Roebuck, I be 
 lieve. An honest fellow, for that kind, they 
 tell me. It s always well to be civil to them." 
 
A CALL FROM "THE PARTY" 117 
 
 Dunkirk s "initiation" of me into the duties 
 of my office wiped away my last lingering sense 
 of double, or, at least, doubtful, dealing. He told 
 me nothing that was not calculated to mislead me. 
 And he was so glib and so frank and so sympa 
 thetic that, had I not known the whole machine 
 from the inside, I should have been his dupe. 
 
 It is not pleasant to suspect that, in some par 
 ticular instance, one of your fellow men takes you 
 for a simple-minded fool. To know you are being 
 so regarded, not in one instance, but in general, is 
 in the highest degree exasperating, no matter 
 how well your vanity is under control. 
 
 Perhaps I should not have been able to play my 
 part and deceive my deceiver had I been steadily 
 at headquarters. As it was, I went there little and 
 then gave no orders, apparently contenting my 
 self with the credit for what other men were do 
 ing in my name. In fact, so obvious did I make 
 my neglect as chairman that the party press com 
 mented on it and covertly criticized me. Dun 
 kirk mildly reproached me for lack of interest. 
 He did not know indeed, he never knew that 
 his chief lieutenant, Thurston, in charge at head- 
 
n8 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 quarters, had gone over to "the enemy," and was 
 Woodruff s right-hand man. And it is not neces 
 sary for me to say where Woodruff got the or 
 ders he transmitted to Thurston. 
 
 My excuse for keeping aloof was that I was 
 about to be transformed into a man of family. 
 As I was fond of children I had looked forward 
 to this with more eagerness than I ventured to 
 show to my wife. She might not have liked it, 
 eager though she was also. As soon as she knew 
 that her longings were to be satisfied, she entered 
 upon a course of preparation so elaborate that I 
 was secretly much amused, though I thoroughly 
 approved and encouraged her. Every moment of 
 her days was laid out in some duty imposed upon 
 her by the regimen she had arranged after a study 
 of all that science says on the subject. 
 
 As perfect tranquillity was a fundamental of 
 the regime, she permitted nothing to ruffle her. 
 But Ed more than made up for her calm. Two 
 weeks before the event, she forbade him to enter 
 her presence "or any part of the grounds where 
 I m likely to see you," said she. "The very sight 
 of you, looking so flustered, unnerves me." 
 
A CALL FROM "THE PARTY" 119 
 
 While he and I were waiting in the sitting- 
 room for the news, he turned his heart inside out. 
 
 "I want to tell you, Harvey," said he, "that 
 the boy or girl whichever it is is to be my 
 heir." 
 
 "I shan t hold you to that," I replied with a 
 laugh. 
 
 "No, I ll never marry," he went on. "There 
 was an an angel. You know the Shaker settle 
 ment? well, out there." 
 
 I looked at him in wonder. If ever there was a 
 man who seemed unromantic, it was he, heavy 
 and prosaic and so shy that he was visibly agi 
 tated even in bowing to a woman acquaintance. 
 
 "I met her," he was saying, "when I was driv 
 ing that way, the horse ran, I was thrown out, 
 and her parents had to take me in and let her 
 nurse me. You ve seen her face, or faces like 
 it. Most of those Madonnas over on the other 
 side in all the galleries suggest her. Well, her 
 parents were furious, wouldn t hear of it, you 
 know Shakers think marriage and love and all 
 those things are wicked. And she thought so, 
 too. How she used to suffer! It wore her to 
 
120 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 a shadow. She wouldn t marry me, wouldn t 
 let me so much as touch her hand. But we used 
 to meet and then she caught a cold waiting 
 hours for me, one winter night, when there d 
 been a misunderstanding about the place I was 
 in one place, she in another. And the cold, you 
 see, she couldn t fight against it. And and 
 there won t be another, Harvey. All women are 
 sacred to me for her sake, but I couldn t any more 
 marry than I could could stop feeling her sit 
 ting beside me, just a little way off, wrapped in 
 her drab shawl, with her face like a glimpse 
 through the gates of Heaven." 
 
 Within me up-started the memories that I kept 
 battened down. 
 
 "Your children are mine, too, Harvey," he 
 ended. 
 
 I took from Carlotta s work-basket an un 
 finished bit of baby clothing. I went to him and 
 held it up and pointed to the monogram she had 
 embroidered on it. 
 
 "E. R. S.," he read aloud. Then he looked at 
 me with a queer expression beginning to form in 
 his eyes. 
 
A CALL FROM "THE PARTY" 121 
 
 "Edward Ramsay Sayler, if it s a boy/ said I. 
 "Edwina Ramsay Sayler, if it s a girl." 
 
 He snatched the bit of linen from me and 
 buried his face in it. 
 
 The baby was a boy, fortunately, for I don t 
 admire the name Edwina, and I shouldn t have 
 liked to handicap a child with it. Carlotta and 
 Ed were delighted, but I felt a momentary keen 
 disappointment. I had wanted a girl. Girls never 
 leave their parents completely, as boys do. Also 
 I should rather have looked forward to my child s 
 having a sheltered life, one in which the fine and 
 beautiful ideals do not have to be molded into the 
 gross, ugly forms of the practical. I may say, in 
 passing, that I deplore the entrance of women 
 into the world of struggle. Women are the nat 
 ural and only custodians of the ideals. We men 
 are compelled to wander, often to wander far, 
 from the ideal. Unless our women remain aloof 
 from action, how are the ideals to be preserved? 
 Man for action; woman to purify man, when he 
 returns stained with the blood and sin of battle. 
 
 But with the birth of the first child I began 
 to appreciate how profoundly right my mother 
 
122 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 had been about marriage and its source of Happi 
 ness. There are other flowers than the rose, 
 other flowers, and beautiful, the more beautiful 
 for its absence. 
 
IX 
 
 TO THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY 
 
 We, our party, carried the state, as usual. Our 
 legislative majority was increased by eleven, to 
 thirty-seven on joint ballot. It was certain that 
 Dunkirk s successor would be of the same polit 
 ical faith ; but would he be Dunkirk? At first that 
 venerable custodian of the plum tree hadn t a 
 doubt. He had come to look on it as his personal 
 property. But, after he had talked to legislators- 
 elect from various parts of the state, he became 
 uneasy. He found that the party s members were 
 dangerously evenly divided between himself and 
 the "Dominick-Croffut" faction. And soon he 
 was at me to declare for him. 
 
 I evaded as long as I could, which did not 
 decrease his nervousness. When he put it to me 
 point-blank, I said: "I can t do it, Senator. I 
 will not mix in quarrels within the party." 
 
 "But they are saying you are against me," he 
 pleaded. 
 
 123 
 
124 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 "And your people are saying I am for you," I 
 retorted. 
 
 "But surely you are not against me and for 
 Schoolcraft ? What has he done for you ?" 
 
 "And what have you done for me?" I replied, 
 a mere interrogation, without any feeling in it. 
 "Tell me. I try to pay my debts." 
 
 His eyes shifted. "Nothing, Sayler, nothing," 
 he said. "I didn t mean to insinuate that you 
 owed me anything. Still, I thought you 
 wouldn t have been state chairman, except " 
 
 As he halted, I said, "Except that you needed 
 me. And you will recall that I took it only on 
 condition that I should be free." 
 
 "Then you are opposed to me," he said. "No 
 body can be on the fence in this fight." 
 
 "I do not think you can be elected," I replied. 
 
 As he sat silent, the puffs under his eyes 
 swelled into bags and the pallor of his skin 
 changed to the gray which makes the face look 
 as if a haze or a cloud lay upon it. I pitied him 
 so profoundly that, had I ventured to speak, I 
 should have uttered impulsive generosities that 
 would have cost me dear. How rarely are our 
 
TO THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY 125 
 
 impulses of generosity anything but impulses to 
 folly, injustice, and wrong ! 
 
 "We shall see," was all he said, and he rose and 
 shambled away. 
 
 They told me he made a pitiful sight, wheed 
 ling and whining among the legislators. But he 
 degraded himself to some purpose. He succeeded 
 in rallying round him enough members to dead 
 lock the party caucus for a month, members 
 from the purely rural districts, where the senti 
 ment of loyalty is strongest, where his piety and 
 unselfish devotion to the party were believed in, 
 and his significance as a "statesman." I let this 
 deadlock continue forty-one for Dunkirk, forty- 
 one for Schoolcraft until I felt that the party 
 throughout the state was heartily sick of the 
 struggle. Then Woodruff bought, at twelve 
 thousand dollars apiece, two Dunkirk men to 
 vote to transfer the contest to the floor of a joint 
 session of the two houses. 
 
 After four days of balloting there, seven Dom- 
 inick-Croffut men voted for me my first appear 
 ance as a candidate. On the seventy-seventh bal 
 lot Schoolcraft withdrew, and all the Domi- 
 
126 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 nick-Croffut men voted for me. On the seventy- 
 ninth ballot I got, in addition, two opposition 
 votes Woodruff had bought for me at eight hun 
 dred dollars apiece. The ballot was: Dunkirk, 
 forty-one; Grassmere, (who was receiving the 
 opposition s complimentary vote) thirty-six; 
 Sayler, forty-three. I was a Senator of the 
 United States. 
 
 There was a wild scene. Threats, insults, blows 
 even, were exchanged. And down at the Capital 
 City Hotel Dunkirk crawled upon a table and de 
 nounced me as an infamous ingrate, a traitor, a 
 serpent he had warmed in his bosom. But the 
 people of the state accepted it as natural and satis 
 factory that "the vigorous and fearless young 
 chairman of the party s state committee" should 
 be agreed on as a compromise. An hour after that 
 last ballot, he hadn t a friend left except some 
 galling sympathizers from whom he hid him 
 self. Those who had been his firmest supporters 
 were paying court to the new custodian of the 
 plum tree. 
 
 The governor was mine, and the legislature. 
 Mine was the Federal patronage, also all of it, 
 
 I 
 
TO THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY 127 
 
 if I chose, for Croffut was my dependent, though 
 he did not realize it; mine also were the indefi 
 nitely vast resources of the members of my com 
 bine. Without my consent no man could get of 
 fice anywhere in my state, from governorship and 
 judgeship down as far as I cared to reach. Sub 
 ject only to the check of public sentiment, so 
 easily defeated if it be not defied, I was master 
 of the making and execution of laws. Why? Not 
 because I was leader of the dominant party. Not 
 because I was a Senator of the United States. 
 Solely because I controlled the sources of the 
 money that maintained the political machinery of 
 both parties. The hand that holds the purse 
 strings is the hand that rules, if it knows how 
 to rule ; for rule is power plus ability. 
 
 7 JL .,.-. MMWMMMNMM mHM 4r 
 
 I was not master because I had the plum tree. 
 I had the plum tree because I was master. 
 
 The legislature attended to such of the de 
 mands of my combine and such of the demands of 
 the public as I thought it expedient to grant, and 
 then adjourned. Woodruff asked a three months 
 leave. I did not hear from or of him until mid- 
 
128 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 summer, when he sent me a cablegram from Lon 
 don. He was in a hospital there, out of money 
 and out of health. I cabled him a thousand dol 
 lars and asked him to come home as soon as he 
 could. It was my first personal experience with 
 that far from uncommon American type, the peri 
 odic drunkard. I had to cable him money three 
 times before he started. 
 
 When he came to me at Washington, in De 
 cember, he looked just as before, calm, robust, 
 cool, cynical, and dressed in the very extreme of 
 the extreme fashion. I received him as if nothing 
 had happened. It was not until the current of 
 mutual liking was again flowing freely between 
 us that I said: "Doc, may I impose on your 
 friendship to the extent of an intrusion into your 
 private affairs?" 
 
 He started, and gave me a quick look, his color 
 mounting. "Yes," he said after a moment. 
 
 "When I heard from you," I went on, "I made 
 some inquiries. I owe you no apology. You had 
 given me a shock, one of the severest of my 
 life. But they told me that you never let that 
 that peculiarity of yours interfere with business." 
 
TO THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY 129 
 
 His head was hanging. "I always go away," 
 he said. "Nobody that knows me ever sees me 
 when at that time." 
 
 I laid my hand on his arm. "Doc, why do you 
 do that sort of thing?" 
 
 The scar came up into his face to put agony 
 into the reckless despair that looked from his eyes. 
 For an instant I stood on the threshold of his 
 Chamber of Remorse and Vain Regret, and well 
 I knew where I was. "Why not?" he asked bit 
 terly. "There s always a sort of horror in 
 side me. And it grows until I can t bear it. And 
 then I drown it why shouldn t I?" 
 
 "That s very stupid for a man of your brains," 
 said I. "There s nothing nothing in the world, 
 except death that can not be wiped out or set 
 right. Play the game, Doc. Play it with me for 
 five years. Play it for all there is in it. Then 
 go back, if you want to." 
 
 He thought a long time, and I did not try to 
 hurry him. At length he said, in his old off-hand 
 manner: "Well, I ll go you, Senator; I ll not 
 touch a drop." 
 
 And he didn t. Whenever I thought I saw 
 
130 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 signs of the savage internal battle against the 
 weakness, I gave him something important and 
 absorbing to do, and I kept him busy until I knew 
 the temptation had lost its power for the time. 
 
 This is the proper place to put it on the record 
 that he was the most scrupulously honest man I 
 have ever known. He dealt with the shadiest and 
 least scrupulous of men those who train their 
 consciences to be the eager servants of their appe 
 tites; he handled hundreds of thousands of dol 
 lars, millions, first and last, all of it money for 
 which he could never have been forced to ac 
 count. He has had at one time as much as half a 
 million dollars in checks payable to bearer. I am 
 not confiding by nature or training, but I am 
 confident that he kept not a penny for himself 
 beyond his salary and his fixed commission. I 
 put his salary at the outset, at ten thousand a 
 year; afterward, at fifteen; finally, at twenty. 
 His commissions, perhaps, doubled it. 
 
 There are many kinds of honesty nowadays. 
 There is "corporate honesty," not unlike that pro 
 verbial "honor among thieves/ which secures 
 a fair or fairly fair division of the spoils. Then 
 
TO THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY 131 
 
 there is "personal honesty," which subdivides into 
 three kinds legal, moral, and instinctive. Legal 
 honesty needs no definition. Moral honesty defies 
 definition how untangle its intertwinings of mo 
 tives of fear, pride, insufficient temptation, sacri 
 fice of the smaller chance in the hope of a larger? 
 Finally, there is instinctive honesty the rarest, 
 the only bed-rock, unassailable kind. Give me the 
 man who is honest simply because it never occurs 
 to him, and never could occur to him, to be any- 
 thing else. That is Woodruff. 
 
 There is, to be sure, another kind of instinc 
 tively honest man he who disregards loyalty as, 
 well as self-interest in his uprightness. But there 
 are so few of these in practical life that they may 
 be disregarded. 
 
 Perhaps I should say something here as to the 
 finances of my combine, though it was managed 
 in the main precisely like all these political-com 
 mercial machines that control both parties in all 
 the states, except a few in the South. 
 
 My assessments upon the various members of 
 my combine were sent, for several years, to me, 
 afterward to Woodruff directly, in one thousand, 
 
1 3 2 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 five thousand, and ten thousand dollar checks, 
 sometimes by mail, and at other times by express 
 or messenger. 
 
 These checks were always payable to bearer; 
 and I made through Woodruff, for I kept to the 
 far background in all my combine s affairs, an 
 arrangement with several large banks in different 
 parts of the state, including one at the capital, 
 that these checks were to be cashed without ques 
 tion, no matter who presented them, provided 
 there was a certain flourish under the line where 
 the amount was written in figures. Sometimes 
 these checks were signed by the corporation, and 
 sometimes they were the personal checks of the 
 president or some other high official. Often the 
 signature was that of a person wholly disconnect 
 ed, so far as the public knew. Once, I remember, 
 Roebuck sent me a thousand dollar check signed 
 by a distinguished Chicago lawyer who was just 
 then counsel to his opponent in a case involving 
 millions, a case which Roebuck afterward won! 
 
 Who presented these checks? I could more 
 easily say who did not. 
 
 From the very beginning of my control I kept 
 
TO THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY 133 
 
 my promise to reduce the cost of thejplitical 
 business to my clients. When, I. .got the machine 
 thoroughly in hand, I saw I could make it cost 
 them less than a third of what they had been pay 
 ing, on the average, for ten years. I cut off, al 
 most at a stroke, a horde of lobbyists, lawyers, 
 threateners without influence, and hangers-on of 
 various kinds. I reduced the payments for legis 
 lation to a system, instead of the shameless, scan 
 dal-creating and wasteful auctioneering that had 
 been going on for years. 
 
 In fact, so cheaply did I run the machine that 
 I saw it would be most imprudent to let my 
 clients have the full benefit. Cheapness would 
 have made them uncontrollably greedy and ex 
 acting, and would have given them a wholly false 
 idea of my value as soon as it had slipped their 
 short memories how dearly they used to pay. 
 
 So I continued to make heavy assessments, 
 and put by the surplus in a reserve fund for 
 emergencies. I thought, for example, that I 
 might some day have trouble with one or more 
 members of my combine ; my reserve would sup- 
 
134 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 ply me with the munitions for forcing insurgents 
 to return to their agreements. 
 
 This fund was in no sense part of my private 
 fortune. Nowhere else, I think, do the eccentrici 
 ties of conscience show themselves more interest 
 ingly than in the various attitudes of the various 
 political leaders toward the large sums which the 
 exigencies of commercialized politics place ab 
 solutely and secretly under their control. I have 
 no criticism for any of these attitudes. 
 
 I have lived long enough and practically 
 enough to learn not to criticize the morals of 
 men, any more than I criticize their facial con 
 tour or their physical build. "As many men, so 
 many minds," and morals. Wrong, for prac 
 tical purposes, is that which a man can not cajole 
 or compel his conscience to approve. 
 
 It so happened that I had a sense that to use 
 my assessments for my private financial profits 
 would be wrong. Therefore, my private fortune 
 has been wholly the result of the opportunities 
 which came through my intimacy with Roebuck 
 and such others of the members of my combine 
 as were personally agreeable, or, perhaps it 
 
TO THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY 135 
 
 would be more accurate to say, not disagreeable, 
 for, in the circumstances, I naturally saw a side 
 of those men which a friend must never see in a 
 friend. I could not help having toward most of 
 these distinguished clients of mine much the feel 
 ing his lawyer has for the guilty criminal he is 
 defending. 
 
X 
 
 THE FACE IN THE CROWD 
 
 Except the time given to the children, there 
 were presently three, my life, in all its thoughts 
 and associations, was now politics : at Washing 
 ton, from December until Congress adjourned, 
 chiefly national politics, the long and elaborate 
 arrangements preliminary to the campaign for 
 the conquest of the national fields; at home, 
 chiefly state politics, strengthening my hold up 
 on the combine, strengthening my hold upon the 
 two political machines. As the days and the 
 weeks, the months and the years, rushed by, as 
 the interval between breakfast and bedtime, be 
 tween Sunday and Sunday, between election day 
 and election day again, grew shorter and shorter, 
 I played the game more and more furiously. 
 What I won, once it was mine, seemed worthless 
 in itself, and worth while only if I could gain the 
 next point ; and, when that was gained, the same 
 story was repeated. Whenever I paused to reflect, 
 136 
 
THE FACE IN THE CROWD 137 
 
 it was to throttle reflection half-born, and hasten 
 on again. 
 
 "A silly business, this living, isn t it?" said 
 Woodruff to me. 
 
 "Yes, but " replied I. "You remember the 
 hare and the hatter in Alice in Wonderland. 
 Why? said the hare. Why not? said the hatter. 
 A sensible man does not interrogate life; he lives 
 it." 
 
 "H m," retorted Woodruff. 
 
 And we went on with the game, shuffling, 
 dealing, staking. But more and more frequently 
 there came hours, when, against my will, I would 
 pause, drop my cards, watch the others; and I 
 w^ould wonder at them, and at myself, the mad 
 dest of these madmen, and the saddest, because 
 I had moments in which I was conscious of my 
 own derangement. 
 
 I have often thought on the cause of this dis 
 satisfaction which has never ceased to gird me, 
 and which I have learned girds all men of intelli 
 gence who lead an active life. I think it is that 
 such men are like a civilized man who has to live 
 among a savage tribe. To keep alive, to have in- 
 
138 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 fluence, he must pretend to accept the savage 
 point of view, must. pretend to disregard his own 
 knowledge and intelligent methods, must play 
 the game of life with the crude, clumsy counters 
 of caste and custom and creed and thought which 
 the savages regard as fit and proper. Intelligent 
 men of action do see as clearly as the philoso 
 phers; but they have to pretend to adapt their 
 mental vision to that of the mass of their fellow 
 men or, like the philosophers, they would lead 
 lives of profitless inaction, enunciating truths 
 which are of no value to mankind until it redis 
 covers them for itself. No man of trained reason 
 ing power could fail to see that the Golden Rule 
 is not a piece of visionary altruism, but a sound 
 principle of practical self-interest. Or, could any 
 thing be clearer, to one who takes the trouble 
 really to think about it, than that he who ad 
 vances himself at the expense of his fellow men 
 does not advance, but sinks down into the class 
 of murderers for gain, thieves, and all those who 
 seek to advance themselves by injustice? Yet, so 
 feeble is man s reason, so near to the brute is he, 
 so under the rule of brute appetites, that he can 
 
THE FACE IN THE CROWD 139 
 
 not think beyond the immediate apparent good, 
 beyond to-day s meal. 
 
 I once said to Scarborough: "Politics is the 
 science and art of fooling the people." 
 
 "That is true, as far as it goes," he said. "If 
 that were all, justice, which is only another name 
 for common sense, would soon be established. 
 But, unfortunately, politics is the art of playing 
 upon cupidity, the art of fooling the people into 
 thinking they are helping to despoil the other fel 
 low and will get a share of the swag." 
 
 And he was right. It is by subtle appeal to the 
 secret and shamefaced, but controlling, appetites 
 of men that the clever manipulate them. To get 
 a man to vote for the right you must show him 
 that he is voting for the personally profitable. 
 And very slow he is to believe that what is right 
 can be practically profitable. Have not the 
 preachers been preaching the reverse all these 
 years; have they not been insisting that to do 
 right means treasure in Heaven only? 
 
 It was in my second term as Senator, toward 
 the middle of it. I was speaking, one afternoon, 
 
140 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 in defense of a measure for the big contributors, 
 which the party was forcing through the Senate 
 in face of fire from the whole country. Person 
 ally, I did not approve the measure. It was a 
 frontal attack upon public opinion, and frontal 
 attacks are as unwise and as unnecessary in poli 
 tics as in war. But the party leaders in the nation 
 insisted, and, as the move would weaken their 
 hold upon the party and so improve my own 
 chances, I was not deeply aggrieved that my ad 
 vice had been rejected. Toward the end of my 
 speech, aroused by applause from the visitors 
 gallery, I forgot myself and began to look up 
 there as I talked, instead of addressing myself to 
 my fellow Senators. The eyes of a speaker always 
 wander over his audience in search of eyes that 
 respond. My glance wandered, unconsciously, 
 until it found an answering glance that fixed it. 
 
 This answering glance was not responsive, nor 
 even approving. It was the reverse, and, in 
 spite of me, it held me. At first it was just a pair 
 of eyes, in the shadow of the brim of a woman s 
 hat, the rest of the face, the rest of the woman, 
 hid by those in front and on either side. There 
 
THE FACE IN THE CROWD 141 
 
 was a movement among them, and the whole face 
 appeared, and I stopped short in my speech. I 
 saw only the face, really only the mouth and the 
 eyes, the lips and the eyes of Elizabeth Crosby, 
 an expression of pain, and of pity. 
 
 I drank from the glass of water on my desk, 
 and went on. When I ventured to look up there 
 again, the face was gone. Had I seen or imag 
 ined? Was it she or was it only memory sud 
 denly awakening and silhouetting her upon that 
 background of massed humanity ? I tried to con 
 vince myself that I had only imagined, but I knew 
 that I had seen. 
 
 Within me and, I suppose, within every one 
 else there is a dual personality : not a good and 
 a bad, as is so often shallowly said ; but one that 
 does, and another that watches. The doer seems 
 to me to be myself; the watcher, he who stands, 
 like an idler at the rail of a bridge, carelessly, even 
 indifferently, observing the tide of my thought 
 and action that flows beneath, who is he? I do 
 not know. But I do know that I have no control 
 over him, over his cynical smile, or his lip curl 
 ing in good-natured contempt of me, or his shrug 
 
142 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 at self-excuse, or his moods when he stares down 
 at the fretting stream with a look of weariness 
 so profound that it is tragic. It was he who was 
 more interested in the thoughts, the passion, the 
 protest, the defiance, and the dread, which the 
 sight of that face set to boiling within me. Some 
 times he smiled cynically at the turmoil, and at 
 other times he watched it with what seemed to 
 me bitter disgust and disappointment and regret. 
 
 While this tempest was struggling to boil over 
 into action, Carlotta appeared. She had never 
 stayed long at Washington after the first winter; 
 she preferred, for the children and perhaps for 
 herself, the quiet and the greater simplicity of 
 Fredonia. But "I got to thinking about it," said 
 she, "and it seemed to me a bad idea for a man 
 to be separated so long from his wife and chil 
 dren and home influences." 
 
 That last phrase was accompanied by one of 
 her queer shrewd looks. 
 
 "Your idea is not without merit," replied I ju 
 dicially. 
 
 "What are you smiling at?" she demanded 
 sharply. 
 
I SAW ONLY THE LIPS AND EYES OF ELIZABETH CROSBY /. 
 
THE FACE IN THE CROWD 143 
 
 "If it was a smile," said I, "it was at myself." 
 
 "No, you were laughing at me. You think I 
 am jealous." 
 
 "Of what? Of whom?" 
 
 She looked fixedly at me and finally said: "I 
 want to tell you two things about myself and you. 
 The first is that I am afraid of you." 
 
 "Why?" said I. 
 
 "I don t know," she answered. 
 
 "And the second confession?" 
 
 "That I never trust you." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "I don t know." 
 
 "Yet you are always telling me I am cold." 
 
 She laughed shortly. "So is a stick of dyna 
 mite," said she. 
 
 She stayed on at Washington. 
 
XI 
 
 BURBANK 
 
 It was through Carlotta that I came to know 
 Burbank well. 
 
 He was in the House, representing the eastern 
 most district of our state. I had disliked him 
 when we were boys in the state assembly together, 
 and, when I met him again in Washington, he 
 seemed to me to have all his faults of fifteen years 
 before aggravated by persistence in them. Fi 
 nally, I needed his place in Congress for a useful 
 lieutenant of Woodruff s and ordered him beaten 
 for the renomination. He made a bitter fight 
 against decapitation, and, as he was popular with 
 the people of his district, we had some difficulty 
 in defeating him. But when he was beaten, he 
 was of course helpless and hopelessly discredited, 
 the people soon forget a fallen politician. He 
 "took off his coat" and worked hard and well 
 for the election of the man who had euchred him 
 out of the nomination. When he returned to 
 144 
 
BURBANK 145 
 
 Washington to finish his term, he began a double, 
 desperate assault upon my friendship. The direct 
 assault was unsuccessful, I understood it, and 
 I was in no need of lieutenants. More than I 
 could easily take care of were already striving to 
 serve me, scores of the brightest, most ambitious 
 young men of the state eager to do my bidding, 
 whatever it might be, in the hope that in return 
 I would "take care of" them, would admit them 
 to the coveted inclosure round the plum tree. 
 The plum tree ! Is there any kind of fruit which 
 gladdens the eyes of ambitious man, that does not 
 glisten upon some one of its many boughs, heavy- 
 laden with corporate and public honors and 
 wealth ? 
 
 Burbank s indirect attack, through his wife and 
 Carlotta, fared better. 
 
 The first of it I distinctly recall was after a 
 children s party at our house. Carlotta singled 
 out Mrs. Burbank for enthusiastic commendation. 
 "The other women sent nurses with their chil 
 dren," said she, "but Mrs. Burbank came herself. 
 She was so sweet in apologizing for coming. She 
 said she hadn t any nurse, and that she was so 
 
146 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 timid about her children that she never could 
 bring herself to trust them to nurses. And really, 
 Harvey, you don t know how nice she was all the 
 afternoon. She s the kind of mother I approve of, 
 the kind I try to be. Don t you admire her ?" 
 
 "I don t know her," said I. "The only time I 
 met her she struck me as being well, rather si 
 lent." 
 
 "That s it," she exclaimed triumphantly. "She 
 doesn t care a rap for men. She s absorbed in her 
 children and her husband. " Then, after a pause, 
 she added : "Well, she s welcome to him. I can t 
 see what she finds to care for." 
 
 "Why?" said I. 
 
 "Oh, he s distinguished-looking, and polite, 
 offensively polite to women he doesn t under 
 stand them at all thinks they like deference and 
 flattery, the low-grade molasses kind of flattery. 
 He has a very nice smile. But he s so stilted 
 and tiresome, always serious, and such a pose! 
 It s what I call the presidential pose. No doubt 
 he ll be President some day." 
 
 "Why?" said I. It is amusing to watch a wom 
 an fumble about for reasons for her intuitions. 
 
BURBANK 147 
 
 Carlotta did uncommonly well. "Oh, I don t 
 know. He s the sort of high-average American 
 that the people go crazy about. He he looks 
 like a President, that sort of solemn no-sense- 
 of -humor, Sunday look, you know what I mean. 
 Anyhow, he s going to be President." 
 
 I thought not. A few days later, while what 
 Carlotta had said was fresh in my mind, he over 
 took me walking to the capitol. As we went on 
 together, I was smiling to myself. He certainly 
 did look and talk like a President. He was of the 
 average height, of the average build, and of a sort 
 of average facial mold; he had hair that was a 
 compromise among the average shades of brown, 
 gray, and black, with a bald spot just where most 
 men have it. 
 
 His pose I saw that Carlotta was shrewdly 
 right. He was acutely self-conscious, and was 
 acting his pose every instant. He had selected it 
 early in life ; he would wear it, even in his night 
 shirt, until death. He said nothing brilliant, but 
 neither did he say anything that would not have 
 been generally regarded as sound and sensible. 
 His impressive manner of delivering his words 
 
148 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 made one overvalue the freight they carried. But 
 I soon found, for I studied him with increasing 
 interest, thanks to my new point of view upon 
 him, I soon found that he had one quality the 
 reverse of commonplace. He had magnetism. 
 
 Whenever a new candidate was proposed for 
 Mazarin s service, he used to ask, first of all, 
 "Has he luck ?" My first question has been, "Has 
 he magnetism?" and I think mine is the better 
 measure. Such of one s luck as is not the blunder 
 ing blindness of one s opponents is usually the re 
 sult of one s magnetism. However, it is about 
 the most dangerous of the free gifts of nature, 
 which are all dangerous. Burbank s merit lay in 
 his discreet use of it. It compelled men to center 
 upon him; he turned this to his advantage by 
 making them feel, not how he shone, but how 
 they shone. They went away liking him because 
 they had new reasons for being in love with them 
 selves. 
 
 / I found only two serious weaknesses. The first 
 / was that he lacked the moral courage boldly to do 
 [ either right or wrong. That explained why, in 
 spite of his talents for impressing people both 
 
BURBANK 149 
 
 privately and from the platform, he was at the 
 end of his political career. The second weakness 
 was that he was ashamed of his very obscure and 
 humble origin. He knew that his being "wholly 
 self-made" was a matchless political asset, and he 
 used it accordingly. But he looked on it some 
 what as the beggar looks on the deformity he ex 
 hibits to get alms. 
 
 Neither weakness made him less valuable to my 
 purpose, the first one, if anything, increased his 
 value. I wanted an instrument that was capable, 
 but strong only when I used it. 
 / I wanted a man suitable for development first 
 into governor of my state, and then into a Presi 
 dent. I could not have got the presidency for 
 , myself, but neither did I want it. My longings 
 were all for power, the reality, not the shadow. 
 In a republic the man who has the real power 
 must be out of view. If he is within view, a mil 
 lion hands stretch to drag him from the throne. 
 He must be out of view, putting forward his pup 
 pets and changing them when the people grow 
 bored or angry with them. And the President 
 in all important matters he must obey his party, 
 
ISO THE PLUM TREE 
 
 which is, after all, simply the "interests" that 
 finance it; in unimportant matters, his so-called 
 power is whittled down by the party s leaders and 
 workers, whose requirements may not be disre 
 garded. He shakes the plum tree, but he does 
 it under orders; others gather the fruit, and he 
 gets only the exercise and the "honor." 
 
 I had no yearning for puppetship, however ex 
 alted the title or sonorous the fame ; but to be the 
 power that selects the king-puppet of the political 
 puppet-hierarchy, to be the power that selects 
 and rules him, that was the logical development 
 of my career. 
 
 In Burbank I thought I had found a man 
 worthy to wear the puppet robes, one who would 
 glory in them. He, like most of the other am 
 bitious men I have known, cared little who was 
 behind the throne, provided he himself was seated 
 upon it, the crown on his head and the crowds 
 tossing the hats that shelter their dim-thinking 
 brains. Also, in addition to magnetism and pres 
 ence, he had dexterity and distinction and as 
 much docility as can be expected in a man big 
 enough to use for important work. 
 
BURBANK 151 
 
 In September I gave him our party nomination 
 for governor. In our one-sided state that meant 
 his election. 
 
 As I had put him into the governorship not so 
 much for use there as for use thereafter, it was 
 necessary to protect him from my combine, which 
 had destroyed his two immediate predecessors by 
 over-use, they had become so unpopular that 
 their political careers ended with their terms. 
 Protect him I must, though the task would be 
 neither easy nor pleasant. It involved a collision 
 with my clients, a square test of strength be 
 tween us. What was to me far more repellent, it 
 involved my personally taking a hand in that part 
 of my political work which I had hitherto left to 
 Woodruff and his lieutenants. 
 
