William Allen White

“ In congratulating himself upon the probable success of his pension plans Wharton found another pleasure and perhaps a keener one. All New England turned toward Senator Felt as its hope in the struggle against the Wharton bill. If Felt failed to thwart Wharton, the East and his State and his party would have none of him. So Tom Wharton changed his tobacco quid from one jaw to the other and exhaled a curse upon Felt from the worm-eaten caverns of his soul.
The god of business is an exacting god, and he puts all sorts of warning signs at the mile-posts of the years in men's lives. ”

“ But I believe I have a duty to my country now, as sacred as that which called my grandfather to Lexington, and my father to Bull's Run. That duty is to crush the political life out of one of the most powerful and dangerous influences menacing this nation to-day—the incarnation of political cowardice, corruption, and demagoguery. ”

“ Felt and Williams watched him in silence as he paced the longitude of the room three times. He stopped and cast his blood-shot eyes on Felt and said: "Of course I hain't got no blue stripe down my belly, and a lot of you fellows back here who have think I'm a social leper." Wharton shook his head majestically at Felt as he continued: "But out West, sir—out in God's country—there are several million people who believe in Tom Wharton. They give me reason to hope for something bigger than the United States Senate. The time may come before long when I can help you a good deal. ”

“ At the sixtieth mile-post there is a danger sign which warns men against new enterprises. The penalties for disregarding this sign are severe. But sinful pride having tilted Wharton's nose he could not see the warning on his third-score mile-post. So he began to dabble in wheat. Of course he scalded his fingers. A Chicago packer tempted him, and the two old fellows went on to the market as bears. Wharton's name was not known in the deal; but, little by little, while wheat kept going up, his available collateral went into his broker's hands and was dumped upon the New York market. ”

“ This conviction grew upon him until it became a mania, and at noon he sent Dunning out to the house on the green-car line for the valise containing the bonds. When he returned empty-handed, and when Wharton could not find the Thompson woman by telephone again, he damned her and her kind almost vigorously. At lunch he put into the coal-box of his physical machine an astonishingly large quantity of soft-shell crabs and much whiskey—even much for Senator Wharton, to whom half a pint in an hour was an adult's dose. ”

“ Foreboding and a sense of danger mingled in him until he sickened, as the look down the sheer drop of the ladder makes a man's knees tremble before he starts down. Wharton mumbled through his preliminary speech. Then he saw his private secretary sitting by Curt shake a dubious head, and with a rush of courage Wharton fell to his subject. And soon the old electric company was withering in the hot wind of his oratory. He kept his eyes on Curt and Dunning in the gallery. ”

“ Russell went out of the room, and Wharton went into the vault and filled his little valise with school bonds. Wharton had no trouble in floating them. He deposited them with a Washington bank where he had done all his business for twenty years. The money he realized went into the wheat pit in New York, and he glorified Tom Wharton and prepared to enjoy him forever. For it is the chief end of some self-made men to confuse their deities. ”

“ A terror seized him. He tried to rise. He summoned control of his nerves, and, holding to his chair-arm, rose and poured a glass of water from a sweating silver pitcher in the room. When the Thompson woman came in five minutes later Wharton's wrinkle-scratched face was ashen gray and his voice shook. His hat was on and he was about to go. He knew that what he did to hush the scandal must be done quickly, and that with all the work before him for the coming five hours he could not be handicapped with the bonds. He pointed to the valise and said to the woman, huskily: "I'll leave that here. ”

“ For Wharton had become a financier, and was known in New York banking circles as "the business man of the senate." His introduction to the New Yorkers was brilliant, and admitted him to the inner circle of brigands at once. Wharton and a group of New York bankers got hold of a controlling interest in a Western railroad, the H. & 2 O's, when the stock was selling at 70. The H. & 2 O's ran, as Wharton succinctly put it, "from hell to breakfast, over two streaks of rust, through a four-acre mortgage." ”

“ For several months an innocent-looking bill, which provided that all electric light wires be buried twenty inches under ground, had rested in a pigeon-hole of Wharton's desk in the committee-room of the District of Columbia. To make this bill a law would be in effect to put the new electric company on an equal footing with the old company. Wharton himself had quietly urged the organization of the new company. He had pushed the bill through the lower house of Congress, and shortly thereafter he found $150,000 worth of the new company's stock in his safety deposit box. ”

