A Western Warwick

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General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1916 Original Publisher: George H. Doran Company Subjects: United States Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III PRACTICAL MEN CONFER WE had sneaked -- I hate that word, but it describes our various entrances -- into a big uptown hotel so the reporters wouldn't find us. All of us had been interviewed, and all of us had made our excuses and claimed victory four years hence. The saddest spectacle in politics is to be observed on the day after election when a defeated leader tries to invent some plausible exoneration for his defeat, knowing, in his inside, that he deserved more than he got. As soon as you begin explaining a political defeat you turn it into a rout. You might as well try to explain away a red nose. I called the conference for eleven o'clock in the morning, and it was about ten minutes after that time when I went into the room. They were all there. I looked them over. There was Whispering Lemuel Sterry, a little wraith of a man who had ssh-ssh-sshed himself into the Senate, who wore rubber heels on his shoes, and made less noise in getting about than a dusty miller does on a pane of glass. He was a symphony in the inconspicuous. Hedressed in gray, his hair was gray, his eyes were gray, his voice was gray. He had large, flapping ears and an Adam's apple that rose and fell with his sibilants. He had achieved a great reputation for sagacity because he was so mystically mysterious. He was cabalistic when he drew you aside and asked you what time it was. He was cryptic when he went to luncheon. He never had an opinion or an emotion in his life, save a thrill of pleasure induced by the sight and possibilities of a pair of fe...