own no longer terrified. Evidently the Boss knew this, and
failing the birch, dangled a prize.

What Shelby did not divine was the incentive force of pique. While the
leader gave his smiling interviews to the reporters on the subject of
the governor's vetoes, he had too often had to dissemble that his
earliest information came from them. He did not resent the vetoes, if
they made party capital; nor did he resent Shelby's popularity, for he
liked him. The bitterness of the cup was that the ingrate took no
pains to inquire whether he cared or not. It is true that in large
questions Shelby had uniformly sought his counsel, and the session had
been fairly prolific in legislation redounding to the party credit; but
the governor's independence in the lesser matters attainted his
loyalty. What the one man considered upholding the dignity of his
office, the other interpreted as leze-majesty.

Shelby's attitude toward the presidential chit-chat was frankly human.
Too modest to measure himself beside the greater successors of
Washington, he yet knew himself to be as well equipped as many who had
held the office; and, without troubling his sleep, determined that
should the boss-made boom attain genuine popularity, it might drift
where it would without hindrance from him. Precisely this occurred.
The governor's practicality smoothed the way to his indorsement by men
whose foremost interest was business rather than politics, and a
banquet given him late in April by a great commercial organization of
New York, which approved his policy of letting the city mind its own
affairs, set him definitely in the race.

Throned in a gallery above the diners; courted by heroines of by-gone
horse shows, the hem of whose garments she had never dreamed to touch;
with the White House looming mistily through the sheen of silver and
crystal and napery under tinted lights, Cora viewed the taking
spectacle as a personal apotheosis. A silly periodical for "ladies"
had recently printed an article about her which ascribed Shelby's
making to herself, and she, in this rosy hour believing, looked upon
her handiwork, and saw that it was tolerably good. Statesmen,
diplomats, captains of industry, the smiling Boss--a very parliament of
brains--did the governor honor, and the most famous after-dinner
speaker in the land proclaimed him New York's favorite son.

To most of his listeners Shelby's reply seemed admirable. A morning
paper called it "a lit