And he was right. It is by subtle appeal to the secret and shamefaced, but controlling, appetites of men that the clever manipulate them. To get a man to vote for the right you must show him that he is voting for the personally profitable. And very slow he is to believe that what is right can be practically profitable. Have not the preachers been preaching the reverse all these years; have they not been insisting that to do right means treasure in Heaven only?
It was in my second term as Senator, toward the middle of it. I was speaking, one afternoon, in defense of a measure for the big contributors, which the party was forcing through the Senate in face of fire from the whole country. Personally, I did not approve the measure. It was a frontal attack upon public opinion, and frontal attacks are as unwise and as unnecessary in politics as in war. But the party leaders in the nation insisted, and, as the move would weaken their hold upon the party and so improve my own chances, I was not deeply aggrieved that my advice had been rejected. Toward the end of my speech, aroused by applause from the visitors' gallery, I forgot myself and began to look up there as I talked, instead of addressing myself to my fellow Senators. The eyes of a speaker always wander over his audience in search of eyes that respond. My glance wandered, unconsciously, until it found an answering glance that fixed it.
This answering glance was not responsive, nor even approving. It was the reverse,—and, in spite of me, it held me. At first it was just a pair of eyes, in the shadow of the brim of a woman's hat, the rest of the face, the rest of the woman, hid by those in front and on either side. There was a movement among them, and the whole face appeared,—and I stopped short in my speech. I saw only the face, really only the mouth and the eyes,—the lips and the eyes of Elizabeth Crosby,—an expression of pain, and of pity.
I SAW ONLY THE LIPS AND EYES OF ELIZABETH CROSBY p. 141
I drank from the glass of water on my desk, and went on. When I ventured to look up there again, the face was gone. Had I seen or imagined? Was it she or was it only memory suddenly awakening and silhouetting her upon that background of massed humanity? I tried to convince myself that I had only imagined, but I knew that I had seen.
Within me—and, I suppose, within every one else—there is a dual personality: not a good and a bad, as is so often shallowly said; but one that does, and another that watches. The doer seems to me to be myself; the watcher, he who stands, like an idler at the rail of a bridge, carelessly, even indifferently, observing the tide of my thought and action that flows beneath,—who is he? I do not know. But I do know that I have no control over him,—over his cynical smile, or his lip curling in good-natured contempt of me, or his shrug at self-excuse, or his moods when he stares down at the fretting stream with a look of weariness so profound that it is tragic. It was he who was more interested in the thoughts,—the passion, the protest, the defiance, and the dread,—which the sight of that face set to boiling within me. Sometimes he smiled cynically at the turmoil, and at other times he watched it with what seemed to me bitter disgust and disappointment and regret.
While this tempest was struggling to boil over into action, Carlotta appeared. She had never stayed long at Washington after the first winter; she preferred, for the children and perhaps for herself, the quiet and the greater simplicity of Fredonia. But—"I got to thinking about it," said she, "and it seemed to me a bad idea for a man to be separated so long from his wife and children—and home influences."