HONEST JOHN VANE, 
 
 A STORY. 
 
 BY 
 
 . J. W, DE FOREST, 
 
 AUTHOR OF KATH BEAUMONT, THE WETHBREL AFFAIR, OVERLAND, 
 MISS RAVENAL S CONVERSION, ETC. 
 
 NEW HA VEX, COXX. : 
 RICHMOND & PATTEN. 
 

 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, 
 
 BY RICHMOND & PATTEN, 
 in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C. 
 
 The Case, Lockwood & Brainard Co. 
 
 HARTFORD, CONN. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 I. HONEST JOHN AS A LOVER, 3 
 
 II. HOPELESS IN LOVE, BUT HOPEFUL IN POLITICS, 13 
 
 III. RUNNING FOR CONGRESS AND WINNING A SMILE, 24 
 
 IV. REPRESENTATIVE VANE S EMINENT FITNESS, 36 
 
 V. OLYMPIAN ENCOURAGEMENTS, 46 
 
 / VI. A SECOND SHOT HITS THE MARK, 54 
 
 VII. MAKING THE ENDS MEET IN WASHINGTON, 63 
 
 VIII. A SPECIAL LEGISLATOR AND HIS AGENT, 72 
 
 IX. A SPECIAL LEGISLATOR S VIEWS OF CONGRESSIONAL USEFUL 
 NESS, 83 
 
 X. HONEST JOHN RESISTS TEMPTATION 93 
 
 XI. A DISCONTENTED WIFE, 106 
 
 XII. AN EMINENT SENATOR, ng 
 
 XIII. RUNNING IN DEBT AND ASKING ADVICE,.., 129 
 
 XIV. PAINFUL ECONOMY AND ANOTHER TEMPTATION, 144 
 
 XV. HONESTY IN DECADENCE, 152 
 
 XVI. SATAN S MESSENGER TRIUMPHANT, 162 
 
 XVII. WEATHERCOCK JOHN, 172 
 
 XVI 1 1. A CARCASS FATTENING ON CARCASSES, i8a 
 
 XIX. CAMPAIGN LIBS NAILED TO THE COUNTER, 192 
 
 XX. A COMING SHADOW OF PUNISHMENT, 201 
 
 XXI. LOVE MY WIFE, LOVE ME, 214 
 
 XXII. DODGING AND SKULKING, 227 
 
 XXIII. THE INVESTIGATION, 237 
 
 XXIV. WEATHERCOCK JOHN TRIUMPHANT, 247 
 
 M232227 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ONE of the most fateful days of John Vane s 
 life was the day on which he took board with 
 that genteel though decayed lady, the widow of a 
 wholesale New York grocer who had come out at 
 the little end of the horn of plenty, and the 
 mother of two of the prettiest girls in Slowburgh, 
 
 Mrs. Renssaelaer Smiles. 
 
 
 
 Within a week he was in a state of feeling 
 which made him glance frequently at the eld 
 est of these young ladies, and within a month he 
 would have jumped at a chance to kiss the ground 
 upon which she trod. In the interval he ventured 
 various little attentions, intended to express his 
 growing admiration and interest, such as opening 
 the door for her when she left the dining-room, 
 
< 
 
 4 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 taking off his hat with a flourish when he met 
 her in the hall, joining her now and then in the 
 street, "just for a block or two," and once tremu 
 lously presenting her with a bouquet. 
 
 He would have been glad to run much more 
 boldly than this in the course of courtship, but 
 his heart was in such a tender-footed condition 
 that he could not go otherwise than softly. In 
 his worshiping eyes Miss Olympia Smiles was not 
 only a lovely phenomenon, but also an august and 
 even an absolutely imposing one. Notwithstand 
 ing that she was the daughter of his landlady, and 
 held but a modest social position even in our un 
 pretentious little city, she had an unmistakable 
 air of fashionable breeding and boarding-school 
 finish, such as might be expected of a lady who 
 had passed her aarly youth in opulence. More 
 over, she drew about her an admiring bevy of our 
 university undergraduates, who, by their genteel 
 fopperies and classic witticisms, made Vane feel 
 ill at ease in their presence, although he strove 
 manfully in secret to despise them as mere boys. 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 5 
 
 Finally, she was handsome and impressively so, 
 tall, shapely, and grand in figure, superb and even 
 haughty in carriage, with a rich brunette coloring 
 which made him think of Cleopatra, and with 
 glowing dark eyes which pierced even to his 
 joints and marrow. 
 
 The one circumstance which encouraged Vane 
 to aspire after this astral being was the fact that 
 she seemed older than most of the undergraduate 
 planets who revolved about her, throwing him for 
 the present into sorrowful eclipse. He thought 
 that she must be twenty-three, and he sometimes 
 trusted that she might be twenty-five, or perhaps 
 twenty-seven. At the same time he so reverenced 
 her that he could not have been tortured into 
 believing that she was a veteran flirt, trained to 
 tough coquetry in many a desperate skirmish. 
 Often and often had Olympia " sat up " with a 
 young man till after midnight, and then gone up 
 stairs and passed her mother s bedroom door on 
 her hands and knees, not in penance and mortifi 
 cation of spirit, but in mere anxiety to escape a 
 lecture. 
 
6 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 Of these melodramatic scenes John Vane knew 
 nothing, and desired to know nothing. We must 
 add also, as indicative of his character and breed 
 ing, that, had he been minutely informed of them, 
 he would -have thought none the less of Miss 
 Smiles. In the first place he was so fascinated 
 by her that he would have pardoned almost any 
 folly or imprudence in her bygone history. In 
 the second place, he had been brought up in a 
 simple stratum of society, where girls were allowed 
 large liberties in sparking, even to the extent of 
 arms around the waists and much kissing, with 
 out incurring prudish condemnation. Indeed, so 
 far was he from being fastidious in these matters, 
 that, when he heard that Olympia had been en 
 gaged to one or more students, and that these 
 juvenile bonds had been promptly severed, he 
 was rather pleased and cheered by the informa 
 tion than otherwise. 
 
 " She must be about sick of those young jacka 
 napes," he hopefully inferred. " She must be 
 about ready to take up with a grown man, who 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 7 
 
 knows what he wants, and has some notion of 
 sticking to a bargain, and is able to do the decent 
 thing in the way of supporting her." 
 
 John Vane was himself, both in person and in 
 repute, no despicable match. As may have been 
 already guessed by such readers as are fitted to 
 apprehend his character and find instruction in 
 his history, he was one of those heroes of in 
 dustry and conquerors of circumstances known 
 as self-made men, whose successes are so full of 
 encouragement to the millions born into medioc 
 rity, and whom, consequently, those millions de 
 light to honor. 
 
 Had he really fabricated himself, whether we 
 speak of his physical structure or of his emotional 
 nature, he would have accomplished a rather 
 praiseworthy job of creation. Very few better 
 looking men or kinder hearted men have ever 
 paraded the streets of Slowburgh in Masonic 
 caparisons. Justly proportioned, with ample 
 withers, a capacious barrel, and limbs that were 
 almost majestic, he stood nearly six feet high in 
 
8 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 his stockings, weighed full two hundred pounds 
 in the same, and was altogether an uncommonly 
 fine animal. It is true ihat, to use his own jovial 
 phrase, he " ran a little too much to blubber for 
 comfort"; but it was disposed so becomingly and 
 carried so easily, that it did not prevent him from 
 moving with grace; while even his political ene 
 mies had to admit that it conspicuously enhanced 
 his dignity, and justified his admirers in talking 
 of him for governor. 
 
 His face, too, usually passed for handsome ; it 
 was fairly regular in feature, and of a fresh blonde 
 color like that of a healthy baby ; moreover, it 
 had the spiritual embellishment of a ready, cour 
 teous, and kindly smile. It was only the fastidi 
 ously aristocratic and the microscopically cultiva 
 ted who remarked of this large and well-moulded 
 figure-head that it lacked an air of high-breeding 
 and was slightly vacuous in expression. These 
 severe critics found the genial blue eyes which 
 fascinated humble people as uninteresting as if 
 they had been made of china-ware. They hinted, 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 9 
 
 in short, that John Vane s beauty was pureiy 
 physical, and had no moral or intellectual signifi 
 cance. 
 
 To this height of sentimental fault-finding Miss 
 Olympia Smiles had not attained. New-Yorker 
 by birth though she was, and polished by long- 
 continued friction against undergraduate pundits, 
 she was not a soul of the last and most painful 
 finish. She could not see but that Mr. Vane was, 
 from every point of view, sufficiently handsome. 
 Still she did not feel much pleased with his 
 obvious admiration, nor desire at all to lure him 
 on to the point of love-making. There were im 
 perfections in him which grated upon her sensi 
 bilities, far as these were from being feverishly 
 delicate. 
 
 In the first place, she found his conversation 
 rather uninteresting and distinctly "common." 
 He could only talk freely of politics, business, and 
 the ordinary news of the day ; he had no sparkles 
 of refined wit and no warm flashes of poesy ; he 
 was a little given to coarse chaffing and to slang. 
 
IO HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 For instance, he one day said to his vis-a-vis at 
 table, "Harris, please to scull that butter over this 
 way"; and, what made the matter worse, he said 
 it with a self-satisfied smile, as though the phrase 
 were original and irresistibly humorous. It was 
 unpleasant also to hear him remark every morn 
 ing, alluding to the severity of the weather, that 
 " the thermometer was on a bender." Such meta 
 phors might "do in students and other larkish, 
 agreeable youngsters ; but in a mature man, who 
 pretended to be marriageable, they argued dull 
 ness or vulgarity. Finally, Olympia plainly 
 gathered from Mr. Vane s daily discourse that he 
 was pretty ignorant of science, history, literature, 
 and other such genteel subjects. 
 
 But there was a much more serious defect in 
 this handsome man, considered as a possible ad 
 mirer. He was a widower, and a widower with 
 incumbrances. He had a wife thirty years old in 
 the graveyard, and he had two children of eight 
 and ten who were not there. It was annoying to 
 Olympia to see him help this boy and this girl to 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. I I 
 
 buttered slapjacks, and then bend upon herself a 
 glance of undisguisable, tender appetite. Had he 
 rolled in his carriage and resided in a mansion on 
 Saltonstall Avenue, she might have been able to 
 put up with his weeds and his paternity ; but in 
 a mere manufacturer of refrigerators, whose busi 
 ness was by no means colossal, these trappings of 
 woe and pledges to society were little less than 
 repulsive. 
 
 " I can never, never let him speak to me about 
 it," said the young lady, with excitement, when 
 her mother hinted to her that Mr. Vane seemed 
 to be drifting toward an offer ; " he is so com 
 
 mon: 
 
 " You must get married some time, I suppose," 
 sighed Mrs. Smiles, whose pride had had a fall as 
 splintering as that of Humpty Dumpty, and who 
 found it hard work to support two stylish daugh 
 ters. " Men who are not common are rare in our 
 present circle." 
 
 " I would rather be an old maid than take a 
 widower with two children," asserted Olympia. 
 
 " But how would the old maid live in case her 
 
12 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 mother should be removed ? " asked the parent, 
 pained in heart by her own plain-dealing, but feel 
 ing that it was called for. 
 
 The spinster who had never spun nor done any 
 other remunerative labor could not answer this 
 question. Presently it might have been observed 
 that a tear was rolling down her cheek. Hard, 
 hard indeed is the condition of a proud girl who 
 sees herself encompassed by the thorny hedges 
 of poverty, with no escape therefrom but a de 
 tested match, a match as disagreeable to smell 
 at as one of the brimstone species. 
 
 " Don t throw away this chance without fairly 
 considering it," continued the widow. "Mr. 
 Vane is a prosperous man, and a growing man 
 every way. He has good manners, barring some 
 slang phrases. He likes to talk about sensible 
 subjects and to inform himself. Ten years hence 
 you may find him your superior and have reason 
 to be proud of him. A clever wife would help 
 him forward wonderfully. He is a man that the 
 right kind of a woman could make over and make 
 fit for any circle." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 MRS. Smiles was so deeply interested in this 
 subject that she talked much .more firmly 
 and impressively than was her wont. 
 
 Her manner, however, was pathetically mild 
 and meek, as of a woman who is accustomed to 
 be trampled upon by misfortune, and of a mother 
 who has learned to bow down to her children. 
 
 She was a somewhat worn creature ; originally, 
 indeed, of fair outlines both physical and spiritual ; 
 but considerably rubbed out and defaced by the 
 storms of adversity. She reminded one of those 
 statues which travelers have seen in Italian 
 court-yards, which were once, no doubt, rounded, 
 vigorous, clean-cut, sparkling, and every way 
 comely, but which, being made, of too soft a 
 marble, or beaten upon too long by winds and 
 rains, have lost distinctness of lineament and 
 brightness of color. " A good liquor at the start, 
 
14 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 but too much matured somehow r nuther," judged 
 one of her boarders, Mr. Jonas Damson, the 
 grocer. 
 
 Yet this seemingly dilapidated and really totter 
 ing woman was the entire support, financially and 
 morally, of two healthy daughters. Why? Be 
 cause she was a relic of the time when ladies 
 were not mere dandies ; when work steadily done 
 and responsibility loyally borne trained their 
 characters into vigor ; when they, like their men, 
 were producers as well as consumers. Mrs. 
 Smiles was not as highly educated as Olympia ; 
 she could not talk, whether wisely or foolishly, of 
 so many subjects ; but industrially and morally 
 she was worth six of her. 
 
 Well, as this sorrowfully forethoughted mother 
 had foreseen, the proposal of marriage came at 
 last. John Vane popped the question with the 
 terror and anguish and confusion natural to a 
 self-made man who is madly in love with a "born 
 lady." His tender heart, hysterical with affec 
 tionate fear and desire, nearly pounded the breath 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 15 
 
 out of him while he uttered his message. What 
 he said he was not then sanely conscious of, and 
 could never afterwards distinctly remember. He 
 may have spoken as beautiful words as lover ever 
 did, or he may have expressed himself in the 
 slang which Olympia found so repellent. But 
 five minutes later he had forgotten the most mo 
 mentous speech of his life ; the particulars of it 
 had departed from him as irretrievably as the 
 breath in which they had been uttered ; they were 
 as completely gone as the odors of last year s 
 flowers. Olympia s response, however, remained 
 engraven upon his soul with sad distinctness ; it 
 was as plain as, " Sacred to the memory of," cut 
 into the marble of a gravestone. 
 
 " Mr. Vane, I sincerely respect you, and I thank 
 you for this mark of your esteem, but I cannot 
 be your wife," was the decorous but unsympa 
 thetic form of service which she read over his 
 hopes. 
 
 He essayed to implore, to argue his suit, to ask 
 why, etc. But she would not hear him. " It 
 
l6 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 cannot be," she interrupted, hastily and firmly;" 
 "I tell you, Mr. Vane, it cannot be." 
 
 And so, what seemed to him his ghost, went 
 out from her presence, to walk the earth in cheer 
 less unrest. 
 
 Of course, however, there was yet hope in the 
 depths of his wretchedness, like a living though 
 turbid spring of water in the bottom of a ruined 
 well. He still wanted this girl ; meant to bring 
 her somehow to favor his suit ; trusted in cheer 
 ful moments that she would yet be his. How 
 should he move her ? His friend, Mr. Jonas 
 Damson, to whom he confided his venture and 
 shipwreck, said to him, "John, you must show 
 her your dignified side. Don t stay here and 
 look melted butter at her, and cry in your coffee. 
 Don t make a d d fool of yourself, John, right 
 under her nose. If you can t keep a good face 
 on the business here, quit the house. Show her 
 your independence. Let her see you can live 
 without her. Sorry to lose you, John, from your 
 old chair ; but as a friend, I say, look up another 
 hash house." 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. I/ 
 
 So, despite the plaintive reluctance of Mrs. 
 Smiles, and despite his own desire to gaze daily 
 upon his fair tormentor, the rejected lover chang 
 ed residence. A rival boarding-house received 
 John Vane and his two children, and his weekly 
 payment of forty dollars. Next, after a little 
 period of nerveless stupor, he rushed into the 
 arena of politics. A politician of some local note, 
 he was already able to send to the polls a "crowd" 
 of the artisans whom he employed, or who knew 
 him favorably as an old comrade in handicraft, 
 and was consequently a sure candidate for the city 
 council from his own ward, and a tolerably strong 
 one for the State legislature. 
 
 Happily for his reawakened ambition, there had 
 been a scandal of late among the "men inside 
 politics." The member of Congress from the dis 
 trict of Slowburgh had been charged, and proved 
 guilty too, of taking a one thousand dollar bribe 
 from the "Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea 
 Steam Navigation Company." Some old war- 
 horses of the party, after vainly trying to hush 
 
1 8 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 the matter up, had decided to throw the Honor 
 able James Bummer overboard. 
 / "Bummer never could run again," they unani 
 mously neighed and snorted. " To try to carry 
 Jim Bummer would break down the organization. 
 Jim must take a back seat, at least until this 
 noise about him blows over, and give some fresh 
 man a chance. A man, by George, that would 
 cut the cherry-tree, and then tell of it, was n t fit 
 to guide the destinies of his country." 
 
 On the other hand, the personal friends of 
 Bummer, that is to say, the men whom he had 
 put into "soft places," or who had shared his 
 "perks," supported him for many cogent reasons. 
 They charged his enemies with encouraging the 
 Copperheads and the Ku-Klux ; with dishonoring 
 American institutions in the face of monarchical 
 Europe and of high Heaven, both apparently 
 hostile countries ; worst of all, and what was in 
 sisted upon with the bitterest vehemence, they 
 charged them with demoralizing the party, as if 
 Bummer had moralized it. They denied the 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 1 9 
 
 bribe doubly : first, they asserted that their man 
 had accepted no stock in said Steam Navigation 
 Company; second, they affirmed that he had as 
 much right to own stock in it as any other citi 
 zen. They were stubborn and very uproariously 
 wrathful, and not feeble in point of following. It 
 was evident that the battle which must take place 
 in the nominating caucus would be very fiercely 
 contested. The friends of reform were forced to 
 concede that, if they did not put up a candidate 
 of admittedly high character and of great per 
 sonal popularity, the meretricious veteran who 
 now carried the banner of the district would con 
 tinue to carry it. The whole momentous strug 
 gle, too, must center in the aforesaid caucus. Of 
 course, after this mysterious agency had decided 
 who should head the party, no good Republican 
 could "go back on" the nominee, though he were 
 the impenitent thief. 
 
 "John Vane, you must be there to-night," said 
 Mr. Darius Dorman to our hero, a few hours pre 
 vious to the caucus. "We may want you like 
 
2O HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 the Devil," he added, without considering the 
 precise uncomplimentary sense of the compari 
 son. 
 
 Darius Dorman called himself a broker or gen 
 eral business man; he shaved notes when he had 
 money, and when he had none speculated in city 
 lots; he was always on the lookout for public 
 jobs, such as paving contracts, and the supply of 
 stores to the State militia ; of late he was report 
 ed to be "engineering something through Con 
 gress." A very sooty and otherwise dirty chore 
 this last must have been, if one might judge of it 
 by the state of his linen, his hands, and even his 
 fac e. Indeed, there was about Dorman such a 
 noticeable and persistent tendency toward grimi- 
 ness, that it seemed as if he must be charged 
 with some dark, pulverous substance, which shook 
 through the interstices of his hide. Soap and 
 water were apparently of no more use to him 
 than they would be to a rag-baby of coarse calico 
 stuffed with powdered charcoal instead of saw 
 dust. His collar, his cuffs, his haggard, ghastly 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 21 
 
 features, his lean, griping claws, his very finger 
 nails, were always in a somber condition, verging 
 in spots towards absolute smirch. This opaque 
 finish of tint, coupled with a lean little figure 
 and a lively, eager action, caused some persons 
 to liken him to a scorched monkey. Other per 
 sons, whose imaginations had been solemnized by 
 serious reading, could not look upon him without 
 thinking of a goblin fresh from the lower re 
 gions, who had not found time since he came on 
 earth to wash himself thoroughly. In truth, if 
 you examined his discoloration closely, you dis 
 tinguished a tint of ashes mingled with the coal 
 smirch, so that a vivid fancy might easily impute 
 to him a subterranean origin and a highly heated 
 history. Another poetical supposition concern 
 ing him was, that his dusky maculations and 
 streakings were caused by the exudations of an 
 exceedingly smutty soul. His age was unknown ; 
 no one in Slowburgh knew when he was born, 
 nor so much as where he came from; but the 
 iron-grey of his unkempt, dusty hair suggested 
 that he must be near fifty. 
 
22 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 " They mean to put up Saltonstall against 
 Bummer, don t they ? " asked John Vane, with a 
 languid air, as if he took little interest in the 
 caucus. 
 
 " Yes, but it won t work," replied Dorman. 
 " Saltonstall is altogether too much of a gentle 
 man to get the nomination. He s as calm and 
 cold and dead as his buried ancestors, the old 
 governors. You can t get people to hurrah for a 
 gravestone, even if it has a fine name on it. In 
 fact, the fine name is a disadvantage ; American 
 freemen hate an aristocrat. It s really curious to 
 see how Saltonstall s followers are killing him off. 
 They are saying that, because he is the son of an 
 honorable, he ought to be an honorable himself, 
 and that he will do the right thing for the sake 
 of his forefathers. Our voters don t see it in that 
 light. They want plain people to become honor- 
 ables. Besides, who wants a Congressman to be 
 fussy ? The chaps inside politics know that they 
 won t get any favors out of a man who has a high 
 and mighty character to nurse. I tell you that 
 
HONEST JOHN VAN I .. 23 
 
 t 
 
 Saltonstall won t get the nomination. Bummer 
 won t get it either. Some third man is bound 
 to come in ; and you may be the very fellow. 
 So, don t fail to be on hand, Vane. Everything 
 depends on your showing yourself. When you 
 are called for, rise up to the full height of your 
 manly figger, and see what a yell there 11 be for 
 honest John Vane." 
 
 " O, pshaw ! nonsense, now," smiled Vane, shak 
 ing his large and shapely head ; but none the less 
 he resolved to attend the caucus, and, indeed, 
 positively promised so to do. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 ALTHOUGH Darius Dorman was noted for 
 his unfulfilled prophecies, for instance, fre 
 quently making business predictions which caused 
 such widows and orphans as believed in hinj to 
 lose their money, he on this occasion hit the 
 nail of the future pretty squarely on the head. 
 
 As soon as the caucus had been organized and 
 had listened to a pair of brief speeches urging 
 harmonious action, it split into two furiously hos 
 tile factions, each headed by one of the gentle 
 men who had talked harmony. Fierce philippics 
 were delivered, some denouncing Bummer for 
 being a taker of bribes and a pilferer of the 
 United States Treasury, and some denouncing 
 Saltonstall (as near as could be made out) for be 
 ing a gentleman. So suspicious of each other s 
 adroitness were the two parties, and so nearly 
 balanced did they seem to be in numbers, that 
 
 (24) 
 
JOHN YAM-:. 25 
 
 neither dared press the contest to a ballot. The 
 war of by no means ambrosial words went on 
 until the air of the hall became little less than 
 mephitic, and the leading patriots present had 
 got as hoarse and nearly as black in the face as 
 so many crows. At last, when accommodation 
 was clearly impossible, and the chiefs of the con 
 tending parties were pretty well fagged with their 
 exertions, Darius Dorm an sprang to his feet (if, 
 indeed, they were not hoofs), and proposed the 
 name of his favored candidate. 
 
 "I beg leave to point the way to a compromise 
 which will save the party from disunion and from 
 defeat," he screamed at the top of a voice pene 
 trating enough to cleave Hell s thickest vapors. 
 "As Congressman for this district, I nominate 
 honest John Vane." 
 
 Another broker and general contractor, whose 
 prompt inspiration, by the way, had been pre 
 viously cut and dried with great care, instantly 
 and, as he said, spontaneously seconded the mo 
 tion. Then, in rapid succession, a workingman 
 
26 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 who had learned the joiner s trade with Vane, 
 and a Maine liquor law orator who had more 
 than once addressed fellow-citizens in his teetotal 
 company, made speeches in support of the nomi 
 nation. The joiner spoke with a stammering 
 tongue and a bewildered mind, which indicated 
 that he had been put up for the occasion by 
 others, and put up to it, too, without regard to 
 any fitness except such as sprang from the fact 
 of his being one of the "hard-handed sons of 
 toil," a class revered and loved to distraction by 
 men whose business it is to "run the political 
 machine." The practised orator palavered in a 
 fluent, confident sing-song, as brassily penetrat 
 ing as the tinkle of a bell, and as copious in repe 
 titions. " Let the old Republican," he chanted, 
 " come out for him ; let the young Republican 
 come out for him; let the Democrat, yea, the 
 very Democrat, come out for him ; let the native- 
 born citizen come out for him; let the foreign- 
 born citizen come out for him ; let the Irishman, 
 and the German, and the colored man come out 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 2/ 
 
 for him ; let the cold-water temperance man come 
 out for him ; let the poor, tremulous, whiskey- 
 rotted debauchee come out for him ; let the 
 true American of every sort and species come 
 out for him ; let all, yea, all men come out for 
 awnest Jawn Vane!" 
 
 There was no resisting such appeals, coming 
 as they did from the "masses." The veteran 
 leaders in politics saw that the "cattle," as they 
 called the common herd of voters, were deter 
 mined for once to run the party chariot, and 
 most of them not only got out of the way, but 
 jumped up behind. They were the first to call 
 on Vane to show himself, and the first to salute 
 his rising with deafening applause, and the last to 
 come to order. A vote was taken on his nomina 
 tion, and the ayes had it by a clear majority. * 
 
 Then Darius Dorman proposed, for the sake of 
 party union, for the sake of the good old cause, 
 for the sake of this great Republic, to have the 
 job done over by acclamation. There was not an 
 audible dissenting voice ; on the contrary, there 
 
28 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 was "wild enthusiasm." The old war-horses and 
 wheel-horses and leaders all fell into the traces 
 at once, and -neighed and snorted and hurrahed 
 until their hard foreheads dripped with patriotic 
 perspiration, every drop of which they meant 
 should be paid for in municipal or State or Fed 
 eral dollars. 
 
 Many elders of the people escorted Vane home 
 that evening, and sat up with him with a devotion 
 which deserved no end of postmasterships. Of 
 all these admirers, however, the one who snug 
 gled closest and stayed latest, was that man of 
 general business, Darius Dorman. 
 
 "John, a word with you," he began confiden 
 tially, after his rivals had all departed, at the same 
 time drawing close up to Vane s side, and insinu 
 ating a dark, horny claw into one of his button 
 holes ; " I think you must own, John, that I have 
 done more than any other man to help you into 
 this soft thing. Would you mind hearing a word 
 of advice ? " 
 
 " Go on," replied Vane, with that cheery, genial 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 2Q 
 
 smile which had done so much toward making 
 him popular; " I owe you an oyster supper." 
 
 " You ll owe me a good many, if you follow my 
 counsel," continued Dorman. "Now listen to me. 
 You ll be elected ; that s a sure thing. But after 
 that, what ? Why, you ve got a great career open 
 to you, and you may succeed in it, or you may 
 fail. It all depends on what branch of politics 
 you work at. Don t go into the war memories 
 and the nigger worshiping; all those sentimental 
 dodges arc played out. Go into finance. The 
 great national questions to be attended to now 
 are the questions of finance. Spread yourself 
 on the tariff, the treasury, the ways and means, 
 internal improvements, subsidy bills, and relief 
 bills. Dive into those things, and stick there. 
 It s the only way to cut a figure in politics and 
 to make politics worth your while." 
 
 " I ve thought of that already," replied Vane 
 hopefully. " It s my line, you know, business, 
 money-matters, practical finance." 
 
 " Exactly ! " assented Dorman. " Well, throw 
 
3O HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 yourself on it, especially internal improvements 
 and subsidy bills, that sort of thing. When 
 you get in, I shall have a scheme to propose to 
 you which you ll like to push. Something big, 
 something national, something on a grand scale. 
 If it goes through, it will make reputations, and 
 fortunes, too, for that matter," he added, with a 
 glance at Vane which was monkey-like in its sly 
 greediness. 
 
 " I don t propose to go into Congress for 
 money," answered honest John Vane. 
 
 " O, of course not ! " leered Dorman. " You 
 want honor, and the respect of the country, and 
 so on. Well, this is just the kind of a measure 
 that will fix the eyes of the country on whoever 
 carries it through. You ll be delighted with it, I 
 know you will. However, I mustn t blow it now; 
 the time hasn t come. All I meant to say was, 
 that I wanted you to keep a hand ready for it 
 when it comes round. Well, that s all. I con 
 gratulate you, I do, with all my heart. Good 
 night." 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 31 
 
 Next day all Slowburgh was talking of Vane s 
 unexpected nomination for congress. " Queer 
 choice," said some people. " Everything happens 
 in politics. Vane is as ignorant of real public 
 business as he is of Sanscrit." Others remarked, 
 " Well, we shall have a decent man in the place. 
 John is a good-hearted, steady, honest fellow. 
 Not very brilliant, but he will learn the ropes as 
 others have ; and then he is so confounded 
 honest!" 
 
 After a nomination, as we Americans know by 
 wearisome experience, there must be an election. 
 The struggle between the two great and noble 
 parties of the ins and the outs which divided 
 Slowburgh was on this occasion unusually vehe 
 ment. The opposition, trusting to the divisions 
 which they supposed to exist in the administra 
 tion ranks, made such a fight as despair makes 
 when it changes to hope. 
 
 Many of those genteel and highly cultivated 
 persons who ordinarily hate politics became ex 
 cited ; and among these abnormally agitated ones 
 
32 . HONEST JOHN VAXE. 
 
 was Miss Olympia Smiles, It seems very strange, 
 and yet it was natural. Discovering that her re 
 jected suitor had become an object of interest to 
 all Slowburgh, she also, by mere human infection 
 or contagion, began to find him interesting. We 
 know how women go on when they once begin ; 
 we remember how, during the war, they flung 
 their smiles, their trinkets, and seemingly their 
 hearts, to unintroduced volunteers; we have all 
 seen them absorb enthusiasm from those around, 
 and exhale it with doubled heat. So it went, 
 during that political crisis, with the young lady in 
 question. Before the campaign had roared half 
 way through its course, she was passionately in 
 terested in it, and electioneered for her preferred 
 candidate even to her mother s Democratic board 
 ers. 
 
