f Jethro Bass. He did not know what
to make of it, and told his colleagues so; and at first they feared one
of two things,--treachery or lunacy. But a little later a rumor reached
Mr. Balch's ears that Jethro's hatred of Isaac D. Worthington was at the
bottom of his reappearance in public life, although Jethro himself never
mentioned Mr. Worthington's name. Jethro sat in the Throne Room,
consulting, directing day after day, and when the Legislature assembled,
"the boys" began to call at Mr. Balch's office. But Mr. Balch never again
broached the subject of money to Jethro Bass.

We have to sing the song of sixpence for the last time in these pages;
and as it is an old song now, there will be no encores. If you can buy
one member of the lower house for ten dollars, how many members can you
buy for fifty? It was no such problem in primary arithmetic that Mr.
Balch and his associates had to solve--theirs was in higher mathematics,
in permutations and combinations, and in least squares. No wonder the old
campaigners speak with tears in their eyes of the days of that ever
memorable summer. There were spoils to be picked up in the very streets
richer than the sack of the thirty cities; and as the session wore on it
is affirmed by men still living that money rained down in the Capitol
Park and elsewhere like manna from the skies, if you were one of a chosen
band. If you were, all you had to do was to look in your vest pockets
when you took your clothes off in the evening and extract enough legal
tender to pay your bill at the Pelican for a week. Mr. Lovejoy having
been overheard one day to make a remark concerning the diet of hogs, the
next morning certain visitors to the capital were horrified to discover
trails of corn leading from the Pelican House to their doorways. Men who
had never seen a receiving teller opened bank accounts. No, it was not a
problem in simple arithmetic, and Mr. Balch and Mr. Flint, and even Mr.
Duncan and Mr. Worthington, covered whole sheets with figures during the
stifling days in July. Some men are so valuable that they can be bought
twice, or even three times, and they make figuring complicated.

Jethro Bass did no calculating. He sat behind the curtains, and he must
have kept the figures in his head.

The battle had closed in earnest, and for twelve long, sultry weeks it
raged with unabated fierceness. Consolidation had a terror for the rural
mind, and the state Tribune skilfully played its strea