They were by this time far out Sixth Street, at the edge of town; a little farther on lay the open country. They came to a pasture with a broken fence and a tree.
“Let’s sit down here,” Holman said, “and rest, and I’ll get on with my story.”
They sat side by side on the bank at the roots of the elm, and Holman, having finished his cigar and being a man who seemed to require tobacco in some form every moment of the day, drew out a long plug and a knife and cut a piece and put it comfortably into his mouth.
“Chew?” he said, proffering tobacco and knife. McCray shook his head, but lighted a cigarette. And the old and the new generation sat there side by side on the bank.
“Interested?” asked Holman.
“Yes; go on.”
“Well, this young fellow I’m telling you of—the legislature was just a stepping-stone to him; that’s what he thought and that’s what everybody thought; beyond that were congress, governor, senator, everything. He went right ahead, was popular and influential, got good committees, and when he got up to speak the house grew quiet—you’ve seen it that way yourself—and he worked and studied, and back home there was the girl—and they wanted to get married. But he was poor—mighty poor.”
Holman leaned over, stretched out his long, thin arm—McCray noted the frayed cuffbands—and plucked a spear of young grass, pulled the thin, transparent, whitish-green blade out of its delicate sheath and, squinting his eyes, examined it minutely, as if it were the most engrossing object of study in the world.
“A legislature, McCray,” he went on, “is the damnedest thing in the world, the rottenest, most demoralizing, hell-fire sort of institution there is. All politics is that way, no matter where you find it. Sometimes I think you can’t get within forty rows o’ apple trees of it without being polluted. A man, to go to a legislature and stay there any time and come out whole and safe and sound, has to be made of pure gold. Now, this young friend of mine, he was, as I’ve said, all right at heart, and pretty strong, too, most ways; good family, good blood and all that; and back home there, in safe surroundings, he’d ’ave got along all right till the end. But in the legislature a fellow’s away from home, away from all his customary moorings, and most of the members get it into their heads that at the capital all the rules are suspended, and I reckon they are—that’s about what government, as we administer it, amounts to.
“No one from home ever shows up there. The only ones that come around come to get something for themselves, and it’s always something they have no right to and oughtn’t to have. They come with all kinds of plausible reasons and lies and temptations—damned sneaking, hypocritical, white-washed sepulchers! Eminent and respectable citizens, best people and all that! And unless a fellow has his eyes wide open all the time, has his principles clear and fixed and knows enough to apply ’em every minute, knows what a bunco game it all is, and is of pure gold besides—as I said—why, he gets all tangled up and lost—yes, lost. It pretty much all comes from the cities. We poor jays from the country districts don’t know anything about the cities; we take what they tell us, or did in my time. We think if we just pass a few laws to make our fellow-citizens in the cities good, regulate their beer for ’em and all that, that nothing else is required of us; so these fellows come down from the city and get us to do their dirty work for them. In those days there was a fellow here, a lobbyist, a good-looking man, about the size and favor of—well, Baldwin back there—saw him talking to you this morning—same kind of a man exactly, smooth, genial, polished, well-dressed, polite, good fellow, and all that.