“We thought you were a reformer, Mr. Crewe,” the Honourable Brush Bascom remarked.

“I am a practical man,” said Mr. Crewe; “a railroad man, a business mark and as such I try to see things as they are.”

“Well,” said General Doby, who by this time had regained his usual genial air of composure, I’m glad you said that, Mr. Crewe.  As these gentlemen will tell you, if I’d had my wish I’d have had you on every important committee in the House.”

“Chairman of every important committee, General,” corrected the Honourable Jacob Botcher.

“Yes, chairman of ’em,” assented the general, after a glance at Mr. Crewe’s countenance to see how this statement fared.  “But the fact is, the boys are all jealous of you—­on the quiet.  I suppose you suspected something of the kind.”

“I should have imagined there might be some little feeling,” Mr. Crewe assented modestly.

“Exactly,” cried the general, “and I had to combat that feeling when I insisted upon putting you at the head of National Affairs.  It does not do for a new member, whatever his prominence in the financial world, to be pushed forward too quickly.  And unless I am mighty mistaken, Mr. Crewe,” he added, with his hand on the new member’s shoulder, “you will make yourself felt without any boosting from me.”

“I did not come here to remain idle, General,” answered Mr. Crewe, considerably mollified.

“Certainly not,” said the general, “and I say to some of those men, ’Keep your eye on the gentleman who is Chairman of National Affairs.’”

After a little more of this desultory and pleasant talk, during which recourse was, had to the bathroom for several tall and thin glasses ranged on the shelf there, Mr. Crewe took his departure in a most equable frame of mind.  And when the door was closed and locked behind him, Mr. Manning dipped his pen in the ink, once more produced from a drawer in the table the salmon-coloured tickets, and glanced again at the general with a smile.

“For Mr. Speaker and Mrs. Speaker and all the little Speakers, to New York and return.”

MR. CREWE’S CAREER

By Winston Churchill
book 2.

CHAPTER XI

THE HOPPER

It is certainly not the function of a romance to relate, with the exactness of a House journal, the proceedings of a Legislature.  Somebody has likened the state-house to pioneer Kentucky, a dark and bloody ground over which the battles of selfish interests ebbed and flowed,—­no place for an innocent and unselfish bystander like Mr. Crewe, who desired only to make of his State an Utopia; whose measures were for the public good —­not his own.  But if any politician were fatuous enough to believe that Humphrey Crewe was a man to introduce bills and calmly await their fate; a man who, like Senator Sanderson, only came down to the capital when he was notified by telegram, that politician was entirely mistaken.