“ Way back deeply in his submerged consciousness was the concept of the penitentiary, conceived hardly as a possibility—much less a probability; yet the thing stuck there like a thorn in the flesh. After pacing the diagonal lines of his room in the hotel for half an hour, Wharton went to the telephone and asked the local banker who held the stolen bonds to hold them off the market for twenty-four hours. The request was granted, for Wharton had done many hundred thousand dollars' worth of business at the bank. ”

“ Felt removed his glasses and wiped them, looking fairly at Wharton, who bawled on: "This is your size! Just about your size! To get a man in a rat-trap and then bleed him. Oh, you ——, cowardly, psalm-singing cur! You're in on the rake off, are you? How much do you want?"
Felt put on his glasses, lighted a match for his cigar on his shoe-sole, and smiled, showing a set of beautiful white teeth of unusual size. When Wharton lost breath and finished, Felt spoke to Williams gayly:
"The Senator's vocabulary seems to be well spiced up this evening—at any rate." ”

“ During his first term in the Senate, Wharton spoke vehemently and voted for all laws which expanded the currency and curtailed what he called "the money power." The day after one of his denunciations of the railroads he returned all his passes, and a friend from Baxter who was in Wharton's committee-room when the Senator was dictating letters to the railroads, told at home that Tom said he was rich enough to afford the luxury of being honest ”

“ Wharton rose and paced the room twice, with his cigar in his teeth and his hands deep in his trousers pockets.
"I dunno—anything wrong with this: say that the thing that threatens this country is political apathy. Citizens pay too much attention to business and not enough to politics—and then ask how you're going to get more interest in politics by taking all the offices away from the people and putting them in cold-storage. Get my idea? "
The reporter nodded. ”

“ And the Thompson woman kept her own hours in the pension office, and one day, in a sportive moment, she told the assistant commissioner, under whom she was supposed to work, that if she could ever remember his name she would have him dismissed. Her speech was unwise, for she forgot—if she ever knew—that when a man passes his fortieth year his moral lapses are not for the woman, but for a woman, and he is easily irritated.
Tom Wharton's business interests grew. ”

“ When he helped his friends with money in a political transaction Senator Wharton took their notes, thus mixing business with politics and keeping his allies true—Congressman Wharton had never done this. When the machine sent him back to Washington without opposition to serve a second senatorial term, Tom Wharton was a power of the first class. Although the men in the Senate whom he called the Good, the True, and the Beautiful might ignore him socially, when these men needed help for a local bill they had to consult Senator Wharton. ”

“ Williams looked away. His eyes met Felt's and saw no mercy.
When Wharton finally got hold of his nerves he said, weakly:
"You're young, Senator Felt. You're an educated man. You have the advantage of me—for I am old. I am an ignorant old man, and you can make fine speeches against me. All right, go ahead; ruin me; but is it such a great thing to whip an old man? " Felt did not reply and dropped into a chair near Williams. Wharton rose heavily. "Is there no way I can make you see this—like I do?" he asked. Felt shook his head. Wharton looked appealingly at Williams, whose eyes were downcast. ”

“ One hand kept ruffing his iron-gray hair, the other hand held a cigar. As he talked the reporter wondered just how much of Wharton's double chin and crescent-shaped vest the managing editor would leave in the copy if the reporter told the truth about them. Wharton was saying:
"The trouble with the East is, they're getting flabby. They don't get enough hard knocks. Take the Eastern fellows in Congress. Why, not one in ten of the younger set ever went barefooted. They've lived in steam-heated flats and ridden around in street-cars all their lives. They can't stick to a fight. ”

“ Don't be a Shylock—be a man. I'll pay this outfit their notes all right, and I'll give 'em good collateral. What's more, I'll let you in with me in a little Western Pacific deal I've got, that there's a hundred thousand in—if you'll let up."
There was a whine in Wharton's voice that maddened Felt. He walked up to Wharton and bent over him. "Tom Wharton, I wasn't in the civil war because I was not old enough," began Felt in his musketry voice, which filled the room, but was so well controlled that it did not slip through the door-cracks. ”

“ Tell 'em it's all right to holler about a public office being a private snap, but ask how the registration is going to be kept up in the ward if mansions in the skies are to be the only reward for the fellows who drive the hacks. ”

“ They're what you fellows call effete. Look at the pickle that Harvard puts on a boy. You can spot a boy from Harvard as far as you can see him. He has a kind of highty-tighty air, sniffs at his country, and tolerates his universe. ”