HOW A PRESIDENT IS BRED
Mr. Patrick Henry Hanway, a Senator of the United States, had the
countenance of a prelate and the conscience of a buccaneer. His
grandfather--it was at this old gentleman, for lack of information, he
was compelled to stop his ancestral count--was a farmer in his day.
Also, personally, he had been the soul of ignorance and religion, and of
a narrowness touching Scriptural things that oft got him into trouble.
Grandfather Hanway read his Bible and believed it. He held that the
earth was flat; that it had four corners; and that the sun went around
the earth. He replied to a neighbor who assured him that the earth
revolved, by placing a pan of water on his gate-post. Not a drop was
spilled, not a spoonful missing, in the morning. He showed this to the
astronomical neighbor as refutatory of that theory of revolution.
"For," said Grandfather Hanway, with a logical directness which among
the world's greatest has more than once found parallel, "if the y'earth
had turned over in the night like you allow, that water would have done
run out."
When the astronomical one undertook a counter argument, Grandfather
Hanway fell upon him with the blind, unreasoning fury of a holy war and
beat him beyond expression. After that Grandfather Hanway was left
undisturbed in his beliefs and their demonstrations, and tilled his sour
acres and begat a son.
The son, Hiram Hanway, was sly and lazy, and not wanting in a gift for
making money that was rather the fruit of avarice than any general
length and breadth and depth of native wit. Having occasion to visit, as
a young man, the little humdrum capital of his State, he stayed there,
and engaged in the trade of lobbyist before the name was coined. He,
too, married, and had children--Patrick Henry Hanway and Barbara Hanway.
These his offspring were given a peculiar albeit not always a sumptuous
bringing up.
When Patrick Henry Hanway was about the age of Oliver Twist at the time
Bill Sykes shoved him through the window, Hiram Hanway caused him to be
appointed page in the State Senate. There, for eight years, he lived in
the midst of all that treason and mendacity and cowardice and rapacity
and dishonor which as raw materials are ground together to produce laws
for a commonwealth. He learned early that the ten commandments have no
bearing on politics and legislation, and was taught that part of valor
which, basing itself on greed and cunning and fear, is called
discretion, and consists in first running from an enemy and then hiding
from pursuit. Altogether, those eight years might have been less
pernicious in their influence had Patrick Henry Hanway passed them with
the chain gang, and he emerged therefrom, to cast his first vote,
treacherous and plausible and boneless and false--as voracious as a pike
and as much without a principle.
Patrick Henry Hanway did not follow in the precise footsteps of his
sire. He resolved to make his money by pulling and hauling at
legislation; but the methods should be changed. He would improve upon
his father, and instead of pulling and hauling from the lobby, he would
pull and haul from within. The returns were surer; also it was easier to
knead and mold and bake one's loaf of legislation as a member, with a
seat in Senate or Assembly, than as some unassigned John Smith, who,
with a handful of bribes and a heart full of cheap intrigue, must do his
work from the corridor. A legislative seat was a two-edged sword to cut
both ways. You could trade with it, using it as a bribe, bartering vote
for vote; that was one edge. Or you could threaten with it, promising
nay for nay, and thus compel some member to save your bill to save his
own; that was the other edge. A mere bribe from the lobby owned but the
one edge; it was like a cavalry saber; you might make the one slash at a
required vote, with as many chances of missing as of cutting it down.
Every argument, therefore, pointed to a seat; whereat Patrick Henry
Hanway bent himself to its acquirement, and at the age of twenty-six he
was sworn to uphold the law and the Constitution and told to vote in the
Assembly. In that body he flourished for ten years, while his manhood
mildewed and his pockets filled.
