ion of the President, he had, as I could see,
the impatient resentment which a quick-minded, nervous, small-bodied
man has for the big, slow one whose mental operations are stubbornly
deliberate and leisurely. And he was obviously irritated by the
President's continual assumption that he was better than his party.
"He's honest," he said, "by right of original discovery of what honesty
is. No one can question his honesty. But as soon as he discovers a
better thing than he knew previously, he announces it as if it were
the discovery of a new planet. It may have been a commonplace for a
generation. That doesn't signify. He announces it with such ponderosity
that the world believes it's as prodigious as his sentences!"

As for my own mission: I would have to be persistent, patient,
and--lucky. "You'll have to be lucky, if you intend to persuade him to
acquire any information. He's been so successful in instructing mankind
that it's hard to get him to see he doesn't know all he ought to know
about a public question. But he's honest and he's courageous. If you can
convince him that your view is right, he'll carry but the conviction
in spite of everything. In fact he'll be all the better pleased if it
requires fearlessness and defiance of general sentimentality to carry it
out."

He gave me a letter to Mr. William C. Whitney, then Secretary of the
Navy, explaining my purpose in coming to Washington, and asking him to
obtain for me an interview with President Cleveland without using Mr.
Hewitt's name. Then he shook hands with me, and wished me success. "I
have the faith," he said, "that is without hope."

That expressed my own feeling. The faith that was without hope!

Chapter III. Without A Country

So I came to Washington. So I entered the capital of the government that
commanded my allegiance and inspired my fear. I wonder whether another
American ever saw that city with such eyes of envy, of aspiration, of
wistful pride, of daunted admiration. Here were all the consecrations
of a nation's memories, and they thrilled me, even while they pierced me
with the sense that I was not, and might well despair of ever being,
a citizen of their glory. Here were the monuments of patriotism
in Statuary Hall, erected to the men whose histories had been the
inspiration of my boyhood; and I remember how I stood before them,
conscious that I was now almost an outlaw from their communion of
splendor. I remember how I saw, with an