 "Measures are of little consequence," she de 
 clared when she was > argued with and confuted 
 by these prejudiced individuals. " What we want 
 and all that we want is good men in high places. 
 And, if I had a vote," she frequently asserted 
 
HONEST JOHN YAM.. 33 
 
 with a convincing blush, so beautiful was it, " if 
 I had a vote, it should go for Honest John 
 Vane." 
 
 Honest John heard of this and of other similar 
 speeches of Olympia s, and they seemed to him 
 altogether the most eloquent efforts of the cam 
 paign. They gave him a joy which a connois 
 seur in happiness might envy, a joy which more 
 than once, when he was alone, brought the tears 
 into his eyes. He had cherished no spite against 
 the girl because she had refused him ; and he did 
 not now say to himself scornfully that she would 
 like to be the wife of a Congressman, but that it 
 was too late ; he was too thoroughly a good fel 
 low and true lover to secrete any such venom of 
 thought or feeling. The hope that he might yet 
 win Olympia Smiles, and devote to her such part 
 of his life as his country and the refrigerator 
 business could spare, opened to him the prospect 
 of a little heaven upon earth. Meeting her one 
 day in the street, he ventured to stop her, thanked 
 her stammeringly for her favorable wishes, pressed 
 
34 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 her hand with unconscious vehemence, and parted 
 from her with a swimming head. 
 
 Olympia was sensible enough and sensitive 
 enough to carry away a rejoiced heart from this 
 interview. She knew now that she could still 
 have this hero of the hour, and she began to find 
 that she wanted him, at least a little. He was 
 no longer common and, metaphorically speaking, 
 unclean in her patrician eyes. She looked after 
 his tall, robust figure as it went from her, and 
 thought how manly and dignified and even hand 
 some it was. His condition of widowerhood be 
 came vague to her mind ; the gravestone of his 
 wife vanished like a ghost overtaken by daybreak ; 
 even his two cherished children could not cast a 
 shadow over her feelings. It would surely be 
 something fine to enter the capital of the nation 
 as the wife of one of the nation s law-givers ; it 
 would at least be far better than growing into old- 
 maidenhood amid the sordid anxieties of a board 
 ing-house. Aristocratic as her breed was, and 
 delicate as had been her culture, the title of Mrs. 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 35 
 
 John Vane tempted her. Should she throw a net 
 for this man, drag him back to her feet, and accept 
 him ? Well, perhaps so ; but first she would see 
 whether he carried his election ; she must not be 
 caught by a mere prophecy of greatness and 
 glory. 
 
 Let us not be severe upon the young lady be 
 cause of her prudence, asserting that she carried 
 it to the point of calculating selfishness. As far 
 as concerned love-making, this was her first essay 
 in that deliberate virtue ; and impartial psychol 
 ogy will not express angry surprise at her over 
 doing it a little, so much is the human mind ruled 
 by the law of undulation or pulsation, or, in other 
 words, so apt is it to go from one extreme to an 
 other. Besides, in a matter so permanently serious 
 to woman as marriage, it is pardonable and even 
 praiseworthy that she should be cautious. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 WELL, Honest John Vane triumphed at the 
 polls, and became member of Congress for 
 the district of Slowburgh. 
 
 Let us glance now at his qualifications for the 
 splendid and responsible position of which his 
 fellow-citizens had pronounced him worthy. 
 
 He was, to use a poetical figure, in the flower 
 of his age, or, to use a corresponding arithmetical 
 figure, about thirty-five. 
 
 He had, as lie and his admirers supposed, fully 
 formed his character, and settled it on a stable 
 platform of worthy habits and creeds. 
 
 He was commercially honest, indefatigably in 
 dustrious, a< believer in the equal rights of man, a 
 strenuous advocate of the Maine liquor law, a 
 member, if I am not greatly mistaken, of the 
 church, and every way in good, repute among 
 grave, conscientious people. 
 
 (36) 
 
^ 
 
 HONEST JOHN VANE, 37 
 
 His " war record " was admitted to be unim 
 peachable ; that is to say, he had consistently and 
 unflinchingly denounced the Rebellion " frpm its 
 inception"; if he had not fought for the Union 
 on the battle-field, he had fought for it on the 
 stump and in the chimney-corner. 
 
 In all his geographical sentiments he was truly 
 American, even to occasional misunderstanding 
 of our foreign affairs, and to the verge of what 
 one might call safe rashness. 
 
 He wanted somebody (meaning of course some 
 body else) to thrash England well for the Trent 
 affair, and to annihilate her for the Alabama out 
 rages. He affirmed in one of his public "efforts" 
 that our claim for indirect damages should be 
 prosecuted, if necessary, " before the court of 
 high Heaven," which phrase he always regarded 
 as one of his happiest inspirations, although he 
 had found it " in the paper." 
 
 He contended that it was our mission, and con 
 sequently our duty to interfere in behalf of op 
 pressed Cuba by bringing it within the pale of 
 
38 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 our own national debt, and generally to extend 
 the area of freedom over such countries as would 
 furnish us with a good market for our home pro 
 ductions, and a mild climate for our invalids. 
 
 At the same time he did not want to go to war 
 for these benevolent purposes ; for war, as he fre 
 quently remarked, was a frightful thing, and we 
 had already shed blood enough to show that we 
 would fight rather than submit to outrage ; he 
 only proposed that we "should sit still in our 
 grandeur and let those fellows gravitate toward 
 us." 
 
 His views concerning internal affairs were 
 marked by an equal breadth and thickness. He 
 held that the industry of the American producer 
 should be protected, at no matter what cost to the 
 American consumer. 
 
 He was opposed to the introduction of Chinese 
 cheap labor as being injurious to the "noble class 
 of native artisans," however it might benefit our 
 equally noble farmers by furnishing them with 
 low-priced tools, shoes, and clothing. 
 
HONEST JOHN VAXE. 39 
 
 He believed that our system of government 
 was the purest and most economical in the world, 
 when it was not abused by municipal rings, pub 
 lic defaulters, railroad legislation, and lobbyists of 
 the State and national capitals. 
 
 He argued that rotation in office is republican, 
 because it "gives every citizen a fair chance"; 
 and that it is a means of national education, be- 
 catise it tempts even the dregs of society to 
 aspire to responsibility and power. 
 
 In the whole superficies of our civil affairs he 
 saw but one error which needed serious and in 
 stant attention, namely, the franking privilege. 
 If that could be removed, and two millions thereby 
 saved annually out of a budget of three or four 
 hundred millions, he thought that the legislative 
 sun of American democracy would be left with 
 out a spot, the exemplar and despair of other tax- 
 laden nations. 
 
 Such was the optimist and amiable patriotism 
 of Congressman Vane. While we cannot but ad 
 mire it from a sentimental point of view, we are 
 
4O HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 obliged to regret that it did not rise from a wider 
 base of information. Whether the conclusions 
 of this self-taught statesman were right or wrong, 
 they were alike the offspring of ignorance, or at 
 best of half knowledge. We can only palliate 
 his dark-mindedness with regard to American 
 politics on the ground that it was cosmically im 
 partial, and extended to the politics of all other 
 countries, ancient and modern. 
 
 He had never heard that our civil institutions 
 were not exclusively our own invention, but ger 
 minated naturally from the colonial charters 
 granted by " tyrannical Britain." He believed 
 that, because Queen Victoria cost England half 
 as much annually as Boss Tweed cost the single 
 city of New York, therefore England ought to be 
 and must be on the verge of a revolution. He 
 supposed that Prussia must be an unlettered and 
 dishonestly governed country, because it is ruled 
 by a king. Of the ancient states of Greece he 
 had a general idea that they were republics, with 
 some form or other of representative government, 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 4! 
 
 Sparta being as much a democracy as Athens. 
 It would have been news to him, as fresh as any 
 thing arriving by telegraph, that Attica was legis 
 lated for by a single municipality, and that its in 
 habitants were three-fourths slaves. The Rome 
 of his mind was also a representative democracy, 
 and its conscript fathers were, perhaps, selected 
 by conscription, like recruits for some armies. Of 
 the tyranny of capitalists and of the corruption 
 of magistrates and tax-collectors in that most 
 famous of all republics, he was as ignorant as he 
 was, or strove to be, of similar phenomena in the 
 United States. His reading in ancient history 
 began and ended with Rollin, to the exclusion of 
 Niebuhr, Arnold, Grote, Curtius, and Mommsen, 
 of whom, indeed, he had never heard. It may 
 be thought that, for the sake of a joke, I am ex 
 aggerating Mr. Vane s Eden-like nakedness and 
 innocence ; but I do solemnly and sadly assure 
 the reader that I have not robbed him of a single 
 fig-leaf of knowledge which belonged to him. 
 As for political economy, he had never seen a 
 
42 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 line of Adam Smith, Mill, Bastiat, or any of their 
 fellows ; they not being quoted in "the papers" 
 which furnished his sole instruction in statesman 
 ship, and almost his sole literary entertainment. 
 He was too completely unaware of these writers 
 and of their conclusions to attack them with the 
 epithet of theorists or of doctrinaires. All that 
 he knew of political economy was that Henry C. 
 Carey had written some dull letters about it to 
 the Tribune, and that the Pennsylvania iron-men 
 considered him " an authority to tie to." His 
 vague impression was that the science advocated 
 the protection of native manufactures, and that 
 consequently it would be worth looking into when 
 ever he found a moment s respite from business 
 and politics. 
 
 Certainly, it was wonderful how little this self- 
 taught soul could see into a millstone, even when 
 it was his own and he ground at it daily. He 
 was a manufacturer of refrigerators ; and very 
 thankful indeed was he that Congress had imposed 
 high import duties on foreign specimens of 
 
HONEST JOHN YAM.. 43 
 
 that "line of goods"; it was patriotic and wise, 
 he thought, thus to protect American industry 
 against the pauper labor of Europe. Meantime, 
 he did not consider that his zinc and hinges, and 
 screws and nails, and paint and varnish were 
 taxed ; that his own food, raiment, fuel, and 
 shelter, and .also the food, raiment, fuel, and 
 shelter of his workmen, were likewise taxed ; 
 that, in short, taxation increased the expense of 
 all the materials of labor and the necessaries of life 
 which made up the principal cost of his fabrics ; 
 and that it was mainly because of these things 
 that he was unable to produce refrigerators at 
 anything like the ante-tax prices. 
 
 The government put a little money into one of 
 his pockets and took the same sum or more out 
 of several others ; and he was so far from seeing 
 that the legerdemain did not help him, or perhaps 
 hurt him, that he enthusiastically sang praises to 
 it. There had been a time when he exported, 
 when he could boast that a portion of his revenue 
 came from beyond sea, when he had hopes of 
 building up a fine market abroad. Not so now ; 
 
44 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 foreigners could no longer afford to buy of him ; 
 they made all their own refrigerators. John Vane 
 did not comprehend this adverse providence any 
 more than if he had himself been made of pine 
 and lined with zinc. He compendiously remarked, 
 < " Our prices rule too high for those beggars," and 
 was patriotically proud of the fact, though sadly 
 out of pocket by it. Such was his insight into 
 legislation where it directly concerned his own 
 bread and butter. You can imagine what a clear 
 view he had of those labyrinths of it which ramify 
 through the general body politic. 
 
 But if he was not an instructed soul, he was at 
 all events an honest one. That attribute all his 
 fellow-citizens conceded to him, even those who 
 did not see the wisdom or beauty of it ; it was a 
 matter of common fame in Slowburgh, and, one 
 might almost say, of common conversation. Men 
 who could not get . trusted for five dollars spoke 
 of him approvingly as " Honest John Vane," feel 
 ing, perhaps, that in so doing they imputed to 
 themselves a little of his righteousness, so illogi 
 cal are the mental processes of sinners. 
 
HONEST JOHN YANK. 45 
 
 It is worth while to relate (if only to encourage 
 our youth in the ways of virtue) how easily he 
 had acquired this high repute. While a member 
 of the State legislature he had refused a small 
 bribe from a lobbyist, and had publicly denounced 
 the briber. That this inexpensive outburst of 
 probity should secure him widespread and per 
 manent fame does not, to be sure, shed a very 
 pleasing light over the character which is borne 
 by our law-givers. But we will not enter upon 
 that subject ; it perhaps needs more whitewash 
 than we* possess. We will simply call the atten 
 tion of Sunday school pupils and Young Men s 
 Christian Associations to the cheering fact that, 
 at a prime cost of one hundred dollars, our towns 
 man was able to arise and shine upon a people 
 noted for i.ts political purity as " Honest John 
 Vane!" Only one hundred in greenbacks (about 
 ninety in gold) out of pocket, and the clays of 
 Washington come again ! I should suppose that, 
 for say twice the figure, a legislator of the period 
 %night get the title of " Father of his Country." 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 OUCH as we have described was John Vane s 
 O slender outfit for the labors and responsibili 
 ties of a Congressman at the time he became 
 one. 
 
 Was it sufficient ? Slowburgh, taken collec 
 tively, thought it was. He was too ignorant to 
 be a professor in the State university, or even a 
 teacher in one of the city schools ; but it was 
 presumed that he would answer well enough as a 
 law-giver for a complicated Republic containing 
 forty millions of people. 
 
 The great majority of his constituents did not 
 suppose that their representative needed any more 
 intelligence or moral stamina than would just 
 enable him to find out what were the "party 
 measures," and faithfully to vote for them. The 
 few who believed that he ought to be acquainted 
 either with finance, or political economy, or con- 
 
 (46) 
 
HUNILST JOHN YANK. 47 
 
 stitutional limitations, or international law, and 
 that furthermore he should be a person of tried 
 character and honor, these few eccentrics had 
 no political influence. Such were the happy-go- 
 lucky credences at which universal suffrage had 
 arrived in this exceptional district of Slowburgh. 
 But as this state of public opinion was not 
 John Vane s work, we must neither blame him 
 nor praise him for it. We ought even to take a 
 respectful and compassionate interest in him, as 
 a good-hearted man of fair repute who was about 
 to be severely tried by temptation, a nd who, even 
 in his hour of triumph, had his pathetic hopes 
 and fears. It is creditable to his sentimental 
 nature that, amid all the visions of greatness 
 which naturally flocked about him, he did not 
 forget his love for the daughter of the boarding- 
 house keeper, but rather remembered her the 
 more tenderly because he had a sort of throne 
 to share with her. When he heard that he was 
 elected, his first desire was to seek her presence 
 and offer himself once more. In this mind he 
 3 
 
48 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 faithfully remained ; but how should he transform 
 it into deed ? Having been refused by her, and 
 having departed from her mother s house, really 
 in humble sorrow, but seemingly in lofty dudgeon, 
 he simply supposed that he must not call upon 
 her. 
 
 Should he write ? Well, it is very strange to 
 tell, but nevertheless it is solemnly true, that 
 this Congressman elect distrusted his ability to 
 compose a suitable epistle for the occasion. Of 
 course he could spell correctly, and, as for busi 
 ness letters, he wrote a dozen or so a day, and 
 very good ones too. A speech also he could 
 make, for nature had given him that common 
 place fluency of utterance which does so much 
 duty in our public affairs, and . he had acquired 
 confidence in delivery by practice in caucuses, 
 debating-clubs, and, if I do not err, in prayer- 
 meetings. But in English composition of the 
 elegant and delicate sort, he was entirely inex 
 perienced. He said to himself that, if he should 
 write a declaratory note to Miss Smiles, some- 
 
 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 49 
 
 thing common, something lacking in high breed 
 ing, might creep into it, which would be sure to 
 disgust this genteel and highly educated young 
 lady, and cause her, as he stated it in his anxious 
 mind, " to put another veto on him." So, for sev 
 eral days, our statesman elect walked the streets 
 of the city which had delighted to honor him, 
 with a prevalently humble and troubled spirit. 
 
 Accident at last favored him ; or, perhaps, it 
 may have been a stroke of feminine providence ; 
 for women do sometimes condescend to order 
 their own destinies. Once again Olympia Smiles 
 met him on the street, and most graciously al 
 lowed herself to be stopped by him, if, indeed, 
 she did not herself do the stopping. Vane was 
 for a moment dumb, for he remembered that he 
 had nothing special to say to her except that he 
 adored her, and it did not seem to him quite 
 proper to interview her just there on that subject. 
 Olympia came to his rescue with that quickness 
 of mind which young ladies rarely lose and that 
 mercy which they sometimes have. 
 
5O HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 " Mr. Vane, I am glad to meet you," she smiled. 
 It was a very cordial speech surely, but it did not 
 at all diminish her maidenly dignity, so well did 
 she know how to rule her manner. " I have 
 really longed to congratulate you on your vic 
 tory," she continued. " It gives me a great deal 
 of pleasure." 
 
 " I thank you exceedingly," stammered John, 
 blushing with unspeakable joy and fright. " I 
 heard you were good enough to take my side 
 during the campaign. I was very much obliged 
 to you for it, I am sure." 
 
 He showed no anger and he put on no dignity, 
 though he seemed to hear even then her humili 
 ating words, " It can never be." In the matter 
 of loving, he was surely a model soul, and, so far 
 as that goes, well worth any woman s winning. 
 
 "Why don t you come and see us?" she re 
 sumed, after a moment of natural hesitation over 
 the entangling query. " I had hoped that we 
 should always remain good friends." 
 
 She looked uncommonly attractive as she ut- 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 5 I 
 
 tercd this, for there was an enchantment about 
 her beyond that of mere beauty. Her agitation 
 not only filled her cheeks with color, and her 
 eyes with tremulous light, but drew from her 
 whole being a mysterious influence which we 
 might, perhaps, call a halo of enticement. She 
 longed so earnestly to bring her discarded lover 
 back to her feet, that he could not but be vaguely 
 aware of the longing. 
 
 " I shall be delighted to call," replied John 
 Vane, so much moved that he could not devise a 
 fine speech, but delivering himself with the sim 
 plicity of high breeding. " Will you allow me to 
 see you this evening ? " 
 
 " Yes," murmured Olympia, drawing her breath 
 with some difficulty. " Do come." 
 
 Then, unwilling to say more for fear of expos 
 ing her feelings too clearly, she gave him a bewil 
 dering smile and went her way. Her superb 
 figure thrilled- in every vein with excitement, and 
 she could hardly set her little bootees upon the 
 ground steadily. Citizen John Vane had had no 
 
52 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 attractions for her ; but she could not help being 
 drawn by the member of Congress. After the 
 fashion of women, she instinctively admired a 
 man who rules his fellow-men, and causes them 
 to do him reverence. As he, like all masculine 
 flesh, adored beauty and delicacy, so she, like all 
 feminine flesh, worshiped strength and authority. 
 That evening John called, in his best suit, at 
 his old boarding-house, and was received there 
 with a warmth which melted the icy past out of 
 his mind. Mrs. Smiles, who had always liked 
 him, and who had been sentimentally pained as 
 well as financially injured by losing him from her 
 table, called up all her social graces of bygone 
 fashionable days to do him honor. Julia Maria, 
 Olympia s younger sister, only nineteen years old 
 at the time, saluted him in her pert but allur 
 ing way as, "the delegation from Slowburgh." 
 Olympia herself, that experienced though not 
 hardened veteran of the world, robed herself in 
 just the right mixture of cordiality and dignity. 
 Both in a moral and in a ward-robe sense, she had 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 53 
 
 taken great pains to get herself up for the occa 
 sion. She was arrayed in her best garnet silk ; 
 and we ought to add the statement that it was 
 her only really good and fresh one, a pathetic 
 circumstance in view of the fact that she dearly 
 loved gorgeous apparel, and that it suited her 
 style of beauty. The rich and noble color of the 
 garnet lent additional splendor to the flush on 
 her brunette cheeks, and to the liquid sparkle 
 of her dark eyes. There was an emerald cross 
 (a relic of her mother s former prosperity) on 
 her breast ; and several rings, of like moving his 
 tory, sent out little glimmers of gentility from 
 her fingers. The fine raiment and the authentic! 
 splendor of the jewels became her, and made her 
 more queenly, more like a Cleopatra, than even 
 her wont. John Vane had never "before seen her 
 so beautiful, and he was dazzled to that degree 
 that he forgot his own political majesty, and sat 
 before her on the edge of a chair, a most humble 
 Antonv. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ** T am truly rejoiced at your success, Mr. 
 Vane," chanted the mother, who felt it he r 
 duty to open the way toward full cordiality. 
 
 " We shall now have an honest man to repre 
 sent us," she continued, repeating such political 
 talk as she had fully caught the sense of while 
 serving her boarders. "And a man of ability, 
 too/ she quickly added, vaguely conscious that 
 an imputation of honesty alone is small praise. 
 " Knowing what you have done in life hitherto, I 
 feel sure that you will be very useful in your new 
 sphere." 
 
 " Do manage, Mr. Vane, to have a gay season 
 in Washington," put in Julia Maria ; " and then do 
 get me an invite to spend the winter there." 
 
 Olympia lost a little of her air of repose, and 
 glanced uneasily at her sister. Was it within the 
 range of possibility that this young chit should 
 
 (54) 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 55 
 
 skip into the arena and carry off the prize by dint 
 of mere girlish forwardness and flippancy? Mrs. 
 Smiles also saw the peril, and, in obedience to 
 the eye of her eldest, sweetly sent Julia Maria 
 down stairs with a message to the cook. 
 
 " I don t know what sort of a figger I shall 
 cut in Congress," observed John Vane, modestly. 
 " But you may be sure, Mrs. Smiles, that I shall 
 do my honest best. I hope sincerely that I shall 
 merit the compliments you are so polite as to pay 
 me." 
 
 " O, indeed you will ! " broke in both mother 
 and daughter, eagerly. 
 
 "And yet, I should think you would tremble 
 at the thought of assuming such responsibilities," 
 continued Mrs. Smiles, gazing with real venera 
 tion at her once favored boarder, now the choice 
 of the people. " It must be such a terrible thing 
 to decide on the President s salary, and such-like 
 important questions." 
 
 "O, that s very simple!" answered the Con 
 gressman elect, pardonably anxious to show a little 
 
56 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 bit of his political lore. "You see, the Presi 
 dent s salary is fixed by law, and there s no dis 
 cussion over it." 
 
 " Yes, but you may have to vote on the law," 
 pursued the good lady, eager to make up some 
 work for her hero. 
 
 " O, as to that," stammered Vane, who had 
 been drawn beyond his depth, " I dare say that 
 may come up sometimes ! Of course, when it 
 does, Congress attends to it." 
 
 " Certainly," chimed in Mrs. Smiles, delighted 
 that it should be so, because it enhanced her 
 friend s glory. "I remember hearing Mr. Smiles, 
 my poor husband, this was when we were in 
 better circumstances, Mr. Vane, I remember 
 hearing him say that Congress is only too power 
 ful. He took a great interest in politics, Mr. 
 Smiles did. It is the business of a statesman, 
 he used to say. Often and often I ve heard him 
 say it." 
 
 By this time Olympia was glancing sidelong at 
 her mother, as she had previously glanced at her 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 57 
 
 sister. Mrs. Smiles noted the look and divined 
 from it that she was in the girl s way, and pro 
 ceeded to remove herself. 
 
 " Dear me ! I wonder if Julia gave my mes 
 sage," she exclaimed, in a simulated tone of re 
 miniscence. " Do excuse me for a few moments, 
 Mr. Vane. You know a housekeeper has her 
 affairs." 
 
 " Certainly, Mrs. Smiles," bowed John, who 
 was rejoiced to have her depart, although he also 
 felt nervous. 
 
 As soon as the two " young people " were left 
 alone, Olympia rose from the chair where she 
 had been sitting in isolated dignity, advanced to 
 our Congressman with an air of cordial interest, 
 and placed herself by his side on a sofa. 
 
 " Now tell me all about it," she murmured with 
 a bewildering smile. " I have so longed to ques 
 tion you ! I wanted to give you some intelligent 
 sympathy. Tell me all your plans of legislation, 
 as far as it is proper to tell them to a woman." 
 
 Such a gush from such a source was intoxicat- 
 
58 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 ing to the heart, and furthermore it was inspiring 
 to the mind. Some thousands of psychologists 
 have already remarked that a man can always 
 talk easily, if you will let him talk about himself 
 and provide him with an interested and interest 
 ing listener. John Vane at once lost his em 
 barrassment and found that this was indeed a 
 land of free speech. He had a fluent utterance, 
 / as we have already indicated, and on this occa- 
 | sion he beat his best time on the platform. He 
 told all that he knew about national politics, and 
 some things which neither he nor any other man 
 ever knew. 
 
 " O, that will be noble work!" exclaimed Olym- 
 pia, when he had fully exposed his plan for reno 
 vating and purifying the Republic by rescinding 
 "the franking privilege. " We shall all owe you a 
 vast debt of gratitude," she continued, without in 
 the least comprehending how the reform would 
 benefit her or any other human creature. " But 
 do you think it possible to eradicate such an estab 
 lished and wide-spread abuse?" sine continued, 
 
HONEST JOHN VAXK. 59 
 
 calling it what he had called it, and thereby caus 
 ing him to marvel at her discrimination. " Here 
 are all these greedy people all over the country, 
 crazy to get these big books and reports that you 
 speak of. How do you think they will bear being 
 deprived of them ? Of course they will become 
 your bitter enemies. Don t you think it would 
 be safer, and better in the long run, to begin with 
 some easier work, where there would not be mil 
 lions to oppose you ? Of course I am dreadfully 
 ignorant of these political matters," she naively 
 confessed, discovering by his face that she had 
 made some blunder, which she certainly had as to 
 the millions. " You must forgive me for ventur 
 ing suggestions. I ought not to try to discuss 
 matters so much above me. But I am so eager 
 to have you succeed from the very start! O, so 
 eager!" she added, rolling up her fine eyes en 
 thusiastically 
 
 " O Miss Smiles! I do heartily thank you for 
 your interest," gasped John Vane, barely restrain 
 ing himself from falling on his majestic knees. 
 
6O HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 At this moment the impertinent cheap parlor 
 clock struck ten. Congressman Vane started and 
 stared at its round face with astonishment. Since 
 Mrs. Smiles had left the room " for a few mo 
 ments," more than an hour had elapsed, 
 
 " I must be going," he observed, remembering 
 an appointment, at ten precisely, with certain 
 leading managers of politics. 
 
 "O, it is not late! " pleaded Olympia. " I have 
 but just begun to get interested I mean, to un 
 derstand these matters." 
 
 But the Congressman felt that it would not do 
 to let his potent allies wait long, and, humbly 
 pleading his appointment, he persisted in rising. 
 
 "Do call again soon," urged the young lady. 
 " I want to show you that I am still your friend, 
 one of your most sincere friends," she added fer 
 vently, giving him her hand. 
 
 John Vane could not resist the temptation ; he 
 impulsively pressed that hand to his lips. " You 
 know how I feel ! " he gasped in apology, and then 
 in haste made his dizzy way to the door. 
 
HONEST JOHN YANK. 6 1 
 
 "O, how could you!" whispered Olympia in 
 feigned remonstrance. But her cheek was red 
 with pride and pleasure, and her parting glance 
 was of a nature to fill him with hope. 
 
 A sense of justice compels us to state that this 
 young lady was not merely a clever hypocrite, 
 cold-heartedly planning for herself a prosperous 
 marriage. During the two months in which John 
 Vane had fought his election fight and won his 
 really brilliant victory, she had not only lost all 
 her early disdain of him, but had gradually learned 
 to admire him, to wish to win him, and to like 
 him. People are often loved, not merely for what 
 they are themselves, but also for their adventitious 
 surroundings. I myself feel that I might have a 
 passion for a tolerably plain queen, if her Majesty 
 should distinctly and magnificently encourage me. 
 Just in this natural, and therefore, I suppose, ra 
 tional and proper manner, Olympia "fancied" and 
 in a certain sense loved Mr. Vane because he was 
 a Congressman and a celebrity. 
 
 A learned pig, or any other intellect of a second- 
 
62 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 rate order, might predict with accuracy the result 
 of such a state of things. These two people, 
 who so earnestly wanted each other, soon man 
 aged to have each other. But, although John 
 Vane made an easy conquest, it was none the less 
 an unexpected one to him, and a matter of great 
 and keen joy. When he at last dared to say to 
 Olympia, "Will you be my wife?" and when she 
 leaned with downcast eyes toward him and whis 
 pered, " I will," he was as much astonished with 
 gladness as if he had been received bodily into 
 heaven. Just in that moment his feelings, and 
 we may hopefully venture to add hers also, were 
 as admirable and enviable as the emotions of the 
 most select and highly educated natures would 
 average under the same circumstances, and might 
 easily be accepted as the sure harbingers of a 
 happy married life. 
 
 We shall see in the sequel, when Mr. and Mrs. 
 Vane come to be exposed to the temptations of 
 Washington, whether these seraphic visitants 
 prophesied correctly. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 IN due time John Vane took his lovely bride to 
 the national capital, and entered upon his triple 
 career as a social magnate, a lawgiver, and a re 
 former. 
 
 He was a bloomingly happy man at the period 
 of that advent, and he could surely allege satis 
 factory reasons for his beatitude. He had attained 
 eminence early in life ; there were few younger 
 Congressmen than himself. His fame as an in 
 corruptible soul had preceded him ; and because 
 of it he hnd been received by his brother legisla 
 tors with a deference which spoke well for them : 
 as if they also were honest or admired probity 
 theoretically, or at the very least bowed to popular 
 prejudice on the subject. He had, as he sup 
 posed, a sure entry into the hitherto unvisited 
 region which he called high society, and by his 
 side walked a being who seemed to him perfectly 
 
 (63) 
 
64 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 fitted to guide him among those Delectable Moun 
 tains. Finally, his wife was the object of his ro 
 bust,, undivided affection, and, to the best of his 
 knowledge and belief, returned it with interest. 
 