 One does not in person chase and catch and kill 
 and dress and serve the chicken he has for dinner ; 
 he orders chicken, and hears and thinks no more 
 about it until it is served. Thus, all the highly dis 
 agreeable part of my political work was done by 
 others; Woodruff, admirably capable and most 
 careful to spare my feelings, received the de 
 mands of my clients from their lawyers and trans- 
 
152 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 mitted them to the party leaders in the legislature 
 with the instructions how the machinery was to 
 be used in making them into law. As I was 
 financing the machines of both parties, his task 
 was not difficult, though delicate. 
 
 But now that I began to look over Woodruff s 
 legislative program in advance, I was amazed at 
 the rapacity of my clients, rapacious though I 
 knew them to be. I had been thinking that the 
 independent newspapers there were a few such, 
 but of small circulation and influence were ma 
 lignant in their attacks upon my "friends." In 
 fact, as I soon saw, they had told only a small 
 part of the truth. They had not found out the 
 worst things that were done; nor had they 
 grasped how little the legislature and the gover 
 nor were doing other than the business of the big 
 corporations, most of it of doubtful public bene 
 fit, to speak temperately. An hour s study of the 
 
 facts and I realized as never before why we are 
 so rapidly developing a breed of multi-million- 
 
 \aires in this country with all the opportunities to 
 wealth in their hands. I had only to remember 
 that the system which ruled my own state was in 
 
BURBANK 153 
 
 full blast in every one of the states of the Union. 
 Everywhere, no sooner do the people open or pro 
 pose to open a new road into a source of wealth, 
 than men like these clients of mine hurry to the 
 politicians and buy the rights to set up toll-gates 
 and to fix their own schedule of tolls. 
 
 However, the time had now come when I must 
 assert myself. I made no radical changes in that 
 first program of Burbank s term. I contented 
 myself with cutting off the worst items, those it 
 would have ruined Burbank to indorse. My 
 clients were soon grumbling, but Woodruff han 
 dled them well, placating them with excuses that 
 soothed their annoyance to discontented silence. 
 So ably did he manage it that not until Burbank s 
 third year did they begin to come directly to me 
 and complain of the way they were being 
 "thrown down" at the capitol. 
 
 Roebuck, knowing me most intimately and 
 feeling that he was my author and protector, was 
 frankly insistent. "We got almost nothing at the 
 last session," he protested, "and this winter 
 Woodruff tells me we may not get the only thing 
 we re asking." 
 
154 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 I was ready for him, as I was for each of the 
 ten. I took out the list of measures passed or 
 killed at the last session in the interest of the 
 Power Trust. It contained seventy-eight items, 
 thirty-four of them passed. I handed it to him. 
 
 "Yes, a few things," he admitted, "but all 
 trifles!" 
 
 "That little amendment to the Waterways law 
 must alone have netted you three or four mil 
 lions already." 
 
 "Nothing like that. Nothing like that." 
 
 "I can organize a company within twenty-four 
 hours that will pay you four millions in cash for 
 the right, and stock besides." 
 
 He did not take up my offer. 
 
 "You have already had thirteen matters at 
 tended to this winter," I pursued. "The one that 
 can t be done Really, Mr. Roebuck, the whole 
 state knows that the trustees of the Waukeegan 
 Christian University are your dummies. It would 
 be insanity for the party to turn over a hundred 
 thousand acres of valuable public land gratis to 
 them, so that they can presently sell it to you for 
 a song." 
 
BURBANK 155 
 
 He reddened. "Newspaper scandal!" he blus 
 tered, but changed the subject as soon as he had 
 shown me and re-shown himself that his motives 
 were pure. 
 
 I saw that Burbank s last winter was to be 
 crucial. My clients were clamorous, and were 
 hinting at all sorts of dire doings if they were not 
 treated better. Roebuck was questioning, in the 
 most malignantly friendly manner, "whether, 
 after all, Harvey, the combine isn t a mistake, 
 and the old way wasn t the best." On the other 
 hand Burbank was becoming restless. He had 
 so cleverly taken advantage of the chances to do 
 popular things, which I had either made for him 
 or pointed out to him, that he had become some 
 thing of a national figure. When he got eighty- 
 one votes for the presidential nomination in our 
 party s national convention his brain was dizzied. 
 Now he was in a tremor lest my clients should 
 demand of him things that would diminish or de 
 stroy this sapling popularity which, in his 
 dreams, he already saw grown into a mighty tree 
 obscuring the national heavens. 
 
 I gave many and many an hour to anxious 
 
156 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 thought and careful planning that summer and 
 fall. It was only a few days before Doc Wood 
 ruff appeared at Fredonia with the winter s legis 
 lative program that I saw my way straight to 
 what I hoped was broad day. The program he 
 brought was so outrageous that it was funny. 
 There was nothing in it for the Ramsay interests, 
 but each of the other ten had apparently exhaust 
 ed the ingenuity of its lawyers in concocting de 
 mands that would have wrecked for ever the 
 party granting them. 
 
 "Our friends are modest," said I. 
 
 "They ve gone clean crazy," replied Woodruff. 
 "And if you could have heard them talk! It s 
 impossible to make them see that anybody has 
 any rights but themselves." 
 
 "Well, let me have the details," said I. "Ex 
 plain every item on this list; tell me just what it 
 means, and just how the lawyers propose to dis 
 guise it so the people won t catch on." 
 
 When he finished, I divided the demands into 
 three classes, the impossible, the possible, and 
 the practicable. "Strike out all the impossible," 
 I directed. "Cut down the possible to the ten 
 
BURBANK 157 
 
 that are least outrageous. Those ten and the 
 practicable must be passed." 
 
 He read off the ten which were beyond the 
 limits of prudence, but not mob-and-hanging mat 
 ters. "We can pass them, of course," was his 
 comment. "We could pass a law ordering the 
 state house burned, but " 
 
 "Precisely," said I. "I think the consequences 
 will be interesting." I cross-marked the five 
 worst of the ten possibilities. "Save those until 
 the last weeks of the session." 
 
 Early in the session Woodruff began to push 
 the five least bad of the bad measures on to the 
 calendar of the legislature, one by one. When 
 the third was introduced, Burbank took the 
 Limited for Washington. He arrived in time to 
 join my wife and my little daughter Frances and 
 me at breakfast. He was so white and sunken- 
 eyed and his hands were so unsteady that Frances 
 tried in vain to take her solemn, wondering, pity 
 ing gaze from his face. As soon as my study 
 door closed behind us, he burst out, striding up 
 and down. 
 
 "I don t know what to think, Sayler," he 
 
158 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 cried, "I don t know what to think! The de 
 mands of these corporations have been growing, 
 growing, growing! And now You have seen 
 the calendar ?" 
 
 "Yes," said I. "Some of the bills are pretty 
 stiff, aren t they? But the boys tell me they re 
 for our best friends, and that they re all neces 
 sary." 
 
 "No doubt, no doubt," he replied, "but it will 
 be impossible to reconcile the people." Suddenly 
 he turned on me, his eyes full of fear and sus 
 picion. "Have you laid a plot to ruin me, Sayler? 
 It certainly looks that way. Have you a secret 
 ambition for the presidency " 
 
 "Don t talk rubbish, James," I interrupted. 
 Those few meaningless votes in the national con 
 vention had addled his common sense. "Sit 
 down, calm yourself, tell me all about it." 
 
 He seated himself and ran his fingers up and 
 down his temples and through his wet hair that 
 was being so rapidly thinned and whitened by the 
 struggles and anxieties of his ambition. "My 
 God !" he cried out, "how I am punished ! When 
 I started in my public career, I looked forward 
 
BURBANK 159 
 
 and saw just this time, when I should be the 
 helpless tool in the hands of the power I sold 
 myself to. Governor!" He almost shouted the 
 word, rising and pacing the floor again. "Gov 
 ernor !" and he laughed in wild derision. 
 
 I watched him, fascinated. I, too, at the out 
 set of my career, had looked forward, and had 
 seen the same peril, but I had avoided it. 
 Wretched figure that he was! what more 
 wretched, more pitiable than a man groveling and 
 moaning in the mire of his own self -contempt? 
 "Governor!" I said to myself, as I saw awful 
 thoughts flitting like demons of despair across his 
 face. And I shuddered, and pitied, and rejoiced, 
 shuddered at the narrowness of my own 
 escape; pitied the man who seemed myself as I 
 might have been ; and rejoiced that I had had my 
 mother with me and in me to impel me into an 
 other course. 
 
 "Come, come, Burbank," said I, "you re not 
 yourself; you ve lost sleep " 
 
 "Sleep !" he interrupted, "I have not closed my 
 eyes since I read those cursed bills." 
 
 "Tell me what you want done," was my sug- 
 
160 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 gestion. "I ll help in any way I can, any way 
 that s practicable." 
 
 "Oh, I understand your position, Sayler," he 
 answered, when he had got control of himself 
 again, "but I see plainly that the time has come 
 when the power that rules me, that rules us 
 both, has decided to use me to my own destruc 
 tion. If I refuse to do these things, it will destroy 
 me, and a hundred are eager to come forward 
 and take my place. If I do these things, the peo 
 ple will destroy me, and neither is that of the 
 smallest importance to our master." 
 
 His phrases, "the power that rules us both," 
 
 and "our master," jarred on me. So far as he 
 
 knew, indeed, so far as "our master" knew, were 
 
 /not he and I in the same class ? But that was no 
 
 I time for personal vanity. All I said was: "The 
 
 bills must go through. This is one of those crises 
 
 th&t test a man s loyalty to the party." 
 
 "For the good of the party !" he muttered with 
 a bitter sneer. "Crime upon crime yes, crime, 
 I say that the party may keep the favor of the 
 powers ! And to what end ? to what good ? Why, 
 that the party may continue in control and so 
 
BURBANK 161 
 
 may be of further use to its rulers. * He rested 
 his elbows on the table and held his face between 
 his hands. He looked terribly old, and weary 
 beyond the power ever to be rested again. "I 
 stand with the party, what am I without it?" 
 he went on in a dull voice. "The people may for 
 get, but, if I offend the master, he never for 
 gives or forgets. I ll sign the bills, Sayler, if 
 they come to me as party measures." 
 
 Burbank had responded to the test. 
 
 A baser man would have acted as scores of 
 governors, mayors, and judges have acted in the 
 same situation would have accepted popular 
 ruin and would have compelled the powers to 
 make him rich in compensation. A braver man 
 would have defied it and the powers, would have 
 appealed to the people with one chance of win 
 ning out against ten thousand chances of being 
 disbelieved and laughed at as a "man who thinks 
 he s too good for his party." Burbank was 
 neither too base nor too brave ; clearly, I assured 
 myself, he is the man I want. I felt that I might 
 safely relieve his mind, so far as I could do so 
 without letting him too far into my secret plans. 
 
162 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 I had not spent five minutes in explanation 
 before he was up, his face radiant, and both 
 hands stretched out to me. 
 
 "Forgive me, Harvey!" he cried. "I shall 
 never distrust you again. I put my future in 
 your hands." 
 
XII 
 
 BURBANK FIRES THE POPULAR HEART 
 
 That was, indeed, a wild winter at the state 
 capital, a "carnival of corruption," the news 
 papers of other states called it. One of the first 
 of the "black bills" to go through was a dis- 
 
 Senator 
 
 Cr offuL go t a harrdsonre^ "counsel fee"- o f fi f ty- 
 odd thousand dollars. But as the rout went on, 
 ever more audaciously and recklessly, he became 
 uneasy. In mid-February he was urging me to 
 go West and try to do something to "curb those 
 infernal grabbers." I refused to interfere. He 
 went himself, and Woodruff reported to me that 
 he was running round the state house and the 
 hotels like a crazy man; for when he got into 
 the thick of it, he realized that it was much worse 
 than it seemed from Washington. In a few days 
 he was back and at me again. 
 
 "It s very strange," said he suspiciously. "The 
 boys say they re getting nothing out of it. They 
 declare they re simply obeying orders." 
 163 
 
164 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 "Whose orders?" I asked. 
 
 "I don t know," he answered, his eyes sharply 
 upon me. "But I do know that, unless some 
 thing is done, I ll not be returned to the Senate. 
 We ll lose the legislature, sure, next fall." 
 
 "It does look that way," I said with a touch 
 of melancholy. "That street railway grab was 
 the beginning of our rake s progress. We ve 
 been going it, hell bent, ever since." 
 
 He tossed his handsome head and was about 
 to launch into an angry defense of himself. But 
 my manner checked him. He began to plead. 
 "You can stop it, Sayler. Everybody out there 
 says you can. And, if I am reflected, I ve got a 
 good chance for the presidential nomination. 
 Should I get it and be elected, we could form a 
 combination that would interest you, I think." 
 
 It was a beautiful irony that in his conceit he 
 should give as his reason why I should help him 
 the very reason why I was not sorry he was to 
 be beaten. For, although he was not dangerous, 
 still he was a rival public figure to Burbank in 
 our state, and, well, accidents sometimes hap 
 pen, unless they re guarded against. 
 
BURBANK FIRES THE PUBLIC HEART 165 
 
 "What shall I do?" I asked him. 
 
 "Stop them from passing any more black bills. 
 Why, they ve got half a dozen ready, some of 
 them worse even than the two they passed over 
 Burbank s veto, a week ago." 
 
 "For instance?" 
 
 He cited three Power Trust bills. 
 
 "But why don t you stop those three?" said 
 I. "They re under the special patronage of Dom- 
 inick. You have influence with him." 
 
 "Dominick!" he groaned. "Are you sure?" 
 And when I nodded emphatically, he went on: 
 "I ll do what I can, but" He threw up his 
 hands. 
 
 He was off for the West that night. When he 
 returned, his face wore the look of doom. He 
 had always posed for the benefit of the galleries, 
 especially the women in the galleries. But now 
 he became sloven in dress, often issued forth un 
 shaven, and sat sprawled at his desk in the Sen 
 ate, his chin on his shirt bosom, looking vague 
 and starting when any one spoke to him. 
 
 Following my advice on the day when I sent 
 him away happy, Burbank left the capital and 
 
166 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 the state just before the five worst bills left the 
 committees. He was called to the bedside of his 
 wife who, so all the newspapers announced, was 
 at the point of death at Colorado Springs. 
 
 While he was there nursing her as she 
 "hovered between life and death," the bills were 
 jammed through the senate and the assembly. 
 
 He telegraphed the lieutenant governor not to 
 sign them, as he was returning and wished to 
 deal with them himself. He reached the capital 
 on a Thursday morning, sent the bills back with 
 a "ringing" veto message, and took the late 
 afternoon train for Colorado Springs. It was as 
 good a political "grand-stand play" as ever 
 thrilled a people. 
 
 The legislature passed the bills over his veto 
 and adjourned that night. 
 
 Press and people, without regard to party 
 lines, were loud in their execrations of the "aban 
 doned and shameless wretches" who had "be 
 trayed the state and had covered themselves with 
 eternal infamy." I quote from an editorial in the 
 newspaper that was regarded as my personal or 
 gan. But there was only praise for Burbank ; his 
 
BURBANK FIRES THE PUBLIC HEART 167 
 
 enemies, and those who had doubted his inde 
 pendence and had suspected him of willingness 
 to do anything to further his personal ambitions, 
 admitted that he had shown "fearless courage, 
 inflexible honesty, and the highest ideals of 
 private sacrifice to public duty." And they 
 eagerly exaggerated him, to make his white con 
 trast more vividly with the black of the "satanic 
 spawn" in the legislature. His fame spread, car 
 ried far and wide by the sentimentality in that 
 supposed struggle between heart and conscience, 
 between love for the wife of his bosom and duty 
 to the people. 
 
 Carlotta, who like most women took no inter 
 est in politics because it lacks "heart-interest," 
 came to me with eyes swimming and cheeks 
 aglow. She had just been reading about Bur- 
 bank s heroism. 
 
 "Isn t he splendid!" she cried. "I always told 
 you he d be President. And you didn t believe 
 me." 
 
 "Be patient with me, my dear," said I. "I am 
 not a woman with seven-league boots of intui 
 tion. I m only a heavy-footed man." 
 
XIII 
 
 ROEBUCK & CO. PASS UNDER THE YOKE 
 
 And now the stage had been reached at which 
 my ten mutinous clients could be, and must be, 
 disciplined. 
 
 As a first step, I resigned the chairmanship 
 of the state committee and ordered the election 
 of Woodruff to the vacancy. I should soon have 
 substituted Woodruff for myself, in any event. 
 I had never wanted the place, and had taken it 
 only because to refuse it would have been to 
 throw away the golden opportunity Dunkirk so 
 unexpectedly thrust at me. Holding that posi 
 tion, or any other officially connecting me with 
 my party s machine, made me a target; and I 
 wished to be completely hidden, for I wished the 
 people of my state to think me merely one of the 
 party servants, in sympathy with the rank and 
 file rather than with the machine. Yet, in the 
 chairmanship, in the targetship, I must have a 
 man whom I could trust through and through; 
 168 
 
ROEBUCK & CO. PASS UNDER THE YOKE 169 
 
 and, save Woodruff, who was there for the 
 place ? 
 
 When my resignation was announced, the in 
 dependent and the opposition press congratulated 
 me on my high principle in refusing to have any 
 official connection with the machine responsible 
 for such infamies. When Woodruff s election 
 was announced it came as a complete surprise. 
 Such of the newspapers as dared, and they were 
 few, denounced it as infamy s crown of infamy; 
 and the rank and file of the party was shocked, 
 as I had known it would be. He made not a 
 murmur, but I knew what must be in his mind. 
 I said nothing until six weeks or two months 
 had passed ; then I went straight at him. 
 
 "You are feeling bitter against me," said I. 
 "You think I dropped out when there was danger 
 of heavy firing, and put you up to take it." 
 
 "No, indeed, Senator," he protested, "noth 
 ing like that. Honestly, I have not had a bitter 
 thought against you. I m depressed simply be 
 cause, just as I had a chance to get on my feet 
 again, they won t let me." 
 
 "But," I rejoined, "I did resign and put you 
 
i;o THE PLUM TREE 
 
 in my place because I didn t want to take the fire 
 and thought you could." 
 
 "And so I can," said he. "I haven t any repu 
 tation to lose. I m no worse off than I was be 
 fore. Let em do their damnedest." 
 
 "Your first campaign will probably be a fail 
 ure," I went on, "and, the day after election, 
 there ll be a shout for your head." 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. "I m enlisted for 
 the war," said he. "You re my general. I go 
 where you order." 
 
 I hope the feelings that surged up in me 
 showed in my face, as I stretched out my hand. 
 "Thank you, Doc," said I. "And there s an 
 other side to it. It isn t all black." 
 
 "It isn t black at all," he replied stoutly. 
 
 I explained: "I ve wanted you to have the 
 place from the outset. But I shouldn t dare give 
 it to you except at a time like this, when our 
 party has done so many unpopular things that 
 one more won t count ; and there s so much to be 
 said against us, so much worse things than they 
 can possibly make out your election to be, that 
 it ll soon be almost neglected." 
 
ROEBUCK & CO. PASS UNDER THE YOKE 171 
 
 "They re beginning to drop me already and 
 go back to harrying those poor devils of ours in 
 the legislature," said Woodruff. 
 
 "A few weeks more," I went on, "and you ll 
 be safe and you are to stay chairman, no matter 
 what happens. When they have leisure to attack 
 you, there ll be nothing to attack. The people 
 will have dismissed the matter from their minds. 
 They don t care to watch the threshing of old 
 straw." 
 
 I saw that I had lifted a weight from him, 
 though he said nothing. 
 
 So much for my first move toward the chas 
 tening of my clients. Further and even more 
 effective in the same direction, I cut down our 
 campaign fund for the legislative ticket to one- 
 fifth what it usually was; and, without even 
 Woodruff s knowing it, J heavily subsidized the 
 oppositioji^jjiaekHrer Wherever it could be done 
 with safety I arranged for the trading off of our 
 legislative ticket for our candidate for governor. 
 "The legislature is hopelessly lost," I told Wood 
 ruff; "we must concentrate on the governorship. 
 We must save what we can." In fact, so over- 
 
172 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 whelmingly was our party in the majority, and 
 so loyal were its rank and file, that it was only 
 )y the most careful arrangement of weak can- 
 lidates and of insufficient campaign funds that 
 fl was able to throw the legislature to the oppo 
 sition. Our candidate for governor, Walbrook 
 Burbank was ineligible to a second successive 
 term was elected by a comfortable plurality. 
 And, by the way, I saw to it that the party organs 
 gave Woodruff enthusiastic praise for rescuing so 
 much from what had looked like utter ruin. 
 
 My clients had been uneasy ever since the 
 furious popular outburst which had followed 
 their breaking away from my direction and re 
 straint. When they saw an opposition legisla 
 ture, they readily believed what they read in the 
 newspapers about the "impending reign of radi 
 calism." Silliman, the opposition leader, had ac 
 cepted John Markham s offer of one hundred and 
 fifty thousand dollars for Croffut s seat in the 
 Senate; but I directed him to send Veerhoft, one 
 of the wildest and cleverest of the opposition 
 radicals. He dared not disobey me. Veerhoft 
 went, and Markham never saw again the seven- 
 
ROEBUCK & CO. PASS UNDER THE YOKE 173 
 
 ty-five thousand he had paid Silliman as a "re 
 tainer." 
 
 Veerhoft in the United States Senate gave my 
 clients the chills; but I was preparing the fever 
 for them also. I had Silliman introduce bills in 
 both houses of the legislature that reached for 
 the privileges of the big corporations and in 
 itiated proceedings to expose their corruption. I 
 had Woodruff suggest to Governor Walbrook 
 that, in view of the popular clamor, he ought to 
 recommend measures for equalizing taxation and 
 readjusting the prices of franchises. As my 
 clients were bonded and capitalized on the basis 
 of no expense either for taxes or for franchises, 
 the governor s suggestion, eagerly adopted by 
 Silliman s "horde," foreshadowed ruin. If the 
 measures should be passed, all the dividends and 
 interest they were paying on "water" would go 
 into the public treasury. 
 
 My clients came to me, singly and in pairs, 
 to grovel and to implore. An interesting study 
 these arrogant gentlemen made as they cringed, 
 utterly indifferent to the appearance of self-re 
 spect, in their agony for their imperiled millions. 
 
174 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 A mother would shrink from abasing herself to 
 save the life of her child as these men abased 
 themselves in the hope of saving their dollars. 
 How they fawned and flattered! They begged 
 my pardon for having disregarded my advice; 
 they assured me that, if I would only exert that 
 same genius of mine which had conceived the 
 combine, I could devise some way of saving them 
 from this tidal wave of popular clamor, for 
 they hadn t a suspicion of my part in making 
 that tidal wave. 
 
 Reluctantly I consented to "see what I can 
 do." 
 
 The instant change in the atmosphere of the 
 capital, the instant outcry from the organs of 
 both parties that "the people had voted for re 
 form, not for confiscatory revolution," completed 
 my demonstration. My clients realized who was 
 master of the machines. The threatening storm 
 rapidly scattered; the people, relieved that the 
 Silliman program of upheaval was not to be car 
 ried out, were glad enough to see the old "con 
 servative" order restored, our people always 
 reason that it is better to rot slowly by corrup- 
 
ROEBUCK & CO. PASS UNDER THE YOKE 175 
 
 tion than to be frightened to death by revolu 
 tion. 
 
 "Hereafter, we must trust to your judgment 
 in these political matters, Harvey," said Roe 
 buck. "The manager must be permitted to man- 
 age." 
 
 I smiled at the ingenuousness of this speech. 
 It did not ruffle me. Roebuck was one of those 
 men who say their prayers in a patronizing tone. 
 
 Yes, I was master. But it is only now, in the 
 retrospect of years, that I have any sense of tri 
 umph; for I had won the supremacy with small 
 effort, comparatively, with the small effort re 
 quired of him who sees the conditions of a situ 
 ation clearly, and, instead of trying to combat 
 or to change them, intelligently uses them to his 
 ends. Nor do I now regard my achievement as 
 marvelous. Everything was in my favor ; against 
 me, there was nothing, no organization, no 
 plan, no knowledge of my aim. I wonder how 
 much of their supernal glory would be left to the 
 world s men of action, from its Alexanders and 
 Napoleons down to its successful bandits and 
 ward-bosses, if mankind were in the habit of 
 
i;6 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 looking at what the winner had opposed to him, 
 Alexander faced only by flocks of sheep-like 
 Asiatic slaves; Napoleon routing the badly 
 trained, wretchedly officered soldiers of decadent 
 monarchies; and the bandit or ward-boss over 
 coming peaceful and unprepared and unorganized 
 citizens. Who would erect statues or write eu 
 logies to a man for mowing a field of corn-stalks 
 with a scythe? Mankind is never more amusing 
 than in its hero-worship. 
 
 No, I should simply have been stupid had I 
 failed. 
 
 But even had I been disposed to rein in and 
 congratulate myself at the quarter-stretch, I 
 could not have done it. A man has, perhaps, some 
 choice as to his mount before he enters the race 
 for success. But once in the saddle and off, he 
 must let the reins go; his control is confined to 
 whip and spur. 
 
XIV 
 
 A "BOOM -FACTORY" 
 
 In the early autumn of that last year of his as 
 governor, Burbank s wife died a grim and un 
 expected fulfilment of their pretended anxieties 
 of six months before. 
 
 It was, in some respects, as great a loss to me 
 as to him how great to us both I did not in 
 deed, could not measure until several years 
 passed. She was what I regard as a typical Amer 
 ican wife devoted to her husband, jealously 
 guarding his interests, yet as keen to see his short 
 comings as she was to see her own. And how 
 much more persistent and intelligent in correct 
 ing her faults than he in correcting his! Like 
 most men, he was vain that is, while he would 
 probably have admitted in a large, vague way 
 that he wasn t perfect, when it came to details he 
 would defend his worst fault against any and all 
 criticism. Like most women, she, too, was vain 
 but an intelligent woman s vanity, instead of mak- 
 
 177 
 
i;8 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 ing her self-complacent, somehow spurs her on to 
 hide her weak points and to show her best points 
 in the best light. For example, Mrs. Burbank, a 
 pretty woman and proud of it, was yet conscious 
 of her deficiencies in dress and in manners 
 through her plain and rural early surroundings. 
 It was interesting, and instructive, too, to watch 
 her studying and cleverly copying, or rather, 
 adapting Carlotta; for she took from Carlotta 
 only that which could be fitted without visible 
 joint into her own pattern. 
 
 Latterly, whenever I was urging upon Burbank 
 a line of action requiring courage or a sacrifice of 
 some one of his many insidious forms of personal 
 vanity, I always arranged for her to be present 
 at our conferences. And she would sit there, ap 
 parently absorbed in her sewing ; but in reality she 
 was seeing not only the surface reasons I gave 
 him, but also those underlying and more power 
 ful reasons which we do not utter, sometimes be 
 cause we like to play the hypocrite to ourselves, 
 again because we must give the other person a 
 chance to play the hypocrite before himself and 
 us. And often I left him reluctant and trying to 
 
A "BOOM-FACTORY" 179 
 
 muster courage to refuse or finesse to evade, only 
 to find him the next day consenting, perhaps en 
 thusiastic. Many s the time she spared me the 
 disagreeable necessity of being peremptory 
 doubly disagreeable because show of authority has 
 ever been distasteful to me and because an order 
 can never be so heartily executed as is an assimi 
 lated suggestion. 
 
 When I went to him a month after her death, I 
 expected he would still be crushed as he was at the 
 funeral. I listened with a feeling of revulsion to 
 his stilted and, as it seemed to me, perfunctory 
 platitudes on his "irreparable loss" stale rhetoric 
 about her, and to her most intimate friend and 
 his! I had thought he would be imagining him 
 self done with ambition for ever; I had feared his 
 strongly religious nature would lead him to see a 
 "judgment" upon him and her for having ex 
 aggerated her indisposition to gain a political 
 point. And I had mapped out what I would say 
 to induce him to go on. Instead, after a few of 
 those stereotyped mortuary sentences, he shifted 
 to politics and was presently showing me that her 
 death had hardly interrupted his plannings for 
 
i8o THE PLUM TREE 
 
 the presidential nomination. As for the "judg 
 ment," I had forgotten that in his religion his 
 deity was always on his side, and his misfortunes 
 were always of the evil one. These deities of men 
 of action ! Man with his god a ventriloquist pup 
 pet in his pocket, and with his conscience an old 
 dog Tray at his heels, needing no leading string ! 
 
 However, it gave me a shock, this vivid re 
 minder from Burbank of the slavery of ambition 
 ambition, the vice of vices. For it takes its 
 victims all moral, mental, physical. And, while 
 other vices rarely wreck any but small men or in 
 jure more than what is within their small circles 
 of influence, ambition seizes only the superior and 
 sets them on to use their superior powers to blast 
 communities, states, nations, continents. Yet it is 
 called a virtue. And men who have sold them 
 selves to it and for it to the last shred of man 
 hood are esteemed and, mystery of mysteries, es 
 teem themselves ! 
 
 I had come to Burbank to manufacture him 
 into a President. His wife and I had together 
 produced an excellent raw material. Now, to 
 make it up into the finished product ! 
 
A "BOOM-FACTORY" 181 
 
 He pointed to the filing-cases that covered the 
 west wall of his library from floor to ceiling, from 
 north window to south. "I base my hope on those 
 next to you, of course," said he. Then with his 
 "woeful widower" pose, he added : "They were 
 her suggestions." 
 
 I looked at the filing-cases and waited for him 
 to explain. 
 
 "When we were first married," he went on pres 
 ently, "she said, It seems to me, if I were a pub 
 lic man, I should keep everything relating to my 
 self every speech, all that the newspapers said, 
 every meeting and the lists of the important peo 
 ple who were there, notes of all the people I ever 
 met anywhere, every letter or telegram or note I 
 received. If you do, you may find after a few 
 years that you have an enormous list of acquaint 
 ances. You ve forgotten them because you meet 
 so many, but they will not have forgotten you, 
 who were one of the principal figures at the meet 
 ing or reception. That s in substance what she 
 said. And so, we began and kept it up" he 
 paused in his deliberate manner, compressed his 
 lips, then added "together." 
 
182 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 I opened one of the filing-cases, glanced at him 
 for permission, took out a slip of paper under the 
 M s. It was covered with notes, in Mrs. Bur- 
 bank s writing, of a reception given to him at the 
 Manufacturers Club in St. Louis three years be 
 fore. A lot of names, after each some reminders 
 of the standing and the personal appearance of 
 the man. Another slip, taken at random from the 
 same box, contained similar notes of a trip 
 through Montana eight years before. 
 
 "Wonderful !" I exclaimed, as the full value of 
 these accumulations loomed in my mind. "I knew 
 she was an extraordinary woman. Now I see that 
 she had genius for politics." 
 
 His expression a peering through that eternal 
 pose of his made me revise my first judgment of 
 his mourning. For I caught a glimpse of a real 
 human being, one who had loved and lost, look 
 ing grief and pride and gratitude. "If she had 
 left me two or three years earlier/ he said in that 
 solemn, posing tone, "I doubt if I should have got 
 one step further. As it is, I may be able to go on, 
 though I have lost my staff." 
 
 What fantastic envelopes does man, after he 
 
A "BOOM-FACTORY" 183 
 
 has been finished by Nature, wrap about himself 
 in his efforts to improve her handiwork! Physi 
 cally, even when most dressed, we are naked in 
 comparison with the enswathings that hide our 
 real mental and moral selves from one another 
 and from ourselves. 
 
 My campaign was based on the contents of 
 those filing-cases. I learned all the places through 
 out the West cities, towns, centrally-located 
 villages where he had been and had made an 
 impression ; and by simple and obvious means we 
 were able to convert them into centers of "the 
 Burbank boom." I could afterward trace to the 
 use we made of those memoranda the direct get 
 ting of no less than one hundred and seven dele 
 gates to the national convention and that takes 
 no account of the vaster indirect value of so much 
 easily worked-up, genuine, unpurchased and un- 
 purchasable "Burbank sentiment." The man of 
 only local prominence, whom Burbank remem 
 bered perfectly after a chance meeting years be 
 fore, could have no doubt who ought to be the 
 party s nominee for President. 
 
 The national machine of our party was then 
 
184 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 in the custody, and supposedly in the control, of 
 Senator Goodrich of New Jersey. He had a repu 
 tation for Machiavellian dexterity, but I found 
 that he was an accident rather than an actuality. 
 
 The dominion of the great business inter 
 ests over politics was the rapid growth of about 
 twenty years the consolidations of business nat 
 urally producing concentrations of the business 
 world s political power in the hands of the few 
 controllers of the big railway, industrial and finan 
 cial combines. Goodrich had happened to be ac 
 quainted with some of the most influential of these 
 business "kings" ; they naturally made him their 
 agent for the conveying of their wishes and their 
 bribes of one kind and another to the national 
 managers of both parties. They knew little of the 
 details of practical politics, knew only what they 
 needed in their businesses; and as long as they 
 got that, it did not interest them what was done 
 with the rest of the power their "campaign con 
 tributions" gave. 
 
 With such resources any man of good intelli 
 gence and discretion could have got the same re 
 sults as Goodrich s. He was simply a lackey, 
 
A "BOOM-FACTORY" 185 
 
 strutting and cutting" a figure in his master s 
 clothes and under his master s name. He was 
 pitifully vain of his reputation as a Machia- 
 velli and a go-between. Vanity is sometimes a 
 source of great strength ; but vanity of that sort, 
 and about a position in which secrecy is the prime 
 requisite, could mean only weakness. 
 
