ment too sacred! Anger whirled up in me
against this miserable, short-sighted self-seeker who had brought to a
climax of spoliation my plans to guide the strong in developing the
resources of the country. And I turned upon him, intending to overwhelm
him with the truth about his treachery, about his attempts to destroy
me. For I was now safe from his and Goodrich's vengeance--they had
destroyed themselves with the people and with the party. But a glance at
him and--how could I strike a man stretched in agony upon his deathbed?
"If I could help you, I would," said I.

"You--you and I together can get a convention that will nominate me," he
urged, hope and fear jostling each other to look pleadingly at me from
his eyes.

"Possibly," I said. "But--of what use would that be?"

He sank back in the carriage, yellow-white and with trembling hands and
eyelids. "Then you don't think I could be elected?" he asked in a
broken, breathless way.

For answer I could only shake my head. "No matter who is the nominee," I
went on after a moment, "our party can't win." I half-yielded to the
impulse of sentimentality and turned to him appealingly. "James," said
I, "why don't you--right away--before the country sees you are to be
denied a renomination--publicly announce that you won't take it in any
circumstances? Why don't you devote the rest of your term to regaining
your lost--popularity? Every day has its throngs of opportunities for
the man in the White House. Break boldly and openly with Goodrich and
his crowd."

I saw and read the change in his face. My advice about the nomination
straightway closed his mind against me; at the mention of Goodrich, his
old notion of my jealousy revived. And I saw, too, that contact with and
use of and subservience to corruption had so corrupted him that he no
longer had any faith in any method not corrupt. All in an instant I
realized the full folly of what I was doing. I felt confident that by
pursuing the line I had indicated he could so change the situation in
the next few months that he would make it impossible for them to refuse
to renominate him, might make it possible for him to be elected. But
even if he had the wisdom to listen, where would he get the courage and
the steadfastness to act? I gave him up finally and for ever.

A man may lose his own character and still survive, and even go far. But
if he lose belief in character as a force, he is damned. He could not
survive in a communi