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Updated: June 4, 2025
Dominick looked at him, said in a voice that would have flared even the warm ashes of manhood into a furious blaze: "Go and shake hands with Senator Sayler, Croffut, and sit down." Croffut advanced, smiling. "I am fit for my company," thought I as I let him clasp my hand. "Better tilt Granby's ghost out of that chair, Croffut," said Dominick, as the ex-Senator was seating himself.
He is described as a phlegmatic man of dull and slow mental processes, domestic tastes and of kindly disposition to his children. Croffut gives a number of instances of William's craft and continues: "From his boyhood he had given instant and willing submission to the despotic will of his father, and had made boundless sacrifices to please him.
Soon the door opened and in strode Croffut; handsome, picturesque, with his pose of dashing, brave manhood, which always got the crowds into the mood for the frenzy his oratory conjured.
The governor was mine, and the legislature. Mine was the Federal patronage, also all of it, if I chose, for Croffut was my dependent, though he did not realize it; mine also were the indefinitely vast resources of the members of my combine. Without my consent no man could get office anywhere in my state, from governorship and judgeship down as far as I cared to reach.
As for hisses, I saw in them a certain instinctive tribute to my power. The mob cheers its servant, hisses its master. "Doc," said I, "do you want to go to the Senate instead of Croffut?" By the flames on the torches on either side I saw his amazement. "Me?" he exclaimed. "Why, you forget I've got a past." "I do," said I, "and so does every one else. All we know is that you've got a future."
He was saying cordially, "Ah, Croffut, you are late " Then his dim eyes saw me; he pulled himself up like a train when the air-brakes are clapped on. "They told me at the office that you were at dinner," said I in the tone of one who has unintentionally blundered. "As I was looking for dinner, I rather hoped you'd ask me to join you. But I see that "
After he finished, Croffut spoke, and Senator Berwick of Illinois. Then rose a few calls for me. They were drowned in a chorus of hoots, toots and hisses. Burbank cast a quick glance of apprehension at me again that hidden conviction of my vanity, this time shown in dread lest it should goad me into hating him.
Croffut seemed to me to put the climax upon this despicable company Croffut, one of the great orators of the party, so adored by the people that, but for our overwhelming superiority in the state, I should never have dared eject him from office. Since I ejected him he had not spoken to me.
He drew in his breath hard and leaned back into the corner where the shadow hid him. At last he said in a quiet earnest voice: "You've given me self-respect, Senator. I can only say I'll see that you never regret it." I was hissed roundly at the hotel entrance, between cheers for Croffut and Berwick, and even for Woodruff.
That was, indeed, a wild winter at the state capital, a "carnival of corruption," the newspapers of other states called it. One of the first of the "black bills" to go through was a disguised street railway grab, out of which Senator Croffut got a handsome "counsel fee" of fifty-odd thousand dollars. But as the rout went on, ever more audaciously and recklessly, he became uneasy.
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