m, I
wished to be in a position successfully to take full charge for the work
of repair.

XXXII

A GLANCE BEHIND THE MASK OF GRANDEUR

Not until late in the spring of his second year did Burbank find a trace
of gall in his wine.

From the night of his election parasites and plunderers and agents of
plunderers had imprisoned him in the usual presidential fool's paradise.
The organs of the interests and their Congressional henchmen praised
everything he did; I and my group of Congressmen and my newspapers, as
loyal partizans, bent first of all upon regularity, were silent where we
did not praise also. But the second year of a President's first term is
the beginning of frank, if guarded, criticism of him from his own side.
For it is practically his last year of venturing to exercise any real
official power. The selection of delegates to the party's national
convention, to which a President must submit himself for leave to
re-submit himself to the people, is well under way before the end of
his third year; and direct and active preparations for it must begin
long in advance.

Late in that second spring Burbank made a tour of the country, to give
the people the pleasure of seeing their great man, to give himself the
pleasure of their admiration, and to help on the Congressional campaign,
the result of which would be the preliminary popular verdict upon his
administration. The thinness of the crowds, the feebleness of the
enthusiasm, the newspaper sneers and flings at that oratory once hailed
as a model of dignity and eloquence--even he could not accept the smooth
explanations of his flatterers. And in November came the party's
memorable overwhelming defeat--reducing our majority in the Senate from
twenty to six, and substituting for our majority of ninety-three in the
House an opposition majority of sixty-seven.

I talked with him early in January and was amazed that, while he
appreciated the public anger against the party, he still believed
himself personally popular. "There is a lull in prosperity," said he,
"and the people are peevish." Soon, however, by a sort of endosmosis to
which the densest vanity is somewhat subject, the truth began to seep
through and to penetrate into him.

He became friendlier to me, solicitous toward spring--but he clung none
the less tightly to Goodrich. The full awakening came in his third
summer when the press and the politicians of the party began openly to
discuss the next