But that night, as I lay awake listening to the street noises and
staring at the glint from a street lamp on the brass knob of my
bedstead, I knew that I had failed. I had committed the supreme
violation of the self that leads inevitably to its final dissolution....
Even the exuberant headlines of the newspapers handed me by the club
servant in the morning brought but little relief.

On the Saturday morning before the Tuesday of election there was a
conference in the directors' room of the Corn National. The city reeked
with smoke and acrid, stale gas, the electric lights were turned on
to dispel the November gloom. It was not a cheerful conference, nor a
confident one. For the first time in a collective experience the men
gathered there were confronted with a situation which they doubted their
ability to control, a situation for which there was no precedent.
They had to reckon with a new and unsolvable equation in politics and
finance,--the independent voter. There was an element of desperation in
the discussion. Recriminations passed. Dickinson implied that Gorse
with all his knowledge of political affairs ought to have foreseen that
something like this was sure to happen, should have managed better the
conventions of both great parties. The railroad counsel retorted that it
had been as much Dickinson's fault as his. Grierson expressed a
regret that I had broken out against the reformers; it had reacted, he
said,--and this was just enough to sting me to retaliate that things had
been done in the campaign, chiefly through his initiative, that were not
only unwise, but might land some of us in the penitentiary if Krebs were
elected.

"Well," Grierson exclaimed, "whether he's elected or not, I wouldn't
give much now for your chances of getting to the Senate. We can't afford
to fly in the face of the dear public."

A tense silence followed this remark. In the street below the rumble of
the traffic came to us muffled by the heavy plate-glass windows. I saw
Tallant glance at Gorse and Dickinson, and I knew the matter had been
decided between themselves, that they had been merely withholding it
from me until after election. I was besmirched, for the present at
least.

"I think you will do me the justice, gentlemen," I remember saying
slowly, with the excessive and rather ridiculous formality of a man who
is near the end of his tether, "that the idea of representing you in
the Senate was yours, not mine. You begged me t