e worst of it in our despatches?... And
what's the result? Mallard takes on flesh and every red-mouthed
agitator in the country and every mushy-brained peace fanatic and
every secret German sympathiser trails at his heels, repeating what he
says. I'd like to know what the press of America hasn't done to put
him out of business!

"There never was a time, I guess, when the reputable press of this
country was so united in its campaign to kill off a man as it is now
in its campaign to kill off Mallard. No paper gives him countenance,
except some of these foreign-language rags and these dirty little
disloyal sheets; and until here just lately even they didn't dare to
come out in the open and applaud him. Anyway, who reads them as
compared with those who read the real newspapers and the real
magazines? Nobody! And yet he gets stronger every day. He's a national
menace--that's what he is."

"You said it again, son," said Quinlan. "Six months ago he was a
national nuisance and now he's a national menace; and who's
responsible--or, rather, what's responsible--for him being a national
menace? Well, I'm going to tell you; but first I'm going to tell you
something about Mallard. I've known him for twelve years, more or
less--ever since he came here to Washington in his long frock coat
that didn't fit him and his big black slouch hat and his white string
tie and in all the rest of the regalia of the counterfeit who's trying
to fool people into believing he's part tribune and part peasant."

"You wouldn't call Mallard a counterfeit, would you?--a man with the
gifts he's got," broke in Drayton. "I've heard him called everything
else nearly in the English language, but you're the first man that
ever called him a counterfeit, to my knowledge!"

"Counterfeit? why, he's as bogus as a pewter dime," said Quinlan. "I
tell you I know the man. Because you don't know him he's got you
fooled the same as he's got so many other people fooled. Because he
looks like a steel engraving of Henry Clay you think he is a Henry
Clay, I suppose--anyhow, a lot of other people do; but I'm telling you
his resemblance to Henry Clay is all on the outside--it doesn't strike
in any farther than the hair roots. He calls himself a self-made man.
Well, he's not; he's self-assembled, that's all. He's made up of
standardised and interchangeable parts. He's compounded of something
borrowed from every political mountebank who's pulled that old bunk
about being a fri