"Loyal fiddlesticks!" replied I. "He is agent of the Wall Street crowd—they're his party. He's just the ordinary machine politician, with no more party feeling than—than—" I smiled—"than any other man behind the scenes."
Burbank dodged this by taking it as a jest. He always shed my frank speeches as humor. "Prejudice, prejudice, Harvey!" he said in mild reproof. "We need Goodrich, and—"
"Pardon me," I interrupted. "We do not need him. On the contrary, we must put him out of the party councils. If we don't, he may try to help Scarborough. The Senate's safe, no matter who's elected President; and Goodrich will rely on it to save his crowd. He's a mountain of vanity and the two defeats we've given him have made every atom of that vanity quiver with hatred of us."
"I wish you could have been here when he called," said Burbank. "I am sure you would have changed your mind."
"When does he resign the chairmanship of the national committee?" I asked. "He agreed to plead bad health and resign within two weeks after the convention."
Burbank gave an embarrassed cough. "Don't you think, Harvey," said he, "that, to soothe his vanity, it might be well for us—for you—to let him stay on there—nominally, of course? I know you care nothing for titles."
Instead of being angered by this attempt to cozen me, by this exhibition of treachery, I felt disgust and pity—how nauseating and how hopeless to try to forward one so blind to his own interests, so easily frightened into surrender to his worst enemies! But I spoke very quietly to him. "The reason you want me to be chairman—for it is you that want and need it, not I—the reason I must be chairman is because the machine throughout the country must know that Goodrich is out and that your friends are in. In what other way can this be accomplished?"
He did not dare try to reply.
I went on: "If he stays at the head of the national committee Scarborough will be elected."
"You are prejudiced, Harvey—"