Gradually, Mr. Caldwell put off his air of condescension; he put off his appeal to party authority; he even stopped arguing the tariff and the railroad question.  Gradually, he ceased to be the great man, Favourably Mentioned for Governor, and came down on the ground with me.  He moved his chair up closer to mine; he put his hand on my knee.  For the first time I began to see what manner of man he was:  to find out how much real fight he had in him.

[Illustration:  “HE MOVED HIS CHAIR CLOSER TO MINE”]

“You don’t understand,” he said, “what it means to be down there at Washington in a time like this.  Things clear to you are not clear when you have to meet men in the committees and on the floor of the house who have a contrary view from yours and hold to it just as tenaciously as you do to your views.”

Well, sir, he gave me quite a new impression of what a Congressman’s job was like, of what difficulties and dissensions he had to meet at home, and what compromises he had to accept when he reached Washington.

“Do you know,” I said to him, with some enthusiasm, “I am more than ever convinced that farming is good enough for me.”

He threw back his head and laughed uproariously, and then moved up still closer.

“The trouble with you, Mr. Grayson,” he said, “is that you are looking for a giant intellect to represent you at Washington.”

“Yes,” I said, “I’m afraid I am.”

“Well,” he returned, “they don’t happen along every day.  I’d like to see the House of Representatives full of Washingtons and Jeffersons and Websters and Roosevelts.  But there’s a Lincoln only once in a century.”

He paused and then added with a sort of wry smile: 

“And any quantity of Caldwells!”

That took me!  I liked him for it.  It was so explanatory.  The armour of political artifice, the symbols of political power, had now all dropped away from him, and we sat there together, two plain and friendly human beings, arriving through stress and struggle at a common understanding.  He was not a great leader, not a statesman at all, but plainly a man of determination, with a fair measure of intelligence and sincerity.  He had a human desire to stay in Congress, for the life evidently pleased him, and while he would never be crucified as a prophet, I felt—­what I had not felt before in regard to him—­that he was sincerely anxious to serve the best interests of his constituents.  Added to these qualities he was a man who was loyal to his friends; and not ungenerous to his enemies.

Up to this time he had done most of the talking; but now, having reached a common basis, I leaned forward with some eagerness.

“You won’t mind,” I said, “if I give you my view—­my common country view of the political situation.  I am sure I don’t understand, and I don’t think my neighbours here understand, much about the tariff or the trusts or the railroad question—­in detail.  We get general impressions—­and stick to them like grim death—­for we know somehow that we are right.  Generally speaking, we here in the country work for what we get——­”