father." How often I read those
and similar eulogies of young men just starting in public life! And is
it not really amazing that the people believe, that they never say to
themselves: "But, if he were actually what he so loudly professes to be,
how could he have got public office from a boss and a machine?"

I soon gave up trying to fool myself into imagining I was the servant of
the people by introducing or speaking for petty little popular
measures. I saw clearly that graft was the backbone, the whole skeleton
of legislative business, and that its fleshly cover of pretended public
service could be seen only by the blind. I saw, also, that no one in the
machine of either party had any real power. The state boss of our party,
United States Senator Dunkirk, was a creature and servant of
corporations. Silliman, the state boss of the opposition party, was the
same, but got less for his services because his party was hopelessly in
the minority and its machine could be useful only as a sort of
supplement and scapegoat.

With the men at the top, Dunkirk and Silliman, mere lackeys, I saw my
own future plainly enough. I saw myself crawling on year after
year,--crawling one of two roads. Either I should become a political
scullion, a wretched party hack, despising myself and despised by those
who used me, or I should develop into a lackey's lackey or a plain
lackey, lieutenant of a boss or a boss, so-called--a derisive name,
really, when the only kind of boss-ship open was head political procurer
to one or more rich corporations or groups of corporations. I felt I
should probably become a scullion, as I thought I had no taste or
instinct for business, and as I was developing some talent for "mixing,"
and for dispensing "hot air" from the stump.

I turned these things over and over in my mind with an energy that
sprang from shame, from the knowledge of what my mother would think if
she knew the truth about her son, and from a realization that I was no
nearer marrying Betty Crosby than before. At last I wrought myself into
a sullen fury beneath a calm surface. The lessons in self-restraint and
self-hiding I learned in that first of my two years as assemblyman have
been invaluable.

When I entered upon my second and last winter, I was outwardly as serene
as--as a volcano on the verge of eruption.

III

SAYLER "DRAWS THE LINE"

In February the railways traversing our state sent to the capitol a bill
that had been d