"I'll do more than that," announced Langdon, rising and pounding a fist into his open hand. "I'll make you and Stevens more popular than you ever were in your lives before."
"Bah!" shouted Peabody.
"I'll do even more yet. I'm going to make you generous—patriots. And, I regret to say, I'll give you the chance to make the hits of your careers."
The polished hypocrites looked at him, too astonished to move.
"How? What?" they gasped.
Swept on by his own enthusiasm and the force of his own courageous honesty, the voice of the Southerner rose to oratorical height.
"This afternoon," he exclaimed, "when the naval base committee makes its report, I will rise in my place and declare that for once in the history of the Senate men have been found who place the interests of the Government they serve above any chance of pecuniary reward. These men are the members of the naval base committee.
"With this idea in view, realizing that dishonest men would try to make money out of the Government, these members of the naval base committee, after they settled on Altacoola, went out quietly and secured control of all the land that will be needed for the naval base, and these men secured this at a very nominal figure. Now they are ready to turn over their land to the Government at exactly what they paid for it, without a cent of profit.
"Then they're going to sit up over there in that Senate. They're going to realize that a new kind of politics has arrived in Washington—the kind that I and lots of others always thought there was here.
"And, gentlemen"—he advanced on his colleagues triumphantly—"when I, Senator Langdon of Mississippi, your creation in politics, have finished that speech, I dare one of you to get up and deny a word!"