The native State of Patrick Henry Hanway was a moss-grown member of the
republic and had been one of the original thirteen. It possessed with
other _impedimenta_ a moss-grown aristocracy that borrowed money,
devoured canvasbacks, drank burgundy, wore spotless tow in summer, clung
to the duello, and talked of days of greatness which had been before the
war. It carried moss-grown laws upon its statute books which arranged
for the capture of witches, the flogging of Quakers at a cart's tail,
the boring of Presbyterian tongues with red-hot irons, and the
punishment of masters who oppressed their hapless slaves with terrapin
oftener than three times a week. However, these measures, excellent
doubtless in their hour, together with the aristocracy referred to, had
fallen to decay.
The moss-grown aristocracy were aware in a lifeless, lofty way of
Patrick Henry Hanway, and tolerating while they despised him as one
without an origin, permitted him his place in the legislature. Somebody
must go, and why not Patrick Henry Hanway? They, the aristocracy, would
there command his services in what legislation touching game, and
oysterbeds, and the foreclosure of mortgages they required, and that was
all their need. The supple Patrick Henry Hanway thanked the aristocracy
for the honor, took the place, and carried out their wishes for
patrolling oysterbeds, protecting canvasbacks, and preventing
foreclosures.
While these conditions of mutual helpfulness subsisted, and Patrick
Henry Hanway kept his hat off in the presence of his patrons, nothing
could be finer than that peace which was. But time went on, and storms
of change came brewing. Patrick Henry Hanway, expanding beyond the
pent-up Utica of a State Capitol, decided upon a political migration to
the Senate of the United States.
When this news was understood by men, the shocked aristocracy let their
canvasbacks grow cold and their burgundy stand untasted. With horrified
voice they commanded "No!" The United States Senate had been ever
reserved for gentlemen, and Patrick Henry Hanway was a clod. The fiat
went forth; Patrick Henry Hanway should not go to the Senate; a
wide-eyed patrician wonder was abroad that he should have had the
insolent temerity to harbor such a dream--he who was of the social
reptilia and could not show an ancestor who had owned a slave!
This purple opposition did not surprise the astute Patrick Henry Hanway;
it had been foreseen, and he met it with prompt money. He had made his
alliances with divers railway corporations and other big companies, and
set in to overturn that feudalism in politics which had theretofore been
dominant. The aristocrats felt the attack upon their caste; they came
forth for that issue and the war wagged.
But the war was unequal. The aristocrats, who, like the Bourbons, had
learned nothing, forgotten nothing, plodded with horseback saddle-bag
politics. Patrick Henry Hanway met them with modern methods of telegraph
and steam. Right and left he sowed his gold among the peasantry. In the
end he went over his noble enemies like a train of cars and his
legislature sent him into Washington by a vote of three to one. He had
been there now twelve years and was just entering upon his third term.
Moreover, he had fortified his position; his enemies were now powerless
to do him harm; and at the time this story finds him he had constructed
a machine which rendered his hold upon his State as unshakable as
Gibraltar's famous rock. Patrick Henry Hanway might now be Senator for
what space he pleased, and nothing left for that opposing nobility but
to glare in helpless rancor and digest its spleen.
When Patrick Henry Hanway came to Washington he was unhampered of even a
shadow of concern for any public good. His sole thought was himself; his
patriotism, if he ever possessed any, had perished long before. Some
said that its feeble wick went flickering out in those earlier hours of
civil war. Patrick Henry Hanway, rather from a blind impression of
possible pillage than any eagerness to uphold a Union which seemed
toppling to its fall, enlisted for ninety days. As he plowed through
rain and mud on the painful occasion of a night march, he addressed the
man on his right in these remarkable words:
"Bill, this is the last d----d time I'll ever love a country!"
And it was.
The expletive, however, marked how deep dwelt the determination of
Patrick Henry Hanway; for even as a young man he had taught himself a
suave and cautious conversation, avoiding profanity as of those lingual
vices that never made and sometimes lost a dollar.
The Senate of this republic, at the time when Patrick Henry Hanway was
given his seat therein, was a thing of granite and ice to all newcomers.