 But, however pure and abundant may be the 
 sources of earthly joy, some turbid stream will 
 ever and anon rile them, bubbling up no doubt 
 from the infernal regions. Before long Vane dis 
 covered, or rather had it borne in upon him, that 
 Olympia was not pleased with her architectural 
 surroundings, nor with their upholstery attributes. 
 His apartments, it must be conceded, were not 
 fine; they were just that kind of tarnished, 
 frowsy lodgings which Congressmen of moderate 
 means grumble at, but perforce put up with ; such 
 lodgings as one is sure to find abundantly in any 
 city which is crowded during one half of the 
 year and deserted during the other half. Even 
 Vane, whose self-made career had not left him a 
 sybarite, was obliged to admit that the bedroom 
 smelt unpleasantly of a neighboring stable, and 
 that the parlor was dingy and scantily furnished. 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 65 
 
 "O, this shabby Washington !" Olympia soon 
 began to sigh. " What mean, musty, vile rooms ! 
 I don t see how we came to take them. I m sure 
 nobody but poorhouse people will visit us twice 
 
 "But, my dear petsy posy, what can be done?" 
 gently replied John. "They are the best we 
 could find at the figgcr, and the figgcr is as high 
 as my pocket-book measures. Just look at the 
 whole thing now," he continued, patiently recom 
 mencing an argument which he had already been 
 driven to state more than once. " I ll show you 
 exactly how I stand. As a source of income the 
 refrigerator business don t count at present. I 
 had to take in a partner to carry on the shop ; 
 and whether there ll be any profits or not I can t 
 yet say. It won t be safe, at least not for the first 
 year, to estimate my receipts at anything more 
 than my Congressional salary. What I have to 
 live on, then, is just five thousand dollars, and no 
 more." 
 
 " But that is a great deal," interrupted Olympia, 
 
66 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 who had never had anything whatever to do with 
 the boarding-house responsibilities, and was con 
 sequently as ignorant of the cost of living as 
 Queen Victoria, and probably a great deal more 
 so. 
 
 "Well, that depends on the rate of outgo," 
 smiled the husband, hoping vainly to render his 
 logic palatable by sugaring it with meekness. 
 " Now, what are our expenses? First, there are 
 the two children. I wanted to make things easy 
 for your mother, and so I put their board at 
 twenty-four dollars per week, which, with other 
 bills, such as clothing, schooling, doctoring, etc., 
 will foot up to eighteen hundred a year. It s 
 awful, but I wanted to make it light on the old 
 lady." 
 
 He smiled again, not noting how this reference 
 to the maternal poverty jarred on Olympia. 
 
 "Then our board and rooms here," he con 
 tinued, "cost forty dollars a week, and won t fall 
 greatly below that while we are in Slowburgh, be 
 sides which you want a trip to Saratoga. So 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 6/ 
 
 there goes another payment of two thousand and 
 eighty dollars. That makes three thousand eight 
 hundred and eighty, you see. All we have left 
 for everything else wardrobe, washing, servants, 
 street-cars, hack-hire, and sundries is only eleven 
 hundred and twenty dollars. Can we fetch the 
 twelve months round on that ? I don t know yet. 
 But I m sure, we ought to wait and see, before we 
 branch out any wider. Just look at it, my dear 
 petsy posy, for yourself." 
 
 " I hate arithmetic," was the answer which dear 
 petsy posy accorded to this painstaking exposition 
 of weighty facts ; " I always did hate it and al 
 ways shall." 
 
 There are some persons so constituted that 
 they will get furious with a thermometer for prov 
 ing that a room is warm after they have pro 
 nounced it cold. Olympia, who already felt dis 
 contented with her husband for bringing her into 
 these commonplace rooms, was little less than 
 angry at him because his arguments in favor of 
 retaining them were unanswerable. She did not 
 
68 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 care one straw for his reasons, except to hate 
 them for controverting her wishes. 
 
 "I did think that I should be allowed to live in 
 some style while I was in Washington/ she con 
 tinued to pout "This kind of thing," with a 
 disdainful glance at her furnishings, " I suppose 
 I can bear it, if I must ; but I do say that it is a 
 very great disappointment to me." 
 
 Having been married before, John Vane was 
 not much astonished at this persistence, but he 
 could not help being grieved by it. It did seem 
 to him rather hard that a wife whom he had taken 
 out of the enforced frugality of a boarding-house 
 should be just as eager for grandeur and as hostile 
 to saving as if she had been reared in the lap of 
 luxury and had brought him a fortune. Further 
 more, a sad doubt, which has dolorously surprised 
 many a husband beside him, now sprang upon 
 him for the first time. " Is it possible," he asked 
 himself, "that she is not going to be satisfied with 
 succeeding through my success, but means to 
 make her own glory the centre of our life?" 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 69 
 
 The first Mrs. Vane, whatever her shortcom 
 ings in other respects, had been content with 
 such an abode as he could pay for, and had taken 
 a pride in his growing business. But here was a 
 new style of helpmeet ; a helpmeet who appar 
 ently did not propose to live for him ; who, on 
 the contrary, intended that he should live for her, 
 and that without regard to balancing his bank 
 account. She had got a Congressman ; but that 
 almost continental fact did not satisfy her: she 
 must have her own separate empire and glory. 
 In short, Vane began dimly to suspect (although 
 he did not at all know how to phrase the matter 
 to himself) that he had married a " girl of the l 
 period," that fairest and greediest of all vampires. 
 Being love-bewitched, however, he did not really 
 believe in his calamity, and much less burst forth 
 in wrath or lamentation. 
 
 " Well, my dear, we ll see about it," he said, 
 cheeringly. " We ll keep our eyes open for some 
 better shanty than this, and if the dollars seem 
 plenty we ll pop into it." 
 
7O HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 This conditional promise of finer surroundings 
 
 Olympia tacitly accepted as a positive agreement 
 
 
 
 to provide the same, and went out that very day 
 in search of first-class apartments, returning 
 much annoyed at finding none vacant. To soothe 
 her disappointment she got fifty dollars from her 
 husband, purchased such damask curtains as 
 could be had therefor, and so embellished her 
 parlor/ Vane winced a little ; as a business man he 
 saw that this was a poor way to prepare for getting 
 into better lodgings ; as a business man also he 
 hated to spend money in lending attractions to 
 another person s property. But he tried to per 
 suade himself that he had got off tolerably cheap, 
 and that his wife would learn economy and self- 
 control in the course of time. Then, like many 
 another Congressman who cannot rule his own 
 expenditures, he "turned his attention to reforming 
 those of the nation. 
 
 The first thing to be done was to get in his bill 
 for the abolition of the franking privilege. He 
 had written it out months ago, and touched it up 
 
HONEST JOIIX VANE. /I 
 
 ever so many times since. After pulling aside 
 those damask curtains in order to give himself 
 some light, he took his well-scratched manuscript 
 out of his trunk, and read it to himself aloud. 
 As is frequently the case with persons little ac 
 customed to composition, the sound of his own 
 periods was agreeable to him, and the sense im 
 pressive, not to say sublime. It seemed to him 
 that it was a good bill ; that it was, all over its 
 face and down its back, an honest man s bill ; that 
 every respectable fellow in the House would have 
 to vote for it. He decided to make a clean copy 
 of it just as it was, without another syllable of 
 useless alteration. He had just squared himself 
 and spread out his legs and put his head on one 
 side for this " chore," and was in the very act of 
 flourishing his right hand over the foolscap pre 
 paratory to executing a fine opening capital, when 
 he was arrested by a ring at his door-bell. Pres 
 ently in stampqd his old acquaintance and most 
 adroit wire-puller, Mr. Darius Dorman, followed 
 by a stranger. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 NO miracle having of late been performed for 
 the benefit of Dorman (who, indeed, may 
 have been altogether beyond the pale of heavenly 
 interferences), he was as ungraciously fashioned 
 and as disagreeably discolored as ever. 
 
 Earthly soap and water, it seemed, could not 
 wash away that suspicious smear of charcoal and 
 ashes which constituted his complexion, or which, 
 perhaps, only hid its real tint. 
 
 Blurred, blotched, smoke-dried, wilted, uneasy, 
 and agile, he looked and acted, as he had always 
 looked and acted, to mortal eyes, like either a 
 singed monkey or a bleached goblin, who had 
 some unquenched sparks on his hide that would 
 not let him be quiet. 
 
 To this brownie in bad preservation the person 
 who accompanied him offered a pleasing contrast. 
 He was a man of near seventy, but still slender 
 
 (72) 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 73 
 
 in build and of an upright carriage ; his face was 
 long, venerably wrinkled, firm in expression, and 
 yet unctuous with mildness and benevolence ; his 
 hair was long, straight, thin, and of a gray which 
 verged on the reverend gloss of pure whiteness ; 
 his whole air was marked by a curious staidness 
 and circumspectness which seemed to promise 
 ascetic virtue. One would have said that here 
 was a soul which had dwelt long on the pillar of 
 self-sacrifice. If there was a certain sharpness 
 amounting almost to cunning in the half-shut, 
 faded, cold gray eyes, it might have been acquired, 
 of course, by wary spying into the ambushes of 
 this wicked world, and be only a proof of that 
 serpent-like wisdom which goes properly with the 
 harmlessness of the dove. If there was a show 
 of grip about the close-shut mouth, as though it 
 could hang on to an advantage like a mastiff to a 
 bone, perhaps it might have resulted from a 
 dogged struggle to hold fast to the right. On 
 the whole, this gentleman s appearance was well 
 calculated to inspire instant and entire confidence, 
 
74 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 providing the beholder were disposed by educa 
 tion to put faith in exteriors of the Puritanized 
 cast. 
 
 " How are you, Vane?" exclaimed Dorman, cor 
 dially extending one of those hands which had 
 such an air of having been rubbed in a fireplace. 
 "Glad to see you at last where you belong; glad 
 to see one right man in the right place. Let me 
 make you acquainted with the Honorable Mr. 
 Sharp, one of the leading members from the good 
 old Whetstone State/ he explained referring to 
 a well-known Commonwealth. "Of course you 
 have heard of Mr. Simon Sharp, the great finan 
 cier and practical statesman. Mr. Sharp, this is 
 honest John Vane, the workingman s man, the 
 plain people s man. By Beelzebub ! " he added 
 (for he had very odd fashions of swearing), " I m 
 glad to bring you two gentlemen together. You 
 both travel the honest track. You ll make a 
 team." 
 
 Mr. Vane and Mr. Sharp shook hands respect 
 fully, and said what pleasant things they could 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 75 
 
 think of. Our member noted with some surprise 
 that his famous and puissant visitor had a sin 
 gularly soft, ingratiating, obsequious, nay, even 
 sycophantic utterance, and that his manner was 
 not only deferential, but slightly anxious and 
 nervous and embarrassed, as if he were a needy 
 tradesman eager to propitiate a difficult customer. 
 Moreover, he \vas unctuously and little less than 
 stickily profuse in compliments, pouring them 
 forth with a liberality which reminded one of oil 
 dripping from a castor-bean press. He repeated 
 over and over such lubricating commonplaces as, 
 " I thank you truly, Mr. Vane. You are really 
 much too kind. You do me too high an honor. 
 This from you, my dear sir, is more than I 
 deserve. I am delighted to have the pleasure of 
 your acquaintance. I hope to learn statesman 
 ship from you, sir. I trust that you will find me 
 a zealous scholar. We have all been, as it were, 
 waiting for you. O, thank you kindly ! " when a 
 seat was urged upon him. " You are really too 
 urbane and thoughtful. I thank you heartily." 
 
76 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 At last, emerging with difficulty from a wilder 
 ness of bowings and scrapings, they all three got 
 settled creakily on such unstable chairs as the 
 dingy parlor afforded. Mr. Dorman now opened 
 his dry, blackened, baked lips, and took the lead 
 in the conversation. 
 
 " Just in Washington, Vane. I came on about 
 my little job, and I thought I d drop in to see 
 how you found yourself ; and as I was strolling 
 along I met Friend Sharp." 
 
 Here he glanced at that worthy person, who 
 was thereby driven to nod and smile in confirma 
 tion of the tale, although the fact was that Dor 
 man had looked him up at his residence and 
 besought him eagerly to call on Vane. 
 
 " And it s a lucky circumstance, I think," con 
 tinued Darius, with one of his unpleasing smiles, 
 a grimace which seemed to express suffering 
 rather than joy, as though he had sat down upon 
 an unhealed burn. " You see, Friend Sharp is 
 one of the oldest sailors in this ship of state, and 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 77 
 
 knows all the ropes, and the way to the caboose, 
 and everything." 
 
 " O, Mr. Dorman ! you do me too much hon 
 or!" put in Mr. Sharp, with a meek, uneasy 
 air. " I scarcely know a rope, and know nothing 
 about the caboose. You are really too obliging. 
 But you mean a compliment, and I thank you 
 kindly." 
 
 " I must have my little joke," winked Darius. 
 " Well, at any rate, Friend Sharp is a man who 
 knows how to keep out of traps and to show 
 others how to steer clear of them. Now you, 
 Vane, have got a great measure on your mind 
 and conscience. It s a great and good measure ; 
 there s no use in disputing it. The only ques 
 tion is, whether it is best to push it now, or 
 wait awhile. Will hurrying it up do good or do 
 harm ? Mr. Simon Sharp is just the person to 
 tell you." 
 
 " Well, gentlemen," said Vane, with an elevat 
 ing sense of making a revelation, while the truth 
 was that Sharp already knew all about his pro- 
 
78 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 posed bill "well, gentlemen, I want to abolish 
 the franking privilege." 
 
 The member from the old Whetstone State 
 bowed, stretched out one of his smiles into an 
 adulatory grin, and whispered in his greasiest 
 voice, " Certainly, Mr. Vane, certainly ! " 
 
 " You agree with me ! " rejoiced Honest John. 
 "Well, I m glad of securing one leading voice in 
 the House." 
 
 " In principle in principle," Mr. Sharp con 
 tinued to grin ; " yes, in principle I entirely agree 
 with you. You have suggested a measure which 
 touches my conscience, and I need not say that 
 I thank you kindly. You will find many sympa 
 thizers with your idea in Congress, sir. All hon 
 est, fair-minded, intelligent, and patriotic mem 
 bers long to do away with that expensive nuis 
 ance which so corrupts our national morality and 
 overloads our mail-bags. The trouble is that the 
 fellows who want a re-election " And here the 
 good soul shook his venerable head sadly over 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 79 
 
 the character of the fellows who wanted a re-elec 
 tion. 
 
 " But ain t there enough popular men and sound 
 patriots to carry it, in spite of those chaps ?" ask 
 ed Vane, anxiously. 
 
 " You see, there are so many who want a re 
 election!" explained Mr. Sharp, gently. "In fact, 
 almost everybody gets around to that state of 
 mind after two years." 
 
 " Do you mean to say that all Congressmen 
 think of is how to get another term ?" exclaimed 
 Honest John, rather indignant at the insinuation. 
 
 " No, no, by no means ! " implored the Whet 
 stone State representative. " Pray don t under 
 stand me as even suggesting such a calumny. 
 They think of many other things," he added, 
 remembering certain objects of general interest 
 which he did not choose to mention ; " but this 
 particular measure, you see the stoppage of elec 
 tioneering documents, etc. touches every man s 
 chances in the end." 
 
 "I see it does," grumbled our upright and 
 
SO HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 brave member. "But what has that got to do 
 with a fellow s duty ? " 
 
 This allusion to duty may not have seemed 
 germane or important to Mr. Sharp ; at all events 
 he did not give himself the trouble to oil it with 
 any commentaries. 
 
 " Horace Greeley worked at this abuse for 
 years," he pursued. " Horace was an honest 
 politician and a very potent editor. He did his 
 best, and he failed." 
 
 "And you mean to say that a man who isn t 
 a shaving to Horace Greeley won t succeed any 
 better than he did," inferred John Vane, with a 
 lowliness which shows that he had some sense. 
 
 " I don t mean to say that you are only a 
 shaving to Mr. Greeley," responded Mr. Sharp, 
 politely. " By no means, sir. On the contrary, 
 you quite remind me of Mr. Greeley," he added, 
 running his eyes over Vane s cherubic face and 
 portly figure. " He was not so well-favored a 
 man as you, sir ; but still you remind me of him, 
 remind me very agreeably. Both self-made 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 8 1 
 
 men, also ; I say it with profound respect." He 
 bowed here, and indeed he kept bowing all the 
 while, like an earthenware mandarin. "And both 
 honest, known to the world as such, eminent for 
 it ! " he emphasized, with a grin which could have 
 bitten a quarter out of a mince-pie. " Ah, well, sir ! 
 so much the worse!" he resumed. "An honest 
 man can t do away with the franking privilege. 
 A rogue might, for he would offer something in 
 place of it, and so, perhaps, carry his point by 
 a sort of bargain. No, Mr. Vane ; you must 
 really excuse me for contradicting your honorable 
 hopes, but a gentleman of your character can t 
 repeal the franking privilege, at least not for 
 years to come. That is my sorrowful, but candid 
 belief." 
 
 John Vane stared at Mr. Simon Sharp with 
 wonder and dismay. The venerable man had 
 begun all right on this matter, and then in the 
 most rational and natural manner, had ended all 
 wrong. Was this the way that people learned to 
 
82 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 reason by dint of sitting for several terms in 
 Congress ? 
 
 " If you could only become useful, generally 
 useful, you understand, you might try your bill 
 with some chance of success," resumed Mr. Sharp, 
 after some moments of meditation. "A man 
 who is known to be useful" and he laid a very, 
 strong emphasis on the word, " such a man can 
 propose almost anything, and carry well, carry 
 something." 
 
 " Well, how can I get to be useful ? " inquired 
 the zealous neophyte from Slowburgh. 
 
 " I ll tell you," smiled the veteran, at the same 
 time hitching his chair forward confidentially, as 
 if being useful were a sort of patent-right or 
 other precious secret, not to be communicated to 
 the public. 
 I 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 "OPECIAL legislation is the great field for 
 v3 What I call Congressional usefulness" pur 
 sued Mr. Sharp, again bringing down a violent 
 emphasis on the word, as if he were trying to 
 drive it into his listener s head. 
 
 " Ah ! is it ? " stared John Vane. " That s 
 news to me. I thought general legislation was 
 the big thing, reform, foreign relations, sec 
 tional questions, constitutional points, and so on ; 
 I thought those were the diggings to get a repu 
 tation out of." 
 
 "All exploded, my dear sir!" answered Mr. 
 Sharp. "All gone out with Calhoun and Web 
 ster, or at the latest, with Lincoln and Stanton. 
 All dead issues, as dead as the war. Special 
 legislation or, as some people prefer to call it, 
 finance is the sum and substance of Congres 
 sional business in our day. It is the great field, 
 
 (83) 
 
84 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 and it pays for the working. Jt pays every way. 
 Your vote helps people, and they are grateful 
 and help you. Your vote brings something to 
 pass, and the public sees that it does, and 
 respects you. Work into finance, Mr." Vane," 
 exhorted Mr. Sharp, gently moving his hand in 
 a spiral, as if to signify the insinuation of a cork 
 screw, "work slow-ly into finance so to call 
 it. Take up some great national enterprise, and 
 engineer it through. Get your name associated 
 with a navigation scheme, or a railroad scheme, to 
 advance commerce, you understand, or to move 
 the crops." And as he alluded to these noble 
 purposes, his voice became little less than rever 
 ential. " The millions yet unborn you under 
 stand," here he seemed to be suggesting hints for 
 a speech in advocacy of said scheme, " millions 
 yet unborn will have reason to remember you. 
 Capital will become your friend. And capital 
 ah, Mr. Vane, there s a word ! My very blood 
 curdles when I think of the power and majesty 
 of capital. This land, sir, this whole gigantic 
 
HONEST JOHN VANK. 85 
 
 Republic, with its population of forty millions, 
 its incomparably productive and energetic indus 
 try, and its vast network of continental communi 
 cations, is the servant, and I had almost said the 
 creature, of capital. Capital guides it by its wis 
 dom and sustains it by its beneficence. Capital 
 is to be, and already is, its ruler. Make capital 
 your friend. Do something for it, and secure its 
 gratitude. Link your fortunes and your name 
 with some gigantic financial enterprise. Then, 
 when you have won the reputation of advancing 
 the industrial interests of the country, and gath 
 ered around you hosts of admirers and friends, 
 you can return to your pet measure. Now, there 
 is my advice the advice of an old hand. Doesn t 
 it strike you as worth considering ? My maxim, 
 as you see, is slow and sure. I also have my 
 little reform at heart, but I keep it waiting until 
 I can get strong enough to push it, and mean 
 time I strengthen myself by helping other peo 
 ple. Never mind now what that reform is," he 
 added, noting a gleam of inquiry in Vane s eye ; 
 
86 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 "you will hear of it some day. Let us come 
 to the immediate and the practical. While I 
 make my humble little project bide its time, I 
 am busy with a scheme which combines capital 
 and industry, a scheme of national importance 
 and magnitude. I don t mind mentioning it to 
 you. It is the great Subfluvial Tunnel Road, 
 meant to run through our country from north to 
 south, under the Mississippi River, uniting Lake 
 Superior with the Gulf of Mexico. It is a gigan 
 tic idea : you must admit it. Of course, the 
 business minutiae and prospects of it are beyond 
 me," he conceded, with an air of innocence and 
 simplicity which seemed to relieve him of all 
 responsibility as to those points. " There I have 
 to trust to the judgment of business men. But 
 where my information fails, Mr. Dorman here 
 can fill the gap. Dorman, suppose you let our 
 friend into this if he wants to come in." 
 
 John Vane, being quite beyond his honest 
 depth by this time, had nothing to say to the 
 Great Subfluvial either in condemnation or praise, 
 but merely stared in expectant silence. 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 87 
 
 " It is the job I gave you a hint about in Slow- 
 burgh," began Darius Dorman, turning upon his 
 member a pair of sombre, lurid, smoky eyes, 
 which were at once utterly unearthly and utterly 
 worldly. "We have just got it well underway." 
 
 " What !, stock taken ?" exclaimed Vane, amaz 
 ed that he had not heard of such a huge financial 
 success. 
 
 Darius smiled, as a slave-trader might smile 
 upon a stalwart, unsuspicious negro who should 
 express a curiosity to see the interior of his 
 schooner. 
 
 " The subscription is to be started by the 
 government," he proceeded. " That is, the gov 
 ernment will loan the capital necessary to build 
 the tunnel, and then secure itself by a mortgage 
 on the same. No particular risk, you see, to 
 capitalists, especially as they will get the first 
 issue of stock cheap, and won t be called on to 
 pay in a heavy percentage. What they don t 
 want to keep they can sell to the outside public. 
 the raft of small investors. Now, bankers and 
 
88 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 financiers won t neglect such a chance as that ; 
 they will pile in as fast and as plenty as need be. 
 With a government loan to start on, the stock is 
 sure to be floated and the thing finished ; and 
 after that is done, why, it will go on pretty much 
 as railroads do, gradually increase its business, 
 and in the end pay well, like railroads." 
 
 Just here there was a malicious twinkle in his 
 charcoal-pits of eyes, as though he were thinking 
 of the numberless widows and orphans and other 
 unprotected creatures whose little all had gone 
 into railroads without ever bringing out a divi 
 dend. At the same -time, he glanced suddenly 
 at his grimy hands and rubbed them uneasily 
 against each other, as if he would have been 
 glad to get them clean for once in his existence, 
 or as if the maculations on them itched and 
 scalded quite intolerably. 
 
 " O, there s nothing unusual or extra smart 
 about the enterprise ! " he resumed, perhaps de 
 tecting in honest John Vane s countenance a 
 gleam of suspicion. " It s about the way rail- 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 89 
 
 roads in general are got up, except the one 
 notion of a government loan to start the thing. 
 That is new and patented. Don t mention that 
 for the Devil s sake ! " he implored, with an out 
 burst of his characteristically eccentric profanity. 
 " Keep as dark as hell about the whole thing. 
 All we want of you is to bear the job in mind, 
 and when the House comes to the question of 
 the loan, give us your voice and vote." 
 
 " It will be a grand thing for the country," put 
 in Mr. Sharp, seeing that Vane pondered. 
 
 "O, magnificent !" exclaimed Dorman. "Give 
 us another New York at New Orleans. Double 
 the value of land in the Mississippi Valley." 
 
 " Unite the North and South," continued Sharp. 
 " Close up the bloody chasm. Bind together the 
 national unity in chains of cast-iron." 
 
 " Pour the wild rice of Green Bay upon the 
 dinner-tables of our working-men," responded 
 Dorman. 
 
 "Bring the Menomonie Indians within easy 
 reach of Christian missionaries," was Sharp s 
 next word in this litany. 
 
9 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 " Providing the whole tribe hasn t already got 
 to the happy hunting-grounds," suggested Dor- 
 man. 
 
 The Whetstone statesman glanced at the busi 
 ness man, and the business man glanced at the 
 Whetstone statesman. Apparently (only John 
 Vane did not perceive it) the two came very near 
 laughing in each other s faces. 
 
 " Besides, it will pay well, at least to first in 
 vestors," resumed Dorman. 
 
 " Yes, I should think it might pay them well," 
 answered John Vane, with just a suspicion of 
 satire in his tone. 
 
 "If you should ever care to invest, by the way," 
 suggested the business man, as though that were 
 a thing which he had just thought of, and which 
 would of course not influence his representative s 
 decision, " if you should ever fancy putting some 
 thing of your own in, we can promise you a sure 
 return for it. You shall have your pick, stock 
 at the opening figure, corner lots cheap around 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. QI 
 
 the stations, something paying and safe, you 
 know, something salable if you don t want it." 
 
 " Well, I ll think of it," nodded Vane, who had 
 already made up his honest mind to have nothing 
 to do with the Great Subfluvial, judging it to be 
 a scheme for swindling the government and the 
 general public. 
 
 " Do so," begged Mr. Simon Sharp, his broad 
 array of yellow teeth showing in a manner which 
 vaguely reminded one of the phrase, " dead men s 
 bones and all uncleanness." The member from 
 the old Whetstone State seemed at the moment 
 to be as full of teeth as ever a freshly opened 
 tomb was of skeletons. It was an error in him 
 to make exhibition of those ravening tushes and 
 grinders ; they neutralized abominably the ex 
 pression of integrity and piety which gleamed 
 from the Puritanic lacker of his venerable mug. 
 "Do, Mr. Vane," he continued, "give the project 
 your intelligent consideration, and see if it is not 
 worthy of your highly reputable and valuable sup 
 port. And now, sir, I am compelled, very much 
 
92 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 against my wishes, to bid you a good morning* 
 Delighted to have made your acquaintance, and 
 to welcome you as a brother Congressman. 
 Don t go to the door with me, don t ! You are 
 altogether too urbane. I thank you kindly." 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 "TJONEST, able old fellow, that Sharp," ob- 
 
 J~l served Dorman, as soon as the Whetstone 
 patriot had fairly bowed and smirked himself out 
 of the house. " Glad he happened to drop in on 
 you while I was here." 
 
 " See here, Darius!" broke out Vane, still Hon 
 est John Vane, proud of his noble sobriquet and 
 resolved to hold fast to it. " I m not going to go 
 for a bill merely because there s money in it, and 
 some of that money offers to come my way. 
 That ain t my style." 
 
 " I know it is n t," conceded Dorman, bowing 
 humbly to this tempest of integrity and honorable 
 self-esteem, probably for the sake of weathering 
 it sooner. 
 
 " Then what do you offer me cheap stock for, 
 and corner lots at a nominal rigger, and all that 
 sort of thing, to get me to vote your loan ? Don t 
 
 (93) 
 
94 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 you know and don t I know that you are trying 
 to bribe me ? " 
 
 " You take your risk, don t you ? " argued the 
 man of affairs. " I don t offer you money, but 
 merely a business risk." 
 
 " What risk is there when the government is to 
 construct the road, and to give it such a credit 
 that the stock can t help selling ? You might as 
 well talk about the risk of taking United States 
 bonds at half the market value. You can t fool 
 me that way, old boy. I m a business man my 
 self. I see as plainly as you do that the Great 
 Subfluvial is to be built at the expense of the 
 Treasury for the benefit of directors and officers 
 and boss stockholders, who will take the shares 
 at fifty, say, and sell them out at par, and then 
 leave the whole thing on the hands of the small in 
 vestors and Uncle Sam. That s what you fellows 
 mean to do, and want me to help you do. I don t 
 see it." 
 
 " John Vane, if you are really honest John 
 Vane, you ll allow that one good turn deserves 
 another," insinuated Dorman. 
 
HONEST JOHN VAX 1C. 95 
 
 " I know you think you put me here," replied 
 Vane, who already began to feel the oats on 
 which Congressmen feed, and to attribute to his 
 own mettle his advancement from the position of 
 " wheel-horse " to that of " leader." " You did say 
 a word in season for me at the caucus : I own it. 
 But proposing is one thing, and getting the nomi 
 nation is another, and carrying the election is a 
 third. Could you have shoved through any other 
 man ? Why didn t you try it ? You saw what 
 horse could win the race, and you bet on it. It 
 was the name of Honest John Vane, the man of 
 the plain people, the self-made man, that s what 
 took the caucus and the ballot-boxes. And now 
 you want me to throw all those claims to respect 
 and power overboard ; want me to stop being 
 honest and to tax the plain people uselessly; 
 want me to go back on myself and my best 
 friends; want me to follow in Bummer s dirty 
 trail. Suppose I should do it ? Why, I should 
 end like Bummer ; I should be laid on the shelf. 
 O, I m not ungrateful for what you did toward 
 
g6 HONEST JOHN VANE. % 
 
 the nomination ! I ll . do anything in reason for 
 you, old boy, get you a collectorship or post- 
 mastership, anything that ll bear telling of. But 
 I won t help plunder the Treasury of forty mil 
 lions, and the stock-buying public of twice as 
 much more, merely to give you a hundred thou 
 sand and myself five thousand. I tell you 
 squarely, and you may as well understand it first 
 as last, that I wont go into your lobbying." 
 
 " Why, this is the way everything works here," 
 the lobbyist (for such he was) at last asserted in 
 his desperation. " Bills of this sort slide through 
 every year. Some are upset, but who upsets 
 them ? Fellows who haven t been retained, or 
 who have rival bills to push. I tell you, John 
 Vane, that more than half your brother patriots 
 in the Capital do something in this line. The 
 main work of Congress is done out of sight, like 
 that of a mole, or by Beelzebub ! any other un 
 derground creature. Making such laws as are 
 needed, and voting such appropriations as the de 
 partments demand, wouldn t worry through a ten 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 97 
 
 day s session. The real business of your legisla 
 tors is running party politics, clearing scores with 
 your fuglemen, protecting vested interests- which 
 can pay for it, voting relief bills for a percentage 
 on the relief, and subsidizing great schemes for a 
 share of the subsidy. A good Congressman of 
 the present day is the silent partner of every job 
 that he supports. That s what I meant by finan 
 cial legislation when I urged you to go into it. 
 Don t be an old-fashioned dog-in-the-manger, 
 John Vane. Go with the crowd and humor the 
 crowd ; let others have their fodder, and bite in 
 yourself. Look at the rafts of patriot statesmen 
 who drive their carriages and keep open house. 
 Do you suppose they do it off their salaries ? 
 Then why can t you do it off your salary, instead 
 of huddling into these two little rooms and travel 
 ing by horse-car ? Is it because they know how 
 to make money go further than you do ? No, sir! 
 They take their little stock in a good bill, and 
 then pujt it through. It s the common thing in 
 Washington, and it s got to be the correct thing. 
 
9 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 And you can t change- it. There s a boiler inside 
 this boat which will make the wheels turn round, 
 no matter who tries to hold em. As long as 
 there is special legislation, there will be money to 
 be made by it, and legislators will take their share. 
 When a rich financier or monopolist comes to 
 a poor M. C, and whispers to him, I want a 
 chance to pocket a million, is the M. C. to say, 
 Pocket it, and be sure not to give me any ? Will 
 he, as your human nature averages, will he say it ? 
 No, sir! he says, Let me have a percentage ; and 
 I assert that he s right. It s the natural working 
 of humanity, under the circumstances. The only 
 thing I wonder at is, that Congressmen are con 
 tent with so little. Most of em ain t bold and 
 hearty at all. They are pusillanimously half 
 honest. Come, Vane, I want you to do well in 
 the world of politics, and I want you to begin by 
 supporting the Great Subfluvial." 
 
 " Dorman, I have the greatest mind in the world 
 to expose you," was the almost heroic response of 
 honest John. 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 99 
 
 " I should contradict and disapprove every word 
 of your exposure," laughed the unabashed lobby 
 ist. " Do you suppose Congress wants subsidy 
 legislation ripped open and exhibited to the pub 
 lic ? Congress would believe you and would ap 
 point a committee of investigation, and then 
 would hush the matter up. Wait till you have 
 learned your business, and then call me a liar, if 
 you can." 
 
 And so the interview ended, with virtue still 
 unshaken, but vice undiscouraged. Darius Dor- 
 man was too familiar with his evil trade and with 
 the society in which it had hitherto prospered, to 
 despair of finally leading his representative up to 
 the manger of corruption. He narrated the sub 
 stance of the above dialogue to the Honorable 
 Simon Sharp with spasmodic twinges of cheer- 
 less gayety which resembled the " cracked and 
 thin laughter heard far down in Hell." 
 
 " It is ludicrous, I must confess, Mr. Dorman," 
 sighed the representative of the old Whetstone 
 State, with a sad shake of his venerable long 
 
IOO HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 head; "but painfully so. I m afraid that your 
 friend won t come to much in Congress. He 
 won t be a practical statesman. No head for 
 finance." 
 
 " Don t give way to despondency about, him, my 
 benevolent creature," answered Darius, shaking 
 all over with his dolorous mirth, his very raiment, 
 indeed, quivering and undulating with it, so that 
 ^t seemed as if there might be a twitching tail in 
 side his trousers. " I have looked into the very 
 bottom of John Vane s thimbleful of soul. I 
 know every sort and fashio n of man that he will 
 make up into, under the scissoring of diverse cir 
 cumstances. John has no character of his own. 
 He has had neither the born twist nor the educa 
 tion to give him one. He is a chameleon. He 
 takes the color of the people about him. If his 
 constituents ever find him out, they won t call 
 him Honest John Vane, but Weathercock John. 
 I He went straight in Slowburgh, because most 
 . folks in Slowburgh go straight. After he has 
 been long enough in Congress he will be like the 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. IOI 
 
 mass of Congressmen. The furnace of special 
 legislation and the bellows of Washington opinion 
 will melt him over. Don t be anxious about him ; 
 it is a mere matter of time. He is pious, I grant ; 
 but so are you, Friend Sharp ; so are lots more 
 who live by subsidy bills. It s of no use to be 
 inside religion when you are also inside politics, 
 as politics now go. Yes, it is of use ; it varnishes 
 the politics over nicely ; it makes the special 
 legislation look decent. John will be a great help 
 to us, his reputation is so good. We must keep 
 going for him, and we shall finally fetch him. 
 When he finds that the majority take stock in 
 bills, when he fairly realizes that he must choose 
 between failing as a watchdog of the Treasury 
 and succeeding as lapdog of the lobby, he will go 
 for the spoils solid, or at least vote a split ticket. 
 I ll bet on bringing him over ; I ll bet my eternal 
 happiness on it ! " he laughed, as though the 
 article in question were not much to risk. 
 
 " You are a very plain-spoken person, Mr. Dor- 
 man," observed the Honorable Sharp, pulling a 
 
IO2 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 decorously long face. "Just a little well, let us 
 say eccentric, in your expressions," he added with 
 his obsequious smile. " However, to come to the 
 substance of what you tell me, I must admit that 
 it is encouraging. You really cheer me, Mr. Dor- 
 man. I thank you kindly." 
 
 Well, we have described the first Washing- 
 tonian temptation which stole to the side and 
 whispered in the ear of Honest John Vane. Of 
 course it was not the last ; the goblins of the 
 Mammonite crew dropped in upon him from week 
 to week and almost from day to day ; he could 
 hardly put out his hands without feeling the 
 pocket of a ring or corporation gaping to receive 
 them. If he accepted an invitation to a supper, 
 he found that it was given by some subsidy or re 
 lief bill. If a gentleman offered him a cigar, he 
 discovered that it was scented with appropriations. 
 If he helped a pretty woman into a street car, 
 she asked him to vote for her statue or her father s 
 claim. 
 
 The lobby proved to be every way more impos- 
 
HONEST JOIIN^VANE. IO3 
 
 ing and potent than he had imagined it. True, 
 some of its representatives were men whom it 
 was easy for him to snub, men of unwholesome 
 skins, greasy garments, brutish manners, filthy 
 minds, and sickening conversation ; men who so 
 reeked and drizzled with henbane tobacco and 
 cockatrice whiskey that a moderate drinker or 
 smoker would recoil from them as from a cess 
 pool ; men whose stupid, shameless boastings of 
 their briberies were enough to warn away from 
 them all but the very elect of Satan. But there 
 were other corruptionists whom he could not 
 steel himself to treat rudely. There were former 
 members of Congress whose names had been 
 trinnpeted to him by fame in his youthful days ; 
 decayed statesmen, who were now, indeed, noth 
 ing but unfragrant corpses, breeding all manner 
 of moral vermin and miasma, but who still had 
 the speech of patriotism on their lips and the 
 power to argue speciously about the " needs of 
 the country." There were dashing Brummels, 
 who seemed to him much finer gentlemen than 
 
IO4 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 himself, asserting a high position in society, 
 wearing fine raiment elegantly, brilliant in con 
 versation, gracious in manner, and stately in port 
 There were soldiers of the late war, bearing titles 
 which made his civilian history appear mean, and 
 boasting of services which seemed to crown them 
 with a halo of patriotism. 
 
 Hardest of all for a novice in public affairs to 
 face, there were pundits in constitutional law and 
 Congressional precedent, whose deluges of politi 
 cal lore overflowed him like a river, and stranded 
 him promptly on lone islands of silence. Then 
 there were highly salaried and quick-witted agents 
 of great business houses, which he, as a business 
 man, knew, respected, and perhaps feared. Now 
 and then, too, there was a woman, audacious and 
 clever and stylish and handsome, an Aspasia 
 who was willing to promise money, and able to 
 redeem her promises in beauty. Indeed, it some 
 times seemed to John Vane that the lobby was a 
 cleverer and more formidable assemblage than 
 either of those two chambers which nominally 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 1 05 
 
 gave laws to the nation. More and more dis 
 tinctly, as the session went on, he realized that 
 his honesty would have a hard fight of it, and 
 that if he succeeded in keeping it from being 
 borne to the ground, he would grandly deserve to 
 wear his cherished sobriquet. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 IN short, honest John Vane was so abundantly 
 tempted and harassed by the lobbyists and 
 their Congressional allies, as to remind us of that 
 hardly bested saint whom we have all seen in 
 ecclesiastical picture-land, surrounded by greater 
 and lesser goblins and grotesque manifestations 
 of Satan. 
 
 Virtue was the harder for him to follow after, 
 because he perceived that the vicious were not 
 only enviably prosperous, but walked in their evil 
 ways undiscovered. The skinny leanness of his 
 own honest portcmonnaie was all the more ob 
 vious to him when he contrasted it with the 
 portly pocket-books of the slaves of the ring. 
 While he foresaw that it would be difficult for 
 him to bring the year around on his salary, 
 there was Potiphar of New Sodom taking in one 
 hundred thousand dollars for " putting through " 
 
 (i 06) 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. IO/ 
 
 a single bill. While his brilliant Olympra was 
 sitting solitary and sorrowful in her two dingy 
 rooms, plain Mrs. Job Poor, the wife of a mem 
 ber who supported the iron interest, kept open 
 house in a freestone block, and rolled in her 
 carriage. It seemed to him at times that, if 
 there was a city on earth where integrity got all 
 the kicks, and knavery all the half-pence, that 
 city was the capital of this model Republic. 
 
 Nevertheless, he held fast by his righteousness 
 and remained worthy of his reputation. Give 
 a dog a bad name and he will deserve it, says 
 one of the wisest of proverbs. It is equally true 
 that if you give a dog a good name, he will strive 
 to deserve that. In these days, when temptation 
 sought to bow Vane into the dirt, it was a greatly 
 supporting circumstance to him that he had re 
 ceived the title of Honest. Now and then he 
 was cheered and strengthened by seeing himself 
 eulogized in the newspapers under this Catonian 
 epithet. Occasionally, too, the organ of a ring 
 would boast (falsely) that honest John Vane had 
 
IO8 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 decided to vote for its particular swindle, a fact 
 which showed that the name had become a syno- 
 nyme for respectability and was reckoned able to 
 carry weight. He was a better man for this hon 
 orable "handle"; it had the elevating influence 
 of a commission as "an officer and a gentleman"; 
 it inspired him to exemplify the motto, Noblesse 
 oblige. In spite of recurring enticements, he 
 struggled on through the session, without letting 
 his hands be soiled by the first dirty dollar. 
 
 In the meantime, his dear Olympia had been a 
 greater trial and stumbling block to him than the 
 lobby. Not that she consciously meant to trip 
 up his integrity ; on the contrary, she hardly gave 
 a serious thought to it. Her desire was that 
 her husband should take the political leadership 
 which belonged to him, and, what was of course 
 much more important, should give her the fash 
 ionable eminence which belonged to her. She 
 had early discovered, to her amazement and disap 
 pointment and vexation, that a Congressman was 
 not necessarily a social magnate in Washington. 
 
IIOXKST J OIIN VANE. IOQ 
 
 If he was rich or potent, he was reverenced ; if 
 he was poor and uninfluential, he was neglected : 
 his mere office had little to do with the matter. 
 There were members whom the legislative world 
 and the stylish world did not make obeisance to ; 
 and of these members, her John, whom she had 
 partly selected because of his supposed great 
 ness, was one. She soon found that the wives of 
 Cabinet secretaries and of senators and of the 
 chiefs of the great committees regarded "her as 
 their inferior. Many of them did not ask her to 
 their receptions, and only returned her calls by 
 sending cards. Spurred by her eager desire to 
 commune with the ultra genteel, she committed 
 the imprudence of attending one senatorial party 
 without an invitation, and was treated with such 
 undisguised hauteur by the hostess that she went 
 bedridden with mortification for three days. 
 
 Even her beauty, which had secured her so 
 many university beaux in Slowburgh, seemed 
 to have no charm here. Few noted gentlemen 
 called on her, and not many of these called twice. 
 
IIO HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 Whenever by good luck she got to a reception, 
 there was no swarming of fascinated male crea 
 tures about her, and she was free to pass the 
 entire evening on the arm of her husband. She 
 had anticipated romantic attentions from foreign 
 secretaries, and perhaps ambassadors,; but at the 
 end of the session she did not know a single 
 member of any one of the diplomatic corps ; the 
 only alien individuals who came with music to 
 her windows were monkeys and their masters. 
 For a time this neglect was a puzzle to her, and 
 personally a most humiliating one. Her beauty 
 and graces were so obviously ineffective that she 
 began to doubt whether she possessed beauty or 
 grace, and to feel in consequence that she was of 
 no worth, and even contemptible. 
 
 Eventually, however, she obtained light on this 
 subject ; she perceived that her husband was 
 right in affirming that everybody in Washington 
 "had an axe to grind " ; the natural result being, 
 that gentlemen would not spend their time in 
 paying court to ladies whose male relatives had 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. Ill 
 
 no favors to confer. At first it was a dismaying 
 discovery, and she very nearly wept with vexation 
 over it, and tried to despise the world for its sor 
 did selfishness. But before long, moved by her 
 habitual reverence for society, she drifted into a 
 disposition to take it as she found it, and would 
 fain have won its homage by a show of that 
 wealth and power which it demanded. The first 
 step to this end, of course, was to get out of her 
 commonplace lodgings and ascend to a grander 
 style of living. 
 
 " O, I do hate these dirty, poverty-stricken 
 barracks ! " she moaned, more bitterly than ever. 
 " I see plainly that we shall never be anybody in 
 Washington as long as we pen ourselves up in 
 two little vile rooms. You ought to take a house, 
 John, and give receptions and dinners, for the 
 sake of your own career. You would get a great 
 deal more influence that way than by fussing 
 over papers in committees and making speeches." 
 
 Then followed the old, stale discussion over 
 the expense of such a route to glory, the husband 
 
112 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 ending with his usual meek but firm declaration 
 that he dared not risk it. Thereupon Olympia 
 cried harassingly for an hour or more, and sulked 
 in silence for a day or two. It seemed as if 
 some alien and naughty soul had migrated into 
 her since the engaged days when she rayed forth 
 graciousness and amiability. The broad fact is 
 that, so far as the masculine outsider can dis 
 cover, most girls have no character until mar 
 riage. Then for the first time they enter openly 
 upon the struggle for life, and then the strong 
 traits which have hitherto remained invisible 
 come out boldly, like certain chemical inks when 
 exposed to the fire. 
 
 The result of this severest of Olympia s many 
 sulkings was a compromise. John Vane held on 
 in his frugal or semi-frugal lodgings, but he allow 
 ed his wife to give frequent dinners, and also 
 evenings with ice-cream. But such a lame, halt, 
 and beggarly lot as appeared at these cheap, cold- 
 water festivities ! It seemed as if the host must 
 have gone out deliberately into the highways and 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 113 
 
 hedges of political life and forced them to come 
 in. There were Congressmen who were just like 
 John himself, mere tyros and nobodies in the 
 great world of statesmanship, members of the lit 
 tle committees or of no committee at all. There 
 were members from carpetbagdom who had not 
 yet secured their seats, and delegates from the 
 territories who looked as though they might repre 
 sent the Digger Indians. Occasionally there was 
 a sharp wire-puller or a sturdy log-roller from 
 Slowburgh, and more rarely a respectable citizen 
 of that place, who had come on to stare around 
 Washington. One evening Olympia was nearly 
 driven into hysterics of mortification by discover 
 ing that her husband had brought in a Mormon. 
 She treated the venerable representative from 
 Utah as she had herself been treated at Sena 
 tor Knickerbocker s, and subsequently informed 
 Honest Jx)hn several dozen times that he had 
 ruined their position in .society. 
 
 " I thought the old fellow would be a curiosity 
 and amuse you," pleaded the husband. " You 
 are always saying you want amusement." 
 
114 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 "Not that kind," tossed Olympia, utterly out 
 of patience with his stupidity, and thinking that 
 by this time he ought to have comprehended her 
 better. " Low people may amuse you, and I 
 know they do. It is really one of the great 
 faults of your character, John. But to me they 
 are simply strange and odious bores. Can t you 
 understand, once for all, that I want such amuse 
 ments as other ladies want, good society and 
 genteel surroundings and and nice things ?" 
 
 " O, yes ; and you want to dine with the British 
 Ambassador, and ride in a coach with liveries," 
 grumbled John, restive under this pestering, be 
 cause he was yet sore with preceding ones. 
 
 "Well, what woman in Washington doesn t?" 
 retorted Olympia, justifying herself in her own 
 eyes with lamentable facility. 
 
 " I suppose you don t think there s anything 
 fine in having an honest man who does his duty 
 and nothing but his duty," groaned Vane, refer 
 ring with pardonable pride to himself, but fretting 
 under the knowledge that his wife did not share 
 that pride. 
 
HONEST JOHN YAM:. 115 
 
 " O, there are so many honest people," sniffed 
 Olympia, eager to " take him down." " They are 
 as common as chips." 
 
 " Not in Washington," returned this unappre 
 ciated Aristides, with a bitterness which was 
 only in part patriotic. 
 
 Such little tiffs as this, I regret to avow, soon 
 became frequent. Olympia, having discovered 
 that potentiality in politics was necessary as a 
 basis for social eminence, began to interest her 
 self disagreeably in her husband s Congressional 
 doings, and to rub peppery remarks into him con 
 cerning his obligation to be eloquent, able, man 
 aging, and, in short, successful. She informed 
 herself as to what committees were the important 
 ones, and demanded of him why he was not on 
 any of them. 
 
 " Because I am a young member, I suppose," 
 answered John, a little sulkily ; for the fact in 
 itself was an irritating one, let alone being "talk 
 ed to " about it. 
 
 " But here you are on the Committee for Revo- 
 
Il6 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 lutionary Pensions," persisted the ambitious lady/ 
 " It is almost an insult. There are only three or 
 four Revolutionary pensioners left. Of course 
 there is nothing to do." 
 
 " Well, we do nothing," granted John, ungra 
 ciously. " Somebody must do it." 
 
 " You ought to try to get on the Committee of 
 Ways and Means, Mrs. Bullion says," continued 
 Olympia. "That is the great committee, she 
 says. Why don t you ? " 
 
 "Why don t I try to be President?" exclaimed 
 Vane. " I am trying, I am doing what work 
 comes in my way as thoroughly and honestly as 
 I can. If I stay here long enough, I suppose I 
 shall get higher," continued the poor catechised 
 man, who really had in him some industry, perse 
 verance, and common sense, materials of char 
 acter which might in time be worked up into a 
 fair lawgiver. 
 
 " Why don t you push your bill about that 
 that privilege ? " was the next question of this 
 stateswoman. "That would make a sensation." 
 
HONMST JOHN VANE. 
 
 * " They smothered it in committee," confessed 
 the husband. " What could I do after that ? " 
 
 " There ! now you see ! " exclaimed Olympia. 
 " You see the need of being on the leading com 
 mittees. If you had been a member of that 
 committee, you could have stopped their smother 
 ing it." 
 
 " No, I could n t," contradicted John, naturally 
 indignant at being blamed for everything, both 
 what he did and what others did. " If I had 
 been on it, I should have been a minority of one, 
 and the bill would have been smashed all the 
 same. The fact is, that Congressmen in general 
 are determined to hold on to the franking privi- 
 lege." 
 
 "Didn t I tell you?" cried Olympia, remem 
 bering that she had once counselled him not to 
 urge unpopular measures, " did n t I tell you so 
 before we were engaged, and ever so many times 
 since ? I told you to give up that old thing and 
 plan something that could pass. O, I wish / was 
 a man ! " 
 
Il8 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 Remembering that if she had been one, he 
 should not have fallen in love with her, Vane was 
 tempted to reply, "I second the motion." But 
 he restrained himself, for he had a magnanimous 
 streak in him, and he was really very fond of his 
 wife. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 IN these days, Olympia was both sore and 
 prickly with a consciousness of her husband s 
 incapacity ; she was as uncomfortable and as 
 discomforting as a porcupine might be whose 
 quills should be sharp at both ends. 
 
 She was always comparing him disparagingly 
 with somebody, with that well-descended gentle 
 man of the old school, Senator Knickerbocker ; 
 or that opulent gentleman of a new school, Sena 
 tor Ironman ; with the Speaker and the chair 
 man of the Finance Committee, and that elegant 
 Potiphar who had taken the hundred thousand 
 dollar fee ; with the noted orators who had the 
 ear of the House, such as General Bourn and 
 General Splurge. 
 
 She still liked John in lonely moments ; when 
 they were by themselves of an evening, she often 
 clung to him with a sense that it was sweet to 
 6 (119) 
 
I2O HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 be loved and protected ; but all clay she wished 
 that he were more respected than he was, and 
 greater than he could be. At times she had an 
 idea, or perhaps, I should say a feeling, that he 
 had palmed himself off on her by false pretences. 
 Had he not married her in the guise of a politi 
 cal giant, and was he not an indisputable political 
 dwarf ? Other men made great speeches which 
 stormed the admiration of Washington, or " en 
 gineered something through Congress " which 
 had the effect of putting their wives into free 
 stone mansions. Not so with her husband ; he 
 was a nobody, politically, socially, and financially; 
 and it was all his fault, too, for she wanted it 
 different. 
 
 But, at last, and as if by a mere freak of 
 fortune, a beam of prosperity lighted her path. 
 Senator Ironman, who was worth two millions at 
 least, encountered her by chance at a reception, 
 paid her some flattering attentions, called upon 
 her a few days later, and cajoled his wife into 
 calling. Glad and proud indeed was Olympia 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 121 
 
 over the acquisition of this patrician intimacy, 
 the pass to all the selectest dress circles and 
 most exclusive private boxes of that complex 
 theatre, the social life of Washington. Finally 
 her beauty had availed her somewhat ; it had 
 brought her in an hour more that was of value 
 in her eyes than she had derived in many months 
 from her husband s public services and reputable 
 name ; and, as beauty triumphant will do, it 
 bloomed out with increased splendor. 
 
 John Vane thought that he had never seen his 
 wife so handsome as she was on the evening in 
 which he took her to Ironman s great party, the 
 grandest crush of the season. It was even very 
 delightful to the honest, unsuspecting soul to 
 note how the rich and arrogant senator evidently 
 admired her, and how much he walked and 
 waltzed with her. And, if Mr. Vane liked it 
 well, you may be sure that Mrs. Vane liked it 
 better. She was throbbingly happy, whether on 
 the great man s arm in the promenade, or on his 
 shoulder in the dance. The deep flush of her 
 
122 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 brunette cheeks and the liquid sparkle of her 
 dark eyes revealed a stronger agitation than had 
 possessed her for many a day. People stared at 
 her a good deal ; they called her " a stunner," 
 and thought her a little venturesome ; various 
 gentlemen, who knew Ironman well, exchanged 
 queer glances ; certain ladies, who we-re equally 
 informed, gazed sidelong at Mrs. Ironman. None 
 of these disquieting circumstances, however, were 
 visible to our two innocents from Puritanic Slow- 
 burgh. They passed an entirely delightful even 
 ing, . and then walked economically but content 
 edly home, telling each other how nice it had ail 
 been. 
 
 Thenceforward Mrs. Vane led a cheerier life of 
 it. She was invited everywhere, and Mr. Iron 
 man was always delightfully attentive, and conse 
 quently other people paid court. She no longer 
 found the Washington receptions unsocial, heart 
 less, and stupid, mere elbowings of selfish peo 
 ple who either did not know each other, or only 
 wanted to use each other, the dreariest social 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 123 
 
 gatherings perhaps that ever gas-light shone upon. 
 The favor of the rich senator and of his adhe 
 rents and parasites irradiated these doleful cau- 
 cusses to her eyes with interest and gayety. 
 Moreover, Mr. Ironman did not restrict his cour 
 tesies to occasions of festivity. His carriage 
 (not his wife s, but his own special turnout) was 
 frequently seen at Vane s humble door. He took 
 Olympia in it all over the surrounding landscapes, 
 to the reservoir hill back of Georgetown, to the 
 soldiers cemetery at Arlington, and to other 
 similarly inspiring eminences whence one can see 
 a great ways, though not into the future. Fur 
 thermore he gallanted her to the Capitol, to the 
 Smithsonian, to the theatre, and to concerts. 
 Likewise he sent her bouquets, and after a time 
 finer presents. In fact, -his assiduity gradually 
 verged into such an appearance of courtship that 
 there would have been talk about it, if Washing 
 ton society had not been charitable even beyond 
 Christianity in its judgments, and also absorb 
 ingly intent upon affairs which were more profit 
 able than gossip. 
 
124 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 It was, however, a perilous business for Olym- 
 pia, this daily communion with Ironman. The 
 senator was one of those infrequent and yet dis 
 coverable statesmen who value distinction among 
 men mainly because it helps them to captivate 
 women. Although he was, to speak with consid 
 erate vagueness, not under forty, he had that 
 restless passion for "conquests" which we scarcely 
 pardon in the novice of twenty, eager to secure 
 acknowledgments of the puissance of his individu 
 ality, or, in other words, to show that he is "irre 
 sistible." There was not a session during which 
 his proud, calm, mature Juno of a wife did not 
 have occasion to wonder what sort of common 
 mortal her Jove would run after next. This 
 patient or indifferent lady, by the way, had taken 
 very kindly to Olympia, considering her a young 
 person whom it would be respectable for Iron 
 man to drive about with, and who would keep him 
 from making himself ridiculous by sending bou 
 quets to treasury girls. 
 
 But absurd as the senator was in the eyes of 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 125 
 
 his spouse, he could not seem absurd to Mrs. 
 Vane, at least not immediately. His very rage 
 for gallantry made him attractive to a woman who 
 knew by experience the sweetness of flirtation, 
 and who, for months past, had been confined to 
 very short browsings of it. As for his shining 
 state on the alps of society, and the entirely sol 
 vent, redeemable, coinable wreaths and vapors of 
 opulence which hung about him, not only were 
 they circumstances such as she had always looked 
 up to with admiration, but they seemed more daz 
 zling than ever, viewed through the atmosphere 
 of Washington. It is true that this wealth was 
 mainly the result of special enactments, not bene 
 ficial to the masses ; that the rich statesman had 
 enormously increased his riches by operations 
 which he had himself helped to legalize ; and that 
 he had sometimes voted for a brother patriot s 
 pet measure in consideration of a similar service 
 rendered to his own. But Olympia did not con 
 cede much respect to political disinterestedness ; 
 she had had a surfeit of that poorly paying virtue 
 
126 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 in her own cheap and dingy home. Moreover, 
 Ironman had always been so prosperous that he 
 could afford to despise the direct lucre of the 
 lobby, and thus had deserved, in the opinion of a 
 closely sheared, patient public, the repute of being 
 a singularly upright lawgiver. 
 
 Nor was this the end of his enchantments ; he 
 possessed talismans of a more personal nature. 
 He was not so plain a man but that, by dint of 
 careful grooming and fine caparisons, he could 
 pass for handsome. True, he was too lean, too 
 hollow in the chest, too narrow in the shoulders, 
 and too knobby in the arms and legs, to inspire 
 the most realistic sculptor with a desire to per 
 petuate his model in marble, except for the bare 
 emoluments of the job. But like many tall and 
 long-limbed men, he was graceful when under 
 way, and had a specially good gait in dancing. 
 As for the shiny circle on the top of his blonde 
 head, it, at first sight, appeared a decided disad 
 vantage. To conceal it he bowed rarely and at a 
 very obtuse angle, which caused unobservant and 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. I2/ 
 
 unreflecting people to pronounce him haughty, if 
 not discourteous. But, on the other hand, it led 
 him to carry himself with erectness, and thus 
 gave him a port which was generally admitted to 
 be distingue. His long, aquiline, pinkish face 
 had an expression akin to the immortal perplexity 
 of Lord Dundreary, but for that very reason, 
 perhaps, was. considered patrician by numerous 
 Washington ladies. On the whole, he was a cava 
 lier whose proffered arm might well thrill an am 
 bitious woman s heart with pride. 
 
 Such was the partially respectable statesman 
 and almost entirely ludicrous man who lifted the 
 Vanes into the highest circles of the society of 
 our capital. As we have said, his favor was a 
 perilous boon to Olympia, considering her breed 
 ing and aspirations. Even as a girl, even while 
 living thriftily in staid Slowburgh, she had been 
 eager after pomps and prodigalities. In Wash 
 ington, she had become still more demoralized, if 
 we may apply that ugly epithet to a longing for 
 finery and admiration, a longing so common 
 
128 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 among our " guardian angels." The splendors of 
 women whose husbands had got fortunes by en 
 gineering schemes through Congress had com 
 pletely dazzled her imagination and made her mad 
 with envy. 
 
 It would seem that special legislation and its 
 attendant snares of bribery were set for the down 
 fall, not only of our Federal heads in Congress, 
 but also of their Eves. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 BY good fortune the intimacy between Senator 
 Ironman and Qlympia had budded so late in 
 the session that it did not have time to ripen into 
 such bloom as would irresistibly attract the eye of 
 scandal. 
 
 John Vane went home quite content with his 
 wife, and she rather more than content with her 
 self. A diversified existence Delectable Moun 
 tains mingled with Vales of Tears awaited their 
 feet in Slowburgh. It was delightful to our mem 
 ber to have his praises sung night and morning 
 by the enamoured troubadours of the party jour 
 nals, and to receive salaams, which were obviously 
 tokens of respect for his proved uprightness, from 
 men of acknowledged position and character,, 
 men who had not previously deigned to know 
 him, or had blandly kept him at a distance. On 
 the other hand, it was disagreeable to listen to the 
 
 (129) 
 
I3O HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 grumblings of unrewarded wirepullers of low de 
 gree, and to feel obliged to pacify them by dint of 
 promises, apologies, and wheedlings, which now 
 for the first time seemed to him demeaning. 
 