 Throughout his eight years of control of our 
 party it had had possession of all departments of 
 the national administration except of the House 
 of Representatives during the past two years. 
 This meant the uninterrupted and unchecked 
 reign of the interests. To treat with considera 
 tion the interests, the strong men of the country, 
 they who must have a free hand for developing its 
 resources, to give them privileges and immunities 
 beyond what can be permitted the ordinary citi 
 zen or corporation that is a course which, how 
 ever offensive to abstract justice, still has, as it 
 seems to me, a practical justice in it, and, at any 
 rate, must be pursued so long as the masses of the 
 voters are short-sighted, unreasoning and in nose 
 rings to political machines. A man s rights, what 
 ever they may be in theory, are in practice only 
 
186 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 what he has the intelligence and the power to 
 Compel. But, for the sake of the nation, for the 
 
 .upholding of civilization itself, these over-power 
 ful interests should never be given their heads, 
 
 , should be restrained as closely as may be to their 
 rights their practical rights. Goodrich had 
 neither the sagacity nor the patriotism nor the 
 force of will, for that matter to keep them with 
 in the limits of decency and discretion. Hence the 
 riot of plunder and privilege which revolted and 
 alarmed me when I came to Washington and saw 
 politics in the country-wide, yes, history-wide, 
 horizon of that view-point. 
 
 Probably I should have been more leisurely in 
 bringing my presidential plans to a focus, had I not 
 seen how great and how near was the peril to my 
 party. It seemed to me, not indeed a perfect or 
 even a satisfactory, but the best available, instru 
 ment for holding the balances of order as even as 
 might be between our country s two opposing ele 
 ments of disorder the greedy plunderers and the 
 rapidly infuriating plundered. And I saw that no 
 time was to be lost, if the party was not to be 
 blown to fragments. The first mutterings of the 
 
A "BOOM-FACTORY" 187 
 
 storm were in our summary ejection from control 
 of the House in the midway election. If the party 
 were not to be dismembered, I must oust Good 
 rich, must defeat his plans for nominating Crom 
 well, must nominate Burbank instead. If I should 
 succeed in electing him, I reasoned that I could 
 through him carry out my policy of moderation 
 and practical patriotism to yield to the powerful 
 few a minimum of what they could compel, to 
 give to the prostrate but potentially powerful 
 many at least enough to keep them quiet a stom- 
 achful. The world may have advanced; but 
 patriotism still remains the art of restraining the 
 arrogance of full stomachs and the anger of 
 empty ones. 
 
 In Cromwell, Goodrich believed he had a candi 
 date with sufficient hold upon the rank and file 
 of the party to enable him to carry the election by 
 the usual means a big campaign fund properly 
 distributed in the doubtful states. I said to Sen 
 ator Scarborough of Indiana soon after Crom 
 well s candidacy was announced : "What do you 
 think of Goodrich s man?" 
 
 Scarborough, though new to the Senate then, 
 
188 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 had shown himself far and away the ablest of the 
 opposition Senators. He had as much intellect as 
 any of them; and he had what theorists, such as 
 he, usually lack, skill at "grand tactics" the 
 management of men in the mass. His one weak 
 ness and that, from my standpoint, a great one 
 was a literal belief in democratic institutions 
 and in the inspiring but in practice pernicious 
 principle of exact equality before the law. 
 
 "Cromwell s political sponsors," was his reply, 
 "are two as shrewd bankers as there are in New 
 York. I have heard it said that a fitting sign for a 
 bank would be : Here we do nothing for nothing 
 for nobody. 
 
 An admirable summing up of Cromwell s can 
 didacy. And I knew that it would so appear to the 
 country, that no matter how great a corruption 
 fund Goodrich might throw into the campaign, 
 we should, in that time of public exasperation, be 
 routed if Cromwell was our standard-bearer so 
 utterly routed that we could not possibly get our 
 selves together again for eight, perhaps twelve 
 years. There might even be a re-alignment of 
 parties with some sort of socialism in control of 
 
A "BOOM-FACTORY" 189 
 
 one of them. If control \yejg..t n ^ p reiaJnfLcLK} 7 the 
 few who have the capital and the intellect to make 
 efficient the nation s resquc^,^nxL,.energy, my 
 projects must be put through at. once. 
 
 I had accumulated a fund of five hundred 
 thousand dollars for my "presidential flotation" 
 -half of it contributed by Roebuck in exchange 
 for a promise that his son-in-law should have an 
 ambassadorship if Burbank were elected; the 
 other half set aside by me from the "reserve" I 
 had formed out of the year-by-year contributions 
 of my combine. By the judicious investment of 
 that capital I purposed to get Burbank the nomi 
 nation on the first ballot at least four hundred 
 and sixty of the nine hundred-odd delegates. 
 
 In a national convention the delegates are, 
 roughly speaking, about evenly divided among 
 the three sections of the country a third from 
 east of the Alleghanies ; a third from the West ; a 
 third from the South. It was hopeless for us to 
 gun for delegates in the East; that was the es 
 pecial bailiwick of Senator Goodrich. The most 
 we could do there would be to keep him occupied 
 by quietly encouraging any anti-Cromwell senti- 
 
ipo THE PLUM TREE 
 
 ment and it existed a-plenty. Our real efforts 
 were to be in the West and South. 
 
 I organized under Woodruff a corps of about 
 thirty traveling agents. Each man knew only his 
 own duties, knew nothing of the general plan, 
 not even that there was a general plan. Each was 
 a trained political worker, a personal retainer of 
 ours. I gave them their instructions; Woodruff 
 equipped them with the necessary cash. During 
 the next five months they were incessantly on the 
 go dealing with our party s western machines 
 where they could; setting up rival machines in 
 promising localities where Goodrich controlled the 
 regular machines; using money here, diplomacy 
 there, both yonder, promises of patronage every 
 where. 
 
 Such was my department of secrecy. At the 
 head of my department of publicity I put De Milt, 
 (a sort of cousin of Burbank s and a newspaper 
 man. He attended to the subsidizing of news 
 agencies that supplied thousands of country pa 
 pers with boiler-plate matter to fill their inside 
 pages. He also subsidized and otherwise won 
 over many small town organs of the party. Fur- 
 
A "BOOM-FACTORY" 191 
 
 ther, he and three assistants wrote each week 
 many columns of "boom" matter, all of which 
 was carefully revised by Burbank himself before 
 it went out as "syndicate letters." If Goodrich 
 hadn t been ignorant of conditions west of the 
 Alleghanies and confident that his will was law, 
 he would have scented out this department of pub 
 licity of mine and so would have seen into my 
 "flotation." But he knew nothing beyond his 
 routine. I once asked him how many country 
 newspapers there were in the United States, and 
 he said: "Oh, I don t know. Perhaps three or 
 four thousand." Even had I enlightened him to 
 the extent of telling him that there were about 
 five times that number, he would have profited 
 nothing. Had he been able to see the importance 
 of such a fact to capable political management, he 
 would have learned it long before through years 
 of constant use of the easiest avenue into the 
 heart of the people. 
 
 He did not wake up to adequate action until the 
 fourth of that group of states whose delegations 
 to our national conventions were habitually 
 bought and sold, broke its agreement with him 
 
192 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 and instructed its delegation to vote for Burbank. 
 By the time he had a corps of agents in those 
 states, Doc Woodruff had "acquired" more than 
 a hundred delegates. Goodrich was working only 
 through the regular machinery of the party and 
 was fighting against a widespread feeling that 
 Cromwell shouldn t, and probably couldn t, be 
 elected ; we, on the other hand, were manufactur 
 ing presidential sentiment for a candidate who 
 was already popular. Nor had Goodrich much 
 advantage over us with the regular machines any 
 where except in the East. 
 
 Just as I was congratulating myself that noth 
 ing could happen to prevent our triumph at the 
 convention, Roebuck telegraphed me to come to 
 Chicago. I found with him in the sitting-room of 
 his suite in the Auditorium Annex, Partridge and 
 Granby, next to him the most important mem 
 bers of my combine, since they were the only ones 
 who had interests that extended into many states. 
 It was after an uneasy silence that Granby, the 
 uncouth one of the three, said : 
 
 "Senator, we brought you here to tell you this 
 Burbank nonsense has gone far enough." 
 
XV 
 
 MUTINY 
 
 It was all I could do not to show my astonish 
 ment and sudden fury. "I don t understand," said 
 I, in a tone which I somehow managed to keep 
 down to tranquil inquiry. 
 
 But I did understand. It instantly came to me 
 that the three had been brought into line for 
 / Cromwell by their powerful business associates 
 1 in Wall Street, probably by the great bankers 
 \who loaned them money. Swift upon the surge of 
 tanger I had suppressedr-before it flamed at the sur 
 face came a surge of triumph which I also sup 
 pressed. I had often wished, perhaps as a matter 
 of personal pride, just this opportunity ; and here 
 it was ! 
 
 "Cromwell must be nominated," said Granby in 
 his insolent tone. He had but two tones the in 
 solent and the cringing. "He s safe and sound. 
 Burbank isn t trusted in the East. And we didn t 
 i93 
 
194 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 like his conduct last year. He caters to the dema 
 gogues." 
 
 Roebuck, through his liking for me, I imagine, 
 rather than through refined instinct, now began to 
 speak, thinly disguising his orders as requests. I 
 waited until he had talked himself out. I waited 
 with the same air of calm attention until Part 
 ridge had given me his jerky variation. I waited, 
 still apparently calm, until the silence must have 
 been extremely uncomfortable to them. I waited 
 until Granby said sharply, "Then it is settled?" 
 
 "Yes," said I, keeping all emotion out of my 
 face and voice. "It is settled. Ex-Governor Bur- 
 bank is to be nominated. I am at a loss to account 
 for this outbreak. However, I shall at once take 
 measures to prevent its occurring again. Good 
 day." 
 
 And I was gone straight to the train. I did 
 not pause at Fredonia but went on to the capital. 
 The next morning I had the legislature and the 
 attorney-general at work demolishing Granby s 
 business in my state for I had selected him to 
 make an example of, incidentally because he had 
 insulted me, but chiefly because he was the most 
 
MUTINY 195 
 
 notorious of my ten, was about the greediest and 
 cruelest "robber baron" in the West. My legisla 
 ture was to revoke his charter ; my attorney-gen 
 eral was to enforce upon him the laws I had put 
 on the statute books against just such emergen 
 cies. And it had never entered their swollen heads 
 that I might have taken these precautions that 
 are in the primer of political management. 
 
 My three mutineers pursued me to the capital, 
 missed me, were standing breathless at the door 
 of my house near Fredonia on the morning of the 
 third day. I refused to be seen until the afternoon 
 of the fourth day, and then I forbade Granby. 
 But when I descended to the reception-room he 
 rushed at me, tried to take my hand, pouring out 
 a stream of sickening apologies. I rang the bell. 
 When a servant appeared, I said, "Show this man 
 the door." 
 
 Granby turned white and, after a long look into 
 my face, said in a broken voice to Roebuck : "For 
 ..God s sake, don t go back on me, Mr. Roebuck. 
 Do what you can for me." 
 
 As the curtain dropped behind him, I looked 
 expectantly at Roebuck, sweating with fright for 
 
196 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 his imperiled millions. Probably his mental state 
 can be fully appreciated only by a man who has 
 also felt the dread of losing the wealth upon which 
 he is wholly dependent for courage, respect and 
 self-respect. 
 
 "Don t misunderstand me, Harvey," he began 
 to plead, forgetting that there was anybody else to 
 save besides himself. "I didn t mean " 
 
 "What did you mean?" I interrupted, my tone 
 ominously quiet. 
 
 "We didn t intend" began Partridge. 
 
 "What did you intend ?" I interrupted as quiet 
 ly as before. 
 
 They looked nervously each at the other, then 
 at me. "If you think Burbank s the man," Roe 
 buck began again, "why, you may go ahead " 
 
 There burst in me such a storm of anger that 
 I dared not speak until I could control and aim 
 the explosion. Partridge saw how, and how seri 
 ously, Roebuck had blundered. He thrust him 
 aside and faced me. "What s the use of beating 
 around the bush ?" he said bluntly. "We ve made 
 damn fools of ourselves, Senator. We thought 
 we had the whip. We see that we haven t. We re 
 
MUTINY 197 
 
 mighty sorry we didn t do a little thinking before 
 Roebuck sent that telegram. We hope you ll let 
 us off as easy as you can, and we promise not to 
 meddle in your business again and you can bet 
 your life we ll keep our promise." 
 
 "I think you will," said I. 
 
 "I am a man of my word/ said he. "And so is 
 Roebuck." 
 
 , "Oh, I don t mean that," was my answer. "I 
 mean, when the Granby object-lesson in the stu- 
 / pidity of premature ingratitude is complete, you 
 Vshan t be able to forget it." 
 
 They drifted gloomily in the current of their 
 unpleasant thoughts; then each took a turn at 
 wringing my hand. I invited them up to my sit 
 ting-room where we smoked and talked amicably 
 for a couple of hours. It would have amused the 
 thousands of employes and dependents over 
 whom these two lorded it arrogantly to have 
 heard with what care they weighed their timid 
 words, how nervous they were lest they should 
 give me fresh provocation. As they were leaving, 
 Roebuck said earnestly: "Isn t there anything I 
 can do for you, Harvey ?" 
 
ip8 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 "Why, yes," said I. "Give out a statement next 
 Sunday in Chicago for the Monday morning 
 papers indorsing Cromwell s candidacy. Say 
 you and all your associates are enthusiastic for it 
 because his election would give the large enter 
 prises that have been the object of demagogic at 
 tack a sense of security for at least four years 
 
 more." 
 
 He thought I was joking him, being unable to 
 believe me so lacking in judgment as to fail to 
 realize what a profound impression in Cromwell s 
 favor such a statement from the great Roebuck 
 would produce. I wrote and mailed him an inter 
 view with himself the following day; he gave it 
 out as I had requested. It got me Burbank dele 
 gations in Illinois, South Dakota and Oregon the 
 same week. 
 
XVI 
 
 r A VICTORY FOR THE PEOPLE 
 
 I arrived at Chicago the day before the con 
 vention and, going at once to our state headquar 
 ters in the Great Northern, shut myself in with 
 Doc Woodruff. My door-keeper, the member of 
 the legislature from Fredonia, ventured to inter 
 rupt with the announcement that a messenger had 
 come from Senator Goodrich. 
 
 "Let him in," said I. 
 
 As the door-man disappeared Doc Woodruff 
 glanced at his watch, then said with a smile: 
 "You ve been here seven minutes and a half just 
 time for a lookout down stairs to telephone to 
 the Auditorium and for the messenger to drive 
 from there here. Goodrich is on the anxious-seat, 
 all right." 
 
 The messenger was Goodrich s handy-man, 
 
 Judge Dufour. I myself have always frowned on 
 
 these public exhibitions of the intimacy of judges 
 
 in practical politics ; but Goodrich had many small 
 
 199 
 
200 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 vanities he liked his judges to hold his coat and 
 his governors to carry his satchel. One would say 
 that such petty weaknesses would be the undoing 
 of a man. Fortunately, we are not as weak as our 
 weakness but as strong as our strength ; and while 
 the universal weaknesses are shared by the strong, 
 their strength is peculiar and rare. After Dufour 
 had introduced himself and we had exchanged 
 commonplaces he said: "Senator, there s a little 
 conference of some of the leaders at headquarters 
 and it isn t complete without you. So, Senator 
 Goodrich has sent me over to escort you." 
 
 "Thank you very courteous of you and of 
 him," said I without hesitation, for I knew what 
 was coming as soon as his name had been brought 
 in, and my course was laid out. "But I can t leave 
 just now. Please ask him if he won t come over 
 any time within the next four hours." This 
 blandly and without a sign that I was conscious 
 of Dufour s stupefaction for his vanity made 
 him believe that the god the great Dufour knelt 
 to must be the god of gods. 
 / There is no more important branch of the art of 
 
 (successful dealing with men than the etiquette of 
 \ 
 
A VICTORY FOR THE PEOPLE 201 
 
 who shall call upon whom. Many a man has in 
 his very hour of triumph ruined his cause with a 
 blunder there by going to see some one whom 
 he should have compelled to come to him, or by 
 compelling some one to come to him when he 
 should have made the concession of going. I had 
 two reasons for thus humiliating Goodrich, 
 neither of them the reason he doubtless attributed 
 to me, the desire to feed my vanity. My first rea 
 son was his temperament; I knew his having to 
 come to me would make him bow before me in 
 spirit, as he was a tyrant, and tyrants are always 
 cringers. My second reason was that I thought 
 myself near enough to control of the convention 
 to be able to win control by creating the atmos 
 phere of impending success. There is always a lot 
 of fellows who wait to see who is likely to win, so 
 that they may be on the side of the man in the 
 plum tree; often there are enough of these to 
 gain the victory for him who can lure them over 
 at just the right moment. 
 
 As soon as Dufour had taken his huge body- 
 away I said to Woodruff : "Go out with your men 
 and gather in the office down stairs as many mem- 
 
202 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 bers of the doubtful delegations as you can. Keep 
 them where they ll be bound to see Goodrich come 
 in and go out." 
 
 He rushed away, and I waited working with 
 the leaders of three far-western states. At the 
 end of two hours, I won them by the spectacle of 
 the arriving Goodrich. He came in, serene, smil 
 ing, giving me the joyously shining eyes and joy 
 ously firm hand-clasp of the politician s greeting ; 
 not an outward sign that he would like to see me 
 tortured to death by some slow process then and 
 there. Hypocritical preliminaries were not merely 
 unnecessary but even highly ridiculous; yet, so 
 great was his anger and confusion that he began 
 with the "prospects for an old-time convention, 
 with old-time enthusiasm and that generous ri 
 valry which is the best sign of party health." 
 
 "I hope not, Senator," said I pleasantly. "Here, 
 we think the fight is over and won." 
 
 He lifted his eyebrows ; but I saw his maxillary 
 muscles twitching. "We don t figure it out just 
 that way at headquarters," he replied oilily. "But, 
 there s no doubt about it, your man has developed 
 strength in the West." 
 
A VICTORY FOR THE PEOPLE 203 
 
 "And South/ said I, with deliberate intent to 
 inflame, for I knew how he must feel about those 
 delegates we had bought away from him. 
 
 There were teeth enough in his smile but lit 
 tle else. "I think Burbank and Cromwell will be 
 about even on the first ballot," said he. "May the 
 best man win ! We re all working for the good of 
 the party and the country. But I came, rather, 
 to get your ideas about platform." 
 
 I opened a drawer in the table at which I was 
 sitting and took out a paper. "We ve embodied 
 our ideas in this," said I, holding the paper to 
 ward him. "There s a complete platform, but we 
 only insist on the five paragraphs immediately 
 after the preamble." 
 
 He seemed to age as he read. "Impossible !" he 
 finally exclaimed. "Preposterous! It would be 
 difficult enough to get any money for Cromwell 
 on such a platform, well as our conservative men 
 know they can trust him. But for Burbank you 
 couldn t get a cent not a damn cent ! A rickety 
 candidate on a rickety platform that s what 
 they d say." 
 
 I made no answer. 
 
204 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 "May I ask," he presently went on, "has ex- 
 Governor Burbank seen this this astonishing 
 document?" 
 
 Burbank had written it. I confess when he first 
 showed it to me, it had affected me somewhat as 
 it was now affecting" Goodrich. For, a dealer 
 with business men as well as with public senti 
 ment, I appreciated instantly the shock some of 
 the phrases would give the large interests. But 
 Burbank had not talked to me five minutes before 
 I saw he was in the main right and that his 
 phrases only needed a little "toning down" so 
 that they wouldn t rasp too harshly on "conserva 
 tive" ears. "Yes, Mr. Burbank has seen it," said 
 I. "He approves it though, of course, it does not 
 represent his personal views, or his intentions" 
 
 "If Mr. Burbank approves this 9 exclaimed 
 Goodrich, red and tossing the paper on the table, 
 "then my gravest doubts about him are confirmed. 
 He is an utterly unsafe man. He could not carry 
 a single state in the East where there are any 
 large centerings of capital or of enterprise not 
 even our yellow-dog states." 
 
 "He can and will carry them all," said I. "They 
 
A VICTORY FOR THE PEOPLE 205 
 
 must go for him, because after the opposition have 
 nominated, and have announced their platform, 
 your people will regard him as, at any rate, much 
 the less of two evils. We have decided on that plat 
 form because we wish to make it possible for him 
 to carry the necessary Western states. We can t 
 hold our rank and file out here unless we have a 
 popular platform. The people must have their 
 way before election, Senator, if the interests are 
 to continue to have their way after election." 
 
 "I ll never consent to that platform," said he, 
 rising. 
 
 "Very well," said I with a mild show of regret, 
 rising also as if I had no wish to prolong the in 
 terview. 
 
 He brought his hand down violently upon the 
 paper. "This," he exclaimed, "is a timely uncov 
 ering of a most amazing plot a plot to turn our 
 party over to demagoguery." 
 
 -"To rescue it from the combination of dema 
 goguery and plutagoguery that is wrecking it," 
 ^aid I without heat, "and make it again an instru 
 ment of at least sanity, perhaps of patriotism." 
 
 "We control the platform committee," he went 
 
206 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 on, "and I can tell you now, Senator Sayler, that 
 that there platform, nor nothing like it, will never 
 be reported." In his agitation he went back to 
 the grammar of his youthful surroundings. 
 
 "I regret that you will force us to a fight on the 
 floor of the convention," I returned. "It can t 
 but make a bad impression on the country to see 
 two factions in the party one for the people, the 
 other against them." 
 
 Goodrich sat down. 
 
 "But," I went on, "at least, such a fight will in 
 sure Burbank all the delegates except perhaps the 
 two or three hundred you directly control. You 
 are courageous, Senator, to insist upon a count of 
 noses on the issues we raise there." 
 
 He took up the platform again, and began to 
 pick it to pieces phrase by phrase. That was what 
 I wanted. Some phrases I defended, some I con 
 ceded might be altered to advantage, others I 
 cheerfully agreed to discard altogether. Presently 
 he had a pencil in his hand and was going over the 
 crucial paragraphs, was making interlineations. 
 And he grew more and more reasonable. At last 
 I suggested that he take the platform away with 
 
A VICTORY FOR THE PEOPLE 207 
 
 him, make the changes agreed upon and such 
 others as he might think wise, and send it back 
 for my criticism and suggestions. He assented, 
 and we parted on excellent terms "harmony" in 
 the convention was assured. 
 
 When the amended platform came back late in 
 the afternoon, I detained Goodrich s messenger, 
 the faithful Dufour again. It was still the Bur- 
 bank platform, with no changes we could not con 
 cede. I had a cop} r made and gave it to Dufour, 
 saying : "Tell the Senator I think this admirable, 
 a great improvement. But I ll try to see him to 
 night and thank him." 
 
 I did not try to see him, however. I took no 
 risk of lessening the effect created by his having 
 to come to me. He had entered through groups 
 of delegates from all parts of the country. He had 
 passed out through a crowd, so well did my men 
 employ the time his long stay with me gave them. 
 
 On the next day the platform was adopted. 
 On the following day, amid delirious enthusiasm 
 in the packed galleries and not a little agitation 
 among the delegates who, even to the "know 
 ing ones," were as ignorant of what was really 
 
208 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 going on as private soldiers are of the general s 
 plan of battle amid waving of banners and 
 :rash of band and shriek of crowd Burbank was 
 nominated on the first ballot. Our press hailed the 
 nomination as a "splendid victory of the honest 
 common sense of the entire party over the ultra 
 conservatism of a faction associated in the popu- 
 \ lar mind with segregated wealth and undue en 
 joyment of the favors of laws and law-makers." 
 
 When I saw Burbank he took me graciously by 
 the hand. "I thank you, Harvey/ he said, "for 
 your aid in this glorious victory of the people/ 
 
 I did not realize then that his vanity was of the 
 kind which can in an instant spring into a Red 
 wood colossus from the shriveled stalk to which 
 the last glare of truth has wilted it. Still his 
 words and manner jarred on me. As our eyes 
 met, something in mine perhaps something he 
 imagined he saw made him frown in the majesty 
 of offended pose. Then his timidity took fright 
 and he said apologetically, "How can I repay you ? 
 After all, it is your victory." 
 
 I protested. 
 
 "Then ours" said he. "Yours, for us." 
 
XVII 
 
 SCARBOROUGH 
 
 Now came the problem to elect. 
 
 We hear much of many wonders of combina 
 tion and concentration of industrial power which 
 railway and telegraph have wrought. But nothing 
 is said about what seems to me the greatest won 
 der of them all how these forces have resulted 
 in the concentration of the political power of up 
 wards of twelve millions of our fifteen million 
 voters; how the few can impose their ideas and 
 their will upon widening circles, out and out, un 
 til all are included. The people are scattered ; the 
 powers confer, man to man, day by day. The 
 people are divided by partizan and other preju 
 dices ; the powers are bound together by the one 
 self-interest. The people must accept such politi 
 cal organizations as are provided for them; the 
 powers pay for, and their agents make and direct, 
 those organizations. The people are poor; the 
 powers are rich. The people have not even offices 
 209 
 
210 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 to bestow; the powers have offices to give and 
 lucrative employment of all kinds, and material 
 and social advancement, everything that the 
 vanity or the appetite of man craves. The people 
 punish but feebly usually the wrong persons 
 and soon forget; the powers relentlessly and 
 surely pursue those who oppose them, forgive 
 only after the offender has surrendered uncondi 
 tionally, and they never forget where it is to their 
 interest to remember. The powers know both 
 what they want and how to get it; the people 
 know neither. 
 
 Back in March, when Goodrich first suspected 
 that I had outgeneraled him, he opened negotia 
 tions with the national machine of the opposition 
 party. He decided that, if I should succeed in 
 nominating Burbank, he would save his masters 
 and himself by nominating as the opposition can 
 didate a man under their and his control, and by 
 electing him with an enormous campaign fund. 
 
 Beckett, the subtlest and most influential of the 
 managers of the national machine of the opposi 
 tion party, submitted several names to him. He 
 selected Henry J. Simpson, Justice of the Supreme 
 
SCARBOROUGH 211 
 
 Court of Ohio a slow, shy, ultra-conservative 
 man, his brain spun full in every cell with the 
 cobwebs of legal technicality. He was, in his way, 
 almost as satisfactory a candidate for the inter 
 ests as Cromwell would have been. For, while he 
 was honest, of what value is honesty when com 
 bined with credulity and lack of knowledge of 
 affairs? They knew what advisers he would se 
 lect, men trained in their service and taken from 
 their legal staffs. They knew he would shrink 
 from anything "radical" or "disturbing" that is, 
 would not molest the two packs of wolves, the 
 business and the political, at their feast upon the 
 public. He came of a line of bigoted adherents of 
 his party; he led a simple, retired life among sheep 
 and cows and books asleep in the skins of sheep 
 and cows. He wore old-fashioned rural whiskers, 
 thickest in the throat, thinning toward the jaw 
 bone, scant about the lower lip, absent from the 
 upper. These evidences of unfitness to cope with 
 up-to-date corruption seemed to endear him to the 
 masses. 
 
 As soon as those big organs of the opposition 
 that were in the control of the powers began to 
 
212 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 talk of Simpson as an ideal candidate, I suspected 
 what was in the wind. But I had my hands full ; 
 the most I could then do was to supply my local 
 "left-bower," Silliman, with funds and set him to 
 work for a candidate for his party more to my 
 taste. It was fortunate for me that I had cured 
 myself of the habit of worrying. For it was plain 
 that, if Goodrich and Beckett succeeded in get 
 ting Simpson nominated by the opposition, I 
 should have a hard fight to raise the necessary 
 campaign money. The large interests either 
 would finance Simpson or, should I convince 
 them that Burbank was as good for their pur 
 poses as Simpson, would be indifferent which 
 won. 
 
 I directed Silliman to work for Rundle of Ind 
 iana, a thoroughly honest man, in deadly earnest 
 about half a dozen deadly wrong things, and cap 
 able of anything in furthering them after the 
 manner of fanatics. If he had not been in public 
 life, he would have been a camp-meeting exhorter. 
 Crowds liked to listen to him; the radicals and 
 radically inclined throughout the West swore by 
 him ; he had had two terms in Congress, had got a 
 
SCARBOROUGH 213 
 
 hundred-odd votes for the nomination for Presi 
 dent at the last national convention of the opposi 
 tion. A splendid scare-crow for the Wall Street 
 crowd, but difficult to nominate over Goodrich s 
 man Simpson in a convention of practical poli 
 ticians. 
 
 In May it was the afternoon of the very day 
 my mutineers got back into the harness Wood 
 ruff asked me if I would see a man he had picked 
 up in a delegate-hunting trip into Indiana. "An 
 old pal of mine, much the better for the twelve 
 years wear since I last saw him. He has always 
 trained with the opposition. He s a full-fledged 
 graduate of the Indiana school of politics, and 
 that s the best. It s almost all craft there they 
 hate to give up money and don t use it except as a 
 last resort." 
 
 He brought in his man Merriweather by 
 name. I liked the first look at him keen, cynical, 
 indifferent. He had evidently sat in so many 
 games of chance of all kinds that play roused in 
 him only the ice-cold passion of the purely profes 
 sional. 
 
 There s been nothing doing in our state for 
 
214 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 the last two or three years at least nothing* in 
 my line," said he. "A rank outsider, Scarbo 
 rough " 
 
 I nodded. "Yes, I know him. He came into 
 the Senate from your state two years ago." 
 
 "Well, he s built up a machine of his own and 
 runs things to suit himself." 
 
 "I thought he wasn t a politician," said I. 
 
 Merriweather s bony face showed a faint grin. 
 "The best ever," said he. "He s put the profes 
 sionals out of business, without its costing him a 
 cent. I ve got tired of waiting for him to blow 
 
 over." 
 
 Tired and hungry, I thought. After half an 
 hour of pumping I sent him away, detaining 
 Woodruff. "What does he really think about 
 Rundle?" I asked. 
 
 "Says he hasn t the ghost of a chance that 
 Scarborough ll control the Indiana delegation and 
 that Scarborough has no more use for lunatics 
 than for grafters." 
 
 This was not encouraging. I called Merri- 
 weather back. "Why don t you people nominate. 
 Scarborough at St. Louis ?" said I. 
 
SCARBOROUGH 215 
 
 Behind his surface of attention, I saw his mind 
 traveling at lightning speed in search of my hid 
 den purpose along every avenue that my sugges 
 tion opened. 
 
 "Scarborough d be a dangerous man for you," 
 he replied. "He s got a nasty way of reaching 
 across party lines for votes." 
 
 I kept my face a blank. 
 
 "You ve played politics only in your own state 
 or against the Eastern crowd, these last few 
 years," he went on, as if in answer to my 
 thoughts. "You don t realize what a hold Scar 
 borough s got through the entire West. He has 
 split your party and the machine of his own 
 in our state, and they know all about him and 
 his doings in the states to the west. The people 
 like a fellow that knocks out the regulars." 
 
 "A good many call him a demagogue, don t 
 they?" said I. 
 
 "Yes and he is, in sort of a way," replied 
 Merriweather. "But well, he s got a knack of 
 telling the truth so that it doesn t scare folks. 
 And he s managed to convince them that he isn t 
 looking out for number one. It can t be denied 
 
216 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 that he made a good governor. For instance, he 
 got after the monopolies, and the cost of living 
 is twenty per cent, lower in Indiana than just 
 across the line in Ohio." 
 
 "Then I should say that all the large interests 
 in the country would line up against him," said I. 
 
 "Every one/ said Merriweather, and an ex 
 pression of understanding flitted across his face. 
 He went on: "But it ain t much use talking 
 about him. He couldn t get the nomination at 
 least, it wouldn t be easy to get it for him." 
 
 "I suppose not," said I. "That s a job for a 
 first-class man and they re rare." And I shook 
 hands with him. 
 
 About a week later he returned, and tried to 
 make a report to me. But I sent him away, 
 treating him very formally. I appreciated that, 
 being an experienced and capable man, he knew 
 the wisdom of getting intimately in touch with his 
 real employer; but, as I had my incomparable 
 Woodruff, better far than I at the rough work 
 of politics, there was no necessity for my entang 
 ling myself. Merriweather went to Woodruff, and 
 Woodruff reported to me Scarborough s friends 
 
SCARBOROUGH 217 
 
 in Indianapolis all agreed that he did not want the 
 nomination and would not have it. 
 
 "We must force it on him/ said I. "We must 
 have Scarborough." 
 
 Immediately after Burbank s nomination, 
 Goodrich concentrated upon nominating Judge 
 Simpson. He had three weeks, and he worked 
 hard and well. I think he overdid it in the edi 
 torials in our party organs under his influence in 
 New York, Boston and other eastern cities 
 never a day without lugubrious screeds on the 
 dismal outlook for Burbank if the other party 
 should put up Simpson. But his Simpson edito 
 rials in big opposition papers undoubtedly pro 
 duced an effect. I set for De Milt and his bureau 
 of underground publicity the task of showing up, 
 as far as it was prudent to expose intimate poli 
 tics to the public, Goodrich and his crowd and 
 their conspiracy with Beckett and his crowd to 
 secure the opposition nomination for a man of 
 the same offensive type as Cromwell. And I di 
 rected Woodruff to supply Silliman and Merri- 
 weather and that department of my "bi-partizan" 
 machine with all the money they wanted. "They 
 
218 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 can t spend much to advantage at this late day ex 
 cept for traveling expenses," said I. "Our best 
 plan, anyhow, is good honest missionary work 
 with the honest men of the other party who wish 
 to see its best man nominated." 
 
 While Goodrich s agents and Beckett s agents 
 were industriously arranging the eastern machin 
 ery of the opposition party for Simpson, Merri- 
 weather had Silliman s men toiling in the West 
 and South to get Rundle delegates or uninstruct- 
 ed delegations. And, after our conversation, he 
 was reinforced by Woodruff and such men of his 
 staff as could be used without suspicion. Wood 
 ruff himself could permeate like an odorless gas ; 
 you knew he was there only by the results. Noth 
 ing could be done for Rundle in his own state; 
 but the farther away from his home our men got, 
 the easier it was to induce by purchase and 
 otherwise the politicians of his party to think 
 well of him. This the more because they regard 
 ed Simpson as a "stuff" and a "stiff" and they 
 weren t far wrong. 
 
 "It may not be Scarborough, and it probably 
 won t be Rundle," Woodruff said in his final re* 1 
 
SCARBOROUGH 219 
 
 port to me, "but it certainly won t be Simpson. 
 He s the dead one, no matter how well he does on 
 the first ballot." 
 