The oldsters took no more notice of the novice in their midst than if he
had not been, and it was Senate tradition that a member must hold his
seat a year before he could speak and three before he would be listened
to. If a man were cast away on a desert island, the local savage could
be relied upon to meet him on the beach and welcome him with either a
square meal or club. Not so in the cold customs of the Senate. The
wanderer thrown upon its arctic shores might starve or freeze or perish
in what way he would; never an oldster of them all would make a sign.
Each sat in mighty state, like some ancient walrus on his cake of ice,
and made the new one feel his littleness. If through ignorance or worse
the new one sought to be heard, the old walruses goggle-eyed him
ferociously. If the new one persisted, they slipped from their cakes of
ice and swam to the seclusion of the cloakrooms, leaving the new one
talking to himself. This snub was commonly enough to cause the collapse
of the new one, after which the old walruses would return to their cakes
of ice.
Senator Hanway--one should give him his title when now he has earned
it--was not inclined to abide by those gag traditions that ruled the
Senate beaches. He was supple, smooth, apologetic, deprecatory, and his
nature was one which would sooner run a mile than fight a moment. For
all that he was wise in his generation, fearing no one who could not
reach him for his injury. He did not, for instance, fear the Senate
walruses, goggle-eying him from their ice cakes. They could do him no
harm; he did not take his seat by their permission. Upon deliberate
plan, therefore, Senator Hanway had not been in his place a fortnight
before he got the floor on an appropriation, and began to voice his
views. The walruses at first goggle-eyed him in wrathful amazement; but
he kept on. Then, as was their habit, they set sail for the cloakrooms,
waving condemnatory flippers.
[Illustration: One of the Most Reverend of the Senate Walruses]
Senator Hanway had thought of this, and the cloakroom move did not
disconcert him. He seized on one of the most reverend of the Senate
walruses, one festooned with the very seaweed of Senate tradition, and,
casting him, as it were, on the coals of his hot rhetoric, proceeded to
roast him exhaustively. The cloakroom walruses smelled the odor of
burning blubber and returned eagerly to their cakes of ice, for there is
nothing so pleasing to your true walrus as the spectacle of a brother
walrus being grilled. It was in time understood that if the walruses
placed an affront upon Senator Hanway he would assail them singly or in
the drove. Then the walruses made their peace with him and admitted him
to fellowship before his time; for your walrus cannot carry on a war and
is only terrible in appearance.
Now, when the seal of silence was taken from Senator Hanway and he found
himself consented to as a full-grown walrus possessed of every right of
the Senate beaches, he became deferential to his fellow Senators. He
curried their favor by pretending to consult with them, personally and
privately, on every Senate question that arose. He could be a great
courtier when he pleased and had a genius for flattery, and now that his
right to go without a gag was no longer disputed he devoted himself to
healing what wounds he had dealt the vanity of the oldsters. By this he
grew both popular and powerful; as a finale no man oftener had his
Senate way.
Senator Hanway, modestly and unobtrusively, did sundry Senate things
that stamped him a leader of men. He bore the labor of a staggering
filibuster, and more than any other prevented a measure that was meant
for his party's destruction. In the lists of that filibuster he met the
champion of the opposition--a Senator of pouter-pigeon characteristics,
more formidable to look upon than to face--and, forensically speaking,
beat him like a carpet.
On another day when one of his party associates was to be unseated by so
close a vote that a single member of the Committee on Privileges and
Elections would determine the business either way, it was Senator
Hanway, no one knew how, who in manner secret captured that member from
the enemy. The captured one voted sheepishly in committee and continued
thus sheepish on the open Senate floor, although a beautiful woman
smiled and beamed upon him from the gallery as women smile and beam when
granted favors.
It was during Senator Hanway's second term, however, that he
accomplished the work which placed him at his party's fore and confirmed
him as its chief. The Senate, following a certain national election,
fell to be a tie. The party of Senator Hanway still had control of the
committees and generally of the Senate organization; but that election
had sent to be the Senate's presiding officer a Vice-President who
belonged with the opposition. On a tie, Senator Hanway's party would
find defeat by the vote of that new Vice-President.
