Booth Tarkington

“ They bore aloft a crazy transparency, exhibiting the legend:
“FRANK PIXLEY'S HARD-MONEY LEAGUE. WE STAND FOR OUR PRINCIPALS. WE ARE SOLLID! NO FOOLING THE PEOPLE GOES! WE VOTE AS ONE MAN FOR TAYLOR P. SINGLETON!”
Bertha's eyes had not rested upon Toby where they innocently sought him, in the front ranks, even scanning the carriages, seeking him in all positions which she conceived as highest in honour, and she would have missed him altogether, had not there reached her, out of chaotic clamours, a clear, high, rollicking tenor:
“Ahaha! du libra Ogostine, Ogostine, Ogostine! Ahaha! ”

“ And Bertha was very happy, even forgetting, for a while, to be afraid of the smallpox, which had thrown out little flags, like auction signs, here and there about the city.
When the full heat of summer came, Pietro laughed at the dog-days; and it was Bertha's to suffer in the hot little restaurant; but she smiled and waved to Pietro, so that he should not know. Also she made him sell iced lemonade and birch beer, which was well for the corduroy waistcoat pocket. Never have you seen a more alluring merchant. ”

“ Most of all, they counted on Hector's speech, nominating Trimmer, to stampede the convention. If it was to be done, Hector was the man to do it. There's no doubt in the world of the extraordinary capacity he had for whirling a crowd along into a kind of insane enthusiasm. He could make his audience enthusiastic about anything; he could have brought them to their feet waving and cheering for Ben Butler himself, if he had set out to do it. ”

“ He was lounging in his seat when Alonzo returned and was genially talkative. The latter refrained from replying in kind, not altogether out of reserve, but more because of a dim suspicion (which rose within him, the third time Truslow called him “Senator” in one sentence) that his first opinion of the young man as a light-minded person might have been correct.
There was no session the following afternoon, but Alonzo watched the street from the windows of his committee-room, which overlooked the splendid breadth of stone steps leading down from the great doors to the pavement. ”

“ Well, sir, it was a mighty curious campaign. There never really was a day when we could tell where we stood, for certain. As anybody knows, the “better element” can't be depended on. There's too many of 'em forget to vote, and if the weather isn't just right they won't go to the polls. Some of 'em won't go anyway—act as if they looked down on politics; say it's only helping one boodler against another. So your true aristocrat won't vote for either. The real truth is, he don't care. Don't care as much about the management of his city, State, and country as about the way his club is run. ”

“ Truslow was so afraid you wouldn't,” she went on rapidly, “but I was sure. You see I didn't want anybody to suspect that I had any influence with you. I didn't want them to know, even, that I'd talked to you. It all came to me after the first day that we met. You see I've believed in you, in your power and in your reserve, from the first. I want all that you do to seem to come from yourself and not from me or any one else. Oh, I believe in great, strong men who stand upon their own feet and conquer the world for themselves! That's your way, Senator Rawson. ”

“ The dilettantes of the clubs who have so easily abused me, for instance, all my life, for being a ward-worker, these and those other reformers who write papers about national corruption when they don't know how their own wards are swung, probably aren't so useful as they might be. The exquisite who says that politics is 'too dirty a business for a gentleman to meddle with' is like the woman who lived in the parlour and complained that the rest of her family kept the other rooms so dirty that she never went into them. ”

“ In return, Uncle Billy liked Hurlbut better than any other man he had ever known—except Henry, of course. On the first day of the session, when the young leader had been pointed out to him, Uncle Billy's humble soul was prostrate with admiration, and when Hurlbut led the first attack on the monopolistic tendencies of the Republican party, Representative Rollinson, chuckling in his beard at the handsome youth's audacity, himself dared so greatly as to clap his hands aloud. ”

“ There is one thing that will fight harder than a Democrat—that is a railroad.
The “Breaker” had been kept very dark until Hurlbut felt that he was ready; then it was swept through the Senate before the railroad lobby, previously lulled into unsuspicion, could collect itself and block it. This was as Hurlbut had planned: that the fight should be in his own House. It was the bill of his heart and he set his reputation upon it. He needed fifty-one votes to pass it, and he had them, and one to spare; for he took his followers, who formed the majority, into caucus upon it. ”

