The Philanthropist had spoken with so great an intensity that there was a deep stillness over the assembled company. The Negro President had straightened up in his seat, and as he looked at the speaker there was something in his erect back and his stern face and the set of his faded uniform that somehow turned him, African though he was, into a soldier.
"Sir," he said, with his eye riveted on the speaker's face, "what happened to that banker man?"
"The fool!" said The Philanthropist. "He wouldn't hear —he defied me—he said that there wasn't money enough in all my business to buy the soul of a single Englishman. I had his directors turn him from his bank that day, and he's enlisted, the scoundrel, and is gone to the war. But his wife and family are left behind; they shall learn what the grip of the money power is—learn it in misery and poverty."
"My good sir," said the Negro President slowly and impressively, "do you know why your plan of stopping war wouldn't work in Haiti?"
"No," said The Philanthropist.
"Because our black people there would kill you. Whichever side they were on, whatever they thought of the war, they would take a man like you and lead you out into the town square, and stand you up against the side of an adobe house, and they'd shoot you. Come down to Haiti, if you doubt my words, and try it."
"Thank you," said The Philanthropist, resuming his customary manner of undisturbed gentleness, "I don't think I will. I don't think somehow that I could do business in Haiti."
The passage at arms between the Negro President and The Philanthropist had thrown a certain confusion into the hitherto agreeable gathering. Even The Eminent Divine was seen to be slowly shaking his head from side to side, an extreme mark of excitement which he never permitted himself except under stress of passion. The two humble guests at the foot of the table were visibly perturbed. "Say, I don't like that about the banker," squeaked one of them. "That ain't right, eh what? I don't like it."
Mr. Bryan was aware that the meeting was in danger of serious disorder. He rapped loudly on the table for attention. When he had at last obtained silence, he spoke.
"I have kept my own views to the last," he said, "because I cannot but feel that they possess a peculiar importance. There is, my dear friends, every prospect that within a measurable distance of time I shall be able to put them into practice. I am glad to be able to announce to you the practical certainty that four years from now I shall be President of the United States."