It was then the pouter-pigeon chieftain moved that the Senate
organization be given over to him and his fellows. The motion would seem
to settle it. The vote on the floor would be equal, and the sagacious
pouter-pigeon reckoned on the new Vice-President to decide for him and
his. The party colleagues of Senator Hanway, many of them four terms old
in Senate mysteries, were eaten of despair; they saw no gateway of
escape. The pouter-pigeon would take possession, remake the committees,
and, practically speaking, thereby remake the legislation of that
Congress.
At this crisis, Senator Hanway took down the Constitution and showed by
that venerable document how the power of the Vice-President went no
farther than deciding ties on legislative questions; that when the
business at bay was a matter of Senate organization, he had no more to
say than had the last appointed messenger on the gallery doors. The
situation, in short, did not present a tie, for the settlement of which
the Vice-Presidential decision was possible; therefore, Senate things
must remain as they then were.
Senator Hanway's reading of Vice-Presidential powers was right, as even
the opposition confessed; he saved the Senate and thereby the nation to
his party, and his rule was established unchallenged over his people,
his least opinion becoming their cloud and their pillar of fire to guide
them day and night. He was made far and away the dominant figure of the
Senate.
Finding himself thus loftily situated and his hands so clothed with
power, Senator Hanway, looking over the plains of national politics,
conceived the hour ripe for another and a last step upward. For twelve
years a White House had been his dream; now he resolved to seek its
realization. From the Senate he would move to a Presidency; a double
term should close his career where Washington and Jefferson and Jackson
and other great ones of the past closed theirs.
True, Senator Hanway must win his party's nomination; and it was here he
took counsel with his Senate colleagues. Being consulted, the word of
those grave ones proved the very climax of flattery. Senators Vice and
Price and Dice and Ice, and Stuff and Bluff and Gruff and Muff, and Loot
and Coot and Hoot and Toot, and Wink and Blink and Drink and
Kink--statesmen all and of snow-capped eminence in the topography of
party--endorsed Senator Hanway's ambition without a wrinkle of distrust
to mar their brows or a moment lost in weighing the proposal. The Senate
became a Hanway propaganda. Even the opposition, so far as slightly lay
with them, were pleasantly willing to help the work along, and Senator
Hanway blushed to find himself a Senate idol. By the encouragement which
his colleagues gave him, and the generous light of it, Senator Hanway
saw the way clear to become the choice of his party's national
convention. But he must work.
It was in that prior day when Senator Hanway served his State in the
legislature that he wedded Dorothy Harley. It is to be assumed that he
loved her dearly; for twelve years later when she died his grief was
like a storm, and for the rest of his days he would as soon think of a
top hat without a crown as without a mourning band.
When Senator Hanway married Dorothy Harley, her brother, John Harley,
married Barbara Hanway. Whether this exchange of sisters by the two was
meant for retort or for compliment lived a point of dispute--without
being settled--among the friends of the high contracting parties for
many, many months.
Not that anyone suffered by these double nuptials; the families owned
equal social standing, having none at all, and were evenly balanced in
fortune, since neither had a dollar. Both Senator Hanway and John Harley
had their fortunes to make when, each with the other's sister on his
arm, they called in the preacher that day; and after the wedding they
set about the accumulation of those fortunes.
In a half-sense the two became partners; for while a lawmaker can be
highly useful to a man of energy outside the halls of legislation, the
converse is every inch as true. They must be folk of course who know and
trust one another; and, aside from marrying sisters--a fact calculated
to quickly teach two gentlemen the worst and the best about each
other--John Harley and Senator Hanway had been as Damon and Pythias for
a decade. Not that either would have died for the other, but he would
have lied and plotted and defrauded and stopped at nothing short of
murder for him, which, considering the money appetites of the pair and
those schemes they had for feeding them, should be vastly more
important.
