One November day nearly two years after my admission as junior member of
the firm of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon seven gentlemen met at luncheon in
the Boyne Club; Mr. Barbour, President of the Railroad, Mr. Scherer, of
the Boyne Iron Works and other corporations, Mr. Leonard Dickinson, of
the Corn National Bank, Mr. Halsey, a prominent banker from the other
great city of the state, Mr. Grunewald, Chairman of the Republican State
Committee, and Mr. Frederick Grierson, who had become a very important
man in our community. At four o'clock they emerged from the club:
citizens in Boyne Street who saw them chatting amicably on the steps
little suspected that in the last three hours these gentlemen had chosen
and practically elected the man who was to succeed Mr. Wade as United
States Senator in Washington. Those were the days in which great affairs
were simply and efficiently handled. No democratic nonsense about leaving
the choice to an electorate that did not know what it wanted.
The man chosen to fill this high position was Theodore Watling. He said
he would think about the matter.
In the nation at large, through the defection of certain Northern states
neither so conservative nor fortunate as ours, the Democratic party was
in power, which naturally implies financial depression. There was no
question about our ability to send a Republican Senator; the choice in
the Boyne Club was final; but before the legislature should ratify it, a
year or so hence, it were just as well that the people of the state
should be convinced that they desired Mr. Watling more than any other
man; and surely enough, in a little while such a conviction sprang up
spontaneously. In offices and restaurants and hotels, men began to
suggest to each other what a fine thing it would be if Theodore Watling
might be persuaded to accept the toga; at the banks, when customers
called to renew their notes and tight money was discussed and Democrats
excoriated, it was generally agreed that the obvious thing to do was to
get a safe man in the Senate. From the very first, Watling sentiment
stirred like spring sap after a hard winter.
The country newspapers, watered by providential rains, began to put forth
tender little editorial shoots, which Mr. Judah B. Tallant presently
collected and presented in a charming bouquet in the Morning Era. "The
Voice of the State Press;" thus was the column headed; and the remarks of
the Hon. Fitch Truesdale, of the St. Helen's Messenger, were given a
special prominence. Mr. Truesdale was the first, in his section, to be
inspired by the happy thought that the one man preeminently fitted to
represent the state in the present crisis, when her great industries had
been crippled by Democratic folly, was Mr. Theodore Watling. The Rossiter
Banner, the Elkington Star, the Belfast Recorder, and I know not how many
others simultaneously began to sing Mr. Watling's praises.
"Not since the troublous times of the Civil War," declared the Morning
Era, "had the demand for any man been so unanimous." As a proof of it,
there were the country newspapers, "which reflected the sober opinion of
the firesides of the common people."
There are certain industrious gentlemen to whom little credit is given,
and who, unlike the average citizen who reserves his enthusiasm for
election time, are patriotic enough to labour for their country's good
all the year round. When in town, it was their habit to pay a friendly
call on the Counsel for the Railroad, Mr. Miller Gorse, in the Corn Bank
Building. He was never too busy to converse with them; or, it might
better be said, to listen to them converse. Let some legally and
politically ambitious young man observe Mr. Gorse's method. Did he
inquire what the party worker thought of Mr. Watling for the Senate? Not
at all! But before the party worker left he was telling Mr. Gorse that
public sentiment demanded Mr. Watling. After leaving Mr. Gorse they
wended their way to the Durrett Building and handed their cards over the
rail of the offices of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon. Mr. Watling shook
hands with scores of them, and they departed, well satisfied with the
flavour of his cigars and intoxicated by his personality. He had a
marvellous way of cutting short an interview without giving offence. Some
of them he turned over to Mr. Paret, whom he particularly desired they
should know. Thus Mr. Paret acquired many valuable additions to his
acquaintance, cultivated a memory for names and faces that was to stand
him in good stead; and kept, besides, an indexed note-book into which he
put various bits of interesting information concerning each. Though not
immediately lucrative, it was all, no doubt, part of a lawyer's
education.
During the summer and the following winter Colonel Paul Varney came often
to town and spent much of his time in Mr. Paret's office smoking Mr.
Watling's cigars and discussing the coming campaign, in which he took a
whole-souled interest.
"Say, Hugh, this is goin' slick!" he would exclaim, his eyes glittering
like round buttons of jet. "I never saw a campaign where they fell in the
way they're doing now. If it was anybody else but Theodore Watling, it
would scare me. You ought to have been in Jim Broadhurst's campaign," he
added, referring to the junior senator, "they wouldn't wood up at all,
they was just listless. But Gorse and Barbour and the rest wanted him,
and we had to put him over. I reckon he is useful down there in
Washington, but say, do you know what he always reminded me of? One of
those mud-turtles I used to play with as a boy up in Columbia
County,--shuts up tight soon as he sees you coming. Now Theodore Watling
ain't like that, any way of speaking. We can get up some enthusiasm for a
man of his sort. He's liberal and big. He's made his pile, and he don't
begrudge some of it to the fellows who do the work. Mark my words, when
you see a man who wants a big office cheap, look out for him."
This, and much more wisdom I imbibed while assenting to my chief's
greatness. For Mr. Varney was right,--one could feel enthusiasm for
Theodore Watling; and my growing intimacy with him, the sense that I was
having a part in his career, a share in his success, became for the
moment the passion of my life. As the campaign progressed I gave more and
more time to it, and made frequent trips of a confidential nature to the
different counties of the state. The whole of my being was energized. The
national fever had thoroughly pervaded my blood--the national fever to
win. Prosperity--writ large--demanded it, and Theodore Watling
personified, incarnated the cause. I had neither the time nor the desire
to philosophize on this national fever, which animated all my associates:
animated, I might say, the nation, which was beginning to get into a
fever about games. If I remember rightly, it was about this time that
golf was introduced, tennis had become a commonplace, professional
baseball was in full swing; Ham Durrett had even organized a local polo
team.... The man who failed to win something tangible in sport or law or
business or politics was counted out. Such was the spirit of America, in
the closing years of the nineteenth century.
