After four days of balloting there, seven Dominick-Croffut men voted for me—my first appearance as a candidate. On the seventy-seventh ballot Schoolcraft withdrew, and all the Dominick-Croffut men voted for me. On the seventy-ninth ballot I got, in addition, two opposition votes Woodruff had bought for me at eight hundred dollars apiece. The ballot was: Dunkirk, forty-one; Grassmere, (who was receiving the opposition's complimentary vote) thirty-six; Sayler, forty-three. I was a Senator of the United States.
There was a wild scene. Threats, insults, blows even, were exchanged. And down at the Capital City Hotel Dunkirk crawled upon a table and denounced me as an infamous ingrate, a traitor, a serpent he had warmed in his bosom. But the people of the state accepted it as natural and satisfactory that "the vigorous and fearless young chairman of the party's state committee" should be agreed on as a compromise. An hour after that last ballot, he hadn't a friend left except some galling sympathizers from whom he hid himself. Those who had been his firmest supporters were paying court to the new custodian of the plum tree.
The governor was mine, and the legislature. Mine was the Federal patronage, also—all of it, if I chose, for Croffut was my dependent, though he did not realize it; mine also were the indefinitely vast resources of the members of my combine. Without my consent no man could get office anywhere in my state, from governorship and judgeship down as far as I cared to reach. Subject only to the check of public sentiment,—so easily defeated if it be not defied,—I was master of the making and execution of laws. Why? Not because I was leader of the dominant party. Not because I was a Senator of the United States. Solely because I controlled the sources of the money that maintained the political machinery of both parties. The hand that holds the purse strings is the hand that rules,—if it knows how to rule; for rule is power plus ability.
I was not master because I had the plum tree. I had the plum tree because I was master.
The legislature attended to such of the demands of my combine and such of the demands of the public as I thought it expedient to grant, and then adjourned. Woodruff asked a three months' leave. I did not hear from or of him until midsummer, when he sent me a cablegram from London. He was in a hospital there, out of money and out of health. I cabled him a thousand dollars and asked him to come home as soon as he could. It was my first personal experience with that far from uncommon American type, the periodic drunkard. I had to cable him money three times before he started.
When he came to me at Washington, in December, he looked just as before,—calm, robust, cool, cynical, and dressed in the very extreme of the extreme fashion. I received him as if nothing had happened. It was not until the current of mutual liking was again flowing freely between us that I said: "Doc, may I impose on your friendship to the extent of an intrusion into your private affairs?"
He started, and gave me a quick look, his color mounting. "Yes," he said after a moment.
"When I heard from you," I went on, "I made some inquiries. I owe you no apology. You had given me a shock,—one of the severest of my life. But they told me that you never let—that—that peculiarity of yours interfere with business."
His head was hanging. "I always go away," he said. "Nobody that knows me ever sees me when—at that time."