Lee should put him on a level with
Washington. She had only meant to ask why the thing could not be
done, and this little touch of Ratcliffe's vanity was inimitable.
"Mr. Ratcliffe means that Washington was too respectable for our
time,"
interposed Carrington.
This was deliberately meant to irritate Ratcliffe, and it did so all
the more because Mrs. Lee turned to Carrington, and said, with
some bitterness:
"Was he then the only honest public man we ever had?"
"Oh no!" replied Carrington cheerfully; "there have been one or
two others."
"If the rest of our Presidents had been like him," said Gore, "we
should have had fewer ugly blots on our short history."
Ratcliffe was exasperated at Carrington's habit of drawing
discussion to this point. He felt the remark as a personal insult, and
he knew it to be intended. "Public men," he broke out, "cannot be
dressing themselves to-day in Washington's old clothes. If
Washington were President now, he would have to learn our ways
or lose his next election. Only fools and theorists imagine that our
society can be handled with gloves or long poles. One must make
one's self a part of it. If virtue won't answer our purpose, we must
use vice, or our opponents will put us out of office, and this was as
true in Washington's day as it is now, and always will be."
"Come," said Lord Skye, who was beginning to fear an open
quarrel; "the conversation verges on treason, and I am accredited
to this government.
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