 As for Olympia, she could at last enjoy a con 
 sciousness of peculiar distinction ; for, whereas 
 in Washington she had been only one of many 
 Congresswomen, she was the sole and solitary one 
 extant in Slowburgh, a fact which gave her pre 
 eminence among her acquaintance. Unfortu 
 nately, it could not exalt her to the social zenith 
 of Saltonstall Avenue, where political notoriety 
 had long been considered a disqualification rather 
 than an introduction, owing to its frequent con 
 nection w r ith such low "jobbers" as Mr. James 
 Bummer. Furthermore there was a scant supply 
 in the family locker of money. During Vane s 
 absence the refrigerator business had not done 
 well ; a costly patent in the same had proved un- 
 remunerative ; the dividends were pitifully meagre. 
 All the summer was spent in economizing at the 
 maternal boarding-house or at a cheap resort by 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 13 l 
 
 the seaside. It was impossible to meet the Iron- 
 mans at Saratoga, as Olympia had confidently 
 agreed to do. You can imagine her general dis 
 content and how frequently her husband suffered 
 therefrom, and what a poorish season they had 
 of it. But the summer and fall wore away at 
 last, and they returned to Washington with a fair 
 sense of satisfaction, though indifferently furn 
 ished in pocket. 
 
 " We must live mighty close this winter," said 
 Vane to his wife, hoping she would take it well. 
 " Yes, we must keep house," replied Olympia, 
 with cheerful firmness. " This lodging and board 
 ing is awfully expensive, and you get nothing for 
 your money, a horrid table and vile furniture. 
 It is just being swindled." 
 
 " I know it is being swindled," groaned John, 
 gazing over the edge of the frying-pan into the 
 fire. " But it is cheaper than housekeeping ; 
 everybody says so. We can t afford a house any 
 more than we can afford a pyramid." 
 
 " Yes, we can," insisted Olympia. And there- 
 
13? HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 upon she skipped lightly through a calculation of 
 the cost of housekeeping : the rent would be so 
 much, the food not much more, the service about 
 half as much ; the result a clear saving of many 
 dollars a month. 
 
 It looked reasonable, when held up in that off 
 hand way ; it seemed as if economy might evolve 
 such a consummation. 
 
 " But how about furniture, carpets, and so on ? " 
 reflected Vane. 
 
 "Why, take a furnished house, you muddled 
 creature." 
 
 "Ah! but that doubles the rent, or comes closer 
 to trebling it." 
 
 But still Olympia stuck to her project of sav 
 ing ; and at last (oh, the perseverance of wives !) 
 she conquered. A house was taken, at first only 
 for a month, for the rent scared Vane, and he 
 would not sign a longer lease. 
 
 "It seems to me that you are just trying to 
 clean me out," was his rather coarse response 
 when Mrs. Vane pleaded for tenure by the ses- 
 
HONEST JOHN VAXK. 133 
 
 sion. " If we were only married for the seasbn, 
 I could understand it. Can t you remember that 
 whert my pocket is drained" (dreaned, he pro 
 nounces it) "yours is empty too?" 
 
 "And it seems to me that you are just trying 
 to make me miserable," was Olympia s illogical 
 but telling retort. " I don t want to be lectured, 
 sir, as if I were in short dresses." 
 
 Nor was she singularly unreasonable. At that 
 very time and perhaps in that very moment many 
 other wives of Congressmen were inciting their 
 husbands to spend more than their salaries. She 
 had got into a lofty position, and she wanted to 
 live conformably to it. That she should thus live 
 seemed so rational to her, that she could not see 
 how her husband could sanely object to it. As 
 for the lack of sufficient income for the purpose, 
 that surely was his lookout, and not hers. I ask i 
 triumphantly how many feminine Intellects can / 
 discover a flaw in this logic ? 
 
 Still, John showed no relenting ; he had got his 
 back up, as the tom-cats put it to each other ; he 
 
134 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 even looked as though he did not care if she were 
 miserable. So Olympia resorted to argument 
 once more, as feeble humanity does when it finds. 
 grumbling useless. She recited the cases of half 
 a dozen other members who had nothing but 
 their salaries, yet took houses by the session ; the 
 inference being that her member could do like 
 wise, and would if he were not a curmudgeon. 
 
 " Yes, and every one of them is head over heels 
 in debt, or drawing bribes from every ring in the 
 lobby," alleged Vane. " Do you suppose that 
 being ruined in a crowd makes it any finer ? Do 
 you suppose that the drove of porkers who rushed 
 down steep places into the sea found drowning 
 any more comfortable because there were ten 
 thousand of them?" 
 
 " Porkers ! I should like to know whom you ap 
 ply that name to," retorted Olympia, reddening 
 with anger. "I am your wife, sir, and a born 
 lady." 
 
 " I was speaking of Congress," answered Vane, 
 with a smile, for he had grown tough under peck - 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 135 
 
 ing. " Well, I see that there is no use in arguing 
 this matter. I have signed the lease for one 
 month, and I shall not change it." 
 
 So, on this occasion Olympia had to give in, 
 although it almost cost her her life, to use a com 
 mon exaggeration. But if a wife wants to punish 
 her husband for his tyrannies, there are always 
 ways enough to do it, thank gracious. Mrs. Vane 
 signalized her first week of Housekeeping by 
 giving a costly dinner, inviting Senator Ironman 
 thereto, and flirting with him so openly that 
 hencefonvard John carried a fresh prickle in his 
 hymeneal crown of roses. Other extravagances 
 followed, not all of them indeed meant as casti- 
 gations, for Olympia had a curious felicity at 
 spending money, and did it literally without think 
 ing. Instead of " saving on the table," as she 
 had promised to do and really meant to do, she 
 so managed matters as to make the family nourish 
 ment a synonyme in Vane s mind for being eaten 
 out of house and home. Her cook did the mar 
 keting ; for how could a born lady do it ? And 
 
1 36 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 this cook was a Washington colored sister, a 
 fact which speaks volumes to naturalists acquainted 
 with that primitive development of "help," a 
 fact which suggests waste, mousing relations, a 
 hungry host of visitors in the kitchen, and per 
 haps pilfering. Vane asserted that, instead of 
 feeding four people, as he had expected to do, he 
 fed nearer fourteen. Mrs. Vane replied, some 
 times tearfully and sometimes pettishly, that no 
 mortal could rule " those creatures," and that no 
 lady ought to be expected to do it. 
 
 Two months, however, had passed away before 
 this state of things became obvious ; the house 
 being taken for a second month because "it 
 seemed absurd to break up in such a hurry." 
 Then, all of a sudden, our member found himself 
 unable to pay his honest debts, or at least a por 
 tion of them. It was a terrible thing to him ; 
 never before had he been driven to send away a 
 tradesman uncontent; and it took all his Con- 
 gressmanhood to keep him from weeping over the 
 novel humiliation. His distress was heightened 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 137 
 
 by a daybreak dialogue which he chanced to over 
 hear between his milkman and his butcher s 
 driver. 
 
 " Say ! what kind o folks is these Vanes, any 
 way ?" demanded the milk-man, who was a Down- 
 Easter settled in the District. 
 
 "Dunno," responded the driver, who was a 
 colored man, and so cared for nobody and noth 
 ing. 
 
 "Waal, they ve been gettin milk from me for 
 abeout nine weeks, an don t seem to allude to no 
 keind o peay," continued the milkman, with a 
 piteous, inquiring accent. 
 
 " Specs likely," admitted the negro, who would 
 have thought strange of anybody offering to pay 
 for anything. 
 
 The unmeant satire of these remarks stung 
 Vane like a blister. All day he was saying to 
 himself and of himself : "Don t seem to allude to 
 no keind o peay. Specs likely." He could not 
 stand it ; he must confide his troubles and ask 
 advice ; he must get strength, wisdom, and cheer 
 
138 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 out of somebody. The person whom he was 
 finally moved to open his bosom to was not a 
 brother legislator, but a person who was much 
 scoffed at in Congress as a poetical enthusiast 
 and a political idealist, because he was engaged in 
 a noble plan for renovating a wofully decayed 
 branch of the government. Mr. Frank Cavendish 
 had met Vane in committee-rooms, and the two 
 had been somewhat attracted to each other by 
 their common unpopularity, both being reckoned 
 stumbling-blocks to legislation as it is. To Cav 
 endish our member now repaired, saying to him 
 self in a pathetically meek spirit, that, if the man 
 knew how to reform an entire system of official 
 business, he might, perhaps, be able to reform a 
 foolish Congressman. 
 
 " I don t want a loan," he explained, after he 
 had stated his case. "That wouldn t get me out 
 of debt ; it would only change the debtor. Be 
 sides, it would n t stop the sinking process. What 
 I want is to learn how to live on my salary, and 
 still keep a decent position before the world. It 
 
HONEST JOHN VAN 1C. I 39 
 
 would n t be a matter of much account if it was 
 my case alone. But there are loads of us mem 
 bers in the same fix, getting deeper and deeper in 
 debt every year, and seeing only one way out of 
 it, special legislation, you know." 
 
 This last phrase he added with a ready, com 
 monplace wink which was habitual with him, and , 
 suggestive of character. It revealed that, while 
 he disapproved of the briberies and corruptions 
 of the lobby, he did not recoil from them with the 
 disgust of a morally refined soul, and saw in them 
 as much that was humorous as hideous. 
 
 "And that is sheer ruin," interjected Cavendish, 
 with the haste of one who puts out his hand to 
 save a man from falling. 
 
 " Yes, I suppose it is," responded Vane ; remem 
 bering that if he should take bribes and be ex 
 posed in it, he would lose his prized and useful 
 title of " honest." 
 
 " It is moral ruin to Congressmen and financial 
 ruin to the country," continued Cavendish, wish 
 ing to impress his lesson clearly on this evidently 
 doughy nature. 
 
I4O HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 "You re right," admitted John, his conscience 
 vitalized and his intellect cleared by the remark. 
 " If things go on ten years as they are going now, 
 the lobby will be the real legislative power of the 
 land. Well, to come back to my own case, here 
 I am living beyond my salary, and not very blam- 
 able for it either. I am not extravagant in my 
 fancies," he affirmed positively, and, as we know, 
 with truth ; " and my wife don t want more than 
 other women generally do," he added, giving Olym- 
 pia what credit he might, and perhaps more than 
 was her due. " But living here is really dear, 
 you can t make it otherwise. I ve tried it, and 
 you can t ! I don t see but one salvation for us. 
 Do you think it would do to make a move to raise 
 our salaries ?" 
 
 "Why not first make a move to lessen expenses?" 
 suggested Cavendish. 
 
 " How ?" asked Vane, thinking solely of giving 
 up housekeeping and going into very cheap lodg 
 ings, and thinking at the same time of the stren 
 uous fight which Olympia would wage against 
 such a plan. 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 14! 
 
 " Congress is largely to blame for the present 
 enormous cost of living," continued Cavendish. 
 " It devised and it still keeps in force the very 
 laws which diminish by one half the purchasing 
 power of the dollar. Congressmen vote to give 
 themselves five thousand dollars a year, and then 
 vote to make that sum equivalent^ to only twenty- 
 five hundred. Of course yon understand this mat 
 ter," he added, politely imputing to Vane more 
 political economy than was in him. "But allow 
 me to explain myself, if only to relieve my own 
 feelings. Here you legislative gentlemen refuse 
 to hasten the resumption of specie payments. 
 The consequence is, that you draw your salary in 
 dollars which are worth only about ninety cents 
 apiece. Next, and what is much more important, 
 you keep up a system of taxation which benefits 
 certain producers enormously, at an enormous ex 
 pense to the collective body of consumers, the 
 great majority of your constituents. Again, and 
 this too is very important, you lay these taxes less 
 on the luxuries of the rich than on the necessaries. 
 
142 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 of the poor. You have made tea and coffee free, 
 they being really luxuries and not needful to exist 
 ence, although our extravagant working classes 
 use them abundantly. Meanwhile you tax heav 
 ily all materials of labor and all articles of common 
 comfort. There is hardly a substance or a tool 
 which the American uses in his work but pays a 
 heavy duty. His coal and lumber, his food and 
 the salt which cures it, his clothing and so on, all 
 are taxed. The result is that labor must get high 
 wages or starve. The result to you is, that your 
 apparently liberal salaries are insufficient to sup 
 port a moderate style of living." 
 
 " O I see you are a free-trader," drawled 
 John Vane, his countenance falling. 
 
 " No, I am an advocate of a revenue tariff ; of 
 a system of taxation which bears mainly on peo 
 ple in easy circumstances ; of a system like that 
 of England and Belgium. The entire public in 
 come of those two countries is paid by luxuries." 
 
 " O, I dare say you are right," sighed our mem 
 ber ; " I have n t looked into it much, I ain t on 
 
HONEST JOHN VAXK. 143 
 
 those committees, you know, but I dare say you 
 are right. However, it can t be helped." And 
 he shook his law-giving head sadly. " If we 
 should so much as whisper revenue tariff, all the 
 monopolists, all the vested interests, would be after 
 us. You don t know, perhaps, how sharp-eyed 
 and prompt and powerful those fellows are. They 
 are always on hand with their cash, and if you 
 don t want that you do want re-election. They are 
 as greedy, and I don t know but they are as strong, 
 as the relief bill and subsidy chaps. It s a mean 
 thing to own up to, but Congress daren t fight 
 em. This country, Mr. Cavendish, this great 
 Republic which brags so of its freedom, is tyran 
 nized over by a few thousand capitalists and job 
 bers. No, sir, it s no sort of use ; we can t have 
 a revenue tariff." 
 
 " Then there is nothing for an honest legislator 
 to do but to live on the tough steaks and cold hom 
 iny of cheap boarding-houses," observed Caven 
 dish. 
 
 " That s the only ticket," mumbled Vane ; and 
 the two patriots parted in low spirits. 
 7 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 AS honest John walked homeward, eschewing 
 the minute expense of the street-cars, he 
 swore that he would live like a pauper, and so 
 keep his integrity. 
 
 But he reckoned without his host. meaning 
 thereby the partner of his bosom, who was cer 
 tainly a host in herself, particularly when it came 
 to crying. 
 
 " Go back to boarding !" tearfully exclaimed 
 Olympia, who just then had a reception In view. 
 " Then why did you commence housekeeping ? 
 The idea of giving me a house only to take it 
 away again ! You donl love me as other men 
 love their wives. You delight in plaguing me." 
 And so on, and over again, with much sobbing. 
 
 In a day or two she actually impressed Vane 
 with a feeling that, in wishing to "take her house 
 from her," he was guilty of a purpose akin to 
 
HoNliST JOHX VANE. 145 
 
 robbery, and, of course, entirely unworthy of a 
 just husband. He had to concede that, from one 
 point of view, Olympia did not demand overmuch ; 
 even to his business-like and arithmetical imagin 
 ation, five thousand dollars seemed a large income ; 
 even he could not ycS: believe it insufficient to cover 
 housekeeping. Partly because he was deluded by 
 this ante-tax idea, and partly because he was a 
 compassionate man and loving husband, he defer 
 red the humble and lenten pilgrimage through 
 boarding-house deserts back to solvency, and, of 
 course, went more and more laden with the bond 
 age of debt. 
 
 At last, sad to relate, he began to admit to him 
 self, like so many other hardly bested men, that 
 " something or other must be done," meaning 
 something which would bring money; no matter 
 how. One evening as he sat alone in his parlor, 
 now staring in dull discontent at the shaky furn 
 iture for which he paid such a high rent, now 
 recalling the fact that Olympia was away at a re 
 ception with that opulently dazzling Ironman, he 
 
146 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 once more thought over his wilderness of troubles 
 and tried to devise a way out of them. He was 
 harassed, degraded, and enfeebled by the daily 
 urgency of debt. His matrimonial happiness had 
 been half wrecked by the mere lack of filthy lucre. 
 If he wanted to recover his wife s respect and 
 affection, he must positively provide her with gra 
 cious surroundings, and stop bullying her about 
 expenditures. How could he get money, with 
 i honesty, or, alas ! without it ? 
 
 While he was puzzling amid the brambles of 
 this wretched question, he was surprised by a visit 
 from his former friend and wire-puller, Darius 
 Dorman. Vane and Dorman had not seen much 
 of each other since the former had denounced the 
 Great Subfluvial Tunnel as little better than a 
 trick for defrauding the government and the pub 
 lic of small investors. The lobbyist had judged 
 that it would not be wise to " keep at " Honest 
 John, and had expended his time, breath, and 
 funds on members of a less Catonian type. 
 
 Meanwhile the bill had prospered as bills do 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 147 
 
 which " have money in them." Although Vane 
 had voted against it, the tunnel had obtained a 
 charter from Congress and likewise a loan of forty 
 millions from the United States treasury, the same 
 being only a dollar a head from every inhabitant 
 of this free country, including women, children, 
 negroes, and Indians not taxed. Two or three 
 times as many more millions had come in from 
 financiers who saw forty per cent, profit in an early 
 purchase, and from a simple public which believed 
 that it could safely follow the lead of the wise men 
 of the capital. Furthermore, the directors and 
 managers of the Great Subflttvial had contrived 
 what might be called a Sub-Tunnel for their own 
 peculiar emolument, which fulfilled its purpose 
 admirably. This was a most wonderful invention, 
 and deserves our intensest study. It was a cor 
 poration inside of the original corporation. Its 
 ostensible object was the construction of the Sub- 
 fluvial, but its real object was the division of the 
 capital into profits. For instance, it built a mile 
 of tunnel at a cost of, say ten thousand dollars, 
 
148 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 and then delivered the same to the outside com 
 pany for say fifty thousand dollars, and then 
 shared the difference of forty thousand dollars 
 among its own stockholders. Of course this was 
 a better bargain for the inside company than for 
 the outside one; but all chance of quarrelling 
 between the two was evaded by a very erf ective 
 device ; they had the same men for directors, or 
 the same men s partners. 
 
 O, it was a beautiful business idea, this Float 
 ing Credit, or Syndicate, or whatever its inven 
 tors christened it. It reminds one of that ingen 
 ious machine called the Hen Persuader, which 
 was so constructed that when placed under a hen s 
 nest, it would withdraw every egg the moment it 
 was laid, whereupon biddy would infer that her 
 sensations had deceived her with regard to the 
 fact of laying, and would immediately deposit 
 another egg, and so continue to do until she died 
 of exhaustion. In some respects, also, this inter 
 nal corporation resembled that hungry creature 
 known as a tape-worm, which devours a man s din- 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 149 
 
 ner as fast as he swallows it, and leaves him hun 
 grier than ever. 
 
 Of course the gentlemen who held shares in 
 the Hen Persuader did a profitable business, and 
 filled their private wallets with golden eggs in 
 abundance. But still they were not quite con 
 tent; the old fowl above them, that is to say, 
 Uncle Sam s eagle, occasionally cackled angrily ; 
 and it was extremely desirable to put a stop to his 
 alarming demand for chickens. Darius Dorman 
 had an anxious look on his crisped and smutted 
 physiognomy as he seated himself opposite his 
 representative. 
 
 " Vane, we must have another lift, or let the 
 whole thing drop," he said abruptly. 
 
 " What ! have n t you bled the treasury enough ?" 
 grumbled Honest John, angrily contrasting his 
 own shrunken porte monnaic with the plethoric 
 pocket-books and overrunning safes of the great 
 corporation. 
 
 "We want time," anwered Dorman, really mean 
 ing thereby that he wanted an eternity of it. 
 
I5O HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 " Here is this Secretary of the Treasury making 
 a raid on us. He asks for interest on his loan. 
 How in the name of all the witches of Salem does 
 he suppose the Subfluvial can pay three millions 
 of interest per year, in addition to meeting its 
 running expenses ? We understood that the inter 
 est was to wait until the termination of the loan, 
 thirty years from now." 
 
 " Pay it out of the principal," suggested Vane 
 sulkily. " Do as other roads do." 
 
 " But we want the principal for dividends. We 
 can t keep on selling stock, unless we show a div 
 idend now and then." 
 
 " Ain t there any profits ?" asked Vane, with a 
 keen look. " Have n t your managers and inside 
 passengers laid away enough to spare a little for 
 profits ?" 
 
 Dorman had such a spasm that he fairly writhed 
 in his chair. It seemed as if every swindling dol 
 lar that he had got out of the Hen Persuader were 
 that moment burning into his already cicatrized 
 cuticle. 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 151 
 
 " O, they will fall in later," he smiled, recover 
 ing his self possession. " They will come when 
 the tunnel is clean through, and has had time to 
 make travel. But until that time arrives we must 
 have favor shown us. Give us a lift, John, and 
 we ll give you one." 
 
 Honest John Vane hesitated, querying whether 
 he should take one solitary step to meet tempta 
 tion, and see at least what it was like. 
 
 " Well," he at last said, in the surly tone of a f 
 man who feels that he is on the verge of making 
 a diabolically bad bargain, "well, what do you 
 want now?" 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 HE very, faint promise of aid which seemed 
 JL to exhale from Vane s question cheered up 
 Dorman a little. 
 
 There was a strange brightening in his dusky 
 eyes, followed by a momentary obscuration and 
 haziness, as though a few sparks had risen to 
 their surface from some heated abyss, and had 
 gone out there in a trifle of smoke. He started 
 up and paced the room briskly for some seconds, 
 meanwhile tightly clasping his dried-up, blackened 
 claws across his coat-skirts, perhaps to keep his 
 long tail from wagging too conspicuously inside 
 his trousers, that is supposing he possessed such 
 an unearthly embellishment. 
 
 " I ll tell you what we want," he at last chuckled, 
 with the air of a man who is about to utter a 
 devilish good joke. "We want, first, a bill to 
 stop the collection of interest until the loan falls 
 
 (152) 
 
IIOXEST JOHN VAXK. 153 
 
 due, when we will pay the one hundred and thirty 
 millions at once, if we can. Second, we want a 
 bill to change the government lien from a first to 
 a second mortgage, so that we can issue a batch 
 of first-mortgage bonds and raise money for cur 
 rent expenses. That s all we want now, Vane, 
 and I m sure it s moderate." 
 
 "O, ain t it, though?" grinned Honest John, 
 half indignant and half amused at this impudent 
 rapacity. " I m sure it s very kind of you not to 
 ask Uncle Sam to throw in the whole loan as a 
 present. I dare say you might get it." 
 
 " O, we re not a bit greedy," Dorman continued 
 to chuckle. "Well, now, to go back to business, 
 we must have good men to help us. We want 
 the very best. The fellows who have pushed us 
 through so far are mainly such notorious .dead- 
 beats in point of character that they would throw 
 discredit on a recruiting agency. We want a fresh 
 lot, and a respectable lot. We want such fellows 
 as Christian and Faithful in the Senate, and you 
 and Greatheart and Hopeful in the House." 
 
154 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 Honest John Vane pondered ; he thought of 
 his good fame, and then he thought of his debts ; 
 he thought of his insufficient salary, and of 
 the abounding millions of the Great Subfluvial. 
 Finally he came to the risky decision that he 
 would just ask the way to the bottomless pit, re 
 serving for further consideration the question of 
 leaping into its seething corruption. 
 
 " How are you going to get us ? " he inquired, 
 in a choked and almost inaudible voice, the voice 
 of a man who is up to his lips in a quicksand. 
 
 The eyes of the Mephistopheles of the lobby 
 glowed with a lurid excitement which bore an in 
 fernal resemblance to joy. He had a detestable 
 hope that at last he was about to strike a bargain 
 with his simple Faust. There was more than the 
 greed of lucre in his murky countenance ; there 
 was seemingly a longing to buy up honesty, char 
 acter, and self-respect ; there was eagerness to 
 purchase a soul. 
 
 "We can make things just as pleasant as a 
 financier could want/ he answered, coming at 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 155 
 
 once to the point of remuneration. "You don t 
 want stock in the Subfluvial, of course. If you 
 held shares in that and then gave it a lift, the op 
 position lobby would bawl about it, and the public 
 might impute selfish motives. But we have got 
 up an inside machine, which is all the same with 
 the Subfluvial, and yet isn t the same. It works 
 under a separate charter, and yet has the same 
 engineers. It builds the tunnel, handles the 
 capital once or twice, and keeps what sticks to its 
 ringers. It s a construction committee, in short, 
 which fixes its own compensation. It s a sure, 
 quiet, rich thing for dividends. I don t know a 
 safer or more profitable investment. We can let 
 you into that, and you can draw your hundred and 
 fifty per cent a year, and all the while be as snug 
 as a bug in a rug. Will you come inside the rug ? 
 Will you stand by the great, sublime, beneficent, 
 liberal Subfluvial ? Say you will, John ! It s a 
 noble national enterprise. Say you ll see it out." 
 As Honest John Vane stared at his grimy 
 tempter, striving to decide whether he would ac- 
 
156 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 cept or spurn that tempter s degrading proffer, he 
 had the air of a man who is uncomfortably ill, and 
 his appearance was matched by his sensations. 
 There was a woful sickness in his heart ; and, to 
 use a common phrase more easily understood than 
 explained, it struck to his stomach ; and that 
 fleshly-minded organ, taking its own physical view 
 of the matter, electrified every nerve with the de 
 pressing thrills of bodily indisposition. He was 
 as ill at ease and as pale as the unseaworthy lands 
 man whom Neptune has just begun to toss in his 
 great blanket. Moreover, he felt that he was 
 pale; he knew that he did not present the healthy 
 countenance of stalwart innocence; and this 
 knowledge increased his discomposure, and made 
 him look fairly abject. 
 
 Jt would be impossible, short of reiterating all 
 the circumstances of our story, to give a complete 
 idea of his thoughts and emotions. But we must 
 specify that he sorrowfully blamed his wife for 
 those follies of hers which had driven hkn into 
 debt ; that he cursed the widespread social ex- 
 
HONEST JOHN VAXK. 157 
 
 travagance which had made of that wife a pitiless, 
 or at least an uncomprehending extortioner and 
 spendthrift ; and that he cursed even more bit 
 terly that whole system of subsidies and special 
 legislation which was now drawing around him 
 its gilded nets of bribery. There were stinging 
 reminiscences, too, of his worthy glorying in the 
 title of Honest ; of his loud and sincere promises 
 to acclaiming fellow-citizens that he would labor 
 tirelessly at the task of congressional reform; of 
 his noble trust that he might establish a broad 
 and permanent fame on the basis of official up 
 rightness. All these things went through him at 
 once like a charge of small shot. No wonder 
 that his moral nature bled exhaustively, and that 
 he had the visage of a man stricken with mortal 
 wounds. 
 
 It must be observed, however, that his grief 
 and compunction were not of the highest charac 
 ter, such as would doubtless accompany the down 
 fall of a truly noble nature. There is a rabble in 
 morals as well as in manners, and to this spiritual / 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 [ mobocracy Vane belonged by birth. The fibre 
 of his soul was coarse, and it had never been re- 
 fijied or purified by good breeding, and very likely 
 it was not capable of taking a finish, No such 
 "self-made man" was he as Abraham Lincoln, 
 or many another who has shed honor on lowly 
 beginnings, and made the phrase "self-made" 
 dear to millions. On the contrary, he was one of 
 those whose mission it is to show the millions 
 that they are disposed to over-estimate the quali 
 ties implied by this absurdly popular epithet. He 
 had his good fruits ; but they sprang from feeble 
 or selfish motives, and so were not likely to bear 
 abundantly. He did not prize virtue for its own 
 /sake, but because the name of it had brought him 
 I honor. In truth, his far-famed honesty had thus 
 \ far stood on a basis of decent egotism and re- 
 \ spectable vanity. When his self-conceit was 
 sapped by debt and by the sense of legislative 
 failure, the superstructure sagged, leaned, gaped 
 in rifts, and was ready to sink under the first 
 > deluge of temptation. 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 159 
 
 In the expression with which he looked at Dor- 
 man, you could see how much his vanity was 
 hurt. He had a stare of dislike and anger which 
 would have; caused a human being of ordinary 
 sensibilities cither to quit the room or roll up his 
 sleeves for a fight. Like many another over- 
 tempted person, he hated his tempter while sub 
 mitting to him, and because he submitted to him. 
 His soul, indeed, was in a confounding turmoil of 
 contradictions, and did not work at all as the 
 souls of accountable creatures are meant to 
 work. Had he retained full presence of mind, he 
 would have held back his concession to wrong 
 until he could make a bargain, and sell his soul 
 for at least what little it was worth. But his very 
 first words of sin were at once an apology for it 
 and a confession that he was" not in circumstances 
 to dictate his own price for it. 
 
 "Darius, I am awfully hard up," he said, with 
 an abject pathos which ought to have drawn a 
 bonus from the most griping and illiberal of the 
 Lords of Hell. 
 
160 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 But an utterance of weakness or suffering was 
 the last thing in the world which could draw 
 generosity from the nondescript sinner who had 
 come to entice him. It may be that Dorman was 
 only a fiend in embryo, who was still awaiting 
 diabolical regeneration, and had not even com 
 menced his growth in the true infernal graces ; 
 but if so, he was a chrysalis or tadpole of truly 
 abominable promise, whose evolution would be 
 likely to fill all Gehenna with gladness, and cause 
 it to welcome his coming with strewings of its 
 most sulphurous palm-branches. No doubt his 
 anthropological experience had been an advantage 
 to him ; he had absorbed all the evil that he could 
 find in business, politics, and lobbying; he had 
 developed to the utmost the selfish, pitiless in 
 stincts of traffic and -chicane. All the law and 
 the prophets that he knew were comprised in the 
 single Mammonite commandment, Thou shalt buy 
 cheap and sell dear. 
 
 The consequence was that he listened to John 
 Vane s avowal of bankruptcy without a throb of 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. l6l 
 
 compassion. Indeed, his only emotion on hearing 
 that cry of a stumbling soul was a huckstering 
 joy in the hope of getting a good thing at a bar 
 gain. The cheaper the better, the more of a 
 trading triumph, and therefore the nobler. Who 
 ever has read the stories of those diabolical temp 
 tations which were so common in the "ages of 
 faith," knows that Satan is anxious to purchase 
 immortal spirits on the shabbiest possible terms. 
 The reason is plain : a beggarly price not only 
 " bears " the market, but throws contempt on the 
 "line of merchandise" traded for; it exposes to 
 the scorn of chaos the spiritual and, therefore, 
 most perfect work of the Creator. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 DORMAN possessed in full measure the Luci- 
 ferian humor of higgling. 
 
