as I had
approved the cause of Bertha von Hillern. Where she showed heroic, most
of the suffragettes appear to me grotesque. Where her aim was rational,
their aim has been visionary. To me the younger of them seem as children
who need to be spanked and kissed. There has been indeed about the whole
Suffrage business something pitiful and comic.

Often I have felt like swearing "You idiots!" and then like crying
"Poor dears!" But I have kept on with them, and had I been in Albany or
Washington I would have caught Rosalie Jones in my arms, and before she
could say "Jack Robinson" have exclaimed: "You ridiculous child, go and
get a bath and put on some pretty clothes and come and join us at dinner
in the State Banquet Hall, duly made and provided for you and the rest
of you delightful sillies."

Chapter the Ninth

Dr. Norvin Green--Joseph Pulitzer--Chester A. Arthur--General
Grant--The Case of Fitz-John Porter

I

Truth we are told is stranger than fiction. I have found it so in the
knowledge which has variously come to me of many interesting men and
women. Of these Dr. Norvin Green was a striking example. To have sprung
from humble parentage in the wilds of Kentucky and to die at the head
of the most potential corporation in the world--to have held this place
against all comers by force of abilities deemed indispensable to its
welfare--to have gone the while his ain gait, disdaining the precepts
of Doctor Franklin--who, by the way, did not trouble overmuch to follow
them himself--seems so unusual as to rival the most stirring stories of
the novel mongers.

When I first met Doctor Green he was president of a Kentucky railway
company. He had been, however, one of the organizers of the Western
Union Telegraph Company. He deluded himself for a little by political
ambitions. He wanted to go to the Senate of the United States, and
during a legislative session of prolonged balloting at Frankfort he
missed his election by a single vote.

It may be doubted whether he would have cut a considerable figure at
Washington. His talents were constructive rather than declamatory. He
was called to a greater field--though he never thought it so--and was
foremost among those who developed the telegraph system of the country
almost from its infancy. He possessed the daring of the typical
Kentuckian, with the dead calm of the stoic philosopher; imperturbable;
never vexed or querulous or excited; denying himself non