beginning to appreciate the
discomfiture of his enemies. They had thought to find him bewildered
and inefficient, and had encountered instead a man whose conception of
his rights and duties was just and adequate. Strange also to
superficial thinkers was his dignity of bearing, to which the _elite_
of Warwick paid the compliment of their resentment. But that ease and
precision of movement, that steady glance of the eye, had been
transferred from the baseball field to become singularly effective in
the mayor's office.

It was now that his experience as a conductor also yielded its harvest,
though few of those whose money he had formerly collected realised the
valuable knowledge they had given him of human nature's more difficult
side. They had unwittingly taught him to control his temper under
trying circumstances, to hear much and say little, and now they
wondered at the success of their teaching. Even his language was
exasperatingly correct. They might claim that his speech for the joint
debate had been written by another, but this would not explain the
excellent quality of his ordinary conversation; and it never occurred
to them to point to him with pride as a product of the public schools
for which their city was justly famous.

That a man not connected with one of the old families, not possessed of
a baccalaureate degree, should really be effective in the mayor's chair
was such an unheard-of presumption that they denied the fact. Yet they
could not claim that he assumed excess of air. His lack of exuberance
was so marked, he had taken hold of his work with such seriousness and
sobriety, that he seemed to be a man of great coldness, or one whose
sense of triumph was tempered by a secret trouble.

Those whose condemnation was not altogether sweeping found the phrase
"an imitation" capable of conveying some consolation. He was like a
wooden cigar, a lead quarter; in short, he was a loaf baked in a
different oven, and that was enough. How could a man that wore a heavy
watch-chain possess the genuine quality? In the judgment of the First
Church, that chain was heavy enough to bind him hand and foot and to
sink him in the depths of the sea.

But criticisms from this source Emmet accepted as a matter of course,
much as a Republican candidate for the Presidency would count on a
solid Democratic South. A more serious menace to his future lay in the
attitude of some of his own supporters, who supposed that the