 Discovering that Vane was in financial extremi 
 ties, he inferred that he would " sell out at a low 
 figure." He had come empowered to offer five 
 thousand dollars for the respectability which lay 
 in Honest John s character ; but he now decided 
 that he would throw out only the bait with which 
 he was accustomed to angle for the ordinary fry 
 of Congressmen. If one thousand dollars worth 
 of stock sufficed to land his fish, there would re 
 main four thousand dollars for himself, a very fair 
 commission. 
 
 " You ought not to miss this chance, Vane," he 
 said, with the calmness of a horsedealer. " We 
 will guarantee you ten per cent, and it is pretty 
 certain to pay fifty, and may pay twice as much." 
 
 " Of course it will pay anything that you inside 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 163 
 
 fellows choose to make it pay," answered the Con 
 gressman, with a bluntness which revealed his 
 moral inflammation. He was in the condition of 
 a man who is having a tooth pulled, and who can 
 not but desire to make a bite at his dentist s 
 fingers. 
 
 " Well, that s so, of course," admitted Dorman, 
 with the smile of a trickster who decides to make 
 a merit of enforced frankness. " But it wouldn t 
 do for us to cut the profits too fat, you know. 
 We can t divide up the whole Subfluvial stock and 
 government loan among the construction ring. 
 We ve got to draw a line somewhere. Say a 
 hundred per cent, now." 
 
 " Say so, if you like," returned John Vane, sul 
 lenly, meanwhile searching in vain for some pecu 
 niary escape from this bargain, so full of risk for 
 his good name and of humiliation to his vanity. 
 
 " Well, I say so ; that s agreed on," winked Dor 
 man. 
 
 There was a silence now which endured through 
 several eternal seconds. The statesman who was 
 
164 .HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 for sale and the lobbyist who wanted to buy him 
 were both alike unwilling to name a price, the for 
 mer through shame and the latter through nig 
 gardliness. 
 
 " There isn t much of this left," Dorman at last 
 resumed. " Stands at one or two hundred per 
 cent, above par. It s such a safe and paying thing 
 that there s been a loud call for it." 
 
 Vane made no response . He had an appearance 
 even of not listening to the agent of the abysses 
 of corruption. The truth is that he was beginning 
 to recover his self-possession, and with it his fac 
 ulty for dickering. 
 
 " I could let you have five hundred of it, though," 
 continued the lobbyist, still bent upon getting his 
 soul for a song. 
 
 " Do you mean to insult me ?" demanded Vane, 
 with a glare which might mean either huckster 
 ing anger at the meanness of the bribe or virtu 
 ous indignation at being offered a bribe at all. 
 
 " Say a thousand, then," added Dorman, with a 
 spasmodic start, as if the offer had been jerked 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 165 
 
 out of him by red-hot pincers, or as if the breath 
 in which he uttered it had been a scalding steam 
 of brimstone. " Senators Christian and Faithful 
 took a thousand each, and were glad to get it. 
 Let me see ; we ve had to go as high as that on 
 some of the House fellows, too, such men as 
 Greatheart and Hopeful, for instance. Well, I 
 ought not to mention names." 
 
 " Why, those are our biggest figure-heads !" 
 Vane almost shouted, springing up and pacing the 
 room in amazement. 
 
 "Of course they are," grinned Dorman. The 
 very highest sign-boards in Congress, the saints 
 and the advocates of reform, and the watch-dogs 
 of the Treasury ! There are no men of better 
 reputation inside politics." 
 
 " I would n t have thought it of t/icm" pursued 
 Vane. " I knew there was a raft of fellows who 
 took investments in things that they voted for. 
 But I supposed there were some exceptions." 
 
 The lobbyist knew that there were exceptions ; 
 he had learned by dint of rebuffs that Congress- 
 
1 66 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 men existed who were either pure enough or rich 
 enough to be above pecuniary temptation ; but he 
 was careful not to mention this fact to his pro 
 posed victim. 
 
 " Well, you see how it is, at last," he resumed. 
 You see that the candle of fame only lights up a 
 game for money, and now what s the use of your 
 holding different notions from everybody else ? 
 You have n t been practical, John Vane ; you ve 
 been eccentric and highfalutin. I put it to you, 
 as one fair-minded business man to another, is it 
 generous or just for a capitalist to ask a member 
 to work for him gratis ? I say not. If I see an 
 honest chance to make five thousand dollars, and 
 you give me a lift which enables me to use that 
 chance, I ought to allow you a share in the 
 investment. And that s what I do. I ve got 
 five thousand dollars of this inside stock " 
 
 Here he had another spasmodic start, which 
 ended in a prolonged fit of coughing, as though 
 the brimstone fumes which we have imputed to 
 his breath were unusually dense and stifling. Of 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 167 
 
 course it could not have been remorse or shame 
 which interfered with his breathing, although the 
 five thousand dollars which he talked of had been 
 given him to transfer to Vane, and although his 
 own private share of the " Hen Persuader " stock 
 already amounted to fifty thousand. Of remorse 
 or shame he must have been fundamentally inca 
 pable. If he felt any human passion at this mo 
 ment, it must have been a peanut peddler s glad 
 ness. 
 
 " And I offer you twenty per cent, of it," he 
 continued, when he had recovered his utterance. 
 "That s about fair, I think, for I Ve only this one 
 investment on hand, and can t possibly attend to 
 more, while you can dip into all the national enter 
 prises that are going. And don t you make Puri- 
 , tanic faces over it. It is n t money, you see. So 
 help me Lucifer ! I would n t think of offering 
 money to you. It s just a business chance. Is 
 there anything low in a Congressman s putting 
 his money where his constituents put theirs ? 
 
 Is n t he thereby joining his fortunes with theirs? 
 8 
 
168 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 That s what I said to Greatheart and he could n t 
 get round it, and he took the stock. 
 
 " I 11 I 11 take it, too," was John Vane s re 
 sponse, a mere choked gasp of a response, but 
 heard, perhaps, all through Pandemonium. 
 , " All right !" laughed Dorman, leaping up and 
 giving his member s back a slap, which ought to 
 have left the imprint of a fiery hand. "Well, I 11 
 hold the stock for you," he promptly added, with 
 a sly sparkle in his smoky eyes. " Just to keep 
 your name off the books and out of the newspa 
 pers, you understand." 
 
 Our Congressman pondered a full minute be 
 fore he replied. He was no longer Honest John 
 Vane, but he desired to remain such in the. eyes 
 of the public, and consequently he did not want 
 the stock in his own name. At the same time he 
 shrewdly doubted whether it would be worth much 
 to him, if it stood to the credit of Dorman. His 
 countenance was at this moment a study for a 
 painter of character. There were two phases in 
 it> the one growing and the other waning, like the 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 169 
 
 new moon encroaching upon the old. In a 
 moment you might say that it had undergone a 
 transfiguration, though not such a one as apostles 
 would desire to honor with tabernacles. All the 
 guile in his soul that slow, loutish guile which 
 lies at the bottom of so many low-bred and seem 
 ingly simple natures rose to the surface of his 
 usually genial and hearty expression, like oily 
 scum to the surface of water. His visage actually 
 took a physical lubricity from it, and shone like 
 the fraudful superficies of a shaved and greased 
 
 Pig- 
 
 <k I won t trouble you to hold my property for 
 
 me, Darius/ he said. I 11 hold it in my own 
 name. Honesty is the best policy." 
 
 This last phrase was a noteworthy one. It 
 showed that he had already entered upon the life 
 of a hypocrite. A little before he had been a 
 living body of honesty ; now he was a vampire, 
 but he still retained his decent carcass. 
 
 " Xow, look here, John, would you ?" hesi 
 tated the lobbyist, who had hoped to make the 
 shares stick to his own fingers. " Christian and 
 
I/O HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 Greatheart and those fellows have n t. You see, 
 if there should be an exposure, and this stock 
 should be found in your name, you would n t be 
 on the investigating committee." 
 
 " Never mind, I 11 do the square thing," replied 
 Vane, to whom it had suddenly occurred that the 
 Great Subfluvial and its " Hen Persuader" worked 
 under separate charters, so that a man who held 
 property in one might plausibly claim a right to 
 vote on the other. 
 
 " O, well, if you insist upon it," assented Dor- 
 man, much chagrined. " If you choose to risk it, 
 why, of course Well, now about paying for the 
 stock ; as you are hard up, suppose we let the div 
 idends go towards that." 
 
 " Suppose we don t," promptly returned Vane, 
 remembering how direly he needed ready cash. 
 " Suppose you hand me the certificates at once, 
 and the dividends as fast as they fall in." 
 
 The lobbyist looked at his victim with an air of 
 spite qualified by admiration. Maelzel might have 
 had a similar expression (though not by any pos- 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. I/I 
 
 sibility so vicious and diabolical) when he was 
 beaten at chess by his own automaton. 
 
 " I have caught a Tartar," he grinned. "When 
 you turn your attention to finance, John, you show 
 your business training. Your game is n t the 
 safest, though. All the sly old hands, all the 
 fellows who have graduated in the lobbies of the 
 State Legislatures, and bribed their way from 
 there into Congress, all those shysters have had 
 the shares sold for them and taken nothing but 
 the plain greenbacks. I see what your false bosom 
 is made of, John, the fair front of honest sim 
 plicity and ignorance. It may do you, and it may 
 not. The faster a hog swims the more he cuts his 
 throat with his own hoofs," he added, with a spite 
 which made him coarse. " You d better let me 
 keep the stock for you." 
 
 " Well," sighed the imp, who had not bought a 
 soul as cheaply as he had hoped, " have it your 
 own way, then. I ll bring the certificate to-mor 
 row." 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 AND now Honest John Vane had become Dis 
 honest John Vane, and justified Dorman s 
 contemptuous nickname of Weathercock John. 
 
 He had accepted stock in a- financial enter 
 prise, which might fairly be called a Juggernaut 
 of swindling, on the understanding that he would 
 grease its rusted wheels with fresh legislation, 
 and help roll it once more througn the public 
 treasury and over the purses of the people. 
 
 In so doing, he had trampled on such simian 
 instincts of. good as had been born in him, on 
 such development of conscience as he had been 
 favored with during his sojourn in this christianly 
 human cycle, on resolutions which he knew to be 
 noble, because everybody had told him so, and 
 on promises whereby he had secured power. He 
 had proved that, so far as he could be a moral 
 anything, he was a moral failure. In all the 
 
 (172) 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 1/3 
 
 miscellaneous " depravity of inanimate things," 
 he most resembled a weak-jointed pair of tongs, 
 such as pusillanimously cross their legs, let their 
 burdens drop back into the coals, and pinch the 
 hand which trusts them. 
 
 In short, he had easily fallen into the loose 
 horde of Congressional foragers or "bummers," 
 who never do one stroke of fighting in the battle 
 of real statesmanship, but prowl after plunder in 
 the trail of the guerillas of the lobby. Their 
 usual history, as the well-informed Darius Dor- 
 man has already hinted to us, was this : they had 
 acquired a mastery of log-rolling and bribery and 
 stealing in the halls or the lobbies of the State 
 Legislatures ; and, having there gained sufficient 
 wealth or influence, had bribed their way to Con 
 gress, with the sole object of plundering more 
 abundantly. John Vane, on the contrary, had 
 been elected by a hopeful people, going about 
 with a lantern to look for an honest politician. 
 He had meant to be honest ; he had, so to speak, 
 taken upon himself the vows of honesty ; and 
 
1/4 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 now, for a thousand or two of dollars, he had 
 broken them. He differed from a majority of 
 his brethren in piratical legislation just as a 
 backslider and hypocrite differs from a consist 
 ent sinner. 
 
 Can we palliate his guilt ? We repeat here, 
 for the moral importance of the fact will justify 
 iteration, that he came of a low genus. It was 
 a saying of the oldest inhabitant of Slowburgh, 
 that " up to John s time there never had been a 
 magnificent Vane." No more was there one now. 
 Although some blessed mixture had clarified the 
 family soul in him a little, he still retained much 
 sediment deposited by the muddy instincts of 
 his ancestors, and a very little shaking stirred it 
 all through his conduct. Proper breeding and 
 education might have made him a permanently 
 worthy soul ; but of those purifying elements he 
 had been favored with only a few drops. He 
 had risen somewhat above his starting-point, but 
 he still remained below the highest tide-water 
 mark of vice, and got no foothold on the dry 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 1 75 
 
 land of the loftier moral motives. Sidling crab- 
 like about in these low grounds, the daily flood 
 rolled in and submerged him. 
 
 It is impossible to insist too strongly upon the 
 fact that he had no sound self-respect and lofty 
 sense of honor. Of that noble pride which ren 
 ders unassailable the integrity of a Washington, 
 a Calhoun, an Adams, or a Sumner, he had not 
 laid the lowest foundation, and perhaps could not. 
 In place of this fortress, he possessed only the 
 little, combustible block-house of vanity. All, or 
 nearly all, his uprightness had sprung from a 
 desire to win the hurrahs of men who were no 
 better than himself, or who were his inferiors. 
 The title of Honest John (knocked down to him 
 at such a shamefully low price as must have 
 given him but a slight idea of its value) had 
 merely tickled his conceit, as red housings tickle 
 that of a horse. It was a fine ornament, which 
 distinguished him from the mass of John Vanes, 
 some of whom were in jail. It was a ;/<?;;/ de 
 guerre, by aid of which he could rally voters 
 
1/6 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 around him, and perhaps win further glories at 
 the polls. Mainly for these trivial and merely 
 external reasons had he striven to hold on to it, 
 and not because he believed that reputation, self- 
 respect, and sense of honor were precious, far 
 more precious than happiness or even life. 
 
 Such a motive force is of course no force at 
 all, but a niere weathercock, which obeys the 
 wind of public opinion, instead of directing it. 
 Vane had now been exposed for some time to a 
 moral breath which differed greatly from that of 
 his hard-working, precise, exact, and generally 
 upright constituents. In the first place, he had 
 found, as he thought, that in Washington his 
 title of Honest brought him no influence and 
 little respect. He suspected that it w r as chiefly 
 his unwillingness to have a finger in the fat pies 
 of special legislation which had caused him to be 
 kept on the minor committees. He saw other 
 members, who were as new, as untrained, and 
 as comically ignorant as himself, but who had 
 the fame among the lobbyists of being " good 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 1 77 
 
 workers," and able to "put things through," 
 he saw them called to positions of distinguished 
 responsibility, far higher on the roll of honor 
 than himself. He learned, or supposed he had 
 learned, that many Congressmen kept Uncle 
 Sam s eagle setting on their own financial eggs. 
 He knew members who had come to Washing 
 ton poor, and who now owned square miles on 
 the lines of great railroads, and rode in their 
 carriages, while he and his wife walked. For 
 a time, the prosperity of these knaves had not 
 punctured his soap-bubble honesty, .because he 
 still believed that there was a Congressional pub 
 lic which condemned them and respected him. 
 Classing himself with Senators Christian and 
 Faithful, and with those almost equally venerated 
 images, Representatives Greatheart and Hope 
 ful, he continued for a time to stand proudly in 
 his honored niche, and to despise the rabble of 
 money-changers below. 
 
 But at last Dorman had told him, and his 
 necessities easily led him to believe, that he 
 
178 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 was alone in his virtuous poverty ; Christian, 
 / Greatheart, and the other reputed temples of 
 righteousness, were nothing but whited sepul 
 chres, full of railroad bonds and all uncleanness. 
 This illumination from the secrets of the pit 
 bewildered him, and caused him to topple from 
 the narrow footing of his probity. He resolved 
 that he would not be the only case of honest 
 indigence and suffering in the whole political 
 world. Besides, what risk did he run of losing 
 his home popularity by accepting a few golden 
 eggs from the manipulators of the Hen Per 
 suader ? The fact might become current news in 
 Hell, but it would never reach Slowburgh. Was 
 it likely that Congress would expose the interior 
 of a thieving machine on which so many of its 
 members had left their finger-marks ? Even if 
 an investigation should be forced, there was such 
 a trick as doing it with closed doors, and there 
 was such a material as committee-room white 
 wash. 
 
 There was still a momentous question before 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 1 79 
 
 Vane, the question whether he would continue 
 to walk with the Mammonite crew, or make use 
 of his deliverance from debt to resume his former 
 respectable courses. The manner in which he 
 decided it furnishes another proof of the jelly 
 fish flabbiness which characterized his rudiment 
 ary nature. Many a cultivated spirit tumbles 
 once down the declivity of guilt, and then climbs 
 back remorsefully to the difficult steeps of well 
 doing. But our self-manufactured and self-in 
 structed hero continued to stick in the mud where 
 he had drifted, like any other mollusk, and ab 
 sorbed and fattened and filled his shell, a model 
 of stolid and immoral content. 
 
 Just in one direction the only direction in 
 which he had been thoroughly educated he 
 showed energy. At business he had worked 
 hard and made himself what is called a good 
 business man, sharp-sighted in detecting his own 
 interest, and vigorous in delving for it. If in 
 the present case he had not made a particularly 
 fine bargain for himself, it had been because he 
 
l8O HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 was new to that thieves brokerage, the lobby, 
 and bewildered at finding himself hustled into 
 it. But, although he had sold his virtue at a 
 low figure, he was now determined to get the 
 full price agreed upon. As Dorman did not 
 bring him the promised certificate of stock, he 
 sought him out and secured it. Next he heard 
 that a dividend had fallen due on the day of his 
 purchase ; hence another call on his fellow-sin 
 ner, and a resolute demand for the sum total of 
 said dividend. 
 
 "But the transfer is dated the day after the 
 dividend," objected Dorman, who like the rest of 
 his subterranean kind, did not want to pay a cent 
 more for a soul than he could help. 
 
 " Yes, I know it is," answered Dishonest John 
 Vane, angrily. "And that s a pretty trick to 
 play on a man whose help you ask for. Now I 
 want you to make that transfer over again, and 
 date it the day on which I took the stock, and 
 pay me the dividend due on it." 
 
 Dorman, wizened with disappointed greed and 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. l8l 
 
 slyness, looked less like a triumphant goblin than 
 usual, and more like a scorched monkey. His 
 wilted visage twitched, his small, quick, vicious 
 eyes glanced here and there anxiously, and he 
 hatl an air of being ready to drop on all fours 
 and scramble under a table. Nevertheless, as 
 there was no resisting a lawgiver of the United 
 States, he corrected the certificate and paid the 
 dividend. 
 
 " I don t see how I came to make this blunder," 
 he chattered, arching his eyebrows as apologeti- 
 cal monkeys do. 
 
 " You don t pronounce it right ; it wasn t blun 
 der, but plunder," smiled Vane, with a satirical 
 severity, suggestive of Satan rebuking Sin. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 IN an amazingly short time after these solvent 
 providences had befallen Weathercock John, 
 all the lobbyists out of Gehenna seemed to have 
 learned that he was " approachable." 
 r These turkey buzzards have a marvelous apti 
 tude at scenting a moral carcass, and Vane, who 
 did not so much as suspect that he was dead, 
 must have been already, in need of burial, and 
 pungently attractive to their abominable olfac 
 tories. They gathered around him and settled 
 upon him, until he might be described as fairly 
 black with them. Gentlemen who, to be in char 
 acter, ought to have had raw necks and a sore- 
 toed gait, croaked into his ears every imaginable 
 scheme for pilfering, not only the fatness and the 
 life-blood, but the very bones out of Uncle Sam. 
 It is arithmetically certain that, had every one of 
 these pick-purse plans been carried out success- 
 
 (182) 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 183 
 
 fully, the Secretary of the Treasury would have 
 had to suspend all manner of payments. 
 
 Among so many golden bows of promise, 
 Weathercock John was able to make a judicious 
 pick, and to find lots of full purses at the ends 
 of them. He would have nothing to do with 
 " national highways," because he was already 
 highwaying it on the line of the Great Subfl uvial, 
 and did not want to become known as one of the 
 " railroad ring." 
 
 He selected the congenial case of a deceased 
 horse, who had been killed by our tropps in 
 Western New York during the war of 1812, and 
 who had already drawn his ghostly claim for 
 damages through five Congresses, the amount 
 thereof quadrupling with every successive jour 
 ney, so that it had risen from $125 to $32,000. 
 
 Also he pitched upon the case of certain plan 
 tation buildings in Florida, which had been de 
 stroyed by the same indiscreet soldiery while 
 striving to defend them from the Seminoles, 
 or by the Seminoles while struggling to take 
 
184 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 them from the soldiery ; and which, by dint of 
 repeated " settlements and adjustments on prin 
 ciples of justice and equity," every settlement 
 being made the pretext of a new adjustment, 
 and every adjustment the pretext of a new settle 
 ment, had grown in worth from about $8,000 to 
 about $134,000, one of the most remarkable 
 instances of the rise of property ever witnessed 
 in a thinly settled country. 
 
 Likewise he hit upon the grievance of a mail 
 contractor, who, having failed to carry his mails 
 and so forfeited his contract, now demanded 
 (through his heirs) $10,000 in damages ; also 
 $15,000 for mail services, in addition to those 
 not rendered ; also $20,000 of increased compen 
 sation for the mail services not rendered, together 
 with interest and costs to the amount of $15,000 
 more. 
 
 These and some dozen other similar swindles, 
 our member took under his legislative protection, 
 proposing to put them through as such little 
 jokers usually are put through ; that is, by tack- 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 185 
 
 ing them on to appropriation bills at the very 
 end of the session. As for remuneration, he 
 was fair minded enough to be content with ten 
 per cent, on each successful claim, whereas some 
 unscrupulous statesmen extorted as much as fif 
 teen or twenty. It is needless to say that, in 
 view of this conscientious moderation, the lobby 
 itself was stricken with a sense of unholy grati 
 tude, and began to shout through its organs, 
 " Hurrah for Honest John Vane ! " You may 
 imagine how it delighted and strengthened him 
 to find that, no matter what villainous trick he 
 played upon the public, he could not lose his 
 glorious nickname. So cheered was he by this 
 incongruous good fortune that he ventured to 
 introduce a little bill of his own into Congress, 
 appropriating $50,000 for a new cemetery for 
 "the heroic dead of the late war," the contract 
 for the coffins to be awarded to one Elnathan 
 Sly, who was his own man of straw or alter ego. 
 Meantime he would have nothing to do with 
 those visionary projects which " had no money in 
 
1 86 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 them." His motto was, " No Irish need apply," 
 meaning thereby indigent applicants for legisla 
 tion, or applicants who would not offer to go 
 snacks. When an author urged him to introduce 
 an international copyright bill, he cut short his 
 visitor s prosing about the interests of literature 
 by saying brusquely, " Sir, I may as well tell you 
 at once that I don t care anything about this 
 subject, and I don t believe anybody can make 
 me care about it." When some simple college 
 professors wanted him to propose an appropriation 
 for the observation of an eclipse, he got rid oi 
 the venerable Dryasdusts by a stroke of rare 
 humor, telling them that his specialty was Revo 
 lutionary pensions. When a wooden-legged cap 
 tain of volunteers applied to him for the Slow- 
 burgh Post-Office, he treated him with promises, 
 which sent him home promptly in high spirits, 
 and then secured the position for one of his own 
 wire-pullers, a man who had enlisted for the war 
 in the Home Guards. 
 
 A great change, you will say ; an unnaturally 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 1 87 
 
 sudden eclipse ; an improbably complete deca 
 dence. Not so ; in his inmost being Vane had 
 not altered ; only in the incrustations of life 
 deposited by surroundings. Barring the mollusc 
 ous characteristics of easy good nature, and that 
 sort of companionable generosity which amounts 
 to give and take, he had never been beneficent 
 and unselfish. He had not moral sympathy^ 
 enough to feel the beauty of virtue in the indi 
 vidual, nor intellect enough to discover the neces 
 sity of virtue to the prosperity of society, nor 
 culture enough to value any educational instru 
 ment finer than a common school. Considering 
 the bare poverty of his spiritual part, indeed, our 
 Congressman was merely a beggar on horseback ; 
 and it was no wonder that, once temptation got 
 him faced hellwards, he rode to the devil with 
 astonishing rapidity. 
 
 Well, John Vane fell from respectable indi 
 gence into degradingly thrifty circumstances. 
 He paid all the debts which he had incurred 
 during his abnormal, or at least accidental, course 
 
1 88 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 of honesty, and knew no more what it was to be 
 without a comforting roll of pilfered greenbacks 
 in his pocket. He hired a fine carriage for his 
 wife, and gave her all the funds that she needed 
 for entertainments and shopping, thereby arous 
 ing in her fresh respect and affection. Indeed, 
 he so far satisfied the pecuniary expectations of 
 Olympia that she no longer found the wealthy 
 Ironman necessary to her happiness, and fell into 
 a prudent way of discouraging his attentions. 
 Once more our member s home was tranquil, and 
 he happy and glorious in the midst of it. A 
 man who can dazzle and fascinate his own wed 
 ded Danae with showers of gold is nothing less 
 than a Jove of a husband. 
 
 It is worth noting that Olympia had no scruples 
 about using these unaccustomed riches, and never 
 once asked where they came from. Had she 
 learned that they were filched from the public 
 treasury, would she have accepted and spent them 
 the less freely ? A venerable Congressman, 
 thoroughly versed in all the male and female 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 189 
 
 wickedness of Washington, assures me that wo" 
 men are conscienceless plunderers of public prop-j 
 erty, and will steal any official article which they 
 can lay hands on, from a paper-folder upward. 
 
 At last came the end of the session. As is 
 always the case, it was a season of wild turmoil 
 and uproar, by no means resembling one s idea of 
 legislation, but more like a dam breaking away. 
 The House was as frantic with excitement and 
 as noisy with dissonant speaking as was the tower 
 of Babel after the confusion of tongues. Hon 
 orable members who had special bills to push 
 were particularly active and sonorous. They 
 spouted ; they tacked on amendments ; they elec 
 tioneered among their brother lawgivers ; they 
 were incredibly greedy and shameless. An im 
 aginative observer might have fancied himself in 
 a huge mock-auction shop, with two or three 
 score of impudent Peter Funks hammering away 
 at once, while dead horses were knocked down at 
 a hundred times the price of live ones, and burnt 
 barns, empty cotton bags, rotten steamers, and 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 unbuilt railroads went at similar swindling prices, 
 the victimized purchaser in every case being- a 
 rich simpleton called Uncle Sam. The time, 
 talents, and parliamentary skill of the honest 
 members were nearly all used up in detecting and 
 heading off the immortal steeds which were 
 turned into the national pastures by the dishon 
 est ones. Many measures of justice, of govern 
 mental reform, and even of departmental necessity 
 were, perforce, overlooked and left untouched. 
 It seemed as though the only thing which Con 
 gress was not under obligation to attend to was 
 the making of laws for the benefit of the whole 
 people. 
 
 In this raid of special legislation upon real 
 legislation John Vane was one of the most active 
 and adroit guerillas. His "genial" smile sim 
 pered from desk to desk, like Hector s shield 
 blazing along the ranks of Trojan war. He had 
 never smiled so before; he very nearly smiled 
 himself sick ; he proved himself the smiler of 
 smilers. There was no resisting such an obvi- 
 
HONEST JOHN VAXK. IQI 
 
 ously warm-hearted fellow,* especially as he was 
 generous, too, offering to vote as he would be 
 voted for. And everything prospered with him ; 
 the taxes gathered from his countrymen melted 
 on his schemes like butter on hot pancakes ; and 
 when he left the House at midnight he was a man 
 in "respectable circumstances." 
 
 He now had funds enough to carry the next 
 nominating caucus in his district, and thus, with 
 Dorman s potent aid, to make fairly sure of a re 
 turn to Congress. As he had once swept the 
 ballot-boxes as Honest John Vane, so he purposed 
 to sweep them again as Dishonest John Vane. 
 But is the golden calf of lobbydom to be the di 
 recting deity of our politics forever? Is no axe 
 to be laid to the root of this green bay tree of 
 Slowburgh ? We shall see. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 WHAT were the prospects of Weathercock 
 John in the face of that terrible scrutiny of 
 political character, a new election ? 
 
 He had now served two years in the honorable 
 Congress of the United States, after such a 
 fashion that, could he have had his deserts, he 
 would have served ten more in jail. 
 
 But as the mountain brigands of Greece and 
 the municipal highwaymen of New York can 
 both testify it is not the custom of some com 
 munities to execute justice upon criminals, so 
 long as injustice is procurable for love or money. 
 Moreover, our ignominious member had thus far 
 been able to keep that cardinal eleventh com 
 mandment, "Thou shalt not be found out" He 
 was still worshiped by the simple and lowly 
 masses of his district as Honest John Vane; 
 and, furthermore, he had store of that golden oil 
 
 (192) 
 
HONEST JOHN VAXE. 1 93 
 
 which is one of the best of all lubricators for the 
 wheels of political fortune. 
 
 Thus, instead of going to the tread-mill and 
 becoming an object of reverential pity to senti 
 mental philanthropists, he went into a canvass for 
 re-election at the head of a faithful flock of baaing 
 adherents, who did not see how he had led them 
 through the brambles of needless taxation, and 
 who were so bewitched with the instinct of fol 
 lowing a bellwether that, had they discovered all 
 of Vane s ignorance and rascality, they would not 
 have deserted him. Not that he bought the 
 popular suffrage with money, or could do it. 
 Thanks be to the remaining mercy of Heaven, 
 / few freemen as yet sell their votes in Slowburgh. 
 Having no feculent system of special legislation 
 to rot them with its drippings, they are for the 
 most part of sounder morals than the adventurers 
 who contrive to represent them. But there were 
 wirepullers to be conciliated, oratorical forums to 
 be hired, posters and ballots to be printed, vote- 
 distributers to be paid. Vane s tithes from his 
 
IQ4 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 relief and subsidy bills covered these expenses 
 nicely, and to the entire satisfaction of an en 
 lightened and moral constituency, fond of economy 
 in national legislation, and boastful of the honesty 
 which a republic is supposed to generate. 
 