 But I would not let him give me the details 
 the story of shrewd and slippery plots, strata 
 gems, surprises. "I am worn out, mind and 
 body," said I in apology for my obvious weariness 
 and indifference. 
 
 For six months I had been incessantly at work. 
 The tax upon memory alone, to say nothing of the 
 other faculties, had been crushing. Easy as polit 
 ical facts always were for me, I could not lightly 
 bear the strain of keeping constantly in mind not 
 merely the outlines, but also hundreds of the de 
 tails, of the political organizations of forty-odd 
 states with all their counties. And the tax on 
 memory was probably the least. Then added to 
 all my political work was business care ; for while 
 I was absorbed in politics, Ed Ramsay had badly 
 muddled the business. Nor had I, like Burbank 
 and Woodruff, the power to empty my mind as 
 I touched the pillow and so to get eight hours of 
 unbroken rest each night. 
 
 Woodruff began asking me for instructions. 
 
220 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 But my judgment was uncertain, and my imagi 
 nation barren. "Do as you think best," said I. 
 "I must rest. I ve reached my limit," my limit 
 of endurance of the sights and odors and befoul- 
 ings of these sewers of politics I must in person 
 adventure in order to reach my goal. I must pause 
 and rise to the surface for a breath of decent air 
 or I should not have the strength to finish these 
 menial and even vile tasks which no man can 
 escape if he is a practical leader in the practical 
 activities of practical life. 
 
XVIII 
 
 A DANGEROUS PAUSE 
 
 I took train for my friend Sandys country 
 place near Cleveland, forbidding Woodruff or 
 Burbank or my secretaries to communicate with 
 me. Sandys had no interest in politics his for 
 tune was in real estate and, therefore, did not 
 tempt or force him into relations with political 
 machines. 
 
 Early in the morning after my arrival I got 
 away from the others and, with a stag-hound 
 who remembered me with favor from my last 
 visit, struck into woods that had never been de 
 spoiled by man. As I tramped on and on, my 
 mind seemed to revive, and I tried to take up the 
 plots and schemes that had been all-important 
 yesterday. But I could not. Instead, as any sane 
 man must when he and nature are alone and face 
 to face, I fell to marveling that I could burn up 
 myself, the best of me, the best years of my one 
 life, in such a fever of folly and fraud as this 
 
 221 
 
222 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 political career of mine. I seemed to be in a lucid 
 interval between paroxysms of insanity. I re 
 viewed the men and things of my world as one 
 recalls the absurd and repellent visions of a night 
 mare. I shrank from passing from this mood of 
 wakefulness and reason back into the unreal re 
 ality of what had for years been my all-in-all. I 
 wandered hour after hour, sometimes imagining 
 that I was flying from the life I loathed, again 
 that somewhere in those cool, green, golden-light 
 ed mazes I should find my lost youth, and her. 
 For, how could I think of it without thinking of 
 her also ? It had been lighted by her ; it had gone 
 with her ; it lived in memory, illumined by her. 
 
 The beautiful, beautiful world-that-ought-to- 
 be ! The hideous, the horrible world-that-is ! 
 
 I did not return to the house until almost din 
 ner-time. "I have to go away to-morrow morn 
 ing/ I announced after dinner. For I felt that, 
 if I did not fly at once, I should lose all heart for 
 the task which must be finished. 
 
 "Why," protested Sandys, "you came to stay 
 until we all started with you for St. Louis." 
 
 "I must go," I repeated. I did not care to in- 
 
A DANGEROUS PAUSE 223 
 
 vent an excuse ; I could not give the reason. Had 
 I followed my impulse, I should have gone at 
 once, that night. 
 
 By noon the next day I had again flung myself 
 into the vexed political ocean whose incessant buf- 
 fetings give the swimmers small chance to think 
 of anything beyond the next oncoming wave. 
 
XIX 
 
 DAVID SENT OUT AGAINST GOLIATH 
 
 I was almost master of myself again when, a 
 week later, I got aboard the car in which Carlotta 
 and I were taking our friends to look on at the 
 opposition s convention at St. Louis. 
 
 When we arrived, I went at once to confer with 
 Merriweather in a room at the Southern Hotel 
 which no one knew he had. "Simpson has under, 
 rather than over, five hundred delegates," was his 
 first item of good news. "It takes six hundred 
 and fifty to nominate. As his sort of boom always 
 musters its greatest strength on the first ballot, 
 I m putting my money two to one against him." 
 
 "And Scarborough?" I asked, wondering at 
 my indifference to this foreshadowing of tri 
 umph. 
 
 "My men talk him to every incoming delega 
 tion. It s well known that he don t want the 
 nomination and has forbidden his friends to vote 
 for him and has pledged them to work against 
 224 
 
DAVID SENT AGAINST GOLIATH 225 
 
 him. Then, too, the bosses and the boys don t 
 like him to put it mildly. But I think we re mak 
 ing every one feel he s the only man they can put 
 up, with a chance to beat Burbank." 
 
 My wife and our friends and I dined at the 
 Southern that night. As we were about to leave, 
 the streets began to fill. And presently through 
 the close-packed masses came at a walk an open 
 carriage the storm-center of a roar that almost 
 drowned the music of the four or five bands. The 
 electric lights made the scene bright as day. 
 
 "Who is he?" asked the woman at my side 
 Mrs. Sandys. 
 
 She was looking at the man in that carriage- 
 there were four, but there was no mistaking him. 
 He was seated, was giving not the slightest heed 
 to the cheering throngs. His soft black hat was 
 pulled well down over his brows; his handsome 
 profile was stern, his face pale. If that crowd 
 had been hurling curses at him and preparing to 
 tear him limb from limb he would not have looked 
 different. He was smooth-shaven, which made 
 him seem younger than I knew him to be. And 
 over him was the glamour of the world-that- 
 
226 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 ought-to-be in which he lived and had the power 
 to compel others to live as long as they were un 
 der the spell of his personality. 
 
 "That," I replied to Mrs. Sandys, "is Senator 
 Scarborough of Indiana." 
 
 "What s he so stern about?" 
 
 "I m sure I don t know perhaps to hide his 
 joy," said I. 
 
 But I did know, and my remark was the im 
 pulsive fling of envy. He had found out, sev 
 eral weeks before, what a strong undercurrent 
 was running toward him. He was faced by a 
 dilemma if he did not go to the convention, it 
 would be said that he had stayed away deliberate 
 ly, and he would be nominated ; if he went, to try 
 to prevent his nomination, the enthusiasm of his 
 admirers and followers would give the excuse for 
 forcing the nomination upon him. And as he sat 
 there, with that ominous tumult about him, he 
 was realizing how hard his task was to be. 
 
 His companions pushed him a passage through 
 the crowds on the sidewalk and in the lobby, and 
 he shut himself away in the upper part of the ho 
 tel. When we left, half an hour later, the people 
 
THAT, I REPLIED 
 
 OF INDIANA 
 
 IS SENATOR SCARBOROUGH 
 226 
 
DAVID SENT AGAINST GOLIATH 227 
 
 were packed before that face of the hotel which 
 displayed the banner of the Indiana delegation, 
 were cheering Scarborough, were clamoring 
 in vain for him to show himself. 
 
 "But won t he offend them?" asked my wife. 
 
 "A crowd loves like a woman," said I. "In 
 difference only excites it." 
 
 "Oh, / never loved that way," protested Mrs. 
 Sandys. 
 
 "Then," said my wife, rather sourly I thought, 
 "you and Mr. Sandys have something to live for." 
 
 And so we talked no more politics. There may 
 be American women who really like to talk poli 
 tics, but I never happened to know one with so lit 
 tle sense. It s a pity we men do not imitate our 
 women more closely in one respect. In season and 
 out of season, they never talk anything but busi 
 ness woman s one business. When other things 
 are being discussed, they listen, or rather, pre 
 tend to listen; in reality, their minds are still 
 on their business, and how they shall contrive to 
 bring it back into the conversation with advan 
 tage to themselves. 
 
 Next day the convention adopted a wishy- 
 
228 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 washy platform much like Burbank s if any 
 thing, weaker. I saw Goodrich s blight upon it. 
 But the victory cost him dear. That night the 
 delegates realized what a blunder they had made 
 or thought they realized it after Merriweather 
 and his staff had circulated among them. Few 
 of them had been trusted by Beckett with the 
 secret that, with that platform and with Simpson 
 as the nominee, their party would have the inter 
 ests behind it, would almost certainly win. They 
 only saw ahead a dull campaign, and no real issue 
 between the parties, and their candidate, if he was 
 Simpson, much the less attractive personality of 
 the two. 
 
 The following morning the voting began ; and 
 after seven ballots Simpson had thirty-nine votes 
 less than on the first ballot. "It was like a 
 funeral," was the verdict of my disappointed 
 guests that evening. A night of debate and 
 gloom among the politicians and other delegates, 
 and on the opening ballot Merriweather sprung 
 his trap. 
 
 The first big doubtful state in the alphabetical 
 list of states is Illinois. When the secretary of 
 
DAVID SENT AGAINST GOLIATH 229 
 
 the convention called for Illinois vote, it was cast 
 solidly for Scarborough. 
 
 There was straightway pandemonium. It was 
 half an hour before any one could get a hearing. 
 Then Indiana was called, and Pierson, attorney 
 general of that state and chairman of its delega 
 tion, cast its vote as in the other ballots, for 
 Kitchens, its governor. From my box I was 
 watching Scarborough and his immediate friends 
 going from delegation to delegation, and I knew 
 what he was about. When Iowa was called and 
 cast its vote solidly for him I knew he had failed. 
 
 "How white he is !" said Mrs. Sandys, who was 
 looking at him through opera-glasses. 
 
 I borrowed them and saw that his gaze was 
 fixed on a box on the other side of the huge audi 
 torium, on a woman in that box I had only to 
 look at her to see which woman. She was beauti 
 ful, of that type of charm which the French sum 
 up in the phrase "the woman of thirty." I have 
 heard crowds bellow too often to be moved by 
 it though the twenty or thirty thousand gathered 
 under that roof were outdoing the cannonade of 
 any thunderstorm. But that woman s look in re- 
 
230 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 sponse to Scarborough s there was sympathy 
 and understanding in it, and more, infinitely more. 
 He had been crushed for the moment and I un 
 derstood enough of his situation to understand 
 what a blow to all his plans this untimely appar 
 ent triumph was. She was showing that she too 
 felt the blow, but she was also sending a message 
 of courage to him one of those messages that 
 transcend words, like music, like the perfumes of 
 flowers and fields, like that which fills us as we 
 look straight up into a clear night sky. I lowered 
 the glasses and looked away I could not bear it. 
 For the moment I hated him hating myself 
 for it. 
 
 I heard Carlotta asking a woman in the box 
 next ours the name of "the woman with the white 
 plume in the big black hat in the seventh box on 
 the other side." 
 
 "Mrs. Scarborough," was the answer. 
 
 "Oh, is that she?" exclaimed Mrs. Sandys, al 
 most snatching her glasses from me in her eager 
 ness. "You know who she was John Dumont s 
 widow you remember him? She must be an 
 unusual person to have attracted two such men." 
 
DAVID SENT AGAINST GOLIATH 231 
 
 But Scarborough was nominated now. He 
 waved aside those who tried to take him up and 
 bear him to the platform. He walked down the 
 aisle alone and ascended amid a tense silence ; he 
 stood looking calmly out. His face had lost its 
 whiteness of a few minutes before. As he stood 
 there, big and still, a sort of embodiment of fear 
 lessness, I wondered and I fancy many Others 
 were wondering whether he was about to refuse 
 the nomination. But an instant s thought drove 
 the wild notion from my mind. He could not 
 strike that deadly blow at his party. 
 
 "Fellow delegates," said he a clearer, more 
 musical voice than his I have never heard "I 
 thank you for this honor. As you know, I opposed 
 the platform you saw fit to adopt. I have nothing 
 to retract. I do not like it. But, after all, a can 
 didate must be his own platform. And I bring 
 my public record as proof of my pledge that " 
 he paused and the silence was tremendous. He 
 went on, each word distinct and by itself "if I 
 am elected" a long pause "I shall obey the 
 Constitution" another long pause "I shall en 
 force the laws !" 
 
232 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 He was descending to the aisle before the 
 silence was broken a feeble, rippling applause, 
 significant of disappointment at what seemed an 
 anti-climax. He had merely repeated in con 
 densed form the oath of office which a President 
 takes at his inauguration. But somehow no 
 doubt, it was the magic of his voice and his man 
 ner and superb presence those simple words 
 kept on ringing ; and all at once full half a min 
 ute must have elapsed, a long time in such cir 
 cumstances all at once the enormous meaning of 
 the two phrases boomed into the brains of those 
 thousands : If this man is elected, there will be a 
 President without fear or favor, and he will really 
 obey the Constitution, will really enforce the laws! 
 That little speech, though only a repetition of an 
 bath embodied in our century-old supreme law, 
 : was a firebrand to light the torch of revolution, 
 pf revolution back toward what the republic used 
 ^o be before differences of wealth divided its 
 people into upper, middle and lower classes, be 
 fore enthroned corporate combinations made 
 equality before the law a mockery, before the de 
 velopment of our vast material resources restored 
 
DAVID SENT AGAINST GOLIATH 233 
 
 to the intelligent and energetic few their power 
 over the careless and purposeless many. 
 
 As the multitude realized his meaning, I 
 doubt if many times in all history such a sight 
 and sound has burst upon mortal ears and eyes. 
 For the moment I was daunted ; it was impossible 
 not to think that here was the whole people, not 
 to feel that Scarborough had been chosen Presi 
 dent and was about to fulfil his pledge. Daunted, 
 yet thrilled too. For, at bottom, are we not all 
 passionate dreamers of abstract right and justice? 
 
 Then I remembered ; and I said to myself, "He 
 has defied the interests. David has gone out 
 against Goliath but the Davids do not win now 
 adays. I can elect Burbank." 
 
 But where was the elation that thought would 
 have set to swelling in the me of less than two 
 weeks before? And then I began clearly to see 
 that, for me at least, the prize, to be prized, must 
 be fairly won from start to goal; and to be en 
 joyed, must gladden eyes that would in turn glad 
 den me with the approval and sympathy which 
 only a woman can give and without which a man 
 is alone and indeed forlorn. 
 
XX 
 
 PILGRIMS AND PATRIOTS 
 
 From St. Louis I went direct to Burbank. 
 
 His heart had been set upon a grand speech- 
 making tour. He was fond of wandering about, 
 showing himself to cheering crowds ; and he had 
 a deep, and by no means unwarranted, confidence 
 in his platform magnetism. At first I had been 
 inclined to give him his way. But the more I con 
 sidered the matter, the stronger seemed to become 
 the force of the objections it takes a far bigger 
 man than was Burbank at that stage of his growth 
 not to be cheapened by "steeple-chasing for 
 votes"; also, the coming of the candidate causes 
 jealousy and heart-burnings over matters of pre 
 cedence, reception and entertainment among the 
 local celebrities, and so he often leaves the party 
 lukewarm where he found it enthusiastic. Fur 
 ther, it uses up local campaign money that ought 
 to be spent in hiring workers at the polls, which 
 is the polite phrase for vote-buying as "retaining- 
 fee" is the polite phrase for bribe. 
 234 
 
PILGRIMS AND PATRIOTS 235 
 
 I decided against the tour and for the highly- 
 expensive but always admirable and profitable 
 "pilgrimage plan". 
 
 Burbank s own home was at Rivington, and 
 I should have had him visited there, had it not 
 been on a single-track branch-railway which could 
 not handle without danger and discomfort the 
 scores of thousands we were planning to carry to 
 and from him almost daily. So, it was given out 
 that he purposed as far as possible to withdraw 
 from the strife of the campaign and to await the 
 results in the dignified calm in which he wished 
 the voters to determine it. He took after Wood 
 ruff had carefully selected it a "retired" house 
 "in the country." 
 
 And it was in the open country. A farm gar 
 den adjoined it on the one side, a wheat field on 
 the other, a large orchard to the rear. The broad 
 meadow in front gave plenty of room for dele 
 gations visiting the "standard bearer of the party 
 of patriotism" in his "rural seclusion," to hear 
 his simple, spontaneous words of welcome. But 
 for all the remote aspect of the place, it was only 
 five minutes drive and ten minutes walk from a 
 
2 3 6 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 station through which four big railroads passed. 
 One of the out-buildings was changed into a tele 
 graph office from which accounts of the enthusi 
 asm of the delegations and of his speeches could 
 be sent to the whole country. On his desk in his 
 little study stood a private-wire telephone that, 
 without danger of leakage, would put him in 
 direct communication either with my study at 
 Fredonia or with Doc Woodruff s privatest pri 
 vate room in the party national headquarters at 
 Chicago. Thus, our statesman, though he seemed 
 to be aloof, was in the very thick of the fray ; and 
 the tens of thousands of his fellow citizens, though 
 they seemed to come almost on their own invita 
 tion inspired by uncontrollable enthusiasm for the 
 great statesman, were in fact free excursionists 
 and a very troublesome, critical, expensive lot 
 they were. But the public was impressed. It 
 sits in its seat in the theater of action and be 
 lieves that the play is real, and ignores and for 
 gets the fact that there is a behind-the-scenes. 
 
 The party distributed from various centers tons 
 of "literature." And in addition to meetings ar 
 ranged by state and local committees, a series of 
 
PILGRIMS AND PATRIOTS 237 
 
 huge demonstrations was held in the cities of 
 every doubtful state. Besides the party s regular 
 speakers, we hired as many "independent" orators 
 as we could. But all these other branches of the 
 public side of the campaign were subsidiary to the 
 work at the "retreat." It might be called the 
 headquarters of the rank and file of the party 
 those millions of "principle" voters and workers 
 who were for Burbank because he was the stan 
 dard-bearer of their party. No money, no bribes 
 of patronage have to be given to them ; but it costs 
 several millions to raise that mass to the pitch of 
 hot enthusiasm which will make each individual in 
 it certain to go to the polls on election day and 
 take his neighbors, instead of staying at home 
 and hoping the party won t lose. 
 
 Burbank s work was, therefore, highly im 
 portant. But the seat of the real campaign was 
 Woodruff s privatest private room in the Chicago 
 headquarters. For, there were laid and were put 
 in the way of execution the plans for acquiring 
 those elements that, in the doubtful states, have 
 the balance of power between the two opposing 
 and about evenly matched masses of "principle" 
 
238 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 voters. I just now recall a talk I had with my 
 wife, about that time. She took no interest in pol 
 itics and rarely spoke of political matters and 
 both of us discouraged political talk before the 
 children. One day she said to me : "This cam 
 paign of yours and Mr. Burbank s must be cost 
 ing an awful lot of money." 
 
 "A good deal," said I. 
 
 "Several millions?" 
 
 "This is a big country, and you can t stir it up 
 politically for nothing. Why do you ask?" 
 
 "Who gives the money ?" she persisted. 
 
 "The rich men the big corporations give 
 most of it." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Patriotism," said I. "To save the nation from 
 our wicked opponent." 
 
 "How do Mr. Roebuck and the others get it 
 back?" she pursued, ignoring my pleasantry. 
 
 "Get what back?" 
 
 "Why the money they advance. They aren t 
 the men to give anything." 
 
 I answered with a smile only. 
 
 She lapsed into thoughtfulness. When I wag 
 
PILGRIMS AND PATRIOTS 239 
 
 assuming that her mind had wandered off to 
 something else she said : "The people must be 
 very stupid not to suspect." 
 
 "Or, the rich men and the corporations very 
 stupid to give," I suggested. 
 
 "Do you mean that they don t get it back?" she 
 demanded. 
 
 "Of course," said I, "their patriotism must be 
 rewarded. We can not expect them to save the 
 country year after year for nothing." 
 
 "I should think not!" she said, adding dis 
 gustedly, "I think politics is very silly. And men 
 get excited about it ! But I never listen." 
 
 Arriving at the "retreat" from the Scarbor 
 ough convention, I found Burbank much per 
 turbed because Scarborough had been nominated. 
 He did not say so on the contrary, he expressed 
 in sonorous phrases his satisfaction that there 
 was to be "a real test of strength between con 
 servatism and radicalism." He never dropped his 
 pose, even with me not even with himself. 
 
 "I confess I don t share your cheerfulness," 
 said I. "If Scarborough were a wild man, we d 
 have a walkover. But he isn t, and I fear he ll be 
 
24 o THE PLUM TREE 
 
 more and more attractive to the wavering voters, 
 to many of our own people. Party loyalty has 
 been overworked in the last few presidential cam 
 paigns. He ll go vote-hunting in the doubtful 
 states, but it won t seem undignified. He s one of 
 those men whose dignity comes from the inside 
 and can t be lost." 
 
 Burbank was unable to conceal his annoyance 
 he never could bear praise of another man of 
 his own rank in public life. Also he showed sur 
 prise. "Why, I understood I had been led to be 
 lieve that you favored his nomination," was 
 his guarded way of telling me he knew I had a 
 hand in bringing it about. 
 
 "So I did," replied I. "He was your only 
 chance. He won t be able to get a campaign fund 
 of so much as a quarter of a million, and the best 
 workers of his party will at heart be against him. 
 Simpson would have had well, Goodrich could 
 and would have got him enough to elect him." 
 
 Burbank s eyes twitched. "I think you re preju 
 diced against Senator Goodrich, Harvey," said he 
 in his gentlest tone. "He is first of all a loyal 
 party man." 
 
PILGRIMS AND PATRIOTS 241 
 
 "Loyal fiddlesticks!" replied I. "He is agent 
 of the Wall Street crowd they re his party. 
 He s just the ordinary machine politician, with 
 no more party feeling than than " I smiled 
 "than any other man behind the scenes." 
 
 Burbank dodged this by taking it as a jest. He 
 always shed my frank speeches as humor. "Preju 
 dice, prejudice, Harvey !" he said in mild reproof. 
 "We need Goodrich, and" 
 
 "Pardon me," I interrupted. "We do not need 
 him. On the contrary, we must put him out of the 
 party councils. If we don t, he may try to help 
 Scarborough. The Senate s safe, no matter who s 
 elected President ; and Goodrich will rely on it to 
 save his crowd. He s a mountain of vanity and 
 the two defeats we ve given him have made every 
 atom of that vanity quiver with hatred of us." 
 
 "I wish you could have been here when he 
 called," said Burbank. "I am sure you would 
 have changed your mind." 
 
 "When does he resign the chairmanship of the 
 national committee?" I asked. "He agreed to 
 plead bad health and resign within two weeks 
 after the convention." 
 
242 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 Burbank gave an embarrassed cough. "Don t 
 you think, Harvey," said he, "that, to soothe his 
 vanity, it might be well for us for you to let 
 him stay on there nominally, of course ? I know 
 you care nothing for titles/ 
 
 Instead of being angered by this attempt to 
 cozen me, by this exhibition of treachery, I felt 
 disgust and pity how nauseating and how hope 
 less to try to forward one so blind to his own in 
 terests, so easily frightened into surrender to his 
 worst enemies ! But I spoke very quietly to him. 
 "The reason you want me to be chairman for it 
 is you that want and need it, not I the reason I 
 must be chairman is because the machine through 
 out the country must know that Goodrich is out 
 and that your friends are in. In what other way 
 can this be accomplished ?" 
 
 He did not dare try to reply. 
 
 I went on : "If he stays at the head of the na 
 tional committee Scarborough will be elected." 
 
 "You are prejudiced, Harvey " 
 
 "Please don t say that again, Governor/ I in 
 terrupted coldly. "I repeat, Goodrich must give 
 place to me, or Scarborough will be elected." 
 
PILGRIMS AND PATRIOTS 243 
 
 "You don t mean that you would turn against 
 me ?" came from him in a queer voice after a long 
 pause. 
 
 "While I was in St. Louis, working to make 
 you President," said I, "you were plotting be 
 hind my back, plotting against me and yourself." 
 
 "You were at St. Louis aiding in the nomina 
 tion of the strongest candidate," he retorted, his 
 bitterness distinct though guarded. 
 
 "Strongest yes. But strongest with whom?" 
 
 "With the people," he replied. 
 
 "Precisely," said I. "But the people are not 
 going to decide this election. The party lines are 
 to be so closely drawn that money will have the 
 deciding vote. The men who organize and direct 
 industry and enterprise they are going to de 
 cide it. And, in spite of Goodrich s traitorous ef 
 forts, the opposition has put up the man who can t 
 get a penny from them." 
 
 In fact, I had just discovered that Scarborough 
 had instructed Pierson, whom he had made chair 
 man of his campaign, not to take any money 
 from any corporation even if it was offered. But 
 I thought it wiser to keep this from Burbank. 
 
244 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 He sat folding a sheet of paper again and again. 
 I let him reason it out. Finally he said: "I see 
 your point, Harvey. But I practically promised 
 Goodrich practically asked him to remain " 
 
 I waited. 
 
 "For the sake of the cause," he went on when 
 he saw he was to get no help from me, "any and 
 all personal sacrifices must be made. If you insist 
 on having Goodrich s head, I will break my 
 promise, and " 
 
 "Pardon me again/ I interrupted. My mood 
 would not tolerate twaddle about "the cause" and 
 "promises" from Burbank Burbank, whose 
 "cause," as he had just shown afresh, was him 
 self alone, and who promised everything to every 
 body and kept only the most advantageous prom 
 ises after he had made absolutely sure how his 
 advantage lay. "It s all a matter of indifference 
 to me. If you wish to retain Goodrich, do so. 
 He must not be dismissed as a personal favor to 
 me. The favor is to you. I do not permit any 
 man to thimblerig his debts to me into my debts 
 to him." 
 
 Burbank seemed deeply moved. He came up to 
 
PILGRIMS AND PATRIOTS 245 
 
 me and took my hand. "It is not like my friend 
 Sayler to use the word indifference in connection 
 with me/ he said. And then I realized how com 
 pletely the nomination had turned his head. For 
 his tone was that of the great man addressing his 
 henchman. 
 
 I did not keep my amusement out of my eyes. 
 "James," said I, "indifference is precisely the 
 word. I should welcome a chance to withdraw 
 from this campaign. I have been ambitious for 
 power, you want place. If you think the time has 
 come to dissolve partnership, say so and trade 
 yourself off to Goodrich." 
 
 He was angry through and through, not so 
 much at my bluntness as at my having seen into 
 his plot to help himself at my expense for, not 
 even when I showed it to him, could he see that 
 it was to his interest to destroy Goodrich. Moral 
 coward that he was, the course of conciliation al 
 ways appealed to him, whether it was wise or not, 
 and the course of courage always frightened him. 
 He bit his lip and dissembled his anger. Presently 
 he began to pace up and down the room, his head 
 bent, his hands clasped behind him. After per- 
 
246 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 haps five minutes he paused to say : "You insist 
 on taking the place yourself, Harvey?" 
 
 I stood before him and looked down at him. 
 "Your suspicion that I have also a personal rea 
 son is well-founded, James," said I. "I wouldn t 
 put myself in a position where I should have to 
 ask as a favor what I now get as a right. If I help 
 you to the presidency, I must be master of the 
 national machine of the party, able to use it with 
 all its power and against any one " here I looked 
 him straight in the eye "who shall try to build 
 himself up at my expense. Personally, we are 
 friends, and it has been a pleasure to me to help 
 elevate a man I liked. But there is no friendship in 
 affairs, except where friendship and interest point 
 the same way. It is strange that a man of your 
 experience should expect friendship from me at 
 a time when you are showing that you haven t 
 for me even the friendship of enlightened self- 
 interest." 
 
 "Your practice is better than your theory, Har 
 vey," said he, putting on an injured, forgiving 
 look and using his chest tones. "A better friend 
 never Jived than you, and I know no other man 
 
PILGRIMS AND PATRIOTS 247 
 
 who gets the absolute loyalty you get." He looked 
 at me earnestly. "What has changed you?" he 
 asked. "Why are you so bitter and so so un 
 like your even-tempered self?" 
 
 I waved his question aside, I had no mind to 
 show him my uncovered coffin with its tenant who 
 only slept, or to expose to him the feelings which 
 the erect and fearless figure of Scarborough had 
 set to stirring in me. "I m careful to choose my 
 friends from among those who can serve me and 
 whom I can therefore serve," I said. "And that 
 is the sentimentalism of the wise. I wish us to 
 remain friends therefore, I must be able to be 
 as useful to you as you can be useful to me." 
 
 "Goodrich shall go," was the upshot of his 
 thinking. "I ll telephone him this afternoon. Is 
 my old friend satisfied ?" 
 
 "You have done what was best for yourself," 
 said I, with wholly good-humored raillery. And 
 we shook hands, and I went. 
 
 I was glad to be alone where I could give way 
 to my weariness and disgust; for I had lost all 
 the joy of the combat. The arena of ambition had 
 now become to me a ring where men are devoured 
 
248 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 by the beast-in-man after hideous battles. I turned 
 from it, heart-sick. "If only I had less intelli 
 gence, less insight," I thought, "so that I could 
 cheat myself as Burbank cheats himself. Or, if 
 I had the relentlessness or the supreme egotism, 
 or whatever it is, that enables great men to tram 
 ple without a qualm, to destroy without pity, to 
 enjoy without remorse." 
 
XXI 
 
 AN INTERLUDE 
 
 My nerves began to feel as if some one were 
 gently sliding his fingers along their bared length 
 not a pain, but as fear-inspiring as the sound 
 of the stealthy creep of the assassin moving up 
 behind to strike a sudden and mortal blow. I dis 
 missed business and politics and went cruising on 
 the lakes with restful, non-political Fred Sandys. 
 
 After we had been knocking about perhaps a 
 week, we landed one noon at the private pier of 
 the Liscombes to lunch with them. As Sandys 
 and I strolled toward the front of the house, sev 
 eral people, also guests for lunch, were just de 
 scending from a long buckboard. At sight of one 
 of them I stopped short inside, though I mechan 
 ically continued to walk toward her. I recognized 
 her instantly the curve of her shoulders, the 
 poise of her head, and her waving jet-black hair 
 to confirm. And without the slightest warning 
 there came tumbling and roaring up in me a tor- 
 249 
 
250 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 rent of longings, regrets; and I suddenly had a 
 clear understanding of my absorption in this 
 wretched game I had been playing year in and 
 year out with hardly a glance up from the table. 
 That wretched game with its counterfeit stakes; 
 and the more a man wins, the poorer he is. 
 
 She seemed calm enough as she faced me. In 
 deed, I was not sure when she had first caught 
 sight of me, or whether she had recognized me, 
 until Mrs. Liscombe began to introduce us. "Oh, 
 yes," she then interrupted, "I remember Senator 
 Sayler very well. We used to live in the same 
 town. We went to the same school." And with a 
 friendly smile she gave me her hand. 
 
 What did I say ? I do not know. But I am sure 
 I gave no sign of the clamor within. I had not 
 cultivated surface-calm all those years in vain. I 
 talked, and she talked but I saw only her face, 
 splendid fulfilment of the promise of girlhood; 
 I hardly heard her words, so greatly was her 
 voice moving me. It was an unusually deep voice 
 for a woman, sweet and with a curious carrying 
 quality that made it seem stronger than it was. 
 In figure she was delicate, but radiant of life and 
 
AN INTERLUDE 251 
 
 health aglow, not ablaze. She was neither tall 
 nor short, and was dressed simply, but in the 
 fashion I heard the other women discussing her 
 clothes after she left. And she still had the man 
 nerism that was most fascinating to me she kept 
 her eyes down while she was talking or listening, 
 and raised them now and then with a full, slow 
 look at you. 
 
 When Mrs. Liscombe asked her to come to din 
 ner the next evening with the people she was visit 
 ing, she said: "Unfortunately, I must start for 
 Washington in the morning. I am overhauling 
 my school and building an addition." 
 
 It had not occurred to me to think where she 
 had come from or how she happened to be there, 
 or of anything in the years since I was last with 
 her. The reminder that she had a school came as 
 a shock she was so utterly unlike my notion of 
 the head of a school. I think she saw or felt what 
 was in my mind, for she went on, to me: "I ve 
 had it six years now the next will be the sev 
 enth." 
 
 "Do you like it?" I asked. 
 
 "Don t I look like a happy woman?" 
 
252 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 "You do," said I, after our eyes had met. "You 
 are." 
 
 "There were sixty girls last year sixty-three," 
 she went on. "Next year there will be more 
 about a hundred. It s like a garden, and I m the 
 gardener, busy from morning till night, with no 
 time to think of anything but my plants and 
 flowers." 
 
 She had conjured a picture that made my heart 
 ache. I suddenly felt old and sad and lonely a 
 forlorn failure. "I too am a gardener," said I. 
 "But it s a sorry lot of weeds and thistles that 
 keeps me occupied. And in the midst of the 
 garden is a plum tree that bears Dead Sea 
 fruit." 
 
 She was silent. 
 
 "You don t care for politics?" said I. 
 
 "No," she replied, and lifted and lowered her 
 eyes in a slow glance that made me wish I had not 
 asked. "It is, I think, gardening with weeds and 
 thistles, as you say." Then, after a pause : "Do 
 you like it?" 
 
 "Don t ask me," I said with a bitterness that 
 made us both silent thereafter. 
 
AN INTERLUDE 253 
 
 That evening I got Fred to land me at the 
 nearest town. The train she must have been on 
 had just gone. In the morning I took the express 
 for the East. Arrived at Washington, I drove 
 straight to her school. 
 
 A high iron fence, not obstructing the view 
 from the country road ; a long drive under arch 
 ing maples and beeches; a rambling, fascinating 
 old house upon the crest of a hill ; many windows, 
 a pillared porch, a low, very wide doorway. It 
 seemed like her in its dark, cool, odorous beauty. 
 
 She herself was in the front hall, directing 
 some workmen. "Why, Senator Sayler, this is a 
 surprise," she said, advancing to greet me. But 
 there was no suggestion of surprise in her tone or 
 her look, only a friendly welcome to an acquaint 
 ance. 
 
