The lure of fame and high place hurried me on.  With the Senator in the presidential chair I should be well started in the highway of great success.  Then Mr. H. Dunkelberg might think me better than the legacy of Benjamin Grimshaw.  A relay awaited me twenty-three miles down the road.

Well, I reached Washington very sore, but otherwise in good form, soon after daybreak.  I was trembling with excitement when I put my horse in the stable and rang the bell at our door.  It seemed to me that I was crossing the divide between big and little things.  A few steps more and I should be looking down into the great valley of the future.  Yet, now that I was there, I began to lose confidence.

The butler opened the door.

Yes, the Senator was up and had just returned from a walk and was in his study.  I found him there.

“Well, Bart, how does this happen?” he asked.

“It’s important business,” I said, as I presented the letter.

Something in his look and manner as he calmly adjusted his glasses and read the letter of Judge Fine brought the blood to my face.  It seemed to puncture my balloon, so to speak, and I was falling toward the earth and so swiftly my head swam.  He laid the letter on his desk and, without looking up and as coolly as if he were asking for the change of a dollar, queried: 

“Well, Bart, what do you think we had better do about it?”

“I—­I was hoping—­you—­you would take it,” I stammered.

“That’s because the excitement of the convention is on you,” he answered.  “Let us look at the compass.  They have refused to nominate Mr. Van Buren because he is opposed to the annexation of Texas.  On that subject the will of the convention is now clear.  It is possible that they would nominate me.  We don’t know about that, we never shall know.  If they did, and I accepted, what would be expected of me is also clear.  They would expect me to abandon my principles and that course of conduct which I conceive to be best for the country.  Therefore I should have to accept it under false pretenses and take their yoke upon me.  Would you think the needle pointed that way?”

“No,” I answered.

Immediately he turned to his desk and wrote the telegram which fixed his place in history.  It said no.

Into the lives of few men has such a moment fallen.  I am sure the Lord God must have thought it worth a thousand years of the world’s toil.  It was that moment in the life of a great leader when Satan shows him the kingdoms of the earth and their glory.  I looked at him with a feeling of awe.  What sublime calmness and serenity was in his face!  As if it were a mere detail in the work of the day, and without a moment’s faltering, he had declined a crown, for he would surely have been nominated and elected.  He rose and stood looking out of the open window.  Always I think of him standing there with the morning sunlight falling upon his face and shoulders.  He had observed my emotion and I think it had touched him a little.  There was a moment of silence.  A curious illusion came to me then, for it seemed as if I heard the sound of distant music.  Looking thoughtfully out of the window he asked: