Yes, I was master. But it is only now, in the retrospect of years, that I have any sense of triumph; for I had won the supremacy with small effort, comparatively,—with the small effort required of him who sees the conditions of a situation clearly, and, instead of trying to combat or to change them, intelligently uses them to his ends. Nor do I now regard my achievement as marvelous. Everything was in my favor; against me, there was nothing,—no organization, no plan, no knowledge of my aim. I wonder how much of their supernal glory would be left to the world's men of action, from its Alexanders and Napoleons down to its successful bandits and ward-bosses, if mankind were in the habit of looking at what the winner had opposed to him,—Alexander faced only by flocks of sheep-like Asiatic slaves; Napoleon routing the badly trained, wretchedly officered soldiers of decadent monarchies; and the bandit or ward-boss overcoming peaceful and unprepared and unorganized citizens. Who would erect statues or write eulogies to a man for mowing a field of corn-stalks with a scythe? Mankind is never more amusing than in its hero-worship.
No, I should simply have been stupid had I failed.
But—even had I been disposed to rein in and congratulate myself at the quarter-stretch, I could not have done it. A man has, perhaps, some choice as to his mount before he enters the race for success. But once in the saddle and off, he must let the reins go; his control is confined to whip and spur.
XIV
A "BOOM-FACTORY"
In the early autumn of that last year of his as governor, Burbank's wife died—a grim and unexpected fulfilment of their pretended anxieties of six months before.
It was, in some respects, as great a loss to me as to him—how great to us both I did not—indeed, could not—measure until several years passed. She was what I regard as a typical American wife—devoted to her husband, jealously guarding his interests, yet as keen to see his shortcomings as she was to see her own. And how much more persistent and intelligent in correcting her faults than he in correcting his! Like most men, he was vain—that is, while he would probably have admitted in a large, vague way that he wasn't perfect, when it came to details he would defend his worst fault against any and all criticism. Like most women, she, too, was vain—but an intelligent woman's vanity, instead of making her self-complacent, somehow spurs her on to hide her weak points and to show her best points in the best light. For example, Mrs. Burbank, a pretty woman and proud of it, was yet conscious of her deficiencies in dress and in manners through her plain and rural early surroundings. It was interesting, and instructive, too, to watch her studying and cleverly copying, or rather, adapting Carlotta; for she took from Carlotta only that which could be fitted without visible joint into her own pattern.
Latterly, whenever I was urging upon Burbank a line of action requiring courage or a sacrifice of some one of his many insidious forms of personal vanity, I always arranged for her to be present at our conferences. And she would sit there, apparently absorbed in her sewing; but in reality she was seeing not only the surface reasons I gave him, but also those underlying and more powerful reasons which we do not utter, sometimes because we like to play the hypocrite to ourselves, again because we must give the other person a chance to play the hypocrite before himself—and us. And often I left him reluctant and trying to muster courage to refuse or finesse to evade, only to find him the next day consenting, perhaps enthusiastic. Many's the time she spared me the disagreeable necessity of being peremptory—doubly disagreeable because show of authority has ever been distasteful to me and because an order can never be so heartily executed as is an assimilated suggestion.