ving the true color and perspective; but my blundering attempt to
avoid publicity had put me in too bad a light.

It was the irony of fate--my power thus ludicrously thwarted by a
triviality. Within twenty-four hours I realized the danger to our
campaign. I sent Woodruff post-haste to the widow. He gave her
convincing assurances that she and her children were to be lifted from
the slough of poverty into which Granby's drunkenness had thrust them.
And in return she wrote at his dictation and issued an apparently
uninspired public statement, exonerating me from all blame for her
husband's reverses, and saying that he had been acting strangely for
over a year and had been insane for several months. In brief, I did
everything suggested by sincere regret and such skill at influencing
public opinion as I had and commanded. But not until my reports began to
show the good effects of the million dollars Woodruff put into the last
week of the campaign, did I begin to hope again.

Another hope brightened toward confidence when, on the Saturday before
election, I sprung my carefully matured scheme for stiffening those of
our partizans who were wavering. The Scarborough speakers had, with
powerful effect, been taunting us with our huge campaign fund, daring us
to disclose its sources. On that Sunday morning, when it was too late
for the opposition to discount me, I boldly threw open a set of
campaign ledgers which showed that our fund was just under a million
dollars, with the only large subscription, the hundred thousand which I
myself had given. Tens of thousands of our partizans, longing for an
excuse for staying with us, returned cheering to the ranks--enough of
them in the doubtful states, we believed, to restore the floating vote
to its usual balance of power.

Each horse of my team had taken a turn at doing dangerous, even
menacing, threshing about; but both were now quietly pulling in the
harness, Partizanship as docile as Plutocracy. The betting odds were six
to five against us, but we of the "inside" began to plunge on Burbank
and Howard.

XXV

AN HOUR OF EMOTION

It was after midnight of election day before we knew the result, so
close were the two most important doubtful states.

Scarborough had swept the rural districts and the small towns. But we
had beaten him in the cities where the machines and other purchasable
organizations were powerful. His state gave him forty-two thousand
plurality, Burbank ca