IX[ToC]
NEGATIVE FUNDAMENTALS
At one of the great official receptions at the White House one night some years ago, a group of two or three gentlemen were observing the swirling throng, with its ambitions, its jealousies, its brief flashes of happiness, its numberless and infinitesimal intrigues, its atmosphere of jaded, blasé, and defeated expectations.
One of the group was perhaps the greatest master of that mere political craft and that management of men for the ordinary uses of politics, as we employ the word, that the country has yet produced. He was a sage of human nature. It was this quality, combined with many other qualities, and the existence of certain conditions, that made him the power that he was. From a practical point of view, what he said about men was always worth while.
"No, I don't consider him effective," said this great politician when asked his opinion of a certain very prominent man in public life, who had just entered, and who was chatting and occasionally laughing with some boisterousness. "Really, he talks too much. Not that he betrays his confidences; not even that he annoys, for what he says is always bright; but—he talks too much; that is all."
"It's a pity," said one of the group, who was a famous Washington newspaper correspondent, "that that man has never married."
He was talking of another very strong professional and political man who had reached more than forty years of age and was still a bachelor. "He needs the finer sense and restraining influence of woman in his life."