d.

"They are our allies and helpers," I said, "wretches only as I and all
of us in practical politics are wretches. Difference of degree, perhaps;
but not of kind. And, James, if our promises to these invaluable fellow
workers of ours are not kept, kept to the uttermost, you will compel me
and my group of Senators to oppose and defeat your most important
nominations. And I shall myself, publicly, from the floor of the Senate,
show up these Goodrich nominees of yours as creatures of corrupt
corporations and monopolies." I said this without heat; every word of it
fell cold as arctic ice upon his passion.

A long pause, then: "Your promises shall be kept," he assented with
great dignity of manner; "not because you threaten, Harvey, but because
I value your friendship beyond anything and everything. And I may add I
am sorry, profoundly sorry, my selections for the important places do
not please you."

"I think of your future," I said. "You _talk_ of friendship--"

"No, no, Harvey," he protested, with a vehemence of reassurance that
struck me as amusing.

"And," I went on, "it is in friendship, James, that I warn you not to
fill all your crucial places with creatures of the Goodrich crowd. They
will rule your administration, they will drive you, in spite of
yourself, on and on, from excess to excess. You will put the middle West
irrevocably against you. You will make even the East doubtful. You are
paying, paying with your whole future, for that which is already yours.
If you lose your hold on the people, the money-crowd will have none of
you. If you keep the people, the money-crowd will be your very humble
servant."

I happened just then to glance past him at a picture on the wall over
his chair. It was a crayon portrait of his wife, made from an enlarged
photograph--a poor piece of work, almost ludicrous in its distortions of
proportion and perspective. But it touched me the more because it was
such a humble thing, reminiscent of her and his and my lowly beginnings.
And an appeal seemed to go straight to my heart from those eyes that had
so often been raised from the sewing in sympathetic understanding of
the things I was struggling to make her husband see.

I pointed to the picture; he slowly turned round in his chair until he
too was looking at it. "What would _she_ say, Burbank," I asked, "if she
were with us now?"

And then I went on to analyze his outlined administration, to show him
in detail why I thought