The President | Page 8

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