Dixon,
and Congressman Murdock, I was apt to discuss pretty nearly everything
relating to either our internal or our external affairs. There were
many, many others. The present president of the Senate, Senator Clark,
of Arkansas, was as fearless and high-minded a representative of the
people of the United States as I ever dealt with. He was one of the men
who combined loyalty to his own State with an equally keen loyalty to
the people of all the United States. He was politically opposed to me;
but when the interests of the country were at stake, he was incapable of
considering party differences; and this was especially his attitude
in international matters--including certain treaties which most of
his party colleagues, with narrow lack of patriotism, and complete
subordination of National to factional interest, opposed. I have never
anywhere met finer, more faithful, more disinterested, and more
loyal public servants than Senator O. H. Platt, a Republican, from
Connecticut, and Senator Cockrell, a Democrat, from Missouri. They were
already old men when I came to the Presidency; and doubtless there
were points on which I seemed to them to be extreme and radical; but
eventually they found that our motives and beliefs were the same,
and they did all in their power to help any movement that was for the
interest of our people as a whole. I had met them when I was Civil
Service Commissioner and Assistant Secretary of the Navy. All I ever had
to do with either was to convince him that a given measure I championed
was right, and he then at once did all he could to have it put into
effect. If I could not convince them, why! that was my fault, or my
misfortune; but if I could convince them, I never had to think again as
to whether they would or would not support me. There were many other men
of mark in both houses with whom I could work on some points, whereas
on others we had to differ. There was one powerful leader--a burly,
forceful man, of admirable traits--who had, however, been trained in
the post-bellum school of business and politics, so that his attitude
towards life, quite unconsciously, reminded me a little of Artemus
Ward's view of the Tower of London--"If I like it, I'll buy it." There
was a big governmental job in which this leader was much interested,
and in reference to which he always wished me to consult a man whom
he trusted, whom I will call Pitt Rodney. One day I answered him, "The
trouble with Rodney is that