"I'm telling you over again that a new day has dawned in
American politics; I and my kind recognize it, and you and your kind
don't seem to be big enough to recognize it. That is the difference
between us. In the present instance it comes down to this: you are going
to fight for a railroad majority in the legislature, and you want
Reynolds for the head of the ticket because you know that you can depend
upon his veto if you don't get your majority in the House and Senate.
You are not going to get Reynolds, or the majority either, without the
help of the party organization."

"We can put it much more elementally than that," supplemented the
railroad man. "We get nothing without your say-so as the head of the
party organization. That is precisely why I have come a couple of
thousand miles to ask you to eat dinner with me here to-night."

"I reckon I ought to feel right much set up and biggitty over that,
Hardwick," smiled the veteran spoilsman, relapsing, as he did now and
then, into the speech of his Southern boyhood. And then
half-quizzically: "Are you tolerably well satisfied that you've got
around to the place where you are willing to tote fair with me? You
recollect, I gave you a straight pointer two years ago; you wouldn't
take it, and we did you up. Are you right certain you are ready now to
holler 'enough'?"

Once again the vice-president refused to be hurried into making a
capitulative admission. When he spoke, the militant second thought of
the fighting corporation commander chose the words.

"There is a limit to all things, Senator, and you are pushing us pretty
well up to it. I suppose you can crack the whip and swing the vote on
the legislature, and you can take it and be damned. But, by God, we'll
have our governor and our attorney-general!"

"You are betting confidently on that, are you?" said the veteran mildly.
"Is that your declaration of war?"

"Call it anything you like. We are not going to be legislated off the
map if we can help it. Strong as your machine is, you can't swing Gordon
in against Reynolds if we concede your bare majority in the legislature
and put up the right kind of a fight. And when it comes to Rankin, our
candidate for attorney-general, you simply haven't another man in the
party to put up against him. You'd have to run in a dummy, and even you
are not big enough to do that, Blount, and put it over."

"You've settled this definitely in your own mind, have you, Hardwick?"
was t