put to use
before they had been in Washington a single day.

Not that Ratcliffe had anything to do with all this underhand
and grovelling intrigue. Mr. Ratcliffe was a man of dignity and
self-respect, who left details to his subordinates. He waited calmly
until the President, recovered from the fatigues of his journey, should
begin to feel the effect of a Washington atmosphere. Then on Wednesday
morning, Mr. Ratcliffe left his rooms an hour earlier than usual on his
way to the Senate, and called at the President's Hotel: he was ushered
into a large apartment in which the new Chief Magistrate was holding
court, although at sight of Ratcliffe, the other visitors edged away
or took their hats and left the room. The President proved to be a
hard-featured man of sixty, with a hooked nose and thin, straight,
iron-gray hair. His voice was rougher than his features and he received
Ratcliffe awkwardly. He had suffered since his departure from Indiana.
Out there it had seemed a mere flea-bite, as he expressed it, to brush
Ratcliffe aside, but in Washington the thing was somehow different.

Even his own Indiana friends looked grave when he talked of it, and
shook their heads. They advised him to be cautious and gain time; to
lead Ratcliffe on, and if possible to throw on him the responsibility of
a quarrel. He was, therefore, like a brown bear undergoing the process
of taming; very ill-tempered, very rough, and at the same time very much
bewildered and a little frightened. Ratcliffe sat ten minutes with him,
and obtained information in regard to pains which the President had
suffered during the previous night, in consequence, as he believed, of
an over-indulgence in fresh lobster, a luxury in which he had found a
diversion from the cares of state. So soon as this matter was explained
and condoled upon, Ratcliffe rose and took leave.

Every device known to politicians was now in full play against the
Hoosier Quarryman. State delegations with contradictory requests were
poured in upon him, among which that of Massachusetts presented as
its only prayer the appointment of Mr. Gore to the Spanish mission.
Difficulties were invented to embarrass and worry him. False leads were
suggested, and false information carefully mingled with true. A wild
dance was kept up under his eyes from daylight to midnight, until his
brain reeled with the effort to follow it. Means were also found to
convert one of his personal, confidential friends, who