where they fell in the
way they're doing now. If it was anybody else but Theodore Watling, it
would scare me. You ought to have been in Jim Broadhurst's campaign," he
added, referring to the junior senator, "they wouldn't wood up at all,
they was just listless. But Gorse and Barbour and the rest wanted him,
and we had to put him over. I reckon he is useful down there in
Washington, but say, do you know what he always reminded me of? One of
those mud-turtles I used to play with as a boy up in Columbia
County,--shuts up tight soon as he sees you coming. Now Theodore Watling
ain't like that, any way of speaking. We can get up some enthusiasm for a
man of his sort. He's liberal and big. He's made his pile, and he don't
begrudge some of it to the fellows who do the work. Mark my words, when
you see a man who wants a big office cheap, look out for him."

This, and much more wisdom I imbibed while assenting to my chief's
greatness. For Mr. Varney was right,--one could feel enthusiasm for
Theodore Watling; and my growing intimacy with him, the sense that I was
having a part in his career, a share in his success, became for the
moment the passion of my life. As the campaign progressed I gave more and
more time to it, and made frequent trips of a confidential nature to the
different counties of the state. The whole of my being was energized. The
national fever had thoroughly pervaded my blood--the national fever to
win. Prosperity--writ large--demanded it, and Theodore Watling
personified, incarnated the cause. I had neither the time nor the desire
to philosophize on this national fever, which animated all my associates:
animated, I might say, the nation, which was beginning to get into a
fever about games. If I remember rightly, it was about this time that
golf was introduced, tennis had become a commonplace, professional
baseball was in full swing; Ham Durrett had even organized a local polo
team.... The man who failed to win something tangible in sport or law or
business or politics was counted out. Such was the spirit of America, in
the closing years of the nineteenth century.

And yet, when one has said this, one has failed to express the national
Geist in all its subtlety. In brief, the great American sport was not so
much to win the game as to beat it; the evasion of rules challenged our
ingenuity; and having won, we set about devising methods whereby it would
be less and less possible for us winners to lose in the future.