Mr. Stanford says that if he did not cause misery some one else would, for “misery there must always be in this world!” Sound philosophy, truly! Why should he recoil from adding to the sum total of human misery when so many others do the same!
Mr. Huntington was about the same time writing from Washington that he would “see the grass grow over Tom Scott” before he stopped his work of convincing Congressmen. And he kept his word.
He carried conviction to Washington, distress to the South and ruin to San Diego.
Mr. Crocker was answering, “Anything to beat Tom Scott!” The thing was to prevent the construction of San Diego's railroad, no matter to whom ruin came thereby. “No matter how many were sacrificed.”
Nothing was more hopeless, therefore, than to suppose that any of those men would swerve one iota from their course of greedy acquisition, out of respect for equity or humanity.
Not a word was spoken until the three saddened friends reached Don Mariano's parlors at the hotel. They had walked silently out of the railroad building, silently taken the street car and silently walked out of it, as it happened to stop in front of their hotel.
“Well, we have failed sadly, but I am glad to have had the chance of studying that piece of humanity, or rather I should say inhumanity,” Mr. Mechlin exclaimed.
“How confident he is of their power over Congress! And he certainly means to wield it as if he came by it legitimately. He is proud of it,” added Mr. Holman.
“Yes, but he is wrong to be proud of a power he means to use only for selfish ends. Sooner or later the people will get tired of sending men to Congress who can be bought so easily. I am disappointed in Governor Stanford. I thought him much more just and fair; a much higher order of man,” said the Don. “How coolly he laughed at us for quoting Carlyle and Spencer! As if he would have said, ‘You quote the philosophers, gentlemen, and I'll make the millions. You might die in poverty, I shall revel in wealth.’”
“I ought to have quoted Emerson, when he says: ‘I count him a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought into which other men rise with labor and difficulty.’ This might have pointed out to him how groveling it is never to rise above the mere grubbing for money. No, he is not half as large-minded as I had believed,” said Mr. Mechlin.