and handed their cards over the rail of the offices of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon.  Mr. Watling shook hands with scores of them, and they departed, well satisfied with the flavour of his cigars and intoxicated by his personality.  He had a marvellous way of cutting short an interview without giving offence.  Some of them he turned over to Mr. Paret, whom he particularly desired they should know.  Thus Mr. Paret acquired many valuable additions to his acquaintance, cultivated a memory for names and faces that was to stand him in good stead; and kept, besides, an indexed note-book into which he put various bits of interesting information concerning each.  Though not immediately lucrative, it was all, no doubt, part of a lawyer’s education.

During the summer and the following winter Colonel Paul Varney came often to town and spent much of his time in Mr. Paret’s office smoking Mr. Watling’s cigars and discussing the coming campaign, in which he took a whole-souled interest.

“Say, Hugh, this is goin’ slick!” he would exclaim, his eyes glittering like round buttons of jet.  “I never saw a campaign where they fell in the way they’re doing now.  If it was anybody else but Theodore Watling, it would scare me.  You ought to have been in Jim Broadhurst’s campaign,” he added, referring to the junior senator, “they wouldn’t wood up at all, they was just listless.  But Gorse and Barbour and the rest wanted him, and we had to put him over.  I reckon he is useful down there in Washington, but say, do you know what he always reminded me of?  One of those mud-turtles I used to play with as a boy up in Columbia County,—­shuts up tight soon as he sees you coming.  Now Theodore Watling ain’t like that, any way of speaking.  We can get up some enthusiasm for a man of his sort.  He’s liberal and big.  He’s made his pile, and he don’t begrudge some of it to the fellows who do the work.  Mark my words, when you see a man who wants a big office cheap, look out for him.”

This, and much more wisdom I imbibed while assenting to my chief’s greatness.  For Mr. Varney was right,—­one could feel enthusiasm for Theodore Watling; and my growing intimacy with him, the sense that I was having a part in his career, a share in his success, became for the moment the passion of my life.  As the campaign progressed I gave more and more time to it, and made frequent trips of a confidential nature to the different counties of the state.  The whole of my being was energized.  The national fever had thoroughly pervaded my blood—­the national fever to win.  Prosperity—­writ large—­demanded it, and Theodore Watling personified, incarnated the cause.  I had neither the time nor the desire to philosophize on this national fever, which animated all my associates:  animated, I might say, the nation, which was beginning to get into a fever about games.  If I remember rightly, it was about this time that golf was introduced, tennis had become a commonplace, professional baseball was in full swing; Ham Durrett had even organized a local polo team....  The man who failed to win something tangible in sport or law or business or politics was counted out.  Such was the spirit of America, in the closing years of the nineteenth century.