sent out ... no more washing of my one shirt overnight and
hanging it up to dry on the back of a chair, while I slept ... and
putting it on, next morning, crinkly and still damp.

I was already seduced, if there hadn't been that something in me which I
myself could not control!

* * * * *

It was when I caught Mackworth on the streets of his town and in his
newspaper office that I discovered the man himself.

In our country, especially in the Middle West, everybody watches
everybody else for the least lapse in the democratic spirit.

Though he was truly democratic at heart, Mackworth laid it on in
theatric outward appearance, in true line with the Kansas tradition of a
sockless Jerry Simpson, who went without socks, as the adjective
implies, and made Congress on that one platform of his sartorial lack
... of William Roscoe Stubbs, who rode into the office of governor
partly on the fact that his daughter could make salt-rising bread ... a
form of bread-making cultivated by the hardy pioneers of the state, and
now no longer necessary.

Mackworth was "in-legged" ... that is, his legs on the insides rubbed
together from the crotch to the knees ... and he wore old patches,
hanging there actually in strips ... and, I think, had his trouser-seat
patched, too ... and though he could have afforded a car, he drove
about, he and his family, in a rickety old two-seated rig, deliberately
kept, it seemed, in ill-repair ... and it was such an old ex-plow horse
that dragged it about!

His fellow townsmen laughed, but they liked it. "Jarv's all right! No
nonsense about Jarv, even ef he is one o' them lit'rary fellers!"

To call everybody by the first name--that was the last word in honest,
democratic fellowship.

* * * * *

Whether this exterior appearance of Mackworth was sincere or affected in
him I never could quite tell. I am almost inclined to believe it was not
done for effect,--but out of an Assisian simplicity of heart, as a sign
manual of Bourgeois integrity.

If it was an affectation, his personal attitude toward the people with
whom he came into contact was not ... in his office everybody loved him,
and worked for him with that easy efficiency that comes of good will and
respect....

Unostentatiously and affectionately he went about helping people.

"We've got a wonderful town here ... very little vice, except that which
always will be in every comm