 She led the way into the drawing-room to the 
 left. The furniture and pictures were in ghostly 
 draperies ; everything was in confusion. We went 
 on to a side veranda, seated ourselves. She looked 
 inquiringly at me. 
 
 "I do not know why," was my answer. "I only 
 know I had to come." 
 
254 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 She studied me calmly. I remember her look, 
 everything about her the embroidery on the 
 sleeves and bosom of her blouse, the buckles on 
 her white shoes. I remember also that there was 
 a breeze, and how good it felt to my hot face, to 
 my eyes burning from lack of sleep. At last she 
 said : "Well what do you think of my little 
 kingdom ?" 
 
 "It is yours entirely?" 
 
 "House, gardens everything. I paid the last 
 of my debts in June." 
 
 "I m contrasting it with my own," I said. 
 
 "But that isn t fair," she protested with a 
 smile. "You must remember, I m only a woman." 
 
 "With my own," I went on, as if she had not 
 interrupted. "Yours is yours, honestly got. It 
 makes you proud, happy. Mine " I did not 
 finish. 
 
 She must have seen or felt how profoundly I 
 was moved, for I presently saw her looking at me 
 with an expression I might have resented for its 
 pity from any other than her. "Why do you tell 
 me this?" she asked. 
 
 "There is always for every one," was my an- 
 
AN INTERLUDE 255 
 
 swer, "some person to whom he shows himself as 
 he is. You are that person for me because I m 
 surrounded by people who care for me for what 
 I can give. Even my children care to a great ex 
 tent for that reason. It s the penalty for having 
 the power to give the material things all human 
 beings crave. Only two persons ever cared cared 
 much for me just because I was myself. They 
 were my mother and you." 
 
 She laughed in quiet raillery. "Two have 
 cared for you, but you have cared for only one. 
 And what devotion you have given him !" 
 
 "I have cared for my mother for my chil 
 dren" 
 
 "Yes your children. I forgot them." 
 
 "And for you." 
 
 She made what I thought a movement of im 
 patience. 
 
 "For you," I repeated. Then : "Elizabeth, you 
 were right when you wrote that I was a coward." 
 
 She rose and stood near enough to me for me 
 to catch her faint, elusive perfume and gazed out 
 into the distance. 
 
 "In St. Louis the other day," I went on, "I 
 
256 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 saw a man who has risen to power greater than 
 I can ever hope to have. And he got it by march 
 ing erect in the open." 
 
 "Yet you have everything you used to want," 
 she said dreamily. 
 
 "Yes everything. Only to learn how worth 
 less what I wanted was. And for this trash, this 
 dirt, I have given all I had that was of value." 
 
 "All?" 
 
 "All," I replied. "Your love and my own self- 
 respect." 
 
 "Why do you think youVe not been brave?" 
 she asked after a while. 
 
 "Because I ve won by playing on the weak 
 nesses and fears of men which my own weak 
 nesses and fears enabled me to understand." 
 
 "You have done wrong deliberately?" 
 
 "Deliberately." 
 
 "But that good might come ?" 
 
 "So I told myself." 
 
 "And good has come ? I have heard that figs do 
 grow on thistles." 
 
 "Good has come. But, I think, in spite of me, 
 not through me." 
 
AN INTERLUDE 257 
 
 "But now that you see/ she said, turning her 
 eyes to mine with appeal in them, and something 
 more, I thought, "you will you will not go 
 on?" 
 
 "I don t know. Is there such a thing as re 
 morse without regret?" And then my self-control 
 went and I let her see what I had commanded 
 myself to keep hid : "I only know clearly one 
 thing, Elizabeth only one thing matters. You 
 are the whole world to me. You and I could 
 what could we not do together !" 
 
 Her color slowly rose, slowly vanished. "Was 
 that what you came to tell me?" she asked. 
 "Yes," I answered, not flinching. 
 "That is the climax of your moralizings ?" 
 "Yes," I answered. "And of my cowardice." 
 A little icy smile just changed the curve of her 
 lips. "When I was a girl, you won my love or 
 took it when I gave it to you, if you prefer. And 
 then you threw it away. For an ambition you 
 weren t brave enough to pursue honorably, you 
 broke my heart." 
 
 "Yes," I answered. "But I loved you." 
 "And now," she went on, "after your years of 
 
258 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 self-indulgence, of getting what you wanted, no 
 matter about the cost, you see me again. You find 
 I have mended my heart, have coaxed a few 
 flowers of happiness to bloom. You find there was 
 something you did not destroy, something you 
 think it will make you happier to destroy." 
 
 "Yes," I answered, "I came to try to make you 
 as unhappy as I am. For I love you." 
 
 She drew a long breath. "Well," she said 
 evenly, "for the first time in your life you are de 
 feated. I learned the lesson you so thoroughly 
 taught me. And I built the wall round my garden 
 high and strong. You " she smiled, a little 
 raillery, a little scorn "you can t break in, Har 
 vey nor slip in." 
 
 "No need," I said. "For I am in I ve always 
 been in." 
 
 Her bosom rose and fell quickly, and her eyes 
 shifted. But that was for an instant only. "If 
 you were as brave as you are bold !" she scoffed. 
 
 "If I were as brave without you as I should be 
 with you !" I replied. Then : "But you love as 
 a woman loves herself first, the man afterward." 
 
 "Harvey Sayler denouncing selfishness !" 
 
AN INTERLUDE 259 
 
 "Do not sneer," I said. "For I love you as 
 a man loves. A poor, pale shadow of ideal love, 
 no doubt, but a man s best, Elizabeth." 
 
 I saw that she was shaken ; but even as I began 
 to thrill with a hope so high that it was giddy 
 with fear, she was once more straight and strong 
 and calm. 
 
 "You have come. You have tried. You have 
 failed," she went on after a long pause. And in 
 spite of her efforts, that deep voice of hers was 
 gentle and wonderfully sweet. "Now you will 
 return to your life, I to mine." And she moved 
 toward the entrance to the drawing-room, I fol 
 lowing her. We stood in silence at the front 
 doorway waiting for my carriage to come up. I 
 v/atched her maddeningly mistress of herself. 
 
 "How can you be so cold!" I cried. "Don t 
 you see, don t you feel, how I, who love you, suf 
 fer?" 
 
 Without a word she stretched out her beauti 
 ful, white hands, long and narrow and capable. 
 In each of the upturned palms were four deep and 
 bloody prints where her nails had been crushing 
 into them. 
 
260 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 Before I could lift my eyes to her face she was 
 turning to rejoin her workmen. As I stood un 
 certain, dazed, she glanced at me with a bright 
 smile. "Good-by again," she called. "A pleasant 
 journey !" 
 
 "Thank you/ I replied. "Good-by." 
 Driving toward the road gates, I looked at the 
 house many times, from window to window, 
 everywhere. Not a glimpse of her until I was 
 almost at the road again. Then I saw her back 
 the graceful white dress, the knot of blue-black 
 hair, the big white hat, and she directing her 
 workmen with her closed white parasol. 
 
XXII 
 
 MOSTLY ABOUT MONEY 
 
 I went up to New York, to find confusion and 
 gloom at our headquarters there. 
 
 Senator Goodrich had subtly given the im 
 pression, not only to the workers but also to the 
 newspaper men, who had given it to the public, 
 that with his resignation the Burbank campaign 
 had fallen to pieces. "And I fear you ll have 
 some difficulty in getting any money at all down 
 town," said Revell, the senior Senator from New 
 York state, who envied and hated Goodrich and 
 was therefore, if not for personal reasons, amia 
 bly disposed toward me. "They don t like our 
 candidate." 
 
 "Naturally," said I. "That s why he s run 
 ning and that s why he may win." 
 
 "Of course, he ll carry everything here in the 
 
 East. The only doubt was in this state, but I had 
 
 no difficulty in making a deal with the opposition 
 
 machine as soon as they had sounded Scarborough 
 
 261 
 
262 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 and had found that if he should win, there d be 
 nothing in it for them nothing but trouble. I 
 judged he must have thrown them down hard, 
 from their being so sore. How do things look 
 out West?" 
 
 "Bad," said I. "Our farmers and workingmen 
 have had lots of idle time these last four years. 
 They ve done too much of what they call think- 
 ing." 
 
 "Then you need money?" asked Revell, length 
 ening his sly, smug old face. 
 
 "We must have four millions, at least. And 
 we must get it from those people down town." 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 "I think not," was my careless reply. "When 
 they wake up to the danger in Scarborough s elec 
 tion, the danger to business, especially to their 
 sort of business, they ll give me twice four rail- 
 lions if I ask it." 
 
 "What do you wish me to do?" 
 
 "Nothing, except look after these eastern 
 states. We ll take care of the West, and also of 
 raising money here for our campaign during Oc 
 tober out there." 
 
MOSTLY ABOUT MONEY 263 
 
 "Can I be of any service to you in introducing 
 you down town ?" he asked. 
 
 "No, thank you/ said I. "I have a few ac 
 quaintances there. I m not going to fry any fat 
 this trip. My fire isn t hot enough yet." 
 
 And I did not. I merely called on two of the 
 big bankers and four heads of industrial combina 
 tions and one controller of an ocean-to-ocean rail 
 way system. I stayed a very few minutes with 
 each, just long enough to set him thinking and in 
 quiring what the election of Scarborough would 
 mean to him and to his class generally. "If you ll 
 read his speeches," said I to each, "you ll see he 
 intends to destroy your kind of business, that he 
 regards it as brigandage. He s honest, afraid of 
 nothing, and an able lawyer, and he can t be fooled 
 or fooled with. If he s elected he ll carry out his 
 program, Senate or no Senate and no matter 
 what scares you people cook up in the stock mar 
 ket." To this they made no answer beyond deli 
 cately polite insinuations about being tired of pay 
 ing for that which was theirs of right. I did not 
 argue; it is never necessary to puncture the pre 
 tenses of men of affairs with a view to saving 
 
264 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 them from falling into the error of forgetting 
 that whatever "right" may mean on Sunday, on 
 week days it means that which a man can compel. 
 
 I returned to Fredonia and sent Woodruff 
 East to direct a campaign of calamity-howling in 
 the eastern press, for the benefit of the New York, 
 Boston and Philadelphia "captains of industry." 
 At the end of ten days I recalled him, and sent 
 Roebuck to Wall Street to confirm the fears and 
 alarms Woodruff s campaign had aroused. And 
 in the West I was laying out the money I had 
 been able to collect from the leading men of Min 
 nesota, Illinois, Ohio and western Pennsylvania 
 except a quarter of a million from Howard of 
 New York, to whom we gave the vice-presiden 
 tial nomination for that sum, and about half a 
 million more given by several eastern men, to 
 whom we promised cabinet offices and posts 
 abroad. I put all this money, not far from two 
 millions, into our "campaign of education" and 
 into those inpourings of delegations upon Bur- 
 bank at his "rural retreat." 
 
 To attempt to combat Scarborough s popularity 
 with the rank and file of his own party, was hope- 
 
MOSTLY ABOUT MONEY 265 
 
 less. I contented myself with restoring order and 
 arousing enthusiasm in the main body of our par- 
 tizans in the doubtful and uneasy states. So 
 ruinous had been Goodrich s management that 
 even at that comparatively simple task we should 
 not have succeeded but for the fortunate fact that 
 the great mass of partizans refuses to hear any 
 thing from the other side; they regard reasoning 
 as disloyalty which, curiously enough, it so 
 often is. Then, too, few newspapers in the doubt 
 ful states printed the truth about what Scarbor 
 ough and his supporters were saying and doing. 
 The cost of this perversion of publicity to us 
 direct money cost, I mean was almost nothing. 
 The big papers and news associations were big 
 properties, and their rich proprietors were inter 
 ested in enterprises to which Scarborough s elec 
 tion meant disaster; a multitude of the smaller 
 papers, normally of the opposition, were depend 
 ent upon those same enterprises for the advertis 
 ing that kept them alive. 
 
 Perhaps the most far-sighted certainly, as the 
 event showed, the most fortunate single stroke 
 of my campaign was done in Illinois. That state 
 
266 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 was vital to our success; also it was one of the 
 doubtful states where, next to his own Indiana, 
 Scarborough s chances were best. I felt that we 
 must put a heavy handicap on his popularity there. 
 I had noticed that in Illinois the violently radical 
 w r ing of the opposition was very strong. So I 
 sent Merriweather to strengthen the radicals still 
 further. I hoped to make them strong enough to 
 put through their party s state convention a plat 
 form that would be a scarecrow to timid voters 
 in Illinois and throughout the West ; and I wished 
 for a "wild man" as the candidate for governor, 
 but I didn t hope it, though I told Merriweather 
 it must be done. Curiously enough, my calcula 
 tion of the probabilities was just reversed. The 
 radicals were beaten on platform; but, thanks to 
 a desperate effort of Merriweather s in "coax 
 ing" rural delegates, a frothing, wild-eyed, po 
 litical crank got the nomination. And he never 
 spoke during the campaign that he didn t drive 
 voters away from his ticket and, therefore, 
 from Scarborough. And our machine there sacri 
 ficed the local interests to the general by nominat 
 ing a popular and not insincere reformer. 
 
MOSTLY ABOUT MONEY 267 
 
 When Roebuck and I descended upon Wall 
 Street on October sixteenth, three weeks before 
 election, I had everything in readiness for my final 
 and real campaign. 
 
 Throughout the doubtful states, Woodruff was 
 in touch with local machine leaders of Scarbor 
 ough s party, with corruptible labor and fraternal 
 order leaders, with every element that would for 
 a cash price deliver a body of voters on election 
 day. Also he had arranged in those states for the 
 "right sort" of election officers at upward of five 
 hundred polling places, at least half of them 
 places where several hundred votes could be 
 shifted without danger or suspicion. Also, Bur- 
 bank and our corps of "spellbinders" had suc 
 ceeded beyond my hopes in rousing partizan pas 
 sion but here again part of the credit belongs to 
 Woodruff. Never before had there been so many 
 free barbecues, distributions of free uniforms to 
 well-financed Burbank and Howard Campaign 
 Clubs, and arrangings of those expensive parades 
 in which the average citizen delights. The wise 
 Woodruff spent nearly one-third of my "educa 
 tion" money in this way. 
 
268 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 One morning I found him laughing over the 
 bill for a grand Burbank rally at Indianapolis 
 about thirty-five thousand dollars, as I remem 
 ber the figures. 
 
 "What amuses you?" said I. 
 
 "I was thinking what fools the people are, 
 never to ask themselves where all the money for 
 these free shows comes from, and why those who 
 give are willing to give so much, and how they 
 get it back. What an ass the public is !" 
 
 "Fortunately," said I. 
 
 "For us," said he. 
 
 "And for itself," I rejoined. 
 
 "Perhaps," he admitted. "It was born to be 
 plucked, and I suppose our crowd does do the 
 plucking more scientifically than less experienced 
 hands would." 
 
 "I prefer to put it another way," said I. "Let s 
 say that we save it from a worse plucking." 
 
 "That is better," said Doc. For, on his way 
 up in the world, he was rapidly developing what 
 could, and should, be called conscience. 
 
 I looked at him and once more had a qualm 
 like shame before his moral superiority to me. 
 
MOSTLY ABOUT MONEY 269 
 
 We were plodding along on about the same moral 
 level ; but he had ascended to that level, while I had 
 descended to it. There were politicians posing as 
 pure before the world and even in the party s be- 
 hind-the-scene, who would have sneered at Doc s 
 "conscience." Yet, to my notion, they, who 
 started high and from whatever sophistry of 
 motive trailed down into the mire, are lower far 
 than they who began deep in the mire and have 
 been struggling bravely toward the surface. I 
 know a man who was born in the slums, was a 
 pickpocket at eight years of age, was a boss at 
 forty-five, administering justice according to his 
 lights. I know a man who was born what he calls 
 a gentleman and who, at forty-five, sold himself 
 for the "honors" of a high office. And once, after 
 he had shaken hands with that boss, he looked at 
 me, furtively made a wry face, and wiped his 
 hand with his pocket handkerchief ! 
 
 The other part of our work of preparation 
 getting the Wall Street whales in condition for 
 the "fat-frying" was also finished. The Wall 
 Street Roebuck and I adventured was in a state 
 of quake from fear of the election of "the scourge 
 
270 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 of God," as our subsidized socialist and extreme 
 radical papers had dubbed Scarborough and 
 what invaluable campaign material their praise 
 of him did make for us ! 
 
 Roebuck and I went from office to office among 
 the great of commerce, industry and finance. We 
 were received with politeness, deferential polite 
 ness, everywhere. But not a penny could we get. 
 Everywhere the same answer : "We can not see 
 our way to contributing just yet. But if you will 
 call early next week say Monday or Tuesday " 
 four or five days away "we ll let you know what 
 we can do." The most ardent eagerness to 
 placate us, to keep us in good humor; but not a 
 cent until Monday or Tuesday. 
 
 When I heard "Monday or Tuesday" for the 
 third time, my suspicions were rousing. When I 
 heard it for the fifth time, I understood. Wall 
 Street was negotiating with the other side, and 
 would know the result by Monday, or at the latest 
 Tuesday. 
 
XXIII 
 
 IN WHICH A MOUSE HELPS A LION 
 
 I did not dare communicate my suspicions to 
 my "dear friend" Roebuck. As it was, with each 
 refusal I had seen his confidence in me sink ; if he 
 should get an inkling how near to utter disaster 
 I and my candidate were, he would be upon me 
 like a tiger upon its trainer when he slips. I rea 
 soned out my course while we were descending 
 from the fifth "king s" office to our cab : If the 
 negotiations with the opposition should be success 
 ful, I should not get a cent; if they should fail, 
 Wall Street would be frantic to get its contribu 
 tions into my hand ; therefore, the only sane thing 
 to do was to go West, and make such preparations 
 as I could against the worst. 
 
 "Let s go back to the Holland," said I to Roe 
 buck, in a weary, bored tone. "These people are 
 a waste of time. I ll start home to-night, and 
 when they see in the morning papers that I ve left 
 for good, they may come to their senses. But 
 271 
 
2 7 2 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 they ll have to hunt me out. I ll not go near them 
 again. And when they come dragging them 
 selves to you, don t forget how they ve treated us 
 to-day." 
 
 Roebuck was silent, glancing furtively at me 
 now and then, not knowing what to think. "How 
 is it possible to win without them ?" he finally said. 
 "This demagogue Scarborough has set the people 
 crazy. I can t imagine what possesses these men 
 of property with interests throughout the country. 
 They are inviting ruin." 
 
 I smiled. "My dear Roebuck," I replied, "do 
 you suppose I m the man to put all my eggs into 
 one basket and that basket Wall Street?" 
 
 And I refused to talk any more politics with 
 him. We dined together, I calm and in the best 
 of spirits; we went to a musical farce, and he 
 watched me glumly as I showed my lightness of 
 heart. Then I went alone, at midnight, to the 
 Chicago Express sleeper to lie awake all night 
 staring at the phantoms of ruin that moved in dire 
 panorama before me. In every great affair there 
 is a crisis at which one must stake all upon a sin 
 gle throw. I had staked all upon Wall Street. 
 
IN WHICH A MOUSE HELPS A LION 273 
 
 Without its contributions, Woodruff s arrange 
 ments could not be carried out. 
 
 When I descended at the Fredonia station I 
 found De Milt waiting- for me. He had news 
 that was indeed news. I shall give it here more 
 consecutively than my impatience for the event 
 permitted him to give it to me. 
 
 About ten days before, a paragraph in one of 
 Burbank s "pilgrimage" speeches had been twisted 
 by the reporter so that it seemed a personal attack 
 upon Scarborough. As Burbank was a stickler 
 for the etiquette of campaigning, he not only sent 
 out a denial and a correction but also directed De 
 Milt to go to Scarborough s home at Saint X, In 
 diana, and convey the explanation in a personal 
 message. De Milt arrived at Saint X at eight in 
 the evening. As he was leaving the parlor car he 
 saw a man emerge from its drawing-room, make 
 a hasty descent to the platform, hurriedly engage 
 a station hack and drive away. De Milt had an 
 amazing memory for identities something far 
 rarer than memory merely for faces. He was 
 convinced he knew that man; and being shrewd 
 
274 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 and quick of thought, he jumped into a trap and 
 told the driver to follow the hack which was just 
 disappearing. A few minutes driving and he 
 saw it turn in at a gateway. 
 
 "Whose place is that?" he asked. 
 
 The old Gardiner homestead," was the 
 answer. "President Scarborough lives there." 
 
 De Milt did not discuss this rather premature 
 entitling of Senator Scarborough. He said: 
 "Oh I ve made a mistake," descended and sent 
 his trap away. Scarborough s house was quiet, 
 not a soul about, lights in only a few windows. 
 De Milt strolled in at the open gates and, keeping 
 out of view, made a detour of the gardens, the 
 "lay" of which he could see by the starlight. He 
 was soon in line with the front door his man was 
 parleying with a servant. "Evidently he s not 
 expected," thought my chief of publicity. 
 
 Soon his man entered. De Milt, keeping in the 
 shadows, moved round the house until he was 
 close under open windows from which came light 
 and men s voices. Peering through a bush he 
 saw at a table-desk a man whom he recognized as 
 Senator Scarborough. Seated opposite him, 
 
IN WHICH A MOUSE HELPS A LION 275 
 
 with a very uneasy, deprecating expression on his 
 face, was John Thwing, president of the Atlantic 
 and Western System, and Senator Goodrich s 
 brother-in-law. 
 
 De Milt could not hear what Thwing was say 
 ing, so careful was that experienced voice to reach 
 only the ears for whom its insinuating subtleties 
 were intended. But he saw a puzzled look come 
 into Scarborough s face, heard him say : "I don t 
 think I understand you, John." 
 
 Thwing unconsciously raised his voice in his 
 reply, and De Milt caught "satisfactory assur 
 ances from you that these alarming views and in 
 tentions attributed to you are false, and they ll be 
 glad to exert themselves to elect you." 
 
 Scarborough smiled. "Impossible," he said. 
 "Very few of them would support me in any cir 
 cumstances." 
 
 "You are mistaken, Hampden," was Thwing s 
 answer. "On the contrary, they will- 
 Scarborough interrupted with an impatient mo 
 tion of his head. "Impossible!" he repeated. 
 "But in any case, why should they send you to 
 me ? My speeches speak for themselves. Surely 
 
276 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 no intelligent man could fancy that my election 
 would mean harm to any legitimate business, 
 great or small, East or West. You ve known me 
 for twenty years, Thwing. You needn t come to 
 me for permission to reassure your friends such 
 of them as you can honestly reassure." 
 
 "I have been reassuring them," Thwing an 
 swered. "I tell them that you are about the last 
 man in the world to permit mob rule." 
 
 "Precisely," said Scarborough. "I purpose to 
 continue to do what I can to break up the mob 
 that is being led on by demagogues disguised as 
 captains of industry and advance agents of pros 
 perity led on to pillage the resources of the 
 country, its riches and its character." 
 
 This ought to have put Thwing on his guard. 
 But, convinced that the gods he worshiped must 
 be the gods of all men, whatever they might pro 
 fess, he held to his purpose. 
 
 "Still, you don t quite follow me," he persisted. 
 "You ve said some very disquieting things 
 against some of my friends of course, they un 
 derstand that the exigencies of campaigning, the 
 necessity of rousing the party spirit, th< 
 
IN WHICH A MOUSE PIELPS A LION 277 
 
 Thwing stopped short ; De Milt held his breath. 
 Scarborough was leaning forward, was holding 
 Thwing s eyes with one of those looks that grip. 
 "Do you mean," said he, "that, if I ll assure these 
 friends of yours that I don t mean what I say, 
 they ll buy me the presidency?" 
 
 "My dear Hampden," expostulated Thwing, 
 "nothing of the sort. Simply that the campaign 
 fund which Burbank must get to be elected won t 
 go to him, but will be at the disposal of your na 
 tional committee. My friends, naturally, won t 
 support their enemies." 
 
 De Milt, watching Scarborough, saw him lower 
 his head, his face flushing deeply. 
 
 "Believe me, Hampden/ continued Thwing, 
 "without our support Burbank is beaten, and you 
 are triumphantly elected not otherwise. But 
 you know politics ; I needn t tell you. You know 
 that the presidency depends upon getting the 
 doubtful element in the doubtful states." 
 
 Scarborough stood, and, without lifting his 
 eyes, said in a voice very different from his strong, 
 clear tones of a few minutes before : "I suppose 
 in this day no one is beyond the reach of insult. I 
 
278 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 have thought I was. I see I have been mistaken. 
 And it is a man who has known me twenty years 
 and has called me friend, who has taught me the 
 deep meaning of the word shame. The servant 
 will show you the door." And he left Thwing 
 alone in the room. 
 
 I had made De Milt give me the point of his 
 story as soon as I saw its drift. While he was 
 going over it in detail, I was thinking out all the 
 bearings of Scarborough s refusal upon my plans. 
 
 "Has Senator Goodrich seen Governor Bur- 
 bank yet?" I asked De Milt in a casual tone, 
 when he had told how he escaped unobserved in 
 Thwing s wake and delivered Burbank s message 
 the next morning. 
 
 "I believe he s to see him by appointment to 
 morrow," replied De Milt. 
 
 So my suspicion was well-founded. Goodrich, 
 informed of his brother-in-law s failure, was post 
 ing to make peace on whatever terms he could 
 honeyfugle out of my conciliation-mad candidate. 
 
 A few minutes later I shut myself in with the 
 long-distance telephone and roused Burbank from 
 bed and from sleep. "I am coming by the first 
 
IN WHICH A MOUSE HELPS A LION 279 
 
 train to-morrow," I said. "I thought you d be 
 glad to know that I ve made satisfactory arrange 
 ments in New York unexpectedly satisfactory." 
 
 "That s good excellent," came the reply. I 
 noted an instant change of tone which told me that 
 Burbank had got, by some underground route, 
 news of my failure in New York and had been 
 preparing to give Goodrich a cordial reception. 
 
 "If Goodrich comes, James," I went on, "don t 
 see him till I ve seen you." 
 
 A pause, then in a strained voice: "But I ve 
 given him an appointment at nine to-morrow." 
 
 "Put him off till noon. I ll be there at eleven. 
 It s imperative." That last word with an accent 
 I did not like to use, but knew how to use and 
 when. 
 
 Another pause, then: "Very well, Harvey. 
 But we must be careful about him. De Milt has 
 told you how dangerous he is, hasn t he?" 
 
 "Yes how dangerous he tried to be." I was 
 about to add that Goodrich was a fool to permit 
 any one to go to such a man as Scarborough with 
 such a proposition; but I bethought me of Bur- 
 bank s acute moral sensitiveness and how it would 
 
2 8o THE PLUM TREE 
 
 be rasped by the implication of his opponent s 
 moral superiority. "We re past the last danger, 
 James. That s all. Sleep sound. Good night." 
 
 "Good night, old man," was his reply in his 
 pose s tone for affection. But I could imagine 
 him posing there in his night shirt, the anger 
 against me snapping in his eyes. 
 
 On the train the next morning, De Milt, who 
 had evidently been doing a little thinking, said, 
 "I hope you won t let it out to Cousin James that 
 I told you Goodrich was coming to see him." 
 
 "Certainly not," I replied, not losing the oppor 
 tunity to win over to myself one so near to my 
 political ward. "I m deeply obliged to you for 
 telling me." And presently I went on : "By the 
 way, has anything been done for you for your bril 
 liant work at Saint X ?" 
 
 "Oh, that s all right," he said, "I guess Cousin 
 James ll look after me unless he forgets about 
 it." "Cousin James" had always had the habit 
 of taking favors for granted unless reward was 
 pressed for ; and since he had become a presiden 
 tial candidate, he was inclining more than ever to 
 
IN WHICH A MOUSE HELPS A LION 281 
 
 look on a favor done him as a high privilege 
 which was its own reward. 
 
 I made no immediate reply to De Milt; but just 
 before we reached the capital, I gave him a cheque 
 for five thousand dollars. "A little expression of 
 gratitude from the party/ said I. "Your reward 
 will come later." From that hour he was mine, 
 for he knew now by personal experience that "the 
 boys" were right in calling me appreciative. 
 
 It is better to ignore a debt than to pay with 
 words. 
 
XXIV 
 
 GRANBY INTRUDES AGAIN 
 
 Burbank had grown like a fungus in his own 
 esteem. 
 
 The adulation of the free excursionists I had 
 poured in upon him, the eulogies in the newspa 
 pers, the flatteries of those about him, eager to 
 make themselves "solid" with the man who might 
 soon have the shaking of the huge, richly laden 
 presidential boughs of the plum tree this combi 
 nation of assaults upon sanity was too strong for 
 a man with such vanity as his, a traitor within. 
 He had convinced his last prudent doubt that he 
 was indeed a "child of destiny." He was resent 
 ful lest I might possibly think myself more im 
 portant than he to the success of the campaign. 
 And his resentment was deepened by the probably 
 incessant reminders of his common sense that all 
 this vast machine, public and secret, could have 
 been set in motion just as effectively for any one 
 282 
 
GRANBY INTRUDES AGAIN 283 
 
 of a score of "statesmen" conspicuous in the 
 party. 
 
 I saw through his labored cordiality ; and it de 
 pressed me again started me down toward those 
 depths of self-condemnation from which I had 
 been held up for a few days by the excitement of 
 the swiftly thronging events and by the necessity 
 of putting my whole mind upon moves for my 
 game. 
 
 "I am heartily glad you were successful/ he 
 began when we were alone. "That takes a weight 
 off my mind." 
 
 "You misunderstood me, I see," said I. "I 
 haven t got anything from those people in New 
 York as yet. But within a week they ll be beg 
 ging me to take whatever I need. Thwing s re 
 port will put them in a panic." 
 
 His face fell. "Then I must be especially 
 courteous to Goodrich," he said, after thinking in 
 tently. "Your hopes might be disappointed." 
 
 "Not the slightest danger," was my prompt as 
 surance. "And if you take my advice, you will 
 ask Goodrich how his agent found Senator Scar 
 borough s health, and then order him out of this 
 
284 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 house. Why harbor a deadly snake that can be 
 of no use to you ?" 
 
 "But you seem to forget, Harvey, that he is the 
 master of at least the eastern wing of the party. 
 And you must now see that he will stop at noth 
 ing, unless he is pacified." 
 
 "He is the fetch-and-carry of an impudent and 
 cowardly crowd in Wall Street," I retorted, "that 
 is all. When they find he can no longer do their 
 errands, they ll throw him over and come to us. 
 And we can have them on our own terms." 
 
 We argued, with growing irritation on both 
 sides, and after an hour or so, I saw that he was 
 hopelessly under the spell of his pettiness and his 
 moral cowardice. He had convinced himself that 
 I was jealous of Goodrich and would sacrifice 
 anything to gratify my hate. And Goodrich s 
 sending an agent to Scarborough had only made 
 him the more formidable in Burbank s eyes. As 
 I looked in upon his mind and watched its weak, 
 foolish little workings, my irritation subsided. 
 "Do as you think best," said I wearily. "But when 
 he presents the mortgage you are going to give 
 him on your presidency, remember my warning." 
 
GRANBY INTRUDES AGAIN 285 
 
 He laughed this off, feeling my point only in 
 his vanity, not at all in his judgment. "And how 
 will you receive him, Harvey? He will be sure 
 to come to you next must, as you are in charge 
 of my campaign." 
 
 "I ll tell him straight out that I ll have nothing 
 to do with him," said I blandly. "The Wall 
 Street submission to the party must be brought 
 to me by some other ambassador. I ll not help 
 him to fool his masters and to hide it from them 
 that he has lost control." 
 
 I could have insisted, could have destroyed 
 Goodrich forBurbank would not have dared dis 
 obey me. But the campaign, politics in general, 
 life itself, rilled me with disgust, a paralyzing dis 
 gust that made me almost lose confidence in my 
 theory of practical life. 
 
 "What s the use?" I said to myself. "Let Bur- 
 bank keep his adder. Let it sting him. If it so 
 much as shoots a fang at me, I can crush it." 
 
 And so, Burbank lifted up Goodrich and gave 
 hostages to him; and Goodrich, warned that I 
 would not deal with him, made some excuse or 
 other to his masters for sending Senator Revell to 
 
286 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 me. "See Woodruff," said I to Revell, for I was 
 in no mood for such business. "He knows best 
 what we need." 
 
 "They give up too damn cheerfully," Woodruff 
 said to me, when I saw him a week or ten days 
 later, and he gave me an account of the negotia 
 tions. "I suspect they ve paid more before." 
 
 "They have," said I. "In two campaigns where 
 they had to elect against hard times." 
 
 "But I ve a notion," he warned me, "that our 
 candidate has promised them something private- 
 
 iy." 
 
 "No doubt," I replied, as indifferently as I felt. 
 
 I had intended to make some speeches I had 
 always kept the public side of my career in the 
 foreground, and in this campaign my enforced 
 prominence as director of the machine was caus 
 ing the public to dwell too much on the real na 
 ture of my political activity. But I could not 
 bring myself to it. Instead, I set out for home to 
 spend the time with my children and to do by tel 
 ephone, as I easily could, such directing of Wood 
 ruff as might be necessary. 
 
 My daughter Frances was driving me from the 
 
GRANBY INTRUDES AGAIN 287 
 
 Fredonia station. A man darted in front of the 
 horses, flung up his arms and began to shriek 
 curses at me. If she had not been a skilful driver, 
 we should both have been thrown from the cart. 
 As it was, the horses ran several miles before she 
 got them under control, I sitting inactive, because 
 I knew how it would hurt her pride if I should in 
 terfere. 
 
 When the horses were quiet, she gave me an 
 impetuous kiss that more than repaid me for the 
 strain on my nerves. "You are the dearest papa 
 that ever was!" she said. Then "Who was he? 
 He looked like a crazy man !" 
 
