and gentlemen, for making such a
disturbance. I--I hardly seem to be myself to-day."

He went to his desk and sat down and stared up at the portrait of
War-Governor Converse for a long time. At last he thumped his fist on
his desk and shook his head.

"No," he declared, as if the portrait had been asking him a question
and pressing him for a reply, "I can't do it. I could have gone into
the courts and fought them as an attorney. I could have maintained my
self-respect. But not in politics--no--no! It's too much of a mess in
these days."

But he pushed aside the papers which related to the affairs of the big
corporations for which he was counsel and kept on studying the reports
which his clerks had secured for him--such statements on health and
financial affairs as they were able to dig up.

A day later his messenger brought a mass of data back from the State
House along with a story about insolent clerks and surly heads of
departments who offered all manner of slights and did all they dared to
hinder investigation.

"It's a pretty tough condition of affairs, Mr. Converse," complained
the clerk, "when a state's hired servants treat citizens as if they were
trespassers in the Capitol. It has got so that our State House isn't
much of anything except a branch office for Colonel Dodd."

"But you told them from what office you came--from my office?"

"Of course I did, sir."

"Well, what did they say?"

The clerk's face grew red and betrayed sudden embarrassment.

"Oh, they--they--didn't say anything special: just uppish--only--"

"What did they say?" roared Mr. Converse. "You've got a memory! Out with
it! Exact words."

Clerks were taught to obey orders in that office.

"They said," choked the man, "that simply because your father was
governor of this state once you needn't think you could tell folks in
the State House to stand around! They said you didn't cut any ice in
politics."

"That's the present code of manners, eh? Insult a citizen and salaam to
a politician!"

"Mr. Converse, I waited an hour in the Vital Statistics Bureau while the
chief smoked cigars with Alf Symmes, that ward heeler. I had sent in our
firm card, and the chief held it in his hand and flipped it and smoked
and sat where he could look out at me and grin--and when Symmes had
finished his loafing they let me in."

Mr. Converse turned to his desk and plunged again into the data.

The next day he put a clerk at the long-distance tele