vercoming peaceful and unprepared and unorganized citizens.
Who would erect statues or write eulogies to a man for mowing a field of
corn-stalks with a scythe? Mankind is never more amusing than in its
hero-worship.

No, I should simply have been stupid had I failed.

But--even had I been disposed to rein in and congratulate myself at the
quarter-stretch, I could not have done it. A man has, perhaps, some
choice as to his mount before he enters the race for success. But once
in the saddle and off, he must let the reins go; his control is confined
to whip and spur.

XIV

A "BOOM-FACTORY"

In the early autumn of that last year of his as governor, Burbank's wife
died--a grim and unexpected fulfilment of their pretended anxieties of
six months before.

It was, in some respects, as great a loss to me as to him--how great to
us both I did not--indeed, could not--measure until several years
passed. She was what I regard as a typical American wife--devoted to her
husband, jealously guarding his interests, yet as keen to see his
shortcomings as she was to see her own. And how much more persistent and
intelligent in correcting her faults than he in correcting his! Like
most men, he was vain--that is, while he would probably have admitted in
a large, vague way that he wasn't perfect, when it came to details he
would defend his worst fault against any and all criticism. Like most
women, she, too, was vain--but an intelligent woman's vanity, instead of
making her self-complacent, somehow spurs her on to hide her weak
points and to show her best points in the best light. For example, Mrs.
Burbank, a pretty woman and proud of it, was yet conscious of her
deficiencies in dress and in manners through her plain and rural early
surroundings. It was interesting, and instructive, too, to watch her
studying and cleverly copying, or rather, adapting Carlotta; for she
took from Carlotta only that which could be fitted without visible joint
into her own pattern.

Latterly, whenever I was urging upon Burbank a line of action requiring
courage or a sacrifice of some one of his many insidious forms of
personal vanity, I always arranged for her to be present at our
conferences. And she would sit there, apparently absorbed in her sewing;
but in reality she was seeing not only the surface reasons I gave him,
but also those underlying and more powerful reasons which we do not
utter, sometimes because we like to play the hypocrite to o