“ There fell a night in September when Bertha beheld her lover glorious. She had been warned that he was to officiate in the great opening function of the campaign; and she stood on the corner for an hour before the head of the procession appeared. On they came—Pietro's party, three thousand strong; brass bands, fireworks, red fire, tumultuous citizens, political clubs, local potentates in open carriages, policemen, boys, dogs, bicycles—the procession doing all the cheering for itself, the crowds of spectators only feebly responding to this enthusiasm, as is our national custom. ”

“ It was no balm upon that sting to see her pass him at the top of the outer steps, half an hour later, on the arm of that one of his colleagues who had been called the “best-dressed man in the Legislature.” She swept by him without a sign, laughing that same laugh at some sally of her escort, and they got into the black automobile together and were whirled away and out of sight by the impassive bundle of furs that manipulated the wheel.
For the rest of that afternoon and the whole of that night no man, woman, or child heard the voice of Alonzo Rawson, for he spoke to none. ”

“ I believe the trouble with you, Mr. Knowles, is that you've never realized that politicians are human beings. But we are: we breathe and laugh and like to do right, like other folks. And, like most men, you've thought you were different from other men, and you aren't. So, here you are. I believe you said you'd had a hard night?”
Knowles looked up at last, his lips working for a while before he could speak. “I'll resign now—if you'll—if you'll let me off,” he said.
Gorgett shook his head. “I've got the election in my hand,” he answered, “though you fellows don't know it. ”

“ We had been joined by little Fiderson, the youngest member of the club, whose whole nervous person jerkily sparkled “L'Aiglon” enthusiasm.
“Such an evening!” he cried, in his little spiky voice. “Mr. Martin, it does one good to realize that our country towns are sending representatives to us when we have such things; that they wish to get in touch with what is greatest in Art. They should do it often. To think that a journey of only seventy miles brings into your life the magnificence of Rostand's point of view made living fire by the genius of a Bernhardt and a Coquelin!” ”

“ Farwell shifted a little in his chair, but he didn't speak, and Gorgett went on:
“I suppose you think it's mighty hard that your private character should be used against you in a political question by a man you call a public corruptionist. But I'm in a position where I can't take any chances against an antagonist that won't play the game my way. I had to find your vulnerable point to defend myself, and, in finding it, I find that there's no need to defend myself any longer, because it makes all your weapons ineffective. ”

“ The best thing in my life, the widest and deepest; my friendship with a good woman becomes a joke and a horror! Don't you see that the personal scandal about me absolutely undermines me and nullifies the political scandal of the closet affair? Gorgett will come in again and the Grand Jury would laugh at any attack on him. ”

“ I walked back to Mary's with Joe Lane, while Hector followed, making a kind of Royal Progress through the crowds, with his mother and Miss Rainey.
“You see it now, yourself, don't you?” Joe said to me.
“You mean about his doing well?”
“What else? He's just shown what he can do with people. The day will come when you'll have to take him at his own valuation.”
I couldn't help laughing. “Well, Joe,” I said, “that sounds as if you, at least, already took Hector at his own valuation.”
“In some things,” he answered, “I think I do. Don't you take him for an ass, sir. ”

“ Hurlbut's bitter laugh cut him short. “No? Don't you suppose I know how it was done? Do you suppose there's a man in the whole Assembly doesn't know how you were sold? I had it by the long distance an hour ago, from your own home. Do you suppose we have no friends there, or that it was hard to find out about the whole dirty business? Your son's not going to stand trial for bigamy; that was the price you charged for killing the bill. You and Pixley are the only men whom they could buy with all their millions! Oh, I know a dozen men who could be bought on other issues, but not on this! ”

“ Yet, there are times when it looks to me more like a series of combats, hand-to-hand fights for life, and fierce struggles between men and strange powers. You buy your newspaper and that's your ticket to the amphitheatre. ”

“ I can see the boy lying there now, sprawling on the grass with a cigar in his mouth.
“Hector's done well,” I said.
“Oh, Lord, yes!” Joe answered. “He always will. He's going 'way up in the world.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Because he's so sure of it. It only needs a little luck to make him a great man. In fact, he already is a great man.”
“You mean you think he has a great mind?”
“Why, no, sir; but I think he has a purpose so big and so set, that it might be called great, and it will make him great.” ”