 Of course he found the franking privilege as 
 useful as if he had never denounced it. He was 
 almost grateful in these campaigning days for the 
 congressional insignificance which had disenabled 
 him from reforming that abuse. A so-called sec 
 retary, whom he had left in Washington with 
 several thousand " franks," sold one half of those 
 autographs as his own perquisite, and deluged 
 Vane s field of labor with the other half. Every 
 mechanic in Slowburgh got a report on agricul 
 ture, and every farmer got a report on manufac 
 tures. The speeches which the so-called secretary 
 had written, and which our member had obtained 
 leave to print in the Congressional Globe without 
 preliminary delivery, fell in such abundant showers 
 throughout the district that it was a wonder they 
 had not been foretold in the almanac. The Wash- 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. IQ5 
 
 ingtonian assistant, by the way, must have been 
 a fellow of some ability ; he managed this system 
 of political irrigation not only with vigor, but 
 with judgment. For example, among all tlie 
 public documents with which he fructified Slow- 
 burgh, there was not a single copy of the Report 
 on the Corruption of Members of Congress. It 
 was judicious, certainly; for had we been brought 
 to remember the infamy of Matteson, we might 
 not have been so happy in voting for Vane. 
 
 There was, indeed, one ugly week, when it 
 seemed as if the torches of our nocturnal proces 
 sions burned blue, and we almost feared to look at 
 our candidate lest we should see signs of unworth- 
 iness in his face. Certain lobbyists, who had not 
 been able to get what they thought their allow 
 ance of eggs out of the Hen Persuader, set afloat 
 vindictive stories to the effect that that wonderful 
 financial machine was nothing but a contrivance 
 to corrupt Congressmen into voting favors to the 
 Great Subfluvial, and that its retaining fees had 
 been pocketed by some of the most famous cham- 
 
196 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 pions of our party, such as Christian, Greatheart, 
 and Honest John Vane. 
 
 These charges were picked up and used for 
 ammunition by a brazen opposition which was as 
 deep in the mud as we were in the mire. Every 
 shot spread consternation through our array. 
 There was danger lest we should set up the Gaul 
 ish war-cry of Nous sommes tra/iis, and either 
 flinch from the polls or vote a split ticket. Even 
 the political priesthood of wirepullers, who stood 
 about Vane as the Scotch Presbyterian elders 
 encompassed Leslie, began to doubt whether it 
 would not be well to make another nomination. 
 But in the end this select and tried synagogue (of 
 Satan ?) decided to stick to their candidate and to 
 patch up the rents in his ephod. They began by 
 denying flatly that he owned any Hen Persuader 
 stock, or any other property connected with the 
 Great Subfluvial. Next they set a committee 
 over him to prevent him from avowing such own 
 ership. This committee guarded him all day and 
 put him to bed at night ; it went before him like 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 a cloud and behind him like a darkness, keeping 
 him constantly shrouded in non-committalism ; it 
 held interviewing reporters at a distance, or whis 
 pered evasive answers to their questions. Never 
 was a Grand Lama or a Roi Faineant more com 
 pletely secluded. Only a deaf-mute, with all his 
 fingers amputated, could be laid under such a con 
 versational embargo. 
 
 This inspired discretion had its reward ; various 
 providences arrived to favor it. Good and true 
 men perceived that the whole air was full of 
 " campaign lies," and naturally inferred that this 
 story about the Hen Persuader briberies was one 
 of them. Moreover, it was soon " nailed to the 
 counter " by positive and public letters of denial 
 from Christian, Greatheart, and other implicated 
 seraphim. Of course such men would not pre 
 varicate, we argued, and considered the charges 
 entirely refuted. And now we justified Weather 
 cock John ; we imputed his silence to the con 
 scious rectitude of a worthy soul ; we said that he 
 had done rightly in treating slander with unre- 
 
198 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 sponsive scorn. Thus reassured, we went in a 
 solid phalanx to the polls, and triumphantly sent 
 our special legislator back to Congress. 
 
 Nobody was better pleased with the victory 
 than Darius Dorman. It was, by the way, some 
 what of a satire upon our human joy that such a 
 " burnt eyed nigger " of the pit, such a mere field- 
 hand in the earthly plantation of Lucifer, should 
 have shared it. The moment he heard the result 
 he looked up Vane and congratulated him in forms 
 and liturgies of profanity not often heard above 
 ground. 
 
 " It is a triumph of the good cause," he contin 
 ued, with so sarcastic a grin that our heavy-witted 
 member thought him either impertinent or crazy ; 
 " and, by the infernal hoofs and horns, the good 
 cause needed it. If we had been beaten, the 
 Great Subfluvial would have been smashed to 
 make way for some other national enterprise. As 
 it is, I think we can keep things white-washed, 
 and perhaps head off an investigation altogether." 
 
 " An investigation !" exclaimed Vane, his genial 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 199 
 
 smile falling agape with dismay. " Do you think 
 there will be an investigation ?" 
 
 " You may bet what soul you have on it," de 
 clared the lobbyist. " Just as sure as the party 
 believes those charges to be false, it will demand 
 an overhauling of them, of course, to confound the 
 opposition." 
 
 Our Congressman saw the point, and seemed 
 to feel it in his marrow. " If they look this thing 
 up," he gasped, " what s to become of me ?" 
 
 "*I don t know and I don t care," responded 
 Dorman, with a frank brutality which made Vane 
 resolve not to quarrel with him ; " what I want to 
 know is, what s to become of me? Here I have 
 all my results and my materials of labor in those 
 two companies. If the Hen Persuader is called 
 on to refund to the Subfluvial, or if the Subfluvial 
 is foreclosed on by the government, I am a poor 
 devil for certain. Well, we are in the same boat ; 
 we must pull together. If you won t expose my 
 fashion of doing business, I won t expose your 
 share in the profits of it." 
 
2OO HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 Vane answered in his non-committal fashion ; 
 he said nothing, and he did not even look at his 
 guide and ruler in sin ; but he gently nodded 
 his assent. 
 
 " I always meant to pay you for that stock," he 
 continued, for he was very anxious now to make 
 friends with this Mammon of unrighteousness. 
 " I 11 settle with you for it some day, Darius ; I m 
 a little short now. This election, you know." 
 
 " O, yes, I know," Dorman grinned epileptically. 
 " It has cost us both a good bit of money. Well, 
 take your time about it ; pay me when it comes 
 handy. I can trust your honesty, John, under the 
 circumstances." 
 
 The Congressman turned away, "full of an 
 inward wrath, but placid, meek, and sleek on the 
 surface, for his tallowy nature did not come easily 
 to an open boil. He was angry at the lobbyist 
 for his sarcasm ; he perfectly hated him for that 
 avarice and hardness which would not give a 
 receipt for payment on those shares, without the 
 money ; but he must not and would not quarrel 
 with him, so brotherly is the communion of Satan ! 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 FOR once Dorman was correct in a prophecy. 
 The recollection of the " Great Subfluvial 
 slanders " rankled in the soul of an honest and 
 truth-loving nation. 
 
 After the election had been carried and the 
 country duly saved from its quadrennial crisis, it 
 seemed just and necessary to put calumny to open 
 shame, and thus rob it of influence in the future. 
 Virtuous constituencies and a press which at least 
 spoke the words of virtue clamored for an invest 
 igation which should vindicate the innocence of 
 Christian, Greatheart, and Company, and put their 
 lying accusers in the pillory. " We want justice 
 done you," cheerfully shouted a believing party to 
 its demi-gods, streaming piteously with the rotten 
 eggs of the Hen Persuader. 
 
 It was in vain that these revered fetishes whis 
 pered to their confidants that justice was pre- 
 
 (201) 
 
2O2 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 cisely what they were afraid of, and interceded 
 with such divinities as they believed in to save 
 them from their friends. In vain did a sadly wise 
 Congress endeavor to amuse and pacify the coun 
 try by throwing overboard that precious tub of 
 abuses, the franking privilege. In vain did 
 Weathercock John set his daily organ to celebrat 
 ing and imputing to himself a reform which 
 he had so long promised and which he now so 
 unwillingly conceded. The popular whale took 
 no notice of a plaything which at any other time 
 might have diverted it for years, and continued to 
 thrash the political ocean into foam with its rush- 
 ings and plungings after investigations. 
 
 Amid this commotion John Vane rowed about 
 in his cockle-shell of a character with all the agil 
 ity that terror can give. He was so accustomed 
 to value himself on being honest that the thought 
 of being publicly condemned as dishonest was 
 almost as dreadful to him as it would have been 
 to an upright soul. So oppressive was his wretch 
 edness that he craved not only help but also sym- 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 2O3 
 
 pathy, that favorite consolation of the sorrowful 
 feeble. He was in the spiritual state of certain 
 weak-minded murderers, who cannot sleep of 
 nights until they have told some friend the par 
 ticulars of their crime. So entirely had the back- - 
 bone been taken out of him that he could not 
 hold himself erect in the presence of his wife, but 
 wilted upon her slight shoulder for support. It 
 was an abject confession of decrepitude ; for he 
 had learned to consider her as totally lacking in 
 practical sense, and there were impatient moments 
 when he thought of her as merely a lively dunce. 
 But now he must have pity, though it came from 
 a peacock. 
 
 I m afraid there s trouble a brewing for us," 
 he said, one evening, shaking that perplexed head 
 of his which had been the admiration of his con 
 stituents, and which certainly looked large enough 
 to hold all the problems of state. 
 
 What s the matter now?" asked Olympia. 
 
 She did not think of trouble to the nation, nor 
 of trouble to her husband. The only idea which 
 
2O4 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 occurred to her was that perhaps there was a 
 scarcity of money, and she might be called on to 
 give up the honors of house keeping and put on 
 the disgusting humility of lodgings. It was also 
 a little disagreeable to her, this way that John 
 sometimes got into of coming to her with his 
 grievances, and trying to ease his own mind by 
 burdening hers. It was hardly more pleasant 
 than having a dog make a bed for himself on the 
 skirts of one s lilac silk. She possessed in large 
 measure that unsympathy, alleged by some writers 
 to amount to hostility, which certainly does exist 
 to some extent between the sexes. Her world 
 was very different from her husband s world, and 
 she did not much care to have him take an in 
 terest in hers, nor did she want at all to worry 
 about his. That the two spheres had any inti 
 mate connection she could rarely perceive, except 
 when the masculine one ceased to radiate gold 
 upon the feminine one. 
 
 " Well, the matter is this stupid outcry for in 
 vestigations," sighed John, loosening the cravat 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 about his somewhat pulpy throat, as if fearful lest 
 it should make a hangman s circle there. 
 
 " What investigations ? Who is to be investi 
 gated?" demanded Olympia, who was as ignorant 
 of the whole matter as if she were an inhabitant 
 of some celestial world where investigations were 
 not needed, or of some infernal one where they 
 were of no use. 
 
 " Well, it s a secret," the special legislator con 
 tinued to drawl, talking about his misdeed unwil 
 lingly, but unable to stop talking about it. " How 
 ever, I suppose it 11 all be out before long. I 
 thought I might as well prepare your mind for it," 
 he concluded, feebly hoping that she would say 
 something to prepare his mind. 
 
 "Well, what is it?" asked the wife, distinctly 
 foreseeing trouble for herself, and becoming there 
 fore deeply interested. 
 
 . "O, I thought I told you," answered John, whose 
 scared conscience had been babbling at such a 
 rate that it seemed to him as if he had made 
 audible confession of his whole iniquity. " Well, 
 
2O6 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 it s something about this Great Subfluvial Tunnel 
 under the Mississippi, from the Lakes to New 
 Orleans, great national enterprise, you know. 
 You see, it was a pretty heavy thing for Simon 
 Sharp and the other boss stockholders to carry, 
 and they had to get some additional < assistance 
 from Congress, and to do that they gave some of 
 the members stock, or rather sold it to them," 
 he added, doubting whether he could trust even 
 his wife with all the truth. "Well, some of the 
 newspapers are charging that this is bribery and 
 corruption, and are bawling for an investigation 
 and making a row generally, as though it was any 
 thing new, by George!" 
 
 "Have you got any of the stock?" inquired 
 Olympia. She saw that the subject was a sore 
 one to her husband, but she was not much in the 
 habit of sparing his feelings, and so was able to 
 come promptly and squarely to the point. 
 
 " Not much," replied John, loosening his cravat 
 once more. . " Only a thousand." 
 
 "That isn t much," said the wife, rather scorn 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 2O/ 
 
 ing him for not having received more. "Why 
 don t you sell it and get it off your hands?" 
 
 Vane made no answer. Of course, selling the 
 stock would not hide the fact that he had owned 
 it, nor shield him from ugly questions as to how 
 he came to be possessed of it. But it seemed use 
 less to try to explain this to Olympia, women were 
 so irretrievably dark-minded in business matters. 
 
 Does it pay anything?" she asked, merely 
 guessing from his silence that the property was 
 profitable, and that therefore he did not wish to 
 part with it. 
 
 " About fifteen hundred a year," confessed the 
 husband, with a sheepish air ; " or maybe two 
 thousand." 
 
 " Two thousand ! " exclaimed the modern Portia, 
 who, as a legislator, was even more " self-taught " 
 than her husband, and consequently more un 
 scrupulous. " Why, you must n t think of selling 
 it." 
 
 The statesman gazed at his privy counsellor in 
 despair. She could not grasp the situation, and 
 
208 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 he might have known that she could not To ap 
 peal to such a woman for advice and consolation 
 in great trouble was much as if a drowning man 
 should trust to a raft made of millinery. 
 
 " It s all very well to talk that way, as though it 
 was as easy as A B C," he answered, quite out of 
 patience with the straw which he had clutched at 
 to so little purpose. " But supposing this costs 
 me my seat ? Supposing I get expelled for it ? 
 Then you ll understand, I reckon, that it is of 
 some consequence, and not so very handy to 
 manage." 
 
 Olympia perceived that dulness was imputed 
 unto her, and she felt very angry at the injustice. 
 She knew that she was not dull ; nobody ever 
 hinted such an idea but her husband ; other men 
 complimented her for her cleverness, her social 
 powers, etc. 
 
 "Then what did you get yourself in such a 
 scrape for ? " she retorted sharply. " You needn t 
 blame me for, it ; I didn t do it." 
 
 " Yes, you did," insisted John, and with much 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 2OQ 
 
 truth. " I got into this very scrape to raise money 
 for your house keeping and receptions and car 
 riages and all those other confounded ruinous 
 things that you could have got along just as well 
 without. And, by George, the whole fol-de-rol 
 nonsense has got to stop !" he exclaimed, his long- 
 continued excitement over the threatened investi 
 gation bursting up in an explosion of domestic 
 wrath. " We don t keep house this session. And 
 we don t stay here at the Arlington, neither. We 
 go back to a boarding-house ; and we go to parties 
 afoot, too. The omnibus ain t running this ses 
 sion," he added, with a bitterly jocose allusion to 
 "omnibus bills," and their profitable loads of 
 special enactments. " Shoe-leather will have to 
 do our traveling. It s all the turn-out that I can 
 pay for." 
 
 Of course there was a scene. Of course Olym- 
 pia did not surrender her woman s right to luxury 
 without a tearful and little less than hysterical 
 struggle. But John Vane, rendered pitiless by 
 terror concerning his political future, was for once 
 
210 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 master over his own household. He made ar 
 rangements that very day for leaving his fine 
 rooms in the Arlington and going into lodgings. 
 At first sight, his economy seems unnecessarily 
 hard, in view of the fact that he still had several 
 thousand dollars left out of the illegal gleanings 
 of the last session, and thus was a richer man 
 than when he first came to Washington. But 
 this money had gone into the purchase of a new 
 patent in refrigerators, and he could not realize 
 on it without sacrificing a very promising busi 
 ness chance. Moreover, he saw that in the pres 
 ent public excitement about "jobbing" legisla 
 tion, he must forego its emoluments for a time, 
 and thus diminish his income. Finally, it seemed 
 to be absolutely necessary to put on the guise of 
 poverty, if he cared to preserve his repute for 
 honesty. All these things he explained to Olym- 
 pia, in a discreetly vague way, remembering the 
 while that she might be just goose enough to go 
 and cackle it abroad, but anxious, nevertheless, to 
 make her contented with him. 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 211 
 
 " You see, we have been going it rather strong 
 on style," he added. "Ten thousand dollars a 
 year is a pretty tall figure for four persons, two of 
 em children. I suppose we got into that way be 
 cause other people set the example," he concluded, 
 not wishing to be hard on his wife. 
 
 <: If we could only have the rooms on the first 
 floor, I could stand it for a while," was the 
 response of the insatiable Olympia, a pathetic 
 tear fringing her long and really lovely eyelashes. 
 " They are only fifteen dollars a month more, and 
 then we would have a nice parlor, or at least a 
 decent one." 
 
 " That means dinners, I s pose," grinned Vane, 
 testily. " Big dinners and little receptions." 
 
 "Do you want to shut me out of the world 
 altogether?" was the desperate cry of this per 
 secuted wife. 
 
 " Now look here : I would do it, I would if I 
 could," groaned the weak monster of a husband. 
 It I had a thousand dollars of capital loose, I d 
 spend it that way, or any way to please you." 
 
212 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 " Why don t you borrow ? " was the suggestion 
 of a helpmeet whose ideas of a loan did not ex 
 tend so far as the repayment. " I m sure I have 
 gentlemen friends who would be willing to lend 
 you something." 
 
 Although she said "friends," she was think 
 ing of Senator Ironman, and her husband easily 
 divined it. Should he be angry at the suggestion 
 and reject it with self -respectful scorn ? Well, 
 he was not so sensitive as he had been when he 
 came to Washington ; somehow or other he did 
 not care so much about the look of things and 
 the name of things ; on the whole, he could not 
 feel indignation, or at least none to speak of. 
 Indeed, his disintegration of moral sentiments 
 had gone farther than that stage of indifference 
 which simply allows things to take their own 
 course. After meditating for some time over his 
 wife s advice to borrow of her friends, he decided 
 to follow it. 
 
 " It would be better to let Ironman lend me 
 the money than to run the chance of his lending 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 213 
 
 it to her," he reasoned. "And then I can tell 
 him that I am hard up, and give him a hint to 
 let other people know it. By George, it s a queer 
 position for an old business man to be in," he 
 added with a mixture of chagrin and amusement; 
 " I never thought once that I should come to 
 want to be considered bankrupt." 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 WHEN the Honorable Mr. Vane was shown 
 into Senator Ironman s library, his usually 
 pink face wore that pallor which anxieties will 
 bring, especially when they are accompanied by 
 discontent with one s self. 
 
 The equally pink, though bony and narrow 
 visage of the senator also lost some of its natural 
 color as he advanced to welcome his visitor. 
 It was, by Jove, very queer, he thought, that 
 Vane should drop in at that time of day, just 
 after a fellow s breakfast, as though he were an 
 intimate friend. The two men, we must under 
 stand, were not fundamentally fond of each other, 
 as is often the case with two men who admire 
 the same lady. 
 
 " I don t altogether fancy Vane," the senator 
 had confessed to his familiars. " Now Mrs. Vane 
 is a magnificent creature, thoroughly well bred 
 
 (214) 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 215 
 
 and well educated that is, enough so for society, 
 you understand, a whole-souled, splendid, daz 
 zling woman, and and as jolly as possible. She 
 is a woman that shows well in a dance or any 
 where. By Jove, she s a stunner, that woman is. 
 I don t know another lady in Washington that 
 could wear crimson roses in her hair without 
 looking faded. She becomes a bouquet superbly, 
 and, by Jove, I love to give them to her, she 
 shows one off so ! But Vane is another sort of 
 animal altogether. He is rather rather in fact, 
 rather dull" judged the great man, hitting on the 
 right word at last. "And just a little low, too," 
 he added. " Don t always speak the best gram 
 mar. One of your heavy, self-taught men," he 
 explained, forgetting that his own father had 
 begun life as an hostler. " Low man on the 
 whole ; in some points, very low and -dull. " 
 
 So you perceive he did not admire his visitor, 
 
 not as much as Slowburgh would have expected. 
 
 But there were other causes for the Dundreary 
 
 perplexity which now winked from his pale eyes 
 
 10 
 
2l6 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 and crisped his limited forehead. He had noted 
 Vane s unusual ghastliness, and the circumstance 
 alarmed him. What had the man got on his low 
 and dull mind ? Was he going to say anything 
 disagreeable about the Ironman bouquets and car 
 riage-drives and other marks of esteem accorded 
 to Mrs. Vane. The senator was so eager and 
 hurried in his expressions of amity and welcome 
 that he fairly stuttered. 
 
 "Mr. Ironman, I just dropped in to talk about 
 this Great Subfluvial row," commenced our menv 
 ber in a slightly paralytic voice, for he was at 
 least as much agitated as his host. 
 
 " O, O, indeed ! " answered the relieved digni 
 tary of the upper house. " Sit down, sit down," 
 he went on, smiling as cheerily as if the subject 
 were an entirely delightful one. " Had your 
 breakfast ? Just as lieve order you up something 
 as not. Say a devilled kidney, now. Well, take 
 a glass of sauterne, then, or a cigar," he urged, 
 forgetting that John was a tee-totaler and a non- 
 smoker. 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 2I/ 
 
 " I don t use either, thank you," said Vane, 
 holding on to what habits of virtue he had left, 
 though he wanted a glass of wine sadly. " Well, 
 about this affair, now : do you think there ll be 
 an investigation ?" 
 
 " Yes, O, yes ; such a row about it, you know ; 
 can t help coming to one ; bad for those fellows 
 that are in it," prattled the senator, either forget 
 ting that the bulk of his own fortune had come 
 out of the lobby, or remembering with satisfac 
 tion that it had been harvested years ago. 
 
 " With closed doors, I s pose," hoped Dishonest 
 John. 
 
 " Don t know about that, by Jove ! " and Iron- 
 man shook his statesmanlike head. " You see 
 we don t want them open ; but now and then 
 we have to give in to the newspaper fellows ; 
 there s such a row about it, you know ! I m 
 afraid some fellows have got to go overboard," 
 he added, much consoled by the thought that 
 the fellows in question would be out of his way. 
 " You see, when a man is found out, it s bad for 
 him." 
 
2l8 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 "Well," sighed Vane, after a long silence, "/ 
 may have to quit Washington, then." 
 
 The senator opened his eyes. So Honest 
 John Vane was " in it," was he ? It was curious, 
 by Jove ! and he wondered he had n t thought of 
 it before, and then wondered how it was that all 
 those honest fellows ended so badly. But these 
 ideas were almost immediately chased out of the 
 confined boundaries of his mind by the reflection 
 that, if Vane left Washington, his wife would go 
 too. 
 
 " By Jove, that s bad," he broke out. By Jove, 
 that won t do. We can t spare you and Mrs. 
 Vane. My wife won t know what to do," he 
 explained, " if she loses Mrs. Vane." 
 
 The heart of Mrs. Vane s husband grew a 
 little lighter under these acknowledgments of 
 her importance to the Ironmans. 
 
 " Look here ! something might be done, you 
 know," continued the senator, thinking harder 
 than he had been accustomed to think since he 
 left school. " I ll run around, myself, among the 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 2IQ 
 
 House fellows, by Jove ! I ll ask em if some 
 thing can t be done." 
 
 In another instant he had an inspiration. 
 " Look here ! Put you on the investigating com 
 mittee ! You needn t investigate your -own case, 
 you know. That s it ; I ll try to get you put on 
 the investigating committee. It ll help you with 
 the people, clear up your record ; don t you 
 see? And then, if the doors can be kept shut, 
 why, you do that, you know. Just the very 
 idea ! " he concluded, quite happy over his unex 
 pected attack of shrewdness. 
 
 "I m afraid" confessed John Vane, still re 
 taining a little grain of conscience, and rendered 
 timorous by it, "it s a Icctle too bold for me, 
 with this stock on my hands." 
 
 " I don t see why that should hinder," stared the 
 experienced senator. " Of course you bought the 
 stock, (it s the inside stock, is n t it ?) without 
 knowing that it was hitched on to the Great Sub- 
 fluvial." 
 
 " But I have n t paid for it," sighed Vane. 
 
22O HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 "That s the awkward part of the business. And 
 that is partly what I dropped in to see you about," 
 he concluded, his face turning crimson with 
 shame. 
 
 " How much ?" asked Ironman instantly. He 
 understood that a loan was wanted, and he was 
 willing to make a moderate one ; in fact, glad to 
 do it. 
 
 "A thousand par," explained our fallen great 
 man. 
 
 " O, that s nothing !" laughed the millionnaire, 
 highly amused that Vane should have sold his 
 honesty for so little. " Let me lend you enough 
 to cover it. How much will you have ? Say fif 
 teen hundred, now. Here," he continued to laugh, 
 as he went to his safe for the money to hide a 
 bribe, " this trap is always open to a friend. I Ve 
 had too many good dinners and pleasant evenings 
 at your house not to call you by that name." 
 
 "I hope you 11 call often," mumbled John Vane 
 in a stifled voice, as he pocketed the greenbacks. 
 We shall always be delighted to see you." 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 221 
 
 He felt driven to utter these common 
 places, but he could not return thanks for the 
 loan. He had a bitter feeling or suspicion that 
 he was not under obligations to Ironman, and he 
 was so far from being grateful to him that he pos 
 itively hated him. It was a satisfaction to him, 
 after he had got into the street, to look back at 
 the house menacingly, and mutter, " You won t 
 see your funds again in one while, old fellow, if 
 you ever do." 
 
 This speech of his, by the way, is one of the 
 circumstances of his life from which we can most 
 accurately take his measure in regard to delicacy 
 of feeling and sensitiveness to dishonor. 
 
 His next business was to hurry to Dorman s 
 office, and announce that he had come to settle 
 for " that stock." 
 
 " What s the damage ?" he asked, not at all 
 alluding to the damage which his soul had 
 received. 
 
 " How much do you propose to pay ?" replied 
 the lobbyist, his smoky eyes giving forth sparks 
 of commingled satire and greed. 
 
222 HONEST JOHN VAXE. 
 
 " Why, par, of course," said John Vane, a little 
 alarmed. " That s the figure we talked of when 
 I took it." 
 
 Dorman skipped about the room and rubbed 
 himself violently, much like a man who discovers 
 that he has a hornet inside his clothes. 
 
 " It s been worth three hundred all the while," 
 he exclaimed. " I could have sold it for three 
 hundred the day you got it." 
 
 Now Vane could not pay three hundred, nor 
 two hundred, without great inconvenience. More 
 over, he was a bargainer born ; a bargainer, too, by 
 life-long habit, and valued himself on it. He was 
 as proud of his instinctive, functional, and inevit 
 able dexterity in a dicker as a crab is said to be 
 of walking sideways. So, although he was afraid 
 of Dorman, he resolved to show what he called 
 the spirit of a man, and to resist this low attempt 
 at extortion. 
 
 " Look here, Darius, that won t go down," he 
 remonstrated. " The stock may have been worth 
 three hundred once, but it ain t worth it now. 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 223 
 
 People don t want it any more than they want 
 shares in a broken bank with stockholders liable. 
 I 11 bet a cookey " (John Vane was not a sporting 
 man, and did not mean to bet anything), " I 11 bet a 
 cookey that you can t sell my share, nor anybody s 
 share, for a hundred. But I 11 give that for it, 
 because I agreed to and like to stand by my 
 word," he concluded nobly. 
 
 " O, very well, anything you like !" grumbled 
 the corruptionist, who saw that he must relinquish 
 his plan for getting back a part of the price which 
 he had paid for a soul. 
 
 "And I want a receipt dated back to day of 
 transfer," continued Vane. 
 
 " Of course you do," grinned Dorman. " You 
 want it very much indeed. Well, if we give you 
 one, what can you do for us ?" 
 
 " O, well, I don t know," drawled John, who by 
 this time had caught that easy jog-trot of manner 
 which was his bargaining gait. "You 11 need a 
 good deal clone for .you before the thing is over," 
 he added, picking up the morning Chronicle and 
 
224 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 pretending to read it. " If I was in the right 
 place," he continued, after a little, " of course I 
 could help you more or less." After a further 
 perusal of the Chronicle, he resumed, " By the 
 way, I met Ironman just now, and he gave me an 
 idea which might work well for you, providing it 
 would work at all." 
 
 " Nice fellow, Ironman," smirked Dorman. He 
 guessed immediately that Vane had been drawing 
 on the rich senator for money to pay for the stock ; 
 and he wanted to stop him from making use of 
 that resource, for he wanted him poor and in his 
 own power. "Eccentric person in some respects," 
 he went on ; " but genial, generous fellow." 
 
 Either because there was offence in these 
 remarks, or because this black little creature s 
 breath had some pungent quality, Vane suddenly 
 turned away his head and had a slight spasm of 
 coughing, like a man who had caught a whiff from 
 a lucifer match. 
 
 "Yes," he assented presently, looking rather 
 glum. " Well, what was I saying ? O, I know 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 225 
 
 (and by the way, this is between us), he suggested 
 putting me on the committee of investigation !" 
 
 Dorman laughed so violently that Vane could 
 not help joining him. The peach-blow face of 
 the Congressman turned crimson, and the sombre 
 visage of the lobbyist turned almost black, so 
 apoplectic was their merriment. There was also 
 a sound of other hilarity, not so distinct and there 
 fore all the more singular, about the office. There 
 were faint but audible chuckles in the walls, along 
 the lofty ceiling, and under the floor. 
 
 " What s that ?" asked Vane, looking about him 
 with a merely earthly and rather stolid suspicion 
 of eaves-droppers. 
 
 " O, nothing that need interrupt us !" smiled 
 Dorman. " This used to be a dwelling-house, and 
 had the name of being haunted. Curious noises 
 about it, you observe ; perhaps from subterranean 
 passages to the devil knows where ; perhaps noth 
 ing but echoes. Well, John, I like your plan. 
 Here is your receipt for payment, dated back to 
 the day of transfer. Give me one thousand ; no 
 
226 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 interest from you. We are friends, John, forever," 
 he concluded, with a peculiar accent on the last 
 word. 
 
 "I hope so," answered Vane mechanically, and 
 not as much alarmed as he ought to have been. 
 " O, by the way, where is Sharp ? I want to see 
 him about this." 
 
 " Yes, you d better see him," said Dorman, who 
 was counting his bills, all miser again. " You 11 
 find him at home." 
 
M 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 R. JABEZ SHARP, the member from the 
 old Whetstone State, was, it must be under 
 stood, the real head of the Great Subfluvial cor 
 poration, and also of that interior manifestation 
 of it which we have called the Hen Persuader. 
 
