isitors with the air of an official censor. At
intervals, an electric bell whirred once, twice, or three times; and,
according to the signal, one of the trio disappeared into the presence
of the august personage within.

A door connected the office of the chief executive with that of his
lieutenant, but this was rarely opened by either, and then only after a
formal tap and permission to enter had been given. It was a matter of
general knowledge that the Governor and the Lieutenant-Governor were not
in sympathy; but few, even among the intimates of either, were aware how
deep, and wide, and hopelessly impassable was the gulf which lay between
them. This was due not alone to disparity in age, though twenty-eight
years separated the white-haired Governor from his handsome subordinate,
who had been nominated to this, his first public office, on his
thirtieth birthday; nor was it wholly a difference between the
experience of the one and the inexperience of the other. The point of
view of the veteran is, naturally, not that of the novice, particularly
in politics. That the enthusiasms of Lieutenant-Governor Barclay should
have been the disillusions of Governor Abbott, and his pitfalls his
senior's stepping-stones,--this was to be expected. The root of their
dissimilarity lay deeper. It was nothing less than mutual distrust which
kept the connecting door closed day after day, and clogged the channel
of cooperation with the sharp-pointed boulders of antagonism.

The convention which nominated the successful ticket of the preceding
year had been a veritable chaos of contending factions. The labor
delegates, encouraged by the unexpected strength of their
representation, were not content with such nominal plums as had fallen
to their share in former conventions. Led by Michael McGrath, an
agitator whose native Irish eloquence, made keener and more persuasive
by practice in bar-room forensics, brought him naturally to the fore,
they threatened, at one stage of the proceedings, to carry all before
them. The more conservative faction, its strength sapped by the
formation, in its very ranks, of a reform party determined upon the fall
of the "machine," was forced to yield ground. The reformers themselves,
young men for the most part, distinguished by great ideals but small
ability, were too few to impose their individual will upon their
opponents, yet sufficiently numerous to make their support necessary to
the success of either party