It was now less than a month before inauguration. Daily the papers gave
probable selections for the high posts under the approaching
administration; and, while many of them were attributed to my influence,
Roebuck's son as ambassador to Russia was the only one I even approved
of. As payments for the services of the plutocracy they were unnecessary
and foolishly lavish; as preparations for a renomination and reëlection,
the two guiding factors in every plan of a President-elect, they were
preposterous. They were first steps toward an administration that would
make Scarborough's triumph inevitable, in spite of his handicap of
idealism.
I sent Woodruff west to find out what Burbank was doing about the places
I had pledged--all of them less "honorable" but more lucrative offices
which party workers covet. He returned in a few days with the news that,
according to the best information he could get through his spies in
Burbank's _entourage_, all our pledges would be broken; the
Sayler-Burbank machine was to be made over into a Goodrich-Burbank.
I saw that I could not much longer delay action. But I resolved to put
it off until the very last minute, meanwhile trying to force Burbank to
send for me. My cannonade upon Goodrich in six thousand newspapers,
great and small, throughout the West and South, had been reinforced by
the bulk of the opposition press. I could not believe it was to be
without influence upon the timid Burbank, even though he knew who was
back of the attack, and precisely how I was directing it. I was
relying--as I afterward learned, not in vain--upon my faithful De Milt
to bring to "Cousin James'" attention the outburst of public sentiment
against his guide, philosopher and friend, the Wall Street
fetch-and-carry.
I had fixed on February fifteenth as the date on which I would telegraph
a formal demand for an interview. On February eleventh, he
surrendered--he wired, asking me to come. I took a chance; I wired back
a polite request to be excused as I had urgent business in Chicago. And
twenty-four hours later I passed within thirty miles of Rivington on my
way to Chicago with Carlotta--we were going to see Junior, hugely proud
of himself and his twenty-seven dollars a week. At the Auditorium a
telegram waited from Burbank: He hoped I would come as soon as I could;
the matters he wished to discuss were most important.
Toward noon of the third day thereafter we were greeting each other--he
with an attempt at his old-time cordiality, I without concealment of at
least the coldness I felt. But my manner apparently, and probably,
escaped his notice. He was now blind and drunk with the incense that had
been whirling about him in dense clouds for three months; he was
incapable of doubting the bliss of any human being he was gracious to.
He shut me in with him and began confiding the plans he and Goodrich had
made--cabinet places, foreign posts, and so forth. His voice, lingering
and luxuriating upon the titles--"my ambassador to his Brittanic
Majesty," "my ambassador to the German Emperor," and so on--amused and a
little, but only a little, astonished me; I had always known that he
was a through-and-through snob. For nearly an hour I watched his
ingenuous, childish delight in bathing himself in himself, the wonderful
fountain of all these honors. At last he finished, laid down his list,
took off his nose-glasses. "Well, Harvey, what do you think?" he asked,
and waited with sparkling eyes for my enthusiastic approval.
"I see Goodrich drove a hard bargain," said I. "Yet he came on his
knees, if you had but realized it."
Burbank's color mounted. "What do you mean, Sayler?" he inquired, the
faint beginnings of the insulted god in his tone and manner.
"You asked my opinion," I answered, "I'm giving it. I don't recall a
single name that isn't obviously a Goodrich suggestion. Even the Roebuck
appointment--"
"Sayler," he interrupted, in a forbearing tone, "I wish you would not
remind me so often of your prejudice against Senator Goodrich. It is
unworthy of you. But for my tact--pardon my frankness--your prejudice
would have driven him away, and with him a support he controls--"