As for the President, from whom he had not
heard a whisper since the insolent letter to Grimes, which he had
taken care not to show, the Senator felt only a strong impulse to
teach him better sense and better manners. But as for political life,
the events of the last six months were calculated to make any man
doubt its value. He was quite out of sympathy with it. He hated the
sight of his tobacco-chewing, newspaper-reading satellites, with
their hats tipped at every angle except the right one, and their feet
everywhere except on the floor. Their conversation bored him and
their presence was a nuisance. He would not submit to this slavery
longer. He would have given his Senatorship for a civilized house
like Mrs. Lee's, with a woman like Mrs. Lee at its head, and twenty
thousand a year for life. He smiled his only smile that evening
when he thought how rapidly she would rout every man Jack of his
political following out of her parlours, and how meekly they would
submit to banishment into a back-office with an oil-cloth carpet
and two cane chairs.
He felt that Mrs. Lee was more necessary to him than the
Presidency itself; he could not go on without her; he needed
human companionship; some Christian comfort for his old age;
some avenue of communication with that social world, which
made his present surroundings look cold and foul; some touch of
that refinement of mind and morals beside which his own seemed
coarse. He felt unutterably lonely.
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