ting myself ever with such patches of it as time and accident
and occasion now and then sewed on our gilded or tattered garments.
But now it is come--the real thing; at any rate a man somewhat like
us, whose thought and aim and dream are our thought and aim and
dream. That's enormously exciting! I didn't suppose I'd ever become
so interested in a general proposition or in a governmental hope.

Will he do it? Can he do it? Can anybody do it? How can we help him
do it? Now that the task is on him, does he really understand? Do I
understand him and he me? There's a certain unreality about it.

The man himself--I find that nobody quite knows him now. Alas! I
wonder if he quite knows himself. Temperamentally very shy, having
lived too much alone and far too much with women (how I wish two of
his daughters were sons!) this Big Thing having descended on him
before he knew or was quite prepared for it, thrust into a whirl of
self-seeking men even while he is trying to think out the theory of
the duties that press, knowing the necessity of silence, surrounded
by small people--well, I made up my mind that his real friends owed
it to him and to what we all hope for, to break over his reserve
and to volunteer help. He asks for conferences with official
folk--only, I think. So I began to write memoranda about those
subjects of government about which I know something and have
opinions and about men who are or who may be related to them. It
has been great sport to set down in words without any reserve
precisely what you think. It is imprudent, of course, as most
things worth doing are. But what have I to lose, I who have my life
now planned and laid out and have got far beyond the reach of
gratitude or hatred or praise or blame or fear of any man? I sent
him some such memoranda. Here came forthwith a note of almost
abject thanks. I sent more. Again, such a note--written in his own
hand. Yet not a word of what he thinks. The Sphinx was garrulous in
comparison. Then here comes a mob of my good friends crying for
office for me. So I sent a ten-line note, by the hand of my
secretary, saying that this should not disturb my perfect frankness
nor (I knew it would not) his confidence. Again, a note in his own
hand, of perfect understanding and with the very glow of gratitude.