When Senator Hanway came to Washington, John Harley and his wife,
Barbara Hanway-Harley as she preferred to style herself, came with him.
Senator Hanway made his home with the Harleys, when now he was a
widower; and the trio, with the daughter, Dorothy--named for the
Senator's wife--who lost her boot heel when Richard lost his heart, made
up a family of four, and took their place in Capital annals.
John Harley had a red and jovial face that promised conviviality. It was
the custom with John Harley to slap a new acquaintance on the shoulder
and hail him as "Old Man." He was long of body, short of leg, apoplectic
as to neck--a girthy, thick, explosive, boisterous gentleman, who could
order a good dinner and could eat one. He could find you a fair bottle
of wine, and then assist in emptying it. He aimed at the open and frank
and generous, and was willing you should think him of high temper, one
who would on provocation deal a knock-down blow.
Senator Hanway was his opposite, being of no more color than a monk and
of manners as precisely soft as a lady's. He never raised his voice,
never lost his temper; he strove for an accurate gentility--to give the
lie to noble foes at home--and far from owning any ferocities of fist,
retorted to a heated person who charged him with flat falsehood by a
mere shrug of the shoulders and a simple:
"I refuse to discuss it, sir!"
And all with a high air that left his opponent gasping and helpless and
floundering with the feeling that he had been somehow most severely and
completely, not to say most righteously, rebuked.
There you have vague charcoal sketches of Senator Hanway and John
Harley; you may note as wide a difference between the two as lies
between warclubs and poisons. And yet they fitted with each other like
the halves of a shell. Also they were masters of intrigue; only John
Harley intrigued like a Wolsey and Senator Hanway like a Richelieu.
John Harley played the business man, and was rough and plain and
blunt--a man of no genius and with loads of common sense. He made a
specialty of unpalatable truths and discarded sentiment. Indeed, he was
so good a business man that he got possession of a rotund interest in a
group of coal mines without the outlay of a dollar, and later became the
owner of sundry sheaves of railway stocks on the same surprising terms.
Not that the coal and the railway companies lost by John Harley. When it
was known that he possessed an interest in the mines, certain armor
plate mills and shipbuilding concerns, as well as nineteen steamboat
lines, came forward to buy the coal. As for the railway, whereas prior
to John Harley's introduction as shareholder and director it could get
no consideration in the way of freights from those giant corporations
which have to do with beef and sugar and oil--it being both slow and
crooked as a railroad--thereafter it was given all it could haul at
rates even with the best, and its prosperity became such that fifty-five
points were added to the quoted value of its stock.
It is possible that John Harley's nearness to Senator Hanway had
something to do with founding for him a railway and a coal-mine
popularity. The vote of a Senator may be important to armor plate and
shipbuilding concerns; as much might be said of companies that deal in
beef and sugar and oil. The action of a Senator may even become of
moment to a steamship line. The last was evidenced on a day when those
nineteen suddenly refused to purchase further coal from the Harley
mines. They were buying five millions of tons a year, those five
millions finding their way to the sea over the railway of which John
Harley was a director and in which he owned those sheaves of stocks, and
a fortune rose or fell by that refusal. The steamboats said they would
have no more Harley coal; it was stones and slates, they said.
Senator Hanway at once introduced a bill, with every chance of its
passage, which provided for a tariff reduction of ten per cent. _ad
valorem_ on goods brought to this country in American ships. Since the
recalcitrant nineteen were, to the last rebellionist among them, foreign
ships, flying alien flags, this threatened preference of American ships
took away their breath. The owners of those lines went black with rage;
however, their anger did not so obscure them but what they saw their
penitent way to readopt the Harley coal, and with that the mining and
carriage and sale of those annual five millions went forward as before.
The Hanway bill, which promised such American advantages, perished in
the pigeon holes of the committee; but not before the press of the
country had time to ring with the patriotism of Senator Hanway, and
praise that long-headed statesmanship which was about to build up a
Yankee merchant marine without committing the crime of subsidy.