And yet, when one has said this, one has failed to express the national
Geist in all its subtlety. In brief, the great American sport was not so
much to win the game as to beat it; the evasion of rules challenged our
ingenuity; and having won, we set about devising methods whereby it would
be less and less possible for us winners to lose in the future. No better
illustration of this tendency could be given than the development which
had recently taken place in the field of our city politics, hitherto the
battle-ground of Irish politicians who had fought one another for
supremacy. Individualism had been rampant, competition the custom; you
bought an alderman, or a boss who owned four or five aldermen, and then
you never could be sure you were to get what you wanted, or that the
aldermen and the bosses would "stay bought." But now a genius had
appeared, an American genius who had arisen swiftly and almost silently,
who appealed to the imagination, and whose name was often mentioned in a
whisper,--the Hon. Judd Jason, sometimes known as the Spider, who
organized the City Hall and capitalized it; an ultimate and logical
effect--if one had considered it--of the Manchester school of economics.
Enlightened self-interest, stripped of sentiment, ends on Judd Jasons. He
ran the city even as Mr. Sherrill ran his department store; you paid your
price. It was very convenient. Being a genius, Mr. Jason did not wholly
break with tradition, but retained those elements of the old muddled
system that had their value, chartering steamboats for outings on the
river, giving colossal picnics in Lowry Park. The poor and the wanderer
and the criminal (of the male sex at least) were cared for. But he was
not loved, as the rough-and-tumble Irishmen had been loved; he did not
make himself common; he was surrounded by an aura of mystery which I
confess had not failed of effect on me. Once, and only once during my
legal apprenticeship, he had been pointed out to me on the street, where
he rarely ventured. His appearance was not impressive....
Mr. Jason could not, of course, prevent Mr. Watling's election, even did
he so desire, but he did command the allegiance of several city
candidates--both democratic and republican--for the state legislature,
who had as yet failed to announce their preferences for United States
Senator. It was important that Mr. Watling's vote should be large, as
indicative of a public reaction and repudiation of Democratic national
folly. This matter among others was the subject of discussion one July
morning when the Republican State Chairman was in the city; Mr. Grunewald
expressed anxiety over Mr. Jason's continued silence. It was expedient
that somebody should "see" the boss.
"Why not Paret?" suggested Leonard Dickinson. Mr. Watling was not present
at this conference. "Paret seems to be running Watling's campaign,
anyway."
It was settled that I should be the emissary. With lively sensations of
curiosity and excitement, tempered by a certain anxiety as to my ability
to match wits with the Spider, I made my way to his "lair" over Monahan's
saloon, situated in a district that was anything but respectable. The
saloon, on the ground floor, had two apartments; the bar-room proper
where Mike Monahan, chamberlain of the establishment, was wont to stand,
red faced and smiling, to greet the courtiers, big and little, the party
workers, the district leaders, the hangers-on ready to be hired, the city
officials, the police judges,--yes, and the dignified members of state
courts whose elections depended on Mr. Jason's favour: even Judge Bering,
whose acquaintance I had made the day I had come, as a law student, to
Mr. Watling's office, unbent from time to time sufficiently to call there
for a small glass of rye and water, and to relate, with his owl-like
gravity, an anecdote to the "boys." The saloon represented Democracy, so
dear to the American public. Here all were welcome, even the
light-fingered gentlemen who enjoyed the privilege of police protection;
and who sometimes, through fortuitous circumstances, were hauled before
the very magistrates with whom they had rubbed elbows on the polished
rail. Behind the bar-room, and separated from it by swinging doors only
the elite ventured to thrust apart, was an audience chamber whither Mr.
Jason occasionally descended. Anecdote and political reminiscence gave
place here to matters of high policy.
I had several times come to the saloon in the days of my apprenticeship
in search of some judge or official, and once I had run down here the
city auditor himself. Mike Monahan, whose affair it was to know everyone,
recognized me. It was part of his business, also, to understand that I
was now a member of the firm of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon.
"Good morning to you, Mr. Paret," he said suavely. We held a colloquy in
undertones over the bar, eyed by the two or three customers who were
present. Mr. Monahan disappeared, but presently returned to whisper:
"Sure, he'll see you," to lead the way through the swinging doors and up
a dark stairway. I came suddenly on a room in the greatest disorder, its
tables and chairs piled high with newspapers and letters, its windows
streaked with soot. From an open door on its farther side issued a voice.
"Is that you, Mr. Paret? Come in here."
It was little less than a command.
"Heard of you, Mr. Paret. Glad to know you. Sit down, won't you?"
The inner room was almost dark. I made out a bed in the corner, and
propped up in the bed a man; but for the moment I was most aware of a
pair of eyes that flared up when the man spoke, and died down again when
he became silent. They reminded me of those insects which in my childhood
days we called "lightning bugs." Mr. Jason gave me a hand like a woman's.
I expressed my pleasure at meeting him, and took a chair beside the bed.
"I believe you're a partner of Theodore Watling's now aren't you? Smart
man, Watling."
"He'll make a good senator," I replied, accepting the opening.
"You think he'll get elected--do you?" Mr. Jason inquired.