William MacLeod Raine

“ I hope when you get in the Senate you'll take action against this atrocity of turning a Pullman car into a Turkish bath.”
Harlan, swinging from the car to the track, caught sight of a lithe, slim figure of grace walking lightly up and down beside the train with a young man in a gray sack suit. It occurred to him that his eyes were beginning to play him false. And yet——
“There certainly can’t be two women in America with that walk. Come along, Stoneman. You’re in luck to the limit. I’m going to introduce you to the most interesting creature in the country.” ”

“ Harlan,” returned the younger man gravely. “I want you to support me because I am the best man for the Senate from my State—certainly a better man than Simon Schaffner. For the same reason I support you because I believe that you are more to be trusted, would look more to the interests of the small stockholders of the Three C line, than would Mr. Schaffner. If he gains control of the road, it will be in the interests of the smelting trust. That, at all hazards, is to be avoided. In my eyes our alliance is a defensive one against the encroachments of an insidious foe to the republic ”

“ He’s for the people. That’s why this State ought to send him to the United States Senate.”
“Aren’t you afraid he would feel lonesome there?” the sardonic journalist asked.
“Maybe he would, but I'll bet he would make those corporation lawyers sit up,” returned the loyal salesman.
His Denver admirer was right as to Stoneman’s reason for not owning a private car, though perhaps the motive was more mixed than the one assigned. A part of his public creed was to exemplify the simple life, to show greatness with Jeffersonian plainness and wealth divorced from ostentation. ”

“ He considered her gravely. “I’m afraid such a life cannot be a very sane one.”
“Indeed, and it’s the life of all lives I would choose for myself. Look to the beam in your own eye, Mr. Politician,” she countered gaily.
“I don’t call myself a politician,” he explained. “The politician makes an end of the means. ”

“ Harlan, that if I go to the Senate it will be to represent the people, and not special interests.” The Westerner’s pallid, square-cut face, with its strong, cleft chin and dark, serious eyes, offered to the New Yorker a little glow of cynical amusement he was not far from showing. ”