Harwood was not without his perplexities these days.  His work for the “Courier” had gradually increased until he found that his time for study had diminished almost to the vanishing point.  The home acres continued unprofitable, and he had, since leaving college, devoted a considerable part of his earnings to the relief of his father.  His father’s lack of success was an old story and the home-keeping sons were deficient in initiative and energy.  Dan, with his ampler outlook, grudged them nothing, but the home needs were to be reckoned with in the disposition of his own time.  He had now a regular assignment to the county courts and received a salary from the “Courier.”  He was usually so tired at the end of his day’s work that he found it difficult to settle down to study at night in the deserted law office.  The constant variety and excitement of newspaper work militated against the sober pondering of legal principles and Dan had begun to realize that, with the necessity for earning money hanging over him, his way to the bar, or to a practice if he should qualify himself, lay long and bleak before him.

Dan had heard much of Morton Bassett since his visit to Fraserville.  His conviction, dating from the Fraserville visit, that Bassett was a man of unusual character, destined to go far in any direction in which he chose to exert his energies, was proved by Bassett’s growing prominence.  A session of the legislature had intervened, and the opposition press had hammered Bassett hard.  The Democratic minority under Bassett’s leadership had wielded power hardly second to that of the majority.  Bassett had introduced into state politics the bi-partisan alliance, a device by virtue of which members of the assembly representing favored interests cooperated, to the end that no legislation viciously directed against railways, manufacturers, brewers and distillers should succeed through the deplorable violence of reformers and radicals.  Apparently without realizing it, and clearly without caring greatly, Bassett was thus doing much to destroy the party alignments that had in earlier times nowhere else been so definitely marked as in Indiana.  Partisan editors of both camps were glad when the sessions closed, for it had been no easy matter to defend or applaud the acts of either majority or minority, so easily did Republicans and Democrats plot together at neutral campfires.  It had not been so in those early post-bellum years, when Oliver Morton of the iron mace still hobbled on crutches.  Harrison and Hendricks had fought no straw men when they went forth to battle.  Harwood began to be conscious of these changes, which were wholly irreconcilable with the political ideals he had imbibed from Sumner at Yale.  He had witnessed several political conventions of both parties from the press table, and it was gradually dawning upon him that politics is not readily expressed in academic terminology.