John Harley and Senator Hanway at the time when Dorothy suffered that
momentous mishap of the heel, were both enrolled by popular opinion
among the country's millionaires. Each had been the frequent subject of
articles in the magazines, recounting his achievements and offering him
to the youth of America as a "Self-Made Man," whose example it would be
wise to steer by. In the Presidential plans of Senator Hanway, John
Harley nourished a flaming interest. With his pale brother-in-law in the
White House, what should better match the genius of John Harley than the
rôle of Warwick. He would pose as a President-maker. When the President
was made, and the world was saying "President Hanway," that man should
be dull indeed who did not look upon John Harley as the power behind the
curtain. He would control the backstairs; he would wear a White House
pass-key as a watch-charm! John Harley as well as Senator Hanway had his
dreams.
Both Dorothy and her mother were profound partisans of Senator Hanway.
Dorothy loved her "Uncle Pat" as much as she loved her father. Dorothy,
who could weigh a woman,--being of the sex,--might have felt occasional
misgivings as to her mother. She might now and again observe an
insufficiency that was almost the deficient. But of her father and
"Uncle Pat" she never possessed a doubt; the one was the best and the
other the greatest of men.
Dorothy was so far justified of her affection that to both John Harley
and Senator Hanway she stood for the model of all that was good and
beautiful in life. Hard and keen and never honest with the world at
large, the love of those two for the girl Dorothy was gold itself.
Neither said "No" to Dorothy; and neither made a dollar without thinking
how one day it would go to her. She was the joint darling; they would
divide her between them as the recipient of their loves while they lived
and their fortunes when they died. And many thought Dorothy lucky with
two such fathers to cherish her, two such men to conquer wealth
wherewith to feather-line her future.
John Harley made no secret of Senator Hanway's Presidential prospects,
and if he did not talk them over with his helpmeet, he listened while
she talked them over with him. Mrs. Hanway-Harley, who insisted more
vigorously than ever upon the hyphenation, would of necessity preside
over the White House. She saw and said this herself. The Harley family
would move to the White House. Anything short of that would be
preposterous.
Under such conditions and facing such a future, the tremendous
responsibilities of which already cast their shadow on her, Mrs.
Hanway-Harley was driven to take an interest in her brother's canvass;
and she took it. She gave her husband, John Harley, all sorts of advice,
and however much it might fail in quality, no one would have said that
in the matter of quantity Mrs. Hanway-Harley did not heap the measure
high. Senator Hanway himself she was not so ready to approach. He never
mentioned the question of his Presidential hopes and fears, holding to
the position of one who is sought. Under the circumstances, Mrs.
Hanway-Harley felt that it would be gross and forward to force the
subject with her brother, although she was certain that her silence
meant unmeasured loss to him. Mrs. Hanway-Harley was one of those
excellent women whereof it is the good fortune of the world to have such
store, who cherish the knowledge, not always shared by others, that
whatever they touch they benefit and wherever they advise they improve.
"Barbara," said Senator Hanway, on the morning of that day when Richard
meddled so crushingly with Storri's hand, "Barbara, there is a matter in
which you might please me very much."
Mrs. Hanway-Harley looked across the table at her brother, for the four
were at breakfast.
"I promise in advance," said she.
"There is a gentleman," went on Senator Hanway, "I met him for a
moment--a Mr. Gwynn. You ladies know how to arrange these things. I want
to have him--not too large a party, you know--have him meet Gruff and
Stuff and two or three of my Senate friends. He is vastly rich, with
tremendous railway connections. I need not explain; but conditions may
arise that would make Mr. Gywnn prodigiously important--extremely so. I
don't know how you'll manage; he is exceedingly conventional--one of
your highbred English who must be approached just so or they take
alarm. But I'm sure, Barbara, you'll bring the matter about; and I leave
it to you with confidence."