"A calf leaving the cow to chase a steer," he growled. "He'll know better when it comes supper-time!"
One day a man halted him. "You may be interested in what's going on in the House, just now, Mr. Thornton. Your grandson is making a speech."
"Then he has lost his mind!" snapped the Duke. "I'd only suspected it up to now!"
But when he edged in at the door he discovered that his grandson was not making the usual spectacle which the untried orator affords. The zeal which had driven him into the fight was supporting him as he faced the men who were his associates. He stood at his desk, pale—but unfaltering. He was talking to them, man to man.
"It has met me to my face, it has followed at my back through all these weeks," he was saying. "I'm accused of helping to wreck my party. You know better than that, gentlemen. You know who did the wrecking. It has been going on for years. And we have been asked to hide the retreat of the wreckers. I refuse to allow those men who have wrecked our party to call themselves the true prophets and summon us to follow them. Our party is not simply the men who hold office for their personal gain. If making them honest or putting them out is destroying the party, then let's destroy and rebuild.
"We need to rebuild.
"Up in our woods it's dangerous to leave slash on the ground after a winter's cutting. The politicians have left a lot of slash in this State. The fire has got into it. It is burning up the old dead branches and tops, but it is hurting the standing timber, too—I understand that. Why not see to it after this that the men who leave political slash shall not be allowed to operate!
"It's a bad litter, gentlemen, that has been left around the roots of our prohibitory law. I have introduced the bill that's now under consideration. It has nothing to do with the principle of prohibition—the theory of that was threshed out in these chambers before I was born. But isn't it time, gentlemen, to have a test of the practice of prohibition?
"I know little about politics. I am merely one of the hundreds of young men in this State who stand on the outside of politics and want the opportunity to be honest when we vote. We appeal to the older men of this State to drop the game for a little while and give us a chance to start fair. The biggest corporation in this State is the State itself, and I like to think that all of us, young or old, are partners or stockholders. I've been brought up in business. We know what we'd all do in straight business. Why can't we do it in State affairs? Too many influences surround a legislature to make its work really deliberative. After the heat and arguments of this session have died away we ought to have a meeting on a real business basis.
"Let the churches, the grange, the radicals, the liberals, the hotel men, the liquor men, all send their delegates. Let that assemblage take thought on a plan which will lift out of politics a question that doesn't belong there. Let's end civil war on this question. Give the young men some other picture as their eyes open on the politics of this State."