 "No doubt he is," was my reply. And I began 
 complimenting her on her skill with horses, 
 chiefly to prevent her pressing me about the man. 
 I had heard, and had done, so much lying that I 
 had a horror of it, and tried to make my children 
 absolutely truthful my boy Ed used to think up 
 and do mischief just for the pleasure of pleasing 
 me by confessing. To make my example effective, 
 I was always strictly truthful with them. I did 
 not wish to tell her who the man was ; but I in 
 stantly recognized, through the drunken dis- 
 
288 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 hevelment, my mutineer, Granby less than a 
 year before one of the magnates of the state. My 
 orders about him had been swiftly and literally 
 obeyed. Deserted by his associates, blacklisted at 
 the banks, beset by his creditors, harassed by the 
 attorney general, his assets chained with injunc 
 tions, his liabilities given triple fangs, he went 
 bankrupt, took to drink, became a sot and a bar 
 room lounger. His dominant passion was hatred 
 of me; he discharged the rambling and frantic 
 story of his wrongs upon whoever would listen. 
 And here he was in Fredonia ! 
 
 I had one of my secretaries telephone the police 
 to look after him ; they reported that he had dis 
 appeared. 
 
 The next morning but one, my daughter and I 
 went for an early walk. At the turn of the main 
 drive just beyond view from the lodge, she ex 
 claimed, "Oh, father, ohl" and clung to me. 
 Something like a scarecrow, but not a scarecrow 
 swung from a limb overhanging the drive. 
 The face was distorted and swollen ; the arms and 
 legs were drawn up in sickening crookedness. 
 Before I saw, I knew it was Granby. 
 
GRANBY INTRUDES AGAIN 289 
 
 I took Frances home, then returned, passing the 
 swaying horror far on the other side of the road. 
 I got the lodge-keeper, and he and I went back to 
 gether. I had them telephone from the lodge for 
 the coroner and personally saw to it that the 
 corpse should be reported as found in the open 
 woods a long distance from my place. But Gran- 
 by had left a message "to the public" in his room 
 at the hotel: "Senator Sayler ruined me and 
 drove me to death. I have gone to hang myself 
 in his park. Down with monopoly !" In spite of 
 my efforts, this was published throughout the 
 country though not in Fredonia. Such of the 
 big opposition papers as were not under our con 
 trol sent reporters and raked out the whole story ; 
 and it was blown up hugely and told everywhere. 
 Our organs retold it, giving the true color and 
 perspective; but my blundering attempt to avoid 
 publicity had put me in too bad a light. 
 
 It was the irony of fate my power thus ludi 
 crously thwarted by a triviality. Within twenty- 
 four hours I realized the danger to our cam 
 paign. I sent Woodruff post-haste to the widow. 
 He gave her convincing assurances that she and 
 
290 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 her children were to be lifted from the slough of 
 poverty into which Granby s drunkenness had 
 thrust them. And in return she wrote at his dic 
 tation and issued an apparently uninspired pub 
 lic statement, exonerating me from all blame for 
 her husband s reverses, and saying that he had 
 been acting strangely for over a year and had 
 been insane for several months. In brief, I did 
 everything suggested by sincere regret and such 
 skill at influencing public opinion as I had and 
 commanded. But not until my reports began to 
 show the good effects of the million dollars 
 Woodruff put into the last week of the campaign, 
 did I begin to hope again. 
 
 Another hope brightened toward confidence 
 when, on the Saturday before election, I sprung 
 my carefully matured scheme for stiffening those 
 of our partizans who were wavering. The Scar 
 borough speakers had, with powerful effect, been 
 taunting us with our huge campaign fund, dar 
 ing us to disclose its sources. On that Sunday 
 morning, when it was too late for the opposition 
 to discount me, I boldly threw open a set of cam 
 paign ledgers which showed that our fund was 
 
GRANBY INTRUDES AGAIN 291 
 
 just under a million dollars, with the only large 
 subscription, the hundred thousand which I my 
 self had given. Tens of thousands of our parti- 
 zans, longing for an excuse for staying with us, 
 returned cheering to the ranks enough of them 
 in the doubtful states, we believed, to restore the 
 floating vote to its usual balance of power. 
 
 Each horse of my team had taken a turn at do 
 ing dangerous, even menacing, threshing about; 
 but both were now quietly pulling in the harness, 
 Partizanship as docile as Plutocracy. The betting 
 odds were six to five against us, but we of the 
 "inside" began to plunge on Burbank and How 
 ard. 
 
XXV 
 
 AN HOUR OF EMOTION 
 
 It was after midnight of election day before 
 we knew the result, so close were the two most 
 important doubtful states. 
 
 Scarborough had swept the rural districts and 
 the small towns. But we had beaten him in the 
 cities where the machines and other purchasable 
 organizations were powerful. His state gave him 
 forty-two thousand plurality, Burbank carried 
 his own state by less than ten thousand and in 
 twenty-four years our majority there in presiden 
 tial campaigns had never before been less than 
 forty thousand. 
 
 By half-past one, the whole capital city knew 
 that Burbank had won. And they flocked and 
 swarmed out the road to his modest "retreat," 
 until perhaps thirty thousand people were shout 
 ing, blowing horns, singing, sending up rockets 
 and Roman candles, burning red fire, lighting 
 
 bonfires in ^nd near the grounds. I had come 
 292 
 
AN HOUR OF EMOTION 293 
 
 down from Fredonia to be in instant touch with 
 Burbank and the whole national machine, should 
 there arise at the last minute necessity for bold 
 and swift action. When Burbank finally yielded 
 to the mob and showed himself on his porch with 
 us, his immediate associates, about him, I for the 
 first time unreservedly admired him. For the 
 man inside seemed at last to swell until the presi 
 dential pose he had so long worn prematurely was 
 filled to a perfect fit. And in what he said as well 
 as in the way he said it there was an unexpected 
 dignity and breadth and force. "I have made 
 him President," I thought, "and it looks as if the 
 presidency had made him a man." 
 
 After he finished, Croffut spoke, and Senator 
 Berwick of Illinois. Then rose a few calls for me. 
 They were drowned in a chorus of hoots, toots and 
 hisses. Burbank cast a quick glance of appre 
 hension at me again that hidden conviction of 
 my vanity, this time shown in dread lest it should 
 goad me into hating him. I smiled reassuringly at 
 him and I can say in all honesty that the smile 
 came from the bottom of my heart. An hour 
 later, as I bade him good night, I said : 
 
294 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 "I believe the man and the opportunity have 
 met, Mr. President. God bless you." 
 
 Perhaps it was the unusualness of my speaking 
 with feeling that caused the tears to start in his 
 eyes. "Thank you, Harvey," he replied, clasping 
 my hand in both his. "I realize now the grave re 
 sponsibility. I need the help of every friend the 
 true help of every true friend. And I know what 
 I owe to you just as clearly as if she were here to 
 remind me." 
 
 I was too moved to venture a reply. Woodruff 
 and I drove to the hotel together the crowd 
 hissing me wherever it recognized me. Woodruff 
 looked first on one side then on the other, mutter 
 ing at them. "The fools !" he said to me, with his 
 abrupt, cool laugh. "Just like them, isn t it? 
 Cheering the puppet, hissing its proprietor." 
 
 I made no answer what did it matter? Not 
 for Burbank s position and opportunity, as in that 
 hour of emotion they appeared even to us who 
 knew politics from behind the scenes, not for the 
 reality of what the sounding title of President 
 seems to mean, would I have changed with him, 
 would I have paid the degrading price he had 
 
"I HAVE MADE HIM PRESIDENT," I THOUGHT, "AND IT LOOKS AS 
 IF THE PRESIDENCY HAD MADE HIM A MAN " /. 2QJ 
 
AN HOUR OF EMOTION 295 
 
 paid. I preferred my own position if I had 
 bowed the knee, at least it was not to men. As for 
 hisses, I saw in them a certain instinctive tribute 
 to my power. The mob cheers its servant, hisses 
 its master. 
 
 "Doc," said I, "do you want to go to the Sen 
 ate instead of Croffut?" 
 
 By the flames on the torches on either side I 
 saw his amazement. "Me ?" he exclaimed. "Why, 
 you forget I ve got a past." 
 
 "I do," said I, "and so does every one else. 
 All we know is that you ve got a future." 
 
 He drew in his breath hard and leaned back 
 into the corner where the shadow hid him. At last 
 he said in a quiet earnest voice: "You ve given 
 me self-respect, Senator. I can only say I ll see 
 that you never regret it." 
 
 I was hissed roundly at the hotel entrance, be 
 tween cheers for Croffut and Berwick, and even 
 for Woodruff. But I went to bed in the most 
 cheerful, hopeful humor I had known since the 
 day Scarborough was nominated. "At any rate" 
 so I was thinking "my President, with my 
 help, will be a man." 
 
XXVI 
 
 "ONLY AN OLD JOKE" 
 
 On the train going home, I was nearer to castle- 
 building than at any time since my boyhood cas 
 tles collapsed under the rude blows of practical 
 life. 
 
 My paths have not always been straight and 
 open, said I to myself; like all others who have 
 won in the conditions of this world of man still 
 thrall to the brute, I have had to use the code of 
 the jungle. In climbing I have had to stoop, at 
 times to crawl. But, now that I have reached the 
 top, I shall stand erect. I shall show that the 
 sordidness of the struggle has not unfitted me to 
 use the victory. True, there are the many and 
 heavy political debts I ve had to contract in get 
 ting Burbank the presidency ; and as we must have 
 a second term to round out our work, we shall be 
 compelled to make some further compromises. 
 We must still deal with men on the terms which 
 human nature exacts. But in the main we can 
 296 
 
"ONLY AN OLD JOKE" 297 
 
 and we will do what is just and right, what helps 
 to realize the dreams of the men and women who 
 founded our country the men and women like 
 my father and mother. 
 
 And my mother s grave, beside my father s 
 and among the graves of my sisters and my 
 grandparents, rose before me. And I recalled the 
 pledge I had made there, in the boyish beginnings 
 of my manhood and my career. "My chance and 
 Burbank s," said I, "comes just in time. We are 
 now at the age where reputation is fixed; and 
 our children are growing up and will soon begin 
 to judge us and be judged from us." 
 
 Years of patient sowing, thought I, and at last 
 the harvest ! And what a harvest it will be ! For 
 under the teachings of experience I have sown 
 not starlight and moonshine, but seeds. 
 
 The next morning I could not rise; it was six 
 weeks before I was able to leave my bed. During 
 that savage illness I met each and every one of 
 the reckless drafts I had been drawing against my 
 reserve vitality. Four times the doctors gave me 
 up; once even Frances lost hope. When I was 
 getting well she confessed to me how she had 
 
298 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 warned God that He need never expect to hear 
 from her again if her prayer for me were not an 
 swered and I saw she rather suspected that her 
 threat was not unassociated with my recovery. 
 
 Eight weeks out of touch with affairs, and they 
 the crucial eight weeks of all my years of thought 
 and action ! At last the harvest, indeed ; and I was 
 reaping what I had sown. 
 
 In the second week of January I revolted 
 against the doctors and nurses and had my po 
 litical secretary, Wheelock, telephone for Wood 
 ruff the legislature had elected him to the Sen 
 ate three days before. When he had sat with me 
 long enough to realize that I could bear bad news, 
 he said : "Goodrich and Burbank have formed a 
 combination against you." 
 
 "How do you know?" said I, showing no sur 
 prise, and feeling none. 
 
 "Because" he laughed "I was in it. At 
 least, they thought so until they had let me be 
 safely elected. As nearly as I can make it out, 
 they began to plot about ten days after you fell 
 sick. At first they had it on the slate to do me up, 
 
"ONLY AN OLD JOKE" 299 
 
 too. But the day after Christmas Burbank 
 sent for me " 
 
 "Wait a minute," I interrupted. And I began 
 to think. It was on Christmas day that Burbank 
 telephoned for the first time in nearly three 
 weeks, inquiring- about my condition. I remem 
 bered their telling 1 me how minute his question 
 ings were. And I had thought his solicitude was 
 proof of his friendship ! Instead, he had been in 
 quiring to make sure about the reports in the 
 papers that I was certain to recover, in order that 
 he might shift the factors in his plot according 
 ly. "When did you say Burbank sent for you?" 
 I asked. 
 
 "On Christmas day," Woodruff replied. 
 
 I laughed ; he looked at me inquiringly. "Noth 
 ing," said I. "Only an old joke as old as human 
 nature. Go on." 
 
 "Christmas day," he continued; "I didn t get 
 to him until next morning. I can t figure out just 
 why they invited me into their combine." 
 
 But I could figure it out, easily. If I had died, 
 my power would have disintegrated and Wood 
 ruff would have been of no use to them. When 
 
300 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 they were sure I was going to live, they had to 
 have him because he might be able to assassinate 
 me, certainly could so cripple me that I would 
 as they reasoned be helpless under their assaults. 
 But it wasn t necessary to tell Woodruff this, I 
 thought. 
 
 "Well," said I, "and what happened?" 
 
 "Burbank gave me a dose of his great and gra 
 cious way you ought to see the side he puts on 
 now ! and turned me over to Goodrich. He had 
 been mighty careful not to give himself away any 
 further than that. Then Goodrich talked to me 
 for three solid hours, showing me it was my duty 
 to the party as well as to myself to join him and 
 Burbank in eliminating the one disturber of har 
 mony that meant you." 
 
 "And didn t they tell you they d destroy you if 
 you didn t?" 
 
 "Oh, that of course," he answered indifferently. 
 
 "Well, what did you do?" 
 
 "Played with em till I was elected. Then I 
 dropped Goodrich a line. You can go to hell, I 
 wrote. I travel only with men ." 
 
 "Very imprudent," was my comment. 
 
ONLY AN OLD JOKE" 301 
 
 "Yes," he admitted, "but I had to do something 
 to get the dirt off my hands." 
 
 "So Burbank has gone over to Goodrich!" I 
 went on presently, as much to myself as to him. 
 
 "I always knew he was one of those chaps 
 you have to keep scared to keep straight," 
 said Woodruff. "They think your politeness in 
 dicates fear and your friendship fright. Besides, 
 he s got a delusion that his popularity carried the 
 West for him and that you and I did him only 
 damage." Woodruff interrupted himself to laugh. 
 "A friend of mine," he resumed, "was on the 
 train with Scarborough when he went East to the 
 meeting of Congress last month. He tells me it 
 was like a President-elect on the way to be in 
 augurated. The people turned out at every cross 
 roads, even beyond the Alleghanies. And Bur- 
 bank knows it. If he wasn t clean daft about him 
 self he d realize that if it hadn t been for you 
 well, I d hate to say how badly he d have got 
 left. But then, if it hadn t been for you, he d never 
 have been governor. He was a dead one, and you 
 hauled him out of the tomb." 
 
 True enough. But what did it matter now ? 
 
302 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 "He s going to get a horrible jolt before many 
 months," Woodruff went on. "I can see you after 
 him." 
 
 "You forget. He s President," I answered. 
 "He s beyond our reach." 
 
 "Not when he wants a renomination," insisted 
 Woodruff. 
 
 "He can get that without us if" I said. "You 
 must remember we ve made him a fetish with our 
 rank and file. And he s something of a fetish with 
 the country, now that he s President. No, we 
 can t destroy him can t even injure him. He ll 
 have to do that himself, if it s done. Besides " 
 
 I did not finish. I did not care to confess that 
 since Frances and I saw Granby swinging from 
 that tree in my grounds I had neither heart nor 
 stomach for the relentless side of the game. In 
 deed, whether from calculation or from sentimen 
 tality or from both or, from a certain sympathy 
 and fellow feeling for all kinds of weakness I 
 have never pursued those who have played me 
 false, except when exemplary punishment was im 
 perative. 
 
 "Well" Woodrufi looked bitterly disappoint- 
 
"ONLY AN OLD JOKE" 303 
 
 ed. "I guess you re right." He brightened. "I 
 forgot Goodrich for a minute. Burbank ll do him 
 self up through that I d have to be in a saloon to 
 feel free to use the language that describes him." 
 
 "I fear he will," I said. And it was not a 
 hypocrisy for I did not, and could not, feel an 
 ger toward him. Had I not cut this staff deliber 
 ately because it was crooked ? What more natural 
 than that it should give way under me as soon as 
 I leaned upon it? 
 
 "Your sickness certainly couldn t have come at 
 an unluckier time," Woodruff observed just be 
 fore he left. 
 
 "I m not sure of that," was my reply. "It 
 would have been useless to have found him out 
 sooner. And if he had hidden himself until later, 
 he might have done us some serious mischief." 
 
 As he was the President-elect, to go to him un 
 invited would have been infringement of his dig 
 nity as well as of my pride. A few days later I 
 wrote him, thanking him for his messages and 
 inquiries during my illness and saying that I was 
 once more taking part in affairs. He did not re 
 ply by calling me up on the telephone, as he would 
 
304 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 have done in the cordial, intimate years preceding 
 his grandeur. Instead he sent a telegram of con 
 gratulation, following it with a note. He urged 
 me to go South, as I had planned, and to stay un 
 til I was fully restored. "I shall deny myself the 
 pleasure of seeing you until you return." That 
 sentence put off our meeting indefinitely I could 
 see him smiling at its adroitness as he wrote it. 
 
 But he made his state of mind even clearer. His 
 custom had been to begin his notes "Dear Har 
 vey," or "Dear Sayler," and to end them "James" 
 or "Burbank." This note began "My dear Sena 
 tor" ; it ended, "Yours sincerely, James E. Bur- 
 bank." As I stared at these phrases my blood 
 steamed in my brain. Had he spat in my face my 
 fury would have been less, far less. "So!" I 
 thought in the first gush of anger, "you feel that 
 you have been using me, that you have no further 
 use for me. You have decided to take the advice 
 of those idiotic independent newspapers and 
 wash your hands of the corruptionist who al 
 most defeated you ." 
 
 To make war upon him was in wisdom impossi 
 ble even had I wished. And when anger flowed 
 
"ONLY AN OLD JOKE" 305 
 
 away and pity and contempt succeeded, I really 
 did not wish to war upon him. But there was 
 Goodrich the real corruptionist, the wrecker of 
 my plans and hopes, the menace to the future of 
 the party. I sent for Woodruff and together we 
 mapped out a campaign against the senior sen 
 ator from New Jersey in all the newspapers we 
 could control or influence. I gave him a free hand 
 to use with his unfailing discretion, of course 
 all the facts we had accumulated to Goodrich s 
 discredit. I put at his disposal a hundred thou 
 sand dollars. As every available dollar of the 
 party funds had been used in the campaign, I ad 
 vanced this money from my own pocket. 
 
 And I went cheerfully away to Palm Beach, 
 there to watch at my ease the rain of shot and 
 shell upon my enemy. 
 
XXVII 
 
 A DOMESTIC DISCORD 
 
 After a month in the South, I was well again 
 younger in feeling, and in looks, than I had been 
 for ten years. Carlotta and the children, except 
 "Junior" who was in college, had gone to Wash 
 ington when I went to Florida. I found her abed 
 with a nervous attack from the double strain of 
 the knowledge that Junior had eloped with an 
 "impossible woman he had met, I shall not say 
 where, and of the effort of keeping the calamity 
 from me until she was sure he had really en 
 tangled himself hopelessly. 
 
 She was now sitting among her pillows, telling 
 the whole story. "If he only hadn t married her!" 
 she ended. 
 
 This struck me as ludicrous a good woman 
 citing to her son s discredit the fact that he had 
 goodness own ideals of honor. 
 
 "What are you laughing at?" she demanded. 
 
 I was about to tell her I was hopeful of the boy 
 306 
 
A DOMESTIC DISCORD 307 
 
 chiefly because he had thus shown the splendid 
 courage that more than redeems folly. But I re 
 frained. I had never been able to make Carlotta 
 understand me or my ideas, and I had long been 
 weary of the resentful silences or angry tirades 
 which mental and temperamental misunderstand 
 ings produce. 
 
 "Courage never gets into a man unless it s born 
 there," said I. "Folly is born into us all and can 
 be weeded out." 
 
 "What can be expected ?" she went on after try 
 ing in vain to connect my remark with our conver 
 sation. "A boy needs a father. You ve been so 
 busy with your infamous politics that youVe 
 given him scarcely a thought." 
 
 Painfully true, throughout; but it was one of 
 those criticisms we can hardly endure even when 
 we make it upon ourselves. I was silent. 
 
 "I ve no patience with men!" she went on. 
 "They re always meddling with things that 
 would get along better without them, and letting 
 their own patch run to weeds." 
 
 Unanswerable. I held my peace. 
 
 "What are you going to do about it, Harvey? 
 
308 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 How can you be so calm? Isn t there anything 
 that would rouse you ?" 
 
 "I m too busy thinking what to do to waste any 
 energy in blowing off steam," was my answer in 
 my conciliatory tone. 
 
 "But there s nothing we can do," she retorted, 
 with increasing anger, which vented itself toward 
 me because the true culprit, fate, was not within 
 reach. 
 
 "Precisely," I agreed. "Nothing." 
 
 "That creature won t let him come to see me." 
 
 "And you musn t see him when he sends for 
 you," said I. "He ll come as soon as his money 
 gives out. She ll see that he does." 
 
 "But you aren t going to cut him off !" 
 
 "Just that," said I. 
 
 A long silence, then I added in answer to her 
 expression : "And you must not let him have a 
 cent, either." 
 
 In a gust of anger, probably at my having read 
 her thoughts, she blurted out : "One would think 
 it was your money." 
 
 I had seen that thought in her eyes, had watched 
 her hold it back behind her set teeth, many times 
 
A DOMESTIC DISCORD 309 
 
 in our married years. And I now thanked my 
 stars I had had the prudence to get ready for the 
 inevitable moment when she would speak it. But 
 at the same time I could not restrain a flush of 
 shame. "It is my money," I forced myself to say. 
 "Ask your brother. He ll tell you what I ve for 
 bidden him to tell before that I have twice res 
 cued you and him from bankruptcy." 
 
 "With our own money," she retorted, hating 
 herself for saying it, but goaded on by a devil that 
 lived in her temper and had got control many a 
 time, though never before when I happened to be 
 the one with whom she was at outs. 
 
 "No with my own," I replied tranquilly. 
 
 "Your own!" she sneered. "Every dollar you 
 have has come through what you got by marrying 
 me through what you married me for. Where 
 would you be if you hadn t married me? You 
 know very well. You d still be fighting poverty as 
 a small lawyer in Pulaski, married to Betty Cros 
 by or whatever her name was." And she burst 
 into hysterical tears. At last she was showing me 
 the secrets that had been tearing at her, was show 
 ing me her heart where they had torn it. 
 
310 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 "Probably/ said I in my usual tone, when she 
 was calm enough to hear me. "So, that s what 
 you brood over ?" 
 
 "Yes," she sobbed. "I ve hated you and my 
 self. Why don t you tell me it isn t so? I ll be 
 lieve it I don t want to hear the truth. I know 
 you don t love me, Harvey. But just say you 
 don t love her." 
 
 "What kind of middle-aged, maudlin moon 
 shine is this, anyway?" said I. "Let s go back to 
 Junior. .We ve passed the time of life when people 
 can talk sentimentality without being ridiculous." 
 
 "That s true of me, Harvey," she said misera 
 bly, "but not of you. You don t look a day over 
 forty you re still a young man, while I " 
 
 She did not need to complete the sentence. I 
 sat on the bed beside her and patted her vaguely. 
 She took my hand and kissed it. And I said I 
 tried to say it gently, tenderly, sincerely : "People 
 who ve been together, as you and I have, see each 
 other always as at first, they say." 
 
 She kissed my hand gratefully again. "For 
 give me for what I said," she murmured. "You 
 know I didn t think it, really, I ve got such a 
 
A DOMESTIC DISCORD 311 
 
 nasty disposition and I felt so down, and that 
 was the only thing I could find to throw at you." 
 
 "Please please!" I protested. "Forgive isn t 
 a word that I d have the right to use to any one." 
 
 "But I must" 
 
 "Now, I ve known for years/ I went on, "that 
 you were in love with that other man when I 
 asked you to marry me. I might have taunted you 
 with it, might have told you how I ve saved him 
 from going to jail for passing worthless checks." 
 
 This delighted her this jealousy so long and 
 so carefully hidden. Under cover of her delight 
 I escaped from the witness-stand. And the dis 
 covery that evening by Doc Woodruff that my 
 son s ensnarer had a husband living put her in 
 high good humor. "If he d only come home," 
 said she, adding : "Though, now I feel that he s 
 perfectly safe with her." 
 
 "Yes let them alone," I replied. "He has at 
 least one kind of sense a sense of honor. And 
 I suspect and hope that he has at bottom common 
 sense too. Let him find her out for himself. Then, 
 he ll be done with her, and her kind, for good." 
 
 "I must marry him off as soon as possible/ 
 
3U THE PLUM TREE 
 
 said Carlotta. "I ll look about for some nice, quiet 
 young girl with character and looks and domestic 
 tastes." She laughed a little bitterly. "You men 
 can profit by experience and it ruins us women." 
 
 "Unjust," said I, "but injustice and stupidity 
 are the ground plan of life." 
 
 l We had not long to wait. The lady, as soon as 
 Junior reached the end of his cash, tried to open 
 negotiations. Failing and becoming convinced 
 that he had been cast off by his parents, she threw 
 aside her mask. One straight look into her real 
 countenance was enough for the boy. He fled 
 shuddering but not to me as I had expected. 
 Instead, he got a place as a clerk in Chicago. 
 
 "Why not let him shift for himself a while?" 
 suggested Woodruff, who couldn t have taken 
 more trouble about the affair if the boy had been 
 his own. "A man never knows whether his feet 
 were made to stand on and walk with, unless he s 
 been down to his uppers." 
 
 "I think the boy s got his grandmother in him," 
 said I. "Let s give him a chance." 
 
 "He ll make a career for himself yet like his 
 father s," said Woodruff. 
 
A DOMESTIC DISCORD 313 
 
 That, with the sincerest enthusiasm. But in 
 stinctively I looked at him for signs of sarcasm. 
 And then I wondered how many "successful" 
 men would, in the same circumstances, have had 
 the same curiously significant instinct. 
 
XXVIII 
 
 UNDER A CRAYON PORTRAIT 
 
 It was now less than a month before inaugura 
 tion. Daily the papers gave probable selections 
 for the high posts under the approaching admin 
 istration; and, while many of them were attrib 
 uted to my influence, Roebuck s son as ambassa 
 dor to Russia was the only one I even approved of. 
 As payments for the services of the plutocracy 
 they were unnecessary and foolishly lavish; as 
 preparations for a renomination and reelection, 
 the two guiding factors in every plan of a Presi 
 dent-elect, they were preposterous. They were 
 first steps toward an administration that would 
 make Scarborough s triumph inevitable, in spite 
 of his handicap of idealism. 
 
 I sent Woodruff west to find out what Bur- 
 bank was doing about the places I had pledged 
 all of them less "honorable" but more lucrative 
 offices which party workers covet. He returned 
 in a few days with the news that, according to the 
 314 
 
UNDER A CRAYON PORTRAIT 315 
 
 best information he could get through his spies in 
 Burbank s entourage, all our pledges would be 
 broken; the Sayler-Burbank machine was to be 
 made over into a Goodrich-Burbank. 
 
 I saw that I could not much longer delay ac 
 tion. But I resolved to put it off until the very 
 last minute, meanwhile trying to force Burbank 
 to send for me. My cannonade upon Goodrich in 
 six thousand newspapers, great and small, 
 throughout the West and South, had been rein 
 forced by the bulk of the opposition press. I could 
 not believe it was to be without influence upon 
 the timid Burbank, even though he knew who was 
 back of the attack, and precisely how I was direct 
 ing it. I was relying as I afterward learned, not 
 in vain upon my faithful De Milt to bring to 
 "Cousin James " attention the outburst of pub 
 lic sentiment against his guide, philosopher and 
 friend, the Wall Street fetch-and-carry. 
 
 I had fixed on February fifteenth as the date on 
 which I would telegraph a formal demand for an 
 interview. On February eleventh, he surren 
 dered he wired, asking me to come. I took a 
 chance ; I wired back a polite request to be excused 
 
316 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 as I had urgent business in Chicago. And 
 twenty-four hours later I passed within thirty 
 miles of Rivington on my way to Chicago with 
 Carlotta we were going to see Junior, hugely 
 proud of himself and his twenty-seven dollars a 
 week. At the Auditorium a telegram waited 
 from Burbank : He hoped I would come as soon 
 as I could ; the matters he wished to discuss were 
 most important. 
 
 Toward noon of the third day thereafter we 
 were greeting each other he with an attempt at 
 his old-time cordiality, I without concealment of 
 at least the coldness I felt. But my manner ap 
 parently, and probably, escaped his notice. He 
 was now blind and drunk with the incense that 
 had been whirling about him in dense clouds for 
 three months; he was incapable of doubting the 
 bliss of any human being he was gracious to. He 
 shut me in with him and began confiding the plans 
 he and Goodrich had made cabinet places, for 
 eign posts, and so forth. His voice, lingering and 
 luxuriating upon the titles "my ambassador to 
 his Brittanic Majesty," "my ambassador to the 
 German Emperor," and so on amused and a lit- 
 
UNDER A CRAYON PORTRAIT 317 
 
 tie, but only a little, astonished me ; I had always 
 known that he was a through-and-through snob. 
 For nearly an hour I watched his ingenuous, 
 childish delight in bathing himself in himself, the 
 wonderful fountain of all these honors. At last 
 he finished, laid down his list, took off his nose- 
 glasses. "Well, Harvey, what do you think?" he 
 asked, and waited with sparkling eyes for my en 
 thusiastic approval. 
 
 "I see Goodrich drove a hard bargain," said I. 
 "Yet he came on his knees, if you had but realized 
 it." 
 
 Burbank s color mounted. "What do you 
 mean, Sayler?" he inquired, the faint beginnings 
 of the insulted god in his tone and manner. 
 
 "You asked my opinion," I answered, "I m giv 
 ing it. I don t recall a single name that isn t ob 
 viously a Goodrich suggestion. Even the Roe 
 buck appointment " 
 
 "Sayler," he interrupted, in a forbearing tone, 
 "I wish you would not remind me so often of your 
 prejudice against Senator Goodrich. It is un 
 worthy of you. But for my tact pardon my 
 
318 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 frankness your prejudice would have driven him 
 away, and with him a support he controls " 
 
 I showed my amusement. 
 
 "Don t smile, Sayler," he protested with some 
 anger in his smooth, heavy voice. "You are not 
 the only strong man in the party. And I venture 
 to take advantage of our long friendship to speak 
 plainly to you. I wish to see a united party. One 
 of my reasons for sending for you was to tell you 
 how greatly I am distressed and chagrined by the 
 attacks on Senator Goodrich in our papers." 
 
 "Did you have any other reason for sending for 
 me? * said I very quietly. 
 
 "That was the principal one," he confessed. 
 
 "Oh!" I exclaimed. 
 
 "What do you mean, Sayler?" 
 
 "I thought possibly you might also have wished 
 to tell me how unjust you thought the attacks on 
 me in the eastern papers, and to assure me that 
 they had only strengthened our friendship." 
 
 He was silent. 
 
 I rose, threw my overcoat on my arm, took up 
 my hat. 
 
 "Wait a moment, please," he said. "I have al- 
 
UNDER A CRAYON PORTRAIT 319 
 
 ways found you very impartial in your judgments 
 your clear judgment has been of the highest 
 usefulness to me many times." 
 
 "Thank you," I said. "You are most kind 
 most generous." 
 
 "So," he went on, not dreaming that he might 
 find sarcasm if he searched for it, "I hope you 
 appreciate why I have refrained from seeing you, 
 as I wished. I know, Sayler, your friendship was 
 loyal. I know you did during- the campaign what 
 you thought wisest and best. But I feel that you 
 must see now what a grave mistake you made. 
 Don t misunderstand me, Harvey. I do not hold 
 it against you. But you must see, no doubt you 
 do see, that it would not be fair for me, it would 
 not be in keeping with the dignity of the great 
 office with which the people have intrusted me, to 
 seem to lend my approval." 
 
 I looked straight at him until his gaze fell. 
 Then I said, my voice even lower than usual : "If 
 you will look at the election figures carefully you 
 will find written upon them a very interesting fact. 
 That fact is : In all the doubtful states the ones 
 that elected you Scarborough swept everything 
 
320 ,THE PLUM TREE 
 
 where our party has heretofore been strongest; 
 you were elected by carrying districts where our 
 party has always been weakest. And in those 
 districts, James., our money was spent as you 
 well know." 
 
 I waited for this to cut through his enswad- 
 dlings of self-complacence, waited until I saw its 
 acid eating into him. Then I went on : "I hope 
 you will never again deceive yourself, or let your 
 enemies deceive you. As to your plans the plans 
 for Goodrich and his crowd I have nothing to 
 say. My only concern is to have Woodruff s mat 
 ters his pledges attended to. That I must in 
 sist upon." 
 
 He lowered his brows in a heavy frown. 
 
 "I have your assent ?" I insisted. 
 
 "Really, Harvey/ there was an astonish 
 ing change from the complacent, superior voice of 
 a few minutes before, "I ll do what I can but 
 the responsibilities the duties of of my po 
 sition 
 
 "You are going to take the office, James," said 
 I. "You can t cheat the men who gave it to you." 
 
 He did not answer. 
 
UNDER A CRAYON PORTRAIT 321 
 
 "I pledged my word," I went on. "You gave 
 the promises. I indorsed for you. The debts 
 must be met." Never before had I enjoyed using 
 that ugliest of words. 
 
 "You ask me to bring myself into unpopularity 
 with the entire country," he pleaded. "Several of 
 the men on your list are ex-convicts. Others are/ 
 
 about to be indicted for election frauds. Many) 
 
 i ^~* 
 
 Are men utterly without character " 
 
 "They did your work, James," said I. "I guar 
 antee that in no case will the unpleasant conse 
 quences to you be more than a few disagreeable 
 but soon forgotten newspaper articles. You hag 
 gle over these trifles, and why, look at your 
 cabinet list ! There are two names on it two of 
 the four Goodrich men that will cost you blasts 
 of public anger perhaps the renomination." 
 