“ Gorgett laughed that old, fat laugh of his, tilting farther back, with his hands in his pockets and his eyes twinkling under his last summer's straw hat-brim.
“He can't hardly afford it, can he,” he drawled, “he being the representative of the law and order and purity people? They're mighty sensitive, those folks. A little thing turns 'em.”
“I don't understand,” said I.
“Well, I hardly reckoned you would,” he returned. “But I expect if Mr. Knowles wants it warm all round, I'm willing. We may be able to do some of the heating up, ourselves.” ”

“ She begins going for me, first of every campaign.
Yet I just can't seem to keep out of it. It takes a hold on a man that I never could get away from; and when I reach my second childhood and the boys have turned me out, I reckon I'll potter along trying to look knowing and secretive, like the rest of the has-beens, letting on as if I still had a place inside. Lord, if I'd put in the energy at my business that I've frittered away on small politics! ”

“ Uncle Billy was beyond the power of speech. The lobby's agents swarmed on the floor, and, with half-a-dozen hysterically laughing Republicans, met the onset of Hurlbut and his men. It became a riot immediately. Sane men were swept up in it to be as mad as the rest, while the galleries screamed and shouted. All round the old man the fury was greatest; his head sank over his desk and rested on his hands as it had the night before ”

“ Do you know that many thousands of labouring people spend their Sundays drinking and carousing about the low country road-houses because the game is played at such places on Sunday? They go there because they never get a chance to see it played in the city. And don't you understand that there would be no Sunday liquor trade, no working-men poisoning themselves every seventh day in the low groggeries, as hundreds of them do now, if they had something to see that would interest them?—something as wholesome and fine as this sport would be, under the conditions of this bill ”

“ A committee of women from a church society was waiting in the corridor, and he had rounded-up a reluctant half-dozen senators and led them forth to be interrogated as to their intentions regarding the bill. The committee and the lawmakers soon distributed themselves into little argumentative clumps, and Alonzo found himself in the centre of these, with one of the ladies who had unfortunately—but, in her enthusiasm, without misgivings—begun a reproachful appeal to an advocate of the bill whose name was Goldstein. ”

“ He was a furtive, untidy slouch of a man, formerly a Republican; he had a great capacity for “handling the coloured vote” and his name was Pixley. Hurlbut mistrusted him; the young man had that instinct, which good leaders need, for feeling the weak places in his following; and he had the leader's way, too, of ever bracing up the weakness and fortifying it; so he stopped, four or five times a day, at Pixley's desk, urging the necessity of standing fast for the “Breaker,” and expressing convictions as to the political future of a Democrat who should fail to vote for it ”

“ Well, in politics, the country needs all the men who have any patriotism—not to be seeking office, but to watch and to understand what is going on. It doesn't take a great deal of time; you can attend to your business and do that much, too. When wrong things are going on and all the good men understand them, that is all that is needed. The wrong things stop going on.”
PART I
BOSS GORGETT
I guess I've been what you might call kind of an assistant boss pretty much all my life; at least, ever since I could vote; and I was something of a ward-heeler even before that. ”

“ Truslow told you that I am studying such things. I do not want to be an idle woman; I want to be of use to the world, even if it must be only in small ways.”
“I think that is a noble ambition!” he exclaimed. “I think all good women ought—”
“Wait,” she interrupted gently. “Now, that bill is a worthy one, though it astonishes you to hear me say so. Perhaps you don't understand the conditions. Sunday is the labouring-man's only day of recreation—and what recreation is he offered?”
“He ought to go to church,” said Alonzo promptly. ”

“ Somebody said a pessimist is a man who has a choice of two evils, and takes both. There's your man that don't vote.
And the best-dressed wards are the ones that fool us oftenest. We're always thinking they'll do something, and they don't. But we thought, when we took Farwell Knowles, that we had 'em at last. Fact is, they did seem stirred up, too. They called it a “moral victory” when we were forced to nominate Knowles to have any chance of beating Gorgett. ”

“ But what's the use of judging? When a man has a temperament like that, people who haven't can't tell what he's got to contend with.
That Fourth of July speech gave Hector his chance. His district managers and the Trimmer faction saw they could use him; and they sent him round stumping the district. Two campaigns later the State Committee was using him, and parts of his speeches were being printed in all the party papers over the State. Locally, I suppose you might say, he had become a famous man; at least he acted like one—not that there was any essential change in him. ”