“I tell ye there's yeast a-stirring,” he told the state committee. “There's a fellow come up out of the Eleventh Ward in Marion that's some punkins in organizing. He pretends to be a law student in Arch Converse's law-office. He ain't a native. I don't know where he hails from. He ain't a registered voter as yet. But he's a man who needs to be trailed.”
“Squire Converse isn't in politics, Dan. You're getting notional in your old age,” said the committeeman from Breed's county.
“But good gad! there ain't any statute to keep him out. Something has happened to make him good and mad. Some of these fancy jumping-jacks can make awful leaps when the box is opened, gents! Better take warning from what I tell you!”
The committeemen exchanged smiles.
“We are going to steal a little of the kid-gloved chaps' thunder,” explained the chairman. “They have been howling about machine politics and interlocking interests and air-tight methods until the people are growling about the close corporation they say we've got. So we're going to show 'em a thing or two. Nothing like frankness and open house.”
“Gor-ram it, you ain't even square with me--after I have worked politics with you for twenty-five years!” He marched up to the table and rapped his hard little knuckles on it. “It's this way, gents,” he said, “and I'll be short and sweet. What's the matter with politics when a man like I've always been gets pi-oogled out of the councils?”
“We don't need workers like you any more,” stated the chairman.
“But there's politics to play, just the same.”
“But in a different way, Breed. There are the new ideas, and new men can operate more efficiently. They won't attract attention.”
“Old Maid Orne down in my town came into church late and crawled up the aisle on her hands and knees so as not to attract attention. And she broke up the meeting!”
“We've got to fall in with the new ways, Dan,” said the attorney-general. “These are touchy times. We must be careful of the party.”
“I 'ain't never disgraced it, have I?”
“Uncle Dan, we want you to take a good, comfortable position and settle down,” affirmed Governor Alonzo Harwood, an unctuous, rubicund gentleman who had been listening, smiling his everlasting smile.
“I prefer to hold myself in readiness for a call to the field,” squalled Breed. “I'm better'n three of these young snydingles. They don't know how to organize!”
“There isn't much chance for organizing,” said a Congressman, placatingly. “The primaries take care of themselves pretty well.”
“Yes,” sneered old Dan, “a fellow thinks well of himself, or else his neighbors tell him he can save the nation, and he puts a piece in the paper saying how good he is and sets pictures of himself up in store winders like a cussed play-actor, keeps a cash account, and thinks that's politics. I don't care if there ain't ever no more caucuses. This thing ain't going to last. I want to keep in the field. I'll see chances to heave trigs into the spokes of these hallelujah chariots they're rolling to political glory in!”
The mighty ones exchanged glances--deprecating glances--apprehensive glances.
“You don't think I'm dangerous, do you, after I've been in politics as long as I have?”
“No, but we feel that the old war-horses are entitled to run to pasture with their shoes off,” coaxed the chairman.
“It seems to me more like tying me up to a stanchion in a stall. I ain't ungrateful, gents. I know this younger element doesn't believe in setting hens in politics any more. It's the incubator nowadays--wholesale job of it. But, by dadder! my settings have always cracked the shells, twelve to the dozen! Then you don't want me, eh?”
“That job in the state land-office--we thought it would just about fit you,” suggested the chairman.
“I'd just as soon be sent to state prison--solitary confinement. The state hasn't got any land any more. It has all been peddled out to the grabbers. I've messed and mingled with men all my life. Nobody ever comes into the land-office. You ain't afraid of me to that extent, be you?”
“What do you want?” asked the governor.
“Settled, is it, you don't want me in politics?”
“There isn't anything for you to do,” declared his Excellency, and he showed a little impatience, though his smile did not fade.
“Well, then make me state liberian,” said old Dan, with an air of resignation.
There was deep and horrified silence.
“I'm developing literary instinks,” explained Breed. “I've got a son who owns a printing-office, and my granddaughter can take down anything in shorthand and write it off. I'm going to write a book. She'll take it down and he'll print it.”
