y knew what advisers
he would select, men trained in their service and taken from their legal
staffs. They knew he would shrink from anything "radical" or
"disturbing"--that is, would not molest the two packs of wolves, the
business and the political, at their feast upon the public. He came of a
line of bigoted adherents of his party; he led a simple, retired life
among sheep and cows and books asleep in the skins of sheep and cows. He
wore old-fashioned rural whiskers, thickest in the throat, thinning
toward the jawbone, scant about the lower lip, absent from the upper.
These evidences of unfitness to cope with up-to-date corruption seemed
to endear him to the masses.

As soon as those big organs of the opposition that were in the control
of the powers began to talk of Simpson as an ideal candidate, I
suspected what was in the wind. But I had my hands full; the most I
could then do was to supply my local "left-bower," Silliman, with funds
and set him to work for a candidate for his party more to my taste. It
was fortunate for me that I had cured myself of the habit of worrying.
For it was plain that, if Goodrich and Beckett succeeded in getting
Simpson nominated by the opposition, I should have a hard fight to raise
the necessary campaign money. The large interests either would finance
Simpson or, should I convince them that Burbank was as good for their
purposes as Simpson, would be indifferent which won.

I directed Silliman to work for Rundle of Indiana, a thoroughly honest
man, in deadly earnest about half a dozen deadly wrong things, and
capable of anything in furthering them--after the manner of fanatics. If
he had not been in public life, he would have been a camp-meeting
exhorter. Crowds liked to listen to him; the radicals and radically
inclined throughout the West swore by him; he had had two terms in
Congress, had got a hundred-odd votes for the nomination for President
at the last national convention of the opposition. A splendid scarecrow
for the Wall Street crowd, but difficult to nominate over Goodrich's man
Simpson in a convention of practical politicians.

In May--it was the afternoon of the very day my mutineers got back into
the harness--Woodruff asked me if I would see a man he had picked up in
a delegate-hunting trip into Indiana. "An old pal of mine, much the
better for the twelve years' wear since I last saw him. He has always
trained with the opposition. He's a full-fledged graduate of the Ind