"Why, yes," said I. "Give out a statement next Sunday in Chicago—for the Monday morning papers—indorsing Cromwell's candidacy. Say you and all your associates are enthusiastic for it because his election would give the large enterprises that have been the object of demagogic attack a sense of security for at least four years more."
He thought I was joking him, being unable to believe me so lacking in judgment as to fail to realize what a profound impression in Cromwell's favor such a statement from the great Roebuck would produce. I wrote and mailed him an interview with himself the following day; he gave it out as I had requested. It got me Burbank delegations in Illinois, South Dakota and Oregon the same week.
XVI
A VICTORY FOR THE PEOPLE
I arrived at Chicago the day before the convention and, going at once to our state headquarters in the Great Northern, shut myself in with Doc Woodruff. My door-keeper, the member of the legislature from Fredonia, ventured to interrupt with the announcement that a messenger had come from Senator Goodrich.
"Let him in," said I.
As the door-man disappeared Doc Woodruff glanced at his watch, then said with a smile: "You've been here seven minutes and a half—just time for a lookout down stairs to telephone to the Auditorium and for the messenger to drive from there here. Goodrich is on the anxious-seat, all right."
The messenger was Goodrich's handy-man, Judge Dufour. I myself have always frowned on these public exhibitions of the intimacy of judges in practical politics; but Goodrich had many small vanities—he liked his judges to hold his coat and his governors to carry his satchel. One would say that such petty weaknesses would be the undoing of a man. Fortunately, we are not as weak as our weakness but as strong as our strength; and while the universal weaknesses are shared by the strong, their strength is peculiar and rare. After Dufour had introduced himself and we had exchanged commonplaces he said: "Senator, there's a little conference of some of the leaders at headquarters and it isn't complete without you. So, Senator Goodrich has sent me over to escort you."