“I can't appoint you state librarian,” said the governor, getting control of his emotions. “It's already tied up, that appointment. Keep it under your hat, but I have selected Reverend Doctor Fletcher, of Cornish, and have notified him.”
“Giving a plum like that to a parson who never controlled but one vote, and that's his own--and then voted the way the deacon told him to? I reckon it's about as you say--there are new times in politics. All right! I'll go and climb a sumach-bush. You needn't bother about any job for me, gents. I'll settle down to my literary work.”
“What is the book?” asked the chairman.
“I have your word for it that the old days in politics have all gone by,” said Breed. “All the old things dead and buried! Very well. That's going to make my book valuable and interesting. No harm in putting it out in these times. I shall entitle it 'Breed's Handbook of Political Deviltry.' I shall tell the story of how it was done when politics was really politics.”
“Going to tell all you know?” inquired the governor.
“Of course. Truth, and not poetry, will be my motto. And just for a test of how popular it will be, I'd like to ask you gents how many of you will subscribe for a volume?”
“I think this committee will take the whole edition,” said the chairman, dryly.
“Look here, Dan,” blurted the attorney-general, “you must be joking.”
“I don't know what ever gave you the impression that I'm a humorist,” returned Breed. “If there ain't going to be anything more like the old times, then what's the matter with having the story of how it was done? That book will sell like hot cakes. I'll go out and sell it--it will give me a chance to keep on mixing and messing with men.”
“Dan, if it wasn't you talking--knowing you well--I'd say this is a piece of blackmail,” declared the attorney-general. “Of course you can't put out a book of that kind in this state.”
Mr. Breed blinked angrily.
“I'll take all the cases of libel against you and won't charge my clients a cent.”
“Fill everybody else's little tin dipper, eh? Passing everybody else a bottle and a rubber nipple! Everybody getting his, and me left out! All right. If that's political gratitude in these new times, go on with you medinkculum! And last year I snapped the six up-country caucuses that gave you your plurality in joint convention!”
“We appreciate all your past services, Dan. If we didn't we wouldn't be trying so hard to place you,” said the governor. “We're taking care of all the old boys. You mustn't embarrass us. In these days it's for the good of the party to put in each office the man who is especially fitted for it. We mustn't invite criticism. A librarian needs peculiar qualifications.”
“Well, old Jaquish was liberian, wasn't he? And he wouldn't even go vote unless you went and dragged him to the polls by the scruff of his neck. What did he ever do for the party? And look at old Tomdoozle as state treasurer!”
“Jaquish was a bookman, and our state treasurer--but no matter. Now listen! I'm going to put you at the head of a new department in the State House where you won't be lonesome. More people will come there than to the library. You'll have the title of curator.”
“What's that?” asked Breed, suspiciously. “And what is the department, anyway?”
“The museum of natural history in the fish-and-game rooms. We're going to make it complete--mounted specimens of all our animals. You'll be curator--you see, you will get a title that sounds well!”
“I'm of a restless and inquiring disposition, and my special forty is politics,” stated Breed, sulking. “I don't believe I'm going to relish being ringmaster of a lot of stuffed animals, no matter what kind of a title I get. How much pay goes with the job?”
“Fifteen hundred,” said the governor.
“Well,” sighed Breed, “it will give me a chance to be around the State House during the session, and I'll take it. Then if I don't like it I can resign after the legislature adjourns.”
The Big Ones understood his frame of mind and overlooked his ingratitude.
“And so I'll bid you good day, gents,” he said, and straddled out with his hands under his coat-tails.
“So we've got _him_ side-tracked and out of mischief,” averred the governor. “That takes care of all of 'em, and I'm relieved. It isn't stylish any more to come to town with a lot of old hounds trotting under the tail of the political cart.”
But before the end of that week the governor was obliged to call Uncle Dan to a private conference in the Executive Chamber.