y
from floor to ceiling, from north window to south. "I base my hope on
those--next to you, of course," said he. Then with his "woeful widower"
pose, he added: "They were _her_ suggestions."

I looked at the filing-cases and waited for him to explain.

"When we were first married," he went on presently, "she said, 'It seems
to me, if I were a public man, I should keep everything relating to
myself--every speech, all that the newspapers said, every meeting and
the lists of the important people who were there, notes of _all_ the
people I ever met anywhere, every letter or telegram or note I received.
If you do, you may find after a few years that you have an enormous list
of acquaintances. You've forgotten them because you meet so many, but
they will not have forgotten you, who were one of the principal figures
at the meeting or reception.' That's in substance what she said. And so,
we began and kept it up"--he paused in his deliberate manner, compressed
his lips, then added--"together."

I opened one of the filing-cases, glanced at him for permission, took
out a slip of paper under the M's. It was covered with notes, in Mrs.
Burbank's writing, of a reception given to him at the Manufacturers'
Club in St. Louis three years before. A lot of names, after each some
reminders of the standing and the personal appearance of the man.
Another slip, taken at random from the same box, contained similar notes
of a trip through Montana eight years before.

"Wonderful!" I exclaimed, as the full value of these accumulations
loomed in my mind. "I knew she was an extraordinary woman. Now I see
that she had genius for politics."

His expression--a peering through that eternal pose of his--made me
revise my first judgment of his mourning. For I caught a glimpse of a
real human being, one who had loved and lost, looking grief and pride
and gratitude. "If she had left me two or three years earlier," he said
in that solemn, posing tone, "I doubt if I should have got one step
further. As it is, I may be able to go on, though--I have lost--my
staff."

What fantastic envelopes does man, after he has been finished by
Nature, wrap about himself in his efforts to improve her handiwork!
Physically, even when most dressed, we are naked in comparison with the
enswathings that hide our real mental and moral selves from one
another--and from ourselves.

My campaign was based on the contents of those filing-cases. I learned
all the places throug