 As Vane hurried toward this honorable s house, 
 he met that eminent and venerated, but just now 
 grievously slandered statesman, Mr. Greatheart. 
 The two could not pass each other without a 
 moment s discourse. By the way, there was a 
 vast deal of mysterious, muttered conversation 
 going on just now among Congressmen. They 
 had a subject in common, a subject of terrifying 
 interest to only too many of them, the subject of 
 this approaching, unavoidable investigation. You 
 could scarcely turn a corner without discovering 
 a couple of broad-backed, thick-necked, and big- 
 headed gentlemen leaning solemnly toward each 
 
 (227) 
 
228 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 other and engaged in such cautious, inaudible com 
 munion that it seemed as if they were speaking 
 only through their staring eyes, or by means of 
 some twitching of their noses. The number of 
 these duos, the noiseless gravity with which they 
 were conducted, the usually swollen configura 
 tion of the performers in them, and the stupefied 
 astonishment which was depicted in their faces, 
 all reminded one of those numerous solemn meet 
 ings of toads which may be seen after a shower. 
 
 Mr. Greatheart was not physically such a man 
 as you might have expected from his heroic name. 
 There was not a line about him, either in the way 
 of muscle or expression, which could suggest de 
 scent from that stalwart knight who guided 
 Christiana through the Dark Valley. He was 
 short and squab in build, with a spacious, clean- 
 shaved, shining face, huge red wattles of cheeks 
 hanging down over his jaws, and a meek, non- 
 combatant, semi-clerical mien. A bacchanalian 
 cardinal, who should lately have turned Quaker, 
 but lacked time to get the Burgundy out of his 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 complexion, might wear a similar physiognomy. 
 There was conscience in this visage, but there 
 was. also spiritual pride and animal propensity, 
 and perhaps other evidences of a nature not yet 
 made perfect. Good people who believed in him 
 knew him as a man whose public career was 
 famed for spotless, and whose private life had 
 been smirched here and there by inuendo. 
 
 Just now the Honorable Greatheart was evi 
 dently in low spirits, not to say in a bewildering 
 funk. Recalling our batrachian simile, we might 
 describe him as a toad who looked as if he had 
 eaten too many ants and got the dyspepsia. In 
 real truth he was ready to call on mushrooms to 
 *hide him, and on molehills to cover him. His 
 condition was a sorry one, much sorrier than John 
 Vane s. He had pocketed Hen Persuader stock, 
 and then had publicly and positively denied the 
 fact, either to save his own reputation from the 
 charge of bribery, or to lighten the party ship 
 over the breakers of the election. Now there 
 was to be an investigation, and the ownership of 
 
23O HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 this malodorous property would be traced to him, 
 and he would be convicted of lying. Is* it any 
 wonder that under such circumstances a reputed 
 saint should have somewhat the air of a reptile ? 
 
 " Glad to see you, Vane," he murmured, shak 
 ing our member s hand fervently, for he was a 
 cordial man when in adversity. " What do you 
 judge to be the prospects about an investigation?" 
 
 " Sure to come on, I hear," answered John, who 
 was much cheered by the results of his interviews 
 with Ironman and Dorman, and remembered that 
 he might yet sit in judgment on Greatheart. 
 
 " So I understand," sighed that stumbled worthy, 
 his wattles drooping still lower and taking a yel 
 lowish tint. " Ah well ! we may suffer severely 
 for this error. I conceive now, Mr. Vane, that it 
 was an error. Yes, it was a really terrible mis 
 take," he went on conceding, for he was in that 
 mood of confession which gripes unaccustomed 
 misdoers under the threatenings of punishment. 
 " A blunder is sometimes worse than a crime, 
 that is, worse in its consequences. And circurn- 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 23! 
 
 stances are such in Washington that the best-in- 
 tentioned of us are occasionally beguiled into 
 very sad blunders." 
 
 "In spite of everything that we can do," eagerly 
 affirmed Vane, classing himself of course among 
 the "best-intentioned." 
 
 " Very few men are really fit for Congress," 
 pursued Mr. Greatheart, in a certain preaching 
 tone which was natural to him, he having once 
 been a clergyman. " I sometimes feel that I my 
 self ought never to have come here. I had 
 neither the pecuniary means nor the stoical char 
 acter to grapple witn the protean life -of Wash 
 ington. It is too full of exigencies and tempta 
 tions for any human nature which is not quite 
 extraordinary. The legislative system alone is 
 enough to kill us. As long as these subsidy bills 
 and relief bills are allowed, no man ought to run 
 for Congress who is not a Croesus or a Cato. A 
 poor fellow will get into debt, and then the lobby 
 offers to help him out, and it is very hard to re- 
 
232 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 fuse. The whole arrangement is terribly severe 
 on men of small means." 
 
 " Just so," feelingly assented Vane, who heard 
 his own decline and fall narrated, and was moved 
 to compassion by the tale. " It s too bad on us. 
 Either the whole system of special legislation 
 ought to be done away with, or else we ought to 
 be allowed a regular percentage on the appropria 
 tions we vote, and the thing made business-like." 
 
 "That that is a bold idea," smiled Greatheart, 
 apparently not disapproving it. " Are you think 
 ing of proposing it?" 
 
 " O, no ! " exclaimed John, drawing back bodily 
 in the earnestness of his negation. "I suppose 
 it would .cost a fellow his re-election." 
 
 "I suppose it would, unless he represented a 
 very staunch district," said Greatheart. " I don t 
 know but one man who would dare advocate such 
 a plan. I think if you have no objection that 
 I ll mention it to General Bourn." 
 
 And so these two penitents, who were ready to 
 resume thievery as soon as they could get free 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 233 
 
 from their crosses, bade each other a sad good 
 morning and parted. 
 
 Next John found Mr. Sharp, and was received 
 by him with razor-strop smoothness, as that well- 
 oiled gentleman received everybody who could 
 vote on his schemes. 
 
 " Do take a seat, Mr. Vane, take a seat with 
 out ceremony," he begged, meanwhile softly 
 handling his visitor by the arms, much as though 
 they were glass ones. " Let me offer you this 
 easy-chair. You honor me by accepting it. I 
 thank you kindly." 
 
 Vane had an instinctive desire to look at the 
 sleeves of his overcoat. It always seemed to him, 
 after Mr. Sharp had fingered him, as if he must 
 be greasy. 
 
 " I am exceedingly glad to see you here," con 
 tinued the Whetstone representative, gazing as 
 genially as he could at our member through his 
 cold, vitreous eyes. " I had begun to fear that I 
 was under such a cloud of misrepresentation and 
 obloquy that my old friends would not come to 
 
234 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 call on me. This great enterprise, which I have 
 had the honor to foster a little, according to my 
 poor measure of financial ability, has been terri 
 bly abused and maligned. A national enterprise, 
 too ! a thing not only beneficial, but absolutely 
 necessary to the country ! The noblest scheme 
 ever indorsed by the wisdom of Congress ! What 
 do people mean? What does the press mean? 
 What is this investigation for? I am completely 
 bewildered." 
 
 "It s giving the stock to Congressmen that has 
 made the row," answered Vane, who judged that 
 they might as well come to the point at once. 
 
 " O, that is it ? " grinned Mr. Sharp, with an air 
 of getting light in the midst of really discourag 
 ing darkness. " I am glad you have explained it 
 to me. I should have expected it from a man of 
 your clearness of vision. I thank you kindly. 
 Well as to that matter why, that is simple. I 
 put the stock where it would do the most good to 
 a good thing." 
 
 "Just so," nodded Vane, meanwhile thinking 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 235 
 
 what nonsense it was for Sharp to be talking 
 gammon to him. "But you see Well, never 
 mind about that now ; we may as well get to busi 
 ness. There is sure to be an investigation." 
 
 "Exactly," answered the Whetstone member, 
 sloughing off his coating of " soft sawder,"- and 
 coming out as hard and bright as a new silver 
 dollar. 
 
 "And I have a smart chance of being put on 
 the House committee," continued John. 
 
 Mr. Sharp opened the dark-lantern of his Puri 
 tanic visage, and let out a smile which contained 
 all the guile of all the peddlers that ever sold 
 wooden nutmegs. 
 
 "Mr. Vane," said he, "are your arrangements 
 about that stock of yours completed to your en 
 tire satisfaction ? " 
 
 " I have paid Dorman for it and got a receipt 
 that will do me." 
 
 " Mr. Vane, do let me hand that money back," 
 pursued Sharp, fumbling in his desk and produc 
 ing a package of bills. " It was a trifling mark 
 
236 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 of private amity and sincere esteem. I never 
 meant it should be paid for. Dorman is an able 
 business man, but hasn t an idea beyond trading. 
 I insist, Mr. Vane, on your taking back your 
 money." 
 
 "Well from that point of view since you 
 will have it so," smiled Dishonest John, pocket 
 ing the bills. 
 
 " Want any more of the stock ? " inquired 
 Sharp, with a cunning twinkle in his half-shut 
 eyes, as if he saw a way to recover his thousand 
 dollars. 
 
 " No ! " answered Vane, not less promptly and 
 positively than if he had been offered a ladleful 
 of pitch from the infernal caldron. 
 
 " My dear sir, we are at your service," bowed 
 the financier. "Anything that we can do for 
 you, call on us. Of course you will have all our 
 influence towards putting you on that committee. 
 Must you go ? So obliged for this call ! Let me 
 open the door for you. Thank you kindly." 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 ? HANKS to the labors of solemn Mr. Sharp 
 and of worldly Mr. Ironman, our member 
 soon had a fair prospect of getting on the investi 
 gating committee, supposing always that there 
 should be such a nuisance. 
 
 But the nearer he came to this post of respon 
 sibility and honor, the more it looked to him as 
 though it might turn out a whipping-post, at 
 which he would stand with exposed shoulders 
 and bleeding cuticle. If he as a judge should be 
 able to close the court-room doors, and keep out 
 not only spectators but also the witnesses in the 
 case, all might go famously well, at least from 
 the Satanic point of view. But if, while pretend 
 ing to examine into the little games of others, 
 the same kind of cards should be found up his 
 own sleeves, he would be ruined beyond a hope 
 
 (237) 
 
238 HONEST JOHN VANE/. 
 
 of re-election. The sad state of a boy whose 
 pockets are full of fire-crackers in a state of 
 crackling and scorching ignition, would be but a 
 feeble image of such a disaster. In these days 
 he vacillated as rapidly and disagreeably as if he 
 were astride some monstrous shuttlecock, or were 
 being seesawed by all the giants of fairy-tale 
 land. His pulpy pink face wore an air of abid 
 ing perplexity which rivalled that of his Dun- 
 drearyish friend, Ironman. At times it seemed 
 as if its large watery features would decompose 
 entirely with irresolution, and come to resemble 
 an image of strawberry ice which has been ex 
 posed to too high a temperature. 
 
 Meantime, the spectre of investigation ad 
 vanced, and its pointing finger renewed his 
 sense of guilt. The approach of punishment 
 always enlightens a sinner marvellously as to 
 the heinous nature of his sin. Even the Devil, 
 when visited by the hand of sickness, perceived 
 that he had led an evil life, and hungered to 
 withdraw from a world of temptation and thirst- 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 239 
 
 ed to take holy orders. Just so John Vane now 
 discovered plainly once more that he had been 
 pocketing bribes and swindling the public treas 
 ury, and that these were very wrong actions. If 
 he had never truly had a conscience before, but 
 had regulated his conduct by the consciences 
 of others, he at last possessed one of his 
 own. Indeed, it appeared to him a very large 
 one because it was sore, precisely as a man s 
 nose seems large to him while yet tender from 
 a fisticuff. From one point of view, he was 
 an honester John Vane than ha had ever been, 
 inasmuch as terror and remorse made him intelli 
 gently honest with himself. 
 
 Before he could decide to accept a position on 
 the committee, he must be sure that Sharp & 
 Co. would conceal his ownership of their stock, 
 and he called on Dorman to obtain a positive 
 promise to that effect. It is wonderful, by the 
 way, how rogues in distress will trust each other s 
 word, even when each knows by experience that 
 
 the other is a confirmed liar. 
 II 
 
24O HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 "Look here, Darius, the more I stir up this 
 business, the worse it looks to me," he groaned 
 from the summit of a state of mind which almost 
 raised him to the moral altitude of a penitent 
 thief. 
 
 Dorman responded by groaning over his end 
 of the burden, which naturally seemed to him 
 much heavier than Vane s ; each of these inva 
 lids, like the majority of commonplace sick peo 
 ple, wanted to talk of his own malady and symp 
 toms. Still, there was a sort of fellow-feeling 
 between them, such as even small-pox patients 
 have for each other. Dorman no longer purposed 
 financial vengeance upon Vane for getting his 
 stock at par and paying no commission. Nor 
 was Vane sensibly embittered against Dorman, 
 although the latter had made a large fortune 
 out of the Subfluvial, while he himself had only 
 pocketed a beggarly thousand or two. 
 
 "It s the cursed unfairness of the thing that 
 yerks me," the lobbyist complained. " Now isn t 
 it too bad that the public should want to haul 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 241 
 
 our job over the hottest kind of coals, when ever 
 so many other jobs just like it ain t spoken of ?" 
 
 We must remark here, what the reader has 
 doubtless already noticed, that there was some 
 thing disappointing in this creature s conversa- v 
 tion. While his person and demeanor reminded 
 one of the supernatural castaways of the lake 
 of fire, his discourse was insignificantly human 
 and even smacked of a very low down sort of 
 humanity. 
 
 "And here I am in it, for almost nothing," 
 sighed Vane, returning instinctively to his own 
 case. " What sort of a story are you going to 
 tell, Darius, if they put you on the stand?" he 
 presently inquired. 
 
 " O, I would say anything that would do the 
 most good," grimaced the lobbyist. " But Sharp 
 means to let out a few facts ; that is, if they 
 crowd him. You see, Sharp unluckily has a 
 character to nurse. I dare say, too, he thinks 
 he can stop questions by showing that he means 
 to answer them," added Dorman, who always 
 imputed the lowest motives. 
 
242 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 Thoroughly scared by this information, Vane 
 resolved to keep off the committee. He went 
 home in the dumps, wished he had never gone 
 into politics, and meditated resigning his seat. 
 Perhaps he would have taken this wholesome 
 step, but he was moved first to consult Olympia 
 about it, and she flatly refused to resign. 
 
 " I won t agree to it, no, never ! " she ex 
 claimed, rustling in all her silks with indignation. 
 "Why, I have just fairly got into the best society, 
 and there are all the receptions to come, and the 
 inauguration ball ! and the winter is going to be 
 so gay ! " 
 
 " O well," stared John, who had not thought 
 to look at this side of the medal ; " but we must 
 stick to boarding, if we do stay," he capitulated 
 on conditions. " I" tell you the winter ain t going 
 to be gay in Congress, and there won t be much 
 money lying around loose, and we must skimp." 
 
 Before many days he found cause to pluck up 
 his courage a little. He learned that Slowburgh 
 considered him innocent of evil, meaning, of, 
 
HONEST JOHN V.\ 243 
 
 course, that half of Slowburgh which had voted 
 for him. The committee of a certain association 
 sent him an invitation to lecture before it, and 
 promised that " the appearance of his honest face 
 on their platform would be the signal of frantic 
 applause." Furthermore, certain newspapers re 
 marked that, although John Vane was suspected 
 of owning Hen Persuader stock, he had at least 
 not denied such ownership, and commented upon 
 the fact as an unusual exhibition of upright 
 ness and manliness in a Congressman. These 
 things revived his confidence so much that his 
 mind was able to work. He saw his game clear 
 before him ; he must get in a " long suit " of 
 frankness. There was a little trick, which, if 
 skilfully and luckily played, would give him such 
 a repute for veracity and for just intentions that 
 all the caverns of the Great Subfluvial could not 
 swallow it. What, this happy thought was we 
 shall learn presently. 
 
 Meantime the excitement of the men outside 
 politics increased. That vast, industrious, decent 
 
244 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 American public, which wire-pullers usually re 
 gard as having no more intelligence or moral 
 principle than one of the forces of nature, show 
 ed unmistakably that it possessed much political 
 virtue and some political sense. The discovery 
 that the so-called slanders against its favorites 
 were, in all probability, verities, only made it 
 more determined that those slanders should be 
 investigated. The steady tempest of its right 
 eous indignation scattered good seed through 
 Congress, and produced on that upland of states 
 manship a promising nubbin or two of con 
 science. An investigation was ordered, at first 
 under hermetically sealed conditions, but the 
 popular storm soon blew the doors open. 
 
 The rest we mainly know ; the whole alien 
 world of monarchies, empires, and despotisms 
 knows it ; the capacity of republicanism for hon 
 est government is everywhere being judged by it. 
 In every civilized land on this planet, thoughtful 
 souls are seeking to divine, by the light of these 
 and other similar dolorous revelations, whether it 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 245 
 
 is possible for a democracy to save itself from 
 the corrupting tyranny of capital. Within our 
 own borders sadder spirits are asking which is the 
 most alluring spectacle, a free America falling 
 into squandering and bribery, or a monarchial 
 Prussia ruled by economy and honesty. 
 
 We know how it fared with Christian and Faith 
 ful and Hopeful and Greatheart and other vener 
 ated statesmen who had turned more or less into 
 the ways of Achan and Ananias. Anxious to 
 clear themselves of an ugly charge, and trusting 
 that the chief manipulator of the Hen Persuader 
 would be willing to bear their sins in return for 
 their services, they had flatly denied having taken 
 any golden eggs out of his abstracting machine. 
 But this disclaimer left Mr. Simon Sharp under 
 the imputation of putting said eggs into his own 
 pocket, and so plundering his partners in the enter 
 prise of making the national hen lay on indefin 
 itely. Being a man of exact arithmetical instincts, 
 and of inveterate, ingrained business habits, he 
 revolted from such an unfair allotment of the div- 
 
246 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 idends of dishonor, and insisted that every one 
 should take his own share and no more. To the 
 astonishment of everybody, he told a story as 
 straight and searching as a ploughman s furrow ; 
 and we will venture to say that no American was 
 proud of the unexpected skeletons which it turned 
 up. There was a time when every fair political 
 reputation reminded us of the Arabian oil-jars, 
 each one of which held a robber ; when it seemed 
 as if we should have to concede that our legislative 
 temple was but a den of thieves, sadly given to 
 lying. It was a new and perversely reversed 
 .) and altogether bedevilled rendering of the Pil 
 grim s Progress into American politics; it was 
 much as if Bunyan had at the last pitched his 
 Christian and Hopeful into the little lurid hole 
 which led from the gate of Zion to the pit. Noth 
 ing could well be more subverting and confounding 
 and debilitating to the moral sense, unless it might 
 be to see silver Demas and filthy Muckrake wel 
 comed by the shining ones into the Holy City. 
 
 And something similar to this last marvel was 
 not wanting. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 TT TEATHERCOCK John carried out his plan 
 V V for getting up a new and revised edition of 
 his character as Honest John Vane. 
 
 He let Sharp and Ironman go on working for 
 him, declaring that he was the most upright crea 
 ture on this footstool, and recommending him as 
 fit to investigate the very claims of saints to their 
 crowns. But when his name was read as a mem 
 ber of the committee, he rose and requested to be 
 excused from serving. 
 
 " My reason is simply this," he said, calmly 
 turning his honest face and dignified abdomen 
 towards every quarter of the house ; " I own stock 
 to the amount of one thousand dollars in the 
 corporation in question. I will offer no explana 
 tions here and now as to my motives in taking it, 
 because those motives will doubtless be demanded 
 of me by the committee of investigation. I shall 
 
 (247) 
 
248 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 be happy to appear before it, but I cannot con 
 scientiously be a member of it. I trust that the 
 House, and you, Mr. Speaker, will excuse me." 
 
 The Honorable Sharp looked icicles from his 
 arm-chair, and Dorman looked coals of fire from 
 his rear corner. But as our member sat down 
 there was a general murmur of perfunctory ap 
 plause, and by next morning he was newspapered 
 all over as " Honest John Vane." 
 
 Still, he was not out of danger. As the rain of 
 fire and brimstone into the Congressional Sodom 
 continued, and especially when the blazing flames 
 of investigation began to light on his own com 
 bustible garments, he was in a state of mind to 
 flee into the mountains and dwell in a cave. 
 When he appeared before the committee, he did 
 not look much like one of those just men whose 
 mere presence can save a wicked city. Moreover, 
 Sharp and Dorman testified against him to the 
 full extent of their naughty knowledge. Never 
 theless, Vane came out of his furnace without 
 much of a singeing. He exhibited Dorman s 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 249 
 
 receipt of payment for the stock, and triumphantly 
 remarked that " the document spoke for itself." 
 As for the thousand dollars which Sharp had re 
 funded to him, he said that he had always regarded 
 it as a loan, and stood ready to repay it. As for 
 the singular profitableness of the investment, 
 well, he had expected it would bring him in some 
 thing handsome ; it was his habit as a business 
 man to invest for a profit. 
 
 He tried to raise a smile here, turning his gen 
 ial visage from one to another of the committee, 
 with an almost pathetic effort at humor. But the 
 sad synagogue of investigators did not smile back ; 
 it had been engaged that morning in digging 
 graves for some of the fairest reputations in poli 
 tics ; for once a body of Congressional Yoricks 
 could not appreciate a poor joke. 
 
 "What we mainly wish to know," hummed and 
 hawed the worried chairman, "is whether you 
 were aware, at the time of purchase, that the Hen 
 Persuader was a branch of the Great Subfluvial 
 corporation." 
 
25O HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 Weathercock John was in dire trouble ; if he 
 said " Yes," his character and career were ruined ; 
 if he said " No/ he was a perjurer. It cost him 
 many seconds of penal meditation to hit upon that 
 happy dodge known as the non mi ricordo. 
 
 " Gentlemen, I will frankly confess that I did 
 not inquire so closely as I perhaps should have 
 done into that point," he answered, remembering 
 distinctly that he had not inquired into it at all, 
 but had been told all about it by Dorman. " I 
 did, however, know that the two companies were 
 acting under different and independent charters. 
 It seemed fair to infer that investing in one was 
 not the same thing as investing in the other." 
 
 It was done. Congressman Vane had found 
 his own way out of his entanglements. The com 
 mittee-men were ready to rise and salute his 
 escape with benevolent cheers. How in the name 
 of political -human nature could they want to find 
 guilty their brother lawgiver, brother worker in 
 the party traces, and, perhaps, brother sinner in 
 special legislation ? They bowed him away from 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 25 I 
 
 
 
 their operating table with a look which said 
 plainly, We rejoice that we shall not be obliged 
 to amputate your able and honored head, Mr. 
 Vane. 
 
 Only a few people remarked on the shallowness 
 of this show of innocence. Here was stock sold 
 at par which was worth three hundred, which on 
 the day after purchase paid a dividend of sixty 
 per cent., and, only a few weeks later, forty more. 
 How could a legislator and business man doubt 
 that it was a swindle ? How could he fail to 
 divine that Mr. Sharp s Hen Persuader was but 
 an adjunct of Mr. Sharp s Great Subfluvial? 
 
 But the public, the great, soft-hearted Ameri 
 can public, that public which has compassion on 
 every species of scoundrel, which tries murder 
 ers under jury restrictions warranted to save four- 
 fifths of them, which cannot see one condemned 
 t > death without pleading with tears for his nox 
 ious life, that forgiving, milk-and-water public 
 was as mild in its judgment as the committee. 
 It magnified our dishonorable member for not 
 
252 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 lying, and exalted his name for not committing 
 perjury. What a pity, said this lamblike public 
 which was so bent on getting itself fleeced to the 
 skin, what a pity that our other shepherds could 
 not have used the shears with a steadier hand and 
 avoided snipping off their own fingers ! In con 
 trast to these unlucky and somewhat ridiculous 
 bunglers, what a straightforward, workmanlike, 
 admirable creature was " Honest John Vane." 
 
 And so he escaped all exposure that could in 
 jure him in the eyes of a community of humani 
 tarians, and all punishment that could hurt a 
 man whose conscience lay solely in the opinions 
 of others. Even the Subfluvial people did not 
 follow him up vindictively ; they admired him so 
 much for his ability in sneaking that they could 
 not hate him ; moreover, they considered that 
 he might still be useful. Not long after Vane s 
 escape from the committee, he held with Dorman 
 one of those friendly colloquies which rogues are 
 capable of when it no longer pays to quarrel. 
 
 "What a horrid scrape Christian and Great- 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 253 
 
 heart have got themselves into ! " observed John, 
 with cheerful self-complacency. "Why couldn t 
 those fellows have told a straight story ? " 
 
 " Half-honesty is cursed poor policy," smirked 
 the lobbyist. "After all, those chaps are the 
 cleanest-handed of the whole gang. They want 
 ed to make an actual investment, something 
 that would show like a fair business transaction, 
 just to ease their consciences. The real sharp 
 ers took greenbacks and kept their names off 
 paper. Do you suppose that the committee is 
 raking up the Subfluvial to the bottom ? Why, 
 our very first move, the mere getting our charter 
 through, cost us half a million. We have paid 
 out hundreds of thousands to men against whom 
 we haven t a particle of proof beyond our verbal 
 statements." 
 
 " Exactly," nodded Vane, who had long since 
 heard as much. " Well, do you mean to swear in 
 these things ?" 
 
 "Of course we don t," Dorman chuckled. 
 " We know enough not to kill the goose that lays 
 our golden e 
 
254 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 " So much the worse for the Greatheart lot," 
 inferred Weathercock John. " They will have to 
 go out, I suppose." 
 
 "Don t you believe it," scoffed the lobbyist. 
 " I can tell you exactly how this thing is sure to 
 come out. There will be a one-legged report, 
 somebody giving bribes, but none of the takers 
 guilty of being bribed, like a gambling case in 
 which only one of the players is a gambler. 
 Then, if the public excitement keeps up, a couple 
 or so will be picked out as scapegoats, to bear 
 off the sins of the congregation. This report 
 will be so manifestly unfair that it can t help 
 rousing opposition. As soon as it appears, a 
 debate will be arranged. All the old war-horses 
 will gallop up and down among charges, counter 
 charges, precedents, and points of law, raising 
 such a dust that the public won t be able to see 
 what is going on. When the dust clears away, it 
 will be found that nobody is expelled. The two 
 scapegoats will be almost expelled, but not quite. 
 It will be like the pig going through the crooked 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 255 
 
 hollow log and always coming out on his own side 
 of the fence. Then the wire-pullers at home will 
 take a hand in the job. All the convicted chaps 
 will have receptions got up for them in their 
 districts, and be whitewashed all over with reso 
 lutions expressing unshaken confidence. You 
 won t have any reception, John. You are not 
 far gone enough to need such vigorous treatment. 
 Your case is lobby varioloid, instead of lobby 
 small-pox." 
 
 Vane felt somewhat offended at this plain 
 speaking, for it is a curious fact that he had not 
 
 lost his self-esteem ; but, looking at matters in 
 
 % 
 
 his habitual profit-and-loss way, he decided that 
 wrath would brjng him in nothing. 
 
 " Take care of yourself, Dorman," he said, with 
 
 a tranquil good nature which did him dishonor. 
 
 " If I owned a million of your style of property, 
 
 I shouldn t feel rich. There ll be suits against 
 
 your inside corporation." 
 
 " I m out of it," replied the lobbyist, flashes of 
 cunning dancing about his sooty eyes, as sparks 
 
256 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 run over the back of a foul fireplace. " I have 
 failed." 
 
 For the life of him, a.nd notwithstanding the 
 long-faced decorum which sham honesty requires, 
 John Vane could not help laughing. The fact 
 that a financier should declare himself bankrupt 
 the moment he saw himself in danger of being 
 called on to refund his swindlings, did not strike 
 our self-taught legislator as a very disgusting 
 exhibition of rascality, but as a very amusing bit 
 of cleverness. 
 
 " But you re going to hang around here, I 
 hope," he added, unwilling to lose a trickster who 
 had been helpful, and might be so again. 
 
 " No, I am going back," said Dorman, in a tone 
 which would have been significant *bf forebodings 
 and horrors to any soul less carnal than a spare- 
 rib. His face, too, was strange ; it had an un 
 usually seared, cindered, and smoke-stained look ; 
 one would have said that the cuticle was drying 
 up with inward heat. If that scorched envelope 
 had cracked open, and the creature within had 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 257 
 
 bounced forth in some different hide, or in a 
 ra\v-head-and-bloody-bones state of nudity, there 
 would have been no great cause of wonderment. 
 But Congressman Vane saw nothing remarkable 
 he simply inquired, with calm, oleaginous inter 
 est, " Going back ivhcir. " 
 
 " Where I came from," grimaced Dorman, and 
 disappeared abruptly, either by stepping briskly 
 around a corner, or by slipping under a flagstone. 
 
 "Not in the least disturbed by this singular 
 circumstance, and, indeed, altogether failing to 
 perceive anything noteworthy in it, Weathercock 
 John marched on majestically to the Capitol, and 
 commenced his day s work of statesmanship. 
 
 Well, there he is still, a lawgiver to this tax- 
 . burdened people, and ex-officio a director of its 
 finances. As soon as he has recovered from his 
 present slight scare, he will resume his labor 
 (the only legislative labor which he knows much 
 about) of enacting the national revenue into the 
 safes of huge corporations and into the hats of 
 individual mendicants, for the sake of a small 
 
258 HONEST JOHN VANE. 
 
 percentage thereof to himself. Can nothing be 
 done to stop him, or at least to shackle and limit 
 him, in his damaging industry ? Can we not 
 wrest from him and from his brother knaves or 
 dunces this fearfully abused privilege of voting 
 the public money for other objects than the 
 carrying on of the departments of the govern 
 ment ? Can we not withdraw altogether from 
 Congress the power of aiding corporations and 
 schemers out of an income which is contributed 
 by all for the equal benefit of all ? Can we not 
 provide, for instance, that, if a man has a claim 
 for injuries to property against the United States, 
 he shall prosecute that claim in the courts ? 
 
 Such men as John Vane will inevitably find 
 their way in numbers to the desks of the Capitol. 
 Better and wiser men than he will be corrupted 
 by a lobby which has thoroughly learned the 
 easy trick of paying a hundred thousand out of 
 every stolen million. Nothing in the future is 
 more certain than that, if this huge " special 
 
HONEST JOHN VANE. 259 
 
 legislation" machine for bribery is not broken 
 up, our Congress will surely and quickly become, 
 what some sad souls claim that it already is, a 
 den of thieves. 
 
14 D 
 
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