fatal
Georgian Bay-Ontario Canal would be forgot. Meanwhile, what was there he
might save from the situation as it stood?

Senator Hanway exerted his diplomacy, and as fruit thereof was visited
by an eye-glassed gentleman--a foremost national figure, and the chief
of Governor Obstinate's management. Senator Hanway showed the
eye-glassed Mazarin of party how, upon his own withdrawal, he, Senator
Hanway, might put Speaker Frost in his place and endow him with the
major share of what had been his own elements of strength. Was there any
reason why he, Senator Hanway, should refrain from such a step?

The eye-glassed Mazarin thereupon represented that it would be much
better if Speaker Frost were to remain undisturbed in his House
autocracy. It was over-late for Speaker Frost and the convention only
days away. The die was already cast; Governor Obstinate would be
nominated and elected. Once inaugurated, the eye-glassed Mazarin
understood that it would be Governor Obstinate's earliest care to invite
Senator Hanway into his Cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury. The
scandal of the Georgian Bay-Ontario Canal would have blown itself out;
also no one--against a President whose hands were full of offices--would
dare lift up his voice in criticism of any Cabinet selection.

Senator Hanway was impressed by the hint of the eye-glassed Mazarin. The
Treasury portfolio stood within ready throw of a Presidential
nomination; he, Senator Hanway, might step from it the successor of
Governor Obstinate whenever that gentleman's tenancy of the White House
should come to an end. Likewise, the Treasury portfolio was as a
thirteen-inch gun within pointblank range of the stock market.

Senator Hanway took a week to consider; he conferred with Senators Gruff
and Price and Loot and lastly with Mr. Harley. Then he struck hands with
the eye-glassed Mazarin, and published an interview in the _Daily Tory_
saying that he, Senator Hanway, was not and had never been a candidate
for the Presidency; that he was and had ever been of the opinion that
the needs of both a public and a party hour imperatively demanded
Governor Obstinate at the Nation's helm. He, Senator Hanway, being a
patriot, was diligently working for the nomination and election of
Governor Obstinate, and all who called him friend would do the same.
Following this pronunciamento, Senator Hanway began laying personal
pipes for four years away with pristine ardor.

Friday, the twenty-seventh