After the funeral I lingered at our Fredonia place. There was the estate
to settle; my two daughters had now no one to look after them; Junior
must be started right at learning the business of which he would soon be
the head, as his uncle had shown himself far too easy-going for large
executive responsibility. So, I stayed on, doing just enough to keep a
face of plausibility upon my pretexts for not returning to Washington.
The fact was that Carlotta's death had deepened my mood of distaste into
disgust. It had set me to brooding over the futility and pettiness of my
activities in politics, of all activities of whatever kind. I watched Ed
and my children resuming the routine of their lives, swiftly adjusting
themselves to the loss of one who had been so dear to them and
apparently so necessary to their happiness. The cry of "man overboard,"
a few ripples, a few tears; the sailing on, with the surface of the
water smooth again and the faces keen and bright.
Woodruff wrote, urging; then he sent telegram after telegram. Still I
procrastinated; for all the effect his letters and telegrams had upon
me, I might as well have left them unopened. My final answer was: "Act
as you would if I were dead."
Probably, what had given my pessimism its somberest tone was the
attitude of the public toward Burbank's high appointments. I had
confidently predicted that filling all the high offices with men who had
no interest but "the interests," men who were notoriously the agents and
servants of the great "campaign contributors," would cause a public
outcry that could not be ignored. The opposition press did make
perfunctory criticisms; but nowhere was there a sign that the people
were really angered.
I got the clue to this mystery from my gardener, who prided himself on
being strenuously of the opposition party. "What do you think of the new
administration?" said I when I came upon him one morning at the
rhododendron beds.
"Much better than I allowed," said he. "Burbank's got good men around
him."
"You approve of his Cabinet?"
"Of course, they're all strong party men. I like a good party man. I
like a man that has convictions and principles, and stands up for 'em."
"Your newspapers say some pretty severe things about those men."
"So I read," said he, "but you know how that is, Mr. Sayler. They've got
to pound 'em to please the party. But nobody believes much he sees in
the newspapers. Whenever I read an item about things I happen to know,
it's all wrong. And I guess they don't get it any nearer right about the
things I don't happen to know. Now, all this here talk of there being so
many millionaires--I don't take no kind of stock in it."
"No?" said I.
"Of course, some's poor and some's rich--that's got to be. But I think
it's all newspaper lies about these here big fortunes and about all the
leading men in politics being corrupt. I know it ain't so about the
leading men in _my_ party, and I reckon there ain't no more truth in it
about the leading men of your'n. I was saying to my wife last night,
'It's all newspaper lies,' says I, 'just like the story they printed
about Mrs. Timmins eloping with Maria Wilmerding's husband, when she had
only went over to Rabbit Forks to visit her married daughter.' No, they
can't fool me--them papers."
"That's one way of looking at it," said I.
"It's horse sense," said he.
And I have no doubt that to the average citizen, leading a small, quiet
life and dealing with affairs in corner-grocery retail, the stupendous
facts of accumulations of wealth and wholesale, far-and-wide purchases
of the politicians, the vast system of bribery, with bribes adapted to
every taste and conscience, seem impossibilities, romancings of
partizanship and envy and sensationalism. Nor can he understand the way
superior men play the great games, the heartlessness of ambition, the
cynicism of political and commercial prostitution, the sense of
superiority to the legal and moral codes which comes to most men with
success.
Your average citizen is a hero-worshiper too. He knows his own and his
neighbor's weaknesses, but he gapes up at the great with glamoured eyes,
and listens to their smooth plausibilities as to the reading of the
Gospel from the pulpit. He belongs to the large mass of those who
believe, not to the small class of those who question. But for the
rivalries and jealousies of superior men which have kept them always
divided into two parties, the ins and the outs, I imagine the masses
would have remained for ever sunk in the most hopeless, if the most
delightful, slavery--that in which the slave accepts his lowliness as a
divine ordinance and looks up to his oppressors and plunderers as
hero-leaders. And no doubt, so long as the exuberant riches of our
country enable the triumphant class to "take care of" all the hungry who
have intellect enough to make themselves dangerous, we shall have no
change--except occasional spasms whenever a large number of unplaced
intelligent hungry are forcing the full and fat to make room for them.
How long will this be?
If our education did not merely feed prejudices instead of removing
them, I should say not long. As it is, I expect to "leave the world as
wicked and as foolish as I found it." At any rate, until the millenium,
I shall continue to play the game under the rules of human
nature--instead of under the rules of human ideals, as does my esteemed
friend Scarborough. And I claim that we practical men are as true and
useful servants of our country and of our fellow men as he. If men like
him are the light, men like us are the lantern that shields it from the
alternating winds of rapacity and resentment.
But, in running on about myself, I have got away from my point, which
was how slight and even flimsy a pretense of fairness will shelter a man
in high place--and therefore a Burbank. "He will fool the people as
easily as he fools himself," said I. And more than ever it seemed to me
that I must keep out of the game of his administration. My necessity of
party regularity made it impossible for me to oppose him; my equal
necessity of not outraging my sense of the wise, not to speak of the
decent, made it impossible for me to abet him.
At last Woodruff came in person. When his name was brought to me, I
regretted that I could not follow my strong impulse to refuse to see
him. But at sight of his big strong body and big strong face, with its
typically American careless good humor--the cool head, the warm heart,
the amused eyes and lips that could also harden into sternness of
resolution--at sight of this old friend and companion-in-arms, my mood
began to lift and I felt him stirring in it like sunshine attacking a
fog. "I know what you've come to say," I began, "but don't say it. I
shall keep to my tent for the present."
"Then you won't have a tent to keep to," retorted he.
"Very well," said I. "My private affairs will give me all the occupation
I need."
He laughed. "The general resigns from the command of the army to play
with a box of lead soldiers."
"That sounds well," said I. "But the better the analogy, the worse the
logic. I am going out of the business of making and working off gold
bricks and green goods--and that's no analogy."
"Then you must be going to kill yourself," he replied. "For that's
life."
"Public life--active life," said I. "Here, there are other things." And
I looked toward my two daughters, whose laughter reached us from their
pony-cart just rounding a distant curve in the drive.
His gaze followed mine and he watched the two children until they were
out of sight, watched them with the saddest, hungriest look in his eyes.
"Guess you're right," he said gruffly.