From that moment one could find the youth with the Senator even oftener than with Col.  Sellers.  When the statesman presided at great temperance meetings, he placed Washington in the front rank of impressive dignitaries that gave tone to the occasion and pomp to the platform.  His bald headed surroundings made the youth the more conspicuous.

When the statesman made remarks in these meetings, he not infrequently alluded with effect to the encouraging spectacle of one of the wealthiest and most brilliant young favorites of society forsaking the light vanities of that butterfly existence to nobly and self-sacrificingly devote his talents and his riches to the cause of saving his hapless fellow creatures from shame and misery here and eternal regret hereafter.  At the prayer meetings the Senator always brought Washington up the aisle on his arm and seated him prominently; in his prayers he referred to him in the cant terms which the Senator employed, perhaps unconsciously, and mistook, maybe, for religion, and in other ways brought him into notice.  He had him out at gatherings for the benefit of the negro, gatherings for the benefit of the Indian, gatherings for the benefit of the heathen in distant lands.  He had him out time and again, before Sunday Schools, as an example for emulation.  Upon all these occasions the Senator made casual references to many benevolent enterprises which his ardent young friend was planning against the day when the passage of the University bill should make his means available for the amelioration of the condition of the unfortunate among his fellow men of all nations and all. climes.  Thus as the weeks rolled on Washington grew up, into an imposing lion once more, but a lion that roamed the peaceful fields of religion and temperance, and revisited the glittering domain of fashion no more.  A great moral influence was thus brought, to bear in favor of the bill; the weightiest of friends flocked to its standard; its most energetic enemies said it was useless to fight longer; they had tacitly surrendered while as yet the day of battle was not come.

CHAPTER LIII.

The session was drawing toward its close.  Senator Dilworthy thought he would run out west and shake hands with his constituents and let them look at him.  The legislature whose duty it would be to re-elect him to the United States Senate, was already in session.  Mr. Dilworthy considered his re-election certain, but he was a careful, painstaking man, and if, by visiting his State he could find the opportunity to persuade a few more legislators to vote for him, he held the journey to be well worth taking.  The University bill was safe, now; he could leave it without fear; it needed his presence and his watching no longer.  But there was a person in his State legislature who did need watching —­a person who, Senator Dilworthy said, was a narrow, grumbling, uncomfortable malcontent—­a person who was stolidly opposed to reform, and progress and him,—­a person who, he feared, had been bought with money to combat him, and through him the commonwealth’s welfare and its politics’ purity.