 "Is this my friend Harvey Sayler?" he ex 
 claimed, grief and pain in that face which had 
 been used by him for thirty years as the sculptor 
 uses the molding clay. 
 
 "It is," I answered calmly. "And never more 
 your friend than now, when you have ceased to be 
 a friend to him and to yourself." 
 
322 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 "Then do not ask me to share the infamy of 
 those wretches/ he pleaded. 
 
 "They are our allies and helpers/ I said, 
 "wretches only as I and all of us in practical poli 
 tics are wretches. Difference of degree, perhaps ; 
 but not of kind. And, James, if our promises to 
 these invaluable fellow workers of ours are not 
 kept, kept to the uttermost, you will compel me 
 and my group of Senators to oppose and defeat 
 your most important nominations. And I shall 
 myself, publicly, from the floor of the Senate, 
 show up these Goodrich nominees of yours as 
 creatures of corrupt corporations and monopo 
 lies." I said this without heat ; every word of it 
 fell cold as arctic ice upon his passion. 
 
 A long pause, then : "Your promises shall be 
 kept/ he assented with great dignity of manner ; 
 "not because you threaten, Harvey, but because 
 I value your friendship beyond anything and 
 everything. And I may add I am sorry, pro 
 foundly sorry, my selections for the important 
 places do not please you." 
 
 "I think of your future," I said. "You talk of 
 friendship " 
 
UNDER A CRAYON PORTRAIT 323 
 
 "No, no, Harvey," he protested, with a vehe 
 mence of reassurance that struck me as amusing. 
 
 "And," I went on, "it is in friendship, James, 
 that I warn you not to fill all your crucial places 
 with creatures of the Goodrich crowd. They will 
 rule your administration, they will drive you, in 
 spite of yourself, on and on, from excess to ex 
 cess. You will put the middle West irrevocably 
 against you. You will make even the East doubt 
 ful. You are paying, paying with your whole 
 future, for that which is already yours. If you 
 lose your hold on the people, the money-crowd 
 will have none of you. If you keep the people, 
 the money-crowd will be your very humble ser 
 vant." 
 
 I happened just then to glance past him at a 
 picture on the wall over his chair. It was a crayon 
 portrait of his wife, made from an enlarged photo 
 graph a poor piece of work, almost ludicrous in 
 its distortions of proportion and perspective. But 
 it touched me the more because it was such a hum 
 ble thing, reminiscent of her and his and my lowly 
 beginnings. And an appeal seemed to go straight 
 to my heart from those eyes that had so often 
 
324 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 been raised from the sewing in sympathetic un 
 derstanding of the things I was struggling to 
 make her husband see. 
 
 I pointed to the picture ; he slowly turned round 
 in his chair until he too was looking at it. "What 
 would she say, Burbank," I asked, "if she were 
 with us now ?" 
 
 And then I went on to analyze his outlined ad 
 ministration, to show him in detail why I thought 
 it would ruin him, to suggest men who were as 
 good party men as the Goodrich crowd and would 
 be a credit to him and a help. And he listened 
 with his old-time expression, looking up at his 
 dead wife s picture all the while. "You must be 
 popular, at any cost," I ended. "The industrial 
 crowd will stay with the party, no matter what we 
 do. As long as Scarborough is in control on the 
 other side, we are their only hope. And so, we 
 are free to seek popularity and we must regain 
 it or we re done for. Money won t save us when 
 we ve lost our grip on the rank and file. The 
 presidency can t be bought again for you. If it 
 must be bought next time, another figure-head 
 will have to be used. Y 
 
UNDER A CRAYON PORTRAIT 325 
 
 "I can t tell you how grateful I am," was his 
 conclusion after I had put my whole mind before 
 him and he and I had discussed it. "But there 
 are certain pledges to Goodrich " 
 
 "Break them," said I. "To keep them is catas 
 trophe." 
 
 I knew the pledges he had in the foreground of 
 his thoughts a St. Louis understrapper of the 
 New York financial crowd for Secretary of the 
 Treasury; for Attorney General a lawyer who 
 knew nothing of politics or public sentiment or 
 indeed of anything but how to instruct corpora 
 tions in law-breaking and law-dodging. 
 
 He thought a long time. When he answered 
 it was with a shake of the head. "Too late, I m 
 afraid, Harvey. I ve asked the men and they ve 
 accepted. That was a most untimely illness of 
 yours. I ll see what can be done. It s a grave 
 step to offend several of the most conspicuous 
 men in the party." 
 
 "Not so serious as to offend the party itself," I 
 replied. "Money is a great power in politics, but 
 partizanship is a greater." 
 
 "I ll think it over," was the most he had the 
 
326 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 courage to concede. "I must look at all sides, 
 you know. But, whatever I decide, I thank you 
 for your candor." 
 
 We separated, the best friends in the world, I 
 trying to recover some few of the high hopes of 
 him that had filled me on election night. "He s 
 weak and timid," I said to myself, "but at bottom 
 he must have a longing to be President in fact as 
 well as in name. Even the meanest slave longs to 
 be a man." 
 
 I should have excepted the self-enslaved slaves 
 of ambition. Of all bondmen, they alone, I be 
 lieve, not only do not wish freedom, but also are 
 ever plotting how they may add to their chains. 
 
XXIX 
 
 & LETTER FROM THE DEAD 
 
 I was living alone at the Willard. 
 
 Soon after the death of Burbank s wife, his sis 
 ter and brother-in-law, the Gracies, had come with 
 their three children to live with him and to look 
 after his boy and girl. Trouble between his 
 family and mine, originating in some imperti 
 nences of the oldest Gracie girl, spread from the 
 children to the grown people until, when he went 
 into the White House, he and I were the only two 
 on speaking terms. I see now that this situation 
 had large influence on me in holding aloof and 
 waiting always for overtures from him. At the 
 time I thought, as no doubt he thought also, that 
 the quarrel was beneath the notice of men. 
 
 At any rate my family decided not to come to 
 Washington during his first winter in the White 
 House. I lived alone at the Willard. One after 
 noon toward the end of February I returned there 
 from the Senate and found Woodruff, bad news 
 327 
 
328 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 in his face. "What is it?" I asked indifferently, 
 for I assumed it was some political tangle. 
 
 "Your wife was taken very ill very sud 
 denly," he said. His eyes told me the rest. 
 
 If I had ever asked myself how this news would 
 affect me, I should have answered that it would 
 give me a sensation of relief. But, instead of re 
 lief, I felt the stunning blow of a wave of sorrow 
 which has never wholly receded. Not because I 
 loved her that I never did. Not because she was 
 the mother of my children my likes and dislikes 
 are direct and personal. Not because she was my 
 wife that bond had been galling. Not because 
 I was fond of her she had one of those cold, 
 angry natures that forbid affection. No; I was 
 overwhelmed because she and I had been inti 
 mates, with all the closest interests of life in com 
 mon, with the whole world, even my children 
 whom I loved passionately, outside that circle 
 which fate had drawn around us two. I imagine 
 this is not uncommon among married people, 
 this unhealable break in their routine of associa 
 tion when one departs. No doubt it often passes 
 with the unthinking for love belatedly discovered. 
 
A LETTER FROM THE DEAD 329 
 
 "She did not suffer," said Woodruff gently. 
 "It was heart disease. She had just come in from 
 a ride with your oldest daughter. They were 
 resting and talking in high spirits by the library 
 fire. And then the end came like putting out 
 the light." 
 
 Heart disease ! Often I had noted the irregu 
 lar beat of her heart a throb, a long pause, a 
 flutter, a short pause, a throb. And I could re 
 member that more than once the sound had been 
 followed by the shadowy appearance, in the door 
 of my mind, of one of those black thoughts 
 which try to tempt hope but only make it hide in 
 shame and dread. Now, the memory of those oc 
 casions tormented me into accusing myself of 
 having wished her gone. But it was not so. 
 
 She had told me she had heart trouble ; but she 
 had confided to no one that she knew it might 
 bring on the end at any moment. She left a let 
 ter, sealed and addressed to me : 
 
 Harvey 
 
 I shall never have the courage to tell you, yet I feel you 
 ought to know. I think every one attributes to every one 
 else less shrewdness than he possesses. I know you have 
 
330 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 never given me the credit of seeing that you did not love 
 me. And you were so kind and considerate and so patient 
 with my moods that no doubt I should have been deceived 
 had I not known what love is. I think, to have loved and 
 to have been loved develops in a woman a sort of sixth 
 sense sensitiveness to love. And that had been developed 
 in me, and when it never responded to your efforts to de 
 ceive me, I knew you did not love me. 
 
 Well, neither did I love you, though I was able to hide 
 it from you. And it has often irritated me that you were so 
 unobservant. You know now the cause of many of my dim- 
 cult moods, which have seemed causeless. 
 
 I admired you from the first time we met. I have liked 
 you, I have been proud of you, I would not have been the 
 wife of any other man in the world, I would not have had 
 any other father for my children. But I have kept on loving 
 the man I loved before I met you. 
 
 Why? I don t know. I despised him for his weaknesses. 
 I should never have married him, though mother and Ed 
 both feared I would. I think I loved him because I knew he 
 loved me. That is the way it is with women they seldom 
 love independently. Men like to love; women like to be 
 loved. And, poor, unworthy creature that he was, still he 
 would have died for me, though God had denied him the 
 strength to live for me. But all that God gave him the 
 power to love he gave me. And so he was different in my 
 eyes from what he was in any one s else in the world. And 
 I loved him. 
 
 I don t tell you this because I feel regret or remorse. I 
 don t; there never was a wife truer than I, for I put him 
 
A LETTER FROM THE DEAD 331 
 
 completely aside. I tell you, because I want you to remem 
 ber me right after I m gone, Harvey dear. You may re 
 member how I was silly and jealous of you, and think I 
 am mistaken about my own feelings. But jealousy doesn t 
 mean love. When people really love, I think it s seldom 
 that they re jealous. What makes people jealous usually is 
 suspecting the other pe rson of having the same sort of 
 secret they have themselves. It hurt my vanity that you 
 didn t love me; and it stung me to think you cared for 
 some one else , just as I did. 
 
 I want you to remember me gently. And somehow I 
 think that, after you ve read this, you will, even if you did 
 love some one else. If you ever see this at all, Harvey 
 and I may tear it up some day on impulse but if you ever 
 do see it, I shall be dead, and we shall both be free. And I 
 want you to come to me and look at me and " 
 
 It ended thus abruptly. No doubt she had in 
 tended to open the envelope and finish it but, 
 what more was there to say? 
 
 I think she must have been content with the 
 thoughts that were in my mind as I looked down 
 at her lying in death s inscrutable calm. I had 
 one of my secretaries hunt out the man she had 
 loved a sad, stranded wreck of a man he had be 
 come ; but since that day he has been sheltered at 
 
332 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 least from the worst of the bufferings to which his 
 incapacity for life exposed him. 
 
 There was a time when I despised incapables; 
 then I pitied them; but latterly I have felt for 
 them the sympathetic sense of brotherhood. Are 
 we not all incapables? Differing only in degree, 
 and how slightly there, if we look at ourselves 
 without vanity; like practice-sketches put upon 
 the slate by Nature s learning hand and impa 
 tiently sponged away. 
 
XXX 
 
 A PHILOSOPHER RUDELY INTERRUPTED 
 
 After the funeral I lingered at our Fredonia 
 place. There was the estate to settle; my two 
 daughters had now no one to look after them; 
 Junior must be started right at learning the busi 
 ness of which he would soon be the head, as his 
 uncle had shown himself far too easy-going for 
 large executive responsibility. So, I stayed on, 
 doing just enough- to keep a face of plausibility 
 upon my pretexts for not returning to Washing 
 ton. The fact was that Carlotta s death had deep 
 ened my mood of distaste into disgust. It had set 
 me to brooding over the futility and pettiness of 
 my activities in politics, of all activities of what 
 ever kind. I watched Ed and my children resum 
 ing the routine of their lives, swiftly adjusting 
 themselves to the loss of one who had been so dear 
 to them and apparently so necessary to their hap 
 piness. The cry of "man overboard," a few rip 
 ples, a few tears ; the sailing on, with the surface 
 
 333 
 
334 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 of the water smooth again and the faces keen and 
 bright. 
 
 Woodruff wrote, urging ; then he sent telegram 
 after telegram. Still I procrastinated ; for all the 
 effect his letters and telegrams had upon me, I 
 might as well have left them unopened. My final 
 answer was : "Act as you would if I were dead." 
 
 Probably, what had given my pessimism its 
 somberest tone was the attitude of the public to 
 ward Burbank s high appointments. I had con 
 fidently predicted that filling all the high offices 
 with men who had no interest but "the interests," 
 men who were notoriously the agents and servants 
 of the great "campaign contributors," would 
 cause a public outcry that could not be ignored. 
 The opposition press did make perfunctory criti 
 cisms ; but nowhere was there a sign that the peo 
 ple were really angered. 
 
 I got the clue to this mystery from my garden 
 er, who prided himself on being strenuously of the 
 opposition party. "What do you think of the new 
 administration?" said I when I came upon him 
 one morning at the rhododendron beds. 
 
A PHILOSOPHER INTERRUPTED 335 
 
 "Much better than I allowed," said he. "Bur- 
 bank s got good men around him." 
 
 "You approve of his Cabinet?" 
 
 "Of course, they re all strong party men. I 
 like a good party man. I like a man that has con 
 victions and principles, and stands up for em." 
 
 "Your newspapers say some pretty severe 
 things about those men." 
 
 "So I read," said he, "but you know how that 
 is, Mr. Sayler. They ve got to pound em to 
 please the party. But nobody believes much he 
 sees in the newspapers. Whenever I read an item 
 about things I happen to know, it s all wrong. 
 And I guess they don t get it any nearer right 
 about the things I don t happen to know. Now, 
 all this here talk of there being so many million 
 aires I don t take no kind of stock in it." 
 
 "No?" said I. 
 
 "Of course, some s poor and some s rich that s 
 got to be. But I think it s all newspaper lies 
 about these here big fortunes and about all the 
 leading men in politics being corrupt. I know it 
 ain t so about the leading men in my party, and I 
 
336 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 reckon there ain t no more truth in it about the 
 leading men of your n. I was saying to my wife 
 last night, It s all newspaper lies/ says I, just 
 like the story they printed about Mrs. Timmins 
 eloping with Maria Wilmerding s husband, when 
 she had only went over to Rabbit Forks to visit 
 her married daughter/ No, they can t fool me 
 them papers." 
 
 "That s one way of looking at it/ said I. 
 
 "It s horse sense," said he. 
 
 And I have no doubt that to the average citizen, 
 leading a small, quiet life and dealing with affairs 
 in corner-grocery retail, the stupendous facts of 
 accumulations of wealth and wholesale, far-and- 
 wide purchases of the politicians, the vast sys 
 tem of bribery, with bribes adapted to every taste 
 and conscience, seem impossibilities, romanc- 
 ings of partizanship and envy and sensationalism. 
 Nor can he understand the way superior men play 
 the great games, the heartlessness of ambition, the 
 cynicism of political and commercial prostitution, 
 the sense of superiority to the legal and moral 
 codes which comes to most men with success. 
 
 Your average citizen is a hero-worshiper too. 
 
A PHILOSOPHER INTERRUPTED 337 
 
 He knows his own and his neighbor s weaknesses, 
 but he gapes up at the great with glamoured eyes, 
 and listens to their smooth plausibilities as to the 
 reading of the Gospel from the pulpit. He be 
 longs to the large mass of those who believe, not 
 to the small class of those who question. But for 
 the rivalries and jealousies of superior men which 
 have kept them always divided into two parties, 
 the ins and the outs, I imagine the masses w r ould 
 have remained for ever sunk in the most hopeless, 
 if the most delightful, slavery that in which the 
 slave accepts his lowliness as a divine ordinance 
 and looks up to his oppressors and plunderers as 
 hero-leaders. And no doubt, so long as the ex 
 uberant riches of our country enable the trium 
 phant class to "take care of" all the hungry who 
 have intellect enough to make themselves danger 
 ous, we shall have no change except occasional 
 spasms whenever a large number of unplaced in 
 telligent hungry are forcing the full and fat to 
 make room for them. How long will this be? 
 If our education did not merely feed prejudices 
 instead of removing them, I should say not long. 
 As it is, I expect to "leave the world as wicked 
 
338 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 and as foolish as I found it." At any rate, until 
 the millenium, I shall continue to play the game 
 under the rules of human nature instead of un 
 der the rules of human ideals, as does my 
 esteemed friend Scarborough. And I claim that 
 we practical men are as true and useful servants 
 of our country and of our fellow men as he. If 
 men like him are the light, men like us are the 
 lantern that shields it from the alternating winds 
 of rapacity and resentment. 
 
 But, in running on about myself, I have got 
 away from my point, which was how slight and 
 even flimsy a pretense of fairness will shelter a 
 man in high place and therefore a Burbank. 
 "He will fool the people as easily as he fools him 
 self," said I. And more than ever it seemed to 
 me that I must keep out of the game of his admin 
 istration. My necessity of party regularity made 
 it impossible for me to oppose him; my equal 
 necessity of not outraging my sense of the wise, 
 not to speak of the decent, made it impossible for 
 me to abet him. 
 
 At last Woodruff came in person. When his 
 name was brought to me, I regretted that I could 
 
A PHILOSOPHER INTERRUPTED 339 
 
 not follow my strong impulse to refuse to see him. 
 But at sight of his big strong body and big strong 
 face, with its typically American careless good 
 humor the cool head, the warm heart, the 
 amused eyes and lips that could also harden into 
 sternness of resolution at sight of this old 
 friend and companion-in-arms, my mood began 
 to lift and I felt him stirring in it like sunshine 
 attacking a fog. "I know what you ve come to 
 say," I began, "but don t say it. I shall keep to 
 my tent for the present." 
 
 "Then you won t have a tent to keep to," re 
 torted he. 
 
 "Very well," said I. "My private affairs will 
 give me all the occupation I need." 
 
 He laughed. "The general resigns from the 
 command of the army to play with a box of lead 
 soldiers." 
 
 "That sounds well," said I. "But the better 
 the analogy, the worse the logic. I am going out 
 of the business of making and working off gold 
 bricks and green goods and that s no analogy." 
 
 "Then you must be going to kill yourself," he 
 replied. "For that s life." 
 
340 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 "Public life active life," said I. "Here, there 
 are other things." And I looked toward my two 
 daughters, whose laughter reached us from their 
 pony-cart just rounding a distant curve in the 
 drive. 
 
 His gaze followed mine and he watched the two 
 children until they were out of sight, watched 
 them with the saddest, hungriest look in his eyes. 
 "Guess you re right," he said gruffly. 
 
 After a silence I asked : "What s the news?" 
 
 A quizzical smile just curled his lips, and it 
 broadened into a laugh as he saw my own rather 
 shamefaced smile of understanding. "Seems to 
 me," said he, "that I read somewhere once how a 
 king, perhaps it was an emperor, so hankered for 
 the quiet joys that he got off the throne and re 
 tired to a monastery and then established lines 
 of post-horses from his old capital to bring him 
 the news every half-hour or so. I reckon he d 
 have taken his job back if he could have got it." 
 
 "I reckon," said I. 
 
 "Well," said he, "the news is that they re about 
 to oust you from the chairmanship of the national 
 committee and from control in this state." 
 
A PHILOSOPHER INTERRUPTED 341 
 
 "Really?" said I, in an indifferent tone 
 though I felt anything but indifferent. 
 
 "Really," said he. "Burbank is throwing out 
 our people throughout the country and is putting 
 Goodrich men in place of em wherever our fel 
 lows won t turn traitor. And they ve got hold of 
 Roebuck. He s giving a dinner at the Auditor 
 ium to-morrow night. It s a dinner of eleven 
 covers. I think you can guess who ten of em are 
 for. The eleventh is for Dominick !" 
 
 That was enough. I grasped the situation in 
 stantly. The one weak spot in my control of my 
 state was my having left the city bosses their 
 local power, instead of myself ruling the cities 
 from the state capital. (Why had I done, this? 
 Perhaps the bottQm--4^sW--was-4hakJL- shrank 
 from permitting any part of the, riia.cliinL_jpr 
 which I was directly responsible to. .fie.. financed 
 by collections from vice and crime. I admit that 
 the distinction between corporate privilege and 
 plunder and the pickings and stealings and prosti 
 tutions of individuals is more apparent than real. 
 I admit that the kinds of vice and crime I toler 
 ated are far more harmful than the other sorts 
 
342 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 which are petty and make loathed outcasts of 
 their wretched practitioners. Still, I was snob 
 or Pharisee or Puritan enough to feel and to act 
 upon the imaginary distinction. And so, I had 
 left the city bosses locally independent for, 
 without the revenues and other aids from vice 
 and crime, what city political machine could be 
 kept up? 
 
 "Dominick!" I exclaimed. 
 
 "Exactly!" said Woodruff. "Now, Mr. Say- 
 ler, the point is just here. I don t blame you for 
 wanting to get out. If I had any other game, I d 
 get out myself. But what s to become of us 
 of all your friends, not only in this state but 
 throughout the country? Are you going to stand 
 by and see them slaughtered and not lift a finger 
 to help em?" 
 
 There was no answering him. Yet the spur of 
 vanity, which clipped into me at thought of my 
 self thrown down and out by these cheap in- 
 grates and scoundrels, had almost instantly 
 ceased to sting; and my sense of weary disgust 
 had returned. If I went into the battle again, 
 what work faced me? The same old monotonous 
 
A PHILOSOPHER INTERRUPTED 343 
 
 round. x To outflank Burbank and Goodrich by 
 jfricks as old as war and politics, and effective 
 only because human stupidity is infinite and un- 
 teachable. To beat down and whip back into the 
 ranks again these bandits of commerce disguised 
 as respectable, church-going, law-upholding men 
 of property and to do this by the same old 
 methods of terror and force. 
 
 "You can t leave us in the lurch," said Doc. 
 "And the game promises to be interesting once 
 more. I don t like racing on the flat. It s the 
 hurdles that make the fun." 
 
 I pictured myself again a circus horse, going 
 round and round the ring, jumping the same old 
 hurdles at the same old intervals. "Take my 
 place, Doc," said I. 
 
 He shook his head. "I m a good second," said 
 he, "but a rotten bad first." 
 
 It was true enough. He mysteriously lacked 
 that mysterious something which, when a man 
 happens to have been born with it, makes other 
 men yield him the command give it to him, 
 force it on him, if he hangs back. 
 
 "What do you want me to do ?" I asked. 
 
344 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 "That dinner to-morrow night is in Suite L. 
 Go to it that s the shortest way to put Roebuck 
 and Dominick out of business. Face em and 
 they ll skulk." 
 
 "It s a risk," said I. I saw at once that he was 
 right, but I was in a reluctant humor. 
 
 "Not a bit of it," was his confident reply. "I 
 had a horse that was crazy would run away on 
 any old provocation. But no matter how busy 
 he was at kicking up the dust and the dashboard, 
 you could always halt him by ringing a bell once. 
 He d been in the street-car service. That s the 
 way it is with men, especially strong men, that 
 have been broken to the bell. They hear it ring 
 and they can t resist. Go up and ring the bell." 
 
 "Go ring it yourself," said I. 
 
 "You re the bell," said he. 
 
XXXI 
 
 HARVEY SAYLER, SWINEHERD 
 
 At a little after eight the following night, I 
 was in Chicago, was knocking at Suite L in the 
 Auditorium Hotel; I was hearing sounds from 
 within that indicated that the dinner was under 
 way. The door swung back and there stood old 
 Roebuck himself, napkin in hand, his shriveling 
 old face showing that his dollar sense was taking 
 up the strength which his other senses were los 
 ing. He was saying cordially, "Ah, Croffut, you 
 are late" 
 
 Then his dim eyes saw me; he pulled himself 
 up like a train when the air-brakes are clapped 
 on. 
 
 "They told me at the office that you were at 
 dinner," said I in the tone of one who has un 
 intentionally blundered. "As I was looking for 
 dinner, I rather hoped you d ask me to join you. 
 But I see that" 
 
 "Come right in," he said smoothly, but gray 
 345 
 
346 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 as a sheep. "You ll find some old friends of 
 yours. We re taking advantage of the conven 
 tion of western manufacturers to have a little re 
 union." 
 
 I now had a full view of the table. There was 
 a silence that made the creaking of starched 
 evening shirt-bosoms noisy as those men drew 
 long stealthy breaths when breathing became im 
 perative. All my "clients" and Dominick he at 
 Roebuck s right. At Roebuck s left there was a 
 vacant chair. "Shall I sit here?" said I easily. 
 
 "That place was reserved was for but " 
 stammered Roebuck. 
 
 "For Granby s ghost?" said I pleasantly. 
 
 His big lips writhed. And as my glance of 
 greeting to these old friends of mine traveled 
 down one side of the table and up the other, it 
 might have been setting those faces on fire, so 
 brightly did they flare. It was hard for me to 
 keep my disgust beneath the surface. Those 
 "gentlemen" assembled there were among the 
 "leading citizens" of my state ; and Roebuck was 
 famous on both sides of the Atlantic as a king 
 of commerce and a philanthropist. Yet, every 
 
HARVEY SAYLER, SWINEHERD 347 
 
 one of those brains was busy most of its 
 hours with assassin-like plottings and for what 
 purpose? For ends so petty, so gross and stu 
 pid that it was inconceivable how intelligence 
 could waste life upon them, not to speak of the 
 utter depravity and lack of manliness. Liars, 
 cheats, bribers; and flaunting the fruits of in 
 famy as honors, as titles to respect, as gifts from; 
 Almighty God! And here they were, assembledV 
 now for silly plottings against the man whose 
 only offense in their eyes was that he was saving 
 them from themselves was preventing them 
 from killing the goose that would cheerfully keep 
 on laying golden eggs for the privilege of remain- / 
 ing alive. It was pitiful. It was nauseating. l 
 felt my degradation in stooping to such com 
 pany. 
 
 I spoke to Dominick last. To my surprise he 
 squarely returned my gaze. His eyes were twink 
 ling, as the eyes of a pig seem to be, if you look 
 straight into its face when it lifts its snout from 
 a full trough. Presently he could contain the 
 huge volume of his mirth no longer. It came 
 roaring from him in a great coarse torrent, shak- 
 
348 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 ing his vast bulk and the chair that sustained it, 
 swelling the veins in his face, resounding 
 through the silent room while the waiters liter 
 ally stood aghast. At last he found breath to 
 ejaculate: "Well, I ll be good and damned !" 
 
 This gale ripped from the others and whirled 
 away their cloaks of surface-composure. Naked, 
 they suggested a lot of rats in a trap Dominick 
 jeering at them and anticipating the pleasure of 
 watching me torment them. I choked back the 
 surge of repulsion and said to Roebuck: "Then 
 where shall I sit?" 
 
 Roebuck looked, almost wildly, toward the 
 foot of the table. He longed to have me as far 
 from him as possible. Partridge, at the foot of 
 the table, cried out in alarm: "Make room for 
 the Senator between you and Mr. Dominick, Roe 
 buck ! He ought to be as near the head of the ta 
 ble as possible." 
 
 "No matter where Senator Sayler sits, it s the 
 head of the table," said Roebuck. His common 
 place of courtesy indicated, not recovered self- 
 control, but the cunning of his rampant instinct 
 of self-preservation that cunning which men 
 
HARVEY SAYLER, SWINEHERD 349 
 
 so often exhibit in desperate straits, thereby win 
 ning credit for cool courage. 
 
 "We re a merry company," said I, as we sat. 
 This, with a glance at Dominick heaving in the 
 subsiding storm of his mirth. My remark set him 
 off again. I glanced at his place to see if he had 
 abandoned his former inflexible rule of total ab 
 stinence. There stood his invariable pot of tea. 
 Clearly, it was not drink that enabled him to en 
 joy a situation which, as it seemed to me, was 
 fully as unattractive for him as for his fellows. 
 
 Soon the door opened and in strode Croffut; 
 handsome, picturesque, with his pose of dashing, 
 brave manhood, which always got the crowds 
 into the mood for the frenzy his oratory con 
 jured. Croffut seemed to me to put the climax 
 upon this despicable company Croffut, one of 
 the great orators of the party, so adored by the 
 people that, but for our overwhelming superiority 
 in the state, I should never have dared eject him 
 from office. Since I ejected him he had not 
 spoken to me. Dominick looked at him, said in a 
 voice that would have flared even the warm 
 ashes of manhood into a furious blaze : "Go 
 
350 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 and shake hands with Senator Sayler, Croffut, 
 and sit down." 
 
 Croffut advanced, smiling. "I am fit for my 
 company," thought I as I let him clasp my hand. 
 
 "Better tilt Granby s ghost out of that chair, 
 Croffut," said Dominick, as the ex-Senator was 
 seating himself. And in his animal exuberance 
 of delight at his joke and at the whole situation 
 he clapped Roebuck on the shoulder. 
 
 Roebuck shrank and winced. Moral humilia 
 tion he could shed as an armor-plated turret 
 sheds musket-balls. But a physical humiliation, 
 especially with spectators, sank in and sank deep. 
 Instantly, alarmed lest Dominick had seen and 
 understood, he smiled and said : "That s a vigor 
 ous arm of yours, Mr. Dominick." 
 
 "Not bad for a man of sixty," said Dominick. 
 
 I ate because to eat was a necessary part of my 
 pose of absolute calmness; but I had to force 
 down the food. It seemed to me to embody the 
 banquet there set before my mental appetite. I 
 found I had no stomach for that banquet. It 
 takes the coarse palate of youth or the depraved 
 palate of a more debauched manhood than mine 
 
HARVEY SAYLER, SWINEHERD 351 
 
 to enjoy such a feast. Yet, less than a year be 
 fore, I had enjoyed, had delighted in, a far less 
 strenuous contest with these mutineers. As I sat 
 holding down my gorge and acting as if I were 
 at ease, I suddenly wondered what Elizabeth 
 Crosby would think of me if she could see. And 
 then I saw her, with a reality of imagining that 
 startled me it was as if she were in the door 
 way; and her eyes lifted to mine in that slow, 
 steady, searching gaze of hers. 
 
 I suppose, if a soldier thrusting his saber into 
 the bowels of his enemy on the battle-field were 
 suddenly to see before him his mother or the 
 good and gentle wife or daughter he loved, he 
 would drop the saber and fly to hide himself like 
 a murderer. So, I, overwhelmed, said to my 
 self : "I can not go on ! Let these wretches wal 
 low in their own vileness. I shall not wallow 
 with them. I am no swineherd !" 
 
 As I was debating how to escape and what one 
 of the many other ways of saving my friends 
 and lieutenants I should adopt, Dominick 
 touched me on the arm. "A word with you, Sen 
 ator," said he. 
 
352 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 He glanced at the others as if he were debating 
 whether he should order them from the table 
 while he talked with me. If he had ordered it, 
 they would have gone. But restrained, perhaps 
 by his crude though reverent sense of conven 
 tion, he rose and led the way over to a corner. 
 
 "I want to tell you, Senator, that as soon as 
 I got on to what this here push was plotting I 
 wired you askin an appointment. You ll find 
 the telegram at your house when you go home. 
 I don t stand for no foulin . I play the game 
 straight. I came because I thought you d want 
 the party to be represented at such a getherin ." 
 
 I saw that he had come to the dinner, doubtful 
 whether any enterprise against me, promising 
 enough for him to risk embarking, could be 
 launched; as soon as I entered the room he, like 
 the rat when the cat interrupted the rat-and- 
 mouse convention to discuss belling it, unceremo 
 niously led the way to safety. But this was not 
 one of those few occasions on which it is wise 
 to show a man that his lies do not fool you. "I 
 am glad to hear you say these things, Dominick," 
 said I. "I am glad you are loyal to the party." 
 
HARVEY SAYLER, SWINEHERD 353 
 
 "You can trust me, Senator," said he earnestly. 
 
 "I can trust your common sense," said I. 
 And I proceeded to grasp this lucky chance to 
 get away. "I am leaving," I went on, "as soon 
 as the coffee is served. I shall look to you to send 
 these gentlemen home in a proper frame of mind 
 toward the party." 
 
 His eyes glistened. Except his growing for 
 tune, nothing delighted him so much as a chance 
 to "rough-house" his eminently respectable 
 "pals." He felt toward them that quaint mixture 
 of envy, contempt and a desire to fight which fills 
 a gamin at sight of a fashionably dressed boy. 
 He put out his big hand and dampened mine with 
 it. "You can count on me, Senator," he said 
 gratefully. "I ll trim em, comb and tail- 
 feathers." 
 
 "Don t overlook their spurs," said I. 
 
 "They ain t got none," said he, "except those 
 you lend em." 
 
 We returned to a table palled by sullen dread 
 dread of me, anger against Dominick who, in 
 the courage of his ignorance of the convention 
 alities which restrained them, had taken the 
 
354 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 short, straight cut to me and peace. And, as 
 veterans in the no-quarter warfare of ambition, 
 they knew I had granted him peace on no less 
 terms than their heads. 
 
 They had all, even Roebuck, been drinking 
 freely in the effort to counteract the depression. 
 But the champagne seemed only to aggravate 
 their gloom except in the case of young Jamieson. 
 He had just succeeded, through the death of his 
 father, to the privilege of levying upon the peo 
 ple of eleven counties by means of trolley fran 
 chises which the legislature had granted his 
 father in perpetuity in return for financial ser 
 vices to "the party." It is, by the way, an inter 
 esting illustration of the human being s lack of 
 thinking power that a legislature could not give 
 away a small gold-mine belonging to the public 
 to any man for even a brief term of years with 
 out causing a revolution, but could and does give 
 away far more valuable privileges to plunder and 
 to tax, and give them away for ever, without 
 causing any real stir. However young Jamie- 
 son s liquor, acting upon a mind that had not had 
 enough experience to appreciate the meaning of 
 
HARVEY SAYLER, SWINEHERD 355 
 
 the situation, drove him on to insolent taunts and 
 boasts, addressed to his neighbors but intended 
 for me. I ignored him and, when the coffee was 
 served, rose to depart. 
 
