sition and
opportunity, as in that hour of emotion they appeared even to us who
knew politics from behind the scenes, not for the reality of what the
sounding title of President seems to mean, would I have changed with
him, would I have paid the degrading price he had paid. I preferred my
own position--if I had bowed the knee, at least it was not to men. As
for hisses, I saw in them a certain instinctive tribute to my power. The
mob cheers its servant, hisses its master.

"Doc," said I, "do you want to go to the Senate instead of Croffut?"

By the flames on the torches on either side I saw his amazement. "Me?"
he exclaimed. "Why, you forget I've got a past."

"I do," said I, "and so does every one else. All we know is that you've
got a future."

He drew in his breath hard and leaned back into the corner where the
shadow hid him. At last he said in a quiet earnest voice: "You've given
me self-respect, Senator. I can only say--I'll see that you never regret
it."

I was hissed roundly at the hotel entrance, between cheers for Croffut
and Berwick, and even for Woodruff. But I went to bed in the most
cheerful, hopeful humor I had known since the day Scarborough was
nominated. "At any rate"--so I was thinking--"my President, with my
help, will be a man."

XXVI

"ONLY AN OLD JOKE"

On the train going home, I was nearer to castle-building than at any
time since my boyhood castles collapsed under the rude blows of
practical life.

My paths have not always been straight and open, said I to myself; like
all others who have won in the conditions of this world of man still
thrall to the brute, I have had to use the code of the jungle. In
climbing I have had to stoop, at times to crawl. But, now that I have
reached the top, I shall stand erect. I shall show that the sordidness
of the struggle has not unfitted me to use the victory. True, there are
the many and heavy political debts I've had to contract in getting
Burbank the presidency; and as we must have a second term to round out
our work, we shall be compelled to make some further compromises. We
must still deal with men on the terms which human nature exacts. But in
the main we can and we will do what is just and right, what helps to
realize the dreams of the men and women who founded our country--the men
and women like my father and mother.

And my mother's grave, beside my father's and among the graves of my
sisters and my grandparents, rose before me. An