or spoils which he had failed to satisfy--the greed which the
Boss had framed his makeshift to meet. The opportunity for jobbery was
left as wide as before, perhaps wider; for while under color of economy
the appropriation cut the reasonable sum Shelby had suggested as a
beginning, it was a vast amount still. So conceived, and at the
eleventh hour saddled with an amendment directing the building of a
costly feeder which the engineers had declared needless, the travesty
of all the governor's good intentions passed both Houses by a narrow
vote, and reached Shelby himself.

Jacob Krantz, whose interest in this particular bit of legislation was
keen, in his own vernacular hit off the situation.

"It's time for a show-down," said this observer of things as they are.
"The Boss has put it up to the Champion of Canals to make good his
bluff."

Shelby realized this truth clearly enough in the ten days given him by
the constitution for his decision; but he took no one into his
confidence, and fought his dreary battle alone. It was a hard choice
that destiny had offered him in the end--total shipwreck of his brave
dreamings, or a salvage of what perhaps might better sink. Had his
duty by the people been absolutely plain, he would have acted
instantly, for he had striven to be the people's governor; but in the
ten days of his ordeal the people seemed to speak with a hundred
differing tongues, whose single coherent message proclaimed what he
already knew--that for him there could be no middle way. The bill was
in the form of a concurrent resolution to submit the appropriation to
popular vote; but Shelby had no mind to dodge his responsibility. With
his record, with his conception of his trust, he must confront the
issue squarely--sign or reject.

One of the most clamorous of the newspapers favoring the bill phrased
his choice yet more narrowly, quoting copiously from his speeches and
bidding him "sign or stultify." But appeals to his consistency found
him deaf. The man who never changed his mind and the man who never
changed his coat were to him equally ridiculous; time had its sport
with each of them. Another attack, made when he had held the bill for
upward of a week and a rumor of a veto was rife, drew blood. Volney
Sprague's _Whig_ which, without ever thinking good of Shelby, had long
since returned to the party fold, embraced the occasion to revive the
old scandals linking Shelby's name to unsavory canal contracts