 Roebuck urged me to stay, followed me to the 
 coat-room, took my coat away from the servant 
 and helped me with it. "I want to see you the 
 first thing in the morning, Harvey," said he. 
 
 "I ll call you up, if I have time," said I. 
 
 We came out of the cloak-room, his arm linked 
 in mine, and crossed the corner of the dining- 
 room toward the outside door. Jamieson threw 
 up his arm and fluttered his hand in an imperti 
 nent gesture of farewell. "So long, Senator 
 Swollenhead," he cried in a thick voice. "We ll 
 teach you a lesson in how to treat gentlemen." 
 
 The last word gentlemen was just clearing 
 his mouth when Dominick s tea-pot, flung with 
 all the force of the ex-prize-fighter s big muscles 
 and big body, landed in the midst of his broad 
 white shirt-bosom. And with the tea-pot Dom- 
 inick hurled his favorite epithet from his garbage 
 barrel of language. With a yell Jamieson crashed 
 over backward; his flying legs, caught by the 
 
356 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 table, tilted it; his convulsive kicks sent it over, 
 and half the diners, including Dominick, were 
 floored under it. 
 
 All this in a snap of the fingers. And with the 
 disappearance of the physical semblance of a 
 company of civilized men engaged in dining in 
 civilized fashion, the last thin veneer over hate 
 and fury was scraped away. Curses and growl 
 ing roars made a repulsive mess of sound over 
 that repulsive mess of unmasked, half-drunken, 
 wholly infuriated brutes. There is shrewd, sly 
 wisdom snugly tucked away under the fable of 
 the cat changed into a queen and how she sprang 
 from her throne at sight of a mouse to pursue it 
 on all fours. The best of us are, after all, ani 
 mals changed into men by the spell of reason; 
 and in some circumstances, it doesn t take much 
 of a blow to dissolve that spell. 
 
 For those men in those circumstances, that 
 blow proved sufficient. Partridge extricated 
 himself, ran round the table and kicked Jamieson 
 in the head partly in punishment, perhaps, and 
 because he needed just that vent for his rage, but 
 chiefly to get credit with me, for he glanced 
 
HARVEY SAYLER, SWINEHERD 3 57 
 
 toward me as he did it. Men, sprawling and 
 squirming side by side on the floor, lashed out 
 with feet and fists, striking each other and add 
 ing to the wild dishevelment. The candles set 
 t fire to the table-cloth and before the blaze was 
 extinguished burned several in the hair and mus 
 taches. 
 
 Dominick, roaring with laughter, came to Roe 
 buck and me standing at the door, both dazed at 
 this magic shift of a "gentlemen s" dinner into a 
 bear-pit. "Granby s ghost is raisin hell," said 
 he. 
 
 But I had no impulse to laugh or to gloat. 
 "Good night," said I to Roebuck and hastened 
 away. 
 
 It was the end of the attempt to mine the 
 foundations of my power. But I did not neglect 
 its plain warning. As soon as the legislature as 
 sembled, I publicly and strongly advocated the 
 appointment of a joint committee impartially to 
 investigate all the cities of the state, those ruled 
 by my own party no less than those ruled by the 
 opposition. The committee was appointed and 
 did its work so thoroughly that there was a pop- 
 
358 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 ular clamor for the taking away of the charters 
 of the cities and for ruling them from the state 
 capital. It is hardly necessary to say that my 
 legislature and governor yielded to this clamor. 
 And so the semi-independent petty princes, the 
 urban bosses, lost their independence and passed 
 under my control; and the "collections" which 
 had gone directly to them reached them by way 
 of Woodruff as grants from my machine, instead 
 of as revenues of their own right. 
 
 Before this securing of my home power was 
 complete, I had my counter-attack upon the Bur- 
 bank-Goodrich combine well under way. Im 
 mediately on my return to Fredonia from the 
 disastrous dinner, I sent for the attorney general 
 of the state, Ferguson. He was an ideal combi 
 nation of man and politician. He held to the 
 standards of private morality as nearly as it is 
 possible for a man in active public life to hold to 
 them far more nearly than most men dare or, 
 after they have become inured, care, to hold. He 
 always maintained with me a firm but tactful in 
 dependence; he saw the necessity for the sordid 
 side of politics, but he was careful personally to 
 
for hin^ 
 [its, botlj 
 
 HARVEY SAYLER, SWINEHERD 359 
 
 keep clear of smutched or besmutching work. 
 He had as keen an instinct for popularity as a 
 bee has for blossoms; he knew how to do or to 
 direct unpopular things on dark nights with a 
 dark lantern, how to do or to direct popular 
 things in full uniform on a white horse. I have 
 never ordered any man to a task that was not 
 morally congenial; and I was careful to respect 
 Ferguson s notion of self-respect. /I sent 
 now, and outlined my plan to bring suits, 
 civil and criminal, in the Federal courts in the 
 name of the state, against Roebuck and his asso*- 
 ciates of the Power Trust. 
 
 When he had heard, he said : "Yes, Mr. Say- 
 ler, we can break up the Power Trust, can cause 
 the indictment and conviction of Mr. Roebuck. 
 I can prevent the United States Attorney General 
 from playing any of the usual tricks and defend 
 ing the men whom the people think he is vigor 
 ously prosecuting. But " 
 
 "But?" said I encouragingly. 
 
 "Is this on the level? If I undertake these 
 prosecutions, shall I be allowed to push them 
 honestly? Or will there be a private settlement 
 
360 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 as soon as Roebuck and his crowd see their dan 
 ger?" 
 
 "No matter what happens," I replied, "you 
 shall prosecute at least the civil suits to the end. 
 I give you my word for that." 
 
 He thanked me warmly, for he appreciated 
 that I was bestowing upon him an enormous op 
 portunity for national fame. 
 
 "And you?" said I. "If you succeed in this 
 prosecution, will you remain in the public service 
 or will you accept the offers the interests will 
 make, and remove to New York and become a 
 rich corporation lawyer?" 
 
 He reflected before answering. "That de 
 pends," said he. "If you are going to stay on 
 in control in this state, I shall stick to public life, 
 for I believe you will let me have what I call a 
 career. But, if you are going to get out and 
 leave me at the mercy of those fellows, I certainly 
 shan t stay where they can fool the people into 
 turning on me." 
 
 "I shall stay on," said I; "and after me, there 
 will be Woodruff unless, of course, there s some 
 sort of cataclysm." 
 
HARVEY SAYLER, SWINEHERD 361 
 
 "A man must take chances," he answered. 
 "I ll take that chance." 
 
 We called Woodruff into the consultation. 
 Although he was not a lawyer, he had a talent 
 for taking a situation by the head and tail and 
 stretching it out and holding it so that every 
 crease and wrinkle in it could be seen. And this 
 made him valuable at any conference. 
 
 In January we had our big battery loaded, 
 aimed and primed. We unmasked it, and Fer 
 guson fired. I had expected the other side to act 
 stupidly, but I had not hoped for such stupidity 
 as they exhibited. Burbank s year of bathing in 
 presidential flatteries and of fawning on and 
 cringing to the multi-millionaires and their 
 agents hedging him around, had so wrought upon 
 him that he had wholly lost his point of view. 
 > And he let his Attorney General pooh-pooh the 
 proceedings, this in face of the great popular 
 excitement and enthusiasm. It was not until 
 Roebuck s lawyers got far enough into the case 
 against him to see his danger that the adminis- 
 \ tration stopped flying in the teeth of the cyclone 
 of public sentiment and began to pretend enthus- 
 
362 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 iasm, while secretly plotting the mistrial of Fer 
 guson s cases. And not until the United States 
 Attorney General a vain Goodrich creature 
 whose talents were crippled by his contempt for 
 "the rabble" and "demagoguery" not until he 
 had it forced upon him that Ferguson could not 
 be counter-mined, did they begin to treat with 
 me for peace. 
 
 I shall not retail the negotiations. The up 
 shot was that I let the administration drop the 
 criminal cases against Roebuck in return for the 
 restoration of my power in the national com 
 mittee of the party to the smallest ejected post 
 master in the farthest state. The civil action was 
 pressed by Ferguson with all his skill as a lawyer 
 and a popularity-seeking politician; and he won 
 triumphantly in the Supreme Court the lower 
 Federal Court with its Power Trust judge had 
 added to his triumph by deciding against him. 
 
 Roebuck was, therefore, under the necessity of 
 going through the customary forms of outward 
 obedience to the Supreme Court s order to him to 
 dissolve. He had to get at huge expense, and to 
 carry out at huger, a plan of reorganization. 
 
: HARVEY SAYLER, SWINEHERD 363 
 
 Though he was glad enough to escape thus 
 lightly, he dissembled his content and grumbled 
 so loudly that Burbank s fears were roused and 
 arrangements were made to placate him. The 
 scheme adopted was, I believe, suggested by Vice- 
 President Howard, as shrewd and cynical a ras 
 cal as ever lived in the mire without getting 
 smutch or splash upon his fine linen of respecta 
 bility. 
 
 For several years there had been a strong pop 
 ular demand for a revision of the tariff. The 
 party had promised to yield, but had put off re 
 deeming its promise. Now, there arose a neces 
 sity for revising the tariff in the interest of "the 
 interests." Some of the schedules w r ere too low; 
 others protected articles which the interests 
 wanted as free raw materials; a few could be 
 abolished without offending any large interests 
 and with the effect of punishing some small ones 
 that had been niggard in contributing to the 
 "campaign fund" which maintains the standing 
 army of political workers and augments it when 
 ever a battle is on. Accordingly, a revision of 
 the tariff was in progress. To soothe Roebuck, 
 
364 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 they gave him a tariff schedule that would enable 
 him to collect each year more than the total of 
 the extraordinary expenses to which I had put 
 him. Roebuck "forgave" me; and I really for 
 gave Burbank. 
 
 But I washed my hands of his administration. 
 Not only did I actually stand aloof but also I dis 
 associated myself from it in the public mind. 
 When the crash should come, as come it must 
 with such men at the helm, I wished to be in a 
 position successfully to take full charge for the 
 work of repair. 
 
XXXII 
 
 A GLANCE BEHIND THE MASK OF GRANDEUR 
 
 Not until late in the spring of his second year 
 did Burbank find a trace of gall in his wine. 
 
 From the night of his election parasites and 
 plunderers and agents of plunderers had im 
 prisoned him in the usual presidential fool s para 
 dise. The organs of the interests and their Con 
 gressional henchmen praised everything he did; 
 I and my group of Congressmen and my newspa 
 pers, as loyal partizans, bent first of all upon reg 
 ularity, were silent where we did not praise also. 
 But the second year of a President s first term is 
 the beginning of frank, if guarded, criticism of 
 him from his own side. For it is practically his 
 last year of venturing to exercise any real official 
 power. The selection of delegates to the party s 
 national convention, to which a President must 
 submit himself for leave to re-submit himself to 
 the people, is well under way before the end of 
 365 
 
366 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 his third year ; and direct and active preparations 
 for it must begin long in advance. 
 
 Late in that second spring Burbank made a 
 tour of the country, to give the people the pleas 
 ure of seeing their great man, to give himself the 
 pleasure of their admiration, and to help on the 
 Congressional campaign, the result of which 
 would be the preliminary popular verdict upon 
 his administration. The thinness of the crowds, 
 the feebleness of the enthusiasm, the newspaper 
 sneers and flings at that oratory once hailed as a 
 model of dignity and eloquence even he could 
 not accept the smooth explanations of his flatter 
 ers. And in November came the party s memora 
 ble overwhelming defeat reducing our majority 
 in the Senate from twenty to six, and substituting 
 for our majority of ninety-three in the House an 
 opposition majority of sixty-seven. 
 
 I talked with him early in January and was 
 amazed that, while he appreciated the public an 
 ger against the party, he still believed himself 
 personally popular. "There is a lull in prosper 
 ity," said he, "and the people are peevish." 
 
A GLANCE BEHIND THE MASK 367 
 
 Soon, however, by a sort of endosmosis to which 
 the densest vanity is somewhat subject, the truth 
 began to seep through and to penetrate into him. 
 
 He became friendlier to me, solicitous toward 
 spring but he clung none the less tightly to 
 Goodrich. The full awakening came in his third 
 summer when the press and the politicians of the 
 party began openly to discuss the next year s 
 nomination and to speak of him as if he were out 
 of the running. He was spending the hot months 
 on the Jersey coast, the flatterers still swarming 
 about him and still assiduous, but their flatteries 
 falling upon ever deafer ears as his mind rivetted 
 upon the hair-suspended sword. In early Sep 
 tember he invited me to visit him my first invi 
 tation of that kind in two years and a half. We 
 had three interviews before he could nerve him 
 self to brush aside the barriers between him and 
 me. 
 
 "I am about to get together my friends with a 
 view to next year," said he through an uneasy 
 smile. "What do you think of the prospects?" 
 
 "What do your friends say?" I asked. 
 
368 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 "Oh, of course, I am assured of a renomina- 
 tion " He paused, and his look at me made 
 the confident affirmation a dubious question. 
 
 "Yes?" said I 
 
 "And don t you think my record has made 
 me strong?" he went on nervously. 
 
 "Strong with whom?" said I. 
 
 He was silent. Finally he laid his hand on 
 my knee we were taking the air on the ocean 
 drive. "Harvey," he said, "I can count on you?" 
 
 I shook my head. "I shall take no part in 
 the next campaign," I said. "I shall resign the 
 chairmanship." 
 
 "But I have selected you as my chairman. I 
 have insisted on you. I can t trust any one else. 
 I need others, I use others, but I trust only you." 
 
 I shook my head. "I shall resign," I repeated. 
 "What s the matter won t Goodrich take the 
 place?" 
 
 He looked away. "I have not seriously 
 thought of any one but you," he said reproach 
 fully. 
 
 I happened to know that the place had been of 
 fered to Goodrich and that he had declined it, 
 
A GLANCE BEHIND THE MASK 369 
 
 protesting that I, a Western man, must not be 
 disturbed when the West was vital to the party s 
 success. "My resolution is fixed/ said I. 
 
 A long silence, then : "Sayler, have you heard 
 anything of an attempt to defeat me for the nom 
 ination? 
 
 "Goodrich has decided to nominate Governor 
 Ridgeway of Illinois," said I. 
 
 He blanched and had to moisten his dry, 
 wrinkled lips several times before he could speak. 
 "A report of that nature reached me last Thurs 
 day," he went on. "For some time I have been 
 perplexed by the Ridgeway talk in many of our 
 organs. I have questioned Goodrich about it 
 and I must say his explanations are not not 
 wholly satisfactory." 
 
 I glanced at him and had instantly to glance 
 away, so plainly was I showing my pity. He 
 was not hiding himself from me now. He 
 looked old and tired and sick not mere sickness 
 of body, but that mortal sickness of the mind and 
 heart which kills a man, often years before his 
 body dies. 
 
 "I have come to the conclusion that you were 
 
370 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 right about Goodrich, Sayler. I am glad that I 
 took your advice and never trusted him. I think 
 you and I together will be too strong for him." 
 
 "You are going to seek a renomination ?" I 
 asked. 
 
 He looked at me in genuine astonishment. "It 
 is impossible that the party should refuse me," he 
 said. 
 
 I was silent. 
 
 "Be frank with me, Sayler," he exclaimed at 
 last. "Be frank. Be my friend, your own old 
 self." 
 
 "As frank and as friendly as you have been?" 
 said I, rather to remind myself than to reproach 
 him. For I was afraid of the reviving feeling of 
 former years the liking for his personal charms 
 and virtues, the forbearance toward that weak 
 ness which he could no more change than he 
 could change the color of his eyes. His moral 
 descent had put no clear markings upon his pose. 
 On the contrary, he had grown in dignity 
 through the custom of deference. The people 
 passing us looked admiration at him, had a new 
 sense of the elevation of the presidential office. 
 
A GLANCE BEHIND THE MASK 371 
 
 Often it takes the trained and searching eye to de 
 tect in the majestic fagade the evidences that the 
 palace has degenerated into a rookery for pariahs. 
 
 "I have done what I thought for the best," he 
 answered, never more direct and manly in man 
 ner. "I have always been afraid, been on guard, 
 lest my personal fondness for you should betray 
 me into yielding to you when I ought not. Per 
 haps I have erred at times, have leaned back 
 ward in my anxiety to be fair. But I had and 
 have no fear of your not understanding. Our 
 friendship is too long established, too well- 
 founded." And I do not doubt that he believed 
 himself; the capacity for self-deception is rarely 
 short of the demands upon it. 
 
 "It s unfortunate " I began. I was going to 
 say it was unfortunate that no such anxieties had 
 ever restrained him from yielding to Goodrich. 
 But I hadn t the heart. Instead, I finished my 
 sentence with : "However, it s idle to hold a 
 post-mortem on this case. The cause of death is 
 unimportant. The fact of it is sufficient. No 
 doubt you did the best you could, Mr. President." 
 
 My manner was that of finality. It forbade 
 
372 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 further discussion. He abandoned the finesse of 
 negotiation. 
 
 "Harvey, I ask you, as a personal favor, to 
 help me through this crisis," he said. "I ask 
 you, my friend and my dead wife s friend." 
 
 No depth too low, no sentiment too sacred! 
 Anger whirled up in me against this miserable, 
 short-sighted self-seeker who had brought to a 
 climax of spoliation my plans to guide the strong 
 in developing the resources of the country. And 
 I turned upon him, intending to overwhelm him 
 with the truth about his treachery, about his at 
 tempts to destroy me. For I was now safe from 
 his and Goodrich s vengeance they had de 
 stroyed themselves with the people and with the 
 party. But a glance at him and how could 
 I strike a man stretched in agony upon his death 
 bed? "If I could help you, I would," said I. 
 
 "You you and I together can get a conven 
 tion that will nominate me," he urged, hope and 
 fear jostling each other to look pleadingly at me 
 from his eyes. 
 
 "Possibly," I said. "But of what use would 
 that be?" 
 
A GLANCE BEHIND THE MASK 373 
 
 He sank back in the carriage, yellow-white and 
 with trembling hands and eyelids. "Then you 
 don t think I could be elected?" he asked in a 
 broken, breathless way. 
 
 For answer I could only shake my head. "No 
 matter who is the nominee," I went on after a 
 moment, "our party can t win." I half-yielded 
 to the impulse of sentimentality and turned to 
 him appealingly. "James," said I, "why don t 
 you right away before the country sees you 
 are to be denied a renomination publicly an 
 nounce that you won t take it in any circum 
 stances? Why don t you devote the rest of your 
 term to regaining your lost popularity? Every 
 day has its throngs of opportunities for the man 
 in the White House. Break boldly and openly 
 with Goodrich and his crowd." 
 
 I saw and read the change in his face. My 
 advice about the nomination straightway closed 
 his mind against me ; at the mention of Goodrich, 
 his old notion of my jealousy revived. \^SndI\ 
 saw, too, that contact with and use of and sub-i 
 servience to corruption had so corrupted him thati 
 he no longer had any faith in any method notj 
 
374 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 corrupt. All in an instant I realized the full 
 folly of what I was doing. I felt confident that 
 by pursuing the line I had indicated he could so 
 change the situation in the next few months that 
 he would make it impossible for them to refuse 
 to renominate him, might make it possible for 
 him to be elected. But even if he had the wis 
 dom to listen, where would he get the courage 
 and the steadfastness to act? I gave him up 
 finally and for ever. 
 
 A man may lose his own character and still 
 survive, and even go far. But if he lose belief 
 in character as a force, he is damned. He could 
 not survive in a community of scoundrels. 
 
 Burbank sat motionless and with closed eyes, 
 for a long time. I watched the people in the 
 throng of carriages hundreds of faces all turned 
 toward him, all showing that mingled admira 
 tion, envy and awe which humanity gives its ex 
 alted great. "The President! The President!" 
 I heard every few yards in excited undertones. 
 And hats were lifting, and once a crowd of en 
 thusiastic partizans raised a cheer. 
 
A GLANCE BEHIND THE MASK 375 
 
 "The President!" I thought, with mournful 
 irony. And I glanced at him. 
 
 Suddenly he was transformed by an expression 
 the most frightful I have ever seen. It was the 
 look of a despairing, weak, vicious thing, cor 
 nered, giving battle for its life like a fox at bay 
 before a pack of huge dogs. It was not Burbank 
 no, he was wholly unlike that. It was Bur- 
 bank s ambition, interrupted at its meal by the re 
 lentless, sure-aiming hunter, Fate. 
 
 "For God s sake, Burbank!" I exclaimed. 
 "All these people are watching us." 
 
 "To hell with them!" he ground out. "I tell 
 you, Sayler, I will be nominated! And elected 
 too, by God ! I will not be thrown aside like an 
 emptied orange-skin. I will show them that I 
 am President." 
 
 Those words, said by some men, in some tones, 
 would have thrilled me. Said by him and in that 
 tone and with that look, they made me shudder 
 and shrink. Neither of us spoke again. When 
 he dropped me at my hotel we touched hands and 
 smiled formally for appearances before the gap- 
 
376 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 ing, peeping, peering crowd. And as he drove 
 away, how they cheered him the man risen high 
 above eighty millions, alone on the mountain- 
 peak, in the glorious sunshine of success. The 
 President ! 
 
 The next seven months were months of tur 
 moil in the party and in the country a tur 
 moil of which I was a silent spectator, con 
 spicuous by my silence. Burbank, the deepest 
 passions of his nature rampant, had burst 
 through the meshes of partizanship and the 
 meshes of social and personal intimacies in 
 which he, as a "good party man" and as the 
 father of children with social aspirations and 
 as the worshiper of wealth and respectability, 
 was entangled and bound down; with the des 
 perate courage that comes from fear of de 
 struction, he was trying to save himself. 
 
 But his only available instruments were all 
 either Goodrich men or other kinds of machine- 
 men; they owed nothing to him, they had 
 nothing to fear from him a falling king is 
 a fallen king. Every project he devised for 
 striking down his traitor friends and making 
 
A GLANCE BEHIND THE MASK 377 
 
 himself popular was subtly turned by his 
 Cabinet or by the Senate or by the press or by 
 all three into something futile and ridiculous or 
 contemptible. It was a complete demonstration 
 of the silliness of the fiction that the President 
 could be an autocrat if he chose. Even had 
 Burbank seen through the fawnings and the 
 flatteries of the traitors round him, and dis 
 missed his Cabinet, whatever men he might 
 have put into it would not have attached 
 themselves to his lost cause, but would have 
 used their positions to ingratiate themselves 
 with the power that had used and exhaust 
 ed and discarded him. 
 
 He had the wisdom, or the timidity, to proceed 
 always with caution and safe legality and so to 
 avoid impeachment and degradation. His chief 
 attempts were, naturally, upon monopoly; they 
 were slyly balked by his sly Attorney General, 
 and their failure was called by the press, and 
 was believed by the people, the cause of the 
 hard times which were just beginning to be 
 acute. What made him such an easy victim to 
 his lieutenants was not their craft, but the fact 
 
378 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 that he had lost his sense of right and wrong. 
 A man of affairs may not, indeed will not, al 
 ways steer by that compass; but he must have 
 it aboard. Without it he can not know how far 
 off the course he is, or how to get back to it. No 
 ship ever reached any port except that of fail 
 ure and disgrace, unless it, in spite of all its 
 tackings before the cross-winds of practical 
 life, kept in the main to the compass and to the 
 course. 
 
 His last stagger was or seemed to be an 
 attempt to involve us in a war with Germany. 
 I say "seemed to be" because I hesitate to as 
 cribe a project as infamous to him, even when 
 unbalanced by despair. The first ugly despatch 
 he ordered his Goodrich Secretary of State to 
 send, somehow leaked to the newspapers before 
 it could be put into cipher for transmission. It 
 was not sent for from the press of the entire 
 country rose a clamor against "deliberate provo 
 cation of a nation with which we are, and wish 
 to remain, at peace." He repudiated the despatch 
 and dismissed the Secretary of State in disgrace 
 to disgrace the one stroke in his fight against 
 
A GLANCE BEHIND THE MASK 379 
 
 Goodrich in which he got the advantage. But 
 that advantage was too small, too doubtful and 
 too late. 
 
 His name was not presented to the convention. 
 
XXXIII 
 
 I forced upon Goodrich my place as chairman 
 of the national committee and went abroad with 
 my daughters. We stayed there until Scarbor 
 ough was inaugurated. He had got his nomina 
 tion from a convention of men who hated and 
 feared him, but who dared not flout the people 
 and fling away victory ; he had got his election be 
 cause the defections from our ranks in the doubt 
 ful states far outbalanced Goodrich s extensive 
 purchases there with the huge campaign-fund of 
 the interests. The wheel-horse, Partizanship, had 
 broken down, and the leader, Plutocracy, could 
 not draw the chariot to victory alone. 
 
 As soon as the election was over, our people 
 began to cable me to come home and take charge. 
 But I waited until Woodruff and my other faith 
 ful lieutenants had thoroughly convinced all the 
 officers of the machine how desperate its plight 
 was, and that I alone could repair and restore, 
 380 
 
A "SPASM OF VIRTUE 381 
 
 and that I could do it only if absolute control 
 were given me. When the ship reached quaran 
 tine Woodruff came aboard; and, not having 
 seen him in many months, I was able to see, and 
 was startled by, the contrast between the Doc 
 Woodruff I had met on the train more years be 
 fore than I cared to cast up, and the United 
 States Senator Woodruff, high in the councils of 
 the party and high in the esteem of its partizans 
 among the people. He was saying: "You can 
 have anything you want, Senator," and so on. 
 But I was thinking of him, of the vicissitudes of 
 politics, of the unending struggle of the foul 
 stream to purify itself, to sink or to saturate its 
 mud. For we ought not to forget that if the 
 clear water is saturated with mud, also the mud 
 is saturated with clear water. 
 
 A week or so after I resumed the chairman 
 ship, Scarborough invited me to lunch alone with 
 him at the White House. When I had seen him, 
 four years before, just after his defeat, he was 
 in high spirits and looked a youth. Now it de 
 pressed me, but gave me no surprise, to find him 
 worn, and overcast by that tragic sadness which 
 
382 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 canopies every one of the seats of the mighty. 
 "I fear, Mr. President," said I, "you are rinding 
 the men who will help you to carry out your 
 ideas as rare as I once warned you they were." 
 
 "Not rare," was his answer, "but hard to get 
 at through the throngs of Baal-worshipers that 
 have descended upon me and are trying to hedge 
 
 me in." 
 
 "Fortunately, you are free from political and 
 social entanglements," said I, with ironic intent. 
 
 He laughed with only a slightly concealed bit 
 terness. "From political entanglements yes," 
 said he. "But not from social toils. Ever since 
 I have been in national life, my wife and I have 
 held ourselves socially aloof, because those with 
 whom we would naturally and even inevitably 
 associate would be precisely those who would 
 some day beset me for immunities and favors. 
 And how can one hold to a course of any sort of 
 justice, if doing so means assailing all one s 
 friends and their friends and relatives? For who 
 are the offenders? They are of the rich, of the 
 successful, of the clever, of the socially agreeable 
 and charming. And how can one enforce justice 
 
A "SPASM OF VIRTUE" 383 
 
 against one s dinner companions and in favor 
 of whom? Of the people, voiceless, distant, un 
 known to one. Personal friendship on the one 
 side; on the other, an abstraction. 5 
 
 "I should not class you among those likely to 
 yield many inches to the social bribe," said I. 
 
 "That is pleasant, but not candid," replied he 
 with his simple directness. "No man of your ex 
 perience could fail to know that the social bribe 
 is the arch-corrupter, the one briber whom it is 
 not in human nature to resist. But, as I was 
 saying, to my amazement, in spite of my wife s 
 precautions and mine, I find myself beset and 
 with what devilish insidiousness ! When I re 
 fuse, simply to save myself from flagrant treach 
 ery to my obligations of duty, I find myself seem 
 ing, even to my wife and to myself, churlish and 
 priggish; Pharisaical, in the loathsome attitude 
 of a moral poseur. Common honesty, in pres 
 ence of this social bribe, takes on the sneaking 
 seeming of rottenest hypocrisy. It is indeed hard 
 to get through and to get at the men I want and 
 need, and must and will have." 
 
 "Impossible," said I. "And if you could get 
 
384 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 at them, and if the Senate would let you put them 
 where they seem to you to belong, the tempta 
 tion would be too much for them. They too 
 would soon become Baal-worshipers, the more 
 assiduous for their long abstinence." 
 
 "Some," he admitted, "perhaps most. But at 
 least a few would stand the test and just one 
 such would repay and justify all the labor of all 
 the search. The trouble with you pessimists is 
 that you don t take our ancestry into account. 
 Man isn t a falling angel, but a rising animal. 
 So, every impulse toward the decent, every gleam 
 of light, is a tremendous gain. The wonder isn t 
 the bad but the good, isn t that we are so imper 
 fect, but that in such a few thousand years we ve 
 got so far so far up. I know you and I have 
 in the main the same purpose where is there a 
 man who d like to think the world the worse for 
 his having lived? But we work by different 
 means. You believe the best results can be got 
 through that in man which he has inherited 
 from the past by balancing passion against pas 
 sion, by offsetting appetite with appetite. I hope 
 for results from that in the man of to-day which 
 
A "SPASM OF VIRTUE" 385 
 
 is the seed, the prophecy, of the man who is to 
 be." 
 
 "Your method has had one recent and very 
 striking apparent success," said I. "But the 
 spasm of virtue will pass." 
 
 "Certainly," he replied, "and so too will the 
 succeeding- spasm of reaction. Also, your party 
 must improve itself and mine too as the result 
 of this spasm of virtue." 
 
 "For a time," I admitted. "I envy you your 
 courage and hope. But I can t share in them. 
 You will serve four stormy years; you will re 
 tire with friends less devoted and enemies more 
 bitter; you will be misunderstood, maligned; and 
 there s only a remote possibility that your vindi 
 cation will come before you are too old to be 
 offered a second term. And the harvest from the 
 best you sow will be ruined in some flood of re 
 action." 
 
 "No," he answered. "It will be reaped. The 
 evil I do, all evil, passes. The good will be 
 reaped. Nothing good is lost." 
 
 "And if it is reaped," I rejoined, "the reaping 
 
386 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 will not come until long, long after you are a 
 mere name in history." 
 
 Even as I spoke my doubts I was wishing I 
 had kept them to myself; for, thought I, there s 
 no poorer business than shooting at the beautiful 
 soaring bird of illusion. But he was looking at 
 me without seeing me. His expression suggested 
 the throwing open of the blinds hiding a man s 
 inmost self. 
 
 "If a man/ said he absently, "fixes his mind 
 not on making friends or defeating enemies, not 
 on elections or on history, but just on avoiding 
 from day to day, from act to act, the condemna 
 tion of his own self-respect " The blinds closed 
 as suddenly as they had opened he had become 
 conscious that some one was looking in. And I 
 was wishing again that I had kept my doubts 
 to myself ; for I now saw that what I had thought 
 a bright bird of illusion was in fact the lost star 
 which lighted my own youth. 
 
 Happy the man who, through strength or 
 through luck, guides his whole life by the star 
 of his youth. Happy, but how rare ! 
 
XXXIV 
 "LET us HELP EACH OTHER" 
 
 In the following September I took my daugh 
 ters to Elizabeth. She looked earnestly, first at 
 Frances, tall and slim and fancying herself a 
 woman grown, then at Ellen, short and round 
 and struggling with the giggling age. "We shall 
 like each other, I m sure/ was her verdict. "We ll 
 get on well together." And Frances smiled, and 
 Ellen nodded. They evidently thought so, too. 
 
 "I want you to teach them your art/ said I, 
 when they were gone to settle themselves and 
 she and I were alone. 
 
 "My art?" 
 
 "The art of being one s self. I am sick of men 
 and women who hide their real selves behind a 
 pose of what they want others to think them." 
 
 "Most of our troubles come from that, don t 
 they?" 
 
 "All mine did," said I. "I am at the age when 
 the very word age begins to jar on the ear, and 
 387 
 
388 THE PLUM TREE 
 
 the net result of my years of effort is I have 
 convinced other people that I am somebody at 
 the cost of convincing myself that I am nobody/* 
 
 "No, you are master," she said. 
 
 "As a lion-tamer is master of his lions. He 
 gives all his thought to them, who think only of 
 their appetites. And his whole reward is that 
 with his life in his hand he can sometimes cow 
 them through a few worthless little tricks." I 
 looked round the attractive reception-room of 
 the school. "I wish you d take me in, too/ I 
 ended. 
 
 She flushed a little, then shook her head, her 
 eyes twinkling. "This is not a reformatory," 
 said she. And we both laughed. 
 
 As I did not speak or look away, but contin 
 ued to smile at her, she became uneasy, glanced 
 round as if seeking an avenue of retreat. 
 
 "Yes I mean just that, Elizabeth," I admit 
 ted, and my tone explained the words. 
 
 She clasped her hands and started up. 
 
 "In me in every one," I went on, "there s a 
 beast and a man. Just now with me the man 
 
"LET US HELP EACH OTHER" 389 
 
 is uppermost. And he wants to stay uppermost. 
 
 Elizabeth will you help him?" 
 
 She lowered her head until I could see only the 
 
 splendor of her thick hair, sparkling like black 
 
 quartz. 
 
 "Will you dear? Won t you dear?" 
 Suddenly she gave me both her hands. "Let 
 
 us help each other," she said. And slowly she 
 
 lifted her glance to mine; and never before had 
 
 I felt the full glory of those eyes, the full melody 
 
 of that deep voice. 
 
 And so, I end as I began, as life begins and 
 ends with a woman. In a woman s arms we en 
 ter life; in a woman s arms we get the courage 
 and strength to bear it; in a woman s arms we 
 leave it. And as for the span between the busi 
 ness, profession, career how colorless, how 
 meaningless it would be but for her! 
 
 THE END 
 
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