t is torpid and
discouraged. We cannot any of us, you see, live to ourselves alone. Does
not the preacher say that? And do we not all look about us in the pews,
when he thus moralizes, to see who has prospered? The B's have taken a
back seat, the C's have moved up nearer the pulpit. There is a reason for
these things, my friends.

I am sorry to say that Margaret was usually obliged to go alone to the
little church where she said her prayers; for however restful her life
might have been while that season was getting under way, Henderson was
involved in the most serious struggle of his life--a shameful kind of
conspiracy, Margaret told Carmen, against him. I have hinted at his
annoyance in the courts. Ever since September he had been pestered with
injunctions, threatened with attachments. And now December had come and
Congress was in session; in the very first days an investigation had been
ordered into the land grants involved in the Southwestern operations.
Uncle Jerry was in Washington to explain matters there, and Henderson,
with the ablest counsel in the city, was fighting in the courts. The
affair made a tremendous stir. Some of the bondholders of the A. and B.
happened to be men of prominence, and able to make a noise about their
injury. As several millions were involved in this one branch of the case
--the suit of the bondholders--the newspapers treated it with the
consideration and dignity it deserved. It was a vast financial operation,
some said, scathingly, a "deal," but the magnitude of it prevented it
from falling into the reports of petty swindling that appear in the
police-court column. It was a public affair, and not to be judged by
one's private standard. I know that there were remarks made about
Henderson that would have pained Margaret if she had heard them, but I
never heard that he lost standing in the street. Still, in justice to the
street it must be said that it charitably waits for things to be proven,
and that if Henderson had failed, he might have had little more lenient
judgment in the street than elsewhere.

In fact, those were very trying days for him-days when he needed all the
private sympathy he could get, and to be shielded, in his great fight
with the conspiracy, from petty private annoyances. It needed all his
courage and good-temper and bonhomie to carry him through. That he went
through was evidence not only of his adroitness and ability